Docudharma Times Tuesday September 15

Lots of Fear Remains Over Economy, Job Losses



By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Despite fresh signs that the worst may be over for the beleaguered U.S. economy, there has been no letup in public fears about possible financial hardship ahead and there is broad concern that not enough is being done to avert another meltdown, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Painful personal experiences over the past year continue to dampen the outlook of many Americans. About two-thirds of those polled say they have been hurt financially by the recession, with extensive reports that job losses and pay reductions are hitting home. Most call the economic situation a source of stress in their lives, and that anxiety also stems from apprehension of what may lie ahead for their families.

Codes, symbols and conspiracies: you’ve read it all before, but who cares?

Dan Brown’s follow-up to ‘The Da Vinci Code’ went on sale at midnight. Janet Maslin delivers her instant verdict

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

As a man whose ideas have had their share of physical effects, Dan Brown is well aware of how widely read and closely scrutinised The Lost Symbol will be. He even lets a character joke about this book’s guaranteed popularity. Dr Katherine Solomon specialises in noetic science, with its focus on mind-body connections. She admits that her field is not widely known. But when her story comes out, she suggests, noetics could get the kind of public relations bump that Mr Brown gave to the Holy Grail.

Dr Solomon accompanies Robert Langdon, the rare symbologist who warrants the word dashing as both noun and verb, through much of this novel, his third rip-snorting adventure. As Browniacs have long predicted, the chase involves the secrets of Freemasonry and is set in Washington, where some of those secrets are built into the architecture and are thus hidden in plain sight. Browniacs also guessed right in supposing that The Lost Symbol at one point was called “The Solomon Key”. That’s a much better title than the generic one it got.

USA

Healthcare reform wins over doctors lobby

The American Medical Assn., once opposed to any government overhaul, now has more to gain, including a proposal worth billions of dollars to physicians.

 By Kim Geiger and Tom Hamburger

September 15, 2009

Reporting from Washington – The American Medical Assn., after 60 years of opposing any government overhaul of healthcare, is now lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama’s sweeping plan — a proposal that promises hundreds of billions of dollars for America’s doctors.

Of all the interest groups that have won favorable terms in closed-door negotiations this year, the association representing the nation’s physicians may have taken home the biggest prizes, including an agreement to stop planned cuts in Medicare payments that are worth $228 billion to doctors over 10 years.

In addition, the proposal that would require all individuals to obtain medical insurance includes premium subsidies to ensure that their doctor bills would be paid.

Wall Street’s New Gilded Age

A year after the crash, a few financial giants are back to making millions, while average Americans face foreclosure and unemployment. What’s wrong with this picture?

By Niall Ferguson | NEWSWEEK

Published Sep 11, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Sep 21, 2009

Since its birth, the United States has grappled with the problem of an over-mighty financial sector. With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, the Founders’ vision was of a republic of self-reliant farmers and small-town tradesmen. The last thing they wanted was for New York to become the London of the New World-a mammon-worshiping metropolis in which financial capital and political capital were rolled into one. That was why there was such resistance to creating a central bank, and why-despite two attempts-we have no Bank of the United States to match the Bank of England. That was why populists railed against the adoption of the gold standard after the crash of 1873. That was why there was so much suspicion when the Federal Reserve System was created in 1913. That was why government regulation of Wall Street was so strict from the Depression until the 1970s.

Europe

Stalin grandson in court fight to clear dictator’s name



Luke Harding in Moscow

guardian.co.uk,

Sitting in his front room at home in Moscow, surrounded by shelves of books on 20th-century history, Leonid Zhura recounts how life was better under Stalin. “It was a heroic epoch. It was the first time in human history that a society was founded on fair principles,” he says, adding that Stalin did not commit any crimes.

Zhura’s views are not greatly unusual in today’s Russia. What distinguishes the amateur historian from other Stalin fans is that he is going to court to prove his assertion that Stalin never killed anybody. And he claims to have an impeccable witness – Stalin’s 73-year-old grandson.

At lunchtime tomorrow Yevgeny Dzhugashvili – the offspring of Stalin’s ill-fated son Yakov, from the dictator’s first marriage – is due to appear at Moscow’s Basmanny court.

UN war crimes tribunal fines ex-spokeswoman for contempt of court

 By Aaron Gray-Block, Reuters, in the Hague

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

The United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal yesterday found its former prosecution spokeswoman guilty of disclosing confidential information about the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb president, in a book that she wrote.

Florence Hartmann, a former journalist who had covered the war in the Balkans, was charged with contempt after publishing information in a 2007 book in violation of a tribunal order.

“The chamber is satisfied the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused knowingly and wilfully interfered with the administration of justice,” said Bakone Moloto, a judge for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. “The chamber has found the accused’s conduct may deter sovereign states from co-operating with the tribunal.”

Hartmann, a Frenchwoman who worked as a spokeswoman for the ICTY’s prosecutor between 2000 and 2006, was found guilty on two charges of contempt and fined €7,000 (£6,170). The maximum penalty was seven years in prison and/or a €100,000 fine.

