Docudharma Times Thursday December 11

Bush Is A Lame Duck

Yet The Democrats Bend To The Will Of

Mr. 22%    

Massacre Unfurls in Congo, Despite Nearby Support



By LYDIA POLGREEN

Published: December 11, 2008

KIWANJA, Congo – At last the bullets had stopped, and François Kambere Siviri made a dash for the door. After hiding all night from firefights between rebels and a government-allied militia over this small but strategic town, he was desperate to get to the latrine a few feet away.

“Pow, pow, pow,” said his widowed mother, Ludia Kavira Nzuva, recounting how the rebels killed her 25-year-old son just outside her front door. As they abandoned his bloodied corpse, she said, one turned to her and declared, “Voilà, here is your gift.”

In little more than 24 hours, at least 150 people would be dead, most of them young men, summarily executed by the rebels last month as they tightened their grip over parts of eastern Congo, according to witnesses and human-rights investigators.

U.S. Joins Effort to Bar Claims on Iraqi Coffers



By STEVEN LEE MYERS and JAMES GLANZ

Published: December 10, 2008

George Charchalis says he has never really recovered from the ordeal he endured after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

He hid for more than a month in Kuwait City but was ultimately arrested, “roughed up pretty good” and taken to Iraq. He was held there for nearly three months as a human shield against American bombing.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mr. Charchalis, now 78, had every reason to believe that he and 240 other Americans held during the Persian Gulf war of 1991 would be compensated under expansive laws that allow Americans to claim assets of foreign governments like Iraq’s. President Bush, after all, had seized Iraqi assets just before the war and paid other people used as human shields nearly $100 million.

USA

Auto Bailout Clears House but Faces Hurdles in Senate

Many in GOP Doubt Aid Will Save Detroit

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, December 11, 2008; Page A01

The House last night approved an emergency plan to prevent the collapse of the nation’s domestic automobile industry, but the measure faces serious opposition in the Senate, where Republicans are revolting against a White House-brokered deal to speed $14 billion to cash-starved General Motors and Chrysler.

After battling through the weekend to reach a compromise with congressional Democrats, the White House yesterday dispatched Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to sell the plan to restive Republican senators. But many GOP lawmakers emerged from a combative luncheon with Bolten unconvinced the plan would compel Detroit automakers to make the painful changes necessary to restore them to profitability.

Most Americans favor government intervention in economy

Sixty percent of those surveyed back assistance for homeowners facing foreclosure, and 64% favor tighter regulation of financial institutions. But lukewarm support is shown for helping carmakers.

By David Pierson

December 11, 2008

Linda Forest cringes when she thinks about the millions of dollars corporate chief executives earn. She believes greed is to blame for the nation’s economic crisis. ¶ So the third-grade teacher from DeSoto, Texas, believes the pendulum needs to swing away from a less-regulated business environment to one with more government intervention and oversight to lift the country out of its morass. ¶ She is among the majority of Americans who favor the idea of Washington stepping in to prevent any further collapse of the nation’s economy, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. ¶ “I’m hesitant to get government involved,” said Forest, 46, who was contacted in a follow-up interview. “But I do know there needs to be intervention. They need to do it with a watchful eye.” ¶ The survey of 1,000 adults was taken Saturday through Monday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The poll showed that most of those surveyed favored increasing government intervention in the economy, and half blamed lack of regulation for many of the nation’s current woes. ¶ About two-thirds back tighter regulation of banks and financial institutions, and half said the federal government should take an ownership stake in banks and other industries to save the private sector.

Asked whether such moves would constitute a step toward socialism, about half said yes, but just 20% said that this worried them “a lot.”

Africa

Bodies pile up as Mugabe wages war on diamond miners

Scores have been killed during a campaign of terror unleashed by Zimbabwe’s rulers against illegal diggers in the east of the country

Chris McGreal in Mutare

The Guardian, Thursday December 11 2008

The young miner already recognised the sound of dogs as a terrifying harbinger of death but the dull thud of the helicopter blades was something new.

Minutes later a Zimbabwean air force helicopter swept over the hundreds of fleeing illegal diamond miners and mowed down dozens with machine-gun fire. After that the police arrived and unleashed the dogs that tore into the diggers, killing some and mutilating others. The police fired teargas to drive the miners out of their shallow tunnels and shot them down as they emerged.

How many died in the assault two weeks ago is not clear but the miners say it was at least scores. Some bodies remain unclaimed and unidentified in Mutare hospital mortuary.

UN claims Rwanda is abetting Congo rebels

Report could prove violation of arms embargo and torpedo peace talks

By David Usborne in New York and Anne Penketh

Thursday, 11 December 2008

A draft UN report has bolstered allegations that the government of Rwanda has been supplying arms and even child soldiers to Tutu rebels whose military surge in the Democratic Republic of Congo has displaced 250,000 people since August.

The deeply sensitive document has been drawn up by a panel of experts appointed by the UN secretary general. Parts of it were presented to members of the 15-nation UN sanctions committee in New York yesterday, sources close to the authors told The Independent. The report’s leaked conclusions will be an acute embarrassment for the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, who has repeatedly denied charges that his government has been supplying arms and soldiers to the rebel faction of Laurent Nkunda, which would be in flagrant violation of a UN arms embargo.

