Docudharma Times Monday March 8

Iraqi family endures the loss of both parents, looks for renewal at the polls



By Leila Fadel

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, March 8, 2010

BAGHDAD — Marwa Riyadh put on pink eye shadow to match her silky scarf. She donned a skirt and put on her best white boots. Then she and her siblings walked to the polls on Sunday morning from the shabby three-room home where they live as squatters.

Maybe voting would soften the pain caused by the death of their parents, bystanders who were killed in separate clashes between U.S. troops and militants. Maybe it would fade the memories of a sectarian war that still roils beneath the surface. Maybe it would spur Marwa, 22, to celebrate her birthday again.

In Deal on Everglades, a Dream Is Deferred



By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and DAMIEN CAVE

Published: March 7, 2010

When Gov. Charlie Crist announced Florida’s $1.75 billion plan to save the Everglades by buying out a major landowner, United States Sugar, he declared that the deal would be remembered as a public acquisition “as monumental as the creation of the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.”

Standing amid the marshes at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in June 2008, Mr. Crist said, “I can envision no better gift to the Everglades, the people of Florida and the people of America – as well as our planet – than to place in public ownership this missing link that represents the key to true restoration.”

USA

Ethics clouds over Rangel and Paterson are the talk of political Harlem



By Wil Haygood

Washington Post staff writer

Monday, March 8, 2010

NEW YORK — Few will deny that the political landscape here in Harlem has yielded rich and galvanizing story lines. The arcs of those narratives have been taught and shared in classrooms across America.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Charles B. Rangel became chairmen of powerful congressional committees. David N. Dinkins became the first black mayor of New York City, and David A. Paterson became the state’s first black governor. Percy Sutton and Basil Paterson, David’s father, became genuine power brokers, rolling between downtown and uptown with a sophisticated ease. The accomplishments gave Harlem a swagger and also a sweet pride.

Toyota workers raised safety concerns with bosses in 2006 memo

The notice told of worries about employees and vehicles over the automaker’s push to trim costs and boost production.

By John M. Glionna

March 8, 2010

Reporting from Toyota City, Japan – All six Toyota veterans around the table agreed: The memo they were about to send to senior management could damage their careers.

The workers had recognized a troubling trend. In recent years, the automaker had kicked into high gear to fill the booming U.S. demand for smaller, more gas-efficient vehicles.

The union men had watched the company take what they believed were dangerous safety and manpower shortcuts to lower costs and boost production.

Europe

Spyclists: how Hitler Youth’s cycling tours caused panic in prewar Britain

Nazis’ bid to forge ties with Lord Baden-Powell and boy scouts rang government alarm bells

Owen Bowcott

The Guardian, Monday 8 March 2010  

Cycling tours by Hitler Youth groups and Nazi attempts to establish close links with the Boy Scout movement caused a security panic in prewar Britain, according to MI5 files released today.

Police officers were alerted to monitor German students on bicycle holidays in the late 1930s as they stopped at schools, Rotary clubs, factories and church services.

An effusively amicable meeting between Lord Baden-Powell, head of the Scout movement, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, rang even louder alarm bells in Whitehall.

Earthquake hits eastern Turkey; at least 41 dead



By SUZAN FRASER (AP)

ANKARA, Turkey – A strong earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6, hit eastern Turkey on Monday, killing at least 41 people and knocking down houses in at least six small villages, the government said.

The quake affected villages near the town of Kovancilar, toppling stone or mud-brick homes and minarets of mosques, officials and media reports said. The worst-hit area was the village of Okcular where some 17 people were reported killed.

The government’s crisis center said around 100 people were also injured in the quake, which occurred at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) in Elazig province, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) east of Ankara, the capital, and caught many people in their sleep.

Middle East

Robert Fisk: Once again, a nation walks through fire to give the West its ‘democracy’

Democracy doesn’t seem to work when countries are occupied by Western troops

Monday, 8 March 2010

n 2005 the Iraqis walked in their tens of thousands through the thunder of suicide bombers, and voted – the Shias on the instructions of their clerics, the Sunnis sulking in a boycott – to prove Iraq was a “democracy”. There followed the most blood-boltered period in Iraq’s modern history. Yesterday, the Iraqis walked in their tens of thousands through the thunder of mortar fire – at least 24 dead before voting stations closed – to prove that Iraq was a “democracy”.

