Docudharma Times Tuesday July 8

The Beijing Olympics

Arrests Of Dissedents

And

Air Pollution

The Perfect Sporting Event

For The Authoritarian Leader

Beijing ‘failing pollution test’

Just a month before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the city is still failing to meet international air quality standards, the BBC has found.

By James Reynolds

BBC News, Beijing

When Beijing bid for the Olympics in 2001, it said its air would meet World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

The BBC put this to the test using a hand-held detector to test for airborne particles known as PM10.

We found that the city’s air failed to meet the WHO’s air quality guidelines for PM10 on six days out of seven.

These particles are caused by traffic, construction work and factory emissions. They are responsible for much of this city’s pollution.

Industrial Nations Endorse Halving Emissions by 2050



By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 8, 2008

RUSUTSU, Japan (AP) — The Group of Eight leading industrial nations on Tuesday endorsed halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, edging forward in the battle against global warming but stopping short of tough, nearer-term targets.

The G-8 countries — the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy — also called on all major economies to join in the effort to stem the potentially dangerous rise in world temperatures.

”The G-8 nations came to a mutual recognition that this target — cutting global emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 — should be a global target,” said Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who announced the endorsement.

USA

U.S. Seeks Data Exchange

Newer European Union Countries Want Waiver From Visa Requirements

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 8, 2008; Page D01

The United States is negotiating deals with European countries to exchange fingerprint and DNA data in criminal and terrorist cases, and in some circumstances to transfer data on race or ethnic origin, political and religious beliefs, or sexual orientation.

Such agreements are a condition for granting citizens of newer European Union member states the right to enter the United States without visas, and for maintaining that right for older E.U. members. U.S. citizens already enjoy such a right when traveling to Europe.

Iraqis want US pullout timeline

Envisioned as part of security accord; Plan would hinge on forces’ readiness

By Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sebastian Abbot

Associated Press / July 8, 2008

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s prime minister said yesterday his country wants some type of timetable for a withdrawal of American troops included in the deal the two countries are negotiating.

It was the first time that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has explicitly and publicly called for a withdrawal timetable – an idea opposed by President Bush.

He offered no details. But his national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, told the Associated Press that the government is proposing a timetable conditioned on the ability of Iraqi forces to provide security.

The White House said it did not believe Maliki was proposing a rigid timeline for US troop withdrawals.

Asia

With a month to go until Olympics, China grows anxious



By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING – These will be no ordinary Olympic Games. They will be the most extravagant ever put on, designed to dazzle the world and display China’s reclaimed status as a major world power.

Reaching into its deep pockets, China has erected awe-inspiring new buildings and sports venues, spending an estimated $40 billion, or three times as much as Athens did four years ago.

On display will be China’s rising economic clout and its national pride, but under the glamour one can also see the nation’s penchant for social control, its aggrievement at the world, and its polluted skies. And the games all begin on a superstitious note. They get under way at 8:08 p.m. on Aug. 8 because Chinese consider eight a lucky number.

Muslim-Hindu tension: Land riots bring down Kashmir coalition



Maseeh Rahman in New Delhi

The Guardian,

Tuesday July 8, 2008

Violent street protests by rival groups of Muslims and Hindus in a dispute over 40 hectares of forest land led to the fall of the democratically elected government in India’s Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday.

The chief minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who headed a coalition government, submitted his resignation to the provincial governor after the People’s Democratic party pulled out of the coalition and it became clear that he could no longer muster a majority in the state assembly.

The governor, NN Vohra, who accepted the resignation, had earlier asked Azad to prove his majority in the state assembly

Europe

The Big Question: Why is tension rising in Turkey, and is the country turning Islamist?

Why are we asking this now?

 By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul

Tuesday, 8 July 2008

For Turkey’s more radical secularists, there is a war going on between the defenders of Kemalism – the mix of authoritarian secularism, statism and nationalism that is still Turkey’s official ideology – and a government intent on imposing Islam on the country. The AKP government insists the struggle is between democrats and defenders of an outdated authoritarian political vision. Cynics see a battle between two sides linked by their obsession with controlling the state apparatus and their cavalier attitude to democracy.

Since March, eight months after it swept to victory at general elections with 47 per cent of the vote, AKP has been facing closure on charges of anti-secular activities. The prosecutor who opened the case called for five-year political bans for 71 AKP members including the prime minister and the president.

Russia ‘backed Litvinenko murder’

The murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was carried out with the backing of the Russian state, Whitehall sources have told the BBC.

