Docudharma Times Friday January 23

Spending The Public’s Money

The Old Fashioned Way On A Toilet  

Freed by U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief



By ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: January 22, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon – The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

No Home to Return to in Gaza

15,000 Still Living In Crowded Shelters

By Griff Witte

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, January 23, 2009; Page A12

GAZA CITY, Jan. 22 — When members of the Sultan family ran from their home as an Israeli tank shelled its northern wall, there was no time to shut the front door. There was also no need.

The house, which family patriarch Samir al-Sultan began building at the age of 15, was all but destroyed as Israeli forces advanced into the Gaza Strip in early January, turning the house’s contents into a mangled mess of glass and mortar.

With no home to return to and no prospects for rebuilding, the Sultans on Thursday were among the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza searching for somewhere to go.

USA

Stimulus Plan Meets More GOP Resistance

Obama to Reiterate Appeal for Bipartisanship

By Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, January 23, 2009; Page A01

Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of “petty grievances,” President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support.

Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning the new president’s pledge, ignoring his call for bipartisan comity and shutting them out of the process by writing the $850 billion legislation. The first drafts of the plan would result in more spending on favored Democratic agenda items, such as federal funding of the arts, they said, but would do little to stimulate the ailing economy.

They came for the inauguration but got stuck in a tunnel

Many holders of purple tickets spent hours in a tunnel under the National Mall instead of witnessing Obama’s swearing-in. Officials are investigating what went wrong.



By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

7:48 PM PST, January 22, 2009

Reporting from Washington — You wouldn’t think a presidential inauguration would require a survivors group. But shortly after thousands of ticket holders were trapped in an underground tunnel beneath the National Mall on Tuesday, a new Facebook group was born: Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom. Membership as of Thursday evening: 3,950.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), head of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which was responsible for the event, has apologized to the distressed visitors — whose color-coded tickets were purple — and called for an investigation by the law enforcement agencies that planned the event, which include the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police.

“Sen. Feinstein was very displeased,” said committee spokeswoman Carole Florman. “Word has gone out to get some answers.”

Middle East

Israel may swap prisoners for soldier

• Olmert deal could involve hundreds of Palestinians

• Release of captive held for two years seen as priority

Peter Beaumont in Ramallah

The Guardian, Friday 23 January 2009

Israel might be prepared to swap hundreds of jailed Palestinians for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been held in captivity in the Gaza Strip for more than two years, senior Israeli officials indicated yesterday.

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, said yesterday that the Israel Defence Forces’ operation in the Gaza Strip had created “renewed momentum” to strike a deal with Hamas for Shalit’s return.

Hamas officials in Gaza and the West Bank insisted, for their part, that Shalit, who was captured in a cross-border raid, “would not see the light of day” unless Israel agreed to the release of up to 1,400 Palestinian prisoners.

Shalit has become a cause célèbre in Israel. Little information is known about his condition and there have been unconfirmed reports that he had been injured at the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Fatah fears Gaza conflict has put Hamas in the ascendancy

Palestinian party created by Yasser Arafat suffers sharp decline in support

By Patrick Cockburn in Nablus

Friday, 23 January 2009

The Islamic movement Hamas is taking over from Fatah, the party created by Yasser Arafat, as the main Palestinian national organisation as a result of the war in Gaza, says a leading Fatah militant. “We have moved into the era of Hamas which is now much stronger than it was,” said Husam Kadr, a veteran Fatah leader in the West Bank city of Nablus, recently released after five-and-a-half years in Israeli prisons.

“Its era started when Israel attacked Gaza on 27 December.”

The sharp decline in support for Fatah and the discrediting of Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, because of his inertia during the 22-day Gaza war, will make it very difficult for the US and the EU to pretend that Fatah are the true representatives of the Palestinian community. The international community is likely to find it impossible to marginalise Hamas in reconstructing Gaza.

Africa

Congo and Rwanda forces arrest rebel leader Laurent Nkunda

General whose rebel offensive in Congo led to humanitarian crisis last October held after crossing border into Rwanda

Matthew Weaver and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 January 2009 08.05 GMT

The renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, who led a rebel offensive in eastern Congo that caused a humanitarian crisis last October, has been arrested in a joint operation by Rwandan and Congolese troops, it was announced today.

Troops converged yesterday on Nkunda’s base in the town of Bunagana, in North Kivu province. Nkunda then fled south, crossing the border into Rwanda, where he was captured.

“Ex-general Laurent Nkunda was arrested on Thursday, 22 January at 2230 hours while he was fleeing on Rwandan territory after he had resisted our troops at Bunagana with three battalions,” Congolese and Rwandan military commanders said in a statement.

They said rebels were being urged to disarm, but did not say why Nkunda had been arrested

Millions of caterpillars devour Liberia crops

‘Black, creeping and hairy’ insects also clog wells, waterways with feces

Associated Press

ROME – Tens of millions of voracious caterpillars are destroying crops and prompting terrified villagers to flee their homes in northern Liberia in what is described as the West African country’s worst plague in 30 years, a U.N. agency said Thursday.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said the inch-long caterpillars – described by villagers as “black, creeping and hairy” – are devouring vegetation and food crops in dozens of towns.

