Tag: Docudharma Times

Docudharma Times Thursday April 24



Its on the front page of the papers

This is their hour of need

Wheres a policeman when you need one

To blame the colour tv?

Thursday’s Headlines: Deomcratic superdelegates also divided over a prolonged race: For Children, a Better Beginning: Gaza fuel embargo blocks UN aid: Hints of progress toward a deal on the Golan Heights: Korea’s ‘comfort women’: The slaves’ revolt: Filmgoer faces jail in Thailand for sitting during the national anthem: French finally face Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo: Credit Suisse bank loses billions: Zimbabwe’s church leaders warn the world: intervene to avert genocide:    

Is it time to give up the search for an Aids vaccine?

After 25 years and billions of pounds, leading scientists are now forced to ask this question

By Steve Connor and Chris Green

Thursday, 24 April 2008

Most scientists involved in Aids research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever and some have admitted that effective immunisation against the virus may never be possible, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by The Independent.

A mood of deep pessimism has spread among the international community of Aids scientists after the failure of a trial of a promising vaccine at the end of last year. It just was the latest in a series of setbacks in the 25-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine.

The Independent’s survey of more than 35 leading Aids scientists in Britain and the United States found that just two were now more optimistic about the prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were more optimistic now than they were five years ago.

Docudharma Times Tuesday April 22



So keep your auditions for somebody

Who hasn’t got so much to lose

`Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting

That I’ve seen that movie too

Tuesday’s Headlines: Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned: What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary: Monsoon divorce: Samsung chairman to resign after indictment: Russia bans play about deadly siege at Moscow theatre: Key Sudan census gets under way: Shiite cleric’s followers ready to fight: Syria tunes in the West on Medina FM:    

A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

Docudharma Times Monday April 21



Why does it rain and never say good-day to the new-born

On the big screen they showed us a sun

But not as bright in life as the real one

It’s never quite the same as the real one

Monday’s Headlines: Few Clear Wins in U.S. Anti-Terror Cases:  Ford, Lucas, Spielberg on risky quest for treasure: Mugabe minister accused of gun threats: Banks meet over £40bn plan to harness power of Congo river and double Africa’s electricity: Malaysian police detain Japanese family protesting Olympic torch run: China’s cheerleaders take to the streets: Saudi women appeal for legal freedoms: Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor: Dancer’s attack on Spanish culture: Bank details £50bn lending boost: Opposition victorious in Paraguay  

Some crack convicts forced to seek lighter sentences without lawyers

WASHINGTON – As the federal courts begin the unprecedented task of deciding whether thousands of prisoners should receive lower crack cocaine sentences, some judges are telling poor convicts that they won’t get lawyers to help them argue for leniency.

As a result, some prisoners are being left to argue on their own behalf against skilled prosecutors, raising questions about fairness in cases that already have been widely perceived as unjust.

The recalculations come after a 20-year debate over racial disparities in cocaine sentences. A majority of crack cocaine defendants are African-American, while most powder cocaine defendants are white and received much less severe sentences.

In what’s seen as a first step toward addressing the disparity, the U.S. Sentencing Commission issued new recommendations last year for lighter penalties.

Docudharma Times Sunday April 20



In the streets there’s no wrong and no right

so forget all that you see

It’s not reality

It’s just a fantasy

Can’t you see

What this crazy life is doing to me

Life is just a fantasy

Sunday’s Headlines:DNA Tests Offer Deeper Examination Of Accused: Military medical malpractice: Seeking recourse: Iraqi cleric threatens ‘open war’: British dealers supply arms to Iran: Beijing gags anti-Western online anger: Tokyo offers free pizza to lure pensioners from their cars: Women in politics: Berlusconi lays into Spain’s ‘too pink’ cabinet: Paper is shut down after report on Vladimir Putin’s love life: Voters flee Zimbabwe’s state terror: Deadly clashes erupt in Mogadishu    

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Docudharma Times Saturday April 19



