July 10, 2006

World Media Watch

Edited 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 JULY 10, 2006

1//The Dong-A Ilbo, South Korea--SOUTH KOREA DIVIDED OVER MISSILE TEST (North Korea’s missiles are dividing South Korea from Seoul to Busan. The South Korean government adheres to meetings with the North even after seven missiles that could reach everywhere on the Korean Peninsula and even beyond it were fired. Anti-American demonstrations that oppose a Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are intensifying. Moreover, anti-governmental demonstrations staged by conservative groups are getting louder and louder. In July 2006, South Korea is showing signs of slipping into a chaos of “South-South” conflicts.)

2//The Times, UK--ID CARD SCHEME IN DISARRAY (The Government’s controversial identity card scheme is in jeopardy, with Whitehall officials accusing ministers of ignoring reality, according to leaked e-mails. Officials are openly questioning whether the scheme can be tested and delivered by 2008 as promised. The e-mails also indicate that ministers are “rethinking” the scheme and that Tony Blair has plans for a “face-saving” compromise — an early variant or ID card lite — to meet the deadline.)

3//The Moscow Times, Russia--DUMA ENDS SESSION WITH AN EYE ON ELECTIONS (After approving a bill on extremist activity that critics say will help stifle the opposition ahead of national elections, State Duma deputies adjourned Saturday for summer vacation. The final bill can be seen as a fitting conclusion to a spring session dominated by legislation that promises to help United Russia in next year's Duma elections and to secure a smooth handover of power to President Vladimir Putin's designated successor in 2008. … United Russia, which has 310 of the Duma's 450 seats, rejected a proposal by Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent deputy, to delay the third reading of the bill on extremism until the fall and voted down dozens of revisions suggested by Communist deputies. … Opponents said that the existing law provided no definition of the word "extremist" and that the bill would help the Kremlin clear the field of unwanted candidates ahead of the Duma and presidential elections. "You can put anything under the understanding of extremism, even different points of view," Ryzhkov said. The bill would bar from elections not only candidates deemed extremist, but their parties, too. Central Elections Commission head Alexander Veshnyakov called the bill undemocratic on Saturday and urged the deputies to vote against it.)

4//The Independent, UK--A £6BN LONDON FLOTATION, A RUSSIAN OIL COMPANY – AND A QUESTION OF MORALS (This week the London Stock Exchange will play host to one of the biggest share sales on record. But the £6bn flotation of Rosneft, a state-owned Russian oil producer, will not only be huge, it will also be massively controversial. Apart from the sheer size of Rosneft - it will have a stock market value of about £38bn - one other thing marks it out from other public listings. Critics of Rosneft, and they include the billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, claim the company has been built on assets stolen by the Kremlin from another set of shareholders. Allowing Rosneft to list its shares here will therefore legitimise that act and undermine London's reputation as one of the world's leading financial centres. … The allegation against the company is simply put: that its main subsidiary, an oil and gas business called Yuganskneftegaz, was illegally expropriated from another oil company called Yukos by the Russian government. The Kremlin says Yuganskneftegaz was seized in lieu of unpaid taxes. Indeed, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos, now languishes in a Siberian concentration camp having been found guilty of tax fraud. But to many observers, inside and outside Moscow, Mr Khodorkovsky's crime was not to embezzle the Russian taxman but to challenge the political authority of President Vladimir Putin.)

5//IRINnews.org (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ), NY-- EGYPT: OPPOSITION JOURNALISTS PROTEST PRESS LAW, URGE PUBLISHING BOYCOTT (The ongoing battle over local press freedom came to a head Sunday when some 300 opposition journalists and their supporters gathered in front the parliament building in Cairo to protest a new press law, expected to be ratified Sunday. In solidarity with the journalists, 28 opposition and independent newspapers refused to publish their Sunday editions, saying the new law would only serve to erode press freedom further. “This law kills journalism and protects the corrupt,” said Ahmed al-Sayed al-Naggar, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and member of the Journalists Syndicate. “This is a major step backwards for freedom of the press and shows that the oppressive regime wants to retain control over all information circulating in the country.” The new law – which contradicts a 2004 promise by President Hosni Mubarak to abolish prison terms for press offences such as libel – allows for the imprisonment of offenders and augments monetary fines for so-called “publishing crimes.” It also forbids journalists from criticising the president of the republic, state bodies such as parliament and government ministries, and foreign heads of state.)

