Tag: Docudharma Times

Deeply Divided House Democrats Return to Work — and the Same Set of Problems



By Paul Kane, Ben Pershing and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

After a nearly 40-day recess that was anything but restful, House Democrats are returning to work Tuesday still unsettled over pending health-care legislation and sure only that the people have had their say.

They are in almost the exact position they were in when they left the Capitol in late July. Conservatives are still leery of supporting a government-funded, or public, insurance option. Freshman lawmakers from suburban districts remain fearful of increasing taxes for their wealthy constituents to pay for the new measure and await alternatives from moderate Senate Democrats. And progressives, who are demanding the most far-reaching reform since the Great Depression, are still threatening to bring down the legislation if it does not contain a robust version of the public option.

Dominic Lawson: Seventy years on, we are still appeasing dictators

In dealing with Libya the Foreign Office has been guilty of institutional cringe

Tuesday, 8 September 2009

In this, the week of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, British newspapers have published entire supplements, setting out once again how the policy of appeasing dictators showed a complete failure to understand the gangster psychology of totalitarian regimes.

Yet the unravelling tale of our current government’s negotiations with the regime of Col Gaddafi is a more enthrallingly contemporary illustration of the unchanging institutional cringe known as the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. We have learned – chiefly through the medium of government memos leaked to the Sunday Times – how the Foreign Office saw the release from Scottish custody of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, as a way of earning us good favour in the court of Megrahi’s patron and distant relative, Muammar Gaddafi.

Obama Readies Reform Specifics

n Health-Care Address, President Is Expected to Take Firmer Positions

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, September 7, 200

Looking to rescue his signature domestic policy initiative with a prime-time address to Congress on Wednesday, President Obama for the first time is poised to “draw some lines in the sand” over the size and shape of legislation to remake the nation’s health-care system, top advisers said Sunday.

Until now, Obama has resisted taking firm positions on specific elements of a broad health-care bill, instead expressing openness to many ideas. But the approach has left lawmakers divided over contentious elements, such as how to rein in costs. And with a growing chorus in favor of a slower, less ambitious approach, Obama is inching toward a proposal that would bear his name and carry the political risks of sponsorship.

Japan vows big climate change cut

Japan’s next leader has promised a big cut in greenhouse gas emissions, saying he will aim for a 25% reduction by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

The BBC  Monday, 7 September 2009

Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama is due to take over as prime minister on 16 September, after a resounding election victory in August.

His predecessor, Taro Aso, had pledged cuts of only 8%.

Mr Hatoyama said the plan was dependent on other nations agreeing targets at December’s climate talks in Copenhagen.

But Monday’s announcement has already sparked resistance from Japanese business groups, and parts of the automotive industry are expected to lobby against the targets.

Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance

BACK TO BUSINESS

By JENNY ANDERSON

Published: September 5, 2009

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash – $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

Is America ready to admit defeat in its 40-year war on drugs?

A wave of decriminalisation is sweeping through Latin America

Ed Vulliamy in Tijuana

The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009

Bruno Avangera, a 40-year-old web designer from Tucumán in Argentina, pauses to relight a half-smoked joint of cannabis. Then he speaks approvingly of “progress and the right decision” by the country’s seven supreme court judges, who decided last week that prosecuting people for the private consumption of small amounts of narcotics was unconstitutional.

“Last year three of my friends were caught smoking a spliff in a park and were treated like traffickers,” he said. “They went to court, which took six months. One went to jail alongside murderers. The others were sent to rehab, where they were treated for an addiction they didn’t have, alongside serious heroin and crack users. It was pointless and destroyed their lives.”

The court’s ruling was based on a case involving several men caught with joints in their pockets.

States Cut Back and Layoffs Hit Even Recipients of Stimulus Aid



By MICHAEL COOPER

Published: September 4, 2009

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – It was just five months ago that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the New Flyer bus factory here a symbol of the stimulus. With several cabinet secretaries in tow, he held a town-hall-style meeting at the factory, where he praised the company as “an example of the future” and said that it stood to get more orders for its hybrid electric buses thanks to the $8.4 billion that the stimulus law devotes to mass transit.

