Docudharma Times Friday August 15

The Russian Government

Is Paranoid

So Let’s Take Their Paranoia

To Higher Plane By

Installing Missiles In Countries Which Boarder Russia

Pakistani President Expected to Resign

Musharraf, Facing Impeachment, Likely To Step Down Within Days, Officials Say

By Candace Rondeaux and Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, August 15, 2008; Page A01

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 14 — Faced with mounting pressure from former political allies and dwindling support from his international backers, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, once a top U.S. ally, is expected to resign in the next few days, according to Pakistani officials.

A week after leaders of the ruling coalition said they planned to impeach Musharraf, the capital was abuzz with speculation that he would step down before formal impeachment charges are filed in Parliament on Monday

Bush Aides Say Russia Actions in Georgia Jeopardize Ties  



 By STEVEN LEE MYERS and THOM SHANKER

Published: August 14, 2008

WASHINGTON – Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush administration’s relationship with Moscow, senior officials said Thursday, forcing a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia and jeopardizing talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses.

The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration’s view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president turned prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend. Now Mr. Bush’s aides complain that Russian officials have been misleading or at least evasive about Russia’s intentions in Georgia.

USA

Anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins slipped under the radar because of FBI obsession

Records show agents overlooked a series of early clues pointing to Ivins as the source of the 2001 deadly anthrax mailings and that the investigation remained locked on a former Army researcher.

By David Willman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 15, 2008  

WASHINGTON — As federal authorities pursued the wrong suspect in the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, they ignored or overlooked a series of early clues that pointed to Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins, a review of investigative records by the Los Angeles Times shows.

Law enforcement documents unsealed by a federal judge last week, along with other materials reviewed by The Times, show that within a few months of the mailings, FBI leaders were positioned to know important details spotlighting Ivins, who killed himself last month and has now been identified as the government’s prime suspect.

The information available to investigators in those early months included:

GOP Loyalty Not a Given For Young Evangelicals



By Krissah Williams Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 15, 2008; Page A01

DULUTH, Ga. — Jonathan Merritt is a Baptist preacher’s son with a pristine evangelical lineage. It was his dad, the Rev. James Merritt, who reportedly brought President Bush to tears in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks when he called the president “God’s man for this hour.” The Rev. Jerry Falwell was like a grandfather.

“I grew up believing an evangelical couldn’t be a Democrat,” said Merritt, 25. “The two were mutually exclusive.”

But in the past year, as the presidential campaign has focused on the country’s problems, Merritt has begun to question the party of his father.

Asia

Indonesia: Aceh villagers face homelessness again – in name of tsunami aid from US government



Ian MacKinnon, south-east Asia correspondent

The Guardian,

Friday August 15 2008

Fishing families in Aceh who survived the 2004 tsunami that struck the northern tip of Indonesia and washed away every home in their village, and most of the land, face the prospect of seeing their community devastated a second time.

Months after new quake-proof homes on stilts were built, almost half could be torn down to make way for a coastal highway billed as the US government’s signature project for tsunami reconstruction.

Even as the 118 homes in the village of Kuala Bubon were being designed and built, plans were being laid for the road from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh, west Aceh, funded to the tune of £125m by USAid, the American government’s international relief and development agency.

Briton detained after Olympics protest



 By Rosamond Hutt, PA

Friday, 15 August 2008  

A Briton was detained by police at the Olympics today after unfurling a Free Tibet banner in protest at human rights abuses.

Philip Kirk, 24, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, and an Australian-Canadian climbed the distinctive China Central Television building in the capital Beijing to unfurl the banner.

Han Shan, Olympics campaign co-ordinator for campaign group Students for a Free Tibet, said the banner read Free Tibet in English and Chinese.

Three other protesters were also detained as they watched the climbers in action.

Europe

Poland missile shield deal adds to tension between East and West



 From The Times

August 15, 2008

Roger Boyes

The confrontation between Russia and the United States was set to deepen last night after Warsaw and Washington struck a deal to set up a missile shield on Polish territory.

Russia bitterly opposes the plan and Moscow responded immediately by cancelling a planned visit to Poland by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, scheduled for next month. The Poles are expecting other repercussions.

