Norway mass killer jeered on way to court hearing

Norway mass killer jeered on way to court hearing - Norway's police believe Anders Behring Breivik probably acted alone in killing 76 people last Friday, and Norwegians united in revulsion against the worst attack in the Nordic nation since World War Two.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters of Breivik's talk of other cells: "We feel that the accused has fairly low credibility when it comes to this claim but none of us dare to be completely dismissive about it either."

Researchers also doubt Breivik's claim that he is part of a wider far-right network of anti-Islam "crusaders," seeing them as empty bragging by a psychopathic fantasist who has written that exaggeration is a way to sow confusion among investigators.

On Tuesday, Justice Minister Knut Storberget will meet police chiefs who are facing criticism for taking more than an hour on Friday to stop a shooting spree in which 68 people, mostly teenagers, were shot after a bomb in Oslo killed eight.

Norway has felt a widening sense of relief that 32-year-old Breivik seems to have been alone in his drive to protect Europe from "cultural Marxism" and a "Muslim invasion" by striking at Norway's ruling Labour Party.

Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of a killing spree and bomb attack in Norway, sits in the rear of a vehicle as he is transported in a police convoy to a court in Oslo July 25, 2011. The 32-year-old Norwegian gunman appeared in court for a custody hearing on Monday after killing at least 93 people in a bomb attack in Oslo's government district and shooting rampage at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling Labour party on the island of Utoeya on Friday. Breivik declared in a rambling 1,500-pagemanifesto posted online shortly before the massacre that he was on a self-appointed mission to save Europe from what he saw as the threats of Islam, immigration and multi-culturalism. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay (NORWAY - Tags: DISASTER CONFLICT SOCIETY)

More than 100,000 Norwegians rallied in Oslo on Monday night, many carrying white and red roses, to mourn the dead and to show unity after July 22. Tens of thousands of others rallied in other cities from Tromsoe to Bergen.

BORDER CONTROLS

In signs that police are toning down fears that Breivik was part of a wider network, border controls imposed on July 22 were lifted late on Monday. Norway has not asked foreign nations to launch probes nor raised the threat level for terrorism.

Even the final entry in Breivik's own 1,500 page manifesto says on July 22: "The old saying: 'if you want something done, then do it yourself' is as relevant now as it was then."

"Intuitively, it feels like he is alone when you read the document. It's like he's lost in this made-up world and can't distinguish between fantasy and reality," said Magnus Ranstorp, Research Director at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College.

"They (mass killers) are usually alone," he said.

Police defended themselves from suggestions that some alarm bells should have rung about Breivik. The head of the PST security police even said he would have slipped through the net in former East Germany with its feared Stasi police.

PST says Breivik's name appeared only once, on a list of 50-60 Norwegians sent by Interpol after he paid 120 crowns ($22.16) to a Polish company that sold chemicals and was on a watch list. They found no reason to react.

STASI GERMANY

"I don't think even Stasi Germany could have uncovered this person," PST chief Janne Kristiansen told the VG newspaper's online edition, adding he was "the incarnation of evil."

Breivik is likely to face a lifetime in jail if convicted of the crimes, which included shooting dead terrified teenagers on Utoeya island at a Labour Party summer camp.

He admits the attacks, but denies criminal responsibility. Even his father is horrified.

"In my darkest moments, I think that rather than killing all those people, he should have taken his own life," Breivik's father told Norwegian independent TV2 in France.

He said his son, with whom he has had no contact since he was a teenager, must be mentally ill. "There is no other way to explain it."

Other researchers say that he shares traits with past mass murderers.

"He has no empathy, he is indifferent to the people he kills, he has no conscience and no remorse," said Ragnhild Bjoernebekk, a researcher at Norway's police school.

"Evil can kill a person but never conquer a people," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday evening at the mass rally, probably the biggest in Norway since the end of World War Two. Norway's population is 4.8 million

"Our fathers and mothers promised 'never again April 9'. We promise 'never again July 22'," he said. Hitler's forces invaded Norway on April 10, 1940 at the start of a five-year occupation.

Many Norwegians have expressed relief that Breivik seems to have been a lone, home-grown fanatic rather than, for instance, an envoy of al Qaeda. Many compare him to Timothy McVeigh who killed 168 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995.

"If this was done by a foreigner it would have been very difficult," said Raj Pereet Singh, a Norwegian whose parents immigrated. ( Reuters )

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The Story of John Hancock's Signature

The Story of John Hancock's Signature - There are a lot of stories surrounding the Declaration of Independence. One of the most famous concerns John Hancock and his comically large signature. According to legend, the founding father signed his name bigger than everyone else's because he wanted to make sure "fat old King George" could read it without his spectacles.

It's a neat story about American brashness, but it isn't very accurate. The truth is a tad less dramatic. Snopes.com explains that Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, gave a super-sized signature not because he was itching for a fight with the king, but because, among other things, he happened to be the first person to sign the document.

Because Hancock was the first to sign, he did the sensible thing and put his name front and center. He was the leader of the Congress, after all. He didn't know his fellow patriots would sign their names on a smaller scale.

The story behind John Hancock's signature on the Declaration of Independence. (Thinkstock)

So, why are some of the other signatures high and to the left while others are down and to the right? The National Archives explains, "In accordance with prevailing custom, the other delegates began to sign at the right below the text, their signatures arranged according to the geographic location of the states they represented. New Hampshire, the northernmost state, began the list, and Georgia, the southernmost, ended it."

And it's worth remembering that signing one's name to the Declaration of Independence was no small thing. Those who signed the document were sure to be hanged for treason should they be caught.

Another popular story says that the members of Congress were inspired to lend their own names to the document after seeing Hancock's epic autograph and the bravery it signified. Neat, but not true. Not only was Hancock the first to sign the Declaration, he did it weeks before anybody else. The National Archives explains, "One of the most widely held misconceptions about the Declaration is that it was signed on July 4, 1776, by all the delegates in attendance."

In reality, Hancock signed it in the presence of just one man, Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress. National Geographic explains, "no one actually signed the Declaration of Independence at any time during July 1776. Signing began on August 2, with John Hancock's famously bold scribble, and wasn't completed until late November."

That famous painting of all the founding fathers gathered around, signing the document was a case of artistic license. ( yahoo.com )

READ MORE - The Story of John Hancock's Signature

Arrest in 54-year-old murder mystery

Arrest in 54-year-old murder mystery — Charles "Chuck" Ridulph always assumed the person who stole his little sister from the neighborhood corner where she played and dumped her body in a wooded stretch some 100 miles away was a trucker or passing stranger — surely not anyone from the hometown he remembers as one big, friendly playground.

