Docudharma Times Monday December 1

What Will Monday’s Announcements

Mean For The U.S. And The World?  

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security



By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, December 1, 2008; Page A01

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

At war level: India raises security status amid grief

Fallout from Mumbai attacks jeopardises south Asian peace process

Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai and Jason Burke in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Monday December 1 2008 00.01 GMT

The Indian government raised the country’s security to a “war level” yesterday saying it had certain proof of a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks.

The dramatic move prompted Pakistan to say it would end military operations against Islamist militants on the Afghan border, which are critical to the “war on terror”, for an “unwanted conflict” with Delhi.

With bodies being pulled from the Taj Mahal hotel, where gunmen had made their last stand after a rampage that left more than 170 dead, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, India’s minister of state for home affairs, said the country’s “intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level”. The Press Trust of India, India’s official news agency also reported that the government was considering suspending the four-year-old peace process with its neighbour.

USA

A wealth of ideas for Obama’s stimulus program

The next president has yet to offer details of his plan. Its size and scope, and how he’ll address housing and the auto industry, are up for debate.

By Michael A. Hiltzik

December 1, 2008

In three news conferences last week, President-elect Barack Obama began to outline an economic stimulus and recovery program involving public works, tax breaks and new federal funding for energy research.

The planned initiatives provided a spark of optimism amid the nation’s worsening financial outlook, but elements crucial for a sustained recovery are yet missing and many important details remain to be filled in, economists say. These include Obama’s approach to mortgage relief and the structure of a bailout of the automobile industry.

Some of the gaps may be deliberate, as insiders debate the size and scope of the package. Liberal economists in particular argue that to be effective, the program will have to be massive.

Geothermal systems conserve energy and reduce bills for heating and cooling



By MISTY McNALLY

Special to The Star

You may not know anyone with a geothermal heating and cooling system in the house, but you will soon. With tax credits and financial incentives plus lowered utility bills and increased energy efficiency, the numbers of geothermal homes are growing – and homeowners are singing the praises of “going underground.”

James Bose of the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association says commercial and residential installations total 50,000 a year now, up from about 2,500 in 1986.

Asia

Thai anti-government protesters defy police warning to leave airports

• Fears of widening unrest as blast injures 51 people

• Emergency flights sent to pick up stranded tourists

Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok

guardian.co.uk, Monday December 1 2008 00.01 GMT

Police in Thailand ordered protesters to leave Bangkok’s two airports yesterday, and allow more than 160,000 stranded travellers to fly home.

But the authorities showed little sign that they were about to move in forcefully to take control of the airports, which have been closed for six days amid mounting frustration of foreign governments concerned over their nationals.

The rising alarm came as more than 10,000 of the beleaguered government’s supporters gathered for a mass rally in Bangkok, leading to a fear of clashes with their rivals holding the airports and the prime minister’s Government House headquarters.

N Korea restricts border controls

North Korea has begun enforcing stricter border controls with South Korea, due to what it calls “relentless confrontation” from Seoul.

The BBC

The western crossing at Dorasan was not completely shut under the restrictions, but it failed to open at its usual time on Monday morning.

Hundreds of South Koreans were expelled from a joint industrial zone in the North as part of the restrictions.

Tourism trips and a cargo train to North Korea were suspended last week.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said: “It is very regrettable that North Korea has imposed restrictions on border crossings.

“The North’s measure should be immediately withdrawn.”

A South Korean official said as many as 1,700 South Korean managers could return to the Kaesong industrial zone from Monday, Reuters news agency reported.

Europe

Swiss voters give boost to heroin on the NHS

Switzerland set to back radical plan to help addicts

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Monday, 1 December 2008

A pioneering British programme to provide injectable heroin to drug addicts received a boost yesterday when voters in Switzerland backed a similar scheme in a referendum.

Early returns indicated overwhelming support for the Swiss scheme which has been credited with reducing crime, improving the health of addicts and clearing them from the streets.

Drug experts in Britain hailed the result as an indication that long-term prescription of heroin to hardened addicts could be politically acceptable. The practice of giving addicts drugs on a maintenance basis, rather than weaning them off them, is one of the most controversial in medicine.

Nato plays it cool over Georgia and Ukraine





From The Times

December 1, 2008

Michael Evans, Defence Edito

Nato foreign ministers will attempt to avoid a diplomatic row with Moscow tomorrow when they deny Georgia and Ukraine the opportunity to take the first step towards guaranteed membership of the alliance.