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1//The Dong-A Ilbo, South Korea July 10, 2006 03:03

SOUTH KOREA DIVIDED OVER MISSILE TEST

North Korea’s missiles are dividing South Korea from Seoul to Busan.

The South Korean government adheres to meetings with the North even after seven missiles that could reach everywhere on the Korean Peninsula and even beyond it were fired. Anti-American demonstrations that oppose a Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are intensifying. Moreover, anti-governmental demonstrations staged by conservative groups are getting louder and louder. In July 2006, South Korea is showing signs of slipping into a chaos of “South-South” conflicts.

Anti-American demonstrations in Seoul versus anti–North Korean demonstrations in Busan—

Starting July 10, the second round of negotiations for a Korea-U.S. FTA will be held in Seoul, while an inter-Korean general-level meeting is scheduled to be held in Busan starting July 11.

From July 10 to July 14, the timing for the negotiations, various demonstrations and propaganda campaigns in various parts of Seoul are scheduled, including ones that will be staged by the Korean Alliance against the Korea-U.S. FTA everyday in front of Shilla Hotel, the venue for meetings between Korean and U.S. negotiators. These demonstrations are expected to develop into fierce anti-American protests.

In particular, “the movement against the U.S. base extension in Pyeongtaek,” which has led anti-U.S. demonstrations, will participate in the protests, which means virulent slogans against the U.S. are likely to be heard during the protests.

Meanwhile, reports have it that conservative groups that are against North Korea and North Korean policies of this administration plan to stage a series of protests in Busan, backed by the public opinion which is against holding general-level talks with the North as scheduled from July 11 despite its missile tests.

All these scenes clearly reveal the conflicts between practical benefits and ideologies surrounding the two Koreas and the U.S. Some have pointed out that these conflicts are largely attributable to the current government’s inconsistency.

(SNIP)

There is a lot of talk going on about Cheong Wa Dae being responsible for the chaos in which this nation finds itself including fierce demonstrations of two different characteristics in Seoul and Busan. It has been pointed out that it is getting more and more difficult to draw public consensus on how to resolve the problem because Cheong Wa Dae keeps a soft stance toward the North’s missile fire, signaling that it does not care about the aggravating division among South Koreans. Je Seong-ho, a law professor at Chungang University, said, “Conflicts are being expanded and reproduced as the government continues to do politics aimed not at unifying the members of this nation, but at bringing about division among them, which, it hopes, will give the ruling party an edge in the upcoming presidential election.” He added, “However, the characteristics of the crisis that we find ourselves in make it all the more important for the government to heed and respect the opposing opinions in order to overcome conflicts.”

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2//The Times, UK July 10, 2006

ID CARD SCHEME IN DISARRAY
By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

The Government’s controversial identity card scheme is in jeopardy, with Whitehall officials accusing ministers of ignoring reality, according to leaked e-mails.

Officials are openly questioning whether the scheme can be tested and delivered by 2008 as promised. The e-mails also indicate that ministers are “rethinking” the scheme and that Tony Blair has plans for a “face- saving” compromise — an early variant or ID card lite — to meet the deadline.

Opposition parties and campaigners seized on the e-mails, which originated from an official close to the Treasury and leaked to The Sunday Times, as proof that the multimillion-pound project was in chaos.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “These are all the classic signs of a Whitehall IT project about to go disastrously wrong. These civil servants can see plainly what the Government refuses to accept. The Prime Minister’s obsession with this project will actually weaken our security and cost at least £20 billion.”

(MORE)

3//The Moscow Times, Russia Monday, July 10,2006. Issue 3499. Page 3.

