Docudharma Times Sunday Nov. 4

This is an Open Thread: Speaking is the only way.

USA

New Detainee Rights Weighed in Plans to Close Guantánamo

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: November 4, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 – Administration officials are considering granting Guantánamo detainees substantially greater rights as part of an effort to close the detention center and possibly move much of its population to the United States, according to officials involved in the discussions.

One proposal that is being widely discussed in the administration would overhaul the procedure for determining whether detainees are properly held by granting them legal representation at detention hearings and by giving federal judges, not military officers, the power to decide whether suspects should be held.

blo

Thompson Adviser Has Criminal Past

By Matthew Mosk

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, November 4, 2007; Page A01

Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing.

Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White House bid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and the head of a group called the “first day founders.” Campaign aides jokingly began to refer to Martin, who has been friends with Thompson since the early 1990s, as the head of “Thompson’s Airforce.”

Atlanta water use is called shortsighted

The rapidly growing metropolis’ ‘cavalier’ attitude toward conservation is the real problem, critics say.

By Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 4, 2007

ATLANTA — When Rick McKee, the editorial cartoonist of the Augusta Chronicle newspaper, set out to capture the historic and severe drought that is afflicting the Southeast, he did not draw parched rivers or shriveled crops or brown lawns: He drew an oafish, bloated hulk of a boy holding up a straw to slurp up water from a smaller boy’s water fountain.

Above the larger boy, a sign reads “Atlanta,” above the other, “Everybody else.”

It is, in many ways, a cartoon that sums up feelings across the Southeast now that Lake Lanier, the reservoir that supplies drinking water to most of metropolitan Atlanta’s 5 million residents, is draining to historic lows

South Asia

The Daily Times Lahore

It is martial law

* Emergency imposed, Constitution held in abeyance

* ‘Judicial interference’, law and order cited as reasons

* PM, CMs and cabinets to continue

* Senate, NA, PAs and local governments not suspended

* COAS empowered to amend Constitution

* Fundamental rights under articles 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 19, 25 suspended

* Troops deployed at government installations

* Private TV news channels blacked out

By Rana Qaisar

ISLAMABAD: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Pervez Musharraf on Saturday imposed a state of emergency in the country and promulgated a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) holding the Constitution in abeyance.

Musharraf cites Lincoln to justify emergency

LAHORE: President General Pervez Musharraf cited an extract from a letter by 19th century US president Abraham Lincoln to justify extra-constitutional measures, during his address on Saturday.

Gen Musharraf quoted Lincoln as writing that though he had pledged to uphold the Constitution, he had to first preserve the nation, for without the nation the Constitution was not much use. Speaking in English and saying he had a message for Pakistan’s “friends in the United States, European Union and Commonwealth, he said: “Kindly understand the criticality of the situation in Pakistan … Inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.” staff report

Its rather disturbing that President General Pervez Musharraf would use America’s greatest President Abraham Lincoln as a justification for declaring martial law.

This editorial is from Dawn Pakistan’s largest English language newspaper.

Another move towards absolutism

SO we are back to square one. Back to Oct 12, 1999. All the gains over the years have gone down the drain. All this talk about the forward thrust towards democracy, about the impending ‘third phase’ of the political process and the lip service to the sanctity of judiciary turned out to be one great deception. The people have been cheated. In a nutshell, one-man rule has been reinforced, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel – a tunnel that is dark and winding with an end that is perhaps blocked. The reports about emergency rule were denied umpteenth times by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. The denials were bogus. From now on it would simply be a waste of newspaper space and channel time if ever a denial by this government is printed or aired.

Middle East

Kurdish rebels release Turkish soldiers

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – Kurdish rebels on Sunday released eight Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq two weeks after capturing them in an ambush inside Turkey, a PKK spokesman said.

The release came before Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets President Bush on Monday in Washington to discuss a possible cross-border offensive against the Kurdish rebel group.

Kurds withhold assurances on border

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 4, 2007

ISTANBUL, Turkey – U.S. officials met with Iraqi and Turkish diplomats here Saturday on the crisis threatening Iraq’s northern border, but key Kurdistan officials failed to offer assurances that they would move against Kurdish militants attacking Turkey from havens in their region, American officials said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice led the U.S. delegation in meetings with the foreign ministers of Turkey and Iraq amid a broader two-day gathering of Arab countries and world powers to discuss Iraq’s many problems.

