Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On?

Posted by John Cassidy

 

As I write this, a bunch of reporters are flying from Moscow to Havana on an Aeroflot Airbus 330, but Edward Snowden isn’t sitting among them. His whereabouts are unknown. He might still be in the V.I.P. lounge at Sheremetyevo International Airport. He could have left on another plane. There are even suggestions that he has taken shelter in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Moscow.

What we do know is that, on this side of the Atlantic, efforts are being stepped up to demonize Snowden, and to delegitimize his claim to be a conscientious objector to the huge electronic-spying apparatus operated by the United States and the United Kingdom. “This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent,” General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “What Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies.” Over on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I don’t think this man is a whistle-blower… he could have stayed and faced the music. I don’t think running is a noble thought.”

An unnamed senior Administration official joined the Snowden-bashing chorus, telling reporters, “Mr. Snowden’s claim that he is focussed on supporting transparency, freedom of the press, and protection of individual rights and democracy is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen: China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador. His failure to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the U.S., not to advance Internet freedom and free speech.”

It is easy to understand, though not to approve of, why Administration officials, who have been embarrassed by Snowden’s revelations, would seek to question his motives and exaggerate the damage he has done to national security. Feinstein, too, has been placed in a tricky spot. Tasked with overseeing the spooks and their spying operations, she appears to have done little more than nod.

More unnerving is the way in which various members of the media have failed to challenge the official line. Nobody should be surprised to see the New York Post running the headline: “ROGUES’ GALLERY: SNOWDEN JOINS LONG LIST OF NOTORIOUS, GUTLESS TRAITORS FLEEING TO RUSSIA.” But where are Snowden’s defenders? As of Monday, the editorial pages of the Times and the Washington Post, the two most influential papers in the country, hadn’t even addressed the Obama Administration’s decision to charge Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of theft.

If convicted on all three counts, the former N.S.A. contract-systems administrator could face thirty years in jail. On the Sunday-morning talk shows I watched, there weren’t many voices saying that would be an excessive punishment for someone who has performed an invaluable public service. And the person who did aggressively defend Snowden’s actions, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian blogger who was one of the reporters to break the story, found himself under attack. After suggesting that Greenwald had “aided and abetted” Snowden, David Gregory, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

After being criticized on Twitter, Gregory said that he wasn’t taking a position on Snowden’s actions—he was merely asking a question. I’m all for journalists asking awkward questions, too. But why aren’t more of them being directed at Hayden and Feinstein and Obama, who are clearly intent on attacking the messenger?

To get a different perspective on Snowden and his disclosures, here’s a portion of an interview that ABC—the Australian Broadcasting Company, not the Disney subsidiary—did today with Thomas Drake, another former N.S.A. employee, who, in 2010, was charged with espionage for revealing details about an electronic-eavesdropping project called Trailblazer, a precursor to Operation Prism, one of the programs that Snowden documented. (The felony cases against Drake, as my colleague Jane Mayer has written, eventually collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)

INTERVIEWER: Not everybody thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing. I presume you do…

DRAKE: I consider Edward Snowden as a whistle-blower. I know some have called him a hero, some have called him a traitor. I focus on what he disclosed. I don’t focus on him as a person. He had a belief that what he was exposed to—U.S. actions in secret—were violating human rights and privacy on a very, very large scale, far beyond anything that had been admitted to date by the government. In the public interest, he made that available.

INTERVIEWER: What do you say to the argument, advanced by those with the opposite viewpoint to you, especially in the U.S. Congress and the White House, that Edward Snowden is a traitor who made a narcissistic decision that he personally had a right to decide what public information should be in the public domain?

DRAKE: That’s a government meme, a government cover—that’s a government story. The government is desperate to not deal with the actual exposures, the content of the disclosures. Because they do reveal a vast, systemic, institutionalized, industrial-scale Leviathan surveillance state that has clearly gone far beyond the original mandate to deal with terrorism—far beyond.

As far as I’m concerned, that about covers it. I wish Snowden had followed Drake’s example and remained on U.S. soil to fight the charges against him. But I can’t condemn him for seeking refuge in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. If he’d stayed here, he would almost certainly be in custody, with every prospect of staying in a cell until 2043 or later. The Obama Administration doesn’t want him to come home and contribute to the national-security-versus-liberty debate that the President says is necessary. It wants to lock him up for a long time.

And for what? For telling would-be jihadis that we are monitoring their Gmail and Facebook accounts? For informing the Chinese that we eavesdrop on many of their important institutions, including their prestigious research universities? For confirming that the Brits eavesdrop on virtually anybody they feel like? Come on. Are there many people out there who didn’t already know these things?

Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”

I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. But, at the same time, they are part of the media and political establishment that stands accused of ignoring, or failing to pick up on, an intelligence outrage that’s been going on for years. It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”

Mea culpa. Having spent almost eighteen years at The New Yorker, I’m arguably just as much a part of the media establishment as David Gregory and his guests. In this case, though, I’m with Snowden—not only for the reasons that Drake enumerated but also because of an old-fashioned and maybe naïve inkling that journalists are meant to stick up for the underdog and irritate the powerful. On its side, the Obama Administration has the courts, the intelligence services, Congress, the diplomatic service, much of the media, and most of the American public. Snowden’s got Greenwald, a woman from Wikileaks, and a dodgy travel document from Ecuador. Which side are you on?

Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On? : The New Yorker

Berlusconi found guilty after case that cast spotlight on murky premiership

Lizzy Davies in Milan The Guardian, Tuesday 25 June 2013

Former Italian prime minister given seven-year jail term and banned from public office for life at Milan court

Silvio Berlusconi, left, and Karima el-Mahroug, known as Ruby Rubacuori, who both deny having 'intimate relations'. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

After more than 26 months, 50 court hearings and countless breathless column inches from journalists worldwide, it took just four minutes for the sentence that Silvio Berlusconi had feared to be delivered. At 5.19pm, before a fascist-era sculpture showing two men struck down by a towering figure, the judges swept into the courtroom and pronounced their damning verdict for Italy's longest-serving postwar prime minister. By 5.23pm, it was all over.

At the culmination of a trial that helped strike the final nail in the coffin of the playboy politician's international reputation, the judges found Berlusconi guilty both of paying for sex with the underage prostitute nicknamed Ruby Heartstealer and abusing his office to cover it up. They even went beyond the prosecutors' sentencing requests, ordering him to serve seven – rather than six – years in prison and face a lifetime ban on holding public office.

Perhaps fittingly for a case that cast a spotlight on the murky nexus of sex and power that prosecutors argued was at the heart of his premiership – in which young women were procured, they said, "for the personal sexual satisfaction" of the billionaire septuagenarian – all three judges were female.

Berlusconi, who had been predicting the verdict for weeks as the logical result of his lifelong "persecution" by leftwing prosecutors, has always denied the charges and now has the right to lodge not one but two appeals. The sentence will be enforced only if these fail and it is made definitive, a process that could take years. Regardless of whether it is eventually upheld, Berlusconi is highly unlikely ever to go to jail.

There were some notable absentees in court on Monday: Ilda Boccassini, the formidable prosecutor who had led the case against the 76-year-old, and Karima el-Mahroug, the former nightclub dancer from Morocco whom Berlusconi was convicted of paying for sex in 2010 when she was 17, below the legal age of prostitution in Italy. Both he and she denied having "intimate relations" and claimed the thousands of euros he gave her were simply the support of a generous friend.