And, after more than a half century passed since her death, he assumed the culprit also had died or was in prison for some other crime.

On Saturday, he said he was stunned by the news that a one-time neighbor had been charged in the kidnapping and killing that captured national attention, including that of the president and FBI chief. Prosecutors in bucolic Sycamore, a city of 15,000 that's home to a yearly pumpkin festival, charged a former police officer Friday in the 1957 abduction of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph after an ex-girlfriend's discovery of an unused train ticket blew a hole in his alibi.

Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, has been held in Seattle on $3 million bail. A judge overseeing a Saturday court appearance for him said he had been taken to a regional trauma center but did not elaborate. She rescheduled his bail hearing for 12:30 p.m. Monday.

The grave site of Maria Ridulph at Elmwood Cemetery is shown in Sycamore, Ill., on Saturday, July 2, 2011. DeKalb County prosecutors charged Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, on Friday with murdering Ridulph, a 7-year-old Illinois girl who was last seen playing with a friend near her home in Sycamore, about 50 miles west of Chicago in 1957. (AP Photo/ Barbara Rodriguez)

"I just can't believe that after all these years they'd be able to find this guy," Chuck Ridulph told The Associated Press at his duplex in Sycamore, about 50 miles west of Chicago.

A 65-year-old minister who mainly serves his area's senior citizens, Ridulph once shared a bedroom with his sister and already has his headstone placed on a burial plot next to her grave. With McCullough's arrest, he worries about a drawn-out legal process that will dredge up bad memories but also perhaps answer some nagging, stomach-churning questions about what happened to the little girl who loved to play dress up.

"It's in my every thought, even in my dreams," he said of his sister's death. "It was just like it was yesterday. It comes up all the time in conversation."

Sycamore Police Chief Donald Thomas was reluctant to discuss the case when found at home Saturday. But he said, "we believe we know who did it. We believe we have a strong case."

His department's breakthrough was a long time coming.

Maria disappeared Dec. 3, 1957, while doing what kids in Sycamore did then — playing. Maria's friend, Kathy Chapman, who was 8 at the time, recalled that she and Maria were under a corner streetlight when a young man she knew as "Johnny" offered them a piggyback ride. Chapman, now 61 and living in St. Charles, Ill., told the AP she ran home to get mittens and that when she returned, Maria and the man were gone.

"She was my best friend," Chapman told the AP on Saturday. "We played every day. We were always together."

The search for Maria grew to involve more than 1,000 law enforcement officers and numerous other community members, ultimately catching the eye of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who requested daily updates.

"Things never went back to normal," Chapman said. "It was always a struggle. I didn't have a normal childhood after that."

Christmas came and went, with a pogo stick wrapped as a gift for Maria remaining unopened, her brother remembered. Then in April 1958, two people foraging for mushrooms found her remains.

Police suspected McCullough, who lived less than two blocks from the Ridulphs and who fit the description of the man said to have approached the girls, Thomas said Friday. But McCullough seemed to have an alibi, claiming he took the train from Rockford to Chicago the day of the abduction.

His story fell apart last year after investigators reinterviewed a woman who dated him in 1957 and asked her to search through some personal items, the Seattle Times reported, citing court documents. She found an unused train ticket from Rockford to Chicago dated the day the girl went missing.

"Once his alibi crumbled, we found about a dozen other facts that helped us build our case," Thomas said.

The Times reported investigators also determined a collect phone call McCullough purportedly made to his then-girlfriend from Chicago actually came from his Sycamore home the day Maria vanished — and he gave a ride to a relative when he should have been on the train.

Chapman said police never showed her a photo of McCullough in the days and months after Maria was kidnapped. But in September of last year, she said investigators came to her with a photo of a teenage McCullough. She identified him as the "Johnny" who approached her and Maria the night her friend vanished. At the time, McCullough's name was John Tessier.

Chapman was shocked to learn the case was still being investigated. She said she had received information some years before about it being closed.

When she got the news that McCullough was charged, she said she was "just ecstatic, could not be happier."

"We've been waiting a long, long time for this," said Chapman, who has three children and three grandchildren.

By Saturday, word of McCullough's arrest had swept throughout Sycamore, its main street adorned by American flags tethered to parking meters and lined by mom-and-pop shops. The prospect of reliving one of the most upsetting moments in the town's history during a trial was already weighing on Dick Larson, a rural mail carrier who went to school with Chuck Ridulph.

"It breaks my heart to think we have to go through this again. This is 54 years ago. It just brings back a whole river flow of memories," the 65-year-old said before crying.

He doesn't believe a conviction will bring closure or help the town heal.

"That's a standard way of thinking, that there's justice and closure," he said. "The people who go through it, they deal with it forever." ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Arrest in 54-year-old murder mystery

Saudi Arabia Bans Filipino, Indonesian Domestic Workers

Saudi Arabia Bans Filipino, Indonesian Domestic Workers - Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday it would stop granting work permits to domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, following hiring conditions imposed by the Asian countries.

The ministry of labor said it would “stop issuing work visas to bring domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, effective from Saturday“ due to “the terms of recruitment announced by the two countries,“ according to a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

“The ministry's decision coincides with its great efforts to open new channels to bring domestic workers from other sources,“ said the statement in English quoting the ministry's spokesman Hattab bin Saleh al-Anzi.

Last week Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono denounced the beheading in Saudi Arabia of an Indonesian maid and accused Riyadh of breaking the “norms and manners“ of international relations. His comments signaled Indonesia's growing anger over the treatment of its manual laborers in the Gulf countries, after a spate of cases of abuse and killings.

Ruyati binti Sapubi, 54, was beheaded on June 18 after she was convicted of killing her Saudi employer, prompting Indonesia to recall its ambassador in Saudi Arabia for “consultations.“ Indonesia also announced a moratorium on sending migrant workers to Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of thousands of Indonesians toil as maids and laborers.

Saudi Arabia and the Philippines have also clashed over the working conditions of Filipina domestic workers in the oil-rich kingdom. Earlier this year the Philippines asked Saudi Arabia to guarantee higher pay for Filipina housemaids but the request was turned down.

The Philippines demanded $400 in monthly wages for for housemaids but Saudi authorities offered a base monthly salary of $210, Filipino labor official Carlos Cao had told AFP in Manila in May. Manila had also demanded proof that that Saudi households employing Filipina housemaids would pay and provide humane working conditions.

