Docudharma Times Sunday November 1

Karzai Rival Said to Be Planning to Quit Runoff



By DEXTER FILKINS and ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: October 31, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan – Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai, plans to announce on Sunday his decision to withdraw from the Nov. 7 Afghan runoff election, effectively handing a new term to Mr. Karzai but potentially damaging the government’s credibility, according to Western diplomats here and people close to Mr. Abdullah.

Mr. Abdullah seemed to be keeping his options open until the last second, perhaps maneuvering for more bargaining power, as he has throughout the Afghan political crisis.

Those close to him, speaking Saturday on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Abdullah had committed to leaving the runoff. But they said he was still trying to decide whether to publicly denounce Mr. Karzai, whom he has accused of stealing the Aug. 20 election, or to step down without a fight during a news conference scheduled for Sunday morning.

How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town

Wall Street is celebrating a recovery in the US economy, but the future looks increasingly bleak in America’s industrial heartland

Paul Harris in Detroit

The Observer, Sunday 1 November 2009

Try telling Brother Jerry Smith that the recession in America has ended. As scores of people queued up last week at the soup kitchen which the Capuchin friar helps run in Detroit, the celebrations on Wall Street in New York seemed from another world.

The hungry and needy come from miles around to get a free healthy meal. Though the East Detroit neighbourhood the soup kitchen serves has had it tough for decades, the recession has seen almost any hope for anyone getting a job evaporate. Neither is there any sign that jobs might come back soon.

“Some in the past have had jobs here, but now there is nothing available to people. Nothing at all,” Brother Jerry said as he sat behind a desk with a computer but dressed in the simple brown friar’s robes of his order.

USA

In Tuesday’s contests, Steele sees a vote on his leadership

RNC chairman touts fundraising, predicts a Republican comeback

By Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, November 1, 2009

As they campaigned together across Virginia on Thursday and Friday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele praised Robert F. McDonnell, the state’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, as an innovative leader.

McDonnell was just as enthusiastic.

“Thank you to my largest donor, Michael Steele,” he told a crowd outside a train depot in Culpeper on Friday, referring to the millions that the RNC has poured into the contest. And seeming to realize the potential double meaning of his words as Steele’s 6-foot-4 frame towered over everyone, McDonnell joked, “And also my tallest.”

Health insurance mandate alarms some

 Critics say it may be unconstitutional to charge a penalty for not buying a product. Supporters compare the mandate to car insurance requirements.

By David G. Savage

November 1, 2009

Reporting from Washington – Among some libertarians and conservatives, the most troubling aspect of the pending healthcare reform bills is the prospect of a federal requirement that Americans buy insurance.

“What next? Can Congress order you to buy spinach?” asked Roger Pilon, director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

He and other defenders of limited federal power foresee a constitutional challenge to the mandate to buy insurance based on the claim that Congress’ power to regulate commerce does not extend to forcing citizens to buy a commercial product.

“I think the individual mandate will be challenged. And it will be a close call,” Pilon said.

Middle East

Iran students plan return to street protests

Huge demonstration will defy Ahmadinejad on 30th anniversary of US embassy takeover

Saeed Kamali Dehghan

The Observer, Sunday 1 November 2009

Students across Iran are planning to lead a huge day of protest this week against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime, in a defiant commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the US embassy takeover by radical students in Tehran.

Thousands of green flyers and posters, drawn by anonymous artists, are circulating on the internet, inviting ordinary Iranians to join the student protests, planned for Wednesday.

Organisers have condemned the repressive measures taken by Ahmadinejad’s government since the disputed election results of the summer, which gave the Iranian president a second term and led to unprecedented demonstrations on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi appeared to back the protests yesterday, posting a statement on a reformist website. Mousavi said he would press ahead with his efforts for political change.

Our man in Cairo rashly enters Egypt’s veil debate

Muslims upset over comments about ban on women wearing the niqab

By Jane Merrick, Political Editor

Sunday, 1 November 2009

As the great-grandson of the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and as a rising star in the Foreign Office, Britain’s ambassador to Cairo should be fluent in the carefully crafted language of negotiation and diplomacy.

But Dominic Asquith has caused upset among Muslims after comments he wrote in a blog in which he entered the hotly contested and sensitive debate over whether women should be allowed to wear the niqab in Egypt. Mr Asquith, 52, described the niqab – the full-face veil – as a “symbol” of Islam rather than central to the religion and insisted that not wearing it did not make women any less Islamic.

He also compared the wearing of the niqab to women beginning to attend Catholic churches without the head veil in the 1960s, adding that “change is always difficult”.

Europe

Mother of jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky calls for UK help

David Miliband urged to put pressure on Moscow over case during his first visit to Russia

Luke Harding in Moscow

The Observer, Sunday 1 November 2009

The mother of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – the billionaire oligarch locked up for defying Vladimir Putin – has appealed to the foreign secretary, David Miliband, to raise her son’s case during his high-profile visit to Russia tomorrow Monday.