Under the terms of the agreement – which will not come into force until technical details have been settled and the whole package is presented to parliament – the Americans will establish a small, permanent garrison in Poland of about 110 men before the year 2012.

Porn claims outrage German Kafka scholars

· Briton savaged for book on seedy side of great writer

· Critics in turn accused of ‘conspiracy of censorship’

Kate Connolly in Berlin

The Guardian,

Friday August 15 2008

The German-speaking world of Kafka scholars hit out yesterday over a British academic’s claims that the writer had a penchant for hard porn.

James Hawes, a Kafka expert and novelist, claims in his book Excavating Kafka, published in Britain yesterday, that the writer was a subscriber to upmarket pornography. Furious German academics reacted by accusing Hawes of prudishness, sensationalism and even antisemitism.

“Hawes has given us a look through the keyhole of a Kafka with his trousers down … but to call the illustrated magazines he subscribed to as hardcore porn, is like comparing a poem by Heinrich Heine with an advertising slogan for McDonald’s,” wrote Anjana Shrivastava, a Kafka researcher on Spiegel Online, calling Hawes a “prude”. She said he had made himself a “preacher of hate” in the world of Kafka scholars.

Is freedom near for captive Israeli soldier?

Hamas says that Gilad Shalit could be released in a week, but terms of a deal with Israel keep shifting.

By Rafael D. Frankel  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 15, 2008 edition

GAZA CITY, Gaza –  More than two years after Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Gaza militants in a cross-border raid, he is being used more than ever as a pawn in the battle between Israel, Hamas, and Fatah over the future of the impoverished coastal strip.

On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the recent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that calmed fighting along Gaza’s border should be used to push for Mr. Shalit’s return. And the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar said a prisoner swap in exchange for Shalit, believed to be alive and held inside Gaza, could conclude within a week.

AP Exclusive: Hit squads training in Iran >



By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Iraqi Shiite assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran’s elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah and are planning to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources in Iraq.

A senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Baghdad described the information Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

The officer on Wednesday provided Iraq’s national security adviser with several lists of the assassination teams’ expected targets.

Africa

Archaeologists get a glimpse of life in a Sahara Eden

Scientists uncover skeletons thought to be as old as 10,000 years, when monsoon rains created a ‘green Sahara.’

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 15, 2008

The tiny skeletal hand jutted from the sand as if beckoning the living to the long dead.

For thousands of years, it had lain unheeded in the most desolate section of the Sahara, surrounded by the bones of hippos, giraffes and other creatures typically found in the jungle.

A chance discovery by a team of American scientists has led to the unearthing of a Stone Age cemetery that is providing the first glimpses of what life was like during the still-mysterious period when monsoons brought rain to the desert and created the “green Sahara.”

The more than 200 graves that have been explored so far indicate that, beginning 10,000 years ago, two populations lived on the shores of a massive lake, separated by a 1,000-year period during which the lake dried up.

Mauritania

A bad example?

Africa’s reaction to the continent’s latest coup is being carefully watched

NOUAKCHOTT

From The Economist print edition

AFTER a decent election last year, Mauritania was held up as a fine new democracy for Africa. Alas, no more. The latest military putsch, on August 6th, put failed and successful coups in the last three decades into double figures and prompted a flood of international criticism, including suspension of aid and of membership of the African Union (AU). But will such remonstrations make a jot of difference?

The hopeful part of the story goes back to 2005, when soldiers including Colonel Muhammad Ould Abdelaziz overthrew Maaouya Ould Taya, a nasty dictator who had been in power for two decades. For once, the soldiers kept their promise to organise fair elections. But Colonel Abdelaziz stayed close to the centre of power, first by persuading Sidi Muhammad Ould Cheikh Abdallahi to compete in the presidential election of 2007, which he won, and then by serving as the head of his presidential guard.

Latin America

Mexican gunmen kill drug patients

Gunmen have killed eight patients and injured six others in a drug rehabilitation centre in Mexico.

By Duncan Kennedy

BBC News, Mexico city  

The shootings are believed to be part of a drug gang feud in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.

The hooded gunmen, all wearing body armour, burst into the drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation centre, dragged the patients to the patio and shot them.

About 40 people have been killed in drug cartel-related violence in the city this week.

The gunmen stormed the centre on Wednesday night and ordered the patients onto the floor.