Europe

Beyond the ice

Greenland is four times the size of France, but with a population of only 57,000 – and as its huge ice sheets begin to melt, it could find itself sitting on a fortune in oil and gems. Now, it has voted to cut all ties with its Danish rulers. Patrick Barkham reports from a nation in the making



Patrick Barkham

The Guardian, Thursday December 11 2008

From the air, the largest island on the planet not to be its own continent, or even a nation, is so white and featureless that it resembles a soft cloud. On the ground, hard snow is driven into black rock, and the cold slaps you in the face. When people stomp indoors, icy air clings to them like a shroud.

In the past, the chill has killed off entire civilisations in Greenland. Even today, wrapped in fat rolls of designer polar wear or cosseted in climate-controlled SUVs, life is tough. Late last month, however, the 57,000 people who inhabit this harsh land took a firm step further into the cold when a decisive majority voted “aap” – yes – to seeking complete independence from Denmark, their colonial master for nearly 300 years.

Reverberations from Greenland’s desire to go it alone will be felt far beyond this icy coastline. What happens here could have a bearing on the fate of the globe.

European feudalism finally ends as Sark heads for democracy

Jerome Taylor reports on an acrimonious election marred by the Barclay brothers’ threat to withdraw investment from island

Thursday, 11 December 2008

Europe’s final feudal state became a full democracy yesterday as inhabitants of Sark headed to the polls to create the island’s first wholly elected government, after months of rancorous infighting which has left the tiny Channel Island bitterly divided.

A high turnout was expected at the only polling booth, in the island’s community centre, from among Sark’s 474 registered voters. The landmark election will turn the island’s feudal-inspired legislature into a democratically elected one.

But despite the celebratory atmosphere in Island Hall yesterday, Sark’s transition to democracy has been a long and painful process, one which has pitted neighbour against neighbour, and friend against friend. The birth of democracy on the crown dependency has indeed created two bitterly opposed factions.

Asia

Mumbai terror mastermind placed on UN blacklist



From Times Online

December 11, 2008

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

Four leaders of the Pakistan-based militant group suspected of being behind the attack on Mumbai last month have been placed on a UN Security Council terrorist blacklist. They include the alleged mastermind of the terror strike, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a Pakistan national.

The UN move represents a fillip for India, which has demanded that Pakistan do more to curb the terrorists who operate from its territory. Relations between the two nuclear armed neighbours have deteriorated sharply in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

In Basilan, Philippines, a US counterterrorism model frays>

Renewed violence on the island shows the challenge of wiping out militant groups for good.

By Jonathan Adams | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 11, 2008 edition

MANILA – Just a couple of years ago, the Philippines was hailed as a success story in the US-led war on terror.

A military campaign by US-backed Philippines Special Forces had routed al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf terrorists from their stronghold in the southern island of Basilan, killed their leaders, and confined surviving diehards to a remote island. Generous economic aid and “hearts and minds” outreach undergirded the “Philippines model.”

“The iron fist and the hand of friendship succeeded in … restoring both peace and hope to the island,” crowed an August 2006 State Department report.

But recent violence shows how hard it is to keep the peace, and to uproot terrorists for good. Fighting broke out in Basilan early last week between the Philippines military and Abu Sayyaf. Battles Sunday left five soldiers dead and 24 injured, and reports say some 3,000 civilians have fled their villages amid the violence. The Abu Sayyaf is eyed for a recent spate of kidnappings, the latest of a girl and a nursing student.

Middle East

Prices for sacrificial lambs skyrocket as Iraqis honor dead



By Jenan Hussein and Adam Ashton | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD – The sheep markets looked different this year: They were packed with customers buying animals to sacrifice in memory of recently lost relatives, but many people went home empty-handed due to the enormous demand and steeply rising prices.

There’s an ancient tradition in Iraq of honoring deceased loved ones during the annual Eid al Adha religious holiday by donating part of a slaughtered lamb to neighbors and part to Baghdad’s poor.

However, the demand for lambs has soared as Iraqis this week remember tens of thousands of people who died during the war.

The search for a US envoy for Iran



By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

United States president-elect Barack Obama needs to pick a special envoy to deal with Iran, so much is clear by the priority assigned to the Iran nuclear “crisis” by nearly all US foreign policy experts. The question is: Will Obama make the right choice?

This is an exceedingly important question that raises, in turn, another question: What are Obama’s criteria for the right choice in this matter? Certainly, in light of Obama’s declared willingness to engage the Iranians in dialogue without preconditions, his special envoy on Iran would have to be a convert to this principle.

This essentially means that he or she would not be recycling the George W Bush administration’s stiff demand that Iran must halt

ts uranium-enrichment program before sitting across the table from the US, a position that was reversed by Bush when he sent Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to meet with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, in Geneva in July.

Latin America

Cuban activists say they were beaten on eve of 60th human rights anniversary

Leading Cuban activist Belinda Salas says she and others were beaten Wednesday after leaving the US Interests Section in Havana.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 11, 2008 edition

MEXICO CITY – On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Wednesday – a day when Cuban dissidents traditionally gather for protest marches – Belinda Salas, a leading Cuban activist, was beaten by Cuban police, she said via telephone in Havana.

Ms. Salas, the director for the Latin American Foundation of Rural Women (FLAMUR), says she, her husband, and another couple were leaving the US Interests Section in Havana, where the group regularly sends e-mails and news to Cuban activist groups based in the US and Europe, when two police cars stopped next to them. Eight officers began to beat them on the street, just after 1 p.m. Tuesday, and detained her husband and the two other activists.