Docudharma Times Tuesday May 26

UN Condemns

North Korea Flips Out

With Missiles  

President Obama to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court

North Korean Nuclear Blast Draws Global Condemnation

China, Russia Decry Ally; Device Seen as Small Advance

By Blaine Harden

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

TOKYO, May 27 — North Korea’s detonation of a nuclear device Monday appears not to have been a significant technical advance over its first underground test three years ago. But it has triggered a swifter, stronger and more uniform wave of international condemnation, most notably from the isolated nation’s historical allies, China and Russia.The U.N. Security Council moved quickly in an emergency meeting Monday to condemn the test, saying it constituted a clear violation of a 2006 U.N. resolution barring the communist state from exploding a nuclear weapon. The council’s speedy response contrasted with protracted discussions that followed North Korea’s April 5 launch of a long-range missile and reflected what analysts called deep displeasure by Russia and China.

Ex-Detainee Describes Struggle for Exoneration

In France, Algerian Savors Normal Life

By Edward Cody

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

PARIS, May 25 — When the nightmare finally ended — seven years at Guantanamo Bay, two years of force-feeding through a tube in his right nostril, the long struggle to proclaim his innocence before a judge, and finally 10 days of hospitalization — Lakhdar Boumediene celebrated with pizza for lunch in a little Paris dive.

“When we were at the restaurant,” Boumediene said Monday, shortly after the meal that marked his release from doctors’ care and reentry into normal society, “I told my wife that for the first time I felt like a man again, tasting things, picking things up in my fingers, eating lunch with my wife and my two daughters.”

USA

Credit cards may go charging into the past

New regulations signed into law by Obama could bring back the tight access and low limits of the ’50s.

By Abigail Goldman

May 26, 2009

Norman Hockett didn’t realize that the small plastic rectangle that arrived in his Fresno mailbox in the fall of 1958 put him at the vanguard of the credit revolution.

Fresno was the proving ground for the BankAmericard, the granddaddy of mass market credit cards, and Hockett was one of the first 65,000 people to get one. He used the new tool carefully, never failing to pay off his balance when he bought a TV or a dinner out.

“I have never paid any interest,” said the 78-year-old retired teacher and salesman. “I clear the account every month, and I don’t run up a big bill.”

If the industry — and its customers — maintained the prudence of Hockett’s Depression-era upbringing, the new credit card law signed Friday by President Obama might never have been necessary.

California Couples Await Gay Marriage Ruling



By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: May 25, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – After more than 30 years together, Brent Lok and Wade French have accumulated more than a few possessions, including a hilltop home, an impressive collection of Asian art and, alongside their diplomas, vacation photos and family portraits, a framed marriage license, dated June 17, 2008.

On Tuesday, Mr. Lok and Mr. French will discover what that license means in the eyes of the law, as the California Supreme Court hands down its decision on Proposition 8, the voter initiative passed in November that outlawed same-sex marriage. Previously, in May 2008, the court legalized same-sex marriage, and since the election, several groups have sued, saying the proposition’s revocation of that right was unconstitutional.

Europe

Breaking with Poland’s past

A debate about a time of change in Poland highlights a division between the nation’s older and younger generations



Anita Prazmowska

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 May 2009 08.00 BST

All historic events seem to need a definition in terms of where they start and end. The collapse of communism in Poland was played out in full view of the world’s media. The establishment of the Solidarity movement could well be treated as the starting point of this process. The alternative date could be that of the conclusion of the round table talks or even the first genuinely free elections. For Poland, 1989 was a time of change.

I initiated a debate on this subject at this year’s Hay festival. Timothy Garton Ash, well known to Guardian readers, and Slawomir Sierakowski, a young editor of a challenging leftwing publication in Poland, were asked to tell the audience when they thought the history of communist Poland had come to an end and the transformation in accordance with the liberal democratic model and free market principles began. Both speakers grappled with the problem created by the power of symbols, which tend to trap us in a timewarp and prevent us moving on to understanding the complexities of present day politics in Poland.

Tom Cruise and a trial that could drive Scientology out of France

Movement accused of ‘organised fraud’ against two female members persuaded to part with €20,000

By John Lichfield in Paris

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

The Scientology movement went on trial in Paris yesterday for “organised fraud” in a case which could lead to the cult’s organising bodies being outlawed in France.

The French state prosecution service has failed to back the trial but denies that its decision was influenced by the lobbying of French politicians, including Nicolas Sarkozy before he became President, by leading Scientologists, including the actor Tom Cruise. After an 11-year inquiry, following complaints from four French former Scientologists, an independent, investigating magistrate decided that the prosecution should go ahead.

Two female plaintiffs allege that, between 1997 and 1999, the French movement persuaded them to pay the equivalent of €20,000 each on drugs, vitamins, counselling, saunas and equipment to improve their mental and physical health. This included an “electrometer” to measure the state of their “spiritual condition”.

