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Editor’s note: Mark Bowman is managing director of brewing company SABMiller Africa.

(CNN) — Nothing better sums up Africa’s extraordinary mixture of challenges and opportunities than agriculture. On the one hand, Africa is home to one in four of the world’s hungry and is the only continent which fails to grow enough food to meet its own needs.

Yet it has also half of the world’s unused land suitable for farming. Better still, increasing yields on existing farmland by 50% — still far below the global average — would not only meet Africa’s own food requirements but provide a sizable surplus for export. With global food supply needing to increase by an estimated 70% by 2050, the continent is at the heart of the challenge of food security.

All this explains why agriculture in Africa is finally getting the attention it deserves from both the continent’s governments and donors.

The recent Nutrition for Growth summit generated pledges of $4.1 billion to fight malnutrition and hunger. This builds on the commitments made at Camp David 12 months ago when we, along with other local and multinational companies, committed to collectively invest over $3 billion across the agricultural value chain in Grow Africa countries.

There is now increased pressure on G8 leaders, meeting this week in the UK, to tackle the issues at the heart of food insecurity, including “land grabs.”

Read this: African land grabs, mirage in the desert

In the worst cases, local communities and farmers have been evicted from land they long regarded as their own. Farmland which was once productive can be left idle. Plans to grow crops for export in the future can also be difficult to stomach when local people don’t have food to eat today.

Land purchases which ignore the interests of local communities and the local landscapes are both morally wrong and commercially short-sighted. We need action both nationally and globally to stop them.

But there is a danger that these clear-cut cases fuel opposition to all outside investment or create a false choice between large-scale commercial farming and smallholders. The truth is Africa desperately needs to maximize the potential of both to meet the needs of its citizens.

With smallholder farmers still producing 80% of the food and supporting 65% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, they are central to any successful sustainable solution. We need to lift the barriers which have seen them locked out of the developments in agriculture from which farmers around the world have long benefited. Where this has happened, the results can be remarkable.

Read this: Africa can feed itself in a generation

As a company, we have been working with African farmers for many years. We buy our raw materials from all sorts of farming systems, from large-scale commercial barley farmers right through to near-subsistence cassava farmers who we are keen to help become viable commercial operators — and at least half of the grains we use come from local farmers.

African farmers key to growing economies

Farm Radio Malawi boosts agriculture

A green revolution for Africa?

The challenge for all who want to see African agriculture drive prosperity for its people is to maximize the benefits which both smallholder and large-scale commercial farming can bring. There is no single answer to preventing land grabs but at the heart of any solution is the need to improve land rights. It is no coincidence that many of the most questionable acquisitions have taken place in countries with the weakest system of land rights in place.

As much as 90% of the land in sub-Sahara Africa is untitled. The result is that communities which may have lived and farmed the land for many generations have no enforceable legal claim to it. In the worst cases, this can allow land to be sold off by governments from under their feet without any hope of compensation.

Read this: Land grabs really water grabs?

Improved land rights which go at least some way to recognize history and usage would help prevent this from happening. Nor is it impossible to put in place. Countries such as Botswana and Ghana have already improved their laws so customarily held lands have the force of private property.

Giving people the protection of legally enforceable land rights does not only give them security. It also gives them greater incentive to invest in their farms and an easier route to get this investment. The lack of legal paperwork to their land remains a major reason for the refusal of banks to lend to farmers.

Improving land rights would also help commercial organizations who want to invest and farm in a responsible way. The present position gives us the worst of all worlds. While bad investors can get away with riding roughshod over the rights of smallholders and communities, the present free-for-all makes it difficult for good investors who want to farm in a way which is beneficial to local people and the environment from accessing land.

It is not just weak land rights which are holding back African agriculture, and the solutions are complex and multi-faceted. But work to put in place a fair and enforceable system would be a major step to helping the continent fulfill its rich potential.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of Mark Bowman.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/opinion/land-grabs-africa-mark-bowman/index.html?eref=edition

Editor’s note: Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive.”

(CNN) — Today, the United States is conducting offensive cyberwar actions around the world.

More than passively eavesdropping, we’re penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We’re creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be “fired” against some piece of another country’s electronic infrastructure on a moment’s notice.

This is much worse than what we’re accusing China of doing to us. We’re pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren’t making the Internet any safer. We’re reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We’re ignoring resilience in favor of offense.

Welcome to the cyberwar arms race, an arms race that will define the Internet in the 21st century.

Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued last October and released by Edward Snowden, outlines U.S. cyberwar policy. Most of it isn’t very interesting, but there are two paragraphs about “Offensive Cyber Effect Operations,” or OCEO, that are intriguing:

“OECO can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging. The development and sustainment of OCEO capabilities, however, may require considerable time and effort if access and tools for a specific target do not already exist.

“The United States Government shall identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power, establish and maintain OCEO capabilities integrated as appropriate with other U.S. offensive capabilities, and execute those capabilities in a manner consistent with the provisions of this directive.”

Opinion: Cyber arms control? Forget about it

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Could the NSA leaker defect to China?

These two paragraphs, and another paragraph about OCEO, are the only parts of the document classified “top secret.” And that’s because what they’re saying is very dangerous.

Cyberattacks have the potential to be both immediate and devastating. They can disrupt communications systems, disable national infrastructure, or, as in the case of Stuxnet, destroy nuclear reactors; but only if they’ve been created and targeted beforehand. Before launching cyberattacks against another country, we have to go through several steps.

We have to study the details of the computer systems they’re running and determine the vulnerabilities of those systems. If we can’t find exploitable vulnerabilities, we need to create them: leaving “back doors” in hacker speak. Then we have to build new cyberweapons designed specifically to attack those systems.

Sometimes we have to embed the hostile code in those networks, these are called “logic bombs,” to be unleashed in the future. And we have to keep penetrating those foreign networks, because computer systems always change and we need to ensure that the cyberweapons are still effective.

Like our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, our cyberweapons arsenal must be pretargeted and ready to launch.

That’s what Obama directed the U.S. Cyber Command to do. We can see glimpses in how effective we are in Snowden’s allegations that the NSA is currently penetrating foreign networks around the world: “We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one.”

The NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command are basically the same thing. They’re both at Fort Meade in Maryland, and they’re both led by Gen. Keith Alexander. The same people who hack network backbones are also building weapons to destroy those backbones. At a March Senate briefing, Alexander boasted of creating more than a dozen offensive cyber units.

