Docudharma Times Sunday May 10

Bill O’Reilly Don’t Know

Much About History

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About Anything

Taliban-Style Justice Stirs Growing Anger

Sharia Being Perverted, Pakistanis Say

By Pamela Constable

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, May 10, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 9 — When black-turbaned Taliban fighters demanded in January that Islamic sharia law be imposed in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, few alarm bells went off in this Muslim nation of about 170 million.

Sharia, after all, is the legal framework that guides the lives of all Muslims.

Officials said people in Swat were fed up with the slow and corrupt state courts, scholars said the sharia system would bring swift justice, and commentators said critics in the West had no right to interfere.

Today, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Swat and Pakistani troops launching an offensive to drive out the Taliban forces, the pendulum of public opinion has swung dramatically.

Iran court hears reporter appeal

A court in Iran is hearing an appeal from jailed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi, two days earlier than originally expected.

The BBC

Ms Saberi’s lawyer said it was not clear when a ruling would be announced, but that he was optimistic that the 32-year-old would be acquitted.

Ms Saberi was convicted of spying for the US – a charge she denied.

The case sparked international concern and US President Barack Obama has appealed on her behalf.

Appeal process

Unlike her original trial, the legal process this time has been arranged to appear fair and open, says the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran.

While Sunday’s hearing is still not open to the public, Ms Saberi’s appeal is being heard before a panel of three judges, and representatives of the Iranian Bar Association are being allowed to attend.

Her lawyer has also been given plenty of notice.

USA

For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid

THE SAFETY NET

By JASON DePARLE

Published: May 9, 2009

WASHINGTON – As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

Health care, housing, food stamps and cash – each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.

The result is a hit-or-miss system of relief, never designed to grapple with the pain of a recession so sudden and deep. Aid seekers often find the rules opaque and arbitrary. And officials often struggle to make policy through a system so complex and Balkanized.

Memos shed light on CIA use of sleep deprivation

Though widely perceived as more effective and less objectionable than other interrogation methods, memos show it’s harsher and more controversial than most realize. And it could be brought back.

By Greg Miller

May 10, 2009

Reporting from Washington — As President Obama prepared last month to release secret memos on the CIA’s use of severe interrogation methods, the White House fielded a flurry of last-minute appeals.

One came from former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who expressed disbelief that the administration was prepared to expose methods it might later decide it needed.

“Are you telling me that under all conditions of threat, you will never interfere with the sleep cycle of a detainee?” Hayden asked a top White House official, according to sources familiar with the exchange.

From the beginning, sleep deprivation had been one of the most important elements in the CIA’s interrogation program, used to help break dozens of suspected terrorists, far more than the most violent approaches. And it is among the methods the agency fought hardest to keep.

Europe

Papi Silvio ‘to fix up’ teen model as MP

The girl at the centre of the Berlusconi divorce row claims the Italian prime minister will launch her into a career in politics

From Times Online

May 10, 2009 John Follain

THE teenage lingerie model whose birthday party appears to have precipitated the divorce of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, has said she wants to stand for parliament.

“Papi [Daddy] Silvio will fix it,” declared Noemi Letizia, in an interview with an Italian newspaper.

Veronica Lario, 52, the prime minister’s wife, complained publicly about his appearance at Letizia’s 18th birthday celebrations before announcing last week she was divorcing him after 19 years of marriage.

Thousands rally to mark one month of Georgia protests

Thousands of protestors rallied in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi on Saturday, demanding the president step down. That came after talks between his administration and the opposition broke down.

GEORGIA | 10.05.2009

Georgian opposition leaders accuse President Mikhail Saakashvili of mishandling last year’s war with Russia over South Ossetia, and of becoming increasingly autocratic since coming to power in the peaceful 2003 Rose Revolution.

Saturday’s protests marked a month since they first began on April 9 and came a day after the first formal contact between Saakashvili’s government and opposition leaders failed to make any progress in resolving the political stand-off.

Opposition representatives at the talks said the government had failed to meet their key demand of setting a time and place for a meeting with Saakashvili.

Despite that, the European Union hailed the start of talks as an important step forward.