Middle East

Bursting bubbles on the Jesus Trail

A spot of sightseeing can be a great way of bringing together Israeli Jews and Arabs – but first you have to get out of Tel Aviv



Seth Freedman

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 May 2009 09.00 BST

Reporting from Baghdad — Baghdad will burn, the resistance leader warns.

Prior to last weekend, I had spent a full week firmly ensconced in the Bu’ah – the cynical name given to the state of blissful ignorance in which many of Tel Aviv’s residents dwell. Despite the physical proximity of the occupation, that the effects of the subjugation are not seen or felt on their very doorstep allows them to exist as though they have not a care in the world, rather than engage with the highly precarious and highly suspect way in which their leaders oppress the Palestinians under their control.

While I try to visit the West Bank at least once a week, and usually do my best to follow domestic affairs with a keen interest, last week I morphed temporarily into the epitome of Bu’ah beach bum; a combination of friends visiting from abroad and cloudless skies suspending my usual routine.

PKK leader offers Turkey an olive branch to end war

From The Times

May 26, 2009

Anthony Loyd, Qandil Mountains

The Kurdish leader proposing to end a 25-year-long conflict with Turkey that has cost 30,000 lives believes his peace offer is a once in a generation opportunity that must be grasped by both sides.

In a unilateral gesture that has prompted a re-examination of strategy in Ankara, Baghdad and Washington, the guerrilla leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has extended an olive branch, offering to drop its aim of an independent state in return for a negotiated settlement to end its war with Turkey.

“We are at a turning point,” said Murad Karayilan, acting head of the PKK, in an interview with The Times at a secret location in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Africa

Shell on trial

Oil giant in the dock over 1995 murder of activist who opposed environmental degradation of Niger Delta

By Daniel Howden, Africa Correspondent

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

Royal Dutch Shell will revisit one of the darkest periods of its history tomorrow as a potentially groundbreaking court case opens in New York.

The oil giant stands accused of complicity in the 1995 execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian environmental activist.

The world’s boardrooms are watching the case, which is seen as a test of whether transnational companies owned or operating in the US can be held responsible for human rights abuses committed abroad.

A collection of cases brought by torture victims in the oil-rich Niger Delta and by relatives of those killed has been brought together under the umbrella of Wiwa v Shell.

The plaintiffs include Ken Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Wiwa Jnr, and his brother, Owens Wiwa.

For Shell, which denies any involvement in the environmentalist’s killing, ordered by the government of Sani Abacha, the case represents an unwelcome public hearing of grievances that the company has spent time and money trying to make people forget.

In South Africa, a tangled vine of dreams and reality

Urbanites who buy a grape farm are in for some surprises before smelling the sweet bouquet of success.

By Scott Kraft

May 26, 2009

Reporting from Stellenbosch, South Africa — Like many black professionals during the dark days of apartheid, Diale and Malmsey Rangaka dreamed of leaving the crowded township of Soweto. But, unlike their neighbors, they didn’t want to move to the gated white suburbs.

They wanted to be farmers.

For years Diale, an English literature professor, would chatter away about cattle ranching, quoting the latest issue of Farmer’s Weekly. His wife was skeptical. “But you haven’t produced so much as a rabbit your whole life,” she would gently chide him.

But Malmsey, a clinical psychologist, harbored her own ambition: She wanted to be an organic farmer. To which her husband would invariably point out that she hadn’t grown so much as a carrot.

A few years ago, with their children grown and land ownership suddenly open to blacks, they began scanning advertisements for farmland. Twenty-two farms later, their quest ended. It was neither a ranch nor a vegetable farm but a moldering 100-acre tract of grapes and guava.

Asia

Aung San Suu Kyi to take stand today

From Times Online

May 26, 2009

Times Online

Aung San Suu Kyi will take the stand at her trial today, as the junta defied international outrage and threatened to extend her house arrest even if she is not convicted.

Lawyers said the Nobel peace prize winner would declare her innocence of charges that she breached the terms of her six-year detention by assisting an American man who swam to her lakeside home this month.

She faces up to five more years in jail if convicted at the trial in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison, with critics accusing the military regime of trying to keep her locked up during elections due in 2010.

Sri Lanka rejects Tigers’ offer

Sri Lanka’s defence secretary has rejected the Tamil Tigers’ offer to enter a democratic process after their military defeat by government forces.

The BBC  Tuesday, 26 May 2009

In an interview with the BBC, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said the LTTE rebels could not be trusted to give up “terrorism”.

The rebels had said they would give up violence after their leader was killed in recent fighting in the north-east.

Later on Tuesday the UN Human Rights Council meets to discuss how to provide aid to thousands of displaced people.

The special session in Geneva will consider two resolutions.

The first, proposed by Switzerland and backed by European countries, calls for aid agencies to be given unimpeded access to all those in need, including the 300,000 people housed in government-run camps.

The UN has complained that the government has been blocking humanitarian aid.

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