Rights groups say millions of mostly Asian domestic workers are regularly exposed to physical and financial abuse in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states due to poor or absent labor laws. ( AFP )

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How to Evaluate a Job Offer

How to Evaluate a Job Offer - Choosing the right job when you have a number of offers is a very taxing decision. There will a number of reasons why you should be taking each of those jobs, and your choice changes every minute.

We make that decision easier for you by bringing you two human resource consultants who give you the criteria for evaluating a job offer.

Will you profit?

You want to make sure that the salary is good enough for the amount of experience and qualifications that you have. Compare yourself to others in the same profession and position. Try negotiating the salary if you have reasons to demand a higher salary. Also, make sure the company is giving you at least a 25 to 30 per cent hike.


Reaching the top

Will the new job give you scope to grow? "First, check out the kind of responsibilities the manager above you has. If there is a significant amount of difference you want to take the job because you will have the opportunity to grow bigger in the company," says Suresh Goel, an HR consultant.


CV matters

The new job should add a good deal of weight to your resume. According to HR consultant Adarsh Shetty, a job adds value to you if it presents a number of challenges and lets you assume a number of roles. "You should be able to present your work as an achievement," he adds.


Moving to a new city?

A new job may take you to another city or even another country. "The right option here depends on your priorities," says Goel. If you would rather give up a better job in another city so that you can live with your family, then do it.


Brand name

"If a big brand is making a job offer, you don't want to ignore it," says Shetty. Sure, you get more responsibilities in smaller organisations, but a brand name adds sheen to your resume. There's a lot to learn from others when you join a big organisation.

Obviously, the one criterion you don't want to miss is whether you will love your job. If you don't like your job, our pointers won't make a very big difference. Be sure you'll like the new job and then re-read this article. ( idiva.com )

READ MORE - How to Evaluate a Job Offer

Miss California, a history buff, named Miss USA

Miss California, a history buff, named Miss USA - A 21-year-old "history geek" representing California was named Miss USA at the annual beauty pageant in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Alyssa Campanella, who was born and raised in New Jersey which she represented at the Miss Teen USA contest in 2007, was considered among the favorites by pageant experts.

She will represent the United States at the Miss Universe pageant to be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on September 12.

Campanella was crowned by incumbent Miss USA, Rima Fakih, a Lebanese-born Muslim who was the first Arab-American to hold the title.

Miss Tennessee came in second, Miss Alabama was third, and Miss Texas was fourth.

Campanella is a natural blond who dyed her hair red for a play several years ago and never went back. She told Reuters that she moved to Los Angeles about 18 months ago, and would like to remain there once her duties were over.

Miss California Campanella reacts as she is chosen as the last of the final four finalists during the 2011 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas



Miss California Campanella answers a question with show hosts during the 2011 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas

After revealing on the show that she was a "huge history geek" with a special interest in the Tudor and Stuart periods, she added in the interview that her favorite monarch was Mary, Queen of Scots, who was beheaded in 1587.

Campanella won the crown despite giving a muddled answer when a judge asked her whether marijuana should be legalized in California. She replied that marijuana for medical purposes was "very important," but had concerns about whether legalization would help in the war against drugs.

Miss Tennessee, 21-year-old journalism student Ashley Elizabeth Durham, declared that burning the American flag should not be protected by free speech and that burning religious books was "just a line that you do not cross."

DON'T STAND BY YOUR MAN

Miss Alabama, 22-year-old Madeleine Mitchell, said Internet bullies whose taunts force their targets to commit suicide should be prosecuted. Miss Texas, 25-year-old Ana Rodriguez, received loud applause when she said the wives of political figures caught in sex scandals should move on "and find a man who really loves you."

The fate of most of the 51 contestants was decided during a preliminary ceremony last Wednesday when a panel of judges selected 15 of the quarter-finalists based on their swimwear and evening gowns. A 16th spot was reserved for a contestant determined by fans' Internet voting.

During that event, Campanella tripped while parading in her evening gown.

The results were announced early in Sunday's ceremony, with contestants from Georgia, Arizona, Maine, Utah, Indiana, South Carolina, New York, Hawaii, Florida, Missouri and Maryland rounding out the top 15. Miss New Mexico was the fan favorite for the 16th spot.

The semi-finalists were then whittled down to Maine, Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, Hawaii, California and Maryland by a new panel of judges. ( Reuters )

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Schwarzenegger, Patty Baena and Maria Shriver's Sons Born Six Days Apart

Schwarzenegger, Patty Baena and Maria Shriver's Sons Born Six Days Apart - In 1984, Dudley Moore played a bigamist whose wives, "Micki and Maude," had babies at the same time. In the Schwarzenegger-Shriver-Baena love triangle, Patty Baena and Maria Shriver gave birth to Schwarzenegger's sons within six days of each other.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver have always seemed to be a poster couple. They have a 25-year marriage and four beautiful kids. There have been rumors of flirtations on Arnold's part, but by and large the marriage appeared healthy, especially when you consider the odds stacked against them.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver have weathered years of Kennedy family drama. Shriver is JFK's niece and the daughter of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Then there was Arnold's high-profile movie career and Maria's front-woman post with NBC.

Most difficult of all may be that the couple is on opposite sides of the political coin: she is a strict Democrat while he is a first-water Republican. My husband and I have similar politics, but even our few differences can be hard on our relationship. Polar opposites must make strange bedfellows.

The rock-solid house of Schwarzenegger was recently discovered to have cracks in the foundation, however. After the governor's term of office was up in January, he was back in circulation on the film scene sans wife. Then Shriver moved out of their mansion. Rumors of infidelity surfaced, but nothing specific.

On May 17, the bombshell broke. "Conan" had been in an affair with his housekeeper, Mildred Patricia "Patty" Baena. More than that, the two had a child together. Despite Baena's claims that her husband at the time, Rogelio Baena, was the father, Schwarzenegger admitted to paternity.

Here's where the "Micki and Maude" part comes in. TMZ obtained copies of the child's birth certificate. The document shows that Schwarzenegger's fourth and youngest child Christopher was born to Maria Shriver at the same time his baby mama, Patty Baena was giving birth to their love child.

Baena's child's birthday is Oct. 2, 1997. Shriver's son Christopher Sargent Shriver was born Sept. 27, 1997. The former Mr. Universe's boys are six days apart.

Photos of Baena, with the child show his face blurred to preserve juvenile privacy. However the famous Schwarzenegger grin is still visible. Even in an indefinite image, the child looks like his father.

