Docudharma Times Thursday January 28

The new Afghan plan: buy off Taliban

Leaders back multimillion-pound fund and consider an olive branch for leadership

By Katherine Butler and Andrew Grice Thursday, 28 January 2010

Britain and the US are backing a new strategy to buy off “soft” supporters of the Taliban in a radical attempt to end nine years of war in Afghanistan. The plan, to be approved at a 60-nation conference in London today, comes amid unexpected signs of growing political support for the equally high-risk idea of talks leading to a political settlement with the Taliban leadership.

In a telling move, on Tuesday night the UN Security Council bowed to pressure from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, to lift sanctions imposed on former officials who served in the Taliban government driven from power by the US-led invasion of 2001.

We Googlistas want a global debate on information freedom. Why are others so coy?

Davos: A new digital cold war is afoot. At stake is something much larger than just a rivalry between the western and eastern superpowers

Timothy Garton Ash

guardian.co.uk

Four cheers for Google. Risking the loss of potentially huge long-term profits in the Chinese internet market, it has struck a blow for one of the great causes of our time: global information freedom. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. In practice, most people in the world still cannot exercise that right, partly because of crippling poverty and lack of education, but also because governments stop them.

There is nothing automatic about the triumph of these wonderful new technologies of communication and information. We (we of this persuasion) celebrate every small victory of digital David over authoritarian Goliath, be it of the mobile phone-using protester in Iran or the VPN-using blogger in China, but Goliath has defended himself quite effectively so far. In real life it may take a Goliath to beat a Goliath. Hence the fascination of “Google versus China”.

USA

For Hmong Hunters, a Guiding Voice in Their New Home

SACRAMENTO JOURNAL

By MALIA WOLLAN

Published: January 27, 2010

SACRAMENTO – Along the barren airwaves of AM radio in Northern California, somewhere between gospel music and traffic updates, Yia Yang can be heard telling his devoted listeners to always be aware of their gun muzzles.

A 50-year-old Hmong immigrant from northern Laos, Mr. Yang is the host of a regular all-things-hunting program on KJAY 1430-AM. The station serves one of the nation’s largest Hmong populations – one for whom the link between hunting and survival is still palpable.

“In Laos a main source of food was wildlife,” said Mr. Yang, who owns a used-car lot in Sacramento, a city with more than 16,000 Hmong residents.

ACORN foe tweeted about planned sting of Sen. Landrieu’s office



By Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, January 28, 2010

On New Year’s Eve, conservative activist James O’Keefe telegraphed across the Internet that he was up to something big.

On the social networking site Twitter, he said that his past undercover video stings had exposed wrongdoing at Democratic-leaning organizations — and he foreshadowed one more in the offing.

“2008: Planned Parenthood VPs fired 2009: ACORN defunded 2010: Get ready cuz this is about to get heavy,” he wrote on his public  Twitter page, dubbed “JamesOKeefeIII.”

Asia

Challenger rejects Sri Lanka poll as soldiers surround his hotel

Defeated general says victorious President is guilty of electoral abuses

By Andrew Buncombe in Colombo Thursday, 28 January 2010

The main challenger in Sri Lanka’s hard-fought presidential election has rejected the result, vowing to launch a legal challenge against the government.

On a tense and often chaotic day during which heavily armed government troops surrounded his hotel, former army chief Sarath Fonseka said President Mahinda Rajapaksa had misused government resources, prevented people from voting and overseen a series of electoral abuses.

He also accused the government of seeking to remove his security detail in order to kill him. Despite this, General Fonseka said he would continue to fight to build a new democracy in Sri Lanka, declaring: “It’s do or die.”

Wrestler Takanohana takes on the Japanese sumo establishment

From The Times

January 28, 2010

Richard Lloyd in Parry in Tokyo

During his fighting career the sumo wrestler known as Takanohana was seldom bettered. Seven years after leaving the ring, he is remembered as one of the all-time greats: an athlete of classical elegance and grace.

Now in retirement he is facing the greatest battle of his life; not against a rival wrestler, but against the blubbery bulk of the sumo establishment.

In his new role as the head of one of the stables in which wrestlers train and live, Takanohana, 37, is leading nothing less than an insurgency against the sumo hierarchy. Together with a small band of young rebels, he is demanding drastic change in the Sumo Association, the ultra-conservative committee of old men who govern the centuries-old sport.

