Docudharma Times Monday February 15

Marines move in perilous slog against Taliban

Nine-hour walk covering a mile reveals danger, complexity in Afghanistan

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

MARJA, AFGHANISTAN – For the Marines of Charlie Company’s 3rd Platoon, Sunday’s mission was simple enough: Head west for a little more than a mile to link up with Alpha Company in preparation for a mission to secure the few ramshackle government buildings in this farming community.

It would take nine hours to walk that distance, a journey that would reveal the danger and complexity of the Marines’ effort to wrest control of Marja from the Taliban.

Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda



By Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, February 15, 2010

With its 2007 report declaring that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won a Nobel Prize — and a new degree of public trust in the controversial science of global warming.

But recent revelations about flaws in that seminal report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel’s work but also in projections about climate change. Scientists who have pointed out problems in the report say the panel’s methods and mistakes — including admitting Saturday that it had overstated how much of the Netherlands was below sea level — give doubters an opening.

USA

When presidents and slaves mingled at the White House



By Liza Mundy

Monday, February 15, 2010

Sometime around the middle of April 1804, a slave named John Freeman wrote a letter to the president of the United States. Freeman, technically owned by a Maryland doctor, William Baker, had been contracted to work for Thomas Jefferson, who engaged him to serve in the White House and accompany Jefferson on trips to Monticello.

Now, Freeman was writing because he wanted the president to buy him outright.

“I am sorye to trubel you with a thing of this kind,” he began, saying he felt obliged to do so because “I have been foolish anufe to in gage myself to Melindar.”

The letter was an extraordinary feat of persuasion, heartfelt but also artful.

$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route t

Some question the cost, effectiveness and environmental effect of erecting a fence on Otay Mountain, where those who hiked three days up a steep, arid peak were often met by border agents anyway.

By Richard Marosi

February 15, 2010

Reporting from San Diego – The border barrier dips and curves, zigs and zags, hugging the mountain’s contours like a slimmed-down version of the Great Wall of China.

Among the costliest stretch of fencing ever built on the U.S.-Mexico border, the 3.6-mile wall of steel completed last fall is meant to block trafficking routes over Otay Mountain, just east of San Diego.

People seeking to enter the country illegally have hiked the scrub-covered, tarantula-infested peak for years, trying to get to roads leading to San Diego.

Europe

EU biofuels significantly harming food production in developing countries

EU biofuels 10% targets cause millions of peope to go hungry and increase food prices and landlessness, says report

John Vidal

guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 February 2010 06.00 GMT

EU companies have taken millions of acres of land out of food production in Africa, central America and Asia to grow biofuels for transport, according to development campaigners. The consequences of European biofuel targets, said the report by ActionAid, could be up to 100 million more hungry people, increased food prices and landlessness.

The report says the 2008 decision by EU countries to obtain 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020 is proving disastrous for poor countries. Developing countries are expected to grow nearly two-thirds of the jatropha, sugar cane and palm oil crops that are mostly used for biofuels.

Bishops meet Pope over child abuse scandals



By Colm Kelpie, PA Monday, 15 February 2010

A Vatican meeting between Irish bishops and Pope Benedict XVI gets under way today with the past handling of child abuse scandals on the agenda.

The 24 senior clergymen will take part in the unprecedented two-day talks after being hauled before the pontiff in the wake of the sexual abuse revelations that rocked the Irish church.

On the eve of the meeting, survivors of clerical abuse demanded leadership and accountability from the Pope and called for financial compensation for victims.

Four bishops already resigned over the damning Murphy report, which unveiled a catalogue of child abuse and subsequent cover-ups over three decades by the Catholic hierarchy in Dublin.

Middle East

Beirut grinds to a standstill in honour of Hariri’s memory

Hundreds of thousands protest on fifth anniversary of prime minister’s murder

By Robert Fisk in Beirut  Monday, 15 February 2010

As one Lebanese journalist put it, they had “water in their mouths”. Oh yes they did. Much water. Former prime minister Fouad Siniora spoke of the need for good relations with Syria. Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s Prime Minister, who in December made his own grim pilgrimage to Damascus to shake the hand of the President whose country he believes (or believed) killed his father, talked about Arab reconciliation. Statesmanship overwhelmed judicial guilt. National unity came first. Five years after Rafiq Hariri, Saad’s father, was butchered in Beirut, the people of Lebanon were asked to be responsible (politically, not culpable, mark you). No violence, please. No accusations against Syria. The gathering in central Beirut – perhaps 100,000 – was obedient, submissive and law-abiding.

Israeli politicians may provoke arrest to force law change in Britain

From The Times

February 15, 2010



Roland Watson, Political Editor, and Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem

A swift change to the law promised by ministers to prevent Israeli politicians and generals being arrested when they visit Britain is in doubt.

A Cabinet split over timing threatens to postpone any alteration of the rules until after the election, The Times has learnt, even though ministers assured Israel that it was a priority. Such a delay would leave visiting Israelis at risk and could worsen an already sour dispute with Jerusalem.

Asia

Anti-whaling campaigners plead not guilty to theft and trespass

Greenpeace activists say they took whale meat to expose corruption and misuse of taxpayers’ money

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 February 2010 08.02 GMT  

Two Greenpeace activists who were arrested after attempting to expose embezzlement in Japan’s whaling fleet today pleaded not guilty to theft and trespass in a case campaigners hope will spark a domestic backlash against the heavily subsidised industry.

Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were detained in June 2008, two months after intercepting a consignment of whale meat they claimed had been stolen by a member of the crew on the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese Antarctic whaling fleet’s mother ship.

The activists – who claimed the meat was destined for the black market – face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

India fears terror campaign after new bomb attack in tourist area

From The Times

February 15, 2010

Rhys Blakely in Poona  

India is on alert for a protracted terror campaign after the country suffered its first major attack since the Mumbai massacre.

A bomb in a café popular with foreign tourists and local students killed nine people in the western city of Poona, about 60 miles (97km) southeast of Mumbai, on Saturday evening.

The blast ripped through the German Bakery as it was packed with diners. “A massive explosion knocked me off my feet. I saw several bodies, some in three or four pieces,” Harsh Chotand, 35, a local resident, told The Times.

No group has admitted that it planted the bomb – thought to have been hidden in a backpack and stashed under a table.