In an interview with the Observer, Khodorkovsky’s mother, Marina Filipovna, 74, said she was “deeply concerned” by the US administration’s new hands-off approach to Russia – and said it was essential that Britain kept human rights at the forefront of its dialogue with the Kremlin.

“It’s very important that western leaders keep raising my son’s case,” she said. Asked whether the Russian government was likely to heed criticism from Miliband, given London and Moscow’s recent fraught relations, she replied: “Foreign governments have enough levers that they can use.”

Moscow’s iron mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, loses grip

A whiff of corruption threatening the career of Russia’s third most powerful politician

Mark Franchetti in Moscow From The Sunday Times

November 1, 2009

He has branded homosexuals satanic, deployed cloud-seeding fighter jets to ensure good weather on bank holidays and ordered riot police to break up anti-Kremlin demonstrations. As mayor, Yuri Luzhkov has ruled Moscow with an iron fist for the past 17 years.

But with only two years of his fourth term left to serve, the populist mayor is coming under a barrage of criticism which some believe could signal the beginning of the end for Russia’s third most powerful politician.

The most common criticism levied at Luzhkov is that he has used his influence to help the business interests of Yelena Baturina, his wife of 18 years and Russia’s wealthiest woman.

Asia

 Pakistan presses the Taliban in its lawless heartlands

Despite advances on the ground, Hillary Clinton’s visit last week showed up tensions with the US

By Omar Waraich in Sherwengai, South Waziristan and Andrew Buncombe in Lahore

Sunday, 1 November 2009

White smoke rises across a deep gorge. The screeching whistle of mortar fire echoes in the valley as troops target militants five miles away. The sky buzzes with Cobra gunship helicopters.

This is the front line of Pakistan’s war on terror. Two weeks into its assault on the Taliban’s heartlands, the army has edged east and claims it is poised to make fresh gains against hardened central Asian and Taliban fighters hunkered down in the Kaniguram valley, faintly visible in the distance.

This arid vista became the first window on the war as the authorities used helicopters to give journalists a rare look at the borderlands that have long been suspected to serve as sanctuaries for the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders.

In China lonely workers force sex into open

 The plight of its migrant labour has made China confronts an old taboo

Michael Sheridan From The Sunday Times

November 1, 2009

In a rare instance of sexual frankness, a Chinese official has called for “conjugal homes” and short-stay hotels to meet the needs of sex-starved migrant workers in Guangdong, the province known as the “workshop of the world”.

The family planning official, Zhang Feng, said millions of workers lived a lonely existence away from their families and he encouraged them to use sex toys rather than the thriving prostitution industry.

“In this province we have 30m migrants living apart from their wives or husbands whose hunger for sex has never been recognised by society or the government,” Zhang said.

Africa

Homeless carted out of Cape Town and Johannesburg for World Cup

From The Sunday Times

November 1, 2009

Dan McDougall in Johannesburg

South African cities are planning to create “concentration camps” to house thousands of poor people well away from the football stadiums where next year’s World Cup will be staged, charities say.

Human rights groups in Cape Town and Johannesburg have expressed outrage at leaked plans to clear the streets of the homeless during the tournament. Councils in Johannesburg and Durban have told charities that street children and the destitute will be “compassionately” relocated out of city centres from next month.

Bill Rogers, from the Addiction Action Campaign, which helps thousands of drug abusers in Johannesburg, said the city had asked charities for assistance with the scheme.

Mubarak avoids talk of succession

The Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, has promised further domestic reforms at the annual conference of his ruling National Democratic Party in Cairo.

The BBC

In the opening speech, Mr Mubarak laid out plans for much-needed improvements to healthcare, education and transport.

However, the president did not address growing speculation that his son, Gamal, is being groomed to succeed him.

He has yet to announce whether will decide to run for a sixth term in the next presidential election in 2011.

On the eve of the conference, the NDP’s secretary-general said that choosing a successor to the president was not on the agenda.

“We have a special conference to choose the party’s candidate… which is not held annually, and choosing the party’s candidate for the presidency would be its one and only subject,” said Safwat al-Sharif.

Latin America

Mexican farmworker activist, 14 others slain

  Margarito Montes Parra, who had styled himself as a modern-day Zapata, made many enemies as he helped farmworkers in land disputes. His convoy was ambushed in Sonora.

By Tracy Wilkinson

November 1, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City – A flamboyant farmworker organizer who called himself a modern-day Emiliano Zapata has been slain in a brazen ambush that also killed 14 members of his family and staff, officials said Saturday.

Prosecutors in the border state of Sonora, where the slayings occurred, said they were investigating a number of possible motives. Sonora, like much of Mexico, has been hit by a wave of killings tied to drug-trafficking gangs.

The union leader, Margarito Montes Parra, was killed in the southern part of Sonora bordering the state of Sinaloa, a major center for the production and transport of marijuana and heroin.

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