Docudharma Times Sunday November 22

Partisan divide widens as Obama considers Afghanistan policy

The Sunday Take

By Dan Balz

Sunday, November 22, 2009

As President Obama nears a decision on Afghanistan, he faces a partisan divide in public opinion that is pulling him in opposite directions. His recent statements about the decision suggest that he is trying to accommodate the views with a war strategy that can be successful and contained.

This is the dilemma Obama faced when, as a candidate, he cast his lot with Afghanistan while opposing the war in Iraq. The issue that was avoidable then, but is no longer, is how to put down al-Qaeda and the Taliban without being drawn into an endless conflict in a nation that has swallowed up outside forces through the centuries.

Celebrities lead charge against Scientology

Hollywood figures quit ‘rip-off’ church as Australian prime minister threatens parliamentary inquiry into its activities

Peter Beaumont in London, Toni O’Loughlin in Sydney, and Paul Harris in New York

The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009

The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston’s waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city’s bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise.

The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology’s top legal adviser for a quarter of a century, Earle Cooley. The controversial head of Scientology worldwide, David Miscavige, delivered the eulogy, thanking his late friend for his contribution to the neo-religion during his career, much of which was spent pursuing journalists and former members who spoke out against it.

USA

An NYPD surgeon learns the random nature of wounds

An NYPD surgeon expected to see gunshots and random violence. But he was more surprised by officers’ hidden traumas.

By Francis V. Adams

November 23, 2009

I expected to see more gunshot wounds when I became a police surgeon for the NYPD three years ago. I had seen my first one as an intern decades earlier — a suspect injured during a robbery had been brought into the emergency room — and I still recalled the jagged, deep crater left by the bullet. The image had left its mark on me, not only by its appearance but also because it had been inflicted by another human being.

I was braced for the sight of other such disturbing wounds, but I was surprised to find that many injuries resulted from trips, stumbles and mishaps that occurred off duty. Among these were a detective who had grasped a glass that shattered, lacerating her hand and severing tendons and nerves supporting her thumb, and a sergeant building a deck on his home who had fallen through it, breaking several ribs. At first I thought this odd, that members of the police department, empowered by the law, would be as vulnerable as the rest of society.

Forced labour and rape, the new face of slavery in America

In the Midwestern heartland, police are encountering a new social evil: trafficking, often involving women and children who are forced to work as prostitutes or unpaid labour; and the outcomes can be brutal.

Paul Harris in Dayton, Ohio

The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009

Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery.

Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America’s coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan.

“It is not only a crime. It is an abomination,” said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue.

Europe

The accidental uprising: How ‘corpse’ killed Communism

Twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, Victor Sebestyen recalls how the Czech regime fell to a hapless secret plot

Sunday, 22 November 2009

For the past two decades, 17 November has been a national holiday in the Czech Republic. It is the day that marks the beginning of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that brought down the Communist dictatorship which for 40 years had run Czechoslovakia, the country that then comprised today’s Czech and Slovak republics.

The celebrations in Prague last Tuesday were especially poignant. It was the 20th anniversary of those dizzying few days when a combination of people power on the streets, and clever politicking behind the scenes by the opposition, brought Czechs freedom. The people who took part in the revolution are middle aged or older now – and young people take a free market, free movement around Europe, and free voting for granted. They never knew what living under Communism and Soviet occupation was like.

The Large Hadron Collider back in business

From The Sunday Times

November 22, 2009

Robert Watts

Scientists successfully restarted the Large Hadron Collider this weekend, aiming to power the £6 billion Big Bang simulator up to record-breaking speeds.

Nine days after last year’s project launch, a component overheated, causing damage that cost £24m to repair. Following a 14-month hiatus, on Friday night engineers fired two split-second proton beams in opposite directions around the machine’s 17-mile tunnel on the French-Swiss border.

They were originally due to be fired at 6am yesterday, but the relaunch was brought forward by 10½ hours, so many scientists nearly missed it.

