Docudharma Times Thursday April 23

Weatherboarded To Prove

A False Connection

Between Al Qaida And Iraq    

Interrogation tactics got the OK early on

A Senate report says Bush administration officials signed off on CIA methods without the input of key agencies.

By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes

April 23, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Senior Bush administration officials signed off on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures in July 2002 after a series of secret meetings that apparently excluded the State and Defense departments, according to information released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Senate report indicated that then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other officials gave the CIA’s interrogation plan political backing even before the methods had been approved by the Justice Department.

The document also revealed the existence of a series of Justice Department memos written in 2006 and 2007 that in some cases undermined congressional efforts to rein in the CIA’s interrogation authorities — memos that were excluded from the batch released by the Obama administration last week.

The Senate document represents the most complete chronology to date of the Bush administration’s embrace of simulated drowning and other interrogation methods now widely denounced as torture.

Taliban oust Pakistani authorities in Swat Valley sharia zone

• Fighters force out judiciary, police, politicians and aid agencies

• Clinton attacks Islamabad’s appeasement of Islamist militants

Declan Walsh in Mingora

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 April 2009 09.34 BST

Taliban fighters spilling out of the Swat Valley have swept across Buner, a district 60 miles from Islamabad, as Hillary Clinton warned the situation in Pakistan now poses a “mortal threat” to the security of the world.

The US secretary of state told Congress yesterday that Pakistan faced an “existential” threat from Islamist militants. “I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists,” she said. Any further deterioration in the situation “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world”, she said.

In Buner, Taliban fighters occupied government buildings, ransacked the offices of aid agencies and ordered aid employees to leave. Fighters brandishing guns and rocket launchers patrolled villages, forcing beleaguered local police to retreat to their stations. Local courts have stopped functioning and judicial officials have gone on indefinite leave.

USA

Congress Debates Fresh Investigation Of Interrogations

White House Tries to Quell Controversy

By Dan Balz and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The legacy of George W. Bush continued to dog President Obama and his administration yesterday, as Congress divided over creating a panel to investigate the harsh interrogation techniques employed under Bush’s authorization and the White House tried to contain the controversy over the president’s decision to release Justice Department memos justifying and outlining those procedures.

Obama had hoped to put the whole matter behind him, first by banning those interrogation methods early in his presidency and then by releasing the memos last week with the proviso that no CIA official who carried out interrogations should be prosecuted.

Instead, the latest decision has stirred controversy on the right and the left. Obama has drawn sharp criticism from former vice president Richard B. Cheney, former CIA directors and Republican elected officials for releasing the memos. Those critics see softness in the commander in chief. He faces equally strong reaction from the left, where there is a desire to punish Bush administration officials for their actions and to conduct a more thorough investigation of what happened.

Third World banker gives boost to U.S. women

Nobel Prize winner shifts from developing countries to New York City

REUTERS

NEW YORK – Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, known as the “banker to the poor” for making small loans in impoverished countries, is now doing business in the center of capitalism – New York City.

In the past year the first U.S. branch of his Grameen Bank has lent $1.5 million, ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, to nearly 600 women with small business plans in the city’s borough of Queens.

People around the country are struggling to repay mortgages and credit card debts, but Grameen America says its loan repayment rate is more than 99 percent.

“While other banks are collapsing, this one remains strong,” Yunus told reporters at a street fair, where about 100 Grameen America borrowers sold wares ranging from food and flowers to clothes and jewelry.

Asia

Dam of Awe to be Afghan national park

• Kabul puts beauty spot on tourist trail, 36 years late

• Visitors face perilous trip to see natural wonder

Jon Boone in Kabul

The Guardian, Thursday 23 April 2009

The two-day, bone-rattling journey to Band-i-Amir may be littered with landmines and the odd village of Taliban sympathisers, but if the Afghan government gets its way a collection of five sapphire-blue lakes will one day become one of Central Asia’s hottest international tourist destinations.

A first significant step was taken yesterday when Afghanistan declared that one of its most astonishing natural features will become the country’s first national park – 36 years after a previous attempt to do so was interrupted by political strife and decades of war.

Few people would deny that the crystal-clear lakes in the country’s mountainous centre, which are ringed with pink cliffs, deserve their new designation, which still needs to be ratified by parliament.

Tamil rebels surrender – but hunt for their leader goes on

Prabhakaran warned that he ‘must now face the consequences of his actions’

By Charles Haviland in Colombo

Thursday, 23 April 2009

The army in Sri Lanka said yesterday that two prominent members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had surrendered, as the military advanced on the shrinking patch of territory the rebels still hold on the island’s north-east coast.

With the number of Tamil civilians fleeing the conflict zone surpassing 100,000 in three days, according to army estimates, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said the LTTE’s supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran had lost any chance of being pardoned.

The men the military says have surrendered are Daya Master, a one-time schoolteacher who for years was the Tamil Tigers’ voice to the English-speaking world, and a translator named George, who worked for the late head of their political wing.

Europe

Turmoil at French universities could leave students facing missed year



Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

The Guardian, Thursday 23 April 2009

French universities, paralysed by three months of student blockades and staff strikes, were warned by the government to resume teaching yesterday or risk damaging France’s image on the world stage.

