Docudharma Times Sunday September 14

Why Is IT So Difficult

To Hold People Accountable For Their Actions?

Hurricane Damage Is Extensive in Texas  



 By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JAMES C. MCKINLEY Jr.

Published: September 13, 2008  

HOUSTON – Hurricane Ike barreled across a wide swath of Texas on Saturday, deluging the city of Galveston with a wall of water, flooding coastal towns and leaving extensive damage across metropolitan Houston. With wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour, the 600-mile-wide Category 2 hurricane peeled sheets of steel off skyscrapers here, smashed bus shelters and blew out windows, sending shattered glass and debris across the nation’s fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million.

The storm came ashore on Galveston Island, which in 1900 suffered one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States.

‘It’s voter registration, stupid’ – the fight moves South

Small-town Virginia, once a backwater, has become a vital battleground. By Rupert Cornwell

  Sunday, 14 September 2008  

Last week was one Barack Obama will want to forget: more Sarah Palin, more depressing polls, and a deepening fear in the pit of Democrat stomachs that somehow they’re going to blow yet another presidential election. But as the campaign enters its final stretch, everything is still to play for across the handful of swing states that will decide the outcome – not least here in deepest Virginia.

Since the Republican convention and the triumphant unveiling of the lady from Alaska, everything has gone John McCain’s way. To be sure, Palin is a divisive figure. “To be honest, I can’t stand her,” one Obama supporter here said last week. But not only has she electrified the Republican base, in her persona as a no-nonsense all-American housewife, she has given her party a new lease of life among women voters. And as the fact-twisting Republican juggernaut rolls on, the Obama campaign, seemingly wanting to play by a nobler set of rules, appears incapable of hitting back.

USA

Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink

This is the first of two stories adapted from “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. Original source notes are denoted in [brackets] throughout.

 By Barton Gellman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page A01

A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president’s attorney was shouting.

“The president doesn’t want this! [1] You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!”

Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself.

Metrolink officials say trains crashed after their engineer drove through red light  

Federal transportation officials say it’s too early to determine what caused the crash that has killed at least 25 people and left 135 more injured, 40 of them critically.?

By Esmeralda Bermudez,, Kate Linthicum and Rich Connell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

September 14, 2008    

Metrolink officials said Saturday that a train engineer’s failure to heed a red light signal apparently caused the catastrophic head-on crash in Chatsworth on Friday afternoon that claimed at least 25 lives.

As rescuers continued the emotionally grueling work of extracting bodies from a tangled mountain of steel and dozens of families maintained vigils for the injured in hospital waiting rooms, Metrolink officials accepted responsibility for the worst Southern California train wreck in more than 50 years.

Asia

Shadow of Guantanamo follows freed inmates back to their homes  

After years in detention, Afghan returnees have bitter memories as they face new hardships. Jason Burke reports from Kabul

Jason Burke

The Observer,

Sunday September 14 2008

They call them the Bandi Guantánamo, the Guantánamo returnees, and their welcome home is far from warm. All across Afghanistan in recent months, scores of men have been coming back from a long journey halfway around the world. About 100 have been released from Guantánamo Bay by United States authorities in the last 12 months as Washington, under mounting pressure from governments around the world, attempts to moderate the damage done to America’s image by the Cuba-based detention centre. A third are Afghan and more are due to return in the coming weeks.

After more than five years in detention thousands of miles away, often traumatised, often angry, or just broken and poor, the Bandi Guantánamo try to build new lives, with limited success. Most claim innocence.

My brilliant Korea: Kim Jong Il’s weird world

The Dear Leader’s recent no-show sparked yet more odd tales about him

  By David McNeill

Sunday, 14 September 2008  

Even for the weird world of Kim Jong Il, it has been an eventful week. He was dead, then alive but felled by a stroke, or a heart attack; bedridden, unable to walk more than 30 yards; healthy as a horse, but fed up with speculation about his health. On Friday, South Korean sources reported that North Korea’s 66-year-old leader was suffering from “convulsions”. From across the Sea of Japan came the most alarming claim of all: the Dear Leader went to the Great People’s Republic in the Sky five years ago, and has been replaced by a double.

