Docudharma Times Thursday December 24

Army’s new all-terrain vehicle debuts in Afghanistan



By Thomas Day | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGRAM, Afghanistan – The U.S. military’s new all-terrain vehicle doesn’t look all that different from its lumbering predecessor. It’s painted desert sand, and reaching the cabin still means climbing a couple of steps.

On Afghanistan’s rough dirt roads, however, the new $500,000 to $1 million Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicle is a major improvement over the massive Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle it’s replacing, soldiers say. The M-ATV is tailored to Afghanistan, at least parts of it, and the Pentagon is sending about 5,000 of them to the battlefield.

Ben Chu: There’s a good reason why climate naysayers are failing

Isn’t it likely that oppositionist views have been weighed and found wanting?

Thursday, 24 December 2009

Copenhagen has come and gone, but the climate change naysayers are still very much with us. And they are indisputably right about one thing: the scientific consensus can be wrong.

Scientists and their predecessors, the natural philosophers, have been in error in the past on many things, from planetary orbits to the origins of humankind. Scholars with impressive-sounding qualifications argued that the Sun revolved around the Earth and that God created the natural world in all its variety in one astonishing burst of creativity. They were wrong then. So couldn’t those massed ranks of doctorate-laden climate scientists, oceanographers and physicists be wrong now about mankind’s role in warming the climate?

USA

Taking Hold in Silicon Valley, a Ping-Pong Boom



By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

Published: December 23, 2009

MILPITAS, Calif. – Young people who were serious about table tennis used to have to make the trip to Beijing, Stockholm or Moscow to train with world-class coaches.

Now they go no farther than this Silicon Valley suburb.

“I’m trying to become one of the greatest players in the nation,” Srivatsav Tangirala, 14, said matter-of-factly between drills at the huge new table tennis facility here. He and three dozen players, some as young as 5, sprinted sideways along the edge of the tables, 45 times in a row, perfecting their footwork.

“Lean forward, lean, lean, lean, lean!” their coach implored.

Black men hit hard by unemployment in Milwaukee

 

By Krissah Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, December 24, 2009

MILWAUKEE — Radolph Matthews was taught that hope starts at home. He followed the path his strict father set out and checked all the right boxes. But there he was last week on his way to cash an unemployment check — $388. He ran the numbers through his head — $200 for the cellphone bill, $60 for gas for the truck and the rest for food for nine people.

“I thought, I got my MBA, I’m set. I graduated with honors. I’m perfect. All of a sudden all of that was snatched from up under me,” said Matthews, whose $60,000-a-year job at a nonprofit group was eliminated two months ago. “It’s days before Christmas. I have four babies in the house.”

Middle East

In Yemen, tribal tradition trumps education

At the heart of Yemen’s poverty, malnutrition and religious extremism is a tribal culture that prevails over schooling. Educators persevere despite a lack of materials, adequate pay and respect.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

December 24, 2009

Reporting from Sana, Yemen – Seventy boys in khaki uniforms cram shoulder to shoulder into chemistry class, where there are no chemicals or test tubes, only the squeak of the teacher’s magic marker drawing diagrams and equations in the minutes before recess.

If there is a genius among the rows of teenage faces, his gift may never be known. The boys are poor and many are undernourished, leaving class every afternoon to sell water and newspapers in the streets. The teacher earns about $200 a month, not enough to support his family, so he looks for odd jobs in the neighborhoods at the city’s edge.

Iranian security forces suppress new wave of opposition protests in Isfahan

From The Times

December 24, 2009

Martin Fletcher

Iranian security forces violently suppressed opposition supporters in the city of Isfahan yesterday as tensions increased before nationwide demonstrations planned for this weekend.

Two days after massive demonstrations in the holy city of Qom, clashes erupted in Isfahan, Iran’s third city, as thousands of mourners gathered for a memorial service for Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the opposition’s spiritual leader, who died at the weekend. Opposition websites said riot police and Basij militiamen surrounded the Seyed mosque from early in the morning, and then attacked the mourners with batons, teargas and pepper gas.

