Docudharma Times Monday June 30

This Is The 200th Issue

Of This Publication

Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan

By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID ROHDE

Published: June 30, 2008

WASHINGTON – Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to make it easer for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda.

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.

U.S. Advised Iraqi Ministry on Oil Deals

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

Published: June 30, 2008

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.

USA

Pentagon Fights EPA On Pollution Cleanup

By Lyndsey Layton

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, June 30, 2008; Page A01

The Defense Department, the nation’s biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose “imminent and substantial” dangers to public health and the environment.

The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed.

High gas prices hobble cities nationwide

Safety patrols, school bus routes, even mowing services are cut as governments struggle with budgets.

By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 30, 2008

DENVER — Squeezed by soaring energy prices, governments around the nation are reacting just like consumers — changing basic routines, and scrimping and saving in order to get by.

The El Paso County Sheriff’s Department in southeastern Colorado has ended car patrols of its 2,000-square-mile jurisdiction. One Ohio sheriff is putting his deputies into golf carts. Stillwater, Okla., has stopped mowing the grass on nearly half of its parkland. Cleveland is remapping its trash pickup routes to cut costs.

“I know it’s a step backwards,” said El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa, whose deputies will now respond only to calls for help. “But when the dollars aren’t there, they aren’t there.”

Asia

Protests in China at official ‘cover-up’ of teenager’s death

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

Monday, 30 June 2008

It is the latest explosive example of how political corruption in China can have a dangerously destabilising impact. Thousands of rioters torched police cars and government office buildings in the south-western province of Guizhou after allegations that local officials covered up a teenage girl’s death.

It started with the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. The story that flashed around Weng’an county was that three men were responsible, two of them with great “guangxi”, or local connections. One of them was reportedly the son of the deputy mayor. When the police report said she had killed herself, tensions really began to simmer. When her popular schoolteacher uncle went to the police to seek justice, he was beaten into a coma and subsequently died. The tensions turned into rioting.

Government ‘smear’ in Malaysia causes crisis for opposition party

From The Times

June 30, 2008

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor

Malaysia was facing its gravest political crisis in a decade last night after Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, was accused of sodomy – a charge that led to rioting when it was first made against him ten years ago.

Mr Anwar, the leader of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), fled to the Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur yesterday because of death threats, which he received after the fresh allegations. He indignantly denied the claim, made to police over the weekend, that he sodomised a 23-year-old party aide last week in a Kuala Lumpur flat.

Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and in 1999 Mr Anwar was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted of having sexual relations with his male driver.

Africa

Farmer who exposed terror, Ben Freeth, is kidnapped with family

From The Times

June 30, 2008

Jan Raath in Harare

Scarcely an hour before Robert Mugabe was sworn in yesterday for his sixth term as President of Zimbabwe, his henchmen abducted Ben Freeth, a white farmer who documented the pre-election terror in an article for The Times last Monday .

Mr Freeth and his inlaws, Michael and Angela Campbell, 75 and 70, were assaulted and taken from their homes in Chegutu, about 90 miles (150km) west of Harare.

The Campbells’ son, Bruce, responded to an alarm from his parents’ house but the militias of the ruling Zanu (PF) party were already driving out with their three hostages by the time he reached the scene.

Will Africa take action against Zimbabwe’s Mugabe?

The African Union is expected to discuss the issue in Egypt Monday, one day after Mugabe declared a ‘sweeping victory’ in Friday’s presidential runoff, which was widely condemned as a sham.

By Scott Baldauf  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

and contributors

from the June 30, 2008 edition

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA; and HARARE, ZIMBABWE – President Robert Mugabe has long been able to count on African leaders to sympathize with his goals of ridding Zimbabwe of the vestiges of white colonial rule.

But with his brutal tactics in what’s widely seen as a sham runoff presidential election Friday, Mr. Mugabe may have squandered his last shred of credibility even in Africa.

Monday, at a meeting of African leaders in Egypt, Mugabe faces a critical personal test. Will the African Union join the international community in pushing for new sanctions, even military intervention, in Zimbabwe?

Middle East

Israel’s prisoner swap with Hezbollah: too risky?

Israel’s cabinet approved a controversial prisoner swap of ‘terrorists’ to recover two soldiers abducted in 2006.

By Joshua Mitnick  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 30, 2008 edition

Tel Aviv –  In an epilogue to the Lebanon war two summers ago, Israel’s cabinet on Sunday approved a prisoner swap with Hezbollah to recover two soldiers whose kidnapping along the Lebanese border sparked six weeks of cross-border fighting.

The deal involves trading Samir Quntar – a Lebanese member of a Palestinian militant group responsible for the killing of an Israeli father and daughter in a 1979 terrorist attack – for Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were abducted in 2006 and have probably been killed, say Israeli officials.

The swap is stirring a heated debate among Israelis about the trade-off between the obligations of the government to families and soldiers and the risk of encouraging more kidnappings by paying an “inflated” price to get soldiers back.

Report: Iranian gets death for Israel spying

Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian state television says the country’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced an Iranian man to death after convicting him of spying for Israel.

The report Monday identifies the man as Ali Ashtari, a 45-year-old salesman who worked for a company supplying electronic devices to military, security and defense firms and facilities around Iran.

State TV quotes an unidentified Iranian official on its web site as saying that Ashtari relayed sensitive information on Iran’s military, defense and research centers to Israeli intelligence officers.

Europe

Kosovo Serbs set up rival assembly

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade

Monday, 30 June 2008

Kosovo Serbs have inaugurated their own assembly in the divided town of Mitrovica, in a blow to the authority of the new state’s ethnic Albanian leadership.

Forty-five members of the “parliament” were elected last month, during a general election in Serbia proper. The voting by Kosovo Serbs was deemed illegal by the UN administration and Kosovan government. The Kosovo Serb parliament has no authority, but reflects a deepening ethnic partition of Kosovo since its Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia in February – a move backed by the West but opposed by Belgrade and Russia.

Court judgment for Turkey’s ruling party could stop EU membership

From The Times

June 30, 2008

Suna Erdem in Istanbul

Turkey’s top court will hear a case this week to shut down the ruling party for alleged Islamist activities, a fate that could halt its hard-won European Union membership process.

The indictment against the Justice and Development Party (AK) rests heavily on government proposals to allow girls to wear the Muslim headscarf at university. A recent separate ruling scrapping that move increases the likelihood of the government party being shut down.

AK party members are pessimistic and are said to be preparing for the worst. The constitutional court could also ban up to 71 of its members, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, and President Abdullah Gül, from party affiliation.

Latin America

Guatemalan women kick aside constraints in the U.S.

Soccer, a frowned on activity in their home country, becomes a passion.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 30, 2008

Celestina “Celes” Lopez strode out from under the shade of a battered palm tree in a corner of MacArthur Park, entered the makeshift soccer field of dirt and gravel, and called to teammates in Spanish.

“Don’t be afraid of the big ones,” said the 40-year-old mother of two, shoulders thrust back, head as high as she could manage on a 5-foot frame.Her sisters, Francisca, 34, and Elda, 30, walked with her.

“Be like the men — aggressive,” Elda called out. During the week, the sisters spend their days like scores of other illegal immigrant women in Los Angeles: Wedged behind Singer sewing machines, they feed pants and shirts under the needle until their shoulders grow stiff.