May 24, 2004

World Media Watch

by Gloria R. Lalumia

BUZZFLASH NOTE: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR MAY 24, 2004

1//The Independent, UK--ALLIED TROOPS MAY WIN IMMUNITY FROM IRAQI LAWS (A deal to give British forces immunity from Iraqi law is being negotiated by British diplomats drawing up a United Nations Security Council resolution to set up an Iraqi government. Sources said they expected the British military to be under their own domestic and military laws. The deal would echo military operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo where foreign forces remain subject to the military law of their own countries.)

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--BERG BEHEADING: NO WAY, SAY MEDICAL EXPERTS ("I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic," Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson's criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it.")

3//The Toronto Star, Canada-- MARTIN CALLS VOTE FOR JUNE 28 (Prime Minister Paul Martin set a sharp tone for the federal election campaign that began today by portraying Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as a right-wing ideologue out to Americanize health care and social programs. In turn, Harper challenged voters to oust what he called a government of corruption and waste. Martin painted Harper as a man distant from Canadian values. Harper accused him of planning a campaign of fear...The five-week campaign pits Martin's Liberals against the uneasily merged Conservatives, an NDP revitalized by a snappy new leader and the resurgent Bloc Quebecois in an election that could be the closest vote in more than a decade.)

4//The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines--LAWMAKER: RP NEEDS PRESIDENT BY JUNE 30 OR ELSE (The country must proclaim a president before noon of June 30. If it doesn't, this would be "the surest invitation for military adventurism'' or it could result in the declaration of martial law. Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzales on Friday gave these two scenarios in the event Congress fails to do its Constitutional duty to proclaim the next president and vice president before noon of June 30. "A military junta is a remote possibility but not altogether impossible," he told reporters after the news conference of Senate President Franklin Drilon and Speaker Jose de Venecia where they announced the proposed set of rules that Congress hopes to approve in canvassing the votes starting next week.)

Related Story: CONGRESS DIVIDED ON HOW TO COUNT (Congress is set to convene Monday as the National Board of Canvassers for the presidential and vice presidential candidates, but it is divided over how to go about the counting of votes... At least 600 fully armed antiriot police officers will be assigned to the Batasan complex where an anti-election fraud alliance and supporters of actor Fernando Poe Jr. plan to set up camp to monitor the canvassing.)

5//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia--KYOTO HEAT AS RUSSIA RATIFIES (The Howard Government has come under renewed pressure to sign the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions after Russia's surprise announcement at the weekend that it intends to ratify the deal. When Russia signs the protocol it will become international law and leave Australia and the United States the only two developed countries opposing the international agreement to combat global warming. The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, said yesterday that many Australian businesses would be disadvantaged by not having access to the trading mechanisms under the protocol...The European Union had flagged possible trade sanctions against countries that did not ratify the protocol, Mr Henry said.)

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1//The Independent, UK 24 May 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524305

ALLIED TROOPS MAY WIN IMMUNITY FROM IRAQI LAWS
By Ben Russell and Ciar Byrne

A deal to give British forces immunity from Iraqi law is being negotiated by British diplomats drawing up a United Nations Security Council resolution to set up an Iraqi government. Sources said they expected the British military to be under their own domestic and military laws.

The deal would echo military operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo where foreign forces remain subject to the military law of their own countries. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The legal status of multi-national forces post-30 June is a matter for discussion between the multi-national force and the Iraqi interim government and will be discussed in the new UN security resolution."

Diplomats have been discussing the working of a resolution to hand authority to the Iraqis with a full document expected to be published within days, in time for the expected handover of power on 30 June.

The resolution will transfer full power to the Iraqi Interim Authority before elections are held next year. Because the formal occupation of Iraq would end, British and American forces would remain in the country under an agreement with the new government.

(MORE)

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong May 22, 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE22Ak03.html

BERG BEHEADING: NO WAY, SAY MEDICAL EXPERTS
By Ritt Goldstein
(Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.)

American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

"I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic," Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson's criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it."

Questions of when the video's footage was taken, and the time elapsed between the shooting of the video's segments, were raised by both experts, reflecting a portion of the broader and ongoing video controversy. Nordby, speaking to Asia Times Online from Washington state, noted: "We don't know how much time wasn't filmed," adding that "there's no way of knowing whether ... footage is contemporaneous with the footage that follows".

While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg's last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

"I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it was genuine," said Simpson. Notably, the act's perpetrators appeared far from so. And separately Nordby observed: "I think that by the time they're ... on his head, he's already dead."

