Docudharma Times Friday August 7

A $191 Million Question

How a relationship between an Army official and a private contractor led to allegations of collusion and impropriety

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 7, 2009

He called her Princess. She called him Bubba. They got together whenever they could, sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, traveling to business conferences, taking long walks. They exchanged e-mails night and day.

“You been sleepin??” George Raymond wrote to Catherine Campbell in September 2005.

“I slept some,” she wrote back. “Just got out of the shower.”

“Oh boy,” he wrote.

Theirs was a cozy relationship, and they worked in a world where such cozy relationships are officially frowned upon.

Secret deal to keep Karzai in power

Afghan President’s alliance with rival designed to prevent civil war after election

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Friday, 7 August 2009

With less than two weeks to go until national elections, the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is trying to cut a secret deal with one of his rivals to knock out his leading contender and ensure a decisive victory to avoid the chaos that a tight result might unleash.

Afghanistan’s second democratic polls threaten to split the country along sectarian lines. That would risk undermining US and British-led peace efforts which are already under pressure from a resurgent Taliban.

Mr Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, hail from different ethnic groups and different regions.

USA

With Jobs Data Due, Experts See Some Lift From Stimulus



By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: August 6, 2009

WASHINGTON – Even as the Obama administration braces for another grim report about job losses on Friday, economists say that the president’s $787 billion stimulus package has helped blunt the downturn in limited but discernible ways.

Sotomayor will bring unique perspective to the Supreme Court

The newly confirmed justice’s experiences with a disability, economic struggles and as a prosecutor and trial judge are among several things that may set her apart from her new colleagues.

By David G. Savage and James Oliphant

August 7, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The historic confirmation Thursday of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation’s newest justice will bring new perspectives to the Supreme Court, and not just because she will be its first Latino.

After three days of debate, the Senate voted 68 to 31 in her favor, with nine Republicans crossing party lines to support her.

During the debate and confirmation hearings, her experience as a Latina seemed to overshadow discussions about her qualifications. But her background will probably affect her thinking and influence her decisions in ways that were hardly mentioned in the Senate fight.

After she is sworn into office Saturday, she will be the only justice whose first language is not English. She has had diabetes since childhood — a medical condition classified as a disability under federal law.

Europe

Tensions high as anniversary of South Ossetia war approaches

Georgia and Russia trade accusations over breakaway republic

Tom Parfitt in Moscow

Russian and Georgian troops were on high alert today, on the eve of the first anniversary of their war over the disputed South Ossetia region.

Tomorrow marks a year since Georgia launched a massive artillery barrage against Tskhinvali, the capital of its breakaway Moscow-backed republic, prompting an invasion by Russian troops that led to five days of bitter fighting.

The two sides have traded barbs over the last week, with each accusing the other of exacerbating tensions. About 1,000 Russian troops remain stationed in South Ossetia – a scrap of land beneath the Greater Caucasus mountain range – and were “standing ready to act” against “Georgian provocations”, officers said.

Rehabilitated: Nobel Prize winner who fell for Hitler

Knut Hamsun was lucky to escape execution for collaborating with the Nazis. Now, almost 60 years after his death, Norway has finally honoured his contribution to literature – and even put his face on a stamp

By Andy McSmith

Friday, 7 August 2009

All this week, Norway is feting a writer who was lucky to escape being shot for his shameless collaboration with the Nazis. Knut Hamsun was either, according to taste, one of the greatest figures in world literature, or a vile old man with a head full of nasty ideas who betrayed his country.

Not many years ago, anyone who went into a Norwegian bookshop and asked for one of Hamsun’s books was likely to get a frosty reply from across the counter. And yet he was, to be blunt, the only world-renowned novelist that country has yet produced.

Asia

Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud believed dead in air strike

US and Pakistan officials all but certain notorious commander died when missiles hit farmhouse along Afghan border

Declan Walsh in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 August 2009 08.37 BST

Officials in America and Pakistan are all but certain the country’s most wanted man, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, has been killed in a CIA missile strike.

