Docudharma Times Sunday Oct. 28

This is an Open Thread: Don’t Be Shy.

USA

Father gains sense of son’s last moments in Iraq

By James Ricci

Los Angeles Times

Darrell Griffin Sr. has gotten down to work on his final collaboration with his son and namesake.

The book taking shape is a compendium. It will blend an account of a father’s melancholy journey to Iraq with the dire experiences and searching meditations of a son, the latter written down by Darrell Griffin Jr. before a Sadr City sniper’s bullet pierced the back of his head in March.

Darrell Jr. was a Fort Lewis-based Army infantry staff sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches of muscled warrior. Married, with no children, he had been an emergency medical technician in Compton, Calif., before finding his life’s work as a soldier.

Feds Strike ID Deal Over NY Licenses

The Bush administration and New York cut a deal Saturday to create a new generation of super-secure driver’s licenses for U.S. citizens, but also allow illegal immigrants to get a version.

New York is the fourth state to reach an agreement on federally approved secure licenses, after Arizona, Vermont and Washington. The issue is pressing for border states, where new and tighter rules are soon to go into effect for crossings.

Calif. firefighters work to hold gains

LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. – Firefighters Sunday hoped to hold on to the strong gains they made against Southern California blazes, despite a forecast of warmer, drier weather and a continuing threat to some homes.

The blistering Santa Ana winds that whipped fires over more than a half-million acres earlier in the week were replaced by light breezes and even some rain on Saturday but another change in direction was expected to bring drier weather to Orange and San Diego counties.

Child sweatshop shame threatens Gap’s ethical image

Amitosh concentrates as he pulls the loops of thread through tiny plastic beads and sequins on the toddler’s blouse he is making. Dripping with sweat, his hair is thinly coated in dust. In Hindi his name means ‘happiness’. The hand-embroidered garment on which his tiny needle is working bears the distinctive logo of international fashion chain Gap. Amitosh is 10.

The hardships that blight his young life, exposed by an undercover Observer investigation in the back streets of New Delhi, reveal a tragic consequence of the West’s demand for cheap clothing. It exposes how, despite Gap’s rigorous social audit systems launched in 2004 to weed out child labour in its production processes, the system is being abused by unscrupulous subcontractors. The result is that children, in this case working in conditions close to slavery, appear to still be making some of its clothes.

Middle East

A haven for Kurdish rebels who await the Turks

By Asso Ahmed, Special to The Times

October 28, 2007

MARDU, IRAQ — It is a land of resistance, the mountain peaks and winding valleys where Iraq’s Kurds battled Saddam Hussein for decades. Now another generation of guerrillas is bunkered down waving the flag of Kurdish nationalism in the Qandil mountains, this time in a fight against Turkey.

Iraqi Kurds and members of the Turkish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, live together in this vast mountain range that straddles Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The haven provided to the Turkish Kurd rebels here infuriates the Turkish government in Ankara, which has been locked in an intense conflict with the Kurdish separatist movement that has cost thousands of lives since the 1980s.

Turkey: We will make Kurd rebels grieve

ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey’s top military commander promised Saturday to make Iraq-based Kurdish rebels “grieve with an intensity that they cannot imagine,” while the prime minister said his nation would fight “when needed,” regardless of international pressure.

The military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, said Friday that Turkey would wait until Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with President Bush in Washington on Nov. 5 before deciding on any cross-border offensive.

But Erdogan said his country could not be pinned down by dates in deciding whether to attack.

Explosive charge blows up in US’s face

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON – When the United States military command accused the Iranian Quds Force in January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years, a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows.

The record also shows that the US command had considerable evidence that the Mahdi Army of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

had received the technology and the training on how to use it from Hezbollah, rather than Iran.

Asia

Inside rebel Pakistan cleric’s domain

SWAT, Pakistan – Long-haired militants with assault rifles and walkie-talkies guard the approach to the stronghold of Maulana Fazlullah, the radical cleric whose mission to spread fundamentalist Islam has provoked a bloody showdown with Pakistan’s government.

Beyond the checkpoint, down a narrow track winding through orchards and by the clear blue waters of the Swat River, an Associated Press reporter was granted access to a sprawling seminary beyond state control, behind the new front line in Pakistan’s faltering campaign against Islamic extremists.

Hu’s ‘olive branch’ breaks in Taiwan

By Ting-I Tsai

TAIPEI – At the height of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in May 2003, China’s former representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Sha Zukang, was asked by Taiwanese reporters why China had again blocked Taiwan’s bid to join the World Health Organization as an observer.

“Who cares about you?” he responded, putting a final exclamation point on another diplomatic victory for Beijing.

But four years later, China might be finding that its hardline policy has had negative consequences.

Asia-Pacific

We said our brave son was invincible

THE father of Matthew Locke, the Special Air Services soldier who was killed in action in Afghanistan, left his NSW property last night to make the long journey to Perth to comfort the dead soldier’s wife and son.

Norm Locke will wait with his daughter-in-law Leigh Ann and 12-year-old grandson Keegan at Perth for the arrival of Sergeant Locke’s body.

The soldier died after being shot in the chest in a firefight with Taliban extremists in Oruzgan province on Thursday. He was the second Australian casualty this month. A roadside bomb killed trooper David Pearce on October 8.

Europe

Ukraine reburies Stalin’s victims

Ukrainian authorities have reburied near the capital, Kiev, the bodies of some 2,000 people killed by the Soviet secret police more than 60 years ago.

Relatives of the victims watched as red coffins were lowered into graves and blessed by a priest at the ceremony.

War shame ended by plea of a daughter

Henry McDonald, Ireland Correspondent

Sunday October 28, 2007

The Observer

The tears and testimony of a 93-year-old woman whose father was shot for cowardice during the First World War led to a pardon for him and other soldiers, a new book reveals.

In October 1916 Irish-born Private Harry Farr was executed for cowardice while serving with the West Yorkshire regiment. Ninety years later an emotional encounter between his daughter, Gertie Harris, and a British government minister started the process of overturning decades of Ministry of Defence policy.

Latin America

Briefing: Wife of Argentine president on course for election victory

Voters today are likely to let the Kirchners keep the top job in the family

By David Usborne

Published: 28 October 2007

Argentina goes to the polls today and, barring an unexpected revolt, voters are likely to choose the wife of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner as his successor. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is already being compared to another female icon of Buenos Aires, Evita Peron. Oh, yes, and to Hillary Clinton, too.

Is there something fishy about President Kirchner hand-picking his wife to succeed him?