Since February, various universities have been thrown into chaos by the biggest higher education revolt in modern French history, surpassing the protests of May 1968 in terms of the numbers of academic staff who have gone on strike.

This year students have barricaded colleges with desks and chairs, and briefly held two university rectors hostage, while swaths of researchers and lecturers have walked out on strike in protest at what the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, had promised would be his most bold and daring reform: overhauling the crumbling French higher education system.

We’ve got it all wrong on fishing strategy, says EU

 From The Times

April 23, 2009

David Charter in Brussels

Europe’s fishing industry is on the brink of suicide and several species are in danger of extinction after 25 years of policy failure,the European Commission said yesterday.

Officials admitted five key failings in the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy as they prepared to tear up the idea of a centrally dictated strategy. They launched the search for an alternative, saying that much of the responsibility for fishing must be returned to EU member states.

One key failing that has led to the near-extinction of stocks of cod, bluefin tuna and anchovy is the “deep-rooted problem” of fleet overcapacity, with campaign groups arguing for a 40 per cent cut in the EU’s 90,000 vessels. Its admission that Europe’s controversial fisheries policy had failed was broadly welcomed by the fishing industry.

Middle East

Israel defies US and destroys Palestinian home

By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Brushing aside international criticism, Israel demolished a Palestinian house in East Jerusalem in the latest in a series of actions that critics say is racheting up tensions in the city, harming chances for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ammar Hudidon, a resident of the Jebel Mukaber neighbourhood and a father of seven children, said a bulldozer flattened his home yesterday after the Jerusalem municipality said he lacked building permits. Palestinians complain that the permits are virtually impossible to obtain.

A municipality spokesman stressed that the demolition was “conducted completely under the auspices of the Interior Ministry and the government of Israel” and was not ordered by the Mayor, Nir Barkat.

It comes a day after President Barack Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians to take measures to promote peacemaking and two days after a Jerusalem planning committee approved a building project for the headquarters of an Israeli settlement group in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian area which Jewish settlers are increasingly penetrating.

Israel backs down over white phosphorus



From The Times

April 23, 2009

Sheera Frenkel in Tel Aviv

Israeli troops stopped using white phosphorus shells in Gaza this year after The Times published evidence that they were injuring civilians.

In its first explicit admission, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that “media buzz” had forced the army to withdraw the shells from its arsenal on January 7 – the day that The Times obtained photographs of stockpiles and two days after the newspaper had exposed the effect of white phosphorus on the population of Gaza.

Phosphorus bombs may be used to create smokescreens but their use as weapons of war in civilian areas is banned by the Geneva Conventions. They cause severe burns that can penetrate to the bone.

An IDF briefing yesterday after an inquiry into the three-week Gaza offensive disclosed that two different munitions containing white phosphorus had been used.

Africa

 ANC leads in South African poll

Early results have given South Africa’s ANC a big lead in the general election, paving the way for controversial party leader Jacob Zuma to become president.

The BBC

The ANC has 64% – just short of the two-thirds majority it would need if it wanted to change the constitution.

With a quarter of votes counted, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has 21% and the newly formed Congress of the People (Cope) is being given just 8%.

A Cope leader was shot dead but the vote appeared otherwise peaceful.

The final, official results will not be known for days but the margin of the ANC’s victory may become clear later on Thursday.

Charges of corruption against Mr Zuma were dropped just two weeks before the poll after state prosecutors said there had been political interference in the case.

With parliament electing the president, it looks likely that an ANC-controlled assembly will emerge to pick Mr Zuma as the country’s leader next month.

Somali piracy suspects in Kenya court



By KATHARINE HOURELD, Associated Press Write  

MOMBASA, Kenya – Eighteen Somali men who were brought ashore in Kenya by European navies crowded into a Mombasa courthouse Thursday to face piracy charges.

Eleven shabbily dressed men seized by French commandos in the pirate-infested seas off Somalia made their first courtroom appearance after being handed over on Wednesday. Next door, seven other suspected pirates who were turned in by German forces earlier this month awaited their own hearing.

Both groups were seized by European navies after hot pursuits and dramatic captures. The French-seized men were taken in a pre-dawn raid on April 14. The Germans captured the seven men in late March.

Magistrate Catherine Mwangi adjourned the case of the 11 until a bail hearing May 27.

Latin America

In retirement, Fidel Castro is little seen but often heard

Cuba watchers are glued to the former president’s blog, which is always buzzing with his musings, in eight languages.

By Bruce Wallace

April 23, 2009

No sooner did Cuban American relations hit their warmest notes in half a century than former President Fidel Castro stirred from retirement to say: Not so fast.

The 82-year-old Castro tossed cold water on U.S. interpretations of his brother Raul’s overture to President Obama last week. His successor as Cuban president had offered to discuss “everything, everything, everything” — from human rights to political prisoners — with his U.S. counterpart.

Obama “misinterpreted” Raul Castro’s remarks, Fidel wrote in his blog Tuesday, declaring that his brother meant only that “he was not afraid of addressing any issue.”

“That shows his courage and confidence on the principles of the revolution,” the elder Castro wrote.

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