Docudharma Times Tuesday August 5

The Olympics Bring

New Freedoms To China

Only If You’re A

Government Official Or The Rich

Secret deal kept British Army out of battle for Basra



From The Times

August 5, 2008

Deborah Haynes in Baquba and Michael Evans, Defence Editor

A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year, The Times has learnt.

Four thousand British troops – including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade – watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault.

US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts.

China clears streets for the Olympics

Petitioners — those taking their grievances to the government — are swept away for a few weeks.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 5, 2008

BEIJING — On a hot summer night about 10:30, the many men and women living under an elevated section of highway were trying to nod off, swatting the mosquitoes at their ears, shifting their hips uncomfortably on sheets of newspaper and cardboard strewn on the pavement, when someone shouted, “Police!”

By the time most could rouse themselves, it was too late. Police had blocked the routes of escape with large buses they would later use to cart away their quarry.

The bedtime bust was part of a massive Olympic cleanup, in which thousands of Chinese citizens are being booted out of the capital like gate-crashers at a party.

The underpass raid that began July 13 and continued for two days netted about 1,000 people. All were petitioners who had come to protest mistreatment in their home provinces.

USA

At Freddie Mac, Chief Discarded Warning Signs



By CHARLES DUHIGG

Published: August 5, 2008

The chief executive of the mortgage giant Freddie Mac rejected internal warnings that could have protected the company from some of the financial crises now engulfing it, according to more than two dozen current and former high-ranking executives and others.

That chief executive, Richard F. Syron, in 2004 received a memo from Freddie Mac’s chief risk officer warning him that the firm was financing questionable loans that threatened its financial health.

Today, Freddie Mac and the nation’s other major mortgage finance company, Fannie Mae, are in such perilous condition that the federal government has readied a taxpayer-financed bailout that could cost billions.

U.S. May Have Taped Visits to Detainees

Foreign Countries Sent Interrogators

By Josh White

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 5, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations between detainees and representatives from nearly three dozen countries.

Numerous State Department cables to foreign government delegations in 2002 and 2003 show that each country was subject to rules and regulations “to protect the interests and ensure the safety of all concerned.”

Asia

China fails to keep promises it made to win Olympic games



By Jack Chang and Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING – With four days left before the start of the 2008 Summer Games, Chinese officials have not lived up to key promises they made to win the right to host the Olympics, including widening press freedoms, cleaning up their capital city’s polluted air and respecting human rights.

The failures were evident Monday:

   * A thick pall of smog covered Beijing, raising concerns that endurance events such as long-distance races would have to be moved out of the city. Some still held out hope that emergency measures would clear the city’s air by Friday.

Grand Theft Auto IV is pulled from Thai shops after killing of taxi driver



By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

Tuesday, 5 August 2008

One of Thailand’s top video games distributors is pulling Grand Theft Auto IV off the shelves after a teenager allegedly robbed and stabbed to death a Bangkok taxi driver in an apparent attempt to recreate a scene from the controversial video game.

Thai police said Polwat Chinno, 18, told them that he was angry his parents could not afford to buy him a copy of the game. “He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” said a Bangkok police spokesman, Captain Veerarit Pipatanasak. Mr Polwat was arrested on Saturday night as he tried to steer the taxi backwards down a street with the fatally wounded driver in the back seat. The student allegedly told police he had not intended to kill the cabbie and only wanted to rob him but the driver had fought back with a metal bar. The student, described by his parents as polite and diligent, was said to have stabbed the driver 10 times.

Middle East

Top Assad aide assassinated at Syrian resort

· Internal score settling may have been behind killing

· Speculation about crisis over relations in region

Hugh Macleod in Beirut and Ian Black

The Guardian,

Tuesday August 5 2008

The mysterious assassination of a top Syrian army officer and right-hand man to President Bashar al-Assad has triggered intense speculation about a crisis inside the Damascus regime over its complex relations with Iran, Hizbullah and Israel.

