Docudharma Times Thursday March 19

George W. Bush Wants

To Write An

“Authoritarian” Book  




Thursday’s Headlines:

Economic woes slow migration to Sun Belt

France braced for huge street protests over economic crisis

A Pope who seems fallible

To free Iraq, resistance must bridge the sectarian divide

Israel’s voice of reason: Amos Oz on war, peace and life as an outsider

North Korean officials cross the border to arrest US journalists

Key Afghan insurgents open door to talks

Cuba neighbours to restore ties

A Defining Moment for Treasury Secretary



By JACKIE CALMES

Published: March 18, 2009


WASHINGTON – All three of President Obama’s top economic advisers were on message when they appeared Sunday on separate television talk shows. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, they said, had concluded, based on lawyers’ advice, that he could not stop the $165 million in bonuses that the American International Group was even then doling out to hundreds of employees.

But when Mr. Geithner and other officials met at the White House that night, the president’s political advisers – who had agreed to the day’s message – decided the growing outcry left Mr. Obama no choice but to publicly second-guess his Treasury secretary.

The next morning on camera, the president said he had directed Mr. Geithner to find a legal way “to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

MI5 faces new rules on terror interrogations

PM orders code on questioning abroad

Richard Norton-Taylor

The Guardian, Thursday 19 March 2009


The government yesterday bowed to growing pressure over allegations of Britain’s complicity in torture by promising to draw up and publish new guidelines for the security and intelligence agencies when they are involved in interrogating detainees abroad.

Announcing the unexpected move to MPs, Gordon Brown said he condemned torture “absolutely” but had asked the intelligence and security committee (ISC) to help draw up new guidelines “in order to have systems that are robust”.

In a separate move, the prime minister told MPs that compliance with the new guidelines would be monitored by intelligence services commissioner Sir Peter Gibson, a former appeal court judge, who will report annually.

Brown’s announcement, which follows a succession of revelations in the Guardian about the ill-treatment and torture of UK nationals and residents abroad, appeared to be a tacit admission that existing guidelines were open to abuse.

 

USA

Fed to Pump $1.2 Trillion Into Markets

Greatly Expanded Purchases Are Designed to Lower Interest Rates, Stimulate Borrowing

By Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 19, 2009; Page A01


The Federal Reserve yesterday escalated its massive campaign to stabilize the economy, saying it would flood the financial system with an additional $1.2 trillion.

The decision by the Fed to buy government bonds and mortgage-related securities is designed to lower borrowing costs for home mortgages and other types of loans, thereby stimulating economic activity. The central bank, effectively, will print more money to pay for the purchases.

Combined with the billions already deployed by the Fed, the new money dwarfs even the biggest government bailouts of financial companies.Yesterday’s announcement amounts to a recognition by Fed leaders that the economy has gotten much worse than they had forecast at their last policymaking meeting, in January. It also is their attempt to show market participants that, three months after cutting short-term interest rates to zero, they still have more tools to try to bolster the economy.

Economic woes slow migration to Sun Belt

New census data show U.S. population somewhat locked in place

By HOPE YEN

Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON – Strapped by the nation’s economic crisis, fewer Americans are migrating to Sun Belt hot spots in Nevada, Arizona and Florida, instead staying put for now in traditional big cities.

Census data released Thursday highlight a U.S. population somewhat locked in place by the severe housing downturn and economic recession, even before the impact of rippling job layoffs after last September’s financial meltdown.

The population figures as of July 2008 show growth slowdowns in once-booming metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tampa, due mostly to a rapid clip of mortgage foreclosures as well as frozen lines of credit that made it harder for out-of-staters to move in.

Europe

France braced for huge street protests over economic crisis

Private and public sector workers in second general strike against Sarkozy cuts

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 March 2009 08.12 GMT


France is bracing for a wave of street protests in the second general strike over Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis.

Traditional public sector strikers such as teachers, transport workers and hospital staff will join an unprecedented new protest movement by private sector workers from banks and supermarkets to multinationals. Together they are protesting against both Sarkozy’s cuts to France’s public sector and welfare state, and accusing him of failing to protect workers from the economic crisis. Most of those involved fear the dreaded French scourge: unemployment, which is now rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade.

Unions predict the demonstrations will be bigger than the estimated 2.5 million people who took to the streets in a strike over pay and job losses in January.

Today’s protest has the widest public support of any French strike in a decade, with three quarters of the population in favour.

A Pope who seems fallible

 From offending Jews and Muslims to saying condoms could make Africa’s Aids crisis worse, Benedict XVI appears destined to blunder

By Peter Popham in Rome

Thursday, 19 March 2009  

On his first pontifical visit to Africa this week, Pope Benedict XVI set off another storm of controversy when he said that condoms were not only not the solution to the continent’s Aids crisis but that they actually “make matters worse”.

It was just the latest in an endless succession of high-profile gaffes that have made the brainiest pope of modern times also by a wide margin the most accident-prone.

In previous pratfalls the Bavarian theologian has welcomed back into the Church a bishop who flatly denies the existence of the Nazi gas chambers, refused to sign UN declarations on the rights of homosexuals and the disabled, denied the possibility of inter-religious dialogue after praying in a mosque, insulted Muslims en masse, and failed to mention the Jews while visiting Auschwitz.