Longtime NSA watcher James Bamford reached the same conclusion in his recent profile of Alexander and the U.S. Cyber Command (written before the Snowden revelations). He discussed some of the many cyberweapons the U.S. purchases:

“According to Defense News’ C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its intelligence clients — agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence — a unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw, the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected to the Internet around the world, providing what’s called network situational awareness. The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country and city — say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such as the Ministry of Public Security’s No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer security — or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks turned into botnets and zombies — the equivalent of a back door left open…

“The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war. ‘If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary’s systems, you are laying the electronic battlefield and preparing to use it’ wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. ‘In my opinion, these activities constitute acts of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war.’ The question is, who else is on the secretive company’s client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. “It should be illegal,’ said the former senior intelligence official involved in cyberwarfare. ‘I knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn’t like it, but they’re the largest consumer of that business.’”

That’s the key question: How much of what the United States is currently doing is an act of war by international definitions? Already we’re accusing China of penetrating our systems in order to map “military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.” What PPD-20 and Snowden describe is much worse, and certainly China, and other countries, are doing the same.

All of this mapping of vulnerabilities and keeping them secret for offensive use makes the Internet less secure, and these pre-targeted, ready-to-unleash cyberweapons are destabalizing forces on international relationships. Rooting around other countries’ networks, analyzing vulnerabilities, creating back doors, and leaving logic bombs could easily be construed as an act of war. And all it takes is one over-achieving national leader for this all to tumble into actual war.

It’s time to stop the madness. Yes, our military needs to invest in cyberwar capabilities, but we also need international rules of cyberwar, more transparency from our own government on what we are and are not doing, international cooperation between governments and viable cyberweapons treaties. Yes, these are difficult. Yes, it’s a long slow process. Yes, there won’t be international consensus, certainly not in the beginning. But even with all of those problems, it’s a better path to go down than the one we’re on now.

We can start by taking most of the money we’re investing in offensive cyberwar capabilities and spend them on national cyberspace resilience. MAD, mutually assured destruction, made sense because there were two superpowers opposing each other. On the Internet there are all sorts of different powers, from nation-states to much less organized groups. An arsenal of cyberweapons begs to be used, and, as we learned from Stuxnet, there’s always collateral damage to innocents when they are. We’re much safer with a strong defense than with a counterbalancing offense.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bruce Schneier.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/opinion/schneier-cyberwar-policy/index.html?eref=edition

Editor’s note: Michele Weldon is an author, assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University and a leader with The OpEd Project.

(CNN) — Believing that celebrity and success — even attractiveness — guarantee immunity from domestic violence is like believing famous people are magically protected from the dangers of other drivers on the road, airborne pathogens from a stranger’s sneeze, or the path of a wild fire.

Domestic violence knows no boundaries, affecting women — and some men — who meet every descriptor of race, age, socioeconomic or educational status, sexual orientation, demography, geography, ideology, disability or theology. Domestic violence is more common than breast cancer and left-handedness.

Famous or anonymous, one in four women in this country will experience domestic violence in her lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Each year in the United States, 5.3 million women experience domestic violence, at an annual cost to the American economy of $5.8 billion.

Report: Nigella Lawson choked by husband

According to the U.N. Women’s 2011-2012 annual report, “This pervasive human rights violation affects all countries and communities.” The World Health Organization reports that 15% to 71% of women ages 15 to 49 in a multicountry study had experienced intimate partner violence.

Notably, nowhere on this planet is there 0% violence against intimate partners. Nowhere on this planet is there a society immune to domestic violence. And no upscale neighborhood or celebrity-frequented restaurant is off limits.

So why should the recent public altercation between TV chef Nigella Lawson and her handsome, successful husband, Charles Saatchi, surprise anyone? In light of tabloid photographs that show Saatchi holding a tearful Lawson by the neck, it should be clear that intimate partner violence is a universal scourge. Why does the myth that intimate partner violence exists only in lower socioeconomic communities persist?

Saatchi has not been charged in connection with the incident and has denied his actions were abusive, calling the encounter a “playful tiff.” Horrified observers reportedly had a different take.

Certainly no one wishes the suffering of violence on anyone regardless of who they are. But this alleged incident provides a painful reminder that it is time to permanently dissolve the mythology that domestic violence only happens to low-income women. And it is time to take such an outrageous public display of apparent violence seriously.

Shortly after the publication of the photos, Britain’s Nick Griffin of the National Party tweeted: “If I had the opportunity to squeeze Nigella Lawson, her throat wouldn’t be my first choice.” Next, he followed up with this: “To feminist cranks whining re my ‘objectifying’ Nigella, she was happy to use her curves to sell books. Her chorizo potato soup v good btw.”

That’s about as funny as referring to a sleeveless tank top as a “wife beater” and thinking that’s OK.

Saatchi’s downplaying of the incident as “playful” to the media is also no surprise. As a survivor of domestic violence myself, and an advocate and spokesperson for nonviolence for the past 18 years, I know that sentiment is on par with the common rationalizations for domestic violence I have heard: “She asked for it. She likes it. She made me mad. She provoked me. It was her fault.”

Saatchi’s comment does not match in scope the most outrageous response I once heard from a police officer about a man who shot his wife: “She ran in front of the bullet.” But Saatchi’s flippant dismissal matches our universal misunderstanding that domestic violence is not about us. It is always about other people somewhere else.

Unfortunately, the sorority of successful and powerful women who have reportedly been victims of domestic violence includes Halle Berry, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Pamela Anderson, Mariah Carey, Tina Turner, Meredith Baxter and Rihanna.

Sometimes a batterer is the most charismatic man in the room; they are lawyers, doctors, politicians, business titans, actors, celebrities, singers and professional athletes.

I understand; domestic violence was not something I ever thought would happen to me. I married a man I knew my whole life; he was smart, handsome, kind and ambitious. We dated for three years with no hint of violence. That changed four months into our marriage. At the time, I thought I was powerful and successful enough to change him; I was not. We have been divorced 18 years.

What I learned is a partner’s behavior is not something you can control, no matter how educated you are, no matter how idyllic your life was growing up, no matter how much you dreamed your life would go well.