Reading about the tandem births, I immediately thought of the "Micki and Maude" connection. "Micki and Maude" was a funny, warm movie. After a dust-up when the two women discover each other and their coincident babies, it turns out well. Everyone kisses and makes up after a neat 90-minute wind-up. But it's a movie.

Schwarzenegger has hurt a lot of people by his choices: his wife, his children (especially Christopher and the unnamed son of Patty Baena), Rogelio Baena, and even arguably Patty Baena herself. In real life, adultery and deceit don't dovetail so neatly as they do in movies. ( yahoo.com )

READ MORE - Schwarzenegger, Patty Baena and Maria Shriver's Sons Born Six Days Apart

Porn Industry Wants To See Bin Laden's Porn Stash

Porn Industry Wants To See Bin Laden's Porn Stash - Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed -- especially when pornography is involved.

A lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch that is demanding President Obama release photos of Osama Bin Laden is gaining an unlikely ally from the porn industry press.

Ever since word got out that Bin Laden kept a secret porn stash at his compound in Pakistan, the adult industry trade publication XBIZ has been wanting to find out exactly which films were in his collection.

"Will we ever find out the studios, video titles, directors or genres of the films Bid Laden's alleged to have possessed?" pondered XBIZ's Rhett Pardon. "The answer is maybe."

The maybe depends on the success of Judicial Watch's suit, which, according to the National Journal, requests "all photographs and/or video" taken from bin Laden's compound during the raid.

"If the FOIA lawsuit is granted, nearly all information relative to Bid Laden's porn stash, as well as all other details of his compound and belongings, could be released," Pardon said.

Judicial Watch filed its FOIA request to the Department of Defense May 3 and filed an identical request last week, the Atlantic Wire reported. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton believes that Obama's desire to not "spike the football" is not a reason to withhold basic information about this historically important raid.

Experts like Scott Hodes, a former Justice Department lawyer in the office of information and privacy, believe Judicial Watch's suit runs the risk of being swiftly dismissed.

However, the possibility that the terrorist leader may have been watching them perform is definitely arousing the interest of porn actresses like Amber Peach.

"I have no interest in, say, seeing Bin Laden's death photo, but I have a morbid curiosity in knowing what films he was watching," Peach told AOL Weird News. "I'd like to know if he watched older or newer films, and even if I was in any of the films."

Peach, who canvassed door-to-door for Obama in 2008, won't speculate on what adult genres Bin Laden watched, and says she isn't surprised at all that he watched porn.

"It's typical that hardcore religious leaders are often watching in porn in private," she said.

Actress Joanna Angel, who also owns Burning Angel, which specializes in alt-porn featuring punkish women with tattoos, is also curious -- even though she doubts Bin Laden appreciated her work.

"I have a feeling he wasn't watching my films," she said. "Although I'd be oddly flattered if he was. You see, I own my own company -- and it's small. So to know I could reach someone without an internet connection in Pakistan would mean I was really good at marketing."

Dave Cummings, who started his porn career at the age of 54 after serving in the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, believes the porn stash is probably a lower priority than the other information found in the compound, but says knowing the titles does have value for intelligence officials.

"Even though the porn might have been merely for masturbatory purposes, or possibly used to review for potentially tempting martyrs to fantasy about what 'virgins' might look like, it's a piece of the intel and just might provide insight and value into the mindset of the jihadist planners," Cummings said, before adding a caveat. "Keep in mind that Arab culture and religion also comes into play, and the analysts need to relate findings to those aspects." ( aol.com )

READ MORE - Porn Industry Wants To See Bin Laden's Porn Stash

Osama Bin Laden - The false story of his life meets the false story of his death

Osama Bin Laden - The false story of his life meets the false story of his death - First we hunt you down. Then we blow a hole in your face. Then we dump your body in the sea, where no one can find your grave. Then we destroy the last thing left of you: your reputation.

This isn't cruelty. It's strategy. Al-Qaida's greatest strength—diffusion—is also its greatest weakness. It's a scattered network held together by the legend of Osama Bin Laden. We took his life. Now we're out to liquidate his legend.

John Brennan, President Obama's counterterrorism coordinator, understands this. Killing Bin Laden was only the first step. The next step is to use his death to demoralize and divide his followers. "We have a lot better opportunity now that … Bin Laden is out of there to destroy that organization, create fractures within it," Brennan said at a White House briefing Monday. "The number two, Zawahiri, is not charismatic. … You're going to see them start eating themselves from within."

Osama Bin Laden - The false story of his life meets the false story of his death

To accelerate this fratricide, Brennan issued a damning account of Bin Laden's behavior during the raid on his compound. "He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said Brennan. During this shootout, "there was a female who was in fact in the line of fire that reportedly was used … to shield bin Laden." Brennan concluded:

Here is Bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield. I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.

At a Pentagon briefing, a senior defense official told the same story: Bin Laden was "living in a mansion that was eight times the size of any other structure in the neighborhood, living rather comfortably. He and some other male combatants on the target appeared to use—certainly did use women as shields." A senior intelligence official repeated that Bin Laden "died during a firefight" and that "many of his terrorist associates in other parts of Pakistan and throughout the region are living in much more dire conditions. So you have to be wondering what they're thinking at this moment when they see that their leader was living, relatively speaking, high on the hog."

Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed this talking point:

The myth of Bin Laden was one of a freedom fighter living in austerity, risking his life for the cause as he moved around in the hills and mountainous caverns of the tribal areas. The reality of Bin Laden was very different: a man who encouraged others to make the ultimate sacrifice while he himself hid in the comfort of a large expensive villa in Pakistan, experiencing none of the hardship he expected his supporters to endure.

But the image of Bin Laden shooting at U.S. commandos from behind an innocent woman also turns out to be a myth. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney issued a revised "narrative" of the raid, courtesy of the Defense Department. It says the commandos started "on the first floor of the Bin Laden house and worked their way to the third floor." The people who fired at the commandos died on the first floor. Bin Laden was upstairs and "was not armed."

A reporter asked Carney "which of those women was being used a human shield, as Mr. Brennan suggested yesterday." Carney answered: "The woman I believe you're talking about might have been the one on the first floor who was caught in the crossfire. Whether or not she was being used as a shield or trying to use herself as a shield or simply caught in crossfire is unclear." What's clear is that Bin Laden, who was upstairs, couldn't have used her as a shield.

Carney blamed the misleading early reports on the "fog of war." But a fog of war creates confusion, not a consistent story like the one about the human shield. The reason U.S. officials bought and sold this story is that it fit their larger indictment of Bin Laden. It reinforced the shameful picture of him hiding in a mansion while sending others to fight and die. It made him look like a coward.

