Docudharma Times Monday January 19

The National And International

Nightmare Ends Today

Hamas joins fragile Israeli ceasefire

• Mubarak calls summit to secure end of fighting

• Death toll tops 1,300 as UN humanitarian team goes in

Ian Black, Middle East editor, Nick Watt in Sharm el-Sheikh

The Guardian, Monday 19 January 2009

Hamas followed Israel into agreeing a fragile ceasefire yesterday, ending three weeks of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip, as Arab and European leaders scrambled to agree lasting arrangements to prevent a new outbreak of hostilities.

The Palestinian Islamist movement said it would give Israel a week to withdraw its troops and tanks from the territory, but Israel retorted that it would decide when to leave. “The operation is not over,” said a military spokeswoman. “This is only a holding of fire.”

Seventeen rockets were fired into Israel, three of them after the Hamas statement. But Israeli army officials confirmed last night that some ground forces had started to pull out, while the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: “We are interested in quitting the Gaza Strip at the greatest possible speed.”

U.S. economy may sputter for years

Unemployment could be worse than now by the time President-elect Barack Obama’s first term ends.

By Peter G. Gosselin

January 19, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Transfixed by the daily spectacle of dismal economic news and wild Wall Street swings, few Americans have looked up to see what a wide array of economists say lies beyond the immediate crisis.

And with good reason: The picture isn’t pretty.

The sleek racing machine that was the U.S. economy is unlikely to return any time soon despite the huge repair efforts now underway. Instead, it probably will continue to sputter and threaten to stall for years to come.

The prospects are so gloomy, according to a recent study, that unemployment may be slightly higher by the time President-elect Barack Obama’s first term ends.

USA

More Joining American Military as Jobs Dwindle



By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: January 18, 2009

As the number of jobs across the nation dwindles, more Americans are joining the military, lured by a steady paycheck, benefits and training.The last fiscal year was a banner one for the military, with all active-duty and reserve forces meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004, the year that violence in Iraq intensified drastically, Pentagon officials said.

And the trend seems to be accelerating. The Army exceeded its targets each month for October, November and December – the first quarter of the new fiscal year – bringing in 21,443 new soldiers on active duty and in the reserves. December figures were released last week.

Far Fewer Consider Racism Big Problem

Little Change, However, at Local Level

By Michael A. Fletcher and Jon Cohen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, January 19, 2009; Page A06

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, far fewer black and white Americans say they view racism as “a big problem” in American society than said so in mid-1996, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

With the nation poised to inaugurate its first African American president, the survey found that just over a quarter of all Americans said they see racism as a large societal problem, less than half of the 54 percent who said so about a dozen years ago. Americans also have high hopes that Obama — who is of mixed-race parentage but refers to himself as African American — will inspire an improvement in race relations.

Europe

Erdogan in Brussels as Turkey’s EU ambitions face decisive year



Ian Traynor in Brussels, Robert Tait in Istanbul

The Guardian, Monday 19 January 2009

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arrived in Brussels last night for the first time in four years, with the aim of resuscitating his country’s flagging efforts to join the European Union.

Diplomats and senior officials in Brussels believe that this year is likely to be decisive for Ankara’s EU ambitions.

Erdogan’s first visit to the EU headquarters since membership negotiations began in 2005 could signal a shift in his government’s European policies, following two years of power struggles at home and a souring of relations with the EU. The prime minister has appointed a close aide, Egemen Bagis, to take charge of the European negotiations and has established a government department for EU talks.

“Better late than never,” said Cengiz Aktar, an analyst at an Istanbul university. “After four years of negotiations, the prime minister has done the right thing by appointing a sole minister to run EU affairs in this country.”

Stella Baruk makes maths easy with magic squares and dogs’ legs

From The Times

January 19, 2009

Adam Sage in Paris

When Stella Baruk first proposed a teaching method for mathematics that involved magic squares, fingers and dogs’ legs, there were howls of protest from the French elite.

That was 30 years ago. Today, Mrs Baruk is being hailed as a saviour, making les mathématiques understandable to children whose inability to grasp square roots, algebra or geometry has come to be seen as a national crisis.

She is dubbed “the maths fairy” by the radio station Europe 1 and “the J. K. Rowling of figures” by Le Nouvel Observateur, and her methods are influencing teachers and teaching programmes in France and abroad

Middle East

‘My daughters, they killed them’: TV doctor shows Israelis horror of war



By Ben Lynfield in Tel Hashomer, Israel

Monday, 19 January 2009

Like the shellings of UN-run schools and a major hospital in Gaza City, the Israeli public might have regarded the deaths of his three daughters as just more collateral damage in an ugly but justified war, if they noticed it at all. But Dr Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish is a gynaecologist at Israel’s Shiba Hospital near Tel Aviv, and is well known among Israeli medical colleagues and journalists.