DUMA ENDS SESSION WITH AN EYE ON ELECTIONS
By Francesca Mereu, Staff Writer

After approving a bill on extremist activity that critics say will help stifle the opposition ahead of national elections, State Duma deputies adjourned Saturday for summer vacation.

The final bill can be seen as a fitting conclusion to a spring session dominated by legislation that promises to help United Russia in next year's Duma elections and to secure a smooth handover of power to President Vladimir Putin's designated successor in 2008.

In all, deputies approved 144 bills during the spring session, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said Saturday. The session had been scheduled to end Friday, but it was extended by one day to allow deputies to vote on 52 bills in various readings. Of those bills, eight were approved in final readings, including the one on extremism.

United Russia, which has 310 of the Duma's 450 seats, rejected a proposal by Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent deputy, to delay the third reading of the bill on extremism until the fall and voted down dozens of revisions suggested by Communist deputies.

United Russia said the bill would help fight racist groups and increased attacks against dark-skinned foreigners and religious groups.

Opponents said that the existing law provided no definition of the word "extremist" and that the bill would help the Kremlin clear the field of unwanted candidates ahead of the Duma and presidential elections.

"You can put anything under the understanding of extremism, even different points of view," Ryzhkov said.

The bill would bar from elections not only candidates deemed extremist, but their parties, too.
Central Elections Commission head Alexander Veshnyakov called the bill undemocratic on Saturday and urged the deputies to vote against it.

"An entire party cannot be held responsible for one of its members. A party should be punished only if you find indications of extremism in its documents," he said.

"Democratic countries don't have such bills," he added.

The bill still needs to be approved by the Federation Council before Putin can sign it into law. It is expected to come into effect by Jan. 1.

Oleg Kovalyov, chairman of the Duma Management Committee and a United Russia deputy, said he was pleased with the Duma's work this spring. "It was a very intense session, during which we were able to approve bills that were very important for our country," he said.

Gennady Raikov, chairman of the Credentials and Ethics Commission, said United Russia's efforts had "borne fruit."

But the opposition complained that the pro-Kremlin majority had not given it any say.
"The Duma is working like in Soviet times, when we had a single party that made all the decisions," Rodina Deputy Boris Vinogradov said.

Communist Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin called United Russia the Kremlin's puppet. "The Kremlin asks and United Russia does," he said.

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4//The Independent, UK Published: 10 July 2006

A £6BN LONDON FLOTATION, A RUSSIAN OIL COMPANY – AND A QUESTION OF MORALS
By Michael Harrison, Executive Business Editor

This week the London Stock Exchange will play host to one of the biggest share sales on record. But the £6bn flotation of Rosneft, a state-owned Russian oil producer, will not only be huge, it will also be massively controversial.

Apart from the sheer size of Rosneft - it will have a stock market value of about £38bn - one other thing marks it out from other public listings. Critics of Rosneft, and they include the billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, claim the company has been built on assets stolen by the Kremlin from another set of shareholders.

Allowing Rosneft to list its shares here will therefore legitimise that act and undermine London's reputation as one of the world's leading financial centres.

The trickle of Russian companies seeking the respectability, kudos and access to capital that a London share listing brings may have turned into a flood. But the City has never seen anything quite like Rosneft. The allegation against the company is simply put: that its main subsidiary, an oil and gas business called Yuganskneftegaz, was illegally expropriated from another oil company called Yukos by the Russian government.

The Kremlin says Yuganskneftegaz was seized in lieu of unpaid taxes. Indeed, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos, now languishes in a Siberian concentration camp having been found guilty of tax fraud. But to many observers, inside and outside Moscow, Mr Khodorkovsky's crime was not to embezzle the Russian taxman but to challenge the political authority of President Vladimir Putin.

Imprisonment and the confiscation of his company is, say Mr Khodorkovsky's supporters, the price he is now paying. Rosneft's history has not stopped a bevy of the world's biggest investment banks agreeing to float the company and, in the process, share out $140m worth of advisory fees between them.

