Docudharma Times Tuesday September 9

Lying In Face Of The Facts

Is No Longer Cause To Question The Trustworthiness Of

A National Political Candidate

As The News Media Just Repeats Them As Facts

U.S. Team to Reinvestigate Deadly Strike In Afghanistan



By Candace Rondeaux and Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, September 9, 2008; Page A01      

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 8 — The U.S. Central Command will send a senior team, headed by a general and including a legal affairs officer, to reinvestigate a U.S. air attack last month that U.N. and Afghan officials say killed 90 civilians, amid mounting public outrage in Afghanistan and evidence that conflicts with the military’s initial version of events.

The U.S. decision to again probe the Aug. 21 attack in Azizabad, near the western city of Herat, came at the urging of Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan.

Forgoing Subsidy, Obama Team Presses Donors  



 By MICHAEL LUO and JEFF ZELENY

Published: September 8, 2008  

After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it.

Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee, calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”

At a convention-week meeting in Denver of the campaign’s top fund-raisers, buttons with the image of a money tree were distributed to those who had already contributed the maximum $2,300 to the general election, a subtle reminder to those who had failed to ante up.

USA

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs to get golden parachutes

Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, who are stepping down, have already made millions at the troubled mortgage giants and are expected to take away millions more.

By William Heisel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

10:13 PM PDT, September 8, 2008  

Shareholders in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw the value of their stock nearly disappear Monday after the mortgage giants had been taken over by the federal government, but the companies’ chief executives will leave after banking millions and taking millions more on the way out the door.

Fannie Mae’s Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac’s Richard Syron stepped down but are helping with the transition of their companies into federal conservatorship under the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The agency has not said how much they will earn in their new roles.

Mudd earned $11.6 million last year, and Syron made $18.3 million. In both cases, a large portion of their pay packages included stock that was valued much higher at the end of 2007 than it was as of Monday, when it was trading at less than $1 a share.

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home

Taxpayers Also Funded Family’s Travel?

By James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 9, 2008; Page A01  

ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official “duty station” is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

Europe

Russia to leave Georgia after EU deal



Luke Harding in Moscow

The Guardian,

Tuesday September 9 2008

Russia last night agreed to pull all of its forces out of Georgia within a month, after an agreement in Moscow between France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.

Describing yesterday’s deal as “momentous”, Sarkozy said Moscow had agreed to scrap its checkpoints inside Georgia in a week and had promised to remove all forces from areas adjacent to the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia within a month.

The agreement also envisaged the deployment of a 200-strong force of EU observers to Georgia by October 1, Sarkozy said. Additionally, international talks would take place on October 15 in Geneva on the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognised as independent late last month.

Italian minister pays homage to fascist troops



Tom Kington in Rome

The Guardian,

Tuesday September 9 2008

Italy’s defence minister yesterday paid tribute to fascist soldiers who fought in Italy alongside German troops during the second world war, inflaming a row prompted on Sunday when Rome’s mayor refused to condemn fascism as evil.

Speaking at an anniversary event marking Rome’s resistance to Nazi occupation in 1943, the defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, yesterday chose to stress the patriotism of those Italians who fought against the advancing allied forces.

A day earlier, the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-fascist youth leader, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera he “did not and never has” considered fascism to be “absolute evil”.

Asia

The town that took on the yakuza

Japan’s mafia seemed untouchable – until a group of residents risked everything to launch a court fight to drive the gangsters out. By David McNeill in Kurume City

 Tuesday, 9 September 2008  

“Get lost.” Not a promising start to an interview but this is hardly a standard interviewee – a flint-eyed gangster sporting a crew-cut and a boiler suit. His two colleagues glower from behind oversized sunglasses and thick layers of suspicion. Rippling tattoos snake out of the rolled-up sleeves of Goon No 1. “Kieusero,” [fuck off] he growls before slamming down the shutter of his office garage.

A well-earned reputation for unpredictability and violence keeps journalists away from the Japanese mafia, or yakuza, but a vicious turf battle between two rival gangs in Kyushu, southern Japan, has made them reluctant media fodder.