But last month, the company that administration officials had pictured as a stimulus success story began laying off 320 people, or 13 percent of its work force, having discovered how cutbacks at the state level can dampen the boost provided by the federal stimulus money. The Chicago Transit Authority did use some of its stimulus money to buy 58 new hybrid buses from New Flyer. But Chicago had to shelve plans to order another 140 buses from them after the state money that it had hoped to use to pay for them failed to materialize. The delayed order scrambled New Flyer’s production schedule for the rest of the year, and led to the layoffs.

Political infighting threatens survival of the bluefin tuna

The bluefin tuna is one of the ocean’s most magnificent creatures, a half-tonne predator that swims at 40mph. But political scheming in Brussels may condemn it to death

By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

Saturday, 5 September 2009

The last chance to save one of the most majestic fish in the sea is on the verge of collapse because of political jockeying in Europe.

A proposal to ban the sale of bluefin tuna is being fiercely opposed by Malta, the capital of the lucrative global business, and by its representative in Brussels, the fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg.

Spain and Italy are also believed to be resisting an application to bar trade in bluefin under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which would cut off exports to the main market, Japan.

The European Commission will decide next week whether the EU will submit the application to a Cites committee meeting in March.

Conservationists fear that support from Britain, France and other northerly European nations for decisive action is wavering amid the objections.

This is number 1,000

Advisers to Obama Divided on Size of Afghan Force



By PETER BAKER and ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: September 3, 2009

WASHINGTON – The military’s anticipated request for more troops to combat the insurgency in Afghanistan has divided senior advisers to President Obama as they try to determine the proper size and mission of the American effort there, officials said Thursday.

Even before the top commander in Afghanistan submits his proposal for additional forces, administration officials have begun what one called a “healthy debate” about what the priorities should be and whether more American soldiers and Marines would help achieve them.

Leading those with doubts is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has expressed deep reservations about an expanded presence in Afghanistan on the grounds that it may distract from what he considers the more urgent goal of stabilizing Pakistan, officials said.

Hundreds March in Chinese City Hit by Riots in July



By Christopher Bodeen

Associated Press

Friday, September 4, 2009

BEIJING, Sept. 3 — Hundreds of Chinese protested deteriorating public safety Thursday after a series of mysterious syringe attacks further unnerved residents in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, where ethnic rioting in July killed nearly 200 people.

People living near the city center reached by telephone said hundreds, possibly thousands, of members of China’s Han majority marched peacefully in the city center. They waved Chinese flags, confronted local Communist Party leaders to demand they step down, and shouted “Severely punish the hooligans” — a reference to the July 5 rioters.

Obama Aides Aim to Simplify and Scale Back Health Bills



By ROBERT PEAR and JACKIE CALMES

Published: September 2, 2009

WASHINGTON – President Obama plans to address a joint session of Congress next week in an effort to rally support for health care legislation as White House officials look for ways to simplify and scale back the major Democratic bills, lower the cost and drop contentious but nonessential elements.

Administration officials said Wednesday that Mr. Obama would be more specific than he has been to date about what he wants included in the plan. Doing so amounts to an acknowledgment that the president’s prior tactic of laying out broad principles and leaving Congress to fill in the details was no longer working and that Mr. Obama needed to become more personally involved in shaping the outcome.

Kicking Inclusion Up a Notch

As Group Lobbies for More Pickup Soccer Fields It Hopes to Empower D.C.’s Latino Community

By Martin Ricard

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Every evening, on the open patch of grass of an unkempt softball field in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest Washington, a group of men of all ages gathers and plays soccer for hours.

The men aren’t part of any organized league. They don’t communicate over an e-mail group list. There is no need. Everyone knows that at a certain hour, unless the space is occupied, it’s time to play.

But some players and activists say that opportunity is threatened as gentrification and permit requirements to use athletic fields contribute to a shortage of athletic spaces.

Huge wildfire shows little sign of slowing down

The Station blaze has destroyed more than 50 buildings and burned more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush. Little hope of containment is seen as long as hot, dry conditions continue.

