Docudharma Times Thursday September 4

Without Community Organizers

There Would Be No Community

Palin Assails Critics and Electrifies Party



By ELISABETH BUMILLER and MICHAEL COOPER

Published: September 4, 2008  

ST. PAUL – Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska introduced herself to America before a roaring crowd at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night as “just your average hockey mom” who was as qualified as the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, to be president of the United States.

An hour later Senator John McCain, a scrappy, rebellious former prisoner of war in Vietnam whose campaign was resurrected from near-death a year ago, was nominated by the Republican Party to be the 44th president of the United States after asking the cheering delegates, “Do you think we made the right choice” in picking Ms. Palin as the vice-presidential nominee?

Pakistan reacts with fury after up to 20 die in ‘American’ attack on its soil

· Children reported dead in assault near Taliban base

· Raid was gross violation, says foreign ministry?

Simon Tisdall and Saeed Shah in Islamabad

The Guardian,

Thursday September 4 2008

The war in Afghanistan spilled over on to Pakistani territory for the first time yesterday when heavily armed commandos, believed to be US Special Forces, landed by helicopter and attacked three houses in a village close to a known Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold.

The surprise attack on Jala Khel was launched in early morning darkness and killed between seven and 20 people, according to a range of reports from the remote Angoor Adda region of South Waziristan. The village is situated less than one mile from the Afghan border.

Local residents were quoted as saying that most of the dead were civilians and included women and children. It was not known whether any Taliban or al-Qaida militants or western forces were among the dead.

USA

New Orleans gets its people back

Roadblocks are lifted and residents stream back into many neighborhoods. Power service remains spotty. Mayor C. Ray Nagin says he’s concerned that it’s too soon.

 By Richard Fausset and David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

1NEW ORLEANS — It was people this time, not water, that poured into the streets of the storm-tossed city.

On Wednesday morning, police removed the roadblocks that had kept evacuees out of metro New Orleans. Thousands who had fled streamed back home, with wailing children in back seats and empty gas cans strapped to the tops of cars. They returned to a quiet city of fallen trees, spotty electric service, a fragile sewer system, and shuttered grocery stores and gas stations.0:43 PM PDT, September 3, 2008

But at least it was mostly dry.

“I’m more than happy to be back — I’m delighted, and relieved too,” said Esther Padilla, 74, a widow who lives alone in a brick ranch home in the Lakeview area. Her house was inundated three years ago when the 17th Avenue levee ruptured. This time it was fine, save for some debris in the yard, which she promptly set to cleaning up.

The evacuees’ return to New Orleans has proven to be trickier than their departure, which was widely praised as a model of thoughtful government planning. On Tuesday, many of those residents fumed as they waited at police checkpoints.

Radiation Detector Plan Falls Short, Audit Shows

?Concerns About Cost and Effectiveness Could Curtail Program

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 4, 2008; Page D01  

An ambitious Bush administration program to use new technology to stop radioactive materials from being smuggled into the country has fallen far short of its aims and will likely be sharply curtailed, according to an audit report obtained by The Washington Post.

The project, involving three contractors, has been embroiled in allegations that the department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office misled Congress about the testing, cost and effectiveness of the machines. Budget documents this year showed the cost to put the monitors at borders and ports would be far higher than the detection office originally estimated.

Europe

 Rival Cypriot leaders upbeat as they start reunification talks

· Historic turning point for Greek and Turkish sectors

· Leftwing politicians’ friendship raises hopes

Helena Smith in Nicosia

The Guardian,

Thursday September 4 2008

Two men believed to hold the key to peace on Cyprus yesterday launched long-awaited reunification talks, a historic turning point for a country divided by war for the past 34 years. Meeting in the UN-patrolled “dead zone” that divides the capital, Nicosia, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, offered the best hope yet of a breakthrough, saying they aimed to reach a settlement “as soon as possible”.

“There is a common will, a common desire,” said Christofias, whose election last February as Cyprus’s sixth president injected new momentum into the quest to end the island’s division.

US commits $1bn in aid to Georgia



 AP

Thursday, 4 September 2008

The US government committed $1bn (£562m) to help Georgia ally recover from war with Russia.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, visiting Azerbaijan, said the United States has a “deep and abiding interest” in the region’s stability. Cheney is due in Georgia today on a swing through potentially vulnerable former Soviet republics close by Russia’s underbelly.

Meanwhile a US Navy flagship sailed toward Georgia with a cargo of humanitarian aid, ignoring Moscow’s complaints.

