Docudharma Times Saturday June 6

D-Day      

State Dept. Retiree Accused of Spying

Official, Wife Passed Secrets to Cuba For Decades, Federal Prosecutors Say

By Del Quentin Wilber and Mary Beth Sheridan

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, June 6, 2009

A former State Department official with top-secret security clearance and his wife have been charged with spying for Cuba over the past three decades, passing information by shortwave radio and correspondence exchanged in local grocery stores, federal prosecutors said.

State Department officials said last night they were still assessing the potential damage to the government’s security and intelligence operations and declined to comment further.

Within hours of the couple’s appearance yesterday at U.S. District Court in the District, a novel-worthy tale began to emerge from court documents and law enforcement sources, depicting an elderly couple of famed lineage, living in a Northwest Washington neighborhood and traveling abroad under code names, motivated by ideology to pass information to Cuban agents.

Plying the Pacific, Subs Surface as Key Tool of Drug Cartels



By William Booth and Juan Forero

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, June 6, 2009

MEXICO CITY — When anti-narcotics agents first heard that drug cartels were building an armada of submarines to transport cocaine, they thought it was a joke.

Now U.S. law enforcement officials say that more than a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Colombia travels in submersibles.

An experimental oddity just two years ago, these strange semi-submarines are the cutting edge of drug trafficking today. They ferry hundreds of tons of cocaine for powerful Mexican cartels that are taking over the Pacific Ocean route for most northbound shipments, according to the Colombian navy.

The sub-builders are even trying to develop a remote-controlled model, officials say.

USA

U.S. May Permit 9/11 Guilty Pleas in Capital Cases



By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: June 5, 2009

The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial.

The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom.

The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not been publicly disclosed. It was circulated to officials under restrictions requiring secrecy. People who have read or been briefed on it said it had been presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates by an administration task force on detention.

On the front line in the US abortion war

‘People pray for me to die,’ says one of few doctors to perform late-term procedures

Chris McGreal

guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 June 2009

Neal Horsley wants to kill abortion doctors. He publishes what is widely ­regarded as a hit list of medics and openly advocates the execution of women who have terminations.

But he is torn over this week’s murder of one of the country’s prominent abortion doctors. On the one hand, Horsley regards George Tiller’s killing as “justifiable homicide” on behalf of the unborn and the man who shot him in the head at a church as a “soldier in a war”.

“Tiller was a terrorist and I speak as a spokesman for those unborn who have been killed,” said Horsley under posters of aborted foetuses at his office on the edge of Carrollton, Georgia.

Europe

Wilders strikes first blow for European extremists

Fears that low turnout and gains by far right will be repeated across the EU

By Claire Soares and John Lichfield in Paris

Saturday, 6 June 2009

The first killer punch of the European election campaign was struck yesterday by the maverick Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, who scooped 17 per cent of the vote and almost a fifth of his country’s seats in the European Parliament running on a populist, anti-immigrant, law and order agenda.

The Dutch result, released two days early – before most Europeans had even cast their votes – sent jitters around a continent fearful that a miserably low turnout will help extremists on both the left and right.

Mr Wilders, refused access to Britain as a rabble-rouser earlier this year, has perfected a form of tolerant intolerance with his Freedom Party and its smartly-suited, middle-class, anti-Islamic and “pro-liberal” values.

German elections leave millions without the right to vote

62 million Germans are entitled to vote in the EU parliamentary elections and in Germany’s parallel local elections on Sunday. But several million long-term residents will not get a chance to cast their ballots.

ELECTIONS | 06.06.2009

Germany’s constitution and electoral law are quite specific: Those entitled to vote in Sunday’s double-pack of elections must have German citizenship – either through descent or a passport granted under strict integration rules. They also need to be at least 18 years of age and be a resident in a German municipality for at least three months.

EU integration rules widen that circle to include an additional 2.1 million citizens of other EU countries who reside in Germany. They will be able to vote in the European Parliament election and simultaneously in Germany’s municipal elections being held in most regional states. The largest numbers of those eligible originate from Italy, Poland, Greece, Austria and the Netherlands.

Middle East

US ‘can’t force peace in the Middle East

By David Usborne, US editor

Saturday, 6 June 2009

Barack Obama yesterday told both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that while the US will do all it can to help bring about peace – he ordered his peace envoy, the former Senator George Mitchell, back to the region next week – the responsibility for making it happen will rest ultimately with them.

Showing off his talent once more for the stagecraft of peace-making, Mr Obama made his remarks in Germany as his host, Chancellor Angela Merkel, was preparing to take him to the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, a site that is a reminder of why Israel exists.