And no matter if you are a vibrant, internationally successful best-selling author and chef.

Though she and her children have moved out of their family home, Lawson has yet to publicly comment on the situation. We don’t know whether she views herself as a victim of domestic violence, but those photographs tell a story we need to keep repeating.

So many of us who believe the myths of domestic violence don’t tell because we are ashamed to tell. We believe as successful women we are immune, that it happens to others. Millions of women around the globe in all manner of circumstances think they cannot say the truth about the violence in their lives because they will die of embarrassment.

But we all need to remember, in the most severe cases, it is never embarrassment that kills them.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/17/living/opinion-lawson-alleged-abuse/index.html?eref=edition

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Nearly 40 years after his disappearance, former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, pictured circa 1955, remains among America’s most famous missing persons. Authorities have been searching for the once powerful union boss since he vanished in 1975.

Hoffa slumps in a chair at the Teamsters union office. He was one of the most powerful union leaders in America until being forced out of the organized labor movement. He went to prison in 1967 for jury tampering and fraud before being pardoned four years later.

Hoffa appears at the Teamsters union convention in 1957, the year he first became union president.

Hoffa, center, stands with other officials at the Teamsters convention, where he made a successful bid for control of the union in 1957.

Hoffa testifies at a Senate Rackets Committee hearing in 1958.

Hoffa on the phone at an airport in 1959.

An office for Teamsters union local chapters that Hoffa set up.

Hoffa eats with union leader Joseph Curran, left, in 1959.

Hoffa holds a Teamsters rally at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1960.

Hoffa leads supporters at a Teamsters convention in 1959.

The Teamsters boss appears on the cover of Life magazine on May 18, 1959. The headline reads, “A National Threat: Hoffa’s Teamsters; Part 1: Sources of a Union’s Uncurbed Power.”

Hoffa, pictured circa 1960, was a powerful labor leader at a time when unions wielded a great deal of sway over elections and were notoriously tied to organized crime.

From left, “Meet the Press” moderator Ned Brooks, Lawrence K. Spivak and Hoffa appear at an NBC studio.

Hoffa and his son, James Phillip, enter a federal courtroom in July 1964. His son is the current president of the Teamsters.

Hoffa, second row, center, leaves court after being found guilty of jury tampering in 1964.

Hoffa at the Pittsburgh airport in 1971 on his way back to federal prison after being let out to visit his ailing wife. He was released from prison later that year on the condition he not resume union activity before 1980.

Hoffa poses for a picture on July 24, 1975, less than a week before his disappearance. He was 62 at the time.

A Bloomfield Township, Michigan, police officer stands beside Hoffa’s car after the former labor leader’s disappearance in July 1975. Hoffa was last seen at a restaurant in suburban Detroit on July 30, 1975.

Police sweep a field in Waterford Township, Michigan, in search of Hoffa’s body in July 1975.

Demolition workers tear down a horse barn for the FBI in 2006 in a search for Hoffa’s remains in Milford, Michigan. The FBI had received a tip that Hoffa was buried on the farm.

FBI agents search a field for Hoffa’s remains on Monday, June 17, in Oakland Township, Michigan, outside Detroit. Alleged mobster Tony Zerilli tipped off the police, and a source close to the case said the information provided was “highly credible.”

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(CNN) — Like a magician in a blue shirt and white socks, James Riddle Hoffa stood outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Michigan on July 30, 1975, made a phone call, and vanished.

Some people would later say he seemed nervous as he headed to a supposed meeting there with suspected mob bosses. Some would say they saw a mysterious car leaving the lot. But the one question no one has yet answered for investigators is the essential one: Where did he go?

Now, once again, as they have so many times before, FBI agents and other officers are digging. Once again, the lead has come from someone with ties to organized crime. And once again, the target is a nondescript field where Hoffa might…just might…be buried.

All that changes is the details.

This time the story being told involves Hoffa being beaten with a shovel, and buried alive beneath the concrete slab of a now long-gone barn.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Burchard says, “It is my fondest hope that we can give that closure not only to the Hoffa family but also to the community to stop tearing that scab off with every new lead and bring some conclusion.”

Hoffa’s life came to its mysterious conclusion after decades of truly remarkable accomplishments. Born in Indiana, he became interested in organized labor as a teenager when he encountered unfair working conditions. As he grew into adulthood, he became more assertive about organizing unions, and gradually he became the leader of the Teamsters, transforming that union into a political juggernaut capable of making or breaking candidates.

It was his passion. On a grainy old piece of film from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1960 you can still see him in his office near the Capitol in Washington. He bristles when the reporter asks if he has any hobbies, like golfing. “Seven days a week,” Hoffa says, “I have more fun here working than anybody can have on a golf course or any sport you can name.”

Hoffa’s bare-knuckled, win-at-all-costs approach to the union business, however, took him down some dark roads.

He struck deals with organized crime leaders. He broke laws. And eventually he was sent to prison.

FBI to continue Michigan dig Wednesday

In what looked like a sketchy — if unproven — deal for political support, President Richard Nixon pardoned him, and the Teamsters lined up behind Nixon’s successful reelection campaign.

But even Nixon’s help came with a price: Hoffa was told he had to stay out of the union business. Still, Hoffa fought to regain his power anyway, and soon a lot of people in a lot of places arguably had reasons to want him gone. Then he was. And ever since, people have looked for him.

More than a dozen times investigators have followed what are invariably described as “credible” leads to a suspected Hoffa burial site. Michigan has produced the most locations, and Hoffafiles often refer to them by their distinguishing features, making conversation sound like a list of a Richard Stark novels: The Horse Farm Grave. The Dead Man’s Dumpster.

New Jersey, with its long history of Wise Guys (cue the “Sopranos” theme) has also excited attention in the hunt for Hoffa. One of the most popular theories is that he was encased in the cement of Giants Stadium.

And on and on the theories go. He was sunk in the swamps of Florida. He was carted off to California. He was crushed in a car and shipped overseas with a load of scrap metal. Sometimes the possibilities seem as endless as the searches.

All of this is not cheap.

Based on the sticker price of just one search as analyzed by the Detroit News, it is not unreasonable to estimate that police agencies have spent well over $3 million trying to find this man. Or more to the point: his body. He was legally declared dead in 1982, and even if he had been miraculously living incognito in Toledo all these years, he would be 100 years old.

