Docudharma Times Saturday March 15

Grim-faced and forbidding,

Their faces closed tight,

An angular mass of new yorkers

Pacing in rhythm,

Saturday’s Headlines: Behind Bear Stearns Rescue Plan, a Wall St. Domino Theory: Inside the slave trade: Olympic year gives nationalists chance to intensify campaign: We will not let Mugabe be beaten, police and army chiefs warn: Nigerian deals ‘wasted billions’:  I fought for my land against the US. Now I fight alongside them: Iran polls vote count under way: Veto keeps Guatemala executions on hold:  Meet the new mob

Gunfire on the streets of Lhasa as rallies turn violent

Witnesses report killings and attacks on Chinese in fiercest protests for 20 years

China was struggling last night to bring Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, under control after the fiercest anti-government protests for 20 years led to rioting and gunfire on the streets yesterday.

Authorities ordered a curfew and deployed thousands of police officers around the city after a day of turmoil in which eyewitnesses reported hearing automatic gunfire, tanks were seen in the centre and armed police used water cannon and teargas as young Tibetans set security vehicles on fire and stoned Chinese residents.

A witness said Chinese drivers were carried from vehicles with bloodied faces after being beaten by angry youths.

USA

Behind Bear Stearns Rescue Plan, a Wall St. Domino Theory

The Federal Reserve’s unusual decision to provide emergency assistance to Bear Stearns underscores a long-building concern that one failure could spread across the financial system.

Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns conduct business with many individuals, corporations, financial companies, pension funds and hedge funds. They also do billions of dollars of business with each other every day, borrowing and lending securities at a dizzying pace and fueling the wheels of capitalism.

Barack Obama distances himself from pastor who denounced ‘racist’ US

Barack Obama was forced to distance himself yesterday from his former pastor and religious mentor, who has made racially charged criticisms of Hillary Clinton and suggested that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, showed that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”.

The black liberationist theology of the Rev Jeremiah Wright, who retired last month from the Chicago church attended by Mr Obama, has previously barely flickered as an issue in the presidential race.

In the past 48 hours, however, after a week in which both Democratic candidates have had to jettison supporters for making controversial statements, Mr Wright has emerged as a significant problem for Mr Obama.

Asia

Inside the slave trade

They are promised a better life. But every year, countless boys and girls in Bangladesh are spirited away to brothels where they have to prostitute themselves with no hope of freedom

Special investigation by Johann Hari

Saturday, 15 March 2008

This is the story of the 21st century’s trade in slave-children. My journey into their underworld took place where its alleys and brothels are most dense – Asia, where the United Nations calculates 1 million children are being traded every day. It took me to places I did not think existed, today, now. To a dungeon in the lawless Bangladeshi borderlands where children are padlocked and prison-barred in transit to Indian brothels; to an iron whore-house where grown women have spent their entire lives being raped; to a clinic that treat syphilitic 11-year-olds.

But this story begins like all these stories begin: with a girl, and a lie. Sufia comes to talk to me in a centre for children who have been rescued, funded by Comic Relief – which is having its major Sport Relief funding run this weekend. She has only ever talked about it to her counsellors here. But she wants the world to know what happened to her.

Olympic year gives nationalists chance to intensify campaign

For President Hu Jintao the violent clashes that rocked Lhasa yesterday must bring on a feeling of deja vu. The last time Tibet’s capital experienced such turmoil, in 1989, Hu was general secretary of the Tibetan communist party – the most powerful politician in the region.

Then, as now, security forces and Tibetan protesters clashed outside the Jokhang, the holiest Tibetan temple, rioters burned police cars outside the Potala palace and troops surrounded monasteries.

But it is the differences that may be more relevant in understanding why the protests are taking place today and how Hu might respond.

In 1989 the eyes of the world were distracted. It was a year of protest in which the Berlin Wall fell and the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. The clashes in Tibet were a small part of what seemed – in the west – a bigger, global story.

Africa

We will not let Mugabe be beaten, police and army chiefs warn

Zimbabwe’s police and army chiefs have said they will not allow Robert Mugabe to be defeated in this month’s presidential election by opposition candidates they deride as “puppets” and “sell-outs” to Britain.

