Docudharma Times Monday July 20

Pentagon Seeks Prison Overhaul in Afghanistan  



  By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: July 19, 2009

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan – A sweeping United States military review calls for overhauling the troubled American-run prison here as well as the entire Afghan jail and judicial systems, a reaction to worries that abuses and militant recruiting within the prisons are helping to strengthen the Taliban.

In a further sign of high-level concern over detention practices, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a confidential message last week to all of the military service chiefs and senior field commanders asking them to redouble their efforts to alert troops to the importance of treating detainees properly.

The prison at this air base north of Kabul has become an ominous symbol for Afghans – a place where harsh interrogation methods and sleep deprivation were used routinely in its early years, and where two Afghan detainees died in 2002 after being beaten by American soldiers and hung by their arms from the ceiling of isolation cells.

Frank McCourt, ‘Angela’s Ashes’ Author, Dies at 78

 

 By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: July 19, 2009

Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned his miserable childhood in Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular, Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,” died in Manhattan on Sunday. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Conn.

The cause was metastatic melanoma, said Mr. McCourt’s brother, the writer Malachy McCourt.

Mr. McCourt, who taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as “a modest book, modestly written.”

USA

Poll Shows Obama Slipping on Key Issues

Approval Rating on Health Care Falls Below 50 Percent

  By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, July 20, 2009

Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama’s stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Obama’s approval ratings on other front-burner issues, such as the economy and the federal budget deficit, have also slipped over the summer, as rising concern about spending and continuing worries about the economy combine to challenge his administration. Barely more than half approve of the way he is handling unemployment, which now tops 10 percent in 15 states and the District.

The president’s overall approval rating remains higher than his marks on particular domestic issues, with 59 percent giving him positive reviews and 37 percent disapproving. But this is the first time in his presidency that Obama has fallen under 60 percent in Post-ABC polling, and the rating is six percentage points lower than it was a month ago.

LAX parking lot is home away from home for airline workers

Buffeted by their industry’s turbulence, airline employees save money by living part time in a motor home colony at LAX.

 By Dan Weikel

July 20, 2009  

For about 15 days a month, Alaska Airlines pilot Jim Lancaster lives in a motor home in Parking Lot B near the southernmost runway at Los Angeles International Airport.

Every four minutes, a jetliner or turboprop roars in — 500 feet above his front door — for a landing. The noise is so loud it forces Lancaster to pause during conversations. But he doesn’t mind. Lancaster puts up with the smell of jet fuel and screaming engines to save time and money.

The 60-year-old aviator’s primary residence is a cottage he shares with his wife overlooking a quiet bay off Puget Sound in Washington state. Living in Lot B while he’s on duty means he doesn’t have to rent a Los Angeles apartment with other pilots or spend 12 hours a day commuting to and from the Seattle area.

“As kids we used to ask our parents to take us to the airport to see the planes,” Lancaster quipped. “Now I get to live at the airport.”

Europe

If you can’t beat ’em … Europe’s new tactics in the battle against the far right

Ruling parties forced into ever-closer allegiances to contain rise of extremists

Ian Traynor

 guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 July 2009 20.55 BST

A brace of baronesses, sundry patrician Tories, Labour party staffers, journalists and eurocrats quaffed the bubbly and nibbled at the cream cheese on brown bread.

On the fourth floor of the grandiose cylinder that is the European Parliament building in Strasbourg last Wednesday evening, the main topics were Brits in Brussels, the UK in Europe.

And nosepegs were metaphorically applied when the gossip turned to the two new MEPs from the north of England who had just taken their seats in the chamber below.

Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the British National party were the only ones of Britain’s 72 MEPs not invited to the champagne reception hosted by the government.

John Lichfield: The life cycle of the Dutch teenager

Emmeloord Notebook: Teenagers chatted each other up by cycling in slow circles, without dismounting

Monday, 20 July 2009

Sitting on the terrace of a restaurant in Emmeloord, in the Netherlands, I had an idea for a Dutch teen movie. The script would be the same as a dozen Hollywood teen movies. Small town teenagers would be trying to discover the joys of sex; parents and police would be trying to stop their fun.