Many were injured and dozens were arrested, including four journalists and a cleric, Masoud Abid, who was to deliver the sermon. Reformist website Parlemannews reported that more than 50 people were detained.

Asia

A child is reborn

Mohammed was a child soldier in Afghanistan. He saw his father shot dead, witnessed savage atrocities and was seen in a Taliban martyrdom video. Now this teenager has been given the chance of a normal life – and you, our readers, can help other boys robbed of their childhood

By Kim Sengupta in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan Thursday, 24 December 2009

The celebrations are not quite the traditional kind that Christians associate with Christmas Eve, and for Mohammed Mir it is not so much a birth as a rebirth of innocence. But for him and others like him, it is a time of hope and peace after years of violence and despair.

Mohammed is one of the thousands of child soldiers who were recruited by Afghan militias during the conflict that has torn their country apart over the past three decades. Many are still fighting now, but for the Taliban. Some of those taken from Islamic religious schools, or madrassas, are being used as suicide bombers and gunmen.

Pakistani Taliban sends reinforcements to Afghanistan

A senior Pakistani Taliban commander says he has sent thousands of fighters across the border into neighbouring Afghanistan to counter the Nato troop surge.

By Damien McElroy  

Waliur Rehman, deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, said they wanted to assist their fellow fighters as they came under increased pressure.

“Since Obama is also sending additional forces to Afghanistan, we sent thousands of our men there to fight Nato and American forces,” he said.

“The Afghan Taliban needed our help at this stage, and we are helping them.”

His comments from his base in South Waziristan were the first he has made since the Pakistani military launched the ground offensive on October.

He said the Taliban remained committed to battling the army in the tribal region, but they were essentially waging a guerrilla war so could spare fighters to send to Afghanistan.

Europe

The unfinished business of Romania’s revolution

On the anniversary of Ceausescu’s death, Daniel McLaughlin examines the questions that continue to trouble the country the dictator tyrannised

Thursday, 24 December 2009

Tomorrow, it will be 20 years since Dan Voinea helped send Nicolae Ceausescu before a Christmas Day firing squad.

But the anniversary of the climax to Romania’s revolution will not bring unalloyed joy to the prosecutor, or indeed to his compatriots, as they struggle to unearth the truth of what really happened in those extraordinary days, and to discover whether it was a vengeful people or a communist clique that really toppled the Romanian dictator.

Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, had been forced to flee Bucharest, after a wave of protests against their quarter-century of despotic rule swept across the country from the western town of Timisoara, reaching the capital on 21 December.

Who’s killing cock robin? Activists point finger at Cyprus

From The Times

December 24, 2009

Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia

In 40 years Cypriots have given Britain kebabs, easyJet, George Michael and Stavros Flatley.

Set against these varied gifts is a rather less palatable practice that is currently in full swing. In Cyprus they are trapping British robins, roasting them and eating them for dinner.

Many robins stay in Britain all year round but each winter thousands migrate in search of warmer climes, fetching up on the Mediterranean island.

Lured with false birdsong into netted thickets, or caught on sticks dipped in a natural glue, they are among a million songbirds slaughtered and sold to restaurants as part of an illegal multimillion-pound industry.

Latin America

Colombia’s FARC rebels kill governor, prompting calls for security shift

The kidnapping and killing of Gov. Luis Francisco Cuéllar, by Colombia’s FARC rebels, is renewing calls for tougher and smarter government security policies.

By Sibylla Brodzinsky Correspondent / December 23, 2009

The kidnapping and brutal murder of a provincial governor has shocked many Colombians who had put the dark days of political kidnappings behind them, and renewed debate over whether Colombia needs to change the direction of its security policies.

Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped Luis Francisco Cuéllar, the governor of Caquetá province, late Monday night, according to Colombian officials. On Tuesday, troops who were on the trail of the kidnappers found the governor’s body and it was surrounded by explosives in a rural area of the troubled southern province.

Seven years of hard-line security policies under conservative President Álvaro Uribe have significantly weakened the leftist FARC rebels, and had reduced kidnappings dramatically. The last time a governor was kidnapped was in April 2002.

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