I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing

Until they got a hold of me

I opened doors for little old ladies

I helped the blind to see

I got no friends cause they read the papers

They cant be seen with me and Im getting shot down

And Im feeling mean

Saturday’s Headlines: McCain, Iraq War and the Threat of ‘Al Qaeda’: Groundings Prompt FAA Safety Overhaul: Our reign of terror, by the Israeli army: Chinese troops are on the streets of Zimbabwean city, witnesses say: Eight days of fear in Mugabe’s machine: Guantanamo Britons to sue MI5 over ‘illegal interrogation’: EU set to scrap biofuels target amid fears of food crisis: Tibetan protesters defy police crackdown in western China: Leftist former bishop set for victory in Paraguay election  

Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture

Senior officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods

America’s most senior general was “hoodwinked” by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.

The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today’s Guardian.

Docudharma Times Friday April 18



kick out the blues

tear out the pages with all the bad news

pull down the mirrors and pull down the walls

tear up the stairs and tear up the floors

oh just burn down the house!

Friday’s Headlines: Workers Get Fewer Hours, Deepening the Downturn: How Obama and the radical became news: Japan temple rejects torch relay: India pulls off a peaceful Olympic torch relay, by banning the public: Guggenheim sues ex-finance boss who admitted stealing £400,000: Dmitri Medvedev votes were rigged, says computer boffin: ‘Softly-softly’ Thabo Mbeki is urged to quit over tolerance of Robert Mugabe: Mugabe set to mark independence: Israel closes off West Bank, Gaza for Passover: Carter in Damascus to meet Hamas: Rural fires choke Buenos Aires with smoke

Amid blasts, Baghdad embassy declared ready

Rocket attacks force completion of costly, controversial compound

The troubled effort to build the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad seemed to be months away from completion when a team of top State Department officials flew to Iraq on March 20 to meet with senior staff from the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. But as insurgent rockets began to rain down on the flimsy trailers housing diplomats inside the Green Zone, the two sides suddenly found ways to settle many of the major issues dividing them.

Docudharma Times Thursday April 17



We’ve come so far so fast from what they call the past

Laying down foundations and we know they’re gonna last

Present and the future we will never fall

Realise united we stand and divided we fall

Thursday’s Headlines: Moratorium on Lethal Injection Is Over, but Hardly the Challenges: Obama Pressed in Pa. Debate: Torch reaches locked-down Delhi: US offers Pakistan government $7bn in non-military aid to fight terrorism: Reuters cameraman ‘killed by Israeli tank’: Report reveals Iran seized British sailors in disputed waters: Mugabe has stolen poll win, Brown tells UN: Odinga sworn in as Kenyan premier: Boycott call as Gibraltar decides to cull monkeys: Seven police hurt in Spanish bomb: Colombia trade pact dispute spills into Californians’ laps

A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice

DENILIQUIN, Australia – Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. “It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety,” he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, “and now it has stopped.”

The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Docudharma Times Tuesday April 15

Got styrofoam boxes

for the ozone layer

Got a man of the people,

says keep hope alive

Got fuel to burn,

got roads to drive.

Tuesday’s Headlines: Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies: Delta, Northwest Agree to Merger: Zimbabwe braced for strike action: 19 children die in Uganda school fire: Berlusconi sweeps back to power as left concedes defeat in Italian elections: Stalin’s space monkeys: Iraqi troops free British journalist: Devising Survival at Factory in Iraq: Beijing bans construction projects to improve air quality during the Olympics: Tibetan monks resist ‘education’ campaign, say rights groups: Mexico opposition barricades Congress

Biofuel: the burning question

The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?

From today, all petrol and diesel sold on forecourts must contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel. The Government insists its flagship environmental policy will make Britain’s 33 million vehicles greener. But a formidable coalition of campaigners is warning that, far from helping to reverse climate change, the UK’s biofuel revolution will speed up global warming and the loss of vital habitat worldwide.

Amid growing evidence that massive investment in biofuels by developed countries is helping to cause a food crisis for the world’s poor, the ecological cost of the push to produce billions of litres of petrol and diesel from plant sources will be highlighted today with protests across the country and growing political pressure to impose guarantees that the new technology reduces carbon emissions.