This is the narrative that's really at stake. A narrative isn't just a chronology. It's a tale woven with themes. For 20 years, Bin Laden peddled a tale of oppression and jihad. In elaborate video and audio messages, he depicted al-Qaida's trail of bombings as a Muslim struggle against Western persecution. He wasn't just a terrorist. He was a storyteller.

That's the story Brennan sought to undermine when he cited Bin Laden's use of a human shield to show "how false his narrative has been over the years." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also targeted Bin Laden's story. In a statement trumpeting his death, she argued that "people across the Middle East and North Africa are rejecting the extremist narratives and charting a path of peaceful progress." Carney, too, warned against false interpretations. "It would be a shame," he warned, if Bin Laden's killing "became a piece in a partisan narrative."

Carney is right. So are Brennan, Clinton, and Cameron. Bin Laden was a delusional mass murderer, and his narrative was false. But you can't debunk one false narrative with another. The firefight at Bin Laden's compound, it now appears, pitted two or three men against a dozen or more commandos. Bin Laden didn't engage in the firefight and used no human shield. He wasn't even armed. We shot him dead anyway. That's the truth. Deal with it. ( salte.com )

READ MORE - Osama Bin Laden - The false story of his life meets the false story of his death

Rio dances on the sand, soars through the sky

Rio dances on the sand, soars through the sky - A lot of passion and personal feeling clearly went into "Rio," the 3-D animated adventure from director Carlos Saldanha, who devised this story as a love letter to his Brazilian hometown.

It's strikingly gorgeous, bursting with big images and vibrant colors. And the use of 3-D, which so often feels so needless and like such an afterthought, is surprisingly effective in the hands of Saldanha (director or co-director of the "Ice Age" movies) and his team. Stuff doesn't come flinging at you in cheeky, knowing fashion — although that can be fun in its own gimmicky way sometimes — but in the flying sequences especially the chase scenes, the 3-D provides an extra thrill, an added layer of immersive oomph. Blu, a cerulean macaw who's the film's reluctant hero, hang-glides around the mountaintop Christ the Redeemer statue, and the depth of field that results is sort of awesome.

Animated characters, from Raphael - In this publicity image released by 20th Century Fox, animated characters, from left, Raphael, voiced by George Lopez, Blu, voiced by Jesse Eisenberg, and Jewel, voiced by Anne Hathaway, are shown in a scene from 'Rio.'

The whole film has a tremendous energy about it, not just in the way it moves but in the snappy banter and screwball antics between Jesse Eisenberg, who voices the character of Blu, and Anne Hathaway, who voices the free-spirited bird Jewel. Eisenberg works his patented halting, neurotic delivery to ideal comic effect, while Hathaway is confident, bold and impatient as the female of the species who is his destiny. They clash so convincingly, you'd think they'd recorded their scenes together. (They didn't, which is unfortunately the norm in animation performances.)

So much is so appealing for so long that you can almost forgive the fact that there's not much story here in the script from Don Rhymer, Joshua Sternin & Jeffrey Ventimilia and Sam Harper. (Three others, including Saldanha himself, get story-by credit.) It's essentially one long chase, with the usual romantic-comedy friction that will, of course, turn into love.

Blu, as a baby, was abducted by smugglers who raided his jungle home to sell him and other beautiful birds illegally in the United States. He ended up getting lost en route and, luckily for him, falling into the loving hands of a nerdy, small-town Minnesota girl named Linda. Over the years, the two forged an amusingly inappropriate bond, and now are enjoying a comfy, co-dependent existence. Linda (voiced as an adult by Leslie Mann) has domesticated this bird she named Blu to such an extent that he makes his own breakfast and enjoys hot cocoa with marshmallows — but he never learned to do what most birds can do, which is fly.

One day, a scientist named Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro) arrives to inform Linda that Blu is the only male left of his species. They must travel at once to Rio de Janeiro to allow Blu to mate with the last female of the species, Jewel. Anxious about leaving their familiar surroundings, they nonetheless make the trip.

But this first date, um, doesn't go quite as everyone hoped. Not only do Blu and Jewel not get it on, but they hate each other — and Jewel is too busy anyway planning her escape. Then they're captured by another set of smugglers, with help from a hideous and diabolical cockatoo named Nigel. Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" voices the character with preening menace — complete with an elaborate production number — and he's a hoot.

From here, they must figure out how to break free so Blu can get back to Linda and Jewel can enjoy independence. (George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, will.i.am and Tracy Morgan lend their voices to the supporting players who help along the way.) The fact that they're chained to each other — and Blu can't fly, if you'll recall — sets up plenty of slapstick and elaborate mad dashes across slums, beaches, forests and finally the spectacle of Carnival. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Rio dances on the sand, soars through the sky

Dr Conrad Murray wants Michael Jackson autopsy photos banned from trial

Dr Conrad Murray wants Michael Jackson autopsy photos banned from trial - Michael Jackson's personal physician Dr Conrad Murray wants to prevent gruesome autopsy shots of the singer being shown during the trial.

Lawyers for Murray, who is being tried for involuntary manslaughter over Jacko's death, fear the images could prejudice the jury.

In a motion filed this week, attorneys Edward Chernoff and Nareg Gourjian said: 'These photographs are graphic, gruesome and highly prejudicial.'

Request: Dr Conrad Murray's lawyers have filed a motion asking a Los Angeles judge to ban autopsy photos of Michael Jackson being shown to jurors at the trial

They explained the graphich photos could make the jury react on an emotional level and cloud members' judgement.

The motion continued: 'Admission of these photographs to the jurors will jeopardize Dr. Murray's right to a fair trial because of the significant risk that the jury will base their decision not on the evidence presented, but on emotional grounds which play no part in a criminal action.'

The defence have also asked the judge to exclude references to events surrounding Murray that don't involve his treatment or relationship with the singer, RadarOnline reported.

Such matters include the doctor's child support obligations, his children, his infidelities, meeting women at strip clubs, and other lawsuits that have been filed, settled or resolved.

It is expected that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor will rule on the defence submissions on April 21.

Lawyers for the prosecution and defence will interview prospective jurors on May 4 to determine what they know about the case and assess levels on bias considering the high profile nature of the case.

Already 170 possible jurors have been given a 29-page questionnaire to fill out to determine what they know about the case, RadarOnline reports. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Dr Conrad Murray wants Michael Jackson autopsy photos banned from trial

The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 4 )

THE VOTE - Right up to the day of the vote, when Juppe took a plane to New York to swing vital votes behind the resolution, Moscow's attitude was uncertain. So too were the three African votes. British and French diplomats tried desperately to contact the Nigerian, South African and Gabonese ambassadors but kept being told they were in a meeting.

