Docudharma Times Sunday April 11

Oklahoma: the day homegrown terror hit America

When war veteran Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, the US was stunned. Why did Americans like him hate their country? And, as the rightwing militias rise again, what lessons does that fateful day hold?

Ed Vulliamy

The Observer, Sunday 11 April 2010

Next Sunday, 18 April, will be Baylee Almon’s 16th birthday. There will be a party and cakes, and her younger half-sister Bella and half-brother Brooks will be there. A place will be set for Baylee, but she will attend in spirit only, not in body. The day after her first birthday, on 19 April 1995, six years before 11 September 2001, Baylee was one of 168 people – including 19 children and babies – who died in a bomb attack on American soil.

The Alfred P Murrah building in Oklahoma City was bombed at 9.01 in the morning, as a normal working day on the Great Plains was getting under way – not by Islamic fundamentalists plotting in Afghan caves, but by a paramilitary unit of Americans who called themselves “patriots”, led by a former serviceman and 1991 Gulf war veteran, Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was executed in 2001, and his principal accomplice, Terry Nichols, is serving life.

The Texas Border Draws Frequent Fliers  

EXPLORER

By ELAINE GLUSAC

Published: April 11, 2010

ELEVEN in the morning is not the best time of day to start birding. But when my plane landed at that hour in the Rio Grande Valley, reputedly one of the best places for bird-watching in the country, I just couldn’t wait.

Driving 15 minutes from the McAllen airport to Edinburg Scenic Wetlands, I scored immediately, notching ringed kingfishers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, black-necked stilts, several varieties of herons, circling ospreys and ducks by the dozens before noon.

USA

Hispanics skeptical that Obama, Democrats will deliver immigration overhaul



By Sandhya Somashekhar

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, April 11, 2010

AURORA, COLO. — Maria Garcia can rattle off a dozen things that are more important to her than politics. Her sky-high mortgage payments, for instance. The convenience store she owns, which isn’t making money. And, at this moment, the chili peppers toasting in the store’s kitchen.”I don’t have time to think about politics,” she said, rubbing her eyes amid the caustic fumes. “Ten years ago, I was doing good.

Kissinger cable heightens suspicions about 1976 Operation Condor killings

A document suggests the secretary of State rejected warning South American governments against international terrorism. Five days later, a bombing linked to Chile killed 2 in Washington.

By Andrew Zajac and David S. Cloud

April 11, 2010

Reporting from Washington

A newly declassified document has added to long-standing questions about whether Henry Kissinger, while secretary of State, halted a U.S. plan to curb a secret program of international assassinations by South American dictators.

The document, a set of instructions cabled from Kissinger to his top Latin American deputy, ended efforts by U.S. diplomats to warn the governments of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina against involvement in the covert plan known as Operation Condor, according to Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a private research organization that uncovered the document and made it public Saturday.

Europe

Out of one nation’s catastrophe comes a clarion call for honesty

Iceland’s proposal to create a haven for investigative journalism should be welcomed by all who cherish freedom of expression

Henry Porter

The Observer, Sunday 11 April 2010

Sitting at the bottom of the mountain in Iceland, there was time enough last week to reflect on this country’s importance in the struggle between the world’s internet users and state secrecy, never better represented than by publication by Wikileaks of a video showing the slaughter of more than a dozen people by an American helicopter gunship in Baghdad.

Iceland is proposing radical new laws that will create a safe haven for investigative journalism and therefore the release of this kind of shocking footage, which exposes a cover-up, as well as the true nature of a war where a superpower deploys its weapons on a third world country, in this instance cutting down, among others, two people working for Reuters.

Vatican lifts veil of secrecy on abuse cases

As two more cover-ups are revealed, a simple online guide to the canonical procedures for dealing with accused priests is launched

By Nicole Winfield in The Vatican Sunday, 11 April 2010

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the office once known as the Inquisition – has long epitomised the secrecy of the Vatican, with responsibility for banning books and meting out punishments as severe as excommunication and burning at the stake. Now, as the office’s handling of child-molesting priests comes increasingly under fire, the Vatican is starting to open up. Tomorrow, it will release online a concise guide for the layman on how the congregation handles sex abuse allegations.

Middle East

In Turkey, military’s power over secular democracy slips

 

By Janine Zacharia

Washington Post Foreign Correspondent

Sunday, April 11, 2010

ISTANBUL — Since the Turkish republic’s founding 87 years ago, the military has stood as unquestioned guardian of secular democracy, intervening when it deemed necessary to keep religion out of politics in this overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

But now, battered by allegations of corruption and scandal, the authority of the once-unchallenged military is being whittled away by an increasingly assertive and confident public.

Asia

Afghan farmers reap cannabis harvest worth £61m

New UN report shows corruption is lubricating Afghanistan’s latest lucrative drugs industry

By Jonathan Owen  Sunday, 11 April 2010

Afghanistan, already the world’s top opium supplier, is now the world’s biggest producer of cannabis, according to United Nations drug experts.

There is large-scale cultivation of the drug in half of the country, resulting in 3,500 tons of hashish worth an estimated £61m annually, according to the first assessment of cannabis in Afghanistan by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It warns that the threat from the drug needs to be dealt with to deny the Taliban the millions they make in protection taxes paid by farmers and drug smugglers.

Bangkok clashes death toll climbs to 20, with 800 hurt

At least 20 people are now known to have died in clashes between Thai troops and opposition supporters in Bangkok, and more than 800 were hurt.

The BBC  Sunday, 11 April 2010  

The worst violence came when soldiers and police made an unsuccessful attempt to retake an area held by opposition supporters on Saturday evening.

They fired tear gas and rubber bullets while protesters hurled petrol bombs, in the deadliest violence in 18 years.

A government spokesman denied reports that live rounds had also been fired.

“There were no live bullets fired at protesters,” Panitan Wattanayagorn said on national TV, AFP agency reported.

At least four soldiers were among the dead on Saturday.

Africa

Jacob Zuma warns ANC to halt racial anger

From The Sunday Times

April 11, 2010  

Dan McDougall in Cape Town

The South African president, Jacob Zuma, moved yesterday to calm racial tensions after the murder of Eugene Terreblanche, the leader of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), was blamed on inflammatory remarks that were made by one of Zuma’s own party officials.

Zuma ordered Julius Malema, 28, leader of the African National Congress (ANC) youth league, to shut up after it emerged that only 48 hours before the killing, Malema had showered praise on Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and called for the nationalisation of white-owned farms.

Sudan holds landmark multi-party elections

Voters in Sudan are casting their ballots in the first multi-party elections in 24 years.

The BBC Sunday, 11 April 2010  

The polls for president, parliament and state assemblies are being held as part of the peace deal that ended the civil war between north and south Sudan.

But several key parties and politicians opposed to President Omar al-Bashir are boycotting the vote amid fraud fears.

For many in southern Sudan, these elections are a prelude to a referendum next January on possible independence.

The 16 million registered voters have until Tuesday to decide but some turned up on Sunday before polls opened to make sure they could cast their votes.

Latin America

Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of ‘Avatar’



By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

Published: April 10, 2010

VOLTA GRANDE DO XINGU, Brazil – They came from the far reaches of the Amazon, traveling in small boats and canoes for up to three days to discuss their fate. James Cameron, the Hollywood titan, stood before them with orange warrior streaks painted on his face, comparing the threats on their lands to a snake eating its prey.

“The snake kills by squeezing very slowly,” Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. “This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be,” he added.

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