Mehsud is believed to have died when a drone plane fired two Hellfire missiles at a remote farmhouse where he was sheltering in South Waziristan, along the Afghan border, early on Wednesday.

If confirmed, the death of Mehsud would represent a quantum leap for Pakistan’s war against the rampaging Islamist militancy based in the tribal belt along the Afghan border.

Pictures show daylight ‘killing’ of suspect by Indian police

From The Times

August 7, 2009

Jeremy Page in Delhi

Indian police have been photographed apparently killing a hospital attendant in a busy market in northeastern India in the first such exposé of a practice that rights groups say is rife within the understaffed and poorly trained force.

The police said originally that they shot dead Chongkham Sanjit, 27, when he fired on them as they chased him through the market in the northeastern state of Manipur, on the border with Burma, on July 23.

The Manipur police commandos said that they found a 9mm Mauser pistol on the dead man, whom they accused of being a member of a banned separatist group – one of dozens operating in the north east of India.

Africa

Bullet in the post is price of power for an enemy of Mugabe

   Threats will not stop the MDC’s march to power, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister tells Alex Duval Smith in Harare

 Friday, 7 August 2009

Attempts by President Robert Mugabe’s old guard to derail Zimbabwe’s democratic progress are mere “sulks from a dying breed”, according to the Finance Minister, Tendai Biti.

Mr Biti, who is also the secretary-general of the former opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), last week became the most high-profile target of intimidation when he received a 9mm bullet and a death note at his home. In what the MDC describes as a strategy to wipe out its parliamentary majority, 12 of its MPs are facing a range of court cases and one has already been jailed.

Dapperly dressed in a pale grey jacket, matching v-neck and trilby, Mr Biti receives guests in a spartan ante-room to his 6th floor Finance Ministry office in Harare.

Hillary Clinton pledges US support to Somali Government

From The Times

August 7, 2009

Tristan McConnell in Nairobi

Hillary Clinton pledged US military and other support for Somalia’s besieged transitional Government, and warned nearby Eritrea that it would take action if it does not stop supporting Islamist insurgents terrorising the war-torn nation.

Speaking after a meeting with Somalia’s President in Nairobi, the US Secretary of State said that the actions of Eritrea, which is widely accused of supporting the militant group al-Shabaab with arms and money, were “unacceptable”. Eritrea’s Government denies the accusations. “It is long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support for al-Shabaab,” she said.

Mrs Clinton praised Sheikh Sharif Ahmed for his Government’s fight against al-Shabaab, which holds sway in much of south and central Somalia, including most of the capital, Mogadishu.

Middle East

 Why Iran’s Revolutionary Guards mercilessly crack down

A force to reckon with in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term, the Guards are led by commanders whose worldview was forged during the devastating Iran-Iraq war.

By Gareth Smyth | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

BEIRUT – To Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the danger facing the Islamic Republic is acute: Its founding ideals are under serious threat at home and from abroad, and every sacrifice must be made to preserve them as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embarks on his second term.

In response, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is openly taking the lead for curbing dissent following Mr. Ahmadinejad’s sharply disputed June 12 reelection – a reflection of the influence it gained in both security and business affairs during the president’s first term.

Over the past decade, and particularly the past two months, the perceived dual threat from domestic reformers and Western meddling has resulted in an IRGC-led militarization of Iran as security “needs” have shaped official decisionmaking.

Kurds turn up the heat on Baghdad



By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s recent visit to Iraqi Kurdistan was aimed to test the waters on how loudly and aggressively the Kurds are willing to push their claim for the oil-rich Kirkuk region.

Maliki received a uniform answer from all his interlocutors, that the Kurds want to go until “the curtain falls”, which makes dialogue, let alone solutions, between the camps virtually impossible.

Maliki will now have to accustom himself to a confrontation – be it words or bullets – with his compatriots in Iraq. Or he will have to cede Kirkuk. A third option does not exist.  And if the Kurds do decide to go full-on with their demands, they will probably work on dethroning the prime minister, by refusing to support his cabinet, or working against him in the parliamentary elections scheduled for early 2010.