Docudharma Times Friday July 3

Secrets, Secrets, Secrets

Always Keeping Secrets

That’s How “Open Government”

Works!    

Purity of Federal ‘Organic’ Label Is Questioned



By Kimberly Kindy and Lyndsey Layton

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, July 3, 2009

Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be found in 90 percent of organic baby formula.

The government’s turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an advisory board’s approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous companies win a coveted green-and-white “USDA Organic” seal on an array of products.

 Head Scarf Emerges as Indonesia Political Symbol



By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Published: July 2, 2009

JAKARTA, Indonesia – The three parties competing in Indonesia’s presidential election next week have plastered this city with campaign billboards and posters depicting, predictably, their presidential and vice presidential choices looking self-confident.

But one party, Golkar, has also put up posters of the candidates’ wives next to their husbands, posing demurely and wearing Muslim head scarves known here as jilbabs. The wives recently went on a jilbab shopping spree in one of Jakarta’s largest markets, and published a book together titled “Devout Wives of Future Leaders.”

Most polls suggest that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of the Democratic Party will be re-elected in next Wednesday’s vote, after running a smooth campaign based on his economic policies and a popular anticorruption drive.

USA

U.S. Shifts Strategy on Illicit Work by Immigrants



By JULIA PRESTON

Published: July 2, 2009

Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.

But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.

NSA to help defend civilian agency networks

At issue is whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny

By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.

President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve “monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic,” and Homeland Security Department officials say the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems.

Africa  

These outrageous slurs undermine our mission in Congo

UN peacekeepers are rooting out perpetrators of sexual violence, not supporting them, says Alan Doss

Alan Doss

The Guardian, Friday 3 July 2009

Eve Ensler describes the suffering of Congolese women and girls subjected to rape and other unspeakable acts of sexual violence (On the heels of catastrophe, 19 June). Monuc, the UN peacekeeping mission that I lead in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is supporting a joint operation known as Kimia 2 with the Congolese Army (FARDC). Kimia 2 is aimed at neutralising the FDLR, an armed group led by former leaders of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that has for years been among the main perpetrators of sexual violence in the eastern Congo.

Ensler dismisses the operation and its objectives as “psychotic science fiction”. She then makes the outrageous claim that UN peacekeepers “are actually supporting the perpetrators” of sexual violence. These gross and simplistic mischaracterisations ignore what we are doing to end the violence. Ensler’s comments irresponsibly undermine the only international mission for improving the performance of Congolese troops – many of whom are recently integrated militia forces – and for dealing with the threat of the FDLR.

Africa leaders enhance union role

African Union (AU) members have agreed a plan to give its executive arm enhanced powers to co-ordinate common-interest policies, officials say.

The BBC  Friday, 3 July 2009

But the African Authority will not be able to act internationally unless it has a mandate from heads of state.

The compromise on the draft came after hours of heated debate in a closed session in the Libyan town of Sirte.

It had been resisted by South Africa and Nigeria, among others, who objected to giving the authority too much power.

The new African Authority aims to simplify the AU’s structure, allowing more control over diplomatic, trade and defence matters.

It will “represent the common interests of the member states of the Union and speak in their name in international forums on international trade”, Reuters news agency quoted the draft agreement as saying.

The structure will create a president, a vice-president, and a secretary of peace and security and common defence. Other secretaries will replace the current union’s commissioners.

Europe

And finally, Germans see the funny side of Mrs Merkel

Chancellor escapes lightly in comic biography three months before election

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

Friday, 3 July 2009

As a child, she was so politically chameleon-like that she didn’t ride a bike. The reason: she saw no difference between left and right. Now in her fifties, she stands somewhat gormlessly on a podium, sporting a golden crown engraved with a giant “A” and celebrating her coronation as Miss Tschörmänie.

The depiction and jokes are contained in a new Angela Merkel comic biography that pokes fun at Germany’s first female chancellor in pocket book form for the first time. The comic went on perfectly timed sale throughout Germany yesterday – less than three months before the general election.

While other European political leaders, most notably Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, have been objects of merciless satire in comics ever since they were elected, it has taken Germany all of the three-and-a-half years since Ms Merkel became Chancellor to produce an equivalent.

Underworld figures are freed to run for parliament in Bulgaria

From The Times

July 3, 2009

 David Charter, Europe Correspondent

Underworld figures facing charges of racketeering, embezzlement and worse have found a novel way to escape jail in Europe’s most corrupt country: they are running for parliament.