The more serious charge, however, was that in May of that year he exerted prime-ministerial pressure on police in Milan to release Mahroug from custody for fear she would reveal details of their liaisons. He admitted having made a call to police, but said he did so in the belief that her detention might cause a "diplomatic incident" because he believed her to be a relative of Hosni Mubarak, then the president of Egypt.

Berlusconi himself also chose to stay away from the court. The leader of the centre-right Freedom People (PdL) party was reported to have waited for the verdict at the Villa San Martino in Arcore, scene of the by-now infamous "bunga bunga" parties where, prosecutors argued, he held raucous evenings of striptease and sex with young women he remunerated handsomely.

Afterwards, he expressed outrage at the verdict, which he said was politically motivated. "An incredible sentence has been issued of a violence never seen or heard of before, to try to eliminate me from the political life of this country," Berlusconi said in a statement.

"Yet again I intend to resist against this persecution because I am absolutely innocent and I don't want in any way to abandon my battle to make Italy a country that is truly free and just."

One of his staunchest allies, the PdL MP Daniela Santanché, had listened to the sentencing in immaculate disbelief. "This is a political sentence that has nothing to do with justice," she told swarms of reporters trailing after her down the stairs of Milan's vast palazzo di giustizia. "These women have used other women for political motives. The defence lawyer Niccolò Ghedini said the sentence was "beyond reality".

For many Italians, however, the verdict was entirely proportionate. Ever since the first media reports emerged in 2010 and the then prime minister was placed under formal investigation in January 2011, the drip-feed of sordid details from Arcore via the courtroom has tested traditional tolerance towards politicians' private lives.

The prosecutors argued that, rather than the innocent, elegant dinner parties of Berlusconi's claims, the soirées were in fact a chance for the then prime minister to procure the sexual services of a variety of women. Two witnesses told investigators of an eyebrow-raising game involving a statue of the fertility god Priapus; in a separate but related trial, Mahroug testified that women had dressed up as nuns and nurses before stripping. On one notable occasion, she claimed, one had even paraded alternately as Barack Obama and the flame-haired Boccassini.

One person who will be less than delighted by the verdict is Enrico Letta, Italy's current prime minister, who has the unenviable task of holding together a fraught grand coalition of his centre-left and Berlusconi's centre-right. Although he occupies no ministry, Berlusconi still plays an influential role in national politics, and he has the power – as Letta is acutely aware – to bring it down by withdrawing his support and triggering new elections.

Some observers say that the verdict – which showed that even in his latest incarnation of benevolent, self-sacrificing statesman, he is not protected from the long arm of the law – may have brought that a step closer. Tensions were made clear in a curt statement by Angelino Alfano, PdL secretary and deputy prime minister. The sentence was, he said, "contrary to common judicial sense, good sense, and worse than the worst expected".

Others, however, predict Berlusconi will make no immediate move, preferring to keep up pressure on Italy's supreme court before another, less salacious but potentially far more damaging verdict, expected by the end of the year: the definitive ruling on tax fraud charges for which he is approaching the last roll of the dice.

If the court of cassation upholds his conviction, he will face not only a four-year jail sentence but also – more pertinently for a man whose political ambitions have never died – a five-year ban on public office. For many people, though, the verdict was already quite something. "A conviction to save the dignity of Italy," read the placard of a woman standing outside the courthouse with an all-female group singing the Italian Resistance song "Bella ciao" ("Bye-bye, beautiful"). Another declared: "Berlusconi is ineligible, unsupportable, unpresentable."

Berlusconi found guilty after case that cast spotlight on murky premiership | World news | The Guardian

German court case could force euro exit, warns key judge

 

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 9:00PM BST 08 Jun 2013

Crucial hearings on the eurozone’s bail-out policies at Germany’s top court this week could set in motion events that force Germany’s withdrawal from the euro, a leading judge has warned.

Crucial hearings on the eurozone’s bail-out policies at Germany’s top court this week could set in motion events that force Germany’s withdrawal from the euro, a leading judge has warned. Photo: AP

Udo di Fabio, the constitutional court’s euro expert until last year, said the explosive case on the legality of the European Monetary Union rescue machinery could provoke a showdown between Germany and the European Central Bank (ECB) and ultimately cause the collapse of monetary union.

“In so far as the ECB is acting 'ultra vires’, and these violations are deemed prolonged and serious, the court must decide whether Germany can remain a member of monetary union on constitutional grounds,” he wrote in a report for the German Foundation for Family Businesses.

“His arguments are dynamite,” said Mats Persson from Open Europe, which is issuing its own legal survey on the case on Monday.

Dr Di Fabio wrote the court’s provisional ruling last year on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the €500bn (£425bn) bail-out fund. His comments offer a rare window into thinking on the eight-strong panel in Karlsruhe, loosely split 4:4 on European Union issues.

The court is holding two days of hearings, though it may not issue a ruling for several weeks. The key bone of contention is the ECB’s back-stop support for the Spanish and Italian bond markets or Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), the “game-changer” plan that stopped the Spanish debt crisis spiralling out of control last July and vastly reduced the risk of a euro break-up.

The case stems from legal complaints by 37,000 citizens, including the Left Party, the More Democracy movement, and a core of eurosceptic professors, most arguing that the ECB has overstepped its mandate by financing the deficits of bankrupt states.

Berenberg Bank said the case was now “the most important event risk” looming over the eurozone, with concerns mounting over an “awkward verdict” that may constrain or even block ECB action.

Dr Di Fabio said the court, or Verfassungsgericht, does not have “procedural leverage” to force the ECB to change policy but it can issue a “declaratory” ultimatum. If the ECB carries on with bond purchases regardless, the court can and should then prohibit the Bundesbank from taking part.

The Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann needs no encouragement, say experts. He submitted a report to the court in December attacking the ECB head Mario Draghi’s pledge on debt as highly risky, a breach of both ECB independence and fundamental principles. The ECB does not have a legal mandate to uphold the “current composition of monetary union”, he wrote.

Dr Di Fabio said it was hard to imagine that an “integration-friendly court” would push the EMU “exit button”, but it can force a halt to bond purchases. This may amount to the same thing, reviving the eurozone crisis instantly.

“It would pull the rug from under the whole project. It is the OMT alone that has calmed markets and saved the periphery,” said Andrew Roberts from Royal Bank of Scotland. Mr Draghi said last week that the OMT was the “most successful monetary policy in recent times”.

The court dates back to the Reichskammergericht of the Holy Roman Empire created in 1490, but it was revived after the Second World War along the lines of the US Supreme Court.

It has emerged as the chief defender of the sovereign nation state in the EU system, asserting the supremacy of the German Grundgesetz over EU law, hence the German term “Verfassungspatriotismus”, or constitution patriotism.

The court backed the Lisbon Treaty but also ruled that Europe’s states are “Masters of the Treaties” and not the other way round, and reminded Europe that national parliaments are the only legitimate form of democracy. It said Germany must “refuse further participation in the EU” if it ever threatens the powers of the elected Bundestag.

It issued another “yes, but” ruling last September. It threw out an injunction intended to freeze the ESM, but it also tied Berlin’s hands by capping Germany’s ESM share at €190bn, and blocked an ESM bank licence. It killed off hope of eurobonds, debt-pooling, or fiscal union by prohibiting the Bundestag from “accepting liability for decisions by other states”.

