Joe the Plumber I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war.
Joe the Plumber Should Be Nowhere Near Journalism
‘Soon we’ll have nowhere left to run. Nowhere in Gaza is safe’
Our correspondent and pregnant wife forced to flee Israeli onslaught
By Fares Akram in Gaza city
Monday, 12 January 2009
We’ve left our home. Like 60,000 other Gazans, we’ve taken our belongings and fled. Once again, we’ve become displaced people. Soon, there will be nowhere to run to, since nowhere in Gaza is safe. In the early hours of Saturday, the bombing got louder and closer to our home, and the rattle of machine-gun fire became more intense. The tanks were not far off.As I lay in the dark, I heard the sound of small-arms fire and voices in the street outside. Since the Israeli offensive began, our city streets have been deserted during the hours of darkness; even the dogs that usually annoy us with their all-night barking have vanished.
Crisis in Gaza Imperils 2-State Plan
NEWS ANALYSIS
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: January 11, 2009
CAIRO – With every image of the dead in Gaza inflaming people across the Arab world, Egyptian and Jordanian officials are worried that they see a fundamental tenet of the Middle East peace process slipping away: the so-called two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel.
Egypt and Jordan fear that they will be pressed to absorb the Palestinian populations now living beyond their borders. If Israel does not assume responsibility for humanitarian aid in Gaza, for example, pressure could compel Egypt to fill the vacuum; Jordan, in turn, worries that Israel will try to push Palestinians from the West Bank into its territory.
USA
In His Emphasis on Economy, Obama Is Looking to History
POLITICAL MEMO
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: January 11, 2009WASHINGTON – It is still a week before he takes office, yet President-elect Barack Obama is everywhere: on the Sunday talk shows, on radio and YouTube, on Capitol Hill, drawing on the techniques he employed during the campaign and lessons from predecessors as he seeks to shape public attitudes about the economic downturn.
His aides said Mr. Obama had studied the way Franklin D. Roosevelt approached the first 100 days of his presidency, and in particular had seized on the notion of Roosevelt having a “conversation with the American public” to try to prepare it for a difficult time. He has, aides said, even looked at the words Roosevelt used and the tone he struck.
Guerrilla Tactics at Oil-Lease Auction
Activist Drives Up Prices With Bidding
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 12, 2009; Page A02
LOS ANGELES — Instead of joining his protester friends on the snowy sidewalk outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Salt Lake City, Tim DeChristopher took a seat inside. In a room milling with oil and gas men who knew one another by sight, he was the unknown in a red parka, registering as a bidder in an auction for the rights to drill on 149,000 acres of federal land. DeChristopher was handed a red paddle bearing the number 70.Half an hour later, he was raising it.
“I leaned forward to one of my colleagues and said, ‘This guy behind us is just running up the prices,’ ” said David Terry, a Salt Lake City oil-land man who routinely attends the BLM auctions. “And my friend said, ‘Yeah, he’s going to get stuck with a tract.’ “
Europe
Russia-Ukraine gas deal hit by last-minute hitch
• Moscow angered by Kiev’s additions to agreement
• Czech mediators insist that deal is still alive
Luke Harding in Moscow
The Guardian, Monday 12 January 2009
An agreement between Russia and Ukraine that would have restored the flow of gas to frozen and frustrated EU countries was again thrown into doubt last night as Moscow declared the deal void because of additions demanded by Kiev.Early yesterday Ukraine, Russia and the EU seemed to have reached a deal under which a team of international experts would monitor the renewed flow of gas from pumping stations on either side of the Ukrainian-Russian border.
The Czech prime minister and EU president, Mirek Topalanek, who held talks with Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow on Saturday, yesterday predicted that gas supplies could start arriving in the EU within the next 36 hours.
Victory for baroness in art feud
Madrid’s glittering Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has been rocked by a family row between its powerful owner and her stepdaughter. Elizabeth Nash reports
Monday, 12 January 2009
Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, owner of one of Europe’s finest private art collections rivalled only by that of the Queen, has emerged victorious from a bitter feud with her stepdaughter.The baroness has rebuffed insistent demands from Francesca von Habsburg, who is also a collector, to mount an ambitious exhibition of avant-garde contemporary works in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, on whose board the she has a deciding voice.
Middle East
Gaza’s burn victims add to pressure on army over phosphorus
From The Times
January 12, 2009
Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem and Michael Evans, Defence Editor
Pressure grew on Israel to end the use of controversial white phosphorus yesterday as The Times saw more evidence of its deployment around civilian populations in Gaza.More than 50 people with burns were taken into Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Yunis, in what the hospital director, Youssef Abu Al-Reesh, said was a massive case of exposure to white phosphorus.
“We don’t have the medical experience to judge these cases, but we searched the internet according to the cases we have, and it indeed confirmed that it’s white phosphorus munitions. I have been working in this hospital for ten years and I have never seen anything like this.”
What’s the endgame for Israel and Hamas in Gaza?