Middle East

To free Iraq, resistance must bridge the sectarian divide

  As anti-occupation leaders recognise, the US could still exploit their divisions in an effort to offset its strategic defeat



Seumas Milne

The Guardian, Thursday 19 March 2009


In a last-ditch attempt to rescue some wafer of credibility from the west’s most catastrophic war of modern times, the story is taking hold in Britain and the US that after six years of horror Iraq is finally coming good. So quickly has this spin become accepted truth that politicians and pundits now regularly insist that if only General Petraeus is allowed to work his surge magic on Afghanistan, all could be well in that benighted land as well. One recent report in the Sunday Telegraph even claimed that the 4,000 British troops still in Basra are regarded as “heroes and liberators” by Iraqis now that their £8bn mission has at last been “accomplished”.

As the seventh year of the US-led occupation of Iraq begins tomorrow, facts on the ground tell a very different tale. Last week more than 60 people were killed in two suicide attacks on Iraqi police and army targets in Baghdad, while on Monday a 12-year-old girl was shot dead by American troops in a checkpoint incident in Nineveh province. It’s true that violence is well down on its gory peak of a couple of years ago and the power supply is edging up – to the level the US promised to achieve five years ago, at about 50% of demand. But a US soldier is killed on average every other day, Iraqi police and soldiers are dying at a much higher rate, and reported Iraqi civilian deaths are running at over 300 a month.

Israel’s voice of reason: Amos Oz on war, peace and life as an outsider

To thousands of fellow Israelis, he’s a dangerous radical. To others, he’s the nation’s liberal conscience. Writer Amos Oz has been making waves for decades.

Interview by Johann Hari

Thursday, 19 March 2009

The unlikely story of the state of Israel – 60, sullied, surviving – is intertwined with the unlikely story of Amos Oz. He is, all at once, its most distinguished novelist, its most passionate defender, and its most notorious “traitor” – a word he uses about himself. His friend David Grossman says “Amos is the offspring of all the contradictory urges and pains within the Israeli psyche.” To spend a day in his company – to follow his story from the birth of the state to the suicide of his mother, from Zionist idealism to a broken heart – is to tour the dizzying dissonances of the Jewish state as it staggers into the 21st century.

Oz is sitting in the coffee shop of Joseph’s bookstore in Golder’s Green, north London, looking older and more fragile than his vigorous black-and-white author’s picture. He is 70 now, his hair wispier and whiter.

Asia

North Korean officials cross the border to arrest US journalists

From Times Online

March 19, 2009


Jane Macartney in Beijing

Security officials from North Korea have detained two Korean-American journalists, apparently while they were on the Chinese side of the border and filming into the closed Stalinist state.

The report by South Korea’s YTN channels quoted a South Korean government official as saying the guards had crossed the border into Chinese territory to arrest the pair after they ignored warnings to stop filming, said a report by South Korea’s YTN channel.

The two women worked for an online news company based in California, the report said. However, it gave no other details of their identity or what kind of media firm they were working for.

If the North Korean guards really did cross the Yalu or the Tumen rivers that demarcate the border, this could prove extremely embarrassing for Beijing, which is the only major ally of isolated North Korea and its main source of economic aid. The incident comes just as North Korean Premier Kim Yong-il is visiting Beijing.

Key Afghan insurgents open door to talks

The Haqqani network has agreed to discuss a peace proposal with government-backed mediators.

By Anand Gopal | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 19, 2009 edition


KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – As the Obama administration ponders reaching out to moderate Afghan insurgents, Kabul has opened preliminary negotiations with the country’s most dangerous rebel faction, the Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network.

The group is accused of masterminding some of the most brazen attacks here in recent years, and a deal with them will likely be key to ending the war.

“If the Haqqanis can be drawn into the negotiation process,” says Kabul-based political analyst Waheed Muzjda, “it would be a serious sign that the insurgents are open to one day making a deal.”

The Haqqani network is one of three major insurgent groups here, along with the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami-Gulbuddin (HIG). Of these, the Haqqanis have orchestrated the majority of the major suicide bombings in Kabul and have significant influence in the southeastern provinces. The group counts many foreign fighters among its ranks and is much closer to Al Qaeda than the other groups, according to US intelligence officials. This influence tends to make the Haqqanis more extremist than other groups

Latin America

Cuba neighbours to restore ties

Both El Salvador and Costa Rica have said they will re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba.

The BBC

They were the only two Central American countries to maintain a diplomatic freeze on the communist island-nation.

In El Salvador, the winner of this week’s presidential election, Mauricio Funes, said ties would be re-established as soon as he takes office.

Announcing a similar move, Costa Rican leader Oscar Arias said: “We have to be capable of adjusting to new realities.”

For Mr Arias, the decision represents a dramatic change in attitude.

He once compared Cuba’s rights record under Fidel Castro to that of Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile.

And Havana has labelled him a “vulgar mercenary” and a puppet of American imperialism.

In an official statement, Mr Arias said: “It no longer makes sense to continue an official rift when we have established channels of co-operation in various areas.

Ignoring Asia A Blog

3 comments

  1. IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement

    During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

    The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

    The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces’ claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session’s transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course’s graduates.

  2. Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Cheney is ‘evil,’ his fearmongering is ‘assisting’ al Qaeda.

    AMEN to that: They’ve been ‘Aiding’ al Qaeda since 9/11

    Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay

    ‘torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough. It’s also perhaps the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists have,'”

    [They] were not fighting this perpetual war for victory, they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism.– George Orwell, 1984

  3. DoD Addressing Military Suicides

    Chairman Ben Nelson (D-NE) is holding a Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcmte. hearing examining suicide prevention programs in each of the armed services. Defense Dept. representatives are discussing areas for improvement of access to mental health care and other initiatives that might help reduce military suicides.

    This will bring up their Video Page of the Hearing

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