Crucially, the court said the Bundestag may not lawfully alienate its tax and spending powers to EU bodies, even if it wants to, for this would undermine German democracy.

Chief Justice Andreas Vosskuhle said at the time that Germany had reached the limits of EU integration. Any further steps would require a “new constitution”, and that in turn would require a referendum.

German court case could force euro exit, warns key judge - Telegraph

Thousands greet defiant Erdogan

Agencies in Istanbul guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 June 2013 11.17 AEST

Turkey's prime minister again ratchets up rhetoric against protesters on his return to Istanbul

Tayyip Erdogan waves to supporters after arriving in Istanbul early on Friday morning. Photograph: Osman Orsal/Reuters

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has delivered a fiery speech on his return to the country, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must end.

In the first large public show of support since anti-government protests erupted last week, more than 10,000 supporters cheered Erdogan outside an Istanbul airport.

Despite earlier comments that suggested he could be softening his stand, Erdogan was in combative mood on his return from a four-day trip to North Africa.

"These protests that are bordering on illegality must come to an end immediately," he said.

Erdogan's reaction has been seen as decisive in determining whether the demonstrations fizzle out or rage on.

"Those who raise their hands against the police should have their hands broken," his supporters chanted. Rights groups say thousands of people have been injured in the demonstrations. Three people have died – two protesters and a policeman.

"We stood strong, but we were never stubborn ... We are together, we are unified, we are brothers," Erdogan told his supporters, who had blocked roads to the airport for hours, waiting for him until long after midnight.

"They say I am the prime minister of only 50%. It's not true. We have served the whole of the 76m from the east to the west," Erdogan said at the airport, referring to his election win in 2011, when he took 50% of the vote.

Speaking before leaving Tunisia, Erdogan had attempted more of a balancing act, appearing to moderate his tone in an effort not to further inflame protesters.

Erdogan acknowledged that some Turks were involved in the protests out of environmental concerns, and said he had "love and respect" for them.

The protests started last week over objections to Erdogan's plan to uproot the square's Gezi Park to make way for a replica Ottoman barracks and shopping mall. Police's extensive use of tear gas and water cannons outraged many and sent thousands flooding into the square to support what had, until then, been a small protest.

In Tunisisa, Erdogan claimed terrorists had been involved in the protests, saying an outlawed left-wing militant group that carried out a suicide bombing on the US embassy in Ankara in February was taking part.

"They are involved. They have been caught in the streets and on social media," he said.

Thousands greet defiant Erdogan | World news | guardian.co.uk

Casa Loma, Toronto | A most unusual castle

 

Craig Platt Travel Editor, Digital

June 6, 2013

Canadian castle ... Casa Loma in Toronto. Photo: Getty Images

Wandering down a suburban street in a modern metropolis, the last thing you expect to see is a medieval castle. What makes the sight even less likely is that I'm not in Europe or Great Britain, but in North America.

And yet, here it looms, its turrets complete with arrow slits, looking out on a spectacular view over downtown Toronto.

This is Casa Loma, and it must be one of the strangest, most fascinating castles in the world.

Unlike, for instance, Victoria's cheesy Kryal Castle, which was built as a tourist attraction, Casa Loma was created as a home for one of Canada's richest men. Only through the misfortune of its owner did the castle become an attraction open to the public in Canada's largest city.

Henry Pellatt, a wealthy industrialist and Anglophile, made his initial fortune through early investment in electricity supply and railroads. His travels in Europe inspired a love of fine art and architecture, which in turn inspired him to build his giant home.

In 1911, worth $C17 million ($A17.2 million) at the time, Pellatt set to work building Casa Loma with architect E.J. Lennox, incorporating classic castle features such as battlements and even secret passageways. It took three years and $3.5 million to build – a fortune now, an outrageous fortune then.

Seeing Casa Loma as it stands today, still in perfect condition, is a strange experience. The castle sits on Avenue Road Hill and is invisible as I approach from the train station at the bottom of the hill.

It's only when I reach the top of the stairs leading up the hill (which seem to be very popular with joggers) that the castle becomes visible. It sits there, in a fairly typical, tree-lined suburban street, a large part of its grounds now converted into parking spaces.

I enter through the large doors to the great hall, with its ceiling 18 metres high, and pick up an audio guide. This is a must, as guests wander the building on their own, and the audio guide adds plenty of fascinating details to the experience.

It's these details, and the general weirdness and folly of such a place in a Canadian city, that makes visiting Casa Loma worthwhile. I take my time wandering through each room, from the great hall and dining room, to the beautiful and bright conservatory, through Pellat and his wife's separate bedrooms, even into the servants' quarters and to the top of one of the turrets.

Of course, I can't miss the opportunity to take the tunnel that leads to the stables, passing under what is now quite a busy thoroughfare. Pellatt was forced to build the tunnel after the City of Toronto decided to put a road through his grounds. It was just one of a great many battles Pellatt had with the city's officials – many of whom, it seemed, despised the ostentatious lifestyle and home of the man. Unfortunately for Pellatt, the city tended to win.

The greatest, and perhaps saddest, victory for the officials was Pellatt's loss of Casa Loma in order to avoid bankruptcy – having lost his local monopoly on electricity supply and having suffered a series of bad investments, Pellatt found himself in debt. The City of Toronto purchased his multi-million dollar home for the paltry sum of $27,305 in 1934.

But it wasn't all bad – Pellatt, who died in 1939, lived long enough to see his home become a tourist attraction, saying that "it could not be put to better use". Having had the opportunity to wander about this fascinating example of the ostentatiousness of the super-rich, I am inclined to agree with him.

Casa Loma, Toronto | A most unusual castle

The story of Google Maps

 

By Tom Chivers 6:15AM BST 04 Jun 2013

Since 2005, Google has mapped 28 million miles of road in 194 countries. And it won't rest until the whole planet is on its servers. Tom Chivers reports on the mammoth operation and asks: is it ruining the way we travel?

Google maps Photo: Alamy

Are you planning a holiday to North Korea? Probably not. But if you are, your job will be a lot easier now that Google Maps covers the place. You could, if you like, use it to navigate your way from Yongbyon nuclear site, along Nuclear Test Road (as it is, apparently, called) and to Camp 22, one of the many scenic prison-labour camps along the country’s border with China. What’s more, you can do it all on beautifully rendered satellite photos of the area. Of course, you’d struggle with mobile internet connectivity, but even that, nowadays, needn’t be a problem – you can download the maps before you go. Frankly, it is surprising that the Pyongyang Office of Tourism doesn’t make more of the facility.

“Our goal is to put together a sort of digital mirror of the world,” says Dan Sieberg, a Google exec and self-described “evangelist” for the Google Maps revolution. (Religious imagery comes naturally to Googlers: one of Sieberg’s colleagues describes him as a “guru”. The whole company has a slight hippy-cult feel to it; the Telegraph can report that there are few more awkward feelings in life than turning up at the Google office, surrounded by people in three-quarter-length trousers and novelty slippers, while wearing a suit and tie. It feels like your cufflinks are burning your skin.) Anyway, the construction of Google’s “digital mirror” was never going to be stopped by a few pesky details, such as an unending 60-year war between North and South Korea, or the existence in one of those countries of a brutally repressive communist police state.

