Docudharma Times Friday September 25

White House Regroups on Guantanamo

Counsel Craig Replaced as Point Man on Issue as Deadline for Closing Looms

By Anne E. Kornblut and Dafna Linzer

Washington Post Staff Writer and ProPublica

Friday, September 25, 2009

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama’s top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

L.A. independent record shop is still in a groove

Collectibles and used CDs enable Rockaway Records in Silver Lake to survive while many like it have closed.

By Randy Lewis

Don’t tell brothers Wayne and Gary Johnson the CD business is dead or that the brick-and-mortar record store has gone the way of the five-and-dime.

Or go ahead. Tell them. They’ll just smile. That’s because they run Rockaway Records in Silver Lake, one of the longest-surviving independent record stores in Los Angeles. It has successfully been trading since 1979 in various forms of music technology pronounced dead or dying in most other corners of the ailing music industry.

“I feel more confident than ever,” Wayne Johnson said during an interview in the back office lined with memorabilia that reflects his lifelong love of the Beach Boys and their music.

USA

Most parents won’t have kids get H1N1 flu shots, study finds

A national survey suggests parents are confused about the risks of the virus and its vaccine.

By Melissa Healy

September 25, 2009

Germ-spreading schoolchildren are expected to be the focus of a massive U.S. vaccination campaign against the novel H1N1 flu.

But if their parents are hearing the rallying cry to have their kids vaccinated, they’re not buying it, says a new national survey.

In a poll of 1,678 U.S. parents conducted by the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, 40% said they would get their children immunized against the H1N1 virus — even as 54% indicated they would get their kids vaccinated against regular seasonal flu.

Banks fight to kill proposed consumer protection agency



By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – If you doubt that U.S. banks long to return to the days of impotent regulation, you need only look at one of the financial sector’s top legislative priorities: killing a proposed new agency that would be dedicated solely to protecting consumers’ financial interests.

The Obama administration is asking Congress to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to regulate consumer financial products ranging from credit cards to mortgages, and to simplify disclosure about them all.

Europe

Anger as Kiev council plans to build hotel at biggest Holocaust shooting site

Euro 2012 football fans may be housed where 33,771 Jews died

Peter Beaumont

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 September 2009 19.20 BST

The biggest mass murder by shooting of the Holocaust occurred during two days in late September 1941. Then, 33,771 Ukrainian Jews – by the Nazis’ own accounts – were ordered to gather at a Jewish cemetery near a ravine called Babi Yar, on the outskirts of the capital, Kiev. They believed they were going to be transported for resettlement in work camps.

Instead they were machine-gunned in small groups by two lines of German SS Einsatzcommando troops assisted by Ukrainian auxiliary police and local Nazi collaborators. Their bodies were pushed into the gorge, where they were later buried.

Nicolas Sarkozy ‘perverted course of justice’ in trial of Dominique de Villepin

From The Times

September 25, 2009

Charles Bremner in Paris

President Sarkozy was accused yesterday of perverting the course of justice after he said that Dominique de Villepin, his former rival and boss who is on trial for forgery, was guilty of waging a smear campaign against him.

Mr Sarkozy’s remark, on television from New York, reinforced a widespread view that the so-called Clearstream trial, which opened on Monday, is more political vendetta than judicial process.

“After a two-year investigation, two independent investigating judges ruled that the guilty parties should be tried before a criminal court,” Mr Sarkozy said in an evening news broadcast watched by 12 million people.

Middle East

UN tells Iran: sanctions are coming

As the jamboree quits New York, leaders leave Ahmadinejad in no doubt what will happen if he presses ahead with nuclear ambitions

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor in New York

Friday, 25 September 2009

Iran has been given an ultimatum to suspend its nuclear programme and warned it will face economic sanctions unless it makes a “serious response” by 1 October. At a special session of the United Nations Security Council yesterday which endorsed Barack Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world, six major powers issued a tough warning to Iran. There were also growing signs that Russia is moving in favour of new sanctions against Tehran.

The US, Britain and Germany want any expanded sanctions to squeeze Iran’s vital oil sector because the country needs to import up to 40 per cent of its gasoline needs. Gordon Brown said Iran faced a “moment of truth”. The country could either join the international community or face isolation.

Israel ex-PM’s graft trial begins

The trial of the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on corruption charges has begun in Jerusalem.

The BBC Friday, 25 September 2009

Mr Olmert, the first Israeli prime minister to stand trial, denies charges of failing to declare income, breaching trust and falsifying corporate records.

The charges relate to the periods when Mr Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a cabinet minister, but before he became the Israeli prime minister in 2006.

As he arrived in court, Mr Olmert insisted he was not guilty.

“I came here as an innocent man and I believe I will leave here as an innocent man,” he said.

Mr Olmert said he had been subjected to “an almost inhumane campaign of mudslinging and inquiries” for the past three years.

His lawyers have described the prosecution case as ridiculously weak.

Asia

World’s first shark sanctuary created in Pacific

The world’s first shark sanctuary is being created by the tiny Pacific nation of Palau to protect Great Hammerheads, Leopard Sharks, Oceanic Whitetip Sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean.

Published: 9:29AM BST 25 Sep 2009

But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles (621,600 square kilometers) of Palau’s newly protected waters – including its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, that extends 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its coastline – enforcement of the new measure could be almost like swimming against the tide.

Palau’s president, who is to announce the news to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, acknowledges the difficulty of patrolling ocean waters nearly the size of Texas or France with a single boat. But he hopes others will respect Palauan territorial waters – and that the shark haven inspires more such conservation efforts globally.

Pakistanis look on U.S. Embassy plans with suspicion

Washington says it wants to expand its Islamabad facility so it can better distribute the increased aid it plans to give. But in a nation deeply distrustful of the U.S., conspiracy theories abound.

By Alex Rodriguez

September 25, 2009

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan – Ask Pakistanis why the United States needs to expand its embassy here in the capital and you’ll hear a host of alarming answers.

It’s a cover for the construction of a Guantanamo-like prison.

It’s part of a U.S. attempt to colonize Pakistan.

It’s the first step in a covert plan to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

What you don’t hear is the reason cited by American officials: the need for a bigger embassy operation to better manage the increased financial aid that Washington will be channeling to Pakistan in coming months.

Africa

How Africa’s party animals drank themselves to death

Buy alcohol in Kampala and you risk losing your sight – or even your life. Alex Duval Smith reports from a city in fear

Friday, 25 September 2009

At Twincoz Bar, the clinking of beer bottles and the usual chorus of tusayukire wamu (cheers) has been deadened by a mournful mumble. Around the plastic tables of the roadside joint on the outskirts of Kampala, patrons talk of the scourge of sudden blindness followed by death.

In the past month, at least 40 Ugandans have died from drinking adulterated alcohol. In this unregulated east African country, believed to have the world’s highest rate of alcohol consumption, the news is terrifying. The authorities appear helpless. Worst of all, no one seems safe.

Barack Obama to impose US travel bans on Kenyan political leaders

From The Times

September 25, 2009

Tristan McConnell in Nairobi

President Obama has taken unprecedented action against the country of his African ancestors, warning 15 Kenyan officials, including serving ministers, that they will be banned from travelling to the United States unless they accept reforms.

A letter signed by America’s top Africa diplomat accuses the Kenyans of blocking measures promised when about 1,500 people were killed ielections in 2007.n riots following disputed

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