Tag: Docudharma Times

House Minority Leader John “I’m Orange” Boehner (R-OH)  

Is Shocked! Shocked!

That Anyone Would

Accuse The C.I.A Of

Misleading Congress

Yea, They Never Lied

Yellow Cake Anyone

A Single-Minded Focus on Dual Wars

Defense Secretary Is Reorienting the Military to Meet U.S. Troops’ Needs Now

By Greg Jaffe

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, May 15, 2009

On a rainy night in March, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the military’s ritual for welcoming home its war dead.

In a small building next to the tarmac, an officer briefed the defense secretary on the four deceased troops arriving that evening. They had been driving along a rutted road near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, when their Humvee hit a powerful roadside bomb.

Gates flashed with anger, according to people with him that day.

Revealed: the inside story of the Tiananmen massacre

Secret memoir of Communist party leader who opposed crackdown is finally published

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

Friday, 15 May 2009

The secret memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader ousted for opposing the military crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, exploded into the open yesterday, four years after his death.

Dictated during his years of house arrest and smuggled out on cassettes disguised as children’s music or Peking opera, the book will be pored over for clues about the workings of the secretive group of men who make up the inner core of China’s Communist Party. The decisions made in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai compound have global impact as China is an emerging superpower, but little is known about how it functions. Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang may change all that.

The publishers, Simon and Schuster, were so worried about news of the Zhao book leaking that they listed it as Untitled by Anonymous in their catalogue. It was not supposed to go on sale until next Tuesday but several stores in Hong Kong broke the embargo and put it on the shelves. And the clamour – just ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square massacre, when tensions are high about political dissent in China – was intense.

USA

Obama to renew military tribunals

He had pledged during the presidential campaign to end the controversial trials of terrorism suspects. Human rights groups are outraged.

By Julian E. Barnes

May 15, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration will announce plans today to revive the Bush-era military commission system for prosecuting terrorism suspects, current and former officials said, reversing a campaign pledge to rely instead on federal courts