Sparked by Mr Kim’s no-show at the North’s 60th anniversary celebrations, the stories piled up like crash-test dummies, fuelled by “unnamed US intelligence officials”, while Pyongyang responded with its usual irritation, blaming Western “conspiracy theories”.

Europe

Mafia’s car-boot bread is ‘poisoning’ Naples



Tom Kington in Rome

The Observer,

Sunday September 14 2008

Not satisfied with control of the drug trade, building industry and rubbish collection in Naples, the local mafia is getting into the bakery trade and ensuring that Neapolitans rely on the mob for their daily bread.

According to a report released last week, city officials and investigators suspect Camorra clans are behind many of the 1,400 unlicensed backstreet bakeries in and around the city which supply hundreds of street vendors who sell loaves out of car boots – and they may be spreading into selling other basic food products.

Scores die in Russian plane crash  

A passenger plane has crashed near the central Russian city of Perm, killing all 88 people on board, officials say.

The BBC  

The Boeing-737, belonging to a branch of the national airline Aeroflot, was on a flight from Moscow.

At least 21 foreign passengers were on board. An investigation into the cause of the crash is under way.

Radio contact with the plane was lost as it was landing. The wreckage was later found outside Perm, which is located near the Ural mountains.

“The Boeing-737 carried 82 passengers on board, including seven children, and six crew… All passengers were killed,” Aeroflot said in a statement quoted by AFP news agency.

Middle East

Iraq: Violence is down – but not because of America’s ‘surge’  

If fewer US troops and Iraqis are being killed, it is only because the Shia community and Iran now dominate  

 By Patrick Cockburn

Sunday, 14 September 2008

As he leaves Iraq this week, the outgoing US commander, General David Petraeus, is sounding far less optimistic than the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, about the American situation in Iraq. General Petraeus says that it remains “fragile”, recent security gains are “not irreversible” and “this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade… it’s not a war with a simple slogan.”

Compare this with Sarah Palin’s belief that “victory in Iraq is wholly in sight” and her criticism of Barack Obama for not using the word “victory”. The Republican contenders have made these claims of success for the “surge” – the American reinforcements sent last year – although they are demonstrably contradicted by the fact that the US has to keep more troops, some 138,000, in Iraq today than beforehand.

‘Iron Lady’ Tzipi Livni set to be Israel’s new leader >

 

From The Sunday Times

September 14, 2008

Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv

ISRAEL’S foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has moved into a strong lead in the race to take over the governing party, putting her in line to become the country’s first woman prime minister since Golda Meir became the original “Iron Lady” nearly 40 years ago.

Polls put Livni 15 points ahead in the Kadima party’s leadership contest, in which voting takes place this week. She is expected to replace Ehud Olmert, the prime minister whose entanglement in corruption allegations led him to announce last week that he would resign once the new leader is elected.

Livni, 50, whose stylish appearance belies her tough outlook, is said to be regarded as a hardliner even by her husband.

Africa

Security is first test of Zimbabwe deal

The opposition wants British troops to help curb Mugabe’s ruthless army

From The Sunday Times

September 14, 2008

RW Johnson

A CALL for British troops to return to Zimbabwe and train its army will provide a crucial early test of whether an agreement to be signed tomorrow by President Robert Mugabe and his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai is a power-sharing deal or merely a fig-leaf for continued despotic rule.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Tsvangirai, who will become prime minister under the agreement, will demand the return of the British military advisory and training team, which trained Zimbabwe’s security forces after independence.

About 200 British troops were based in Zimbabwe from independence in 1980 until they were withdrawn after the seizure of white farms began in 2000.

Latin America

Move to tackle Bolivian turmoil  

Chile has called an emergency meeting of the Union of South American Nations to help resolve the crisis in Bolivia.

 

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said the meeting – on Monday – might help promote a democratic solution.

President Evo Morales imposed martial law in the northern region of Pando on Friday, after clashes between opponents and supporters of the government.

The crisis has arisen over a plan by the Bolivian president to hold a referendum on a new constitution.

The turmoil escalated when President Morales expelled the US ambassador from Bolivia, accusing him of stoking anti-government sentiment.

Protesters have attacked gas supplies to neighbouring Brazil and Argentina.