Tag: Docudharma Times

U.S. Commanders Told to Shift Focus to More Populated Areas



By Greg Jaffe

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military officer in Afghanistan, has told his commanders to pull forces out of sparsely populated areas where U.S. troops have fought bloody battles with the Taliban for several years and focus them on protecting major Afghan population centers.

But the changes, which amount to a retreat from some areas, have already begun to draw resistance from senior Afghan officials who worry that any pullback from Taliban-held territory will make the weak Afghan government appear even more powerless in the eyes of its people.

Senior U.S. officials said the moves were driven by the realization that some remote regions of Afghanistan, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountains that range through the northeast, were not going to be brought under government control anytime soon.

MOROCCO: Ramadan ‘protest picnickers’ face prosecution

OBSERVATIONS FROM IRAQ, IRAN,

ISRAEL, THE ARAB WORLD AND BEYOND

September 21, 2009 | 10:36 am

Moroccan authorities are expected to prosecute a group arrested for organizing a forest picnic to protest a law that forbids Muslims from eating publicly during Ramadan fasting hours, media reports say.

Members of the Moroccan Alternative Movement for Individual Freedoms (MALI) had planned to hold the picnic on Sept. 13 in the woods near the town of Mohammedia, between the Moroccan capital Rabat and Casablanca. Word of the picnic was spread through a page on the social networking site Facebook.

But as would-be picnickers arrived at the train station in Mohammedia, they were met by a large police squad that searched them and took the names and phone numbers of some of them, according to a statement issued by Human Rights Watch.

General Calls for More U.S. Troops to Avoid Afghan Failure



By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

Published: September 20, 2009

WASHINGTON – The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure.”The grim assessment is contained in a 66-page report that the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, submitted to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30, and which is now under review by President Obama and his top national security advisers.

The disclosure of details in the assessment, reported Sunday night by The Washington Post, coincided with new skepticism expressed by President Obama about sending any more troops into Afghanistan until he was certain that the strategy was clear.

Hell’s bells! The joy of Morris Dancing

Beards, silly outfits and wooden sticks – the traditional English dance has been the butt of jokes for decades. So can a new movie celebrating its charms teach us to appreciate it? Jonathan Brown joins the throng

Monday, 21 September 2009

I am standing in a Scout hut on a rainy Wednesday night in a leafy suburb of York, preparing to be initiated in to the ways of morris. Few would imagine that danger is at hand. Morris dancing – with its tinkling bells, clink of pewter tankards and brightly-clad participants – evokes the timeless, gentle charm of an English village. It may be atavistic and some may even find it a little unsettling. But ultimately it is plainly harmless and above all, safe.

Yet I am now learning that what I believed to be a risk-free if rather unfashionable activity is in fact fraught with peril – a contact sport in the finest traditions of bone-crunching Sumo and tooth-spitting Aussie Rules. I had assumed that the greatest menace – apart from the occasional derisory comment – might be a nasty case of hanky burn brought on by a too-vigorously brandished snot rag; or perhaps a poke in the eye with a flailing pig’s bladder – even a mild bout of tinnitus courtesy of those chimes. But that was before I witnessed the spectacle of the Skirmish.

Obama’s Worldwide Star Power Finds Limits

Skepticism Abroad Echoes Doubt at Home

By Michael D. Shear and Howard Schneider

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama has become a global celebrity, far more popular abroad than he is at home and sometimes eclipsing foreign leaders among their own people.

He has sought to use his renown to repair America’s image in the world, extending an “open hand” in major speeches on trips to more than a dozen countries. Obama has restarted talks to limit nuclear weapons, begun engaging adversaries, helped orchestrate the world’s response to economic collapse and reversed Bush-era policies that had angered allies and distanced the United States from the world community.

Happy birthday Guinness! The Black Stuff at 250

The famous stout made its debut in 1759, and has left its mark in the worlds of advertising, the arts and the gossip columns. Andrew Johnson drinks it all in

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Arthur Guinness

God-fearing Arthur would be aghast at the drink- and drug-fuelled high-octane lifestyle of some of his descendants. The founder of the Guinness dynasty was keen on the Methodist teachings of John Wesley and started the first Sunday schools in Ireland.

The seeds of the Guinness brewery were sewn in 1752 when a young Arthur was left £100 by his godfather, the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr Arthur Price. Guinness’s father was a land steward on the Archbishop’s estate and helped brew beer for the workers. Arthur and his brother ploughed the cash into a brewery in Leixlip, County Kildare in 1756. Three years later, in 1759, a 34-year-old Arthur upped sticks and took a 9,000-year lease on a dilapidated brewery in St James’s Gate, Dublin, in order to try his hand at porter, a brew involving roasted barley that turned the drink black and so called after the porters who drank it.

Inquiry Into CIA Practices Narrows

Ex-Agency Directors Urge Administration To Drop Investigation

By Carrie Johnson, Jerry Markon and Julie Tate

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, September 19, 2009

The Justice Department’s review of detainee abuse by the CIA will focus on a very small number of cases, including at least one in which an Afghan prisoner died at a secret facility, according to two sources briefed on the matter.