Google Maps is now so ubiquitous, such a vital part of so many of our lives, that it feels odd to think it didn’t exist until 2005. Of all of the search giant’s many tentacles reaching octopus-like into every area of our existence, Maps, together with its partner Google Earth and their various offspring, can probably claim to be the one that has changed our day-to-day life the most.

“I think that mapping is one of those things that we perhaps couldn’t live without,” says Sieberg. “It’s become such an essential part of understanding a new city, or getting to a meeting quickly, or planning a vacation.” Any of us who, now, sets off to meet someone with only the vaguest idea of where we’re going, confident in the ability of the magic box in our hands to guide us, knows what he means. In the same way that the advent of mobile phones stopped us having to worry about arranging to meet at a certain place and time (“Ring me when you get to the station, yes?”), so the appearance of maps on those phones has stopped us having to worry about knowing our way around a city. We can arrive anywhere – Edinburgh, Cologne, Tokyo – and within moments know our way to our hotel, have a list of the best-rated restaurants and know the best route to take on the metro.

The figures involved are bordering on silly. About a billion people use Google Maps every month, working out at about a billion searches a day. One hundred and ninety-four countries have been at least partly mapped, with a total of 28 million miles of road. (Google will tell you that its ability to warn you of heavy traffic on those roads saves humanity two years of frustration every day, across 600 cities worldwide.) Street View, the bit of Maps that gives you a pedestrian’s-eye view of the roads you’re looking at, is expanding at an intimidating rate: its jaunty, ubiquitous little electric cars have driven down more than five million miles of road, across 50 countries, their camera-turrets recording all the way.

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And it is unlikely to slow down, because Google, being Google, is uncomfortable with anything that looks like standing still. Recently it noticed that the aforementioned jaunty and ubiquitous electric cars were not much use unless they had a road to trundle down. So it looked at other options. First, a Google tricycle began cheerfully Street-Viewing city parks and university campuses across the United States. Then someone decided that they needed indoor maps too, so they built a trolley and started pushing that through museums and the like: “In the UK, we’ve got all the major airports, lots of train stations, shopping centres, markets,” says Sieberg. “You can imagine that, if you’re at an airport and you want to find the right gate, or in a mall and you just want to find the toilet, this will come in handy.” He looks momentarily shifty. “I’ll let you into a secret. We actually have indoor maps of the New York Google building.” No longer will any Googler be caught short between meetings.

_{Google Maps operators on Mount Everest (GOOGLE)}

But trolleys and trikes can’t go everywhere, so the march had to continue. A camera-equipped snowmobile was sent down the slopes of Whistler, mapping it for any GPS-enabled skiers who wanted to plan their routes in advance. And, finally, someone realised that until the Street View cameras could go anywhere humans could go, it wouldn’t be enough. So they built a backpack and started getting people to walk around with them. The Trekker, strapped to some operator’s back, has clambered down the Grand Canyon, trekked through the Canadian Arctic and Antarctica, and zoomed down the Amazon on a motor boat.

At the same time, underwater cameras have started mapping six locations, including the Great Barrier Reef and the Galápagos Islands and Google planes have started flying overhead, taking photos that are being made into 3D images of 40 cities in the US, and Rome, according to Sieberg, and soon many more. And for those parts of the world where flying a plane or trekking with a backpack is frowned upon, Google has called on an army of 40,000 people worldwide to contribute photographs and fill in details. Sieberg calls them “citizen cartographers”, and it’s these foot soldiers who have built the maps of North Korea. (In the North Korean case, it was complicated by the fact that the cartographers couldn’t get into the country itself: instead the maps were put together from the memories of people who had either visited the country or used to live there, and fact-checked against satellite imagery.)

When talking to Googlers about this, it’s hard not to get swept up in the excitement. The “evangelism” of Sieberg and his colleagues is infectious. But many people are worried about where it is taking us – not simply the Street View stuff, but the entire encroachment of technology on travel. The most widely expressed concern has been privacy: Nick Pickles, the director of the pressure group Big Brother Watch, has warned “you won’t be able to sunbathe in your garden” without worrying about a Google plane spying on you in your bikini. (Sieberg is dismissive: “The resolution is not a concern for a person on the ground. It’s just not going to be identifiable.”) And the internet giant has been forced to apologise after it was revealed that its Street View cars downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from householders’ Wi-Fi networks while photographing their roads.

These are serious issues, but some people are just as concerned about the risk Google Maps poses to the experience of travelling. Part of the joy is the mystery that surrounds a trip; not knowing what you will see or where the mood will take you. Maps can strip away that spontaneity. “People spend a huge amount of time and energy and resources planning their trip, researching where they’re going,” says Aaron Quigley, a professor of human-computer interaction at the University of St Andrews. “The risk is that you end up overplanning, when so much of travel is about serendipity, finding that little-known path.”

_{An operator collects images using a Street View Trekker (GOOGLE)}

There’s also a risk that making it so easy to see anywhere in the world before you get there could take away the magic of seeing it for real for the first time. What’s more, because Google Maps is linked to review sites such as Yelp or Google’s own Zagat, there is the possibility that everyone will head for the same well-reviewed destinations. “There’s a risk that we all get sucked into this quagmire of sameness, a very banal, whitewashed sameness,” says Prof Quigley.

It’s not all negative, of course. As Sieberg says, the other side of this coin is that new places become visible to us in ways they weren’t before: “Whatever’s around you, whatever’s near you, opens up.” It provides tourists with a way of avoiding the ghastly overpriced tourist traps around the main square, by showing the well-reviewed, reasonably priced ones a couple of streets away, and then allowing you to find them with Maps.

“You can try before you buy,” he says. “My wife and I used Street View last year before a holiday in London, to look at hotels and see if they had decent access for strollers, because we were bringing our daughter.” He points out that you can also examine a neighbourhood for amenities, or check that it looks safe.

Prof Quigley agrees that the “McDonaldisation” of the world isn’t inevitable. “I’m sure we’ll all have our McDonald’s holidays, our easyJet experiences, but people realise that that’s a weak imitation of what they could be doing,” he says. “We went to a place in the mountains in Morocco, overlooking a big washed-out valley, and they had this festival on a hillside, and they lit it up with candles and a bonfire. It was an irreplaceable moment. No one else could do this. And there are hundreds of places doing something equivalent: not giving you a better breakfast, or more food, but an experience. And technology is allowing people to become an advocate for these experiences.”

And, of course, Google Maps allows us to see things we would never normally see. “I’m not Muslim, so I’ll never be allowed to go to Mecca, to see the Kaaba,” says Prof Quigley. “But I’ve seen it on Google Earth, and I can zoom in to the great black stone, and it’s incredibly impressive. And then I can zoom out, to a mile or so in the air, and you see the city like eight Las Vegases glued together, and it’s just mind-blowing. Similarly, there are islands off the coast of Scotland where tourists aren’t allowed because they were doing too much damage to the environment.

“There are lots of places, we’ll never be able to go, and this sort of thing provides a window.” But the “window” is damaging when you’re looking through it unnecessarily. “When you’re a tourist you should be there to see what’s in front of you – not looking at your iPhone, saying ‘Here’s an amazing photo of the thing I’m supposed to be looking at’,” he says. He thinks an eyes-up, rather than eyes-down, technology could change things profoundly, “freeing our attention from our devices, reconnecting us with physical reality, the view of reality that we actually see”. That may be on the horizon, with Google’s Glass project – a pair of glasses that can overlay digital information onto your vision – although whether it catches on remains to be seen.

