Docudharma Times Sunday December 7

Spying On Those Who Are No Threat

And Calling Them Terrorists   The Paranoia Of The Bush Years Continues  

U.S. Plans a Shift to Focus Troops on Kabul Region



By KIRK SEMPLE

Published: December 6, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan – Most of the additional American troops arriving in Afghanistan early next year will be deployed near the capital, Kabul, American military commanders here say, in a measure of how precarious the war effort has become.

It will be the first time that American or coalition forces have been deployed in large numbers on the southern flank of the city, a decision that reflects the rising concerns among military officers, diplomats and government officials about the increasing vulnerability of the capital and the surrounding area.

Spying on pacifists, environmentalists and nuns

An undercover Maryland State Police trooper infiltrated nonviolent groups and labeled dozens of people as terrorists.

By Bob Drogin

December 7, 2008

Reporting from Takoma Park, Md. — To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes.

Only one thing seemed strange.

“At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away,” said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. “We all thought that was odd.”

Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups.

Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by “Lucy” and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database — and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.

USA

Obama Offers First Look at Massive Plan To Create Jobs

Project Would Be the Largest Since the Interstate System

By Michael D. Shear

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 7, 2008; Page A01

On the heels of more grim unemployment news, President-elect Barack Obama yesterday offered the first glimpse of what would be the largest public works program since President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the federal interstate system in the 1950s.

Obama said the massive government spending program he proposes to lift the country out of economic recession will include a renewed effort to make public buildings energy-efficient, rebuild the nation’s highways, renovate aging schools and install computers in classrooms, extend high-speed Internet to underserved areas and modernize hospitals by giving them access to electronic medical records.

General Motors’ strength is overseas

As the U.S. automaker’s revenue has fallen in the U.S., forcing it to turn to the government for a bailout, international operations have remained profitable.

By Ken Bensinger

December 7, 2008

Nearly three-fifths of the employees at General Motors Corp. work for a company that makes cars that are admired, popular and profitable.

They just don’t work in the United States.

GM has a bigger presence outside the U.S. than in it, employs more people in other countries than here, and actually makes money selling cars everywhere from Sao Paulo to Shanghai. Its U.S. revenue has sunk 24% in the last three full years, but in the rest of the world, GM can boast a 28% increase.

Now, as lawmakers mull whether to provide billions of dollars in loans to keep the Detroit-based company from collapse, GM’s global reach has become in many ways its most overlooked asset and a key to its ultimate survival.

Asia

Mumbai terrorist came from Pakistan, local villagers confirm



Saeed Shah in Faridkot, near Depalpur

The Observer, Sunday December 7 2008

An Observer investigation has established that the lone surviving gunman caught by Indian police during last week’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai came from a village in the Okara district of the Pakistani Punjab.

Ajmal Amir Kasab, interrogated in custody after last month’s attacks, which killed 163 people, reportedly told Indian security officials that he came from a place called Faridkot in the Punjab province. His father was named as Mohammed Amir, married to a woman named Noor. During the past week, Pakistani sources have cast doubt on the authenticity of the leaked information, which has had a predictably explosive impact on relations between the two countries.

In the lair of the Taliban

They were ousted in 2001, yet across Afghanistan the Taliban are steadily regaining control. The writer Nir Rosen ventured into their heartland – and lived to tell the tale

From The Sunday Times

December 7, 2008

The highway that leads south out of Kabul passes through a craggy range of arid, sand-coloured mountains with sharp, stony peaks. Nomadic Kuchi women tend to camels as small boys herd sheep. There is nothing to indicate that the terrain we are about to enter is one of the world’s deadliest war zones.

On the outskirts of the capital we are stopped at a checkpoint manned by the Afghan National Army. The soldiers are suspicious of my foreign accent. My Afghan companions, Shafiq and Ibrahim, convince them that I am only a journalist. As we drive away, Ibrahim laughs. The soldiers thought I was a suicide bomber. Ibrahim did not tell them that he and Shafiq are mid-level Taliban commanders escorting me deep into Ghazni.

Africa

Families offer shelter to victims of Congo war

Amid the brutality of Africa’s most deadly and intractable conflict, refugees fleeing the fighting are being sheltered by families – in defiance of warring factions. Though desperately frightened themselves, they cannot find it in their hearts to turn people away. In the midst of horror, there is comfort in these simple acts of compassion

Tracy McVeigh in Kalengera, Eastern Congo

The Observer, Sunday December 7 2008

The melted handle of a red plastic cup and a snake of blackened cloth are all that remains of someone’s home. Burnt-out circles in the grass and charred branches stretch across the plain of Nyabirehe and the smell of the fires is still strong.