According to one report, the seaside murder of Brigadier-General Muhammad Suleiman was perpetrated by a sniper firing from a yacht moored offshore.

Suleiman was described by Syrian officials as dealing with defence and security issues in Assad’s private office. Israeli and Syrian opposition sources claimed he worked as “liaison” with the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hizbullah, Israel’s sworn enemy.

Olmert, Abbas to meet Wednesday in Jerusalem



By STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Wednesday in Jerusalem, officials with the two leaders said Tuesday.

The meeting will be their first since Olmert, under a cloud of corruption charges, announced he would step down after his Kadima Party selects a new leader in September. The fight among Olmert’s rivals to replace him and the possibility of national elections in Israel is likely to complicate the attempt to strike a deal between the sides.

Africa

Key players in Kenya’s peace deal



from the August 5, 2008 edition

Mwai Kibaki – Kenya’s third president, 2002 to present. Two failed presidential runs, 1992 and 1997. Held positions of vice president, minister of finance, minster of home affairs, and minister of health in previous governments.

Raila Odinga – Presidential candidate for Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). In April, named prime minister in power-sharing deal after contested 2007 presidential election. Former cabinet minister, businessman, professor.

William Ruto – Leader of Odinga’s negotiation team. Minister of agriculture, from the Rift Valley. Elected to Parliament in 1997.

Power-sharing deal close in Zimbabwe: report >



(Reuters)

JOHANNESBURG Zimbabwe’s ruling party and the opposition are close to a power-sharing deal that would turn Robert Mugabe into a ceremonial president, a South African newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The report came as Zimbabwean state media reported ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had agreed to expand their negotiating teams in a move the ruling party called a “good omen.”

The report in The Star newspaper cited unnamed sources close to the negotiations as saying the agreement would make MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai executive prime minister.

Europe

Turkey appoints anti-Islamist army chief



Robert Tait in Istanbul

The Guardian,

Tuesday August 5 2008

Turkey’s powerful military sent out an uncompromising message of support for the country’s secular system yesterday by appointing a new head of the army known for his staunch opposition to Islamism.

Announced at a meeting of the supreme military council, General Ilker Basbug, 65, replaces retiring incumbent General Yasar Buyukanit as army chief of staff and will hold the post until 2010.

Though Basbug is strong advocate of Nato and Turkey’s relationship with Israel, his appointment is expected to herald an easing of tensions between the military and the Justice and Development party (AKP) government. Last week the AKP narrowly escaped being dissolved by the constitutional court for allegedly trying to create an Islamic state. That decision ended months of uncertainty after the chief prosecutor had sought the closure of the party, which has Islamist roots.

A champion of freedom and justice: Putin leads the tributes to Solzhenitsyn



By Dmitry Babich in Moscow and Anne Penketh

Tuesday, 5 August 2008

Russians piled flowers outside the gates of the home of Alexander Solzhenitsyn as they mourned the death of Russia’s leading anti-Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate who chronicled the Stalin terror.

The writer, whose masterwork, The Gulag Archipelago, revealed to the world the full horror of the Soviet labour camp network when it was published in the West, died of heart failure on Sunday night.

Latin America

Mexican police linked to rising kidnappings

Many are afraid to contact authorities about abductions, fearing officers could be involved. The problem is an awkward one for President Felipe Calderon’s drug war.

By Marla Dickerson and Cecilia Sanchez, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

August 5, 2008

MEXICO CITY — When their 14-year-old son was snatched off the street by armed men in early June, the Marti family reportedly did what many wealthy Mexicans do in such a crisis.

The founders of a chain of sporting goods stores hired a private negotiator to deal directly with the kidnappers. They said nothing to police or to the press. They paid millions of dollars in ransom money. Then they waited for a signal that the boy had been released.

It was not to be.

Fernando Marti’s decomposed, bullet-riddled body was found Friday in the trunk of a stolen Chevy that had been abandoned in a working-class Mexico City neighborhood. For many, Monday’s news was equally bad: Authorities said they had arrested at least one city police commander in connection with the crime, and that other cops might be involved.