Docudharma Times Sunday Dec.30

This is an Open Thread: Cheese Burgers

Headlines For Sunday December 30: Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image: Sorting Truth From Campaign Fiction: Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in West: Far from case closed in Pakistan

Teenage son to take on Benazir Bhutto’s legacy

BENAZIR BHUTTO’S 19-year-old son Bilawal will be thrust into a dangerous spotlight today as Pakistan’s most powerful political dynasty prepares to pass the baton to the next generation.

Bilawal, a first-year undergraduate at Oxford University, is the heir to a blood-soaked legacy. He lost his mother to an assassin on Thursday; his uncles both died in suspicious circumstances; and his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 after being deposed from power.

Last night Britain’s foreign office confirmed that Benazir Bhutto met David Miliband, the foreign secretary, shortly before she returned to Pakistan from exile in October and warned him of a plot against her life. Bhutto and Miliband had spoken regularly on the telephone since that meeting and her concerns about her safety were passed on to the Pakistani authorities.

USA

Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image

WASHINGTON – If Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative of Al Qaeda, died in American hands, Central Intelligence Agency officers pursuing the terrorist group knew that much of the world would believe they had killed him.

So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his bandages changed, being interrogated.

In fact, current and former intelligence officials say, the agency’s every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived – by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.

Sorting Truth From Campaign Fiction

Mitt Romney says he “saw” his father “march” with Martin Luther King Jr. Rudolph W. Giuliani claims that he is one of the “five best-known Americans in the world.” According to John McCain, the Constitution established the United States as a “Christian nation.” Ron Paul believes that a “NAFTA superhighway” is being planned to link Mexico with Canada and undermine U.S. sovereignty.

On the other side of the political divide, Sen. Barack Obama says there are more young black males in prison than in college. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton claims she has a “definitive timetable” for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. John Edwards insists that NAFTA — the North American Free Trade Agreement — has cost Americans “millions of jobs.” Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. boasts about his experience negotiating an arms-control treaty with Leonid Brezhnev.

All those claims, made over the past four months as part of the presidential campaign, are demonstrably false.

Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in West

DURANGO, Colo. – In the San Juan National Forest here, an iron rod gate is the last barrier to the Weminuche Wilderness, a mountain redoubt above 10,000 feet where wheels are not allowed.

But the gate has been knocked down repeatedly, shot at and generally disregarded. Miles beyond it, a two-track trail has been punched into the wilderness by errant all-terrain-vehicle riders who have insisted on going their own way, on-trail or off.

From Colorado’s forests to Utah’s sandstone canyons and the evergreen mountains of Montana, federally owned lands are rapidly being transformed into the new playgrounds – and battlegrounds – of the American West.

Asia

Far from case closed in Pakistan

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/

Readers’ Rep

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — The circumstances of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination suggest either that Islamic militants based in Pakistan are able to act with near-total impunity or that elements within the government of President Pervez Musharraf have been complicit in attacks, or both, analysts and Western diplomats say.

The government’s version of events surrounding the attack Thursday that killed the popular former prime minister raises many more questions than it answers, these observers said. The nearly instantaneous naming of a culprit and eagerness to assert that Bhutto had not been shot left some observers troubled about the motives of a government that is a trusted ally in the Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

Japan PM urges China co-operation

Japan’s Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, has called for increased co-operation with China in the future, at the end of a four-day trip to the country.

Mr Fukuda said the neighbours could do more for the world by co-operating than each would achieve single-handedly.

Despite the remarks, earlier talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, and President Hu Jintao did not resolve a dispute over maritime gas fields.

Mr Fukuda’s visit to China was his first since taking office in September.

China refused high-level contact with Japan from 2001 to 2006 during the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi, after he made annual visits to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine.

Mr Fukuda has said he will not visit the shrine while he is in power and has called for Japan to be humble about its past.

Africa

Kenya’s Kibaki told to concede

Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga has called on President Mwai Kibaki to admit defeat in national elections and accused him of electoral fraud.

Mr Odinga called on Kenya’s Electoral Commission to carry out a full re-assessment of the results, which correspondents say could take days.

The count had already been halted while the country’s electoral commission reviewed dozens of disputed results.

The delays have sparked violence, amid reports that three people have died.

“I wish to appeal to President Mwai Kibaki to acknowledge and respect the will of the people of Kenya and honourably concede defeat,” Mr Odinga said.

Senegal brotherhood leader dies

The leader of Senegal’s richest and most powerful Islamic brotherhood has died in the city of Toube aged 92.

Serigne Saliou Mbacke was the fifth caliph of the Mouride brotherhood, as well as religious adviser to the Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade.

Mr Wade, who visited Toube to pay his respects to Mr Mbacke and his family on Friday, has declared three days of national mourning until Monday.

Mr Mbacke was son of the first caliph, who founded the brotherhood in 1883.

The new caliph, Mouhamadou Lamine Bara Mbacke, is the first grandson of Caliph Ahmadou Bamba Mbacke to become leader

Middle East

Bin Laden warns Iraq Sunnis not to fight

CAIRO, Egypt – Osama bin Laden warned Iraq’s Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror group’s holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening “blood for blood, destruction for destruction.”

Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida’s latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida’s Iraq branch on the run.

The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan’s government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.

Europe

Ex-detainee ‘linked to Al-Qaeda cleric’

A BRITISH resident freed from Guantanamo Bay has been accused by the Americans of having direct links to a radical preacher described as Al-Qaeda’s “spiritual ambassador” in Europe.

Omar Deghayes, 38, is alleged to have been “associated” with Abu Qatada and to have travelled to Afghanistan in 1999 after attending prayer meetings in London hosted by the cleric.

Libyan-born Deghayes and Qatada “each possessed the other’s contact information”, according to declassified Pentagon files, and are thought to have met at weekly prayers held at a community centre close to Regent’s Park mosque.

The new claim explains in part why the Spanish government is seeking the extradition of Deghayes and Jamil el-Banna, another British resident with links to Qatada.

Putin’s babes sex up Duma

VLADIMIR PUTIN has resorted to an age-old trick to capture the voters’ imagination: sexing up the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, with an array of glamorous new female recruits.

Ahead of this month’s rigged parliamentary elections, Putin was reported to have complained that there were not enough beautiful women in his United Russia party. The error was soon corrected with a platform of stunning ladies, including four former athletes who have starred in topless photoshoots and Svetlana Zakharova, the elegant principal ballerina of the Bolshoi.

Top debutante among the new Duma intake (already being described as “Putin’s babes”) is Svetlana Khorkina, 28, a leggy blonde who was a seven-time Olympic medal-winning gymnast. She caused a scandal when she appeared nude in Playboy magazine with her unashamed “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” approach.

“I changed people’s attitudes,” she said. “It’s very good to be sexy.”

Latin America

Plane crash girl talks of cheating death

WHEN Miguel Burac and his brother Manuel first reached the scattered wreckage high on the slopes of the Baru volcano, it never occurred to them that they might find a survivor. The four-seat Cessna 172 aircraft had lost a wing after flying into a tree and then smashed into pieces as it cartwheeled through the heavy jungle.

It seemed impossible that anyone might still be alive. Yet the Buracs and their two companions were hacking towards the wreckage with machetes when they heard a cry: “Help me.”

The locals in the western Panamanian city of David are calling it the Christmas miracle. It was at 4.30pm on Christmas Day, more than 52 hours after the Cessna was first reported missing, that the Buracs stumbled on Francesca “Frankie” Lewis, a 12- year-old Californian girl who was hanging in a foetal position in the plane’s crushed cabin, trapped by wreckage and fallen luggage.