As 2008 Draws To A Close The
Wars Continue
Israelis Say Strikes Against Hamas Will Continue
By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY and ETHAN BRONNER
Published: December 28, 2008
GAZA – Waves of Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire, killing more than 225 – the highest one-day toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
Israeli military officials said the airstrikes, which went on into the night, were the start of what could be days or even months of an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. The operation could include ground forces, a senior Israeli security official said.Palestinian officials said that most of the dead were security officers for Hamas, including two senior commanders, and that at least 600 people had been wounded in the attacks.
Rupert Cornwell: Never have hopes been higher – and never has the job been tougher
On 20 January, Barack Obama will become President of the United States. His preparation has been faultless. Soon, we will learn if all the optimism is justified
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Barack Obama had it right. Postpone the first candidates’ debate, John McCain was urging last September at the height of the presidential campaign, as the White House convened an urgent summit on its bank bailout plan, a day or two before the two White House rivals were to lock horns at the University of Mississippi.The financial collapse, McCain argued, rendered everything else superfluous. But the Democrat was unmoved: “It’s going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at a time.” Those words of Obama are contender for 2008’s understatement of the year. Never has an incoming President been confronted by as daunting an array of problems as the untried former Senator from Illinois.
USA
Silver Lining of Subprime Slips Away in Calif. Suburb
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 28, 2008; Page A02
STOCKTON, Calif. — Venice Circle is a loop lined with taupe homes and green lawns, a clear sign that drivers have left the freeway south of town and entered Weston Ranch, a 21st-century Levittown. The subdivision sprang up in asparagus fields 80 miles east and a world away from the urban settings buyers were delighted to escape: gritty, violent east Oakland, and grittier, deadlier Richmond nearby.This bedroom community is populated overwhelmingly by minority families, who were lifted by a wave of easy credit over the Altamont Pass and into dream homes.
Was 2008 the beginning of another Great Depression?
Posted on Sunday, December 28, 2008
By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON – It wasn’t 1929, but like that infamous year, 2008 is sure to be remembered by economic historians as one unlike any other.“We had a much simpler financial system back then. The number of wild and crazy things that happened this year is completely without precedent in world history,” said Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economics professor and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Where to begin? In March, there was the overnight collapse of Wall Street titan Bear Stearns, in hindsight the first domino to fall in what would become a meltdown of the global financial markets.
Asia
Pakistan remembers Bhutto as tension with India mounts
Crowds gather at the former leader’s grave a year after her murder amid concerns that new troop deployments on the border mean the two countries are edging towards war
Saeed Shah in Islamabad and Gethin Chamberlain in Delhi
The Observer, Sunday 28 December 2008
Tens of thousands of ordinary Pakistanis paid their respects at the grave of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto yesterday, as reports of troop movements led to fears that India and Pakistan were making preparations for a military conflict.In an attempt to defuse the growing tension between the two countries, Pakistani prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani gave a televised speech in which he said: “We don’t want to fight, we don’t want to have war, we don’t want to have aggression with our neighbours.” But he added that the country’s military was “fully prepared” to respond to any Indian aggression.
The statement came after Pakistani intelligence officials announced on Friday that the army was redeploying thousands of troops from the country’s fight against militants along the Afghan border to the Indian frontier
Winter offensive against the Taliban in Helmand leads to scores of British casualties
A major winter offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan has led to scores of casualties among British troops.
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
In eight weeks of fighting, 16 soldiers and marines have been killed and around 60 have been wounded in action fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda gunmen in central Helmand.
The vast majority of the casualties are being caused by the increased use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
The casualty surge is a result of Operation “Sond Chara”, pashto for “Ginger Dagger”, a multinational operation involving around 1000 British, Estonian and Danish troops, which is attempting to encircle a large Taliban force.
The last serviceman to die was 20-year-old Lance Corporal Benjamin Whatley of 42 Commando, who was killed by enemy fire on Christmas Eve, during a battle with insurgents. His death brings the number of troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 136.
Europe
Stalin vies for top spot in ‘greatest Russian’ TV contest
Brutal Soviet dictator has a chance of being named later today as the country’s greatest historical figure
By Miriam Elder in Moscow
Sunday, 28 December 2008
He massacred millions of his own people, enforced a system of terror that plagues Russia to this day and, to top it all, he was Georgian. But Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet leader, has a strong chance of winning the mantle of Russia’s greatest historical figure.More than two million votes have been cast in state-run Rossiya television’s Name of Russia contest, modelled on the BBC’s Great Britons, with the result to be announced today.
Stalin has hovered in the top three for months: just before Christmas he was in second place, fewer than 10,000 votes behind Alexander Nevsky, a medieval military hero, and more than 27,000 ahead of the poet Alexander Pushkin.