Strangely, there seems little debate about what most likely happened.

True crime aficionados and authorities alike have long believed that Hoffa’s dreams of a comeback did not sit so well with mobsters who’d settled into a new routine while Hoffa was away. And, they theorize, because he would not go into a quiet retirement, the “muscle” showed up and retired him another way. The details are the problem. Precisely who did it? Precisely how? Police know you can’t make much of a criminal case based on, “We’re pretty sure he’s dead, and we’re pretty sure it was these guys.”

Hoffa’s family has responded to the latest tip and search as they always do, by suggesting they hope it works. But 38 years after the man who was the ruling face of big labor disappeared in the clear light of day, no one has yet been able to throw aside the curtain, untangle the riddle, and declare “We have found him.”

For now, James Riddle Hoffa, is still hiding.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/us/hoffa-mystery/index.html?eref=edition

(CNN) — As his popularity has dropped to 45%, the lowest in a year and a half, President Barack Obama talked with PBS’ Charlie Rose.

The president covered a world of issues, including how some critics now liken him to a particular Republican adversary. Here are his thoughts on seven of the topics he discussed on Monday evening.

Obama as the new Dick Cheney?

When asked if there is enough transparency in how government seeks secret court orders to obtain phone records, Obama abruptly brought up former Vice President Dick Cheney, who served under President George W. Bush.

“Some people say well, Obama was this raving liberal before, now he’s Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yes, you know, he took it all, lock stock and barrel,’” Obama said, referring to the Bush-Cheney security agenda.

Obama bristles at suggestion he has shifted on snooping

“My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?” Obama added.

His administration has advanced checks on security initiatives, he said. “You know, what amuses me is now folks on the right who were fine when it was a Republican president but now Obama’s coming in with a black helicopter,” Obama added.

Obama asserted that the process of securing secret rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court is transparent and is examined by the U.S. Justice Department and Congress.

On surveillance

In the wake of revelations that his administration secured a secret court order to obtain Verizon phone logs, the president assured Americans that the National Security Agency isn’t listening to phone calls or targeting personal e-mails — unless the government has a specific court order to do so.

Obama’s job is to balance national security and personal freedom.

“To say there’s a trade-off doesn’t mean somehow that we’ve abandoned freedom. I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports,” Obama said.

“My job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life, which includes our privacy. And so every program that we engage in, what I’ve said is, let’s examine and make sure that we’re making the right tradeoffs,” Obama added.

His top priorities

National security is Obama’s No. 1 priority, he said, but he quickly added he hasn’t forgotten you — the working person now reeling in the recession’s aftermath and struggling to find or keep a job.

That’s why he became president in the first place, he said.

“The biggest challenge we face right now, in addition to the ongoing challenge of national security, is having recovered from the worst recession since the Great Depression, having dug our way out, with the economy now growing, jobs being created, auto industry back, stock market back, housing recovering by about 10% in terms of prices,” Obama said, “how do we now go back to the issue that led me to run for president in the first place — which is the fact that the economy is not working for everybody, that we have the structural problems that could lead us to second-rate status if they continue.”

Growing economic inequality and declining wages for middle-class families is occurring in the United States — and “worldwide,” Obama added — because of globalization and technology.

“We’ve got to address that if we are going to continue to be the greatest nation on Earth,” the president said. “And that is the thing that I’m going to be focused on for the remainder of my presidency, along with the basics like making sure nobody blows us up.”

Iran’s new president

Obama noted how the newly elected president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is a centrist, which gives Obama optimism that Iran may now want to seriously address its nuclear program, which many feel is being used to eventually build weapons. In response, Iran is now being internationally punished with “the most powerful” economic sanctions ever applied against it, Obama said.

“The Iranian people rebuffed the hardliners and the clerics in the election who were counseling no compromise on anything, anytime, anywhere,” Obama said. “Clearly you have a hunger within Iran to engage with the international community in a more positive way.

U.S. takes ‘wait and see’ stance on Iran’s new president

“Our bottom lines have been, show the international community that you’re abiding by international treaties and obligations, that you’re not developing a nuclear weapon.”

Supporting Syrian opposition

Though his administration has declared that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in his country’s two-year civil war, and as a result he has pledged military support for the opposition, Obama avoided specifying what kind of military support that will be.

What complicates the matter is how some of the Syrian opposition is affiliated with al Qaeda.

G8 leaders agree on need but not methods to stop Syrian bloodshed

“One of the challenges that we have is that some of the most effective fighters within the opposition have been those who, frankly, are not particularly friendly toward the United States of America. And arming them willy-nilly is not a good recipe for meeting American interests over the long term,” Obama said.

He also spoke of avoiding a sectarian Islamic quagmire between Shiites and Sunnis in Syria.

The United States has learned some hard lessons from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he said.

“We know what it’s like to rush into a war in the Middle East without having thought it through. And there are elements within the Middle East who see this entirely through the prism of a Shia/Sunni conflict and want the United States to simply take the side of the Sunnis. And that I do not think serves American interests,” Obama said.

“Now on the other side there are folks who say, ‘You know we are so scarred from Iraq, we should have learned our lesson, we should not have anything to do with it.’

“Well I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is that we’ve got serious interests there and not only humanitarian interests. We can’t have a situation of ongoing chaos in a major country that borders a country like Jordan, which in turn borders Israel. And we have a legitimate need to be engaged and to be involved.”

Meeting with China on alleged hacking

Last week, Obama met with new Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. president broached the serious allegations of hacking against China.

“You know, when you’re having a conversation like this I don’t think you ever expect a Chinese leader to say, ‘You know what? You’re right. You caught us red-handed. We’re just stealing all your stuff and every day we try to figure out how we can get into Apple,’” Obama said.

‘New model’ for U.S.-China relations

But, he added: “We had a very blunt conversation about cybersecurity” with the Chinese president.

Ben Bernanke on way out?

Asked if he is going to reappoint Ben Bernanke to a third term as Federal Reserve chairman, Obama sidestepped a direct answer, opening the door to speculation that Bernanke’s tenure may be ending.

“He’s already stayed a lot longer than he wanted, or he was supposed to,” Obama said. “He has been an outstanding partner along with the White House in helping us recover much stronger than, for example, our European partners from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions.”

Bernanke led the central bank’s response to the global financial collapse that began in fall 2007, keeping interest rates at historic lows and shepherding a massive Fed intervention in the government bond market.

