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France, Britain plan to step up use of attack helicopters in Libya

France, Britain plan to step up use of attack helicopters in Libya

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

By Michael Birnbaum, The Washington Post

 

TRIPOLI, Libya -- France and Britain plan to deploy attack helicopters in Libya, French officials said Monday, a move that will allow greater accuracy in military action in the months-long conflict but will probably put their troops at higher risk.
French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet told reporters in Brussels, Belgium, on Monday that the helicopters would be used against Libyan military equipment while trying to avoid civilian casualties, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Longuet said British military officials were on "exactly the same wavelength" as the French.
NATO planes and ships have been striking cities and military installations in Libya since mid-March. Allied military officials have said they were worried that the situation in Libya would become a stalemate, with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi remaining in power in the west, rebels controlling the east, and a contested area in between. They have spoken in recent weeks of the need for escalation to help protect Libya civilians, and have called for Col. Gadhafi to step down.
Libyan officials have said NATO was picking sides in a civil war and complained that strikes on Col. Gadhafi's Tripoli compound were attempts to assassinate the leader of a sovereign country.
NATO warplanes repeatedly hit Tripoli early today in what appears to be the heaviest night of bombing of the Libyan capital since the start of the air campaign against Col. Gadhafi's forces. More than 20 NATO airstrikes in less than half an hour set off thunderous booms that rattled windows in the city.
Heavy plumes of smoke wafted from an area close to the sprawling Gadhafi compound, suggesting that was a target.
Libyan rebels got a boost on Monday, when Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. assistant secretary of state, Near Eastern affairs, visited the de facto capital of Benghazi, in eastern Libya. The State Department in a statement called the rebel-led Transitional National Council "a credible and legitimate interlocutor for the Libyan people," and said the United States believed Col. Gadhafi "must leave power and Libya."
Mr. Longuet told reporters that France would use Gazelle helicopters, The Associated Press reported. During fighting in rebel-held Misurata, Libyan military forces moved into crowded areas, making it difficult for NATO to target them without risking significant civilian casualties.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11144/1148689-82.stm#ixzz1NF8h9Yms

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11144/1148689-82.stm#ixzz1NF8OYvsb

NATO bombards Tripoli in biggest attack yet!

NATO warplanes mounted what appeared to be the most intense bombardment by allied forces since the campaign to oust Muammar Gaddafi began, repeatedly bombing targets around the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
A rapid string of strikes, all within 30 minutes, rattled windows and sent plumes of smoke wafting over the city, the Associated Presse reports.
Reuters quoted a correspondent for Arab news channel Al Arabiya as saying 17 missiles had struck various parts of Tripoli. One column of smoke rose from an area close to Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound, suggesting that it might have been a target.
A Libyan government spokesman, Mussa Ibrahim, said the bombardment had killed three people and wounded 150.
NATO warplanes have been carrying out air strikes on Libya for more than two months since the U.N. authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians from Gaddafi's forces.
On Monday, Washington urged Gaddafi to leave Libya as its most senior envoy to date held talks in the rebel capital, Benghazi, Agence France-Press reports.
France and Britain, meanwhile, have decided to send strike helicopters into the battle against Gaddafi.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Monday the deployment falls within the U.N. mandate to protect Libyan civilians. He said it would take place as soon as possible.
NATO has about 200 aircraft available for its operation in Libya, but it has not yet used helicopters.

Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman became the most senior U.S. official to visit Libya since the uprising against Gaddafi began, visiting Benghazi in what the State Department calls "another signal" of America's support for the rebels' National Transitional Council. 

The State Department has called the NTC "a legitimate and credible interlocutor for the Libyan people," VOA reports.

His visit comes a day after the European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, opened an EU office in Benghazi.

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France Telecom CEO on Apple, Android

France Telecom CEO on Apple, Android, and kissing unlimited plans goodbye

Stephane Richard knows a thing or two about the iPhone.