Middle East

She’s Israeli, he’s an Arab. War has made them like mother and son

An unlikely pair of peace campaigners brought their message to Britain last week. Sarfraz Manzoor discovers how the deaths of loved ones brought them together

Sarfraz Manzoor

The Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009

It is a friendship as remarkable as it is unlikely: Robi Damelin is a 65-year-old Jewish grandmother whose son, David, served in the Israeli army; Ali Abu Awwad, 37, is a former Palestinian revolutionary who joined the first intifada as a teenager and was later sentenced to 10 years in an Israeli prison – he served four. David Damelin was killed by a Palestinian sniper seven years ago; two years before that, Awwad’s brother, Youssef, 32, was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier.

These were two deaths that might have been expected to contribute to the cycle of violence and hatred that characterises the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, for the past five years Damelin and Awwad have travelled the world, speaking together at mosques, synagogues, parliaments and public meetings to spread the message that there will only be peace in the Middle East when there is reconciliation.

For Christian enclave in Jordan, tribal lands are sacred

 Pope Benedict XVI has sought better ties between Christians and Muslims. But in Fuhays, Jordan, devotion to the land comes first.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

May 10, 2009

Reporting from Fuhays, Jordan — Michel Hattar’s father was a priest in Jerusalem in 1947 when word arrived from the rocky Jordanian hills that he must renounce his vows and marry to protect his tribe’s land and inheritances.

He did as he was told. He broke from the holy order he had known for 20 years to wed the bride picked by his family, his first cousin, Widad. Today their son Michel lives on a bluff of olive groves and fig trees that slopes toward the valley that his Fuhays tribe has farmed and fought over for more than four centuries.

This Christian enclave west of the Jordanian capital, Amman, is ringed with steeples and religious devotion, but for every Bible parable there is a tribal tale, usually one that ends with someone outfoxed or dead. Clan loyalty sets boundaries, keeps the peace and runs on customs, such as sprinkling extra salt into a meal to let a guest know he is welcome. If there’s no salt, it’s wise to make a hasty exit.

Asia  

Karzai in move to share power with warlord wanted by US

Extremist on America’s list of most-wanted terrorists is to hold talks with the Afghan government in coming weeks

From The Sunday Times

May 10, 2009 Christina Lamb and Jerome Starkey, Kabul

ONE of Afghanistan’s most wanted terrorists is to be offered a power-sharing deal by the government of President Hamid Karzai as the country’s warlords extend their grip on power.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on America’s “most wanted” terrorist list, is to hold talks with the Kabul government within the next few weeks.

Hekmatyar is the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, which has been fighting Nato troops alongside the Taliban. The hardline group is responsible for many attacks in the eastern and central regions, including the massacre of 10 French soldiers in Sarobi last year. It controls Kapisa province, just 50 miles north of Kabul.

The party is expected to be offered several ministries and provincial governorships in return for laying down its arms and agreeing not to disrupt the presidential elections due in August.

Sri Lankan shelling ‘kills 257’

Sri Lankan government forces have been accused of killing dozens of Tamil civilians in a night of shelling in the country’s northern war zone.  

The BBC

The pro-rebel Tamilnet website and government health officials said 257 civilians were killed and 814 hurt.

But the Sri Lankan military denied that any shelling had taken place.

The Tamil Tiger rebels and the military regularly accuse each other of atrocities in the civil conflict – claims that are impossible to verify.

Foreign reporters are banned from the war zone.

See a map of the conflict region

The Tamilnet website reported that heavy shelling had started late on Saturday and continued into Sunday.

It said doctors in a makeshift hospital in Vanni district had taken in 814 wounded people, and cited one doctor as saying 257 people had been killed.

The injured told the doctors “dead bodies are scattered everywhere”, according to the site.

‘Propaganda’ claims

The BBC’s Charles Haviland, in Colombo, said health officials confirmed that 257 people had died.

Latin America

Global warming’s toll: Glacier in Bolivia is gone



By John Enders | The Miami Herald

CHACALTAYA, Bolivia – If anyone needs a reminder of the on-the-ground impacts of global climate change, come to the Andes mountains in Bolivia. At 17,388 feet above sea level, Chacaltaya, an 18,000 year-old glacier that delighted thousands of visitors for decades, is gone, completely melted away as of some sad, undetermined moment early this year.

”Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists,” said Dr. Edson Ramirez, head of an international team of scientists that has studied the glacier since 1991.

Chacaltaya (the name in Aymara means ”cold road”) began melting in the mid-1980s. Ramirez, the assistant director of the Institute of Hydraulics and Hydrology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in nearby La Paz, documented its disappearance in March.

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