Docudharma Times Tuesday June 9

 But instead, Boumediene said he endured harsh

treatment for more than seven years.

He said he was kept awake for 16 days straight,

and physically abused repeatedly….

Boumediene described being pulled up from under his arms

while sitting in a chair with his legs shackled, stretching him.

He said that he was forced to run with the camp’s guards

and if he could not keep up, he was dragged, bloody and bruised….

Formerly of the Red Cresent

CIA Urges Judge To Keep Bush-Era Documents Sealed

Al-Qaeda Could Use Contents, Agency Says

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Obama administration objected yesterday to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security and benefit al-Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.

In an affidavit, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta defended the classification of records describing the contents of the 92 videotapes, their destruction by the CIA in 2005 and what he called “sensitive operational information” about the interrogations.

The forced disclosure of such material to the American Civil Liberties Union “could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed,” Panetta argued.

In Lebanese Vote, Hopeful Signs for U.S.

NEWS ANALYSIS

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: June 8, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon – There were many domestic reasons voters handed an American-backed coalition a victory in Lebanese parliamentary elections on Sunday – but political analysts also attribute it in part to President Obama’s campaign of outreach to the Arab and Muslim world.

Most analysts had predicted that the Hezbollah-led coalition, already a crucial power broker in the Lebanese government because of its support from Shiites who make up a large part of Lebanon’s population, would win handily. In the end, though, the American-aligned coalition won 71 seats, while the Syria-Iranian aligned opposition, which includes Hezbollah, took only 57.

It is hard to draw firm conclusions from one election. But for the first time in a long time, being aligned with the United States did not lead to defeat in the Middle East. And since Lebanon has always been a critical testing ground, that could mark a possibly significant shift in regional dynamics with another major election, in Iran, on Friday.

USA

Supreme Court Delays Sale of Chrysler to Fiat



By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED

Published: June 8, 2009

The Obama administration’s effort to hurry Chrysler through bankruptcy court ran into an unexpected last-minute delay on Monday, when the Supreme Court said it could consider whether to hear the objections of three Indiana state funds and consumer groups.

The implications of the court’s move – Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a one-sentence order that amounted to a holding action – are unclear.

The delay could be resolved by Tuesday, freeing Chrysler to join forces with Fiat. But if the court decides to hear an appeal that lasts weeks or months, it could put Chrysler at risk of going out of business. Fiat, the only company to show an interest in acquiring most of the assets of Chrysler, can walk away from the deal if it is not concluded by June 15.

Sotomayor is remembered as a zealous prosecutor

Her experience as an assistant district attorney in New York made her something of a law-and-order judge, experts say, especially when it came to police searches and the use of evidence.

By James Oliphant

June 9, 2009

Reporting from New York — The detectives crouched low, guns in hand, sweeping the crumbling apartments, moving cautiously from room to room, barking at the two prosecutors to stay back, to watch out.

The lawyers were children of the city, raised in ethnic neighborhoods by families of modest means. But the poverty here in central Harlem startled them. Some of the abandoned buildings served as shooting galleries, places where drug addicts congregated. The air was rank, the threat of violence palpable.

Africa

Shell pays out $15.5m over Saro-Wiwa killing



Ed Pilkington in New York

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 June 2009 00.07 BST

The oil giant Shell has agreed to pay $15.5m (£9.6m) in settlement of a legal action in which it was accused of having collaborated in the execution of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni tribe of southern Nigeria.

The settlement, reached on the eve of the trial in a federal court in New York, was one of the largest payouts agreed by a multinational corporation charged with human rights violations.

The scale of the payment was being seen by experts in human rights law as a step towards international businesses being made accountable for their environmental and social actions.

Jennie Green, a lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights who initiated the lawsuit in 1996, said:

Bongo’s son calls for Gabon calm

The son of the late Gabonese President Omar Bongo has appealed for calm following his father’s death.

The BBC Tuesday, 9 June 2009

Defence Minister Ali-Ben Bongo, who made the comments in a televised address, is seen as a leading candidate to succeed his father.

Earlier, the defence ministry said it was closing Gabon’s borders and that it was deploying security forces across the country.

Omar Bongo was Africa’s longest serving leader when he died at 73.

His death was confirmed by Prime Minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong in a written statement.

There had been conflicting reports earlier on Monday about whether Mr Bongo, who had led Gabon since 1967, had died in a Spanish clinic.

Under the constitution, the leader of the Senate, Rose Francine Rogombe, an ally of Mr Bongo, should take over as interim leader and organise elections within 45 days.

Asia

North Korea threatens ‘merciless’ nuclear offensive

• Nuclear arms a ‘means to deal a just retaliatory strike’

• Kim Jong-il son backs reports of brother’s succession

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 June 2009 09.06 BST

North Korea today warned it would use nuclear weapons in a “merciless offensive” if provoked, two weeks after testing a Hiroshima-size device.

It appeared to be the first time the communist state had referred to its nuclear arsenal as “offensive” in nature. Pyongyang has long claimed that its nuclear weapons programme is for self-defence against perceived US threats.