During the 22 days of Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza, the Palestinian doctor and peace advocate who speaks Hebrew fluently had helped the Israeli media cover the war by giving phone interviews from inside Gaza.

Bush shoe man in Swiss asylum bid

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W Bush is seeking asylum in Switzerland, Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve reports.



Muntadar al-Zaidi has been in custody in Iraq awaiting trial since the incident during a visit by Mr Bush to the country in mid-December.

He fears for his safety in his Baghdad prison, the paper says, quoting his lawyer, Mauro Poggia.

The lawyer argues his client likewise cannot resume his old job in Iraq.

Since his arrest, the Iraqi has reportedly been beaten in custody, suffering a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding, his older brother Dargham told the BBC last month.

Mr Zaidi, 29, launched his news conference attack at the outgoing American president, who led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with the words “This is a farewell kiss, you dog”.

Asia

Taliban restrict women’s education in Pakistan



Omar Waraich in Islamabad and Andrew Buncombe

Thousands of young women living in a part of Pakistan once considered the country’s most idyllic tourist destination have been prevented from going to school after an order from Taliban forces which have seized control of much of the area.

Fearful of violent attacks that have already seen the torching of over 180 schools in the Swat Valley, school administrators have announced that more than 900 private schools will remain closed until the security situation improves. Government officials, struggling to organise adequate protection, have appealed to schools to extend their winter holidays until at least March. The future education of around 125,000 young women is uncertain as a result of the order, said to come into effect on January 15.

Japan in move to the left with ‘tenderhearted capitalism’>

From Times Online

January 19, 2009

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

Japan must break free of the heartlessness of Wall Street and create a new brand of “tenderhearted capitalism” to lessen the pain of the worst economic crisis since the Second World War, the economics minister told parliament today.

Kaoru Yosano’s comments were matched by an even more striking public attack on western-style capitalism by Yasuhiro Nakasone – the former prime minister responsible for privatising Japan Railways, Japan Tobacco, Japan Airlines and NTT, the former state telecoms corporation.

“The laissez-faire principle of US economic policy has lacked humanity and was heartless capitalism,” Mr Nakasone told reporters, “the current crisis has revealed that this US-style capitalism has its limits.”

Africa

Mbeki’s Mother Leads Mass Defections From South Africa’s ANC



By Mike Cohen

Epainette Mbeki, 92, mother of South African ex-president Thabo Mbeki, has just thrown away her lifetime membership in the ruling African National Congress.

Sitting in her small house in Ncgingwane, a village of poor farmers in the rural southeast, Mbeki says the ANC under its new leader, Jacob Zuma, isn’t the party she joined decades ago. She has cast her lot with the Congress of the People, formed last year by dissident ANC members.

“The spirit in the ANC now is a spirit of revenge,” she said, following the ousting of her son, first as party leader and then as the country’s president last September.

It’s not just a mother’s hurt pride: COPE says it has signed up about 500,000 members. The party is aiming to win control of three of the country’s nine provinces in elections to be held within six months. That would let it oversee budgets worth more than 60 billion rand ($6 billion) in the biggest challenge yet to the ANC’s 15-year dominance of South African politics.

Zimbabwe unity government enters D-Day: report



 HARARE, (AFP)

Monday was D-Day for Zimbabwe’s inclusive government after political rivals said a fresh round of mediated talks could be a last ditch attempt at a unity deal, state media reported.

President Robert Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai will meet with regional leaders on Monday to try to salvage a unity accord that stalled almost as soon as it was signed in September.

“It’s D-Day for the envisaged inclusive government with both ZANU-PF and MDC-T intimating at the weekend that today’s SADC-brokered meeting could be the last attempt to make the broad-based agreement work,” the Herald said.

At the weekend, Mugabe threatened Sunday to break off power-sharing talks if the opposition declined a deal, saying “either they accept or it’s a break” in the government mouthpiece Sunday Mail newspaper.

Latin America

Shine is off FARC rebel army

Desertions rise as status and perks are replaced with constant harassment by the Colombian army. But the guerrilla group is known for its resilience.

By Chris Kraul

January 19, 2009

Reporting from Villarrica, Colombia — Life was good for “Ernesto” when he joined Colombia’s largest rebel group at age 14. He loved the leftist fighters’ swagger, the perfumed rebel groupies and the stolen SUVs he and his buddies drove unchallenged over the roads of this cattle- and coffee-growing zone.

But eight years later, Ernesto’s life as a foot soldier in the 25th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had lost its charm. Gone were the status and the free-spending ways, a lifestyle financed by kidnappings and extortions here in the west-central state of Tolima.

In their place came constant harassment from the Colombian army, which deployed 1,200 additional soldiers here in May, 10 times the existing garrison. Hunger became a constant, and the peasants who once were supporters began to ignore him and collaborate with the army.

“The army never let up. Wherever you slept, you’d better be gone early the next day because soldiers would be there soon,” said Ernesto, 22, who gave an alias for security concerns. “We were really suffering.”