The difference would be that the Dutch teenagers would not be revving and honking around downtown in noisy convertibles. They would be riding bicycles. Working title: Miss Dutch Graffiti Cheese Pie.

As we sat on the terrace surveying the nightlife of Emmeloord (population 24,000) the entire teenage population went past us at least three times. Ethnic Dutch teenagers and some Moroccans, they were all riding bikes. They eyed each other up and chatted each other up by cycling in slow circles, without dismounting.

Middle East

Thirty-six army officers arrested in Iran over protest plan

Officers planned to attend sermon by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in military uniform  

Robert Tait

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 July 2009 20.04 BST  

 The Iranian army has arrested 36 officers who planned to attend last week’s Friday prayer sermon by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in their military uniforms as an act of political defiance, according to Farsi-language websites.

The officers intended the gesture to show solidarity with the demonstrations against last month’s presidential election result, which was won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but which has been clouded by allegations of mass fraud.

Saudi film festival is cancelled in state crackdown on culture

By Souhail Karam, Reuters, in Riyadh

Monday, 20 July 2009

Saudi Arabia’s only film festival has been cancelled, dealing a blow to reformist hopes of an easing of clerical control over culture that was raised by the low-key return of cinemas in December.

In a country where cinemas were banned for almost three decades, the Jeddah Film Festival has since 2006 presented aspiring Saudi film-makers and actors with a rare opportunity to mingle with more experienced peers from other countries. On the eve of the festival, Mamdouh Salem, one of the festival’s organisers, received a call. He said: “The governorate of Jeddah notified us of the festival’s cancellation after it received instructions from official parties. We were not told why.”

Abdullah al-Alami, a Saudi writer, said he was not sure why the fourth Jeddah festival, expected to start in the Islamic kingdom’s most liberal city this weekend, was cancelled.

Asia

Delhi vows to rid streets of beggars before 2010 Commonwealth Games

 From The Times

July 20, 2009  

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai  

Delhi already has a posse of urban cowboys patrolling its streets to round up cattle – one of several measures imposed to sanitise the city before next year’s Commonwealth Games. Now the capital’s leaders have promised to eradicate the city’s 60,000 beggars: a mission that experts fear will victimise the most vulnerable.

Pleading for alms may be an ancient spectacle in India, but the authorities have decided to banish the sight in Delhi by October 2010 as part of a vast clean-up operation designed to drag the city into the 21st century.

Mobile courts, in the backs of vans and operated by a police task force, are being introduced to speed up convictions for begging. Officials have suggested a biometric database to identify repeat offenders so that they can be locked up or expelled from the city. Bylaws allow beggars to be sent to a special home for a year.

Jakarta bombings: Why Indonesia’s Islamist radicals attack

Charity worker Noor Huda Ismail went to the same Islamic boarding school as some of Indonesia’s top terrorists. Now he explains their ideology.

By Tom McCawley  | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 19, 2009 edition

Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesian authorities said Sunday that there is an increasing evidence that the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an Islamist group responsible for more than 300 murders in attacks dating back to 2000, was responsible for Friday’s deadly attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta.

Ansyaad Mbai, a senior Indonesian counter-terrorist official, said that an unexploded bomb found in a laptop in an 18th floor room at the Marriott indicates that the attackers – two of them suicide bombers – used the room as a sort of command center for the attack.

In particular, he said, the blasts were most likely linked to Malaysian fugitive Noordin Mohammad Top, one of Southeast Asia’s most wanted men and who is believed to be leading a JI splinter group.

Latin America

Honduras talks collapse over ousted president’s demand to return

Honduras could slip into “civil war” after talks in Costa Rica’s capital collapsed over ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s demand to return to power, mediating Costa Rican President Oscar Arias warned.

Published: 2:39AM BST 20 Jul 2009

Mr Zelaya’s delegation in San Jose ended discussions after Honduras’s de facto government rejected as “unacceptable” a proposal by Arias that Zelaya go back as president at the head of a “reconciliation” government and early elections be held.

Mr Zelaya’s top aide at the talks, Rixi Moncada, said: “We announce that this dialogue with the commission from the de facto regime… is finished.”

Mr Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, pleaded for talks to resume after a 72-hour break.

There was no indication that appeal was heeded, though sources close to the negotiations said both sides might meet again late Wednesday.

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