The BBC

A senior security official told Newsnight there were “very strong indications it was a state action”.

Mr Litvinenko, who was a fierce critic of former Russian President Vladimir Putin, was poisoned in London in 2006.

UK investigators suspect former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi of the murder, but he has always denied any involvement.

The BBC has been told that Russia’s internal security organisation, the FSB, operated under Mr Putin with far more autonomy than the organisations usually entrusted with foreign espionage operations.

Middle East

Saudi king set to lead rare interfaith talks in Spain

The three-day conference of religious leaders will start July 16 in Madrid.

By Caryle Murphy  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 8, 2008 edition

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – In a first for a Saudi Arabian leader, King Abdullah will convene a conference in Madrid as part of a Saudi outreach to defuse interfaith tensions, improve Islam’s image, and restore respect for religious values.

King Abdullah’s initiative – a three-day meeting starting July 16 that will include Muslim, Christian, and Jewish clerics, as well as representatives of Eastern religions – stands out among interfaith gatherings that have become commonplace in the post-9/11 world.

Not only is Saudi Arabia the birthplace of Islam, but it also is the wellspring of an austere, exclusivist version of Sunni Islam. Sometimes called Wahhabism, it bans the open practice of other faiths in the kingdom and tends to reject inter-religious dialogue with non-Muslim “infidels.”

West Bank car enthusiasts start their engines

One of the last cities remaining under the Israeli blockade hosts a rare showing of race cars – some of which predate the second intifada.

By Joshua Mitnick

Nablus, West Bank – Over the years of the Palestinian uprising, the center of this city routinely echoed with the grind of Israeli tanks and spurts of gunfire from local militias. Last Friday, it roared with the sounds of souped-up race car engines and the shouts of thousands of spectators who lined Muntasah Street for Nablus’s first-ever road rally.

Over the loudspeakers, an announcer boomed: “Gentlemen, to your cars!”

In a city known as a hotbed for militants and as a hub for car thieves, it almost didn’t matter who won the first-place trophy at the Nablus Wataniyeh Mobile Car Race. The fact that it took place at all marked a milestone in restoring a sense of normalcy.

Africa

Sierra Leoneans look for peace through full truth about war crime

Human rights activist John Caulker looks beyond the high-profile and costly prosecutions to village-level reconciliation.

By Jina Moore  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 8, 2008 edition

Bomaru, Sierra Leone – Little but its history distinguishes Bomaru from other villages scattered across Sierra Leone’s countryside. A quiet place with mud houses the same color as the dust kicked up by the occasional passing vehicle, it would seem, on an ordinary day, impoverished and washed out.

But today, women dress in freshly laundered wrappers ablaze in color; men wear regal Muslim gowns or their best T-shirts. An anonymous few sweat beneath layers of straw and fabric, in costumes like something from Sesame Street: They are – or are dressed as, depending upon your belief system – the village’s local devils, whose appearance signals celebration; their rapid footwork leads a dancing procession to the village center.

Zimbabwe sanctions could lead to civil war, Mbeki warns leaders

· Bush losing patience with South African diplomacy

· Opposition activist’s body found tortured and burnt

Patrick Wintour, Larry Elliott and Chris McGreal in Harare

The Guardian,

Tuesday July 8, 2008

South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, was given a fierce grilling by G8 leaders yesterday at a private meeting at which they told him that they did not believe his mediation efforts in Zimbabwe were succeeding. They also rejected his suggestion that Robert Mugabe remain as titular head of Zimbabwe. At what was described as a fiery meeting, President George Bush, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, all challenged Mbeki’s assertion that his quiet diplomacy was working, a claim that was also questioned at the same meeting by some African leaders, including the Nigerian president, Umaru Yar’Adua, and John Kufuour, president of Ghana.

But Mbeki warned Britain and the US that Zimbabwe could descend into civil war if they pressed for tougher sanctions against the Mugabe regime.

Latin America

11 bodies found in Tijuana over 3 days

Six are found Monday morning, shot execution-style and partially burned in what appears to be drug-related violence.

By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 8, 2008

TIJUANA — Police discovered the tortured and burned bodies of six men in an empty lot Monday morning, ending a period of relative calm in this border city beset by drug war violence.

Eleven bodies have been discovered since Saturday in violence believed to be drug-related, including the corpse of a woman found in a barrel, state and federal authorities said.

The weekend tally pushed the city’s death toll this year to more than 260, compared with about 152 homicides at this time last year, and underscored authorities’ difficulties curbing organized crime.