He became chairman in February 2006 as an appointee of President George W. Bush. Obama appointed Bernanke to a second term in 2010. Bernanke’s term expires on January 31, 2014.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/politics/obama-seven-things/index.html?eref=edition

Editor’s note: Nicolaus Mills is professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of “Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.”

(CNN) — The White House has announced that on Wednesday, at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama will speak in Berlin at the city’s landmark Brandenburg Gate. The president’s subject will be the transatlantic alliance and the enduring bonds between the United States and Germany.

Berlin comes as a welcome relief for Obama. It gives him a chance to put aside for the moment the difficulties he is having in the Middle East and with the National Security Agency spying scandal. The president’s Berlin appearance also reminds us that he is following in historic footsteps.

June 26 marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, praising the citizens of West Berlin for their refusal to be intimidated by the massive East German-built wall that since 1961 had divided their city.

The reaction of the crowd listening to Kennedy address them in front of West Berlin’s City Hall was so overwhelming that, on the plane leaving Germany, he remarked to his aide, Ted Sorensen, who had written most of his speech, “We’ll never have another day like this one as long as we live.”

Kennedy is always given style points for his Berlin speech because of its easy-to-remember rhetoric. But the speech is worth recalling today because it amounted to such a profound pivot away from the prevailing nuclear logic of the Cold War. In Berlin, Kennedy recast how he believed the Cold War should be waged in the future in a way that made his thinking clear to the European and American public.

For Kennedy, the chance to speak near the Berlin Wall two years after it was built was a major opportunity to redefine his foreign policy leadership.

In his 1961 Vienna summit meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, Kennedy had gotten off to a rocky start. In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, he had regained his footing. He had resisted calls by some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a massive airstrike against Cuba and made sure he and the Soviets avoided backing each other into a nuclear exchange.

In Berlin, Kennedy showed that he had learned from both confrontations. Instead of treating the Cold War as simply a battle over which side had the most military power and the will to use it, he framed it as a battle that also included the fate of captive peoples and their right to self-determination.

It was an emphasis that would bear fruit in the Prague spring of 1968, in Poland’s Solidarity movement and finally in Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Brandenburg Gate speech with its memorable line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Kennedy’s rhetoric in Berlin was equal to his good intentions. “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was ‘civis Romanus sum’ (“I am a Roman citizen”). Today, in the world of freedom the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,’ ” Kennedy declared. His words paid tribute to those Germans trapped in a divided Berlin, but his overriding point was, “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”

Kennedy was doing the opposite of saber-rattling. He was updating the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence so they spoke directly to contemporary Europe. When his audience heard Kennedy’s words, they were reminded of the Berlin Airlift of 1948, in which America responded to the Soviet ground blockade of West Berlin with an airlift that brought West Berliners the food and supplies they needed without U.S. troops firing a shot.

Earlier in June 1963, Kennedy had established the groundwork for his Berlin speech with an address he gave at American University in Washington. There, he spoke about establishing the conditions for an “attainable peace” that was neither a Pax Americana nor a peace of the grave.

The Soviet Union, Kennedy cautioned, needed to abandon its distorted view of an America ready to unleash a preventative nuclear war, but at the same time America needed to make sure that it did not fall into the same trap as the Soviets by seeing Russia through a distorted ideological lens.

Ever the practical politician, Kennedy conceded that he had no “magic formula” for bringing about such a change in the world’s two superpowers, but it was possible, he concluded, to debate the Cold War without each side making new threats. “We can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard,” he insisted.

Today, the American University speech is widely praised, but at the time, the speech was seen primarily as a policy statement. The public reaction to the speech was minimal. One day later, the American University proposals were replaced as a front-page story by the highly charged racial confrontation between the Kennedy administration and Alabama Gov. George Wallace over the admission of two African-American students to the formerly all-white University of Alabama.

Berlin was a different story in terms of its popular impact and a sign that Kennedy was becoming increasingly sophisticated in using his personal popularity to promote policy change.

In Berlin, the still-young president took advantage of being on the global stage to make it easier for friend and foe alike to see him as a leader eager to steer America and the world away from nuclear confrontation.

His efforts were not wasted. Two months after his Berlin speech, the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the first such agreement since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nicolaus Mills.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/opinion/mills-jfk-berlin-speech/index.html?eref=edition

Washington (CNN) — Bomb plots targeting the New York Stock Exchange and the city’s subway were among more than 50 terrorist acts worldwide thwarted by top-secret surveillance programs since the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States, security officials said Tuesday.

The startling details disclosed at a House intelligence committee hearing reflected a unified effort by the Obama administration and legislators to defend the telephone and e-mail surveillance made public this month by classified leaks to newspapers.

Testimony by Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency director, as well as officials from the FBI, Department of Justice and the Director of National Intelligence office called the programs created under the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks a vital tool against terrorist plots.

NSA: 50 plots prevented since 9/11

Thwarted terror plot details revealed

Analysis of Obama on NSA policies

Joined by panel Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers and other legislators, they condemned the document leaks by former government contractor Edward Snowden as harmful to the United States and its allies.

The leaks also led to what officials called widespread public misinformation about the surveillance programs that necessitated the relatively rare open hearing by the intelligence panel, where they detailed previously classified information in order to set the record straight.

It was the most comprehensive and specific defense of the surveillance methods that have come under ferocious criticism from civil liberties groups, some members of Congress and others concerned about the reach of government into the private lives of citizens.

National security and law enforcement officials repeated that the programs are tightly run with significant regulation and oversight by federal judges and Congress.

Addressing the most basic questions that have emerged, Rogers asked Alexander if intelligence workers have the ability to simply “flip a switch” in order to listen to phone calls or read the emails of Americans.

When Alexander replied “no,” Rogers asked again to reinforce the message for anyone listening.

“So the technology does not exist for any individual or group of individuals at the NSA to flip a switch to listen to Americans’ phone calls or read their e-mails?” he repeated.

“That is correct,” Alexander answered.

He and others also asserted that the leaks were egregious and carry huge consequences for national security.

“I think it was irreversible and significant damage to this nation,” Alexander said when questioned by Rep. Michele Bachmann.

“Has this helped America’s enemies?” the conservative Minnesota Republican asked.