By Corina Knoll, Louis Sahagun and Rich Connell

September 1, 2009

A voracious 6-day-old wildfire that has destroyed more than 50 buildings and churned through more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush showed only small signs of slowing Monday, and fire officials offered little hope of containment as long as hot, dry conditions continued.

The Station fire, the largest of several burning in the state, was plowing through dense hillside vegetation along the San Gabriel Mountains, cutting a remarkable swath that extended from Altadena into the high desert. On Monday, the fire advanced to the west, bringing new evacuations to Sunland-Tujunga and coming within a few miles of Santa Clarita.

Despite the fire’s sprawling dimensions, stretching up to 25 miles from east to west and 18 miles from north to south, aggressive ground and aerial assaults managed to contain the blaze to largely undeveloped areas.

Communism: Chocolates were a smuggler’s best friend



Robert Booth   guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 August 2009 22.11 BST

Political funding doesn’t get more glamorous than this: the newly-released MI5 files reveal that diamonds and pearls looted by the Bolsheviks from Tsar Nicholas II were hidden in hollowed-out chocolate creams and smuggled into Britain to fund a revolutionary communist newspaper.

A top secret file on Francis Meynell, a director of the Daily Herald, reveals how in 1920 he was given £40,000 worth of gems by Lenin’s Soviet regime and smuggled them into the country to help keep the radical publication afloat.

Meynell’s file describes him as “an ardent Sinn Féiner and an extreme socialist who, in his youth, had tried, but failed, to derail a troop train. But his greatest coup came just as the Soviet Union began funding communist parties around the world”.

Environmentalists Slow to Adjust in Climate Debate

Opponents Seize Initiative as Senate Bill Nears

By David A. Fahrenthold

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, August 31, 2009

ATHENS, Ohio — The oil lobby was sponsoring rallies with free lunches, free concerts and speeches warning that a climate-change bill could ravage the U.S. economy.

Professional “campaigners” hired by the coal industry were giving away T-shirts praising coal-fired power.

But when environmentalists showed up in this college town — closer than ever to congressional passage of a climate-change bill, in the middle of the green movement’s biggest political test in a generation — they provided . . . a sedate panel discussion.

An American Icon Arrives In India With a Rumble

Harley-Davidson Will Try to Crack Country’s Huge Market

By Rama Lakshmi

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, August 31, 2009

NEW DELHI, Aug. 30 — Twenty-five Harley-Davidsons rumbled through the heart of the rain-drenched Indian capital Sunday, aggressively announcing the arrival of the legendary U.S. company in one of the world’s largest motorcycle markets.

The American motorcycle’s long-awaited journey to India was enabled by what has come to be called the “mango-motorcycle swap” in 2007 trade negotiations, when the United States decided to allow Indian mangoes to be imported in return for the export of Harley-Davidsons.

As the engines settled into idle, onlookers milled around the black-jacketed bikers and their machines, which were set against the backdrop of India Gate, a magnificent, British-built arch commemorating Indian soldiers who died in World War I.

‘We Loved This Kind And Tender Hero’

A Day of Mourning, Celebration

By Dan Balz, Keith B. Richburg and Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, August 30, 2009

On the day he was carried to his final resting place,  Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was remembered Saturday as a legislator of almost unequalled prowess, a political force who left a lasting imprint on the country and a husband, father and patriarch whose private acts of love and devotion helped his star-crossed family endure tragedy and misfortune.President Obama led the mourners at a solemn Roman Catholic Mass attended by 1,500 people, including three former presidents, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston, where the Kennedy family dynasty was born. A steady rain fell, adding an elegiac touch to a day already drenched in sorrow.

Millions facing famine in Ethiopia as rains fail

International aid agencies fear that the levels of death and starvation last seen 24 years ago, are set to return to the Horn of Africa. Paul Rodgers reports

Sunday, 30 August 2009

The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world’s pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country’s worst food crisis for decades.

Estimates of the number of people who need emergency food aid have risen steadily this year from 4.9 million in January to 5.3 million in May and 6.2 million in June. Another 7.5 million are getting aid in return for work on community projects, as part of the National Productive Safety Net Program for people whose food supplies are chronically insecure, bringing the total being fed to 13.7 million.