Africa

Mugabe gives deal deadline to MDC

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has said the opposition MDC has until Thursday to agree a power-sharing deal, or he will form a government.

The BBC  

“We feel frozen at the moment [without a government],” he told state media.

The MDC has rejected the ultimatum and says it will not be “bullied” into signing a deal.

Both Mr Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai say they won elections earlier this year. The MDC says it was subjected to state-sponsored violence.

At talks mediated by South Africa the two rivals agreed that Mr Tsvangirai would be named prime minister while Mr Mugabe remained president, but they cannot agree on how to share powers.

Rice to Welcome Qaddafi to War on Terror as Business Ties Grow  



By Viola Gienger

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg)

Enlarge Image/Details

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to travel to North Africa tomorrow to welcome an unlikely ally to the U.S. fight against terrorism: Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.

For most of Qaddafi’s 39 years in power, the U.S. listed Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and banned American companies from doing business there.

Now the country is sharing intelligence with the U.S. about the North African activities of al-Qaeda, the Islamic militants behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Asia

Thai PM refuses to quit as crisis drags on

 

Reuters

Thu Sep 4, 2008

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

 Defiant Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej refused to quit as his opponents vowed on Thursday to keep up a street campaign to unseat him, setting the scene for more political uncertainty.

Speaking on national radio amid widespread speculation that he would resign, Samak also dismissed talk that he would call a snap election to defuse the protests.

“I will not jump ship, I will be in control,” he said in a 50-minute address.

“I can tell you I will not quit. I will not dissolve parliament. I will stay to protect democracy.”

North Korea to become world’s largest recipient of U.N. food aid >

To avert a famine, more aid is needed. Half of all families eat only two meals a day, says new WFP assessment.

By Peter Ford  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 4, 2008 edition

Beijing –  North Korea needs a half a billion dollars’ worth of emergency food aid to avert a famine, a United Nations official warned this week.

Increasing numbers of North Koreans are now foraging for wild foods, creating “an urgent need” for donations to the UN World Food Program’s aid plan, said WFP regional director Tony Banbury.

“It is not a famine, and we are intent on ensuring that it doesn’t turn into one,” added Mr. Banbury, who has just ended a week’s visit to the reclusive country.

Banbury blamed an estimated 20 percent shortfall in food supplies on several factors, including floods last year, less aid from China (down sharply in the past two years due to new restrictions on grain exports generally), and South Korea’s suspension of food and fertilizer shipments this year. South Korea’s President Lee Myung Bak, who took office in February, has vowed to take a harder line against his country’s northern neighbor.

Middle East

Will summer fun foil Gaza’s extremism?

The United Nations ran summer camps for more than 250,000 Palestinian children in a bid to combat militancy that often takes root at a young age in Gaza.  

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

from the September 4, 2008 edition

AlShati Refugee Camp, Gaza –  Walid Sharif just executed a near-flawless somersault on the trampoline. Then, with a wide 8-year-old grin of three missing teeth, he proclaimed this was “the best place in all of Gaza.”

For the second summer in a row, Walid participated in camps run by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN arm devoted to Palestinian refugees, that gave some 250,000 refugee children at more than 350 locations in the impoverished Gaza Strip some sense of summertime normalcy – sports, arts and crafts, relay races, swimming, and even hula-hooping.

But the camps were about more than fun and games, they were about countering the extremism that can take root here at the earliest ages, says John Ding, UNRWA’s Gaza director. While Israel and the West use economic embargoes and political isolation in an effort to compel Gazans to moderate their ideology and behavior, Mr. Ding’s strategy can be summed up like this: Let the children play.  

Handshake defuses a standoff in Baghdad



 

By Erica Goode

Published: September 4, 2008

BAGHDAD: Ali Abdul Jabbar, an Awakening commander in the Adhamiya neighborhood, sat tautly in a battered green armchair at his headquarters early Wednesday afternoon, waiting for the Iraqi Army to come and try to arrest him.

His men – armed with Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition pouches hanging from their chests – guarded the door, prepared to defend him if the army arrived. Other members of the Awakening Council, one of the Sunni-dominated citizen patrols backed by American forces here, lounged around the room, drinking Pepsis and observing a one-day strike called in protest of Jabbar’s rumored status as a wanted man.

But a few hours later, the atmosphere appeared to have calmed. Jabbar and an Iraqi Army captain stood in front of the neighborhood’s Abu Hanifa mosque, shaking hands and exchanging mutual expressions of support and friendship. The strike was called off. And the warrant was forgotten, if it had ever existed; the captain told Jabbar it had never been issued.