"There was drama right up to the last minute," another U.N. diplomat said. That day, March 17, Clinton had just come out of a television studio in Tunis, epicenter of the first Arab democratic revolution, when she spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on a secure cellphone. Lavrov, who had strongly opposed a no-fly zone when they met in Geneva on February 28 and remained skeptical when they talked again in Paris on March 14, told her Moscow would not block the resolution. The senior U.S. official denied that Washington had offered Russia trade and diplomatic benefits in return for acquiescence, as suggested by a senior non-American diplomat. However, Obama telephoned President Dimitry Medvedev the following week and reaffirmed his support for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, which U.S. ally Georgia is blocking.

China too abstained, allowing the resolution to pass with 10 votes in favor, five abstentions and none against. It authorized the use of "all necessary measures" - code for military action -- to protect the civilian population but expressly ruled out a foreign occupation force in any part of Libya. The United States construes it to allow arms sales to the rebels. Most others do not.

Reuters reported exclusively on March 29 that Obama had signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces. The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency declined comment. Clinton said no decision had been taken on whether to arm the rebels.

ARAB JITTERS, COLD TURKEY - No sooner had the first cruise missiles been fired than the Arab League's Moussa complained that the Western powers had gone beyond the U.N. resolution and caused civilian casualties. His outburst appeared mainly aimed at assuaging Arab public opinion, particularly in Egypt, and he muted his criticism after telephone calls from Paris, London and Washington.

Turkey, the leading Muslim power in NATO with big economic interests in Libya, bitterly criticized the military action in an Islamic country. The Turks were exasperated to see France, the most vociferous adversary of its EU membership bid, leading the coalition. Sarkozy, who alternated on a brief maiden visit to Ankara on February 25 between trying to sell Turkish leaders French nuclear power plants and telling them bluntly to drop their EU ambitions, further angered Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan by failing to invite Turkey to the Paris conference on Libya.

Italy, the former colonial power which had Europe's biggest trade and investment ties with Libya, had publicly opposed military action until the last minute, but opened its air bases to coalition forces as soon as the U.N. resolution passed. However, Rome quickly demanded that NATO, in which it had a seat at the decision-making table, should take over command of the whole operation. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini threatened to take back control of the vital Italian bases unless the mission was placed under NATO.

But Turkey and France were fighting diplomatic dogfights at NATO headquarters. Ankara wanted to use its NATO veto put the handcuffs on the coalition to stop offensive operations. France wanted to keep political leadership away from the U.S.-led military alliance to avoid a hostile reaction in the Arab world.

The United States signaled its determination to hand over operational command within days, not weeks, as Obama had promised, and wanted tried-and-trusted NATO at the wheel.

It took a week of wrangling before agreement was reached for NATO to take charge of the entire military campaign. In return, France won agreement to create a "contact group" including Arab and African partners, to coordinate political efforts on Libya's future. Turkey was assuaged by being invited to a London international conference that launched that process.

That enabled the United States to lower its profile and Obama to declare that Washington would not act alone as the world's policeman "wherever repression occurs". While the president promised to scale back U.S. involvement to a "supporting role", the military statistics tell a different tale. As of March 29, the United States had fired all but 7 of the 214 cruise missiles used in the conflict and flown 1,103 sorties compared to 669 for all other allies combined. It also dropped 455 of the first 600 bombs, according to the Pentagon.

For all the showcasing of Arab involvement, only six military aircraft from Qatar had arrived in theater by March 30. They joined French air patrols but did not fly combat missions, a military source said. Sarkozy announced that the United Arab Emirates would send 12 F16 fighters , but NATO and UAE officials refused to say when they would arrive. Britain's Cameron spoke of unspecified logistical contributions from Kuwait and Jordan. The main Arab contribution is clearly political cover rather than military assets.

CASUALTY LIST - While the duration and the outcome of the war remain uncertain, some political casualties are already visible.

Unless the conflict ends in disaster, Germany and its chancellor and foreign minister - particularly the latter - are set to emerge as losers. "I can tell you there are people in London and Paris who are asking themselves whether this Germany is the kind of country we would like to have as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. That's a legitimate question which wasn't posed before," a senior European diplomat told Reuters. German officials brush aside such talk, saying Berlin would have the backing of its western partners and needs support from developing and emerging countries more in tune with its abstention on the Libya resolution.

Merkel has moved quickly to try to limit the damage. She attended the Paris conference and went along with an EU summit statement on March 25 welcoming the U.N. resolution on which her own government had abstained a week earlier. She also offered NATO extra help in aerial surveillance in Afghanistan to free up Western resources for the Libya campaign.

A second conspicuous casualty has been the European Union's attempt to build a common foreign, security and Defense policy, and the official meant to personify that ambition, High Representative Catherine Ashton. Many in Paris, London, Brussels and Washington have drawn the conclusion that European Defense is an illusion, given Germany's visceral reticence about military action. Future serious operations are more likely to be left to NATO, or to coalitions of the willing around Britain and France. By general agreement, Ashton has so far had a bad war. Despite having been among the first European officials to embrace the Arab uprisings and urge the EU to engage with democracy movements in North Africa, she angered both the British and French by airing her doubts about a no-fly zone and the Germans by subsequently welcoming the U.N. resolution. Unable to please everyone, she managed to please no one.

As for Sarkozy, whether he emerges as a hero or a reckless adventurer may depend on events beyond his control in the sands of Libya. Justin Vaisse, a Frenchman who heads the Center for the Study of the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington, detected an undertone of "Francophobia and Sarkophobia" among U.S. policy elites as the war began. "Either the war will go well, and he will look like a far-sighted, decisive leader, or it will go badly and reinforce the image of a showboating cowboy driving the world into war," Vaisse said. The jury is still out. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 4 )

The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 3 )

ARAB SPINE - U.S. officials say the key event that helped Clinton and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, persuade Obama of the need for intervention was a March 12 decision by the Arab League to ask the U.N. Security Council to declare a no-fly zone to protect the Libyan population. The Arab League's unprecedented resolve -- the organization has long been plagued by chronic divisions and a lack of spine -- reflected the degree to which Gaddafi had alienated his peers, especially Saudi Arabia. When the quixotic colonel bothered to attend Arab summits, it was usually to insult the Saudi king and other veteran rulers.

The Arab League decision gave a regional seal of approval that Western nations regarded as vital for military action.