Shackles and blindfold for freed detainee on his way home



By Jonathan S. Landay, Hashim Shukoor and Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan – A young Afghan held for six years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rejoined his family in southern Kabul late Monday, ending an odyssey that came to symbolize many of the problems of the Bush administration’s war on terror detention policies.

Mohammed Jawad, who may have been as young as 12 when he was arrested in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade that wounded two American soldiers, pronounced himself “very happy” but tired after a day in which he arrived in Afghanistan on a U.S. military flight – in shackles and blindfolded, according to his lawyer.<

Diving Deep for a Living Fossil



http://topics.nytimes.com/top/…  

For 33 years, Peter A. Rona has pursued an ancient, elusive animal, repeatedly plunging down more than two miles to the muddy seabed of the North Atlantic to search out, and if possible, pry loose his quarry.Like Ahab, he has failed time and again. Despite access to the world’s best equipment for deep exploration, he has always come back empty-handed, the creature eluding his grip.

The animal is no white whale. And Dr. Rona is no unhinged Captain Ahab, but rather a distinguished oceanographer at Rutgers University. And he has now succeeded in making an intellectual splash with a new research report, written with a team of a dozen colleagues.

Do to work commitments  I will be unable to  provide my usual contribution from Wednesday August 26 until Saturday August 29. I regret any inconvenience this may cause.    

 Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases



By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: August 24, 2009

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released.

The lost legends of American soft rock

As 1980s pop stars from Britain leap on to the crowded revivalist bandwagon, Ben Walsh wonders what happened to their US cousins

  Monday, 24 August 2009

Learn to fly again/ learn to live so free”, wailed Mr. Mister on the power ballad “Broken Wings”. The likes of T’Pau, Kim Wilde, Nick Heyward and Bananarama are pulling in legions of nostalgia fiends as part of Rewind, the wildly popular national Eighties revival tour. But whatever happened to their American counterparts, the Eighties soft-rockers and power balladeers? And what happened to the hair? Has it been gathered up in a crate and deposited in a huge warehouse, Indiana Jones-style, to be studied by future perpetrators of soft-rock?

The recent demise of the superb director/writer John Hughes has generated a lot of Eighties reminiscing, but this odd, garish and evocative decade has never strayed very far from my thoughts. Mainly, because the lyrics that decorated the hits of the day, however corny, however absurd, are enormously memorable. They stick.

Swine Flu Campaign Waits on Vaccine  

Only Third of Supply Is Expected for First Round of Vast Effort

By Rob Stein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Government health officials are mobilizing to launch a massive swine flu vaccination campaign this fall that is unprecedented in its scope — and in the potential for complications.

The campaign aims to vaccinate at least half the country’s population within months. Although more people have been inoculated against diseases such as smallpox and polio over a period of years, the United States has never tried to immunize so many so quickly.

But even as scientists rush to test the vaccine to ensure it is safe and effective, the campaign is lagging. Officials say only about a third as much vaccine as they had been expecting by mid-October is likely to arrive by then, when a new wave of infections could be peaking.

Britons let their hair down for art

Antony Gormley’s project, ‘One & Other,’ features random people on a 30-foot plinth in Trafalgar Square doing whatever they choose for an hour. Charades, semaphores and nakedness have been involved

By Henry Chu

August 23, 2009  

Reporting from London – In most countries, stranding someone on a narrow platform 30 feet off the ground, exposed to the elements, probably would constitute a form of torture.

But in Britain, it’s art.

And thousands of people are vying for a chance to be part of it. Their goal: an hour of fleeting glory atop a patch of prime real estate, an empty pedestal in London’s Trafalgar Square, alongside such illustrious neighbors as Adm. Horatio Nelson on his famous column, King George IV on horseback and the inevitable clumps of tourists below.

Since the art project kicked off last month, hundreds of lucky winners have had their 60 minutes in the sun — or, this being England, the wind and rain — during which they are free to do whatever they want on top of the plinth, as long as it’s legal.