Asia

As deaths in Afghanistan rise, so does the growth of opium

The Taliban, bankrolled by drugs production, have the upper hand over coalition forces

By Jonathan Owen

Sunday, 22 November 2009

Attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan are at record levels and threaten to derail efforts to rebuild the war-torn country, while an unholy alliance of Taliban drug dealers and corrupt government officials has made a mockery of coalition forces’ attempts to stem the export of heroin.

The findings, from new reports looking at the current situation in Afghanistan, highlight key areas in which, contrary to the assurances of Western military leaders, the war is being lost.

A series of secret Government documents have also laid bare the “appalling” errors that contributed to Britain’s failure in Iraq.

Mumbai terror attacks hotel manager leads defiant survivors

From The Sunday Times

November 22, 2009

Nicola Smith

The manager of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, Karambir Singh Kang, had no idea that a fraught conversation with his wife Niti in the early hours of November 27 last year would be the couple’s last.

Niti was barricaded with their sons Uday, 14, and Samar, 5, in the bathroom of the family’s sixth-floor suite at the hotel in Mumbai as terrorists rampaged through its corridors with guns and grenades.

Africa

Egypt’s President Mubarak enters Algeria football row

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has stepped into a row with Algeria, vowing he will not tolerate the “humiliation” of Egyptian nationals abroad.

The BBC

The dispute was triggered by violence following football World Cup qualifying matches between the two north African Arab nations.

Algeria won the crucial play-off, but each side has accused the other’s fans of attacking their supporters.

The governing body of world football, Fifa, is investigating the violence.

The BBC’s Yolande Knell in Cairo says in a country where political demonstrations are usually heavily suppressed this is an unusual sight and a further sign of how strained Egypt’s relationship with Algeria has now become.

In the televised statement to a joint session of parliament, President Mubarak said his country will not be lax in defending the rights and integrity of its citizens.

“Egypt does not tolerate those who hurt the dignity of its sons,” he said.

Botswana fishermen fear tourist invasion will destroy Okavango wilderness

Villagers say visitors to delta are a threat to wildlife and their fishing industry

David Smith in Samochima, Botswana

The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009

Music, dancing and smiling platitudes greeted the royal guest in the fishing village of Samochima, northern Botswana. But cutting through the convivial mood was a cry of anguish – and a plea for a way of life threatened by tourism in the world’s largest inland delta.

Crown Prince Haakon of Norway had arrived as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). While addressing an audience in the shade of some fig trees, he was confronted by a local fisherman, Saoshiko Njwaki, who spoke out bluntly about growing resentment at the world’s indifference to their plight.

“Tourists are allowed to go into the delta without local guides,” Njwaki told the prince.

Middle East

Iran to conduct military exercise aimed at protecting nuke sites





Tehran, Iran (CNN) — Iran plans to launch a large aerial military exercise Sunday to prepare for any possible attack, state media said.

The five-day exercise was to cover a vast area in the country’s northwest, west, south and southwest, Press TV said, citing Brig. Gen. Ahmad Miqani.

Iran’s regular military and its elite Revolutionary Guards were to participate in the exercise against aerial attacks, especially against Iran’s nuclear plants, according to Press TV.

The report did not offer further details about the scope of the exercise, but came as world powers have been strategizing about how to deal with Iran’s apparent rejection of a key part of a nuclear deal.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq regaining strength

GOVERNMENT IS THE TARGET

More high-profile blasts likely in run-up to vote

By Ernesto Londoño

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, November 22, 2009

BAGHDAD — The Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has rebounded in strength in recent months and appears to be launching a concerted effort to cripple the Iraqi government as U.S. troops withdraw, Iraqi and American officials say.

The group asserted responsibility for four powerful bombings that targeted five government buildings in Baghdad in August and October — the deadliest attacks directed at the government in more than six years of war. Authorities say al-Qaeda in Iraq intends to carry out additional high-profile attacks in the months ahead and is attempting to regain its foothold in former strongholds just outside the capital.

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