Nor has it prevented Rosneft's advisers aggressively marketing the company in the hope that they can persuade at least one big Western oil company to become a strategic investor. For days, the banks behind the float have been trying to persuade BP, Britain's biggest company, to take part. Indeed, stories are rife that it has agreed to place an order for shares; stories denied by the company. If it does decide to back the float, it would be a huge fillip for the Kremlin, providing Rosneft and its backers with the veneer of respectability they crave. Robert Amsterdam, Mr Khodorkovsky's lawyer, said it would also leave BP with "blood on its hands", because of the treatment meted out to his client.

So far, BP has kept its counsel, waiting to see whether other big oil companies choose to invest and whether the shares will be priced at a more realistic level.

Price does not concern Mr Soros. He has condemned the Rosneft flotation for raising "serious ethical and energy security issues". In a speech last week to the London School of Economics he said the float ought not to be allowed because Russia was becoming a monopoly supplier to excessively dependent Western economies.

His criticisms have been echoed in Russia by a former Putin adviser, Andrei Illarionov, who resigned last year over what he called the "swindle of the year". Last week, Mr Illarionov described the sale as "a crime against the Russian state and the Russian people. We are talking about the transfer of property from the state without any compensation. We will be witness to massive embezzlement."

He said the flotation would dwarf even the loans-for-shares scandals of the mid-1990s when many of Russia's present-day oligarchs benefited from prize assets being sold off to preferred bidders at bargain-basement prices. And other investors in New York and London, including Foreign and Colonial, have questioned the ethics.

This has not deterred four prominent banks and two of the UK's best-known legal and accountancy firms from lending their names to the offer. The joint global co-ordinators are ABN Amro Rothschild, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Linklaters are Rosneft's lawyers and accountancy advice is being provided by Ernst & Young.

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5//IRINnews.org (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ), NY Sunday 9 July 2006

EGYPT: OPPOSITION JOURNALISTS PROTEST PRESS LAW, URGE PUBLISHING BOYCOTT

CAIRO, 9 Jul 2006 (IRIN) - The ongoing battle over local press freedom came to a head Sunday when some 300 opposition journalists and their supporters gathered in front the parliament building in Cairo to protest a new press law, expected to be ratified Sunday. In solidarity with the journalists, 28 opposition and independent newspapers refused to publish their Sunday editions, saying the new law would only serve to erode press freedom further.

“This law kills journalism and protects the corrupt,” said Ahmed al-Sayed al-Naggar, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and member of the Journalists Syndicate. “This is a major step backwards for freedom of the press and shows that the oppressive regime wants to retain control over all information circulating in the country.”

The new law – which contradicts a 2004 promise by President Hosni Mubarak to abolish prison terms for press offences such as libel – allows for the imprisonment of offenders and augments monetary fines for so-called “publishing crimes.” It also forbids journalists from criticising the president of the republic, state bodies such as parliament and government ministries, and foreign heads of state.

It also limits the financial information that journalists can print about private individuals – a caveat many believe is designed to protect businessmen who profit from state corruption. “This law is for the benefit of certain individuals within the ruling regime or who have links to it,” said Ibrahim Mansour, managing editor of opposition weekly Al-Dustour and Journalists Syndicate board member.

Osama Faraya, however, editor-in-chief of government-run daily Al-Ahram, said that opposition journalists were over-reacting and described the new law as a “progressive” one. “Journalists have the right to publish any facts about corruption that they can confirm,” Faraya explained. “A journalist can publish documents, for example, but he can’t say the person involved is a crook until a legal judgement to that effect has been made in court.”

Faraya went on to say that the legislation aims to protect society from journalistic excesses. “Journalists can ask for a law that doesn’t allow imprisonment, but society has the right to protect itself,” he said.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of the political opposition asserts that the new law will serve to hinder the cause of political reform. “Many newspaper owners and editors will try to avoid paying fines,” said Mansour, which will have the effect of keeping journalists away from contentious subjects. “We can expect the law to bring the papers closer to the president and to many important businessmen,” he added.

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