Loose Network of Activists Drives Reform Opposition
By Dan Eggen and Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The rowdy protests that threaten President Obama’s health-care reform efforts have been spurred on by a loose network of activists — from veteran advocacy groups with millions of dollars in funding to casual alliances of like-minded conservatives unhappy over issues from taxes to deficits to environmental laws.
Most of the groups helping to organize protests view the proposed health-care overhaul as just one part of a broader assault by government on free markets and individual liberty, their leaders say. Conservatives portray the movement as largely organic, fueled by average citizens alarmed at the direction the country has taken since Obama moved into the White House.
Doctored Data Cast Doubt on Argentina
Economists Dispute Inflation Numbers
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 16, 2009
BUENOS AIRES — Workers at the government’s National Institute of Statistics call it crass manipulation: Their agency, under pressure from above, altered socioeconomic data to reflect numbers palatable to the presidency. Inflation and poverty miraculously dropped, they said in interviews, and the economy boomed.At least officially.
“They just erased the real numbers,” said Luciano Belforte, an 18-year veteran at the institute. “Reality did not matter.”
USA
Online, your private life is searchable
Photos, addresses, family ties, court documents, details from MySpace profiles — the moment information is published online, it can be copied and re-posted, and often is.
By David Sarno
August 16, 2009
When Maya Rupert wrote an article frowning at several Southern states for officially celebrating Confederate History Month, Internet critics lined up to fire back. ¶ But this time, they arrived with more than harsh words. ¶ The 28-year-old Los Angeles attorney’s detractors dug up a photo of her and posted it, along with details of political contributions she’d made, in an online discussion of the article she wrote for the L.A. Watts Times. They called their finds evidence of her bias on the emotionally charged subject.
Following the Trail of the Coiling Skies
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: August 16, 2009
“WE’VE got to go right now, folks,” Roger Hill shouted on a recent Monday afternoon in Scott City, a beautiful speck on the map of western Kansas. “We’re going east. The eastern storm is a monster.”
After waiting hours on a sultry day – first at a Pizza Hut, then at a Dairy Queen – we finally heard the words we had been waiting for. We were on the second day of a tornado chase in the Great Plains led by Mr. Hill and David Gold, owners of Silver Lining Tours, a 12-year-old company that specializes in extreme-weather travel, and it seemed that our quarry was finally within reach.
Europe
Fear stalks Caucasus amid hidden war
A campaign of killings and torture has mounted in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, rights groups say. Security forces are said to be involved, and signs reportedly point to Chechnya’s leader.
By Megan K. StackAugust 16, 2009
Reporting from Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Russia – This is a place where gangs with masked faces come out of the darkness to take the young men away.Sometimes the bodies turn up with broken limbs, bruises, torn-away fingernails and burns. Sometimes the captives are placed under arrest officially and end up in jail. Lately, many simply disappear.
Russia’s hidden war against anti-government rebels across the Caucasus Mountains has reached a terrible intensity here in the small, mostly Muslim Russian republic of Ingushetia.
Rome battles teenage binge-drinking culture with street ban
An alcohol ban in the Italian capital is tackling a summer explosion of drunkenness among the young
Tom Kington in Rome
The Observer, Sunday 16 August 2009
The phrase has been imported from the English language because there is no Italian equivalent. But its meaning has been graphically illustrated from Rome to Milan throughout the summer. “Binge drinking”, a vice more commonly associated with British tourists, has become a national controversy in a country that has traditionally taken a moderate approach to alcohol.Police were this weekend patrolling historic piazzas in Rome to enforce a summer ban on drinking alcohol in the streets, put into effect after months of drunken mob scenes. “This is a huge step forward, backed all the way by Romans,” said Dino Gasperini, the city official who masterminded the ban. “Drinking in the street is just not part of Roman culture.”
Middle East
Hamas destroys al-Qaida group in violent Gaza battle
Fighting between Islamist groups leaves 21 dead after brief declaration of ‘Islamic emirate’ by foreign-led followers of Bin Laden
Peter Beaumont The Observer, Sunday 16 August 2009
An al-Qaida inspired group which briefly proclaimed “the birth of an Islamic emirate” in the Gaza Strip included a Syrian national who was believed to be the head of its military wing, Hamas confirmed today after the group was overrun and its leader killed by police.There have been repeated allegations from Israel and the Fatah-led Palestinian leadership in the West Bank that al-Qaida affiliates, including foreign militants, are operating in Gaza with the knowledge of Hamas, the Islamist group which controls the coastal strip.
