Docudharma Times Sunday September 20

Obama’s Worldwide Star Power Finds Limits

Skepticism Abroad Echoes Doubt at Home

By Michael D. Shear and Howard Schneider

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama has become a global celebrity, far more popular abroad than he is at home and sometimes eclipsing foreign leaders among their own people.

He has sought to use his renown to repair America’s image in the world, extending an “open hand” in major speeches on trips to more than a dozen countries. Obama has restarted talks to limit nuclear weapons, begun engaging adversaries, helped orchestrate the world’s response to economic collapse and reversed Bush-era policies that had angered allies and distanced the United States from the world community.

Happy birthday Guinness! The Black Stuff at 250

The famous stout made its debut in 1759, and has left its mark in the worlds of advertising, the arts and the gossip columns. Andrew Johnson drinks it all in

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Arthur Guinness

God-fearing Arthur would be aghast at the drink- and drug-fuelled high-octane lifestyle of some of his descendants. The founder of the Guinness dynasty was keen on the Methodist teachings of John Wesley and started the first Sunday schools in Ireland.

The seeds of the Guinness brewery were sewn in 1752 when a young Arthur was left £100 by his godfather, the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr Arthur Price. Guinness’s father was a land steward on the Archbishop’s estate and helped brew beer for the workers. Arthur and his brother ploughed the cash into a brewery in Leixlip, County Kildare in 1756. Three years later, in 1759, a 34-year-old Arthur upped sticks and took a 9,000-year lease on a dilapidated brewery in St James’s Gate, Dublin, in order to try his hand at porter, a brew involving roasted barley that turned the drink black and so called after the porters who drank it.

USA

Father, son arrested in terrorism investigation

Najibullah Zazi, a Denver-area airport shuttle driver, is arrested along with his father and another man by FBI agents in connection with a suspected terrorist plot.

 By Josh Meyer

September 20, 2009

Reporting from Washington – Federal authorities arrested a Denver-area airport shuttle driver, his father and another man late Saturday in connection with a suspected plot to launch a terrorist attack within the United States, the Justice Department said early today.

Najibullah Zazi, 24, and his father, Wali Mohammed Zazi, 53, were taken into custody at their home in Aurora, Colo., and charged with “knowingly and willfully making false statements to the FBI in a matter involving international and domestic terrorism” during several days of questioning, according to a federal complaint.

Teachers find Obama not the friend they had expected



By Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed merit pay for teachers and lifting the cap on charter schools, the head of the California NAACP stood by his side.

And when the Los Angeles school board voted to approve a plan that could turn over a third of its schools to private operators, Latino members and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa led the charge.

The nation’s public school teachers are feeling the squeeze from all sides these days, and some of the heat is coming from unlikely sources: minorities and longtime Democratic allies.

One of them is President Barack Obama, who is irking teachers by suggesting that student test scores be used to judge the success of educators.

Europe

German election: east continues to feel left out 20 years after Berlin Wall fell

Voters in former DDR angered by Afghanistan troop losses, unemployment and blighted hopes after reunification

Jason Burke in Schwerin

The Observer, Sunday 20 September 2009

Mikhail Stamm is not interested in politics. But he is interested in Afghanistan – not least because he thinks he is likely to be going there soon. Standing outside the recruiting centre in the north-eastern German town of Schwerin, the 19-year-old says he has always wanted to join the army: “I’m happy to go to Afghanistan. I want to see the world and bring peace.”

His brother, Dmitri, 24, adds that most of his friends are now in uniform. Dmitri, who is unemployed, is less idealistic. “There are no jobs where we come from,” he said. “It’s like that everywhere around here.”

In the east of Germany, three themes are dominating the lead-up to the general election on 27 September: the war in Afghanistan; unemployment and the economic crisis; and – with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November – relations between the east and west of a country, where the euphoria of unification is only a memory. The issues form an unholy trinity of reasons to be angry.

The people’s planet: On the road to Copenhagen

Eco-campaigners offer their own solutions to climate change ahead of the UN summit in New York this week – a meeting that holds the key to striking a new ‘Kyoto’ treaty in Denmark in December. Jonathan Owen and Jenny Armstrong report  

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Franny Armstrong, Producer of ‘The Age of Stupid

Cut our emissions by 10 per cent in 2010

“To maximise our chances of preventing runaway climate change, we must quickly and massively cut global emissions. By signing up to the 10:10 campaign, you will commit yourself, your school, your hospital, your church, your business, your whatever, to cut 10 per cent of your emissions next year. As well as being achievable for the vast majority of the population, 10 per cent in one year is the kind of cut the science tells us we need.”