Europe

Eastern Europe: where Oliver Twist and James Bond meet

SOFIA (AFP) – What do Oliver Twist and James Bond have in common? The answer is: Eastern Europe’s newly developing film studios.

Low costs, skilled film professionals, a well-preserved scenery and communist-era architecture have turned the region into a favourite filming destination for both European and US film companies.

Foreign film-makers have also rushed to buy local studios, vowing to turn the region into a new Hollywood.

Sharp pen aims at the mob

Roberto Saviano jokes that he has a mobster’s face, which, if true, has done nothing to endear him to the real criminals he writes about. They despise him, so much so that Saviano, only 28, has been forced to live in hiding under state protection, a sort of Salman Rushdie of Italy’s struggle against organized crime.

The distaste is mutual.

“I have always hated them, a personal hatred, not just an intellectual one,” Saviano said in the safety of his publisher’s office here, his three well-armed police bodyguards outside on the street. “It is a very personal hatred because they ruined my country, forced people to emigrate, killed honest people” – by his count, 3,600 dead near where he grew up, outside Naples.

Latin America

Desperation grows as rains pound Haiti

LES CAYES, Haiti – Thousands of Haitians sought shelter in schoolhouses Saturday as the death toll from Tropical Storm Noel rose to 143 across the Caribbean.

Heavy rains continued to pound Haiti, leaving U.N. and Haitian officials temporarily stranded as they toured Haiti’s flooded southern peninsula.

Noel, which was lashing the northeastern United States with high winds and rough surf Saturday, is the deadliest storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, with the greatest devastation on the waterlogged island of Hispaniola, shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Exodus out of Mexico flood zone

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled severe floods in the south Mexican state of Tabasco where rivers burst their banks after heavy rain.

The centre of the state capital, Villahermosa, is under between 2m (6 feet) and 6m of water with only rooftops visible from the air.

Africa

Sudan’s former foes agree timetable for peace deal

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan’s former foes have agreed on steps to implement a 2005 peace deal, First Vice President Salva Kiir said on Sunday, indicating the country’s worst political crisis in years may be resolved soon.

The announcement raised hopes that ministers from the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement’s (SPLM) will soon return to the national coalition government, ending the political paralysis that set in after they froze the partnership in protest last month.

From the BBC

Chad case prompts Sarkozy visit

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on his way to Chad to discuss the detention of 17 Europeans accused of child abduction, his office said.

The French, Spanish and Belgian nationals are held in connection with an alleged attempt to kidnap 103 African children.

Six of the arrested are members of a charity, Zoe’s Ark, which says the children are orphans from Darfur.

But international aid agencies have cast doubt over the claim.

East Asia

Olympics push Chinese kids to the max

BEIJING – An 8-year-old girl runs 2,212 miles to Beijing in 55 days. A 10-year-old swims in a river with her hands and feet bound. And then there’s 4-year-old Yang Yang, riding a 1,000-pound beluga whale.

Kids’ stunts such as these are becoming more common as Olympic fever rises with the approach of next summer’s games. But don’t expect any great outcry. In China, where one-child families are the government-enforced norm, pushing a child to overachieve is a social imperative.

Japan opposition chief to resign

Japan’s main opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa has offered to resign from his position as head of the Democratic Party of Japan.

Mr Ozawa’s announcement came after he took criticism within his party for not immediately turning down a coalition offer from the country’s new leader.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda offered Mr Ozawa a deal on Friday.

Whistleblowers lift the lid on Japan’s food industry

By David McNeill in Tokyo

Published: 04 November 2007

TV audiences in Japan couldn’t get enough of the steam bun video. Shot secretly in China and screened repeatedly on Japanese networks, the footage showed a street vendor soak and mince corrugated cardboard, stuff it into dough and sell it as a pork-filled bun.

The trouble was that the video was faked and, as a string of recent food scandals prove, there are problems aplenty closer to home. These include pork sold as tuna and chicken; old battery hens packaged as free-range broilers, and sweets and dairy products being illegally recycled.