Docudharma Times Saturday July 26

He’s Not Sure

If He

Agrees With

This Policy Or

Not

Maybe What

Day It Is

Makes A Difference

Meet Cuba’s best-known Generation Y blogger

Yoani Sanchez won the Spanish equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, but her government wouldn’t allow her to leave the country to receive it.

By Sara Miller Llana

from the July 25, 2008 edition

Havana –  Blogger Yoani Sanchez had just found out that she had won an 2008 Ortega y Gasset award – essentially the Pulitzer prize of Spanish journalism – and she was nervous. Would Cuban officials give her the exit visa to fly to Madrid and accept the prize for digital journalism?

At a cafe in Havana, as she talked about the origins of her blog and the risks she takes chronicling daily life in Cuba, she seemed distracted. No wonder; at that moment her husband was standing in a line at a government office seeking instructions on the proper visa protocol.

Ms. Sanchez’s no-nonsense – and often contentious – slices of life that she posts on her blog Generación Y (www.desdecuba.com/generationy/) have suddenly catapulted her into the world spotlight.

AIDS Funding Binds Longevity of Millions to U.S.

pen-Ended Commitment of Money Is Implied

By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, July 26, 2008; Page A01

President Bush plans to sign a bill next week that commits the United States to spending about $40 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS overseas, a major expansion of what many consider his most successful foreign policy initiative.

The legislation also extends an implicit pledge that has little precedent in the history of U.S. foreign assistance: to continue purchasing lifesaving drugs for millions of individual people in developing indefinite period of time. countries for an indefinite period of time.

USA

California Bars Restaurant Use of Trans Fats



By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: July 26, 2008

LOS ANGELES – California, a national trendsetter in all matters edible, became the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Friday to phase out their use.

Under the new law, trans fats, long linked to health problems, must be excised from restaurant products beginning in 2010, and from all retail baked goods by 2011. Packaged foods will be exempt.

New York City adopted a similar ban in 2006 – it became fully effective on July 1 – and Philadelphia, Stamford, Conn., and Montgomery County, Md., have done so as well.

McCain sharpens attack on Obama

Says Democrat tried to ‘legislate’ defeat in Iraq Seeks to draw attention from his rival’s trip

By Michael Kranish

Globe Staff / July 26, 2008  

WASHINGTON – After days of responding to Senator Barack Obama’s overseas tour with off-the-cuff jabs, Senator John McCain yesterday tried a new tactic, delivering a detailed argument accusing his Democratic opponent of favoring an Iraq policy that would have had American troops “retreat under fire.”

Obama not only opposed the “surge” of 30,000 troops last year that has lessened the violence in Iraq, McCain said, “but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn’t just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it.”

And that defeat, the presumptive Republican nominee suggested, would have left America “humiliated and weakened” and could have led to genocide in Iraq and a wider war in the Middle East.

Europe

Serbia: Radovan Karadzic arrest bolsters pro-western president

· Tadic gaining control over security forces

· Ultra-nationalists linked to killings and trafficking

Julian Borger in Belgrade

The Guardian,

Saturday July 26 2008

The arrest of Radovan Karadzic could mark the turning point in a protracted struggle by President Boris Tadic and a new generation of pro-western modernisers to gain control over Serbia’s notorious security forces and point the country westwards.

That struggle is far from over. There are many secret servicemen left with ultra-nationalist links who are nostalgic for the days of Greater Serbia. But the seizure of the Bosnian Serb leader last week showed that Tadic is now in a commanding position after a victory for his supporters in parliamentary elections in May.

The Sarajevo legacy

Joy at Karadzic arrest gives way to the realisation that he succeeded in ethnic carve-up of Bosnia

By Peter Popham

Saturday, 26 July 2008

The jubilation of the people of Sarajevo at the capture of Radovan Karadzic, the man they blame for the bloody siege which pinned down their city for 44 months and cost 10,000 lives, has slowly evaporated during an extraordinary week of revelations. What was left yesterday was a coming to terms with the bitter fact that much of what the former Bosnian-Serb leader stood for has already come to pass.

“I didn’t feel much jubilation,” admitted Senad Slatina, a political analyst in the city. “Some of the young people say it’s a good thing but for me it’s so overdue that it’s almost irrelevant. Karadzic is no longer on the scene, but his ideas and his life work are almost on the verge of becoming reality.”