Middle East

Opposition protest cut out of Iran TV’s football coverage

Broadcast delayed as crowd demonstration is edited out

Robert Tait

The Observer, Sunday 20 September 2009

Live television coverage of an Iranian football match was blacked-out because sections of the crowd were chanting anti-government slogans and waving green emblems in support of the country’s political opposition, it was claimed yesterday.

The premier league match between Esteghlal and Steel Azin took place at Tehran’s Azadi stadium just hours after tens of thousands of green-clad protesters used the state-organised Quds Day anti-Israel demonstrations to voice their opposition to the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is accused of stealing Iran’s recent election.

The game’s scheduled live TV coverage was disrupted apparently after bosses of the state broadcaster, Irib, learned of the presence of protesters inside the stadium.

Yemen: The land with more guns than people

At least 150,000 people are displaced in Yemen by fighting between Shia rebels and Sunni government forces.

By Jane Merrick and Kim Sengupta

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Entire villages of people in north Yemen are being forced to flee by bands of Shia rebels as a sharp escalation of violence in the region prompts warnings that the conflict could become as bitter as that in Darfur. Fighting in the unstable Arab country, where weapons outnumber people and 50 per cent are illiterate, has already displaced about 150,000 souls.

In the past month the conflict has worsened, leaving tens of thousands without access to water and sanitation.And in the past 48 hours, sources reported that two of the largest tribes have begun to polarise behind opposing sides, with one amassing behind the Yemeni president’s “popular army” and another falling in behind the Shia rebels, known as al-Houthi. Aid agencies are concerned that a tribal element to the fighting could add immeasurably to its ferocity.

Asia

Investigation: Nuclear scandal – Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan  

The Pakistani scientist who passed nuclear secrets to the world’s rogue states has been muzzled by his government. In a smuggled letter, AQ Khan reveals his side of the story



From The Sunday Times

September 20, 2009  Simon Henderson

It could be a scene from a film. On a winter’s evening, around 8pm, in a quiet suburban street in Amsterdam, a group of cars draw up. Agents of the Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD, accompanied by uniformed police, ring the bell and knock on the door of one of the houses. The occupants, an elderly couple and their unmarried daughter, are slow to come to the door. The bell-ringing becomes more insistent, the knocks sharper. When the door opens, the agents request entry but are clearly not going to take no for an answer.

The year was 2004. The raid went unreported but was part of the worldwide sweep against associates of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist and “father of the Islamic bomb”, who had just been accused of selling nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. The house belonged to one of his brothers, a retired Pakistani International Airlines manager, who lived there with his wife and daughter. The two secret agents asked the daughter for a letter she had recently received from abroad. Upstairs in her bedroom, she pulled it from a drawer. It was unopened. The agents grabbed it and told her to put on a coat and come with them.

Briefing: Why Thai protesters are taking to the streets again

Antigovernment activists plan to defy a tough security law to rally Saturday on the third anniversary of a military coup.

By Simon Montlake | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 19, 2009 edition

BANGKOK, THAILAND – Antigovernment protesters are gathering Saturday in Bangkok to mark the third anniversary of a military coup against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. At least 30,000 are likely to attend the rally, defying the use of a tough internal security law that allows troops to make arrests.

The protesters will wear red shirts and voice support for Mr. Thaksin, who is living in exile. In April, armed troops put down violent protests in Bangkok by the red shirts after they had disrupted a regional summit. Some of the leaders of the movement face criminal charges.

Last year saw rival yellow-shirted protesters occupy government buildings and two airports. That group has since formed a political party and is loosely aligned with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva, who took office last December after the courts dissolved a pro-Thaksin administration.

Since the coup, Thailand has been held hostage by its fractious politics, to the alarm of the US, a longtime ally. Its Army is also battling a growing Muslim-led insurgency in its southernmost provinces.

Latin America

Cuba

Wheeling west from Havana, two Americans find that while the embargo remains, bicycles own the road.

By Emma Brown and Jacob Fenston

Washington Post Staff Writer and Special to The Washington Post

Sunday, September 20, 2009

We were coated in a slick of sweat, diesel exhaust and sunscreen when we coasted up to a man wearing just-shined shoes and drinking rum from a plastic cup. He squinted at our crinkled map, nodded, told us we wanted to go south to the beach at San Luis and walked off as we tried to explain that we were headed north.

Next we tried an older woman, who donned her huge reading glasses to examine the map. She held it upside down and agreed that San Luis was probably where we were headed. Her nephew chimed in: Nothing up that other road but mountains and rivers. “Do what you want,” he said, exasperated. “But you won’t get there before dark.”

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