Docudharma Times Sunday Nov. 11

This is an Open Thread: There are no fees for speaking

Todays Headlines, Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray, Vietnam Memorial Turns 25, Southern California’s new homes lining up in fires’ path, Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned

USA

Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 – As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand – Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

Vietnam Memorial Turns 25

Thousands of graying Vietnam veterans, many clad in jungle boots and old fatigues, marched down Constitution Avenue yesterday to mark the 25th anniversary of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and to pay tribute to the more than 58,000 war dead enshrined on the Wall.

Their numbers thinned by age, their marching cadence uneven, the men and women who served in the war paraded to the rousing music of Sousa and the calls of “Thank you!” and “Welcome home!” and “Hoo-Ah!” from the crowds lining the sidewalk.

Southern California’s new homes lining up in fires’ path

By Sharon Bernstein, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

November 11, 2007

Much of the new development in Los Angeles and Orange counties is occurring on land the state says is at high risk for wildfires, according to records and interviews.

With little raw land available in flat areas, builders are planning huge tracts of homes on or just below the rough hillsides that fringe the region’s metropolitan areas.

Hillside living is popular with home buyers because of the sweeping views, country feel and proximity to nature. But with their tall brush and trees, and steep terrain that can act as a wind tunnel to speed along a blaze, these are the very areas likely to burn.

A symbol of how the suburban building boom has stretched to meet the fire danger can be found off Plum Canyon Road near Canyon Country, where last month’s fires blackened land being graded for new homes. The fire left the distorted remains of water sprinklers coated with ash and dirt.

Asia

Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, November 11, 2007; Page A01

When the United States learned in 2001 that Pakistani scientists had shared nuclear secrets with members of al-Qaeda, an alarmed Bush administration responded with tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment such as intrusion detectors and ID systems to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

But Pakistan remained suspicious of U.S. aims and declined to give U.S. experts direct access to the half-dozen or so bunkers where the components of its arsenal of about 50 nuclear weapons are stored. For the officials in Washington now monitoring Pakistan’s deepening political crisis, the experience offered both reassurance and grounds for concern.

Japan’s welcome mat getting prickly

TOKYO — The kind of greeting a foreigner receives at immigration upon arrival at an international airport can be a good, if imperfect, indication of the country that waits on the other side of the barrier.

London’s Heathrow? Long queues and lousy service.

New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International? Crumbling infrastructure and over-the-top bureaucracy.

Some Middle Eastern airports? Slow-moving lines that can be circumvented with the right connections and cash.

Now the Japanese government has created new immigration procedures for foreign visitors — rules that critics say are all too revealing about official attitudes toward foreigners.

Middle East

Bloody rivalry between Iraqi insurgents

BAGHDAD — The offer was simple. The Islamic Army must hand over its weapons to a rival Sunni insurgent group led by Al Qaeda in Iraq. It had one week to surrender.

The deadline passed and then the war began in Samarra.

Islamic Army member Abu Ibrahim remembers the fateful meeting in September, and the recriminations between his group and the umbrella group Islamic State of Iraq, which ended years of collaboration in a city that had proved impossible for the Americans to tame

Packed classes hint at peace in battered Iraq

The pupils who had been too scared to attend class are now returning. It’s one small sign that Iraqis are eager for a return to normality – and that the ‘tipping point’ might not be far away

David Smith in Baghdad

Sunday November 11, 2007

The Observer

It begins and ends with the children. They stayed away from the al- Gazaly school in southern Baghdad when the streets were murderous – their parents moved out and their PE teacher was shot dead during the mundane act of having a haircut. Now, one by one, cautiously, determinedly, noisily, they are returning to their desks, bringing the school back from the brink. Their hopeful faces reflect, perhaps, the new and fragile optimism dawning in Iraq.

Europe

Georgian tycoon ‘to contest poll’

Exiled tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili has said he will run in snap presidential elections called to quell an escalating crisis in Georgia.

Mr Patarkatsishvili – whom authorities accuse of plotting a coup – called the government “completely discredited”.

His pledge came after government and opposition leaders met in Tbilisi for the first time since police broke up violent protests there on Wednesday.

Lawyers stop Meredith coffin return

As the murdered student’s body is held at the airport while defence teams demand more tests, Tom Kington in Perugia and Charlotte Franklin in Seattle report on the emergence of a possible fourth suspect

Lawyers representing one of the suspects held in Italy for the sexual assault and murder of exchange student Meredith Kercher were yesterday seeking to prevent her body being returned to Britain for the funeral.

Latin America

Spanish king tells Chavez to ‘shut up’

SANTIAGO, Chile – The king of Spain told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to “shut up” Saturday during a heated exchange that soured the end of a summit of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

Chavez, who called President Bush the “devil” on the floor of the United Nations last year, triggered the exchange by repeatedly referring to former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar as a “fascist.”

Argentines in pulp mill protest

Tens of thousands of Argentines have marched to the Uruguayan border in one of the biggest protests so far against a controversial pulp paper mill.

They have been demonstrating against the construction of the factory for more than two years, saying it will pollute the environment.

Africa

Bomb wounds several in Algerian village

MAATKAS, Algeria (Reuters) – A car bomb badly damaged a police station in a village east of Algiers on Saturday evening, wounding several people, residents said.

“The explosion was shocking. It was about 8 to 8.30 p.m. (2 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST) and I thought the village had been destroyed,” said Aziz Rahmaniya, 22, a resident of Maatkas, a village 80 km (50 miles) east of Algiers in the Kabylie region.

The police station in the village of several thousand people appeared to be almost totally ruined.

More than a game: how football beat apartheid on Robben Island

A new film tells how jailed ANC leaders kept their discipline by following sport’s rules to the letter

Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent

Sunday November 11, 2007

The Observer

It was a moment with an emotional and historic charge. This summer Nelson Mandela returned to Robben Island, where he was imprisoned for 18 years, to mark his 89th birthday and watch a remarkable sporting organisation being honoured for the part it once played in helping his fellow inmates to survive.