In Germany, Mr Obama was by turns cajoling and delicate and spoke to both sides about the steps the parties to the Middle East conflict need to take. After openly criticising Israel’s refusal to end settlements during a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday, he toned down his stance, saying he understood Israel’s problems honouring that commitment that was contained in the so-called “Road Map” peace blueprint.

Swine flu pig cull destroys way of life for Cairo rubbish collectors

From The Times

June 6, 2009

James Hider in Cairo

Just beyond the medieval ramparts, moats and mosques of Cairo’s citadel sprawls an equally medieval site that tourists rarely see. Unlike the well-preserved fortress, however, this is one slice of the city’s past that the authorities are keen to consign to history.

For hundreds – locals say thousands – of years, the zabaleen have collected the rubbish of the Arab world’s greatest city and hauled it by donkey cart, or more recently overloaded pick-up truck, to their fetid ghettos dotted around the city. They are Coptic Christians, a sect that predates Islam and most other forms of Christianity, and until recently they fed the city’s slops to their pigs. These they would either eat or sell to wealthier Christian butchers.

But Manshiyet Nasser, one of the main shantytowns peering over the desert bluffs towards the citadel, is now a pig-free zone. Last month the authorities ordered a massive cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs because of fears of a swine flu epidemic from Mexico, although no cases of the disease had been recorded in Egypt.

Asia

Ban Ki Moon to address Security Council on Sri Lanka ‘war crimes’

From The Times

June 6, 2009

Michael Evans and Catherine Philp

The UN Secretary-General caved in to demands to brief the Security Council on his trip to Sri Lanka yesterday after calls mounted for an international war crimes inquiry into the fighting this year.

Ban Ki Moon was to address the Security Council in a closed-door session last night after Russia and China failed to keep Sri Lanka off the council’s agenda.

The briefing came as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated calls for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes committed by both sides and pledged the UN’s support for such an inquiry.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, angrily rejected allegations of wrongdoing after last week’s revelations in The Times that more than 20,000 civilians were believed to have died in the island’s so-called no-fire zone, most of them from Sri Lankan army shelling.

Rebels ‘kill Pakistan Islamists’

Two detained aides to radical cleric Sufi Mohammad have been killed during a militant ambush in Pakistan’s Swat valley, the country’s military says.

The BBC  Saturday, 6 June 2009

The pair, arrested on Friday, died when rebels attacked a convoy transporting prisoners to Peshawar, officials said.

The men – Muhammad Alam and Ameer Izzat Khan – were senior aides to Sufi Mohammed, the father-in-law of the Taliban leader in the Swat valley.

The army said one soldier was also killed in the attack.

Military officials said suspected Taliban rebels ambushed the prisoner convoy en route to Peshawar early on Saturday.

There was a gun battle between rebels and security forces, with at least one report suggesting the convoy was hit by a roadside bomb.

Muhammad Alam and Ameer Izzat Khan were among six men arrested on Friday along with another aide to Sufi Mohammad and three Afghan nationals.

Africa

Horror of South African miners’ deaths

Around a mortuary in Thabong, in South Africa’s Free State Province, the families of illegal miners, missing underground, wait to see if they can identify their relatives’ bodies

By Mpho Lakaje

BBC News, Free State

They cover their faces to stop the thick stench of decomposing body parts from overwhelming them.

The authorities call out names of identified men so their relatives, some had come from Mozambique or Lesotho, could take their bodies home.

Other relatives couldn’t find their husbands, brothers or fathers and they left looking for other mortuaries where their bodies may be.

Illegal gold

The bodies of 76 illegal miners were found in the shafts of a disused gold mine over the past week.

The Eland shaft, owned by Harmony Gold, has been out of use for years – closed down for being too dangerous and unprofitable.

Latin America

In Mexico, fire kills 29 children in day-care center

Dozens of children are injured in the blaze at the center in Hermosillo.

Associated Press

June 6, 2009

Mexico City — Flames engulfed a day-care center Friday in northern Mexico, killing at least 29 children and injuring dozens as neighbors and teachers ran through thick smoke to pull preschoolers from the blaze, officials said.

The fire apparently started at a car and tire depot Friday afternoon and spread to the ABC day-care center in the city of Hermosillo, said Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for Sonora state investigators. There were about 100 children in the center at the time.

Larrinaga said most of the victims died of asphyxiation.

“We’re still investigating what caused the fire and where exactly it started,” Larrinaga said. It was brought under control within two hours, he said.

Guadalupe Ayala, coordinator of Red Cross rescue workers, said the children were 6 months to 5 years old.

“Firefighters had to knock holes in the walls to get the children,” Ayala said.

The injured were taken to at least five hospitals.

Ignoring Asia A Blog