Whatever the risks and benefits, though, there’s no going back to a pre-Google Maps time. We rely on it too much. Last year, when Apple’s iPhones stopped using Google Maps, people were forced briefly to use Apple’s (at the time) unreliable own-brand equivalent. Within days, six motorists in Australia had to be rescued from the middle of a remote forest, after being directed 40 miles off target. One of them had been stranded for 24 hours without food or water. That is an extreme example, but large sections of our species have forgotten how to get from A to B unless their phone points the way. Even, these days, in North Korea.

The story of Google Maps - Telegraph

Dear Everyone, please stop using the word 'fascist'

By Brendan O'Neill Politics Last updated: June 4th, 2013

I feel like I have woken up in a world full of clones of Rick from The Young Ones. Rick, you will recall, was the spoilt, whining, middle-class, Thatcher-bashing student who referred to everyone he didn’t like as a “fascisssst”. The police were fascists. His lecturers were fascists. The bank manager was a “fascist bully boy”. People who didn’t like Cliff Richard were fascists. “Oh Cliff / Sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if / You really are a cliff / When fascists keep trying to push you over it”, opined poetic Rick. Rick’s non-stop use of the f-word was meant to signal his political immaturity, his inability to view the world in anything other than violently dumbed-down black-and-white terms. Which suggests that today we live in seriously politically immature times, because everywhere one looks there is someone kicking up a Rick-style fuss about some fascist or other.

Post-Woolwich, the entire national debate has basically been: who are the real fascists, the English Defence League or Islamist hotheads? Leftists who love nothing more than to ape their granddads and pretend they are taking up the cudgels against Nazism have been going mad about the EDL. Apparently these gruff, rough, tattooed spouters of anti-immigrant nonsense are “violent fascists” and they must be stopped before they sweep up the entire dumb white working class in an orgy of foreigner-bashing craziness. More right-leaning folk have insisted that the real fascists are the Islamists and jihadists, with their democracy-hating, women-fearing, homophobic tendencies. They are “Islamofascists”, we’re told, who will impose a theocratic straitjacket upon us all if we take our eyes off them for five minutes.

Really? Now, being an open-borders type, I am no fan of the EDL, and being an atheistic massive fan of the Enlightenment I am also left cold by the Dark Ages claptrap that spills from the bearded mouths of Islamists. But I would like to venture the following – neither of these groups are fascists. Hateful, yes; misguided, undoubtedly; possessed of very backward views, certainly. But fascist? No. As a result of the historical experience of the 20th century, for most of us the word fascist means extreme, unforgiving power, the existence of a dictatorial government that totally suppresses dissent, terrorises its opponents, and extinguishes inferiors. I’m not remotely convinced that the EDL even wants to do all of the above, far less that it would ever be capable of doing so. A tiny handful of British-based Islamists might daydream about instituting a theocracy that would border on being a bit fascistic, but then I daydream about being a movie star: neither of these things is ever going to happen. It is the luxury of living in a society that has never experienced fascism that allows people to fantasise about facing up to a “fascist threat”, by which they mean small groups of noisy, stupid agitators.

“The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’”, said George Orwell in 1946. That’s even truer today. Like a bunch of Ricks, we’re always banging on about fascissssts. What’s really nasty about this overuse of the f-word is that it dilutes and relativises the experiences of those who really did live under the fascist yoke in Europe in the twentieth century, and who know that there was rather more to it than being bellowed at by a skinhead in a bomber jacket. It also distracts us from understanding the true nature of today’s cranky political movements, as instead we unthinkingly brand all of them “FASCISTS!”, as if that explains everything. Our promiscuous use of the fascist tag insults the past and muddies the present.

Dear Everyone, please stop using the word 'fascist' – Telegraph Blogs

Erdo-gone? After Taksim, Turkish Leader’s Political Future May Hang in the Balance

By Piotr Zalewski / IstanbulJune 04, 20139

By Sunday night, most of the businesses on Istiklal Avenue, Istanbul’s biggest pedestrian street, seemed to have had their front teeth knocked in. ATM screens glared and winked stupidly from behind broken glass monitors. Display windows were smashed up, facades and metal shutters covered with antigovernment graffiti. Near Bekar Street, young people had taken over a number of buildings. Music, along with leftist banners, wafted out from their windows. Profiting from the lack of police, which had withdrawn from the area on June 1, vendors at the northern end of the street hawked bottles of beer, in plain and symbolic defiance of a recent ban on retail sales of alcohol between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. (The bill, rushed through by parliament last week, hasn’t yet been signed into law by President Abdullah Gul.)

At Gezi Park, the scene of a sit-in that had been repeatedly and violently dispersed by the police last week, fueling popular outrage as well as mass demonstrations and violent clashes in dozens of Turkish cities, the mood was jubilant. The park, whose planned demolition and conversion into a shopping mall styled as a replica of an Ottoman barracks and shopping arcade made it ground zero of the protests, brimmed with groups of young men and women camped out on the grass. They lit campfires and chanted slogans demanding the resignation of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At the adjacent Taksim Square, normally heaving with traffic, thousands of protesters sang, waved Turkish flags and locked hands in a traditional line dance. Vendors sold roast chestnuts, cucumbers and slices of watermelon.

(MORE: Is Taksim Erdogan’s Tahrir Square?)

A few hundred yards away, beyond the scorched skeletons of three city buses, the landscape appeared even more surreal. Down the hill, waves of people attempting to reach protesters in another part of the city hurled themselves against lines of policemen, some throwing the gas canisters fired against them over the walls of a nearby soccer stadium, others ripping up road signs and giant billboards to construct barricades. The 20-floor InterContinental, a five-star hotel, appeared unmoved by the chaos below. Unlike most of the businesses on Istiklal, it had somehow emerged unscathed — no broken windows, not even a trace of graffiti. Inside its spacious, pristine lobby, young people in gas masks and construction helmets chatted animatedly, lounged on sofas and charged their phone batteries as small groups of bewildered tourists looked on. The hotel, it turned out, had decided to open its doors to the protesters.

A pair of young women — one in jean shorts and a fashionable pink hoodie, the other in sweatpants and a white T-shirt, both heavily made up — stretched out on a pair of chairs. Only a pair of snorkeling goggles and a gas mask wrapped around the neck of the one in the hoodie made it clear they weren’t just friends reclining after a day of shopping.

“I voted in every election, but I never really cared that much about politics,” said Pelin Cavdur, the girl in the sweatpants. It was her first time demonstrating anything, she added. “I’m fighting to protect my way of life. Erdogan’s playing with our future, he’s not letting us breathe.”

(PHOTOS: Turkey’s Mass Protests)

“Everyone’s agitated, there’s too many bans, the alcohol law, the ban on people kissing in public,” said her friend Tugba Orbay, referring to a recent warning issued by Ankara subway officials to act “in accordance with moral rules” after security cameras recorded a couple kissing. “Everyone feels like Turkey is becoming Iran,” she said. “The cup has overflowed.”

“It’s good that people have come out en masse. Erdogan felt that he was more powerful than the people,” she added. “But now the tables have turned.”