In addition to carrying one of Apple's iconic smartphones, Richard is also the CEO of France Telecom, whose networks carry traffic from more iPhones than any other carrier except AT&T. France Telecom, with its Orange brands, sells the iPhone in 15 countries.

"They just created smartphones with the iPhone," Richard said during an hour-long chat over breakfast at the W Hotel in San Francisco last week. "Everybody should be grateful to them to have put such a product in our market."

But, while he praises Apple, Richard is wary of the power that the company holds by having total say in which apps do and don't get on its network.

Unlike with Android, where the carrier can largely configure phones the way it would like to, on Apple, the company has to settle for putting various services in the App Store. And, ultimately, it is Apple that controls what makes it into the App Store.

"Everybody is talking about Net neutrality," Richard said, but "Net neutrality is not only dealing with pipes."

"It also deals with management of application shops," he said. "If you have people like Apple managing their application store and saying 'This is OK and I don't want to see this app in my shop,' it's a problem."

In the interview, Richard offered a blunt take on a number of other key industry players and topics ranging from the need for variable pricing to the fates of Nokia and RIM.

Richard has been outspoken before, including calls last year for those flooding networks with data--companies like Apple and Google--to help pay some of the costs of making necessary network investments.

Though RIM and Nokia both face challenges, Richard said in our interview that he is glad that there are still a number of competing smartphone operating systems duking it out.

"For us we are quite happy with the existing landscape in terms of operating systems," he said. "A world with 90 percent of Android-based devices would not be attractive for us, but we are far from that."

Oh, and as for that report that France Telecom and Apple are working together on a standard for smaller SIM cards--that's true, Richard said, and it's a compromise designed to appease Apple's desire for something smaller without resorting to a software-only virtual SIM card that Apple had initially been advocating.

Here were some of his more interesting comments from our conversation:

On the massive increase in mobile data use and the dangers that creates:

The real risk of everything is collapse. Nobody utters this loudly enough, but the real issue for the world is a collapse of the network or some local collapses. We are the people with pipes. We are supposed to invest heavily in pipes in order to bring the capacity which is necessary to sustain the explosion of consumption and usage and data traffic in our networks. At the same time, the people that create this traffic...are not really incentivized to manage properly, globally, the traffic.
There is an unbalance in the overall system, which in our view is a major problem.
It is totally impossible to absorb such an explosion in traffic without first, clearly investing massively in spectrum and equipment, and second, without introducing some new pricing approaches.

On Microsoft-Nokia:

There are a lot of questions around Microsoft and Nokia--capacity really to reverse the quite negative trend that they have in the market. It seems difficult, but we will see. We are still definitely in favor of seeing at least three or four big families of operating systems in the market. But it is true it is going to be difficult for them.

On RIM:

It's not really declining. It's still popular in Europe. They have customers and users that are quite faithful to them. It works more or less like a community of people. It's often families that are big BlackBerry users, and of course companies. They have had some quality problems in the recent period which is a concern, especially with the next generations of devices.
In my view as a customer, or as a partner of them, I think they really should fix very quickly their quality problems.

On Google and Android:

Android is, I think, quite a solid and reliable operating system and doesn't suffer with bugs. We have regularly problems with RIM. We have no problem with Apple and with Android. Let's be frank and clear. To me, the risk theoretically is more for Google to use releases--Android releases--as a weapon in their relationship with device manufacturers and indirectly with telcos than anything else. So far they have not really tried to do it.

On Apple and App Store openness:

Everybody is talking about Net neutrality. Net neutrality is not only dealing with pipes. It also deals with management of application shops. If you have people like Apple managing their application store and saying "This is OK and I don't want to see this app in my shop," it's a problem. So far, we have been able to come to solutions with Apple people, even though they are a little tough....We are able to find solutions. We are not at war with the Apple guys. But it is true that it can be tough.
Of course, ideally we would like to have those services embedded natively in the handset, which is what we do with Android-based devices like with Samsung or HTC or people like that. It is not possible with Apple. We still are in a position to bring those apps to our customers through the app stores, provided clearly we have access to the App Store.
The problem is the day when Apple says "I don't want this one."
Definitely, if we face these kind of problems we will go to court. Because competition is not only something that should be applied to telcos and to carriers. For us it should be a principle for the whole Internet environment.