On Friday, seven former CIA directors urged President Obama to end the inquiry, arguing that it would inhibit intelligence operations in the future and demoralize agency employees who believed they had been cleared by previous investigators.

Finding Humor In Postwar Woes

Ramadan TV Comedies Offer Relie

By Nada Bakri

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, September 19, 2009

BAGHDAD — T he domino stones were scattered on the table in front of Saif Mohammad, a 17-year-old school dropout at a sidewalk cafe on a busy Baghdad street.

It was almost 8 p.m., and his game had ended. Mohammad waved at the waiter to change the embers on his water pipe. He inhaled gingerly, testing it. Then he adjusted his posture to gaze straight ahead at a small television 12 feet away. It was time for “Dar Dour,” one of more than a dozen Iraqi TV shows that run only during Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from dawn until sunset.

Affordability Is Major Challenge for Reform

Burden on Middle Class Is a Top Concern

By Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, September 18, 2009

Lawmakers in both parties raised concerns Thursday that the health-care reform bill offered by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus a day earlier would impose too high a cost on middle-class Americans and said they will seek to change the legislation to ease that potential burden.

The Baucus plan is the product of a year-long effort to find a middle ground between the expansion of government-run health care that liberal Democrats are seeking and the private insurance overhaul that many Republicans favor. But with finance panel members on both sides expressing concerns about the Baucus draft, major revisions could come through amendments in committee and on the Senate floor and in final negotiations with the House.

No health coverage tied to 45,000 deaths a year

Tally rises from previous estimates of about 18,000 annually, study says

Reuters

Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year – one every 12 minutes – in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Race Issue Deflected, Now as in Campaign

Obama Maintains Criticism Is About Policy Differences

By Anne E. Kornblut and Krissah Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, September 17, 2009

A debate over the role of race in the current criticism of President Obama is forcing the White House to confront a volatile issue it would rather avoid.

On Tuesday, former president Jimmy Carter declared racism to be the subtext of many of the attacks being lobbed at the president, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus are pointing to race as a driving force behind the current level of animosity.

But at the White House, the official line is: Race issue? What race issue?

Japan’s New Leader Seeks Revision of Relations With U.S.

But Major Shift in Alliance Is Unlikely

By Blaine Harden

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, September 17, 2009

TOKYO, Sept. 16 — Hours after he became prime minister Wednesday, Yukio Hatoyama said he wants to change Japan’s “somewhat passive” relationship with the United States and review the large American military presence here.

Since his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won in a historic landslide Aug. 30, Hatoyama has tried to reassure the United States that the nation remains the cornerstone of Japan’s foreign policy while following through on his party’s campaign vow to make the two nations’ relationship more equal.

Lots of Fear Remains Over Economy, Job Losses



By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Despite fresh signs that the worst may be over for the beleaguered U.S. economy, there has been no letup in public fears about possible financial hardship ahead and there is broad concern that not enough is being done to avert another meltdown, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Painful personal experiences over the past year continue to dampen the outlook of many Americans. About two-thirds of those polled say they have been hurt financially by the recession, with extensive reports that job losses and pay reductions are hitting home. Most call the economic situation a source of stress in their lives, and that anxiety also stems from apprehension of what may lie ahead for their families.

Codes, symbols and conspiracies: you’ve read it all before, but who cares?

Dan Brown’s follow-up to ‘The Da Vinci Code’ went on sale at midnight. Janet Maslin delivers her instant verdict

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

As a man whose ideas have had their share of physical effects, Dan Brown is well aware of how widely read and closely scrutinised The Lost Symbol will be. He even lets a character joke about this book’s guaranteed popularity. Dr Katherine Solomon specialises in noetic science, with its focus on mind-body connections. She admits that her field is not widely known. But when her story comes out, she suggests, noetics could get the kind of public relations bump that Mr Brown gave to the Holy Grail.

Dr Solomon accompanies Robert Langdon, the rare symbologist who warrants the word dashing as both noun and verb, through much of this novel, his third rip-snorting adventure. As Browniacs have long predicted, the chase involves the secrets of Freemasonry and is set in Washington, where some of those secrets are built into the architecture and are thus hidden in plain sight. Browniacs also guessed right in supposing that The Lost Symbol at one point was called “The Solomon Key”. That’s a much better title than the generic one it got.

U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind



By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 13, 2009

WASHINGTON – When President Obama travels to Wall Street on Monday to speak from Federal Hall, where the founders once argued bitterly over how much the government should control the national economy, he is likely to cast himself as a “reluctant shareholder” in America’s biggest industries and financial institutions.

But one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a series of federal interventions, the government is the nation’s biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor against risk for investors large and small.

Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation’s economy – 26 percent – than at any time since World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent owned by the government.

