Docudharma Times Friday January 15

Live Coverage Of Haiti Can Be Seen Here

Haitians struggle to find the dead and keep survivors alive after earthquake

Waiting for help

By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Mary Beth Sheridan and Michael E. Ruane

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, January 15, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — Desperate Haitians clawed at the rubble of their ruined capital for a second day Thursday, retrieving their dead and rescuing the living, as an international armada of ships and aircraft struggled to provide food, water, medicine and shelter.

Forty-eight hours after much of the impoverished Caribbean nation was devastated by an earthquake, it was mainly the people of this shattered city, working with bare hands and simple tools, who pulled at slabs of concrete and blocks of debris to get at those still trapped.

Black Schools Restored as Landmarks



By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: January 14, 2010

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Until 1923, the only school in the largely black farm settlement of Pine Grove was the one hand-built by parents, a drafty wooden structure in the churchyard. Anyone who could read and write could serve as teacher. With no desks and paper scarce, teachers used painted wood for a blackboard, and an open fireplace provided flashes of warmth to the lucky students who sat close.

This changed after a Chicago philanthropist named Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, took up the cause of long-neglected education for blacks at the urging of Booker T. Washington, the proponent of black self-help. By the late 1920s, one in three rural black pupils in 15 states were attending a new school built with seed money, architectural advice and supplies from the Rosenwald Fund.

USA

Seattle couple in Haiti suddenly become medical workers

Jesse Hagopian and his wife, Sarah Wilhelm, of Seattle, were in Haiti when the earthquake hit. Suddenly, they found themselves administering first aid to victims.

By Hal Bernton

Seattle Times staff reporter

Jesse Hagopian is an unemployed Seattle teacher with no experience in mending broken bones. That all changed Tuesday evening as he ripped up bed sheets and placed splints on the fractured bones of the earthquake victims in Haiti who found their way to the Villa Creole in the Petionville suburb outside of Port-au-Prince.

Hagopian worked under the direction of an American medic whom he knew only as “J.H.” After the earthquake, J.H. took the lead in the emergency first-aid effort in the hotel’s circular front drive.

In Power Push, Movement Sees Base in G.O.P.



By KATE ZERNIKE

Published: January 14, 2010

HOLLAND, Pa. – The Tea Party movement ignited a year ago, fueled by anti-establishment anger. Now, Tea Party activists are trying to take over the establishment, ground up.

Across the country, they are signing up to be Republican precinct leaders, a position so low-level that it often remains vacant, but which comes with the ability to vote for the party executives who endorse candidates, approve platforms and decide where the party spends money.

Asia

Accounts invaded, computers infected – human rights activists tell of cyber attacks

• Authorities blamed for hacking into Gmail users

• Phishing scams and malware used as weapons

Tania Branigan in Beijing

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 January 2010 22.47 GMT

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised.

They came forward after Google’s announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China said they had repeatedly suffered from hacking and blamed the authorities .

Ai Weiwei, one of China’s best-known contemporary artists, said he detected problems with email accounts two months ago.

Aafia Siddiqui demands no Jewish jurors at attempted murder trial

From The Times

January 16, 2010

James Bone in New York

A Pakistani scientist who is the only woman accused of working with the al-Qaeda leadership has demanded that Jews should be excluded from the jury at her trial in New York.

Aafia Siddiqui called for jurors to undergo genetic testing in an outburst in federal court in Manhattan yesterday.

“If they have a Zionist or Israeli background . . . they are all mad at me,” Ms Siddiqui, an American-educated neuroscientist, said. “I have a feeling everyone here is them [sic] – subject to genetic testing. They should be excluded if you want to be fair,” she told the judge

Europe

Race wars in the orange groves of Italy

They came from Africa for a paltry wage, then were driven out when the work dried up. Michael Day reports from Rosarno on the sinister forces behind last week’s violence in Calabria

Friday, 15 January 2010

Via nazionale in Rosarno used to be busy just after dawn. Every day in the half-light, hundreds of black faces jostled to get the nod from men in estate cars and MPVs; immigrants from Ghana, Burkino Faso and Ivory Coast, each of them desperate to earn €15 for a punishing 12-hour day picking fruit in the surrounding citrus groves.