Docudharma Times Monday April 14



there’s battle lines being drawn

nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

young people speakin there minds

getting so much resistance far behind

Monday’s Headlines: Global warming has a new battleground: coal plants: A surge of new voters in Pennsylvania is likely to help Obama: Japan fleet misses whaling target: Former Maoist guerrillas on brink of historic Nepal election victory: Election recount allows Mugabe to step up violence, says opposition: Somali militants kill two Britons: ‘Betrayed’ Iraqi staff in test case over UK’s refusal to offer asylum: Arabs and Jews work together to make drama out of a crisis: Berlusconi’s return in the hands of Rome as Italians go to the polls: Key Bulgarian minister steps down: Colombian clam diggers’ livelihoods under siege

Co-Payments Go Way Up for Drugs With High Prices

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

Docudharma Times Sunday April 13



It’s my freedom

Ah, don’t worry ’bout me, babe

I got to be free, babe

Hey

Sunday’s Headlines: HUD Chief Inattentive To Crisis, Critics Say: Bill Clinton, China linked via his foundation: Secret Iraqi Deal Shows Problems in Arms Orders: Israel re-brands kibbutzim to lure eco-aware generation:  Exclusive: Mugabe prepares for war:  Plan for Darfur peace talks in UK: Western press ‘demonises’ China:  Paramilitary Olympics: Beijing: at least 94,000 security staff – but only 10,500 athletes: ‘Acceptable face’ of fascism may cost Berlusconi victory:  A Maker of Books Destroys 100,000: Haiti Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis fired

Dalai Lama plans Tibet crisis remarks Sunday

Until now, he has avoided issue at Seattle conference on compassion

SEATTLE – The Dalai Lama planned to speak about the turmoil in Tibet on Sunday, but so far on his U.S. tour he has simply urged people to have hope for the future and to look past a century of bloodshed and toward a period of dialogue.

The spiritual leader of Tibet delivered his keynote speech Saturday to more than 50,000 people during the second day of a five-day conference on compassion.

Docudharma Times Tuesday April 8



Everybody wants respect

Just a little bit

And everybody needs a chance

Once in a while

Everybody wants to be

Closer to Free

Tuesday’s Headlines: Asian Inflation Begins to Sting U.S. Shoppers: Congress To Hear Of Gains In Iraq: China vows to keep torch on track: Kashmir Says Come On In, the Tee Times Are Safe:  Hizbollah turns to Iran for new weapons to wage war on Israel: Sadr will disband his militia if religious leaders ask: Zimbabwe: desperate Mugabe begins new assault on white-owned farms: Egyptian police arrest over 200 in strike crackdown: Anti-abortion campaigner sparks violent clashes in Italy: Eurotunnel turns corner into first profit after years of crisis: Healthcare in Venezuela takes turn for worse

Secret US plan for military future in Iraq

Document outlines powers but sets no time limit on troop presence

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

The authorisation is described as “temporary” and the agreement says the US “does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq”. But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces – including the British – in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Docudharma Times Monday April 7



This is my mistake. Let me make it good

I raised the wall, and I will be the one to knock it down

Monday’s Headlines: ‘Soft money’ battle brewing : Three Days of Fire Still Seared in Witnesses’ Minds:  Olympic spirit comes to Britain: Is the food still Italian if the chef is a foreigner?: Farms raided as Mugabe incites racial tension: Darfur women still face rape risk: Sri Lankan minister among dozen killed in suicide blast at marathon:  War reporter Jon Swain pays tribute to Dith Pran: Clashes in Egypt strike stand-off: Rift widens between Iraq’s Shiites:  

Editorial

Another Test for Habeas Corpus


One of the dismal hallmarks of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror has been its obsession with avoiding outside scrutiny of its actions, including by the federal courts. In particular, it has attacked habeas corpus, the guarantee that prisoners can challenge their confinement before a judge. The administration is doing so again in an important Supreme Court case concerning the habeas rights of American citizens held abroad. The justices should rule that the detainees have a right to review by a United States court.

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