This time, the Sunnis did vote. And we Westerners tried to forget the past, even the recent past. Few news reports recalled that only weeks ago hundreds of candidates, most of them Sunnis, were banned from standing on the grounds that they had once had links with the Baath Party.

Biden’s Israel visit is a year too late

 

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent  

I looked over the schedule for U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who will arrive in Jerusalem on Monday, and found it hard to believe. An extensive meeting as well as a more limited meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, dinner with Bibi and Sara Netanyahu at their official residence, a helicopter tour with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and a speech at Tel Aviv University. A draft of his speech wasn’t made available to me, but I’ll go out on a limb and guess that Biden will expound on his declarations of love, support and limitless commitment to the security of Israel and its prosperity.

With so much attention, it’s a shame he’s arriving a year late – a year which his boss, President Barack Obama, wasted on fruitless diplomatic moves that only further compromised the shaky stature of the United States in the Middle East. Obama and his advisers expected the hand that he extended to the Arab world and Iran, the president’s reference in his Cairo speech to passages from the Koran, and the public and demonstrable distance that he created from Israel would soften the Muslims’ and Arabs’ residual hostility for America. It didn’t work.

Asia

Bo Xilai, China’s most charismatic politician, makes a bid for power

Speculation mounts that China’s Mr Cool may become a contender

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing Monday, 8 March 2010

The tall, dapper and smiling Chinese leader looked presidential as he pulled up at the front entrance of the Great Hall of the People, waving photographers and waiting reporters away. Senior members of the Politburo never enter through the front door. But this is Bo Xilai. And when the popular Bo, the mafia-busting Communist Party chief in the south-western city of Chongqing, arrives for the annual National People’s Congress, there is a whiff of change. “He is very cool. He’s Bo, no?” said one passer-by. At the vast People’s Congress which opened in Beijing on Friday and continues until Sunday, Bo is enjoying a moment of celebrity.

Cyberwar declared as China hunts for the West’s intelligence secrets

From The Times

March 8, 2010  

Michael Evans, Giles Whittell

Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyberwar attacks originating in China.

The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states.

Nato diplomatic sources told The Times: “Everyone has been made aware that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.” The sources said that the number of attacks had increased significantly over the past 12 months, with China among the most active players.

Africa

Zimbabwe’s white farmers plan to seize government property

White Zimbabwean farmers whose land was grabbed by Robert Mugabe plan to turn the tables by seizing Zimbabwean-owned property in South Africa.

By Peta Thornycroft in Harare and Sebastien Berger In Johannesburg  

Lawyers for dispossessed farmers believe that on Monday they will be able to start using the law to seize houses in Cape Town which are owned by the Zimbabwean government. Their action, which follows a landmark legal ruling, promises to humiliate Mr Mugabe and embarrass South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma, who was on a state visit to Britain last week.

The battle for justice fought by one of the white farmers, Mike Campbell, aged 77, was featured in the documentary film Mugabe and the White African. It was shown in British cinemas this year to great acclaim.The film tells how he fought stubbornly to bring a legal case in 2008 against Mr Mugabe’s government at the Southern African Development Community tribunal, based in the Namibian capital Windhoek.

Nigeria president puts forces on alert after Jos deaths

Nigeria’s acting President Goodluck Jonathan has ordered security forces to prevent more weapons being brought into the area around the city of Jos.

The BBC  Monday, 8 March 2010

More than 100 people, many of them women and children, are believed dead after attacks in the area on Sunday.

Witnesses said the mainly Christian villages had been attacked from the surrounding hills by men with machetes.

Jos itself has been under curfew since January when at least 200 died in clashes between Christians and Muslims.

Military deployed

The attack happened before dawn on Sunday morning when gangs of men descended on several communities, centred on the village of Dogo-Nahawa, and attacked people with machetes, reports say.

Latin America

Chileans rally for earthquake victims

A benefit concert in the capital, Santiago, taps into national pride and a strong show of solidarity, raising more than $59 million, double the goal.

By Daniel Hernandez

March 8, 2010

Reporting from Santiago, Chile – This capital city grappled with conflicting emotions over the weekend as Chile slowly recovers from one of the strongest earthquakes recorded: tears and jokes, dancing and chanting and a strong show of solidarity for victims in the most severely punished parts of the country.

In crowded cafes, barbershops and even during a drag show in Santiago’s bohemian Bellavista district, Chileans were using humor and a toughened cool to deal with life on a part of Earth that never quite wants to be still.

Strong aftershocks that persisted Sunday just served to punctuate the mood. Did you feel that one?

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