Some of Bulgaria’s best-known alleged mobsters have been let out of custody to campaign in the general election on Sunday under a legal loophole that gives immunity from prosecution to MPs and candidates. Those in the running include the Galev brothers – two reputed gangsters accused of running a southwestern town for years through their police and judicial contacts – as well as Ivan Ivanov, one of nine defendants in a fraud case involving €7.5 million (£6.5 million) of farm aid from the EU. The case was supposed to be a showpiece trial to prove that judicial reforms were working in a country that was allowed into the EU in 2007, despite deep concerns about judicial independence and its backlog of more than a hundred unsolved contract killings. Instead, it has allowed Bulgaria’s critics to insist that the country was let in before it had been forced to change.

Asia

Tamil refugees may end up in permanent camps, say aid workers

From The Times

July 3, 2009



Sri Lankan authorities appear to be building permanent camps to house many of the 300,000 refugees from the last phase of the war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, despite promising to resettle 80 per cent of them by the end of the year.

Aid workers have told The Times that permanent buildings are being erected at the Manik Farm site where the UN says that 230,000 of the refugees are being held after the Tigers’ defeat in May.

The aid workers said that they were able to do humanitarian work in four of six zones at Manik Farm but were barred from two others, including the mysteriously named Zone Zero.

“We’re not allowed to work in these areas,” said Rajinda Jayasinghe, the head of Relief International in Sri Lanka. “But you can see from the outside proper brick-walled buildings going up.” Some aid workers said that the site was fast becoming Sri Lanka’s second biggest city after the capital, Colombo, with schools, clinics and banks, where refugees have deposited more than a billion rupees.

China’s rogue regimes play up

Greater China

    Jul 3, 2009

By Brian McCartan

BANGKOK – Arms shipments, cooperation on underground tunneling and a budding nuclear relationship between North Korea and Myanmar threatens to destabilize Southeast Asia’s security balance and raise the ire of China, both countries’ powerful neighbor and ally.

The global spotlight has focused on North Korean-Myanmar ties ever since a freighter, the Kang Nam 1, was reported to be steaming towards Myanmar with a suspected cargo of weapons in violation of a recent United Nations Security Council ban. The ban came in the wake of North Korea’s ballistic missile test in April and an underground test the following month of a nuclear device. North Korea has promised to launch another ballistic missile test on July 4.

Myanmar severed diplomatic ties with Pyongyang in 1983 after three North Korean agents bombed the mausoleum of Myanmar’s revered independence leader Aung San and killed 18 visiting South Korean officials, including then-deputy prime minister So Suk-chan and three other cabinet ministers.

Middle East

Iran’s Ahmadinejad faces diplomatic isolation

After a disputed election and crackdown on protesters, the Iranian president maybe be feted in some anti-U.S. corners, but he faces slights and snubs from other nations.

By Jeffrey Fleishman and Borzou Daragahi

July 3, 2009

Reporting from Cairo and Beirut — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can in one instant appear the diplomatic equivalent of damaged goods and in the next a confident leader whose bellicose speeches leave the West wondering how to deal with him and his perplexing nation now that he’s won a much-disputed reelection.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev publicly greeted Ahmadinejad at a recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but did not grant him a private meeting as he had the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Belarus, the Iranian leader was met not by President Alexander Lukashenko, but by the speaker of the upper house of parliament.

A similar pattern has emerged in the Middle East, where Arab regimes have long been wary of Iran’s ambitions. Authorities in Jordan withdrew licenses for two Iranian news organizations this week and the sultan of Oman reportedly canceled a trip to Tehran following the unrest after Iran’s June 12 election.

Latin America

Honduras coup spotlights Latin America’s growing instability

Unrest has also erupted in Guatemala and Nicaragua in the past year, and the region is dealing with powerful organized crime and drug traffickers.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS – The military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday, for many, harks back to dark days of military coups in Latin America.

Yet even as it stands as the region’s most tense crisis at the moment, it does not stand alone. Protests have erupted across the region in the past year.

Citizens took to streets in Nicaragua demanding a recount after municipal elections they say were rigged.

In Guatemala, protesters called for their president to step down after he was accused of orchestrating a murder. There, as in other countries in the region, organized crime is taking over wide swaths of territory and corrupting institutions.

“Somewhat to my surprise, Central America seems to be unraveling politically,” says Kevin Casas-Zamora, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution’s Latin America Initiative. “In different ways, it is showing the vulnerabilities of democracy in the region.”

Latin American countries have come a long way from the military dictatorships of past decades. Fair elections are the norm, and while institutions are weak, some have become global models. But recent events have proven a disturbing reminder of the fragility of institution-building.

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