“I believe it has and I believe it will hurt us and our allies,” Alexander said.

President Barack Obama has defended the programs as necessary in an era of terror.

In an interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose broadcast on Monday night, Obama said the situation requires a national debate on the balance between security and privacy.

Obama bristles at suggestion he’s shifted on snooping

Alexander told a Senate committee last week that the surveillance programs helped stop dozens of terror plots, but he was unable then to provide classified details.

Under pressure from Rogers and other legislators, Alexander joined law enforcement officials Tuesday in making public some declassified details of the Patriot Act provisions.

In recent years, Alexander said, information “gathered from these programs provided government with critical leads to prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world.”

Details of most of the thwarted terrorism acts remain secret, but national security officials said they were working on declassifying more information and could have a report to Congress as early as this week.

Sean Joyce, the deputy FBI director, detailed how email surveillance of foreigners under one program helped authorities discover the two New York City plots.

In the fall of 2009, Joyce said, the NSA intercepted an e-mail from a suspected terrorist in Pakistan. That person was talking with someone in the United States “about perfecting a recipe for explosives,” he said.

Authorities identified Afghan-born Najibullah Zazi of Denver. The FBI followed him to New York and eventually broke up planning to attack the city’s subway system. Zazi pleaded guilty and is currently in prison.

Snowden claims online Obama expanded ‘abusive’ security

In the other New York case, the NSA was monitoring a “known extremist” in Yemen who was in contact with a person in the United States, Joyce said. The FBI detected “nascent plotting” to bomb the stock exchange, long considered a target of terrorists, and the plotters were later convicted, according to Joyce.

He also said e-mail surveillance disrupted an effort to attack the office of a Danish newspaper that was threatened for publishing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

The plot involved David Headley, a U.S citizen living in Chicago. The FBI received intelligence at the time regarding his possible involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack that killed 164 people, Joyce said.

The NSA, through surveillance of an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist, found that Headley was working on a plot to bomb the newspaper.

Headley later confessed to conducting surveillance and was convicted. He also pleaded guilty to conducting surveillance in the Mumbai case.

In a fourth case, secret surveillance “tipped us off” to a person who had indirect contacts with a known terrorist group overseas, Joyce said.

“We were able to reopen this investigation, identify additional individuals through the legal process and were able to disrupt this terrorist activity,” Joyce said.

In an exchange with Joyce, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas said the case involved someone financing a designated terrorist group in Somalia.

Rogers, who scheduled the hearing in recent days after Alexander pledged to declassify information on terror plots thwarted by the secret programs, said it was necessary to clear up public confusion caused by misinformation.

“If half the things I read in blog and other places were true, I wouldn’t support it,” the Michigan Republican said, later adding that skeptics “have no understanding” of what is going on.

In particular, he said Snowden disclosed only a sliver of information about the programs without knowing the full extent of what they did and the strict regulation and oversight of them.

“None of the things he talked about were accurate,” Rogers said of Snowden.

The hearing came one day after Snowden defended his actions in leaking classified documents to Britain’s Guardian newpaper and the Washington Post.

In a series of blog posts on the Guardian website, the 29-year-old Snowden said he disclosed the information because Obama worsened “abusive” surveillance practices instead of curtailing them as he promised as a presidential candidate.

The former NSA contractor insisted that U.S. authorities have access to phone calls, e-mails and other communications far beyond constitutional bounds. While he said legal restrictions can be easily skirted by analysts at the NSA, FBI and CIA, Snowden stopped short of accusing authorities of violating specific laws.

Instead, he said toothless regulations and policies were to blame for what he called “suspicionless surveillance,” and he warned that policies can be changed to allow further abuses.

At Tuesday’s hearing, officials detailed how the programs operate and the judicial and legislative oversight involved, repeating several times how access to the content of e-mails or telephone calls — or even the names of people involved — required authorization.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole noted that basic phone records collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act were not protected by Fourth Amendment rights to privacy, citing a 1979 Supreme Court ruling.

In the case, Smith v. Maryland, the justices ruled that information about telephone calls — such as their time and duration — was different from the content of the calls and therefore not protected under the Fourth Amendment.

Cole also provided a detailed description of the legal framework of the programs, noting that the anti-terrorism surveillance effort is not “off the books” or “hidden away.”

“This is part of what government puts together and discusses,” he said. “Statutes are passed. It is overseen by three branches of our government — the Legislature, the Judiciary, and the Executive Branch.”

He described the U.S. phone records collected under Section 215 as basic information “just like what you would get in your own phone bill.”

“It is the number that was dialed from, the number that was dialed to, the date and the length of time. That’s all we get,” he said. “We do not get the identity of any of the parties to this phone call. We don’t get any cell site or location information as to where any of these phones were located. And, most importantly, and you’re probably going to hear this about 100 times today, we don’t get any content under this. We don’t listen in on anybody’s calls under this program at all.”

Tech companies jockey to seem the most transparent

Instead, it takes permission from a special court to get access to further information, based on a verifiable link to a terrorism investigation, Cole explained. Such links have mostly come from another surveillance program that collects communications information of foreign terrorism suspects living overseas.

Critics question the need to store the vast amount of U.S. phone records, saying it creates a database prone to abuses and provides little return for the risk and privacy concerns.

Alexander said Tuesday the phone database played a role in stopping 10 terrorist acts since the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, he and other officials said there were no cases they knew of in which anyone willfully misused the system to access information.

“If you’re looking for the needle in a haystack,” Cole said, “you have to have the haystack.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/politics/nsa-leaks/index.html?eref=edition

(CNN) — Four Americans were killed during a rocket attack at Bagram Air Base, outside of Kabul, a Pentagon official said Tuesday on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that four NATO coalition service members had been killed in an attack but did not disclose the nationality of the casualties or the exact location of the attack.

In a written statement, ISAF said the four were killed in an “attack in eastern Afghanistan.”

News of the casualties came as NATO-led troops transferred security responsibility to Afghan forces.

Security handed over to Afghan forces

Afghan government takes over security

Inside a firefight with the Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he welcomes the U.S. troop withdrawal and insists his army can defend the country against the Taliban.

“It is exactly our job to deal with it, and we are capable of dealing with it,” Karzai told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour earlier this year.

Even so, there are concerns about the abilities of Afghan security forces to deal with the Taliban and other militant groups.