 Deadly airstrike on school set up by bin Laden friend, Jalal-uddin Haqqani  

 

From The Times

September 9, 2008

Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

 At least 20 people were killed yesterday when US missiles struck an Islamic school founded by a friend of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region near the Afghan border.

The attack by unmanned American drone aircraft was the third aimed at militant leaders and their hideouts just inside Pakistani territory. Officials and residents of the village of Dande Darba Khel in North Waziristan said that two drones fired three missiles, which also hit houses close to the Islamic seminary, killing three women and two children.

The madrassa, founded by Jalal-uddin Haqqani, a veteran Afghan commander and old associate of bin Laden, was closed by Pakistani forces in 2002 but several members of Mr Haqqani’s cabal were believed still to be living in the area.

Africa

Mbeki to meet Zimbabwe rivals  

 

 By Cris Chinaka

Tuesday, 9 September 2008  

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has arrived in the Zimbabwean capital to revive powersharing talks. He will meet Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai as well as Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway group from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Talks will resume today after President Robert Mugabe and opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai failed to secure a breakthrough on yesterday.

Mugabe told reporters no deal was reached but the parties held a good meeting.

“We are moving forward, we are not going back,” he said, as he left the Harare hotel where South African president Thabo Mbeki led talks to end the political and economic crisis, after several hours of meetings.

Middle East

For Iran, energy woes justify nuclear push

Many Iranians see the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s Saturday decision that could permit nuclear trade with India as a double standard.

By Scott Peterson  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 9, 2008 edition

Tehran; and Istanbul, Turkey –  On a scorching day in Tehran the power goes out, trapping a maid in a hotel elevator – again. With a routine air, the front desk clerk grabs a wrench and starts for the stairs.

From generators on sidewalks to refrigerators wrecked by power surges, Iranians are in the midst of an energy crunch that outside experts and Iranian officials say can be solved over the long term only by nuclear power. But suspicion in the West that Iran wants nuclear weapons along with power has prompted an array of United Nations and US sanctions.

For many in Iran, the decision last Saturday that promises to open the door to nuclear trade for India is a double standard. And the decision by the Nuclear Suppliers Group to end the pariah status of India – which tested a bomb in 1974, never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor allowed outside inspection – could reinforce Tehran’s refusal to stop uranium enrichment and even encourage a bid for the bomb.

Residents Angry at Pace Of Rescue in Cairo Slum



 By Ellen Knickmeyer

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, September 9, 2008; Page A20  

CAIRO, Sept. 8 — Residents pounded riot police with fists and stones Monday outside an illegal slum crushed by a massive rockslide three days earlier. Egypt’s Interior Ministry said rescue workers had recovered 41 bodies, but residents said they thought hundreds remained buried.

The residents of Manshiyet Nasr have expressed anger at the slow pace of rescue efforts since a cliff weakened by raw sewage and wastewater from an illegal settlement at its top collapsed Saturday morning, sending limestone boulders onto their houses and apartment buildings.

Latin America

Hurricane Ike shreds central Cuba, heads for Havana

Fidel Castro declares a ‘combat alert,’ and state TV reports four deaths on the island.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 9, 2008  

MIAMI — Hurricane Ike ripped through central Cuba on Monday, toppling colonial landmarks and forcing the evacuation of nearly 1 million people — with more likely to be displaced as the powerful storm plowed toward populous Havana.

Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro proclaimed his country on “combat alert” against the third massive storm to hit the island in as many weeks and what he portrayed as a heartless double standard that blocks U.S. humanitarian aid.

The extent of Ike’s damage elsewhere in the Caribbean also emerged Monday, a day after it ravaged the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas as a Category 4 hurricane with winds upward of 135 mph and triggered more flooding in devastated Haiti, where the death toll from the series of storms was reported to exceed 1,000.

In the important Cuban farming and mining areas near Camaguey, news agencies reported that the ferocious winds toppled buildings, including colonial columns that graced the city, a UNESCO-designated historical site.