Erdogan himself does not see it that way. Throughout the protests, he has remained defiant, refusing to acknowledge the protesters as anything more than “marginal elements.” In a series of TV appearances on Sunday, he dismissed them as “looters” and “bums,” called Twitter a “scourge” and seemed to suggest that anyone who drank alcohol was an alcoholic. The significance of his only concession — that Gezi Park would not be converted into a shopping mall after all — faded immediately when he declared that he would proceed with plans to build a mosque in Taksim, whether the protesters or the main opposition liked it or not. On Monday, ignoring suggestions that he should adjust his travel plans, and downplaying the protests’ importance, he departed on a four-day tour to North Africa.

(MORE: Erdogan’s Tricky Ties With the U.S.)

It was exactly the kind of imperious behavior that has riled Erdogan’s critics in recent years and which made him, more than anything or anyone else, the target of the ongoing protests. First elected in 2002, Erdogan has since marched his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to two more consecutive victories in the polls, including a landslide win in 2011, in which the AKP won 50% of the vote, nearly twice as much as the main opposition. In its first years at the helm, Erdogan’s government passed a number of democratic reforms, reducing the power of the once omnipotent, ever meddling military, granting new cultural rights to the country’s Kurdish minority, and cracking down on police torture and honor crimes against women.

Around 2005, however, just as accession negotiations with the E.U. commenced, its reformist zeal began to fizzle. The E.U. talks have since ground to a halt, and Erdogan seems to have busied himself with consolidating power across all institutions of the state and keeping the roaring economy on track, while jailing opponents inside the military and harassing dissenting journalists. With his power almost unchecked, the protesters say, he has grown increasingly patronizing, domineering and allergic to criticism.

(MORE: TIME’s 2011 Interview With Prime Minister Erdogan)

Today, however, after a week of protests that have left at least two people dead and 3,000 injured, Erdogan may be becoming more vulnerable than ever. While the vast majority of the Prime Minister’s electorate seems to have stayed at home — most of the protesters TIME encountered were leftists, students and secularists, people who had never voted for Erdogan in the first place — there are signs of dissent among his political allies. Zaman, a newspaper owned by supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a powerful Muslim cleric who had until recently remained close to Erdogan, and whose followers are said to be a powerful force within the Turkish bureaucracy and the police, has run a number of critical articles. In Monday’s edition, Ihsan Dagi, a veteran commentator, slammed Erdogan and his government for their “I’ll do as I please” attitude. A number of AKP bigwigs, meanwhile, though far from openly defying Erdogan, have shown they are not reading from the same script as their leader.

On Tuesday, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc apologized for the excessive use of force by the police, acknowledging that the Gezi protesters, with the exception of “marginal and illegal groups,” had “shown their legitimate, logical and righteous reaction.” He later agreed to meet with protest leaders on Wednesday morning. As of Tuesday evening, thousands of people were still out on the streets in Istanbul, but the clashes had died down. “In the short run, this has all certainly damaged and weakened Erdogan,” Suat Kiniklioglu, a former AKP deputy, tells TIME. “I know a lot of people inside the party are unhappy with how he dealt with this, but they’re not able to voice it.”

(MORE: Erdogan and Turkey’s Ottoman Past)

The biggest challenge to Erdogan may have come from President Gul, who helped the Prime Minister mold the AKP from an outlawed Islamist party in 2001 into a regional political juggernaut. Gul, who has served as President for the past six years, is yet to announce whether he intends to run again in 2014, a decision that would pit him directly against Erdogan, who is known to covet the post and, after two terms, is no longer eligible to run for Prime Minister. Over the course of the protests, however, Gul has made it clear that he and the Prime Minister have drifted apart. When Erdogan insisted in an interview that people should exercise their democratic rights at the ballot box and not on the streets, Gul, within hours, retorted that democracy consisted of more than elections. Perhaps it was no coincidence that, after the President’s remarks, the news networks — previously cowed into a blackout — began covering the protests around the clock.

While the protests are yet to acquire the kind of critical mass that would force Erdogan to even consider stepping down as Prime Minister, the next few days may be crucial to his hopes of winning the presidency next year. “If he comes back from Africa, takes a conciliatory tone and accepts that he was defeated by the people on this one, he will have time to bounce back,” says Kiniklioglu. “But if he comes back and makes it clear that he doesn’t agree with what Gul has communicated, I think that will damage him further.”

Erdo-gone? After Taksim, Turkish Leader’s Political Future May Hang in the Balance | TIME.com

What is Happening in Istanbul?

by İnsanlik Hali

To my friends who live outside of Turkey:

I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because most of the media sources are shut down by the government and the word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.

Four days ago a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students.  Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very centre of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighbourhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees.  Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines.

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray.  They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Yet more and more people made their way up to the centre of the city by walking.

They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:

The right to live as honourable citizens of this country.

They gathered and marched. Police chased them with pepper spray and tear gas and drove their tanks over people who offered the police food in return. Two young people were run over by the panzers and were killed. Another young woman, a friend of mine, was hit in the head by one of the incoming tear gas canisters. The police were shooting them straight into the crowd.  After a three hour operation she is still in Intensive Care Unit and in  very critical condition. As I write this we don’t know if she is going to make it. This blog is dedicated to her.

These people are my friends. They are my students, my relatives. They have no «hidden agenda» as the state likes to say. Their agenda is out there. It is very clear. The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government, for the construction of malls, luxury condominiums, freeways, dams and nuclear plants. The government is looking for (and creating when necessary) any excuse to attack Syria against its people’s will.

On top of all that, the government control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, caesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the colour of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses.

People who are marching to the centre of Istanbul are demanding their right to live freely and receive justice, protection and respect from the State. They demand to be involved in the decision-making processes about the city they live in.

What they have received instead is excessive force and enormous amounts of tear gas shot straight into their faces. Three people lost their eyes.

Yet they still march. Hundred of thousands join them. Couple of more thousand passed the Bosporus Bridge on foot to support the people of Taksim.

No newspaper or TV channel was there to report the events. They were busy with broadcasting news about Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”.

Police kept chasing people and spraying them with pepper spray to an extent that stray dogs and cats were poisoned and died by it.

Schools, hospitals and even 5 star hotels around Taksim Square opened their doors to the injured. Doctors filled the classrooms and hotel rooms to provide first aid. Some police officers refused to spray innocent people with tear gas and quit their jobs. Around the square they placed jammers to prevent internet connection and 3g networks were blocked. Residents and businesses in the area provided free wireless network for the people on the streets. Restaurants offered food and water for free.

People in Ankara and İzmir gathered on the streets to support the resistance in Istanbul.

Mainstream media kept showing Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”. ***

I am writing this letter so that you know what is going on in Istanbul. Mass media will not tell you any of this. Not in my country at least. Please post as many as articles as you see on the Internet and spread the word.

As I was posting articles that explained what is happening in Istanbul on my Facebook page last night someone asked me the following question:

«What are you hoping to gain by complaining about our country to foreigners?»

This blog is my answer to her.

By so called «complaining» about my country I am hoping to gain:

Freedom of expression and speech,

Respect for human rights,

Control over the decisions I make concerning my on my body,

The right to legally congregate in any part of the city without being considered a terrorist.

But most of all by spreading the word to you, my friends who live in other parts of the world, I am hoping to get your awareness, support and help!

Please spread the word and share this blog.

Thank you!

 

What is Happening in Istanbul?