Middle East

Poverty pushing people into Hamas militia



By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Saturday, 26 July 2008

The Hamas de facto government is one of the only employers in Gaza with a growing payroll, after a record slump resulting from the Israeli blockade imposed when the Islamic faction took control a year ago.

This emerges from a new UN report showing that more than an unprecedented 52 per cent of Gaza households have now plunged below the internationally-designated poverty line despite continued humanitarian assistance, while unemployment has reached 45 per cent for the first time.

Little expat sympathy for Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors, Dubai’s ‘sex on the beach’ pair



From The Times

July 26, 2008

Sonia Verma in Dubai

Friday brunch at Yalumba restaurant is a boozy affair, with an open buffet featuring everything from the finest local lobster to chilled bottles of Taittinger champagne – all you can eat and drink for about £60.

The venue offers a snapshot of one of the many contradictions of living in Dubai: for native Muslims Friday is the holiest day of the week, reserved for family and prayer. For expatriates it is often a day of excess.

Africa

‘Sudanese planes bombed village as President undertook Darfur peace mission’

Three die, eight injured in attack, former rebels claim

From The Times

July 26, 2008

Rob Crilly in Khartoum

Government planes were bombing Darfur even as the Sudanese President toured the war-torn desert region on a mission of peace, sources in a former rebel movement said yesterday.

A commander with a government-allied faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement said that three people died when a village was attacked in North Darfur on Wednesday.

At about the same time, President al-Bashir was playing the role of peacemaker, addressing 10,000 people in El Fasher, the regional capital. He promised understanding and investment.

Elections push democracy in Africa to doorstep of death



Story by GITAU GIKONYO

Publication Date: 7/26/2008

Saturday Nation

There is a saying among my kinsmen to the effect that “what it sires is what it breastfeeds”. The reference in this case is to animals and they seem to have no choice. Thus should a cow give birth to a hen, then it will breast feed it. But we humans have a choice and if, for instance, a woman heavy with child, knew that she would give birth to Lucifer himself, she can terminate the pregnancy.

December 27, 2008,  was the due date for our country and our experiences thereafter are the ensuing results of what we gave birth to. We had a choice and we opted for a coalition government.

Zimbabweans have followed suit after Robert Mugabe ran an election against himself and won. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has  embraced Mugabe and termed his agreement to begin peace talks with Mugabe as “historic”. What a misuse of a good word. He sees it as a great opportunity for peace and possible continuance of governance in Zimbabwe.

Asia

Taliban exploit sectarian rift in siege of Shiites in Pakistan enclave





By Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah

Published: July 26, 2008



PESHAWAR, Pakistan: It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the American-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the cold war.

Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban has inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege.

The Taliban, which have solidified control across Pakistan’s tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds to attack American soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 66-pound bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.

Indian Government Expected to Revive Economic Reform After Confidence Vote

The Indian government is expected to revive an economic reform agenda following its victory in a confidence vote earlier this week. Anjana Pasricha has a report from New Delhi.

By Anjana Pasricha

New Delhi

When the Congress-led coalition government came to power four years ago, it promised to open the economy in sectors such as insurance, banking and retail. But communist allies stalled those plans.

But since left parties parted ways with the government, hopes have risen that the country’s economic reform agenda will get a new lease on life.  

The government, which survived a confidence vote earlier this week with the help of new political partners, has already promised to carry forward the reform process.

Latin America

Cuba’s youth: restless but not often political

They just want the freedom to travel and access to the tech touchstones of their generation: iPods, Facebook, and text messages.

By Sara Miller Llana and Matthew Clark  | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor  

Havana –  The posters in Bian Rodriguez’s tiny room are the same that would adorn the walls of any college student’s dorm. Bob Marley vies for space with US rappers Tupac and Busta Rhymes. The visage of leftist guerrilla icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara sizes up visitors from all angles.

“Che is … the ideal man,” says the tattooed 23-year-old hip-hop artist. “He never let people down. He did what he said.”

But in song and conversation, Mr. Rodriguez is sharply critical of Che’s comrade, the father of Communist Cuba, Fidel Castro – and his successor Raúl Castro.