The Taliban continue to carry out high-profile attacks in the capital, Kabul, even targeting the Afghan Supreme Court during a suicide attack in June. Another strike targeted a building near Kabul International Airport.

On Tuesday, a suicide bomber attacked the convoy of Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of parliament, killing three people and wounding 21 others. Three bodyguards were among the injured. Mohaqiq — a Shiite and an ethnic Hazara — is a member of Afghanistan’s political opposition.

American forces, now at about 66,000, are expected to drop to 32,000 by the end of the year.

The plan is to withdraw all combat troops but keep a residual force in the country to help train Afghan forces and carry out counterterrorism operations when needed.

The size of that force is still being discussed.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/world/asia/afghanistan-violence/index.html?eref=edition

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Cities in Turkey have been rocked by days of anti-government protests. This image by iReporter Nate Hovee from Sunday shows protesters chanting and surrounding a flare in Istanbul.

Protests began last week over government building plans in an Istanbul park, and rapidly gathered pace. Nate Hovee took this image Sunday in Istanbul.

Another image by Nate Hovee shows a shirtless protester in Istanbul late Sunday evening

iReporter Guldal Sonmezler captured a convivial scene on Monday amongst protesters in Istanbul.

Police have used tear gas, or pepper spray, at some demonstrations. iReporter Görkem Keser captured this image of a woman suffering effects of the gas.

Görkem Keser also shot this photo of a police officer amid protests in Istanbul last Friday.

Görkem Keser captured this Fiery scene in Istanbul last Friday as protesters chant.

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Saturday, iReporter Duygu Cihanger shot scenes of protesters ahead of what appears to be a police van firing a water cannon.

An iReporter who wished to remain anonymous sent in this image of smoke or tear gas canisters in a park in Istanbul Saturday.

The same anonymous iReporter observed this street barricaded by protesters with bricks in Istanbul last Saturday. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for an end to the protests against his government.

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Did you witness the protests? Send us your images and video but stay safe.

(CNN) — “Dear World: My fingers and wrists are sore, for the past few days all I could do was punch the letters on the keyboard … “

These were the words of one Turkish man in Africa who spent days scouring the Internet for news on the Turkish protests that he could share.

People from all over Turkey and beyond poured out their feelings after what some say has been a heavy-handed police response to protests in Turkey.

CNN alone received more than 1,000 iReports from Turkey in less than a week from Turks compelled to document, protest and demand their voices be heard.

The protests began over plans to replace an Istanbul park with a new development, but spread nationwide after a heavy-handed crackdown by police.

Erdogan has defended his government’s handling of the protests, saying Friday that the government has “no problem in terms of democratic demands.” He also acknowledged, again, that police may have used excessive force last week, and said he had ordered an investigation.

Turkey’s media in crisis

Tensions rise in Antakya

The changing tone of Turkish protests

Turkey’s economic outlook

Inspiring the protesters in Turkey

“To the Rest of the World: This is the first time in my 30 years that tears well up for what is happening just up the road from where I write these words. …

“People from all ages and races, all political viewpoints are coming together to fight. Notify your local and national media, and tag them on twitter to make them speak the truth about what is happening. This is … for humanity, no less,” wrote iReporter “ateloco” in a post that spread rapidly through social media.

Why Taksim Square matters to the Turks

Turkey as a nation is quite savvy about social media. At least 2 million tweets with hashtags related to the Turkish protests were sent in just eight hours on May 31 when protests gathered steam, a study by New York University revealed — around 90% of them from Turkey. In comparison, Egypt’s main protest hashtag was tweeted less than 1 million times throughout the country’s entire revolutionary period.

And those in Turkey like to talk on the issues — 57% of those using social network sites say they do so to share their political views — a far higher percentage than in many European nations, according to the Pew Research Center.

The arrest this week of 25 social media users on accusations of spreading false information about demonstrations, according to the country’s semi-official Anadolu Agency news service, has sparked concerns from human rights groups about the right of freedom of expression.

But while documenting and disseminating information on the protests can be an arduous task, for many on social media it became a way of holding authorities to account.

“I don’t know when it will end, but I already feel like a robot whose main role is to click the share button on Facebook,” one activist, Istanbul resident Yelin Bilgin, told CNN after days of protests.

She described the protests as her moment of “resurrection.” Although she wasn’t involved in organizing them, she felt she could help the cause by sharing information.

She wants the protests to lead to more self-examination on all sides. “We shouldn’t stop, but we should act more consciously. We have to write, we have to share our thoughts.”

Turkish media in crisis over protests

Renc Korzay is not currently living in his homeland, but working for a construction company in the West African nation of Gabon. His heartfelt letter on iReport opened this story and continues:

“I was guilty for letting my friends get gassed and arrested in the name of freedom without me. I was guilty for not being able to keep my colleagues company as they march to Taksim Square straight off work. I was guilty for not being able to give the people my apartment to shelter, my food to eat, my water to drink and my vinegar to ease off the reaction from the chemicals sprayed on their bodies.”

He hoped that by writing and collecting information — even from far away — he could be of some help. “I was no longer in Africa and I was no longer guilty. I became a reporter with quotes, cameraman with videos, photographer with images, a 24-hour news channel with everything I posted on social media,” he said.

Istanbul writer Arsevi Zeynep Seyran was in the western coastal city of Izmir when protests began. Describing herself as a “pot and pan hitter” after the noisy protests she recorded one night, her thoughtful essay summed up the energy of the protests for many.

If people are silent about the what is happening in Turkey, the protesters “are afraid that as a society things will go backward,” she said.

By shining a spotlight on the situation in the country, she hoped authorities would be less likely to retaliate against those involved in the protests, she said.

Ultimately, it may be too soon to tell what effect the protests will have on Turkey, its government and those who flooded the streets of Istanbul, Ankara and other cities. But one thing is certain; those who have been feverishly tweeting, posting, blogging and documenting will not be inclined to stop any time soon.

“For the first time in a long time,” Seyran said, “Turkey has much reason for pride.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/07/world/irpt-turkey-letters-from-protesters/index.html?eref=edition

Are you there? Share your story on CNN iReport, but please remember to stay safe.

Istanbul (CNN) — Turkish protesters are giving their government the silent treatment.

Hundreds of men and women stood silently Tuesday in Istanbul’s Taksim Square emulating the performance artist whose quiet protest Monday night quickly gained him the nickname “Standing Man.”