It's Twitter, not the 'Turkish Spring': Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames 'extremists' as protester is shot dead near Syrian border

 

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Turkey's Prime Minister has blamed “extremists” for inciting tensions as reports unfold of the second death during the country's unrest, in which thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Istanbul and cities across the nation for a fourth day of anti-government demonstrations.

A protester, named as 22-year-old Abdullah Comert, was shot dead late yesterday during an anti-government demonstration in Antakya, a town in the south of the country near the Syrian border, according to the provincial governor's office.

A statement said that it was not initially clear who opened fire at the Antakya rally, killing Comert, reportedly a member of the main opposition Republican People's Party's youth branch.

Earlier, the Turkish Doctor's Union had said that a 20-year-old called Mehmet Ayvalitas had been killed on Sunday when he was hit by a car that ignored warning to stop and ploughed through a crowd of protesters in Istanbul.

Police again used tear gas in Istanbul in an attempt to quell the protests, which began on Friday, when authorities launched a pre-dawn raid against a peaceful demonstration against plans to cut down trees in the city's Taksim Square to make way for a shopping centre.

The protests, which grew in reaction to the police anti-riot response, have since spiralled into the biggest anti-government disturbances Turkey has seen in years. More than 1,000 people have been injured in the past four days, according to medical officials.

Some protesters demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom they accuse of being “authoritarian”, and of forcing his conservative, Islamic views into the everyday lives of secular Turks.

Mr Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003, has rejected the accusations, and has called the protesters “extremists”, “looters” and a “minority” trying to force their demands on the majority. He called for calm as he rejected claims that the protests in Turkey could be compared to the Arab Spring.

“This is a protest organised by extremist elements,” Mr Erdogan said, speaking to reporters before flying to Morocco on an official visit. “We will not give away anything to those who live arm-in-arm with terrorism.”

Referring to the nation’s free elections, he said: “We already have a spring in Turkey… but there are those who want to turn this spring into winter... Be calm, these will all pass”.

Meanwhile the country’s main stock exchange dropped 10.5 per cent, as investors reacted to the destabilising effect of the protests. A group of Turkish doctors also claimed that one protester had died after a vehicle slammed into a crowd in Istanbul, though this could not be verified.

Mr Erdogan played down the drop in the markets on Monday, saying: “It’s the stock market, it goes down and it goes up. It can’t always be stable.”

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul, a prominent member of Mr Erdogan’s ruling AK party, defended peaceful protests as part of democracy. In comments to reporters, Mr Gul, also called called for calm, and said the “necessary messages” from the protests had been noted.

The Obama administration urged authorities in Turkey to exercise restraint and all sides to refrain from violence. The White House said the US believes the vast majority of those protesting have been peaceful citizens, exercising their rights to free expression.

On Monday thousands of protesters occupied the centre of Istanbul, centring in Taksim Square and Gezi Park, the origin of the protests. Many have set out tents in the park, as well as distribution points for food, drinks and spray cans of water mixed with vinegar, used by protesters to protect themselves from the effects of tear gas. Chants of “Erdogan istifa! (Erdogan, resign!)” could be heard throughout the day, but there were no other clear demands from the protesters.

“Now people don’t know what to do, they want different things, nobody was thinking of anything precise when they started protesting,” said Idil Akin, a 21-year-old university student, who was sitting next to the monument to the Turkish Republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in the centre of Taksim Square. “Some say they’ll go home if [Erdogan] apologises, some say they’ll go home if he resigns, some say they won’t go home until the whole system changes”, she said.

Turkey’s Public Workers Unions Confederation, which represents 240,000 members, said on Monday it would hold a “warning strike” on 4 and 5 June against the government’s response to the protests.

It's Twitter, not the 'Turkish Spring': Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames 'extremists' as protester is shot dead near Syrian border - Europe - World - The Independent

Turkish unions join fierce protests in which two have died

ISTANBUL | Tue Jun 4, 2013 8:00am BST

 

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pockets of protesters clashed with Turkish riot police overnight and a union federation began a two-day strike on Tuesday as anti-government demonstrations in which two people have died stretched into a fifth day.

Hundreds of police and protesters have been injured since Friday, when a demonstration to halt construction in a park in an Istanbul square grew into mass protests against a heavy-handed police crackdown and what opponents call Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian policies.

A 22-year-old protester was shot dead late on Monday at a rally in the southern town of Antakya near the Syrian border, the provincial governor's office said, the second death after a taxi hit a demonstrator in Istanbul on Sunday. It was not clear who opened fire at the demonstration.

Turkey's leftist Public Workers Unions Confederation (KESK), which represents 240,000 members, was due to begin a two-day "warning strike" at midday (0900 GMT) to protest at the police crackdown on what had begun as peaceful protests.

In a defiant response to Turkey's worst riots in years, Erdogan said the protesters were "arm-in-arm with terrorism", before leaving for an official visit to North Africa on Monday.

Barricades of rubble hindered traffic alongside the Bosphorus waterway and blocked entry into Istanbul's main Taksim Square after clashes overnight. Leftist groups hung out red and black flags, and banners calling on Erdogan to resign and declaring: "Whatever happens, there is no going back."

In Ankara, police charged mostly teenage demonstrators and scattered them using teargas and water cannon late on Monday. Protesters had erected a barricade in the Kizilay government quarter and lit a fire in the road.

Erdogan has dismissed the protests as the work of secular enemies never reconciled to the election success of his AK party, which has roots in Islamist parties banned in the past but which also embraces centre-right and nationalist elements. The party has won three straight elections and overseen an economic boom, increasing Turkey's influence in the region.

"This is a protest organised by extremist elements," Erdogan said before leaving for North Africa. "We will not give away anything to those who live arm-in-arm with terrorism."

On arrival in Rabat, flanked by Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, Erdogan blamed parties that had lost elections for the violence, which he predicted would be short-lived: "In a few days the situation will return to normal."

The unrest delivered a blow to Turkish financial markets that have thrived under Erdogan. Shares fell more than 10 percent and the lira dropped to 16-month lows on Monday.

The United States called for restraint in a rebuke to its NATO ally. "We are concerned by the reports of excessive use of force by police," Secretary of State John Kerry said.

WIND OF CHANGE

Since taking office in 2002, Erdogan has curtailed the power of the army, which ousted four governments in the second half of the 20th century and which hanged and jailed many, including a prime minister.

Hundreds of officers, as well as journalists and intellectuals have been jailed over an alleged coup plot against Erdogan. The wind of change has also swept through the judiciary. Where Erdogan was jailed in the late 1990s for promoting Islamism by reciting a poem, a musician was recently jailed for blasphemy after mocking religion in a tweet.

Erdogan said the protesters had no support in the population as a whole and dismissed any comparison with the "Arab Spring" that swept nearby Arab states, toppling rulers long ensconced in power with the help of repressive security services.

His own tenure in office, with its economic and political reforms, was itself the "Turkish Spring", he suggested.

He gave no indication he was preparing any concessions to protesters who accuse him of fostering a hidden Islamist agenda in a country with a secularist constitution.

Some object to new restrictions on alcohol sales and other steps seen as religiously motivated. Others complain of the costs of Erdogan's support of rebels in neighbouring Syria's civil war. Still others bear economic grievances, viewing the disputed development project in Taksim Square as emblematic of wild greed among those who have benefited from Turkey's boom.