The two former Russian satellite countries have been waiting for eight months to see whether their friends in the West would let them participate in Nato’s membership action plan (MAP) – the formal programme of training and assistance that leads to joining the club.

Now, at British government bidding, foreign ministers have come up with a new formula of words and action that will keep the two countries linked to Nato but without putting them on the normal pathway to membership. The move is being seen as part snub to Georgia and Ukraine and part concession to Moscow.

Africa

Africa’s AIDS fight: Fresh focus on issue of multiple partners

New research is leading to new prevention programs focused on cultural change.

By Nicole Itano | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 1, 2008 edition

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – In the latest season of the popular South African television show, Soul City, Zanele presents her husband with a box of condoms when she discovers he’s been cheating.

If he won’t be faithful, she says, they’ll have to use protection.

When he storms out, Zanele’s mother chides her for making a fuss, saying all men have other women.

“Well, times have changed, Ma,” says Zanele. “There is a thing called HIV now.”

The show, produced by a South African nongovernmental organization, is representative of a revolutionary new generation of AIDS prevention campaigns that reflect a growing recognition that condoms aren’t enough and that slowing the epidemic will require widespread cultural change. The new approach, which is being pioneered in South Africa, targets initial practical steps on route to that broader goal. It is based on new research about the driving forces of the epidemic – specifically the common practice in many hard-hit African countries of having multiple, long-term sexual partners at the same time.

Dissident poet is allowed to speak, but Egypt’s leaders aren’t listening>

 Iman Bakry has risen to national prominence with her politically barbed verse about repression, corruption and poverty, appealing to the intellectual as well as the illiterate.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

December 1, 2008

Reporting from Cairo — Iman Bakry has a fortuneteller’s voice, husky and cracked. It coaxes you into her colloquial poems, which once were about romance, but have since shifted to a cutting critique of President Hosni Mubarak’s government and an Egypt plagued by self-doubt, repression, corruption and a dangerous divide between rich and poor.

“I see a storm coming,” begins a stanza in one of her poems.

Bakry is a media-savvy wordsmith who has risen to national prominence through television appearances and public readings. Her politically barbed verse articulates the frustrations and false dreams that have embittered a cynical public and laced the air with hints of rebellion. Opposition forces are often silenced and intimidated by the authoritarian government, but Bakry senses the anger welling.

Middle East

Iraq, with U.N. help, seeks to improve elections



By Adam Ashton | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD – United Nations and Iraqi officials on Sunday revealed a plan to make Iraq’s January elections more transparent and fair in what are expected to be heated races for control of the nation’s provincial governments.

The Jan. 31 elections will differ from Iraq’s 2005 contests in one major respect. This time, candidates names will appear on the ballot instead of lists of political parties.

“That’s what you are going to see – people,” said UN Special Representative Steffan de Mistura, holding up a blue sample ballot. “You will put faces to the people and you will vote for them if you feel comfortable with them.”

A dream for the Middle East

Obama’s victory has inspired me to dream of a better future for one of the most troubled parts of the world

Khaled Diab

guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 30 2008 12.00 GMT

If we suspend scepticism and take up Barack Obama’s invitation to dream of change, what Middle East can the audacity of hope help to forge?

Since Barack Obama’s victory, I have been somewhat at odds with myself. The realist and sceptic within me says that, despite the euphoria, it may well be back to business more or less as usual once the president-elect actually takes office.

But the dreamer and romantic in me urges me to savour the symbolism of Obama’s victory, with the way it has energised US voters and inspired people around the world, and allow myself the luxury of dreaming that change really can happen. This leads me to wonder about my native Middle East, one of the world’s most troubled regions, and what kind of change there I could believe in.

Latin America

Chávez drive for indefinite re-election as president



Rory Carroll in Caracas

guardian.co.uk, Monday December 1 2008 00.01 GMT

Hugo Chávez yesterday launched a push for constitutional reform that would allow him to go on seeking indefinite re-election as Venezuela’s president. After nearly a decade in power, he said he needed more than another 10 years to entrench his self-styled socialist revolution.

“We are going to begin the national debate,” he told a televised rally of supporters in the capital Caracas. “I’m ready to be with you until 2021.” Under the constitution Chávez, 54, should step down when his term ends in 2013. In a referendum last year, voters narrowly rejected a proposal to abolish term limits – but a recovery in the president’s popularity has emboldened him to try again.