Providing another basis for their findings, in the course of such an assault, an individual's autonomic nervous system would react, typically doing so strongly, with the body shaking and jerking accordingly. And while Nordby noted that "they rotated and moved the head", shifting vertebrae that should have initiated such actions, Simpson said he "certainly didn't perceive any movements at all" in response to such efforts.

(MORE)

3//The Toronto Star, Canada May 23, 2004. 07:38 PM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?...

MARTIN CALLS VOTE FOR JUNE 28
From Canadian Press

OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin set a sharp tone for the federal election campaign that began today by portraying Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as a right-wing ideologue out to Americanize health care and social programs.

In turn, Harper challenged voters to oust what he called a government of corruption and waste.
Martin painted Harper as a man distant from Canadian values. Harper accused him of planning a campaign of fear.

Within hours of calling the June 28 vote, Martin held his first campaign event, speaking to a rally in the west-end Ottawa riding of Defence Minister David Pratt.

It's a riding where Tory and Canadian Alliance votes outnumbered Pratt's total in the last election and that could be a Liberal problem if the united right holds its vote.

Martin again zeroed in on Harper, saying the Conservative leader's plan to cut taxes would mean gutted social programs and a new federal deficit.

With Pratt by his side, Martin said, "His numbers don't add up, they're not even close."

He said the election is a choice between radically different visions of the country.

"Stephen Harper has been very clear about his vision for Canada," Martin said. "When the Alliance took over the Conservative party it wasn't a coincidence that they dropped Progressive from the name. That reflects his vision."

Harper proposed tax cuts in his opening campaign news conference: "We're going to announce some doable, modest tax measures that cut deepest for income taxes, personal income taxes, for middle-income Canadians."

(SNIP)

The five-week campaign pits Martin's Liberals against the uneasily merged Conservatives, an NDP revitalized by a snappy new leader and the resurgent Bloc Quebecois in an election that could be the closest vote in more than a decade.

(MORE)

4//The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines Posted: 10:03 AM (Manila Time) May 22, 2004
http://www.inq7.net/brk/2004/may/22/brkpol_5-1.htm

LAWMAKER: RP NEEDS PRESIDENT BY JUNE 30 OR ELSE
By Christine O. Avendaño, Inquirer News Service

The country must proclaim a president before noon of June 30. If it doesn't, this would be "the surest invitation for military adventurism'' or it could result in the declaration of martial law.

Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzales on Friday gave these two scenarios in the event Congress fails to do its Constitutional duty to proclaim the next president and vice president before noon of June 30.

"A military junta is a remote possibility but not altogether impossible," he told reporters after the news conference of Senate President Franklin Drilon and Speaker Jose de Venecia where they announced the proposed set of rules that Congress hopes to approve in canvassing the votes starting next week.

In case no president and vice president are proclaimed on that day, Gonzales said the Senate president, who is next in line, could not take over because there would only be 12 senators by that time.

"We would have no government unless the President declares martial law ... What can you do? She (President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) is still the president up to noon of June 30. And there is no Congress to stop her," he said.

(MORE)

Related Story:

CONGRESS DIVIDED ON HOW TO COUNT
http://www.inq7.net/nat/2004/may/24/nat_1-1.htm

Congress is set to convene Monday as the National Board of Canvassers for the presidential and vice presidential candidates, but it is divided over how to go about the counting of votes... At least 600 fully armed antiriot police officers will be assigned to the Batasan complex where an anti-election fraud alliance and supporters of actor Fernando Poe Jr. plan to set up camp to monitor the canvassing.

(MORE)

5//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia May 24, 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/23/1085250869861.html

KYOTO HEAT AS RUSSIA RATIFIES
By Matt Wade

The Howard Government has come under renewed pressure to sign the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions after Russia's surprise announcement at the weekend that it intends to ratify the deal.

When Russia signs the protocol it will become international law and leave Australia and the United States the only two developed countries opposing the international agreement to combat global warming.

The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, said yesterday that many Australian businesses would be disadvantaged by not having access to the trading mechanisms under the protocol.

"It's very risky for the Australian Government to stand in isolation along with the Bush Administration opposing this protocol," he said.

"The American economy may be big enough to let them dodge this for a while; the Australian economy isn't."

Although the Howard Government refuses to sign the deal, it aims to meet the protocol's emission targets voluntarily.

(SNIP)

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said: "We will be banned from the global carbon trading scheme which the Kyoto protocol will open up."

The European Union had flagged possible trade sanctions against countries that did not ratify the protocol, Mr Henry said.