The plague is spreading fast because the pests multiply rapidly and adult moths can fly long distances.

Europe?

Lebedev to invest ‘tens of millions’ after snapping up Standard for £1

Ex-KGB agent promises he will not interfere with editorial policy

By Shaun Walker in Moscow

Friday, 23 January 2009

Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire and former KGB agent, outlined his plans for London’s Evening Standard at a news conference in Moscow yesterday. He said there would be changes at the paper and promised to funnel “tens of millions of pounds” into the loss-making title over the next two years.

Mr Lebedev, who paid a symbolic £1 to acquire the Evening Standard this week, becomes the first Russian to own a British newspaper, and many eyebrows have been raised at the deal. It comes at a time when British-Russian relations have still not recovered from the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, and Russia’s relations with Europe as a whole are strained after the Georgia war last summer and the recent gas spat with Ukraine.

Closing Guantánamo: Will Europeans take detainees?>

Europeans, who have long pushed to close the controversial facility, are hesitant to take some of its inmates.

By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 23, 2009 edition

PARIS – On no single issue has Europe been more in disagreement with America than the Guantánamo detention center. The camp was a focus of anti-US protest here, synonymous with the image of a bullying world power using torture to obtain confessions from terror suspects.

The European Union collectively called for closing “Gitmo.” Now, Barack Obama, who is deeply admired in Europe, has ordered Gitmo trials to be halted, and signed an executive order Thursday to close Guantánamo within a year.

It sounds like Europe’s dream scenario. Yet European states are not rushing to take detainees, a step considered essential to closing the camps.

Rather, on the eve of a Jan. 26 meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels that takes up the question, there’s more temporizing than unity – and a possibility that some states that say they will take inmates considered wrongly detained may hide behind bureaucratic moves to tie such help to a collective EU agreement. Such agreement may be difficult.

Asia

Sri Lanka editor stabbed in latest attack on media

From Times Online

January 23, 2009

Jeremy Page in Delhi

Another Sri Lankan newspaper editor was attacked this morning while driving to work near Colombo, the capital, just over two weeks after the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper.

Upali Tennakoon, chief editor of the Rivira weekly, was driving on the outskirts of Colombo with his wife when two men on motorbikes pulled up in front of his car and told him to get out, according to a reporter on the paper.

When he refused, they smashed the car window and attacked him and his wife with wooden clubs and a knife, Stanley Samarasinghe, a senior journalist at Rivira, told The Times.

The two assailants escaped on their motorbikes and Mr Tennakoon and his wife were taken to hospital, where they are in a stable condition, Mr Samarasinghe said.

Thailand accused of mistreating Muslim refugees

Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea and abandoned with little food or water, rights group says.

 By Simon Montlake | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 23, 2009 edition

BANGKOK, THAILAND – Hundreds of Muslim refugees from Burma (Myanmar) are feared missing or dead after Thai troops forced them onto boats without engines and cut them adrift in international waters, according to human rights activists and authorities in India who rescued survivors. The revelations have shone a spotlight on the Thai military’s expulsion policy toward Muslims it sees as a security threat.

Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea in two batches and abandoned with little food or water, according to a tally by a migrant-rights group based on survivors’ accounts and media reports. The detainees, mostly members of Burma’s oppressed Rohingya minority, then drifted for weeks. One group was later rescued by Indonesia’s Navy, and two others made landfall in India’s Andaman Islands.

Photos of refugees on a Thai island show rows of bedraggled men stripped to the waist as soldiers stand guard. In a separate incident, foreign tourists snapped pictures of detainees trussed on a beach. Thailand’s Andaman coastline, where the abuses took place, is a popular vacation spot.

Latin America

Bolivians set to vote on new constitution

Bolivians head to the polls Sunday to vote on a controversial new charter that boosts rights for indigenous people and nationalizes gas reserves.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 23, 2009 edition

SANTA CRUZ AND LA PAZ, BOLIVIA – The word “No” papers the prosperous, tropical city of Santa Cruz, the cradle of opposition to Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. Posters, bumper stickers, and even billboards urge residents to reject a new constitution to be voted on Sunday.

Yet the first placard one sees upon entering the city’s Plan 3,000 indigenous neighborhood is in support of the president, urging a “Yes” vote. “We feel divided here from the rest of Santa Cruz,” says resident Benjamin Penaranda. “Here we support the constitution. It will give us rights we never had.”

It’s just one example of the class, cultural, and geographical divisions that have roiled Bolivia since Mr. Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, came into office three years ago promising to “refound” the nation.

The centerpiece of his mission is a new constitution that he says would reverse decades of discrimination against the indigenous majority – his critics claim it’s just a power ploy.