On working with Apple on smaller SIM cards:

As you probably know, Apple has been working for years on reducing the size of SIM cards because they need space in the phone. They even thought about a device without any SIM card, that is what is known as the e-SIM project. All of us told them it was a bad idea because the SIM card is a critical piece of the security and authentication process. It would be very difficult for a telco or carrier to manage the customer relationship. I think that they understood this point. We had a very constructive exchange and dialogue with them.
We are going to work with them in order to standardize a new format of SIM which takes into account our needs with security and authentication and also is compatible with their wishes in terms of size.
I understood that the next iPhone would be smaller and thinner and they are definitely seeking some space.
This is good evidence we can work properly with Apple people, Apple teams. In that particular case, we have been able to find, I think, a good answer which is good for everyone.

On tablets:

To be honest, I am still a little skeptical of the size of the world market in tablets. First, I do think the iPad is very well ahead of the competition in terms of tablets. To me as a user and as a partner, there is the iPad and there is the rest. I think there will be a world market for the iPad. What will be, really, the size of this market, is difficult to say, because in fact it is a new market.
In fact I think that in the future people will have several devices, several screens. Nobody knows what is the mix or the range of devices that we will have.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20065461-94.html#ixzz1NF5zn8A1

The France That Hasn’t Shown Its Face to Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Biting His Nails: Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn sits during his bail hearing at the State Supreme Court in New York on May 19.

The case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former director of the IMF and leading Socialist politician now accused of sexual assault, has left the French public shocked and scandalized in many different ways. But, curiously, there is one response that we have not seen: anti-Semitism.

Curious, because France’s long history with its Jews has often been troubled and it is at moments such as these that an ugly strain of homegrown anti-Semitism rears its head.

It’s a tradition that has its roots in late 19th-century populism. With the nation mired in a severe economic slump and governed by a venal and feckless political class, there was a ready market for demagoguery. In 1886, Edouard Drumont published a two-volume work, La France Juive (Jewish France), which became one of the era’s best sellers. Drumont declared that a cabal of Jewish bankers and financiers — “this hook-nosed tribe” and “sons of Abraham” — had taken the nation’s economy hostage. The newspaper Drumont founded during the Dreyfus Affair, La Libre Parole, brandished as its motto: “France for the French!”

But the anti-Semite’s Jew was polymorphic. Not only did he control the nation’s economic system, but he also conspired to bring down that very same system. Nationalists claimed that the ranks of those critical of liberal democracy were riddled with Jews, as well. During the last years of the 19th century, French Jews became synonymous with socialists; in the wake of World War I they were re-labeled as agents of communism. Banker or Bolshevik, the essence remained constant: the Jew was a relentless financial and political outsider who preyed upon the French nation.

Related

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There was a third facet to the Jew’s predatory nature that plumbed French history much more deeply: that of sexual marauder. With its roots in the blood libel of the Middle Ages, this characterization evolved into the image of the Jew as a threat to the sexual purity of the community. Writers as prominent as Louis Ferdinand Céline, as influential as Sibylle de Mirabeau (known as Gyp) and respectable as Maurice Barrès — all exploited this fear. For these and other writers, there seemed a direct correlation between France’s ostensible decline into decadence and the growth of intermarriage between Christians and Jews.