The confirmation by a Hamas interior ministry spokesman that a Syrian national of Palestinian descent, named as Khaled Banat but also known as Abu-Abdullah al-Suri, was among those killed in fighting in the southern city of Rafah on the border with Egypt between police and Jund Ansar Allah (“Warriors of the Companions of God”) will renew that controversy.
Dozens die in Kuwait wedding fire
Kuwait’s interior ministry says 36 people died when a fire broke out in a tent being used by women and children at a wedding near Kuwait City.
The BBC Sunday, 16 August 2009
The fire began late on Saturday evening while the guests were celebrating the marriage at a party in the al-Jahra area, west of the capital.Up to 60 women and children were also injured, many in a stampede that followed the blaze, officials said.
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. An investigation has begun.
‘Packed with people’
Four teams of fire-fighters were dispatched to the scene, as well as a large number of ambulances needed to take the injured to hospital. Officials said the authorities had had difficulty evacuating the injured because of the large numbers of anxious relatives at the scene.
Asia
Women have the power to bring about change, but fear and fraud will undermine their votes
Afghanistan goes to the pollsBy Golnar Motevalli in Kabul
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Poor security, rampant fraud and not enough female election staff will keep many women away from the ballot box in this week’s presidential election in Afghanistan, say diplomats and campaign workers.While the female vote has emerged as a potentially powerful bloc in some areas, it is unlikely the majority of women will vote in the violent south and east, where the Taliban have extended their influence. Female voter registration cards are also an easy target for fraud because many women will not have their photographs taken for them for religious reasons. In several provinces, such as Nuristan, the number of women registered to vote was higher than the actual number of female citizens.
Stodgy Japanese elite face the chop as young and old unite
From The Sunday Times
August 16, 2009
Michael Sheridan in Tokyo
AN ANGRY alliance of old and young voters has come to haunt Japan’s conservative ruling party and may decide its fate in a general election later this month.One threat comes from the “lost generation” of voters aged between 25 and 35 who see their politicians as old, stodgy and out of touch.
“They all lack vision,” complained Hirotoshi Ishii, 29, an office worker and one of the age group affected by the recession that has destroyed Japan’s job-for-life culture and spread a sense of middle-class crisis.
Africa
Yahya Jammeh’s state witch-hunters kidnap villagers in western Gambia
From The Sunday Times
August 16, 2009
Dan McDougall Banjul, Gambia
DRESSED in ankle-length vermilion robes, adorned with hundreds of tiny cracked mirrors, the witch-hunters had first been spotted by watchmen, through the flames of their campfires, emerging from the bush in the dead of night.Aroky Bajung, a mother of six, was one of the first sleeping villagers to wake. She caught fleeting glimpses of ceremonial gowns glinting in the moonlight as the tall strangers flitted between houses like ghosts. She grabbed her children and cowered under her bed, praying for morning to come.
By daybreak the fitful dreams of the villagers of Jambur in western Gambia had become a terrifying reality as they woke to the sound of screams and a spidery trail of blood and animal entrails.
How Gaddafi came in from the cold
If Libya’s “Brother Leader” had flown to Europe for a G8 summit two decades ago, his plane would probably have been shot down as a security risk.
By David Blair, Diplomatic Editor
Yet last month, Col Muammar Gaddafi was among the selected leaders invited to the margins of the G8’s conclave in Italy, where he was favoured with a meeting with Gordon Brown.This week, the Libyan spy convicted for killing 270 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 may be released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds. If so, Abdul Basset Ali al-Megrahi will return to a Libya gripped by the transforming power of oil wealth and the end of international isolation.
The country he left to stand trial in 2001 was still an isolated and impoverished backwater, with sanctions having left Tripoli stuck in a time-warp of 1970s architecture and technology. Today, Col Gaddafi, now recast as a valued Western ally, is allowing BP to conduct its largest exploration project in Libya.
Latin America
Brazil played role in U.S.-backed overthrow of Chile’s Allende, document shows
Nixon’s offer in 1971 to help undermine Allende’s government came after Brazil’s president said his military officers were working with counterparts in Chile, a newly declassified document
By Andrew ZajacAugust 16, 2009
Reporting from Washington – President Nixon’s determination to eliminate the socialist government of Salvador Allende led him to offer financial support to efforts by the Brazilian military to undermine the Chilean leader, according to a newly declassified summary of a White House meeting between Nixon and the president of Brazil.“The president said that it was very important that Brazil and the United States work closely in this field. . . . If money were required or other discreet aid, we might be able to make it available,” stated the synopsis of Nixon’s December 1971 conversation with President Emilio Medici.