“Our nuclear deterrent will be a strong defensive means … as well as a merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country’s dignity and sovereignty even a bit,” the state-run Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Pakistan put on the spot



By Syed Saleem Shahzad  

BRUSSELS – After Afghanistan, Pakistan is the new battleground for the United States-led war against Islamic militants, with fighting raging in the Swat area of North-West Frontier Province and threatening to spread not only to the country’s urban areas but to Iran and beyond.

Washington is acutely aware of a possible regional crisis and is doing its utmost to convince its allies in Europe to muster all possible support for its client Pakistani establishment before the crisis gets out of hand.

The US’s backroom lobbying helped Pakistan obtain commitments of over US$5 billion in aid at April’s international donors’ conference in Tokyo. But while the Barack Obama administration has made a strong case for increased European support, the difficult part is to agree on the best arrangement under which European capitals could help Pakistan.

Middle East

Bound, blindfolded and beaten – by Israeli troops

Children among Palestinian detainees abused during West Bank operation, according to soldiers’ confessions

By Ben Lynfield in Hares, West Bank

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

Two Israeli officers have testified that troops in the West Bank beat, bound and blindfolded Palestinian civilians as young as 14. The damaging disclosures by two sergeants of the Kfir Brigade include descriptions of abuses they say they witnessed during a search-and-detain operation involving hundreds of troops in Hares village on 26 March. The testimonies have been seen by The Independent and are expected to add fuel to the controversy over recent remarks by Colonel Itai Virob, commander of Kfir Brigade, in which he said violence against detained Palestinians was justified in order to accomplish missions.

Both the soldiers, from the Harub battalion, highlighted the tight tying of the plastic hand restraints placed on detainees. “There are people who think you need to tighten the restraints all the way, until no drop of blood will pass from here to there,” one soldier said. “It doesn’t take much time until the hands turn blue. There were a lot of people that you know weren’t feeling anything.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rally abandoned because crowds are too big

From The Times

June 9, 2009

Martin Fletcher in Tehran

Political history was made last night when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, was forced to abandon an election rally because the crowds who gathered to hear him were too vast.

As many as 50,000 fanatical supporters of the Islamic fundamentalist President had stood jam-packed for four hours in suffocating heat inside a vast prayer hall in Tehran.

Outside, an overflow crowd almost as great blocked all access to the venue. Officials said that Mr Ahmadinejad’s vehicles spent 90 minutes trying to force their way through, without success. There was talk of him holding the rally outside, but the idea was dropped when officials warned that people would be crushed to death.

As Mr Ahmadinejad’s disappointed followers flooded on to the streets, supporters of the President’s strongest rival, the reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, mounted their own show of might. Tens of thousands of them, all dressed in green, formed a human chain running the length of Valiasr, the thoroughfare that runs 30km (18 miles) from the north to the south of the Iranian capital.

Europe

Rout of the soft left: Europe veers right to beat recession

Angry voters stayed home in record numbers but did not flock to extremists

By John Lichfield and Vanessa Mock

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

It may be difficult to say who “won” the European elections, but it is clear who lost. From France to Poland – and spectacularly in Britain – politicians of the moderate left were shunned or humiliated by the few voters who bothered to cast their ballots.

In a time of recession – and especially one caused by the exuberance and immoderate greed of markets – centre-left arguments might have been expected to thrive. Instead, centre-left parties of government were routed in Britain and soundly defeated in Portugal and narrowly beaten in Spain. Centre-left opposition parties were rejected in Italy and Poland and crushed in France. In Germany, where the main centre-right and centre-left parties share power, voters rejected the Social Democrats and gave a comfortable victory to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Latvia budget cuts ease fears of Sweden’s nervous banks

From The Times

June 9, 2009

Carl Mortished

Swingeing cuts in Latvian government spending helped to boost the shares of banks in Sweden yesterday as investors took comfort from the prospect that the Baltic state may avoid a damaging currency devaluation.

The Latvian Government reached agreement with its coalition partners to cut the state budget by Lats500 million (£620 million). The budget deal raised hopes that the debt-burdened country would secure a further tranche of a rescue loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union, thereby avoiding a downward spiral of devaluation and default.

The budget agreement lifted the gloom in Stockholm, where Sweden’s leading banks have been waiting nervously for the outcome of negotiations.

Latin America

Authorities vow impartial inquiry into Mexico day-care center fire

A co-owner of the facility is related to President Felipe Calderon’s wife, but officials promised to investigate fully. Three more children have died, raising the death toll to 44.

By Ken Ellingwood

June 9, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — The death toll from a fire at a day-care center rose to 44 on Monday, as authorities promised their investigation would be unaffected by family ties between a co-owner and the wife of President Felipe Calderon.

Officials in the northern border state of Sonora said three more children had died as a result of Friday’s fast-moving blaze, during which rescuers found only one working door.

The episode has raised questions about official oversight of the preschool, known as ABC. The facility, a converted warehouse, was run privately but under authority of the Social Security Institute, which operates more than 1,500 day-care centers around Mexico for 223,000 children.

State and federal officials said Monday that they would investigate fully, regardless of the owners’ family and political ties. Those links were a growing source of controversy after it emerged that one of the owners,Marcia Gomez del Campo Tonella, is related to First Lady Margarita Zavala, and that Gomez del Campo’s husband is a top public-works official in the Sonoran government. The husband of a second owner is also a ranking Sonoran official.

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