Europe

Oligarch bidding for ‘Independent’ gets huge cash injection from Putin

From The Times

January 28, 2010

Tony Halpin in Moscow and Alexi Mostrous

The Russian billionaire bidding to buy The Independent newspaper is poised to gain a massive cash injection from the Kremlin in a deal personally sanctioned by Vladimir Putin.

Alexander Lebedev, who bought London’s Evening Standard for £1 a year ago, is selling his stakes in the airline Aeroflot and in Russia’s largest aircraft leasing corporation back to the Government.

He told The Times in an exclusive interview that the deals would earn him more than £450 million.

Mr Lebedev said that the cash was destined for new projects in Russia and that none would be spent on his burgeoning newspaper interests in Britain. However, the financial boost casts a revealing new light on the relationship between the Kremlin and a man usually viewed as one of its most outspoken critics.

Holocaust Memorial Day marked on Auschwitz liberation anniversary

Survivors and world leaders gathered in the bitter chill at Auschwitz on Wednesday to remember the hundreds of thousands who perished in one of Nazi Germany’s infamous concentration camps, 65 years to the day since troops of the Red Army liberated the camp.

By Matthew Day in Warsaw

Published: 3:50PM GMT 27 Jan 2010

Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau of Tel Aviv, a holocaust survivor, recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, and sirens wailed across the barracks and barbed wire where an estimated 1.1 million people died.

Speaking at the Vatican Pope Benedict XVI recalled “the horror of crimes of unheard-of brutality that were committed in the death camps created by Nazi Germany”

“May the memory of those events, especially the tragedy of the Shoah that has struck the Jewish people, induce respect for the dignity of every person so that all men can perceive themselves as one big family,” he said.

In a television address Barack Obama spoke of the “sacred duty to remember the cruelty” of Auschwitz.

For many of the ageing and ever-decreasing band of survivors the passing of the years has failed to diminish the suffering incurred at Auschwitz.

Middle East

Iran waits in the wings

 Jan 28, 2010

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi  

On the eve of the major conference on Thursday in London that will bring together senior officials from all of the governments taking part in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan as well as Afghanistan’s neighbors, donors and the United Nations, Iran was still debating whether or not to attend.

However, even if the Iranians do not show up, they will for the immediate future continue to push internationally for a regional approach to stabilizing Afghanistan. This was one of the conditions Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki set for Iran to attend the meeting.

“The occupying forces are now facing great problems as they

have no comprehensive knowledge and information about Afghanistan and we are quite confident that they will leave the country regretfully,” said Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Iran’s first vice president, ahead of a pre-London warmer in Istanbul this week that brought together the heads of states of Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as representatives from China, Tajkistan, Turkmenistan and some international observers.

Iran ‘executes two over post-election unrest’

Iran has executed two men arrested during the period of widespread unrest that erupted after June’s disputed presidential election, reports say.

The BBC Thursday, 28 January 2010

They had been convicted of being “enemies of God”, members of armed groups and trying to topple the Islamic establishment, Isna news agency said.

The executions are believed to be the first related to last year’s protests.

Millions demanded a re-run of June’s poll at the largest demonstrations in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Opposition groups said it had been rigged to ensure the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a charge the government denied.At least 30 protesters have been killed in clashes since the elections, although the opposition says more than 70 have died. Thousands have been detained and some 200 activists remain behind bars.

Latin America

Haiti economy shows signs of life after earthquake

Across Port-au-Prince, indicators of a renascent economy after the Haiti earthquake are unmistakable: bustling street markets, reopened clothing shops, and long lines at cellphone providers, remittance-receiving agencies, and banks.

By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer / January 27, 2010

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Haitians are buying nails to make initial repairs, searching out “tri-tri” – a powder of tiny dried fish used to season rice – and even getting haircuts: all of which means that, slowly, the economy is showing signs of life after being knocked out by the Jan. 12 earthquake.”Business is coming back little by little, despite the damage in the neighborhood, I guess because we Haitians like to keep our hair cut,” says Savien Franciscain, who is running both chairs at the tiny barber shop he operates in Port-au-Prince’s heavily damaged center. “I reopened Sunday, and it’s been pretty good ever since.”

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