The warning comes amid mounting evidence that Mugabe intends to try to repeat the rigging that he used to steal the 2002 election through intimidating rural voters, padding voters rolls and hindering opposition supporters from casting their ballots on March 29.

The police commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, said he would not recognise a victory by Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or by Mugabe’s former finance minister Simba Makoni, who appears to pose the greater threat to the president after breaking from the ruling Zanu-PF and taking some party members with him.

Nigerian deals ‘wasted billions’

Some $2.2bn-worth of Nigerian energy contracts were awarded without a bidding process by the former president and his energy minister, officials say.

One was to a company with less than $200 of base capital at the time, a witness told a parliamentary committee.

It is investigating why $16bn of investment in the energy sector during Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years in power failed to end power shortages.

Ex-President Abdulsalami Abubakar heads one of the firms, the committee heard.

He is chairman of Energo Nigeria Ltd, which received a $163m contract to build a power station by 2009.

Middle East

I fought for my land against the US. Now I fight alongside them

An Iraqi tells our correspondent of his long and violent journey to the side of the alliance forces

As a loyal officer under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi major never imagined that one day he would become an insurgent, but when Iraq fell five years ago he was left bitter, jobless and desperate to drive the invading forces out.

“I saw my country collapse right in front of my eyes,” said Abu Abdullah, who has since orchestrated countless attacks against the US military, spent time in the notorious Abu Ghraib detention centre and briefly joined forces with al-Qaeda.

Iran polls vote count under way

Vote counting is under way in Iran after parliamentary elections which conservatives are expected to win after many reformists were barred.

Partial results from 32 of the 290 seats at stake showed candidates allied to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad leading, the Associated Press reported.

Hardliners were set to win 19 seats, reformists eight and moderate conservatives five, the agency said.

Many candidates opposed to Mr Ahmadinejad were barred from standing.

An Iranian official claimed that turnout had been as high as 65%, the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran reports.

Latin America

Veto keeps Guatemala executions on hold

GUATEMALA CITY – Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom on Friday vetoed a bill that would have reinstated capital punishment and given the president the power to commute death penalty sentences.

There are 34 prisoners in limbo on death row after a high court in 2002 suspended executions, ruling that presidential reprieves on death penalty cases were unconstitutional.

The vetoed measure, approved overwhelmingly in February by lawmakers, would have given Colom the authority to decide whether the prisoners in question are executed by lethal injection or have their sentences commuted to the maximum 50 years in prison.

Mass grave unearthed in midst of Mexico’s drug war

The remains of 33 people are found in a shallow grave on an abandoned property in the border town of Ciudad Juarez.

MEXICO CITY — Authorities in Ciudad Juarez said Friday that they had uncovered the remains of 33 people buried in the yard of an abandoned property, a mass grave believed to be linked to the city’s violent drug trade.

The grisly discovery surfaced as part of a recent government crackdown on narcotics traffickers in this city across the border from El Paso that has been gripped by a spasm of drug-related killing unseen in years. Authorities said the Juarez drug cartel might be involved in the deaths.

Europe

Meet the new mob

In one of two exclusive extracts from his book on organised crime, a leading writer reveals how the fall of the USSR spawned a new mafia, which is alive and well and working in the UK

At 9pm on April 30 1994, a man emerged from his red Toyota outside a house in Willow Way, Woking. Carrying a flat blue and white box, he strolled up to the front door and tapped on it. Inside, Karen Reed, a 33-year-old geophysicist, was enjoying a glass of wine with a friend when they heard the man’s muffled voice through the window. “Have you ordered a pizza?” he inquired. Karen opened the door, whereupon the pizza man drew a .38 pistol and shot her several times in the head. The killer then ran back to the car and drove off.

Karen Reed was not the intended victim. There was a reason for the murderer’s confusion, however. His real target was Karen’s sister, Alison Ponting, a producer at the BBC World Service who was living with Karen at the time but happened to be out that evening. The killing had probably been carried out at the instigation of Dzhokhar Dudayev, then president of the republic of Chechnya.