Moreover, two Arab states - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - soon said they would participate in enforcing a no-fly zone, and a third, Lebanon, co-sponsored a United Nations resolution to authorize the use of force. Arab diplomats said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister with presidential ambitions, played the key role in squeezing an agreement out of the closed-door meeting.

Syria, Sudan, Algeria and Yemen were all against any move to invite foreign intervention in an Arab state. But diplomats said that by couching the resolution as an appeal to the U.N. Security Council, Moussa maneuvered his way around Article VI of the Arab League's statutes requiring that such decisions be taken unanimously. It was he who announced the outcome, saying Gaddafi's government had lost legitimacy because of its "crimes against the Libyan people".

The African Union, in which Gaddafi played an active but idiosyncratic role, condemned the Libyan leader's crackdown but rejected foreign military intervention and created a panel of leaders to try to resolve the conflict through dialogue.

However, all three African states on the Security Council - South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon - voted for the resolution. France acted as if it had AU support anyway. Sarkozy invited the organization's secretary-general, Jean Ping, to the Elysee palace for a showcase summit of coalition countries on the day military action began, and he attended, providing African political cover for the operation.

OBAMA DECIDES - Having failed to win either EU or G8 backing for a no-fly zone, and with the United States internally divided and holding back, France and Britain were in trouble in their quest for a U.N. resolution despite the Arab League support. Gaddafi's forces had regrouped and recaptured a swathe of the western and central coastal plain, including some key oil terminals, and were advancing fast on Benghazi, a city of 700,000 and the rebels' stronghold. If international intervention did not come within days, it would be too late. Gaddafi's troops would be in the population centers, making surgical air strikes impossible without inflicting civilian casualties.

In the nick of time, Obama came off the fence on March 15 at a two-part meeting of his National Security Council. Hillary Clinton participated by telephone from Paris, Susan Rice by secure video link from New York. Both were deeply aware of the events of the 1990s, when Bill Clinton's administration, in which Rice was an adviser on Africa, had failed to prevent genocide in Rwanda, and only intervened in Bosnia after the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two.

They reviewed what was at stake now. There were credible reports that Gaddafi forces were preparing to massacre the rebels. What signal would it send to Arab democrats if the West let him get away with that, and if Mubarak and Ben Ali, whose armies refused to turn their guns on the people, were overthrown while Gaddafi, who had used his airforce, tanks and artillery against civilian protesters, survived in office?

The president overruled doubters among his military and national security advisers and decided the United States would support an ambitious U.N. resolution going beyond just a no-fly zone, on the strict condition that Washington would quickly hand over leadership of the military action to its allies. "Within days, not weeks," one participant quoted him as saying.

A senior administration official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the key concern was to avoid any impression that the United States was once again unilaterally bombing an Arab country. Asked what had swung Washington toward agreeing to join military action in Libya, he said: "It's more that events were evolving and so positions had to address the change of events."

"The key elements were the Arab League statement, the Lebanese support, co-sponsorship of the actual resolution as the Arab representative on the Security Council, a series of conversations with Arab leaders over the course of that week, leading up to the resolution. All of that convinced us that the Arab countries were fully supportive of the broad resolution that would provide the authorization necessary to protect civilians and to provide humanitarian relief, and then the (March 19) gathering in Paris, confirmed that there was support for the means necessary to carry out the resolution, namely the use of military force," the official said.

When Rice told her French and British counterparts at the United Nations that Washington now favored a far more aggressive Security Council resolution, including air and sea strikes, they first feared a trap. Was Obama deliberately trying to provoke a Russian veto, a French official mused privately.

"I had a phone call from Susan Rice, Tuesday 8 p.m., and a phone call from Susan Rice at 11 p.m., and everything had changed in three hours," a senior Western envoy told Reuters. "On Wednesday morning, at the (Security) Council, in a sort of totally awed silence, Susan Rice said: 'We want to be allowed to strike Libyan forces on the ground.' There was a sort of a bit surprised silence." ( Reuters )

READ MORE - The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 3 )

The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 2 )

GERMANY MISSING IN ACTION - In Germany, on the other hand, the Libyan uprising was an unwelcome distraction from domestic politics. It played directly into the campaign for regional elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg, a south-western state which Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats had governed since 1953.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, leader of the Free Democrats, the liberal junior partners in Merkel's coalition, tried to surf on pacifist public opinion by opposing military action. Polls showed two-thirds of voters opposed German involvement in Libya, a country where Nazi Germany's Afrika Korps had suffered desert defeats in World War Two. Present-day Germany's armed forces were already overstretched in Afghanistan, where some 5,000 soldiers are engaged in an unpopular long-term mission. Westerwelle made it impossible for Merkel to support a no-fly zone, even without participating. He publicly criticized the Franco-British proposal for a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to prevent Gaddafi using his air force against Libyan civilians. Merkel said she was skeptical. The Germans prevented a March 11 EU summit from making any call for a no-fly zone, much to the frustration of the French and British.

Relations between France's Juppe and Westerwelle deteriorated further the following week when Germany prevented foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized powers from calling for a no-fly zone in Libya. Westerwelle told reporters: "Military intervention is not the solution. From our point of view, it is very difficult and dangerous. We do not want to get sucked into a war in North Africa. We would not like to step on a slippery slope where we all are at the end in a war."

That argument angered allies. As the meeting broke up, a senior European diplomat tells Reuters, Juppe turned to Westerwelle and said: "Now that you have achieved everything you wanted, Gaddafi can go ahead and massacre his people."

When the issue came to the U.N. Security Council on March 17, 10 days before the Baden-Wuerttemberg election, Germany abstained, along with Russia, China, India and Brazil, and said it would take no part in military operations.

Ironically, that stance seems to have been politically counterproductive. The center-right coalition lost the regional election anyway, and both leaders were severely criticized by German media for having isolated Germany from its western partners, including the United States. The main political beneficiaries were the ecologist Greens, seen as both anti-nuclear and anti-war.

U.S. TAKES ITS TIME - In Washington, meanwhile, President Barack Obama was, as usual, taking his time to make up his mind. Military action in Libya was the last thing the U.S. president needed, just when he was trying to extricate American troops from two unpopular wars in Muslim countries launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama had sought to rebuild damaged relations with the Muslim world, seen as a key driver of radicalization and terrorism against the United States. The president trod a fine line in embracing pro-democracy and reform movements in the Arab world and Iran while trying to avoid undermining vital U.S. interests in the absolute monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf states. Compared to those challenges, Libya was a sideshow.