This week, however, there were no black faces to be seen in this small town in the region of Calabria on the “toe” of Italy, just a few Moroccans and eastern Europeans, loitering in the hope of a day’s work.

Senior officers ignored Spanish neutrality to help German war effort

From The Times

January 15, 2010



Graham Keeley in Madrid

Senior members of General Franco’s military high command tried to alter the course of the Second World War by passing secret British intelligence documents to Nazi spies.

Ben Macintyre’s Operation Mincemeat names for the first time the senior figures within General Franco’s military who ignored Spain’s neutrality to help the Nazi war machine.

The book details the web of deceit spun by British intelligence in 1943 to dupe the Germans into believing that the Allies would invade Greece and the Western Mediterranean, rather than Sicily.

Middle East

Israeli police arrest cult leader suspected of keeping harem

Israeli police have arrested a suspected cult leader who is believed to have fathered dozens of children by as many as 30 women. He is being held on suspicion of rape, slavery and incest.

By Rob Crilly in Jerusalem

Published: 4:00PM GMT 16 Jan 2010

Goel Ratzon, 59, brainwashed the women into staying with him in squalid, overcrowded flats in Tel Aviv, police claimed, following a seven-month undercover investigation.

Mr Ratzon was arrested on Tuesday, when police raided three apartments, where they found 17 women and 39 children.

Police said they have since kept him away from TV cameras for fear he may send secret messages, ordering the women to hurt themselves.

Two women were arrested on suspicion that they co-operated with Mr Ratzon or witnessed his alleged crimes. The 15 others were transferred to homes for abused women along with their children.

In Yemen, soldiers kill al-Qaeda leader and militant ambush kills 2 troops

 

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, January 14, 2010

SANAA, YEMEN — Yemeni security forces killed an al-Qaeda leader during clashes in an extremist stronghold while a road ambush by militants left two soldiers dead Wednesday in the latest battles in an escalating war.

Soldiers surrounded the home of al-Qaeda cell leader Abdullah al-Mehdarhad in the Habban region of Shabwa province in Yemen’s southeast. That triggered a shootout in which Mehdarhad was killed, according to 26Sep.net, a Yemeni Web site that serves as a mouthpiece of the nation’s military.

Africa

Ethiopia – country of the silver sickle – offers land dirt cheap to farming giants

Addis Ababa sells vast fertile swaths to international companies in effort to introduce large-scale commercial agriculture

Xan Rice in Bako

guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010

This is a country of the bent back and the silver sickle, where virtually all the crops have felt the calloused fingers of the peasant farmer working his tiny parcel of state-owned land. The ox pulls the plough and the donkey the cart, and fertiliser counts as agricultural technology.

Chugging into this picture on a bright green John Deere tractor came Hanumantha Rao, a former sugarcane farmer from India who is at the forefront of a revolution sweeping through Ethiopian farming. He hurried up to a hilltop on his company’s farm in Bako, four hours’ drive from the capital, Addis Ababa, and swept out an arm to indicate the land he has leased from the government: 11,000 hectares to grow rice, maize and oil palms.

Guinean coup leader Camara called to return

Senior Guinean military officials have called for the return to Guinea of the country’s injured coup leader, Capt Moussa Dadis Camara.

The BBC   Friday, 15 January 2010

Capt Camara arrived in Burkina Faso on Tuesday from Morocco, where he was being treated after being shot in the head in an assassination attempt.

The military statement appeared to contradict earlier comments by Sekouba Konate, who has taken charge in Guinea.

Since taking over, he has said he opposes Capt Camara’s return.

In their statement, military rulers appeared to reject concerns that Capt Camara’s return to Guinea could block the restoration to civilian rule promised by Gen Konate.

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