Africa

Lord’s Resistance Army terrorises Congo after Ugandan crackdown

1,200 killed and more than 2,000 kidnapped in Democratic Republic of Congo as Joseph Kony’s LRA spreads chaos in central Africa

Xan Rice

guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 September 2009 22.46 BST

Rain was falling, painting the orange dirt road red. Sixty-year-old Jean-Francois Diambosi hurried along nervously. His nephew’s funeral had finished quickly on 11 August to allow mourners to leave the village for Bangadi town, four miles away, which at least offered safety in numbers. But the route was perilous: the surrounding thick bush and chest-high elephant grass was ideal ambush territory.

The Catholic church on the outskirts of town should have provided refuge. Instead, Diambosi felt only panic as three gunmen burst out and started shooting. Two men on a motorbike were hit. A bullet struck Diambosi next to his left nostril and blasted bone fragments through his right cheek. The men took their victims’ clothes and money, and the lights and battery from the motorcycle. Then they disappeared into the bush.

Top militant Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan ‘killed’ in helicopter raid on Somali village

From The Times

September 15, 2009

Tristan McConnell

A prominent terrorist sought in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa was reported to be among the dead yesterday after helicopter gunships attacked a village in southern Somalia, killing at least two Islamist militants.

Residents and Somali Government sources said that Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a militant with links to al-Qaeda, died in the raid.

Witnesses said that up to four helicopters swooped on a convoy of vehicles before opening fire. The attack took place close to the coastal town of Barawe, about 150 miles south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and deep inside territory controlled by al-Shabaab, an Islamist insurgent group.

Asia

I spent 34 years on Japan’s Death Row

Those awaiting execution in Japan’s prisons live in terror that each day could be their last – and that they’ll have only minutes to prepare themselves for the gallows. David McNeill meets an innocent survivor of the system

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

When his body isn’t groaning under the weight of its 83 years, and the sun is shining over his native Kyushu in southern Japan, Sakae Menda sometimes forgets the ordeal he suffered and knows he is lucky to be alive. But most days, there is no forgetting that the Japanese state stole 34 years of his life as retribution for a crime that he didn’t commit, nor that he thought every one of those 12,410 days would be his last. “Waiting to die is a kind of torture,” he says, “worse than death itself.”

Mr Menda was the first man freed from Japan’s Death Row, which has come in for withering criticism in a new report from Amnesty International.

China allays US trade war fears

China has said it does not think its trade disputes with the US will hurt ties between the two countries, playing down the threat of a trade war.

The BBC  Tuesday, 15 September 2009

The US imposed tariffs on Chinese tyre imports on Friday. China then requested talks, under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, over the issue.

“We don’t want to see anything bad happen to bilateral relations,” the Chinese commerce ministry said.

China has called America’s move on tyres “protectionist”.

Under WTO rules, Beijing and Washington will try to solve the dispute over the next 60 days through negotiations.

If that fails, China can ask for a WTO panel to make a ruling on tyre imports.

‘Groundless’

“The US judgement about the disturbance is groundless,” the Chinese commerce ministry said.

Middle East

Shoe-thrower Muntazer al-Zaidi was tortured while in jail, brother says

From The Times

September 15, 2009

Richard Kerbaj in Baghdad

Prison doctors repeatedly injected “unknown substances” into the reporter who threw his shoes at the former US President George Bush, his family claimed yesterday.

The Iraqi was also allegedly tortured with cigarettes and had his nose and ribs broken.

Muntazer al-Zaidi, who became a hero in the Arab world for attacking Mr Bush, is scheduled to be flown to Greece for treatment on his expected release from prison today.

His eldest brother, Uday, told The Times that hospital specialists in Greece were expecting the reporter’s arrival after his visa was recently approved.

Mitchell to Netanyahu: Let’s wrap up deal on West Bank settlements

 15/09/2009

 By Barak Ravid and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondents, and Reuters

United States President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East is meeting on Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

At the start of the meeting, envoy George Mitchell told the premier that he is hopeful the U.S. and Israel can reach agreement on the future of settlement construction in the West Bank.

“We hope to bring this phase of our discussions to early conclusion and to move forward in our common search for a comprehensive peace in the region,” Mitchell told reporters at the start of the meeting, indicating he hoped to wrap up a deal.

Understandings between the U.S. and Israel on the issue would pave the way for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Mitchell told Netanyahu.

Latin America

Mexican city warily awaits Independence Day celebrations

In Morelia, where eight people died in a grenade attack at the festivities last year, some events are canceled and new security measures are being implemented.

By Tracy Wilkinson

September 15, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City – Mexicans begin celebrating their most cherished national holiday today, Independence Day, but indelible memories of unprecedented violence a year ago will make for a somber affair in some parts of the country.

Children’s parades and outdoor parties have been canceled in many cities. Security is tight, with metal detectors set up at public squares where celebrations will take place.

Nowhere is the mood more subdued than in Morelia, capital of the western state of Michoacan and hometown of Mexican President Felipe Calderon. A year ago, it was the site of the first deliberate attack on civilians in an ever-escalating anti-drug war launched by Calderon.

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