The United States had no big economic or political interests in the North African oil and gas producing state and instinctively saw it as part of Europe's backyard. Obama had also sought to encourage allies, notably in Europe, to take more responsibility for their own security issues. Spelling out the administration's deep reluctance to get dragged into another potential Arab quagmire, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a farewell speech to officer cadets at the West Point military academy on March 4: "In my opinion, any future Defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined', as General (Douglas) MacArthur so delicately put it."

Prominent U.S. foreign policy lawmakers, including Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Senator John McCain pressed the Obama administration in early March to impose a "no- fly" zone over Libya and explore other military options, such as bombing runways. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on February 28 that a "no-fly" zone was "an option which we are actively considering".

But the White House pushed back against pressure from lawmakers. "It would be premature to send a bunch of weapons to a post office box in eastern Libya," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on March 7. "We need to not get ahead of ourselves in terms of the options we're pursuing."

While Carney said a no-fly zone was a serious option, other U.S. civilian and military officials cautioned that it would be difficult to enforce.

On March 10, U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper forecast in Congress that Gaddafi's better-equipped forces would prevail in the long term, saying Gaddafi appeared to be "hunkering down for the duration". If there was to be intervention, it had become clear, it would have to come quickly. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 2 )

The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 1 )

The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 1 ) - It's high time that Europeans stopped exporting their own responsibilities to Washington – It is a war that Barack Obama didn't want, David Cameron didn't need, Angela Merkel couldn't cope with and Silvio Berlusconi dreaded.

Only Nicolas Sarkozy saw the popular revolt that began in Libya on February 15 as an opportunity for political and diplomatic redemption. Whether the French president's energetic leadership of an international coalition to protect the Libyan people from Muammar Gaddafi will be enough to revive his sagging domestic fortunes in next year's election is highly uncertain. But by pushing for military strikes that he hopes might repair France's reputation in the Arab world, Sarkozy helped shape what type of war it would be. The road to Western military intervention was paved with mutual suspicion, fears of another quagmire in a Muslim country and doubts about the largely unknown ragtag Libyan opposition with which the West has thrown in its lot.

That will make it harder to hold together an uneasy coalition of Americans, Europeans and Arabs, the longer Gaddafi holds out. Almost two weeks into the air campaign, Western policymakers fret about the risk of a stray bomb hitting a hospital or an orphanage, or of the conflict sliding into a prolonged stalemate.

There is no doubt the outcome in Tripoli will have a bearing on the fate of the popular movement for change across the Arab world. But because this war was born in Paris it will also have consequences for Europe.

"It's high time that Europeans stopped exporting their own responsibilities to Washington," says Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "If the West fails in Libya, it will be primarily a European failure."

A FRENCH FIASCO - When the first Arab pro-democracy uprisings shook the thrones of aging autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt in January, France had got itself on the wrong side of history.

Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie had enjoyed a winter holiday in Tunisia, a former French colony, oblivious to the rising revolt. She and her family had taken free flights on the private jet of a businessman close to President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, and then publicly offered the government French assistance with riot control just a few days before Ben Ali was ousted by popular protests.

Worse was to come. It turned out that French Prime Minister Francois Fillon had spent his Christmas vacation up the Nile as the guest of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the next autocrat in the Arab democracy movement's firing line, while Sarkozy and his wife Carla had soaked up the winter sunshine in Morocco, another former French territory ruled by a barely more liberal divine-right monarch.

Television stations were re-running embarrassing footage of the president giving Gaddafi a red-carpet welcome in Paris in 2007, when Libya's "brother leader" planted his tent in the grounds of the Hotel de Marigny state guest house across the road from the Elysee presidential palace.

On February 27, a few days after Libyan rebels hoisted the pre-Gaddafi tricolor flag defiantly in Benghazi, Sarkozy fired his foreign minister. In a speech announcing the appointment of Alain Juppe as her successor, Sarkozy cited the need to adapt France's foreign and security policy to the new situation created by the Arab uprisings. "This is an historic change," he said. "We must not be afraid of it. We must have one sole aim: to accompany, support and help the people who have chosen freedom."

MAN IN THE WHITE SHIRT - Yet the international air campaign against Gaddafi's forces might never have happened without the self-appointed activism of French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, a left-leaning philosopher and talk-show groupie, who lobbied Sarkozy to take up the cause of Libya's pro-democracy rebels.

Libya was the latest of a string of international causes that the libertarian icon with his unbuttoned white designer shirts and flowing mane of greying hair has championed over the last two decades after Bosnian Muslims, Algerian secularists, Afghan rebels and Georgia's side in the conflict with Russia. Levy went to meet the Libyan rebels and telephoned Sarkozy from Benghazi in early March.

"I'd like to bring you the Libyan Massouds," Levy says he told the president, comparing the anti-Gaddafi opposition with former Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud, who fought against the Islamist Taliban before being assassinated. "As Gaddafi only clings on through violence, I think he'll collapse," the philosopher told Reuters in an interview.

On March 10, Levy accompanied two envoys of the Libyan Transitional Council to Sarkozy's office. To their surprise and to the consternation of France's allies, the president recognized the council as the "legitimate representative of the Libyan people" and told them he favored not only establishing a no-fly zone to protect them but also carrying out "limited targeted strikes" against Gaddafi's forces. In doing so without consultation on the eve of a European Union summit called to discuss Libya, Sarkozy upstaged Washington, which was still debating what to do, embarrassed London, which wanted broad support for a no-fly zone, and infuriated Berlin, France's closest European partner. He also stunned his own foreign minister, who learned about the decision to recognize the opposition from a news agency dispatch, aides said, while in Brussels trying to coax the EU into backing a no-fly zone.

"Quite a lot of members of the European Council were irritated to discover that France had recognized the Libyan opposition council and the Elysee was talking of targeted strikes," a senior European diplomat said. Across the Channel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, aware of the deep unpopularity of the Iraq war, had turned his back on Tony Blair's doctrine of liberal interventionism when he took office in 2010. But after facing criticism over the slow evacuation of British nationals from Libya and a trade-promotion trip to the Gulf in the midst of the Arab uprisings, he overruled cabinet skeptics, military doubters and critics among his own Conservative lawmakers to join Sarkozy in campaigning for military action. However, Cameron sought to reassure parliament that he was not entering an Iraq-style open-ended military commitment.

"This is different to Iraq. This is not going into a country, knocking over its government and then owning and being responsible for everything that happens subsequently," he said. In Britain, as in France, the government won bipartisan support for intervention. Next ( Reuters )

READ MORE - The West's unwanted war in Libya ( 1 )