SAFE FOR NOW

Walls around Taksim were plastered with posters of a policeman spraying teargas at a young woman in a red summer dress, her hair swept upwards by the draught of the spraygun.

"The more they spray, the bigger we get," read the caption.

Western governments have promoted Erdogan's administration as a democratic Islamist model that could be copied elsewhere in the Middle East after the fall of authoritarian leaders. They have expressed concerns about human rights standards discreetly, but last weekend's events prompted the United States and the European Union to openly criticise police action.

Erdogan appeared to reject accusations of heavy handedness, saying authorities were "behaving in a very restrained way".

With strong support, especially in the conservative religious heartland of Anatolia, Erdogan remains Turkey's most popular politician and seems safe for now.

He said plans would go ahead to re-make Taksim Square, long a rallying point for demonstrations, including construction of a new mosque and the rebuilding of a replica Ottoman-era barracks.

The protests have involved a broad spectrum in dozens of cities, from students to professionals, trade unionists, Kurdish activists and hardline secularists who see Erdogan seeking to overthrow the secularist state set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

(Additional reporting by Alexandra Hudson and Sergei Karazy in Istanbul, Aziz El Yaakoubi in Rabat; Writing by Ralph Boulton; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Pravin Char)

Turkish unions join fierce protests in which two have died | Reuters

Istanbul police retreat as protests take hold

Tim Arango June 3, 2013

Turkish Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan characterises the two days of anti-government demonstrations as 'provocations', as Turkey begins to assess the damage.

Violent protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan engulfed Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, on Saturday and spread to other cities, including the capital, Ankara, as tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in a second day of civil unrest and faced the tear-gas and water cannon of a harsh police crackdown.

By late afternoon, the police withdrew from Istanbul's central Taksim Square, allowing the demonstrators to gather unimpeded in the place that set off the protests last week with government plans to turn a park into a replica Ottoman-era army barracks and mall.

The departure of the police, who had been widely criticised for violent tactics on Friday, set off scenes of jubilation and destruction, as some drank and partied while others destroyed police vehicles and bulldozers.

Streets of fire: an injured man is helped away from clashes between protesters and police near the Prime Minister's office in Istanbul. Photo: AP

While the protest began over plans to destroy a park, for many demonstrators it had moved beyond that to become a broad rebuke to the 10-year leadership of Mr Erdogan and his government, which they say has adopted authoritarian tactics.

Some saw the police pull-back as a historic victory. ''It's the first time in Turkey's democratic history that an unplanned, peaceful protest movement succeeded in changing the government's approach and policy,'' said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies.

''It gave, for the first time, a strong sense of empowerment to ordinary citizens to demonstrate and further their belief that if they act like they did the last few days they can influence events in Turkey,'' he said.

Protesters clash: What started as an outcry against a local development project has snowballed into widespread anger against the government's increasingly authoritarian agenda. Photo: AFP

Hundreds of people also demonstrated in New York in a show of support for mass protests. The marchers gathered at Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street, which also became the nerve centre for the Occupy Wall Street movement in late 2011.

Still, it was far from clear on Saturday whether the protesters could capitalise on their success. The Islamist-rooted government retains wide support among religious conservatives, and Mr Erdogan insisted that the redevelopment of the square would continue.

By nightfall, as the crowds in Taksim Square grew rowdier, a sense of foreboding crept in that police would return. In the Besiktas neighbourhood, the police were still firing tear-gas, and protesters were erecting barricades.

The Interior Ministry said it had arrested 939 people at demonstrations across the country, and that 79 were wounded, a number that was probably low. After Friday's protests, which were smaller and less violent than those on Saturday, a Turkish doctors' group reported nearly 1000 injuries.

The scenes carried the symbolic weight of specific grievances: people held beers in the air, a rebuke to the recently passed law banning alcohol in public spaces; young men smashed the windshields of the bulldozers that had begun razing Taksim Square; and a red flag bearing the face of modern Turkey's secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was draped over a destroyed police vehicle.

Despite the comparisons with Egypt's revolution, no viable political opposition in Turkey seems capable of seizing the disenchantment of secular-minded Turks to form a cohesive movement.

The widening chaos threatens to tarnish Turkey's image, which Mr Erdogan has cultivated, as a regional power broker shaping the outcome of the Arab Spring revolutions by presenting itself as a model for the melding of Islam and democracy.

New York Times, AP

Turkey to restrict sale and advertising of alcohol

By Justin Vela, Istanbul 4:36PM BST 24 May 2013

Turkey is to restrict the sale and advertising of alcohol, prompting outcry from citizens concerned about the creeping Islamisation of the country.

The new legislation will see the sale of alcohol in shops prohibited from 10pm to 6am Photo: AFP

Members of Turkey's Islamist-leaning government, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have approved legislation, which is awaiting presidential approval, which will see the sale of alcohol in shops prohibited from 10pm to 6am.

Although similar restrictions are in place in some European countries, including Britain, the legislation also bans the advertising of alcohol. Broadcasters will even need to blur out bottles and glasses of alcohol consumed by TV characters.

Alcoholic beverage companies will also not be allowed to sponsor events where their drinks can be sold, such as concerts or football matches. New liquor licenses will not be issued to establishments within 330 feet (100 metres) of a school or religious institution.

The manager of one liquor shop in Istanbul's central Beyoglu district, famed for its boozy nightlife, called the ban "Islamic fascism."

If the restrictions are enforced, posters on the front of his shop advertising Chilean wine and European beer will need to come down, possibly impacting his business for the worst.

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"This is a problem for all of Turkey," he said, asking that his name and shop be withheld for fear of repercussions.

Erdeniz Ucan, 28, accused the government of being "anti-secularist" and wanting to "manipulate society"."Smoking is bad, drinking alcohol is bad, praying is good…I think they will continue brainwashing people with these regulations," he said.

While 99 per cent of Turkey's citizens are Muslim, the establishment has always fiercely promoted secularism and kept a close watch on religious movements.

However, a decade of rule by Mr Erdogan and his popular Justice and Development Party (AKP), has eroded the power of secularists and pushed the role of Islam to the forefront of the national debate.

Mr Erdogan hit out at critics, saying the restrictions are good for Turkey's youth.

"We do not want a generation that drinks night and day, that walks around merry. They have to be awake, they have to be sharp, they have to be equipped with knowledge. We want such a generation and we are taking steps in this regard," he said, according to local media.

It remains unclear if the restrictions will make foreign tourists stay away. More than 30 million foreigners visit Turkey every year, with around 2.5 million from Britain.

In Egypt, tourism authorities have sought to reassure travellers about the future of the country as a holiday destination, with the emergence of the Islamist-led government of Mohammed Morsi leading to fears of a curb on alcohol.

Ghislain Sireilles, of Cachet Travel, a London-based tourism operator that works in Turkey, said that while Mr Erdogan has taken many positive steps for Turkey, there is another side that is a "bit worrying," such as the restrictions on alcohol.

"Yes, it makes Turkey look a little more fundamentalist, maybe more conservative, losing a bit of freedom, yes," Mr Sireilles said.

However, he doubted that the alcohol restrictions will make Turkey a less attractive holiday destination.

"Our clients are not going to Turkey just to drink. They are going to Turkey to see the sites…the archeology and the history Turkey has to offer."

Turkey to restrict sale and advertising of alcohol - Telegraph