Israeli troops moved deeper into Gaza City Sunday and pounded Rafah from the air. Hamas rejected plans for international peacekeepers in Gaza.
By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the January 12, 2009 edition
JERUSALEM – Israel and Hamas showed little interest over the weekend in moving toward an internationally brokered cease-fire, as both sides vowed to keep fighting.As the rockets and missiles fill the skies over Gaza and southern Israel, it sharpens the question: What are the goals – and exit strategies, if any – of each side?
Within the Israeli public, there is a debate about whether the intent of the Israeli military – having already sent large numbers of tanks and ground troops into the Gaza Strip for the first time – is to occupy southern Gaza to prevent smuggling or “go all the way” and topple the Hamas government. Rule of the Gaza Strip might then be turned over to Fatah, the Palestinian party that was ousted in a Hamas military coup some 18 months ago and supports a two-state solution to the conflict.
Africa
Jacob Zuma faces fresh corruption battle in run-up to election
From The Times
January 12, 200
Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg
The Supreme Court in South Africa is expected to rule today in favour of state prosecutors seeking to bring corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, the controversial leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the man most likely to become President in elections later this year.The National Prosecuting Authority has appealed against a ruling by a High Court judge last September which set aside corruption charges against Mr Zuma on the basis that they were politically inspired and unconstitutional. Sources say indications are that the Supreme Court will now set aside the ruling, opening the way for Mr Zuma to be re-charged on 16 counts of racketeering, corruption and fraud related to his role in a multibillion-pound arms scandal. A general election is due in March or April.
In Congo, signs that rebel group is splitting>
By Lydia Polgreen Published: January 12, 2009DAKAR, Senegal: Disagreements over tactics and power have split the once seemingly invincible Congolese rebel group that has played havoc across the eastern side of the country over the past year and has brought the weakened government to the edge of collapse.
General Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Tutsi-dominated rebel group known as the CNDP, is fighting off an attempt to topple him by Jean Bosco Ntaganda, his chief of staff, a ruthless fighter known as the Terminator who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes, according to accounts from both camps.
The rebel group has humiliated Congolese troops in battle after battle in the past year, growing in momentum and ambition to the point where it has directly threatened the regional capital, Goma. The result has been hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and a serious undermining of the government, the country’s first freely chosen one in four decades.
Asia
China: Lunar New Year without a bribe?
The Communist Party speaks sharply – yet again – in a bid to curtail flourishing seasonal corruption.
By Peter Ford
from the January 12, 2009 edition
Spare a thought, as Chinese New Year approaches, for Song Yuanfang.The Communist Party boss in the eastern town of Liaocheng, Mr. Song could have expected a generous holiday gift from a local gas distribution company, according to his entry in that company’s “2009 Public Relations Maintenance Budget,” which somebody leaked this week on the Internet.
The document’s publication presumably forestalled that particular bribe. But elsewhere in China, corruption is flourishing with special seasonal vigor.
The Lunar New Year is China’s biggest holiday, and according to a recent article in the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece, “more than 80 percent of corruption cases occur during the holidays.”
That, the paper explained, is because “some officials normally alert to bribery relax their vigilance in a happy and joyful atmosphere and accept gifts. Then they cannot stop themselves, and slide into the criminal abyss.”
New Thai PM hails election boost
BANGKOK (AFP)New Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva Monday hailed his government’s victory in key by-elections which cemented the shaky coalition’s grip on power in its first major test at the polls.
His month-old Democrat Party-led coalition grabbed 20 of the 29 seats being contested and the opposition just nine, according to initial results released by the Election Commission after Sunday’s vote.
The polls boosted hopes of stability after months of political unrest but came as a blow to allies of ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who had hoped to narrow Abhisit’s thin majority in the 480-member parliament.
“The result from the by-elections reflects that people want to see the country move forwards and become less divided,” Abhisit told reporters at his office in Bangkok.
“It also reflects that they want the government to solve the country’s economic and social problems quickly.”
Latin America
Venezuela deepens trade, military ties with China
Chavez takes control of a communications satellite, and will soon get delivery of 18 military training aircraft, a sign analysts say of the United States’ waning influence on the continent.
By Chris Kraul
January 12, 2009
Reporting from Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela took control this weekend of a Chinese-built communications satellite, part of a deepening trade relationship that some say illustrates waning U.S. influence in Latin America.Accompanied by Chinese technicians at a communications facility in western Guarico state, President Hugo Chavez presided at a ceremony in which Venezuela formally assumed operation of the Simon Bolivar, a $400-million satellite that China launched in October.
“This will put an end to media terrorism and help us spread our own truth, to wage the battle of ideas with efficiency and transparency,” Chavez said on national television Saturday.
Chavez said the satellite, which China built for Venezuela on contract, would strengthen his nation’s sovereignty by overcoming U.S. “media bombardment.” The orb will also bring the Internet to schools and homes across Venezuela and facilitate “tele-medicine”: sending medical tests of patients in remote locations via the Internet to urban medical centers for speedier diagnoses.