Going down the EU Tube: Brussels videos shunned
From The Sunday Times
December 28, 2008
Robert Watts and Georgia Warren
The European Union’s answer to YouTube, the internet video sharing phenomenon, has backfired, with audiences shunning many of the clips intended to promote pet subjects in Brussels.Eighteen months on from the creation of EU Tube many of the videos posted on the website have attracted only a few dozen viewers.
An EU Tube video entitled Controlling the Use of Chemicals in Europe has been watched 56 times. Another film, Better Rights for Temporary Workers, has attracted 70.
EU Tube’s attempts to adopt street language have also misfired, with ventures such as a three-minute “euro-rap”, which urges young viewers “you gotta be a part of” a united Europe.
Africa
Diplomats watch to see if Robert Mugabe dare go on holiday
From The Sunday Times
December 28, 2008
Jon Swain in Harare
Each morning and afternoon a nauseating ritual is performed in Harare as President Robert Mugabe travels in a heavily guarded motorcade between his home and State House. Police motorcyclists force traffic off the road to allow the presidential motorcade unimpeded progress through the crumbling streets of the capital.Guarded by truckloads of soldiers, Mugabe sits in the back of a custom-built, armoured and gadget-equipped Mercedes. A small man in a black Savile Row suit, he is invisible behind the black-tinted windows. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way – even pointing at the motorcade can lead to imprisonment.
Ghanaians vote for new president >
People in Ghana have begun voting in the presidential run-off after the 7 December election failed to produce an outright winner.
The BBC Sunday, 28 December 2008
Nana Akufo-Addo of the governing party is facing John Atta Mills of the opposition in the battle to succeed President John Kufuor.
Mr Addo defeated his rival by a slender margin in the first round but not by enough to avoid the run-off.
The stakes are high as Ghana has just found commercial quantities of oil.
The two candidates are closely matched and the campaign has been tense with electioneering incessant, the BBC’s Will Ross reports from the Ghanaian capital Accra.
Ghana has held successful elections before and has witnessed a peaceful transfer of power from one leader to another.
Middle East
In Basra, political skirmishing heats up as elections near
The key oil production center and port in southern Iraq is home to Shiite factions with competing visions for the region. And then there is Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who has his own agenda.
By Ned Parker and Raheem Salman
December 28, 2008
Reporting from Basra, Iraq — Eight months after he sent in troops to restore calm to blighted Basra, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is skirmishing with rivals here ahead of elections that will test whether he can convert his military successes into a lasting political victory.The stakes are high: The winner in the provincial elections, scheduled for Jan. 31, gains control of the country’s major oil-producing center and port, its economic lifeline to the world.
But Maliki, who wants Basra under the jurisdiction of Baghdad’s central government, faces a dizzying array of rivals, all fellow Shiite Muslims, with very different goals. One party, for instance, wants to break free of the capital and become something akin to a city state; another wants to create a nine-province “super region” that could dwarf Baghdad in power.
Car Bomb Near Baghdad Shrine Kills 24, as Iraqi Shiites’ Holiest Month Approaches
By SAM DAGHER
Published: December 27, 2008
BAGHDAD – A car bomb killed at least 24 people, many of them Shiite pilgrims, and wounded 46 others when it exploded Saturday on a busy road in Baghdad that leads to the revered shrine of Kadhimiya, according to the Ministry of Interior.That bombing, along with several others in recent weeks, was a stark reminder that even as violence has sharply fallen, insurgents still have the power to carry out deadly strikes in the heart of the capital. The attack’s timing and location appeared to be intended to reignite sectarian passions.
Millions of Shiites are preparing to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The observance falls during Muharram, the holiest month of the Shiite religious calendar, which begins Monday. Shiite families from across Iraq traditionally visit the shrine, with its shimmering twin golden domes, on Saturdays.
Latin America
Cuba’s young revolutionaries fight for their art
Something is stirring in Cuba – and it’s not politics. As the country prepares to mark 50 years of communist rule, there is a cultural awakening of poets, designers and musicians pushing the boundaries of official tolerance. But political controls remain firmly in place
Rory Carroll in Havana
The Observer, Sunday 28 December 2008The electronic beat swelled louder, pumping up the crowd, and spotlights beamed onto the catwalk for the night’s most dramatic entrance. Maykel González, an ebony beauty, scythed down the walkway on Rollerblades wearing nothing but sparkling gold hotpants, a magnificent Afro and a coy smile. The crowd cheered, hooted and whistled. Fashion shows were not supposed to be this much fun.
Until recently, fashion shows were not supposed even to exist here. This was not New York or Milan but Havana, capital of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, a communist island more famed for austerity and ideology than glamour and glitz. More surprising still was that González was male: a strapping, muscular model transformed for the night into a gay fantasy. The Cuban state used to be homophobic and prudish, yet here it was allowing a risqué show in a prime location – in front of the Museum of the Revolution.