In the years before and after World War II, two French politicians became lightning rods for this new kind of anti-Semitism. When Léon Blum, leader of the Socialist Party, became prime minister in 1936, he was attacked with a ferocity and violence remarkable even for French political discourse at the time. One parliamentary deputy, Xavier Vallet, declared in disgust: “For the first time, this old Gallo-Roman country is going to be governed by a Jew…It is better to place at the head of this peasant nation of France someone whose origins, however modest, are rooted in our soil, rather than a subtle Talmudist.” It was hardly surprising that, as war approached, more than one voice on the French right announced: “Better Hitler than Blum!”

Less than a decade after France had been liberated from this fulfilled wish, it was the turn of another remarkable politician, Pierre Mendès-France, to weather these dismal torrents of rhetoric. An economist who had won the admiration, if not the support of Charles de Gaulle, Mendès-France became prime minister in 1954. Pierre Poujade, a deputy in the National Assembly and cut from the same ideological material as Drumont and Vallat, was outraged: “We will not be the plaything of an army of mixed breeds who are camping out on our soil and dictate the law to us.”

The demise of Poujade’s political fortunes did not spell the death of anti-Semitism in France — to the contrary. Poujade’s most notorious follower, Jean Marie Le Pen, founder of the Front National, in turn cultivated many of the bizarre orchids found in the hothouse of this particular ideology. From his insistence that the gas chambers were “a detail of history” to rhyming the name of the government minister Michel Durafour with crematory oven (“four” in French), Le Pen made a career of such racist goads.

When Le Pen’s daughter Marine succeeded him as head of the FN earlier this year, the media described it as a turning point. Young and media-savvy, Marine Le Pen was determined to modernize her father’s party by, in part, ridding it of its anti-Semitic baggage. She declared that she did not share her father’s vision of the past — though she did not add what her own vision happened to be — and has made a show of purging the party of those members who have a predilection for Nazi salutes and shaved heads.

This brings us back to the absence of an anti-Semitic backlash, the dog that didn’t bark. In a country awash in news and commentary about DSK’s arrest, Marine Le Pen’s public remarks have been strikingly circumspect. Though appalled by the nature of the charges, Le Pen, rather than reaching into her father’s repertory of rhetorical provocations, went on to remind her interviewer that DSK must be granted the presumption of innocence.

Against these remarks, however, we should not lose sight of Le Pen’s efforts to meld France’s festering concerns over immigration to its growing fears over globalization. The immigrant to be feared is not the Jew from East Europe, but the Muslim from North Africa. The Muslim has come to represent all that threatens the social and economic fabric of the nation. No less a threat to France are international and supranational institutions. Le Pen has relentlessly attacked not just the European Union — she has proposed pulling France out of the euro zone — but also the International Monetary Fund, which had been led until very recently by the man who was to be her probable opponent in 2012, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. DSK, like the Muslim immigrant, is to her little more than the gravedigger of French national identity. For Le Pen, France is besieged by what she calls “Islamism” and the global sway of “roi-argent” (King Money). The two, she warns, form the dual totalitarianisms of our era.

It may well be that phrases like “King Money,” which echo the rhetoric of Drumont and Poujade, are accidental. We will certainly know better in the coming weeks and months. For now, the question is whether we must give Marine Le Pen the same presumption of innocence she has granted her bête noire. 

Robert Zaretsky, a professor of French history at the University of Houston Honors College, is the author of “Albert Camus: Elements of a Life.”

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/138035/#ixzz1NF4BFFoA

Digest: Former teammate comes to defense of Lance Armstrong

Associated Press

Posted: 05/23/2011 08:19:48 PM PDT

Updated: 05/23/2011 08:19:50 PM PDT

In the wake of fresh doping allegations against Lance Armstrong, cycling's world governing body and one of his former teammates came to the defense of the seven-time Tour de France champion on Monday.

Tyler Hamilton, another ex-teammate of Armstrong, said on "60 Minutes" he witnessed the American take performance-enhancing drugs before or during the 1999, 2000 and 2001 Tours while with the U.S. Postal team.

However, team rider Viatcheslav Ekimov says he never saw Armstrong do any of the things Hamilton described.