Two days earlier, when The Observer passed this field, there were around 200 displaced families living in Swiss roll-shaped huts of grass and banana leaf. ‘Everyone is gone,’ says a woman plucking at bean stalks in the grass with her son and daughter. ‘They’re in the communities.’ The rebels had burnt them out, she said, and the people were running again. But this time, it seems, they had found a safer refuge.

UN forced to cut food aid to Zimbabwe’s starving people

Half a million will go without emergency handouts this month, and more will be hungry in January. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown says it’s time to tell Mugabe ‘enough is enough

 By a special correspondent in Zimbabwe

Sunday, 7 December 2008

Half a million people in Zimbabwe will go without food handouts this month, the UN agency responsible for feeding more than two-fifths of the country’s population warned yesterday, as shortages of funds force further cuts in rations.

“We are still four months away from the [maize] harvest. We haven’t seen the worst yet,” Richard Lee, a spokesman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Johannesburg, told The Independent on Sunday. “The situation has worsened more quickly than expected. We have reduced rations in December, and will have to do so again in January.”

Europe

All Irish pork is recalled in dioxin poison alert



By Brian Brady

Sunday, 7 December 2008

Ireland issued an international warning last night for people not to consume Irish-produced pork products because they could contain dangerous levels of contaminents.

The Dublin authorities ordered the dramatic recall of items including bacon, ham, sausages and even pizzas with ham toppings, after Ireland’s food watchdog revealed that pork products on a number of farms had up to 200 times more dioxins than the recognised safety limit.

Animal feed contaminated with the harmful toxins is thought to have infected pig products, including foods sold across Ireland and exported to the UK. The contamination has been traced back to an ingredient in an animal feed from one supplier used on 47 different farms.

Comedy film puts racism in spotlight >

 

From The Sunday Times

December 7, 2008

Matthew Campbell in Paris

A QUIRKY film about a white Parisian woman who turns black has become the latest – and strangest – example of a new French obsession with the question of how to promote racial harmony.

From the watering holes of the intellos on the Parisian Left Bank to the corridors of parliament, the subject has shot to the top of the agenda in recent days, boosted also by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady, who recently complained about politics, entertainment and business being dominated by a white male elite.

Last week a musical comedy became the unlikely focus of the debate as Agathe Cléry, a film starring Valérie Lemercier, one of the nation’s most popular comic actresses, held a mirror up to some of the ugliest aspects of French society.

Middle East

The city and the rest of Diyala province still deal with fallout of the Sunni insurgency and Shiite mistrust

By Ned Parker

December 7, 2008

Reporting from Baqubah, Iraq — Tariq Jawrani inspected his brother’s corpse. Blood crusted the nose and mouth, his skull was fractured, and bruises covered his stomach, back and legs, he said.

Holes were gouged in Bashir’s flesh. Baqubah police said the marks were from tubes inserted because of kidney failure, but his family said the 34-year-old had been in good health before police officers detained him at a checkpoint late last month.

Iraqi police insist that the Sunni leader’s death last week was of natural causes and that he had confessed to killing Shiite families in Diyala province.

His family and supporters counter that he had fought Islamist extremists and helped resettle Shiite families in the last year as a member of the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq security force.

Tariq described his one hospital visit with his brother. “He was unconscious, and we wrapped him with a blanket. One of my relatives who wanted to test his consciousness asked him: ‘Do you know my name?’ and he answered with one [sentence]: ‘They killed me.’ Afterward, they didn’t let us to stay,” he told The Times.

Iraqi Women, Fighting for a Voice

Activists Confront Dual Powers of Religion, Tribalism

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, December 7, 2008; Page A01

IRBIL, Iraq — Hawjin Hama Rashid, a feisty journalist in bluejeans and a frilly blouse, had come to the morgue in this Kurdish city to research tribal killings of women. “A week doesn’t pass without at least 10,” the morgue director said, showing Rashid pictures of corpses on his computer screen.

First, a bloated, pummeled face.

Next, a red, shapeless, charred body. “Raped, then burned,” the director said.

Then, another face, eyes half-closed, stab wounds below her neck.

Latin America

Journalists become targets in Mexico drug war

They say it’s not just about crime – it’s an attack on freedom of expression

The Associated Press

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – As the photographer pulled his 2000 Ford Explorer into a soccer field, the crackle of his police scanner was broken by a lone accordion riff.

The riff, a fragment of a “narcocorrido” glorifying drug smugglers, was an announcement that the death toll in Mexico’s drug war – already above 4,000 this year – had just risen.

Hector Dayer already knew that as he looked out at the seven bodies, bound, beaten and repeatedly shot. What he didn’t know was whether yet another colleague was among the victims.