Pakistani artists persevere amid increasing militancy

At a university in Punjab, the music department is off-campus, relegated to a dank basement. Singers and playwrights face the risk of attacks from militants who deem the activity un-Islamic.

By Mark Magnier

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan – To find the music department of the University of the Punjab, travel several miles from the main campus to a red-brick building, down some dark stairs, left through a shadowy corridor and into a warren of small, windowless rooms.

The dank basement befits a department exiled after a militant student group called it un-Islamic, un-Pakistani and unwanted. There were threats, protests, machine-gun-toting bodyguards. Then, the basement.

These are the front lines of Pakistan’s culture wars, a very real battlefield with bombs and bloodshed where musicians, filmmakers, painters and theater groups face off against the Taliban and other militants.

U.S. Gives New Rights To Afghan Prisoners

Indefinite Detention Can Be Challenged

By Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.

The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

New Chapter for Moscow’s Toy Story



By MARIANNA TISHCHENKO

Published: September 12, 2009

MOSCOW – Detsky Mir, a landmark here in the heart of Russia’s capital, was once one of the largest children’s stores in Europe, with a central atrium that had elegant balustrades, columns and elevator shafts.Generations of Muscovites and visitors have adored Detsky Mir, which means “children’s world” in Russian. Everything from baby clothes to toys to bobby pins has been sold in the store. Located not far from the Kremlin, Detsky Mir opened in 1957 and became a symbol not only of Soviet architecture but also of the Soviet era itself.

But the store is now closed while it undergoes an estimated $200 million renovation to its interior. The project is raising concerns among preservationists that it could become the latest of the city’s architectural treasures to fall victim to commercial pressures.

A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.



By ALEX BERENSON

Published: September 11, 2009



Wall Street lives on.

One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little.

Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows.

US ready for N Korea direct talks

The US says it would hold direct talks with North Korea to persuade it to return to stalled multilateral talks on ending its nuclear programme.

The BBC  Saturday, 12 September 2009

A spokesman for the US state department said that there had been no decision on when such talks might take place.

Philip Crowley insisted the move was not a policy shift and talks would take place within “the six-party process”.

North Korea pulled out of multilateral talks in April after international criticism following a rocket launch.

“It’s a bi-lateral discussion that (is) hopefully…within the six-party context, and it’s designed to convince North Korea to come back to the six-party process and to take affirmative steps towards de-nuclearisation,” Mr Crowley said from Washington.

Details Still Lacking On Obama Proposal

White House Unclear on How Some Far-Reaching Goals Would Be Met

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, September 11, 2009

One day after President Obama pitched his plan for comprehensive health-care reform to a joint session of Congress, administration officials struggled Thursday to detail how he would achieve his goal of extending coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans without increasing the deficit.

In two public appearances and private meetings with a dozen lawmakers, Obama promised a “full-court press,” saying, “We have talked this issue to death.” He also argued that new Census Bureau figures showing a slight uptick in the number of uninsured Americans only underscores the urgency of enacting major legislation this year.

Al-Qaida: Tales from Bin Laden’s volunteers

Eight years after the attack on New York, intelligence reports from captured western recruits suggest the terror network is weakening

 Jason Burke and Ian Black

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 September 2009 20.04 BST

The meeting was tense. The six recruits, from immigrant communities in France and Belgium, had decided to confront their al-Qaida handler. Before leaving their homes, they had watched al-Qaida videos on the internet and seen massed battalions of mujahideen training on assault courses, exciting ambushes and inspiring speeches by Osama bin Laden.

Now they had spent months in Pakistan’s rugged frontier zones and had done nothing more than basic small arms training, some physical exercise and religious instruction.

They had been deceived, they complained to the Syrian militant looking after them. The videos had lied.

With His Top Priority on the Line, President Reframes Critical Debate



ANALYSIS

By Dan Balz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 10, 2009

After a month of angry town hall meetings and dire predictions about the state of his top domestic priority, President Obama moved forcefully Wednesday night to take the initiative on health care — and in the process rejuvenate his presidency and unite his fractious Democratic Party.

There was a sense of urgency in Obama’s voice — in apparent recognition of the problems he has encountered through months of congressional dickering, hostile and sometimes false claims hurled by opponents of reform, and the degree to which he has gambled his political fortunes on the outcome.

Japan death row ‘breeds insanity’

Prisoners on death row in Japan are being driven towards insanity by harsh conditions, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

The BBC Thursday, 10 September 2009  

The group is calling for an immediate moratorium on all further executions and for police interrogation reform.

A total of 102 prisoners face execution in Japan. Many of them are elderly and have spent decades in near isolation.

International human rights standards prohibit the imposition of the death penalty on the mentally ill.

In Japan, where criminal trials have a 99% conviction rate, the death penalty has wide public support.

But Amnesty’s UK Director Kate Allen called on the government to immediately halt executions.

“Rather than persist with a shameful capital punishment system, the new Japanese government should immediately impose a moratorium on all further executions,” she said.