The International Cycling Union also denied claims from Hamilton that it helped cover up a positive sample submitted by Armstrong at the Tour de Suisse in 2001.

Ekimov, who rode with Armstrong as he won the Tour from 2000-05 and is now RadioShack's team manager, referred to Hamilton as a "liar" and suggested he has ulterior motives.

"Behind his story is something," Ekimov said. "First of all, it's untrue. And behind his story is some money or some stimulation. Because why did this guy just crack now? Why didn't he do it in 2005? "... I call these guys liars. First they lie about the innocence, now they lie about something else."

NFL

A federal magistrate has rejected the NFL's request for more time to file a response in the pending antitrust lawsuit filed by its locked-out players.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanne Graham in Minneapolis ruled that the NFL must answer

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by June 6. The league had asked for a July 6 deadline to answer a lawsuit filed by current players but since amended to included complaints from retirees led by former Hall of Famer Carl Eller.

Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis said in an interview with ESPN that crime will increase if labor issues cause the NFL to cancel its season."Watch how much evil, which we call crime, watch how much crime picks up, if you take away our game," Lewis said. "There's too many people that live through us. "... There's nothing else to do."

Motor sports

An Andretti and a Foyt are teaming up to put Ryan Hunter-Reay back in Sunday's Indianapolis 500.

After a disastrous weekend for Michael Andretti's team, the owner and his father's old rival have reached a deal to get Hunter-Reay, the only American to win an IndyCar race since 2008, into A.J. Foyt's No. 41 car.

U.S. Olympic gold medalist skier Bode Miller will team with Swedish X Games champion freeskier Jon Olsson to drive the Gumball 3000 Rally, a Tour de France-style auto race stretching from London to Istanbul.

College basketball

In a surprise move, coach Ed DeChellis, who led Penn State to the NCAA tournament this year, resigned to take the vacant job at Navy.

Steve Prohm was promoted to head coach at Murray State, taking over for Billy Kennedy, who left to take the job at Texas A&M.

College tennis

Mallory Burdette's victory at No. 2 singles clinched second-seeded Stanford's 4-1 win over Baylor in the NCAA women's national semifinals at Stanford. The Cardinal (28-0) will face Florida (30-1) for the title on Tuesday.

In the men's final, two-time defending champion USC (26-2) will face top-seeded Virginia (34-0).

Golf

Sergio Garcia has withdrawn from British Open qualifying because of an infected fingernail. Garcia has played in every British Open dating to 1998. The 31-year-old had to qualify this year because he has fallen to No. 73 in the world.

Black boxes indicate pilot error in Air France crash: report

A mechanical arm, seen in this image published on the web site of France's BEA air accident inquiry office May 1, 2011, holds an orange cylindrical flight data recorder above the sand.

Credit: Reuters/BEA/Johann Peschel/HO

A mechanical arm, seen in this image published on the web site of France's BEA air accident inquiry office May 1, 2011, holds an orange cylindrical flight data recorder above the sand.

Credit: Reuters/BEA/Johann Peschel/HO

Mon May 23, 2011 10:44pm EDT

(Reuters) - Preliminary findings from the recorders of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 have found that the pilots became distracted with malfunctioning airspeed indicators and failed to properly manage other critical systems, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The crew did not follow standard procedures to maintain air speed and keep the aircraft's nose level after the Airbus 330 encountered some turbulence and unexpectedly high icing at 35,000 feet, the paper said.

Air France and Airbus were unavailable for comment outside business hours.

The Journal said the cockpit recorders show that the pilots apparently became confused by the alarms blaring from their instruments and despite trying to systematically respond to each warning, were unable to sort out the chaos and maintain a steady course.

The findings from the recorders, which are to be released on Friday, are expected to show that the twin-engine jet slowed dangerously after the autopilot disengaged.

The crash killed all 228 people on board Flight 447, which was on a scheduled flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

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