For more than five hours, Erdem Gunduz had stared toward a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, whose likeness adorns the side of the Ataturk Cultural Center in the square.

Police eventually moved in to arrest many of those who had joined him, but it was unclear Tuesday whether Gunduz was in custody.

Turkish protests running out of steam?

A drone’s view of riot zone

‘Standing Man’ silent protest inspires

Police, protesters face off in Ankara

His quiet defiance came after police broke up weekend anti-government protests with tear gas and water cannon.

Turkey has been wracked by more than two weeks of protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But many of those who joined Gunduz said they were standing only for peace, not taking sides.

“I’m standing against all violence,” said Koray Konuk, one of those arrested. “I’m standing there so that the events that we’ve been witnessing and the events taking place over the last two to three weeks can come to a standstill.”

Woman labeled ‘icon’ of Turkey protests: It’s not about me

Konuk, 45, told CNN that police put him on a bus with up to 20 other people who had joined Gunduz, but that Gunduz was not among them.

“I was just standing. They arrested a man who was just standing,” he said. “That is absurd.”

People, alone or in pairs, continued to arrive and stand silently at the square throughout the day Tuesday. Some held hands in a quiet show of solidarity, and a few supporters even took to putting sunscreen on the faces of some protesters.

But police once again arrived in large numbers and took the placid protesters away in vans.

The hushed tableau came two days after police swept into Taksim Square and neighboring Gezi Park to clear out anti-Erdogan protesters.

The demonstrators tried to return to the park Sunday, only to be driven back by police.

Tear gas abates, music fills Turkey’s Gezi Park

Root of protests

The unrest began in Istanbul in late May, when a small group of people turned out to protest government plans to bulldoze Gezi Park, the city’s last green space, and replace it with a shopping mall housed inside a replica of 19th century Ottoman barracks.

Protesters said the plans represented a creeping infringement on their rights in a secular society.

Erdogan supporters turn out for rally

Demonstrators, police clash in Istanbul

What young Turks think of protests

Why are Turks protesting Erdogan?

Turkey was founded after secularists defeated Islamic Ottoman forces in the early 20th century, and many modern-day secularists frown on Ottoman symbols.

Soon after the demonstrations began, security forces cracked down on the protesters. Instead of ending the activity, however, the crackdown prompted more people to come out, many calling for political reforms.

The unrest also brought political risks for Erdogan, a populist and democratically elected politician serving his third term in office.

Speaking Tuesday to a parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development (AK) Party, Erdogan said he had no intention of restricting anyone’s democratic rights. “If you want to make a protest do it, do it, but do it within the framework of law,” he said.

He accused the international media of misrepresenting events in Turkey.

“Vandalism (footage) was twisted and displayed as if it was a innocent environmental protest,” he said. “International media reported on this in a manner to deceive those who are not acting with them to their side.”

He said security forces were being patient, refraining from using guns even when two police officers were wounded by gunfire. “When their warnings are not heeded, they use tear gas,” he said.

The police will not turn a blind eye to illegal actions, he said, in an apparent reference to the ongoing protests.

Erdogan reiterated that the government will abandon its plans to build in Gezi Park if the people of Istanbul vote against them.

Erdogan plans to muster a show of support this weekend in the Turkish heartland, where he has a strong base.

The prime minister told parliament that rallies will be held on behalf of the Justice and Development Party in Kayseri on Friday, in Samsun on Saturday and in Erzurum on Sunday.

Is Istanbul safe for tourists?

U.N. concerns

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday expressed concern about the tactics used by security forces against demonstrators.

“I am particularly concerned about allegations of excessive use of force by police against peaceful groups of protesters as this may have resulted in serious damage to health,” she said in a statement issued from Geneva.

“Reports that tear gas canisters and pepper spray were fired at people from close range, or into closed spaces, and the alleged misuse of rubber bullets, need to be promptly, effectively, credibly and transparently investigated,” Pillay said, noting that “the atmosphere is still clearly highly combustible.”

And Human Rights Watch said Monday that the Turkish government’s response to weekend protests was excessive. “The police assault on a peaceful crowd in Gezi Park and tear gas use in confined spaces showed a dangerous disregard for the well-being — and indeed the lives — of protesters and bystanders,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher for the rights group.

“The repeated police violence against people who are dissatisfied with government policies has deeply polarized Turkey. The government urgently needs to change police tactics and issue a clear signal for restraint.”

But Erdogan defended the police approach.

“The police forces have passed the democracy test,” he said Tuesday, according to the semiofficial Anadolu Agency news service.

He described the use of tear gas on protesters as an “incontestable right of police” and the demonstrations as “an unprincipled, immoderate movement that is based on lies and deception,” Anadolu reported.

Trade unions had tried on Monday to put fresh pressure on Erdogan by mounting a nationwide strike. But a crowd that marched on Taksim Square dispersed when faced with riot squads backed by water cannon.

Letters from Turkey, with pride

‘There is a level of desperation’

While the protests are unlikely to threaten the rule of Erdogan, who is credited with overseeing a decade of economic growth, they are raising questions about what critics say is an increasingly authoritarian style of governing.

iReport: Wedding in the midst of teargas

Some demonstrators have shifted to protesting in their local neighborhoods in the city, putting up barricades. Meanwhile, the atmosphere in confrontations between police and protesters is turning uglier.

“Now it feels like there is a level of desperation,” said Clare Murray, who was vacationing in Istanbul from New York for the past week. “The police seem more comfortable with using aggression.”

Since Saturday night, 116 people have been detained during protests in Ankara and 242 people have been detained in Istanbul demonstrations, said Huseyin Aslan, general secretary of the Progressive Lawyers Association.

Erdogan has accused outsiders of taking advantage of the protests over the park. On Sunday, thousands of his supporters gathered at a rally a few miles from Taksim Square, waving flags and singing songs at a rally that was widely viewed as a re-election rally for the prime minister.

Journalist Karl Penhaul and CNN’s Gul Tuysuz reported from Istanbul, and journalist Ian Lee reported from Ankara. CNN’s Salma Abdelaziz, Arwa Damon and Joe Duran in Istanbul, Antonia Mortensen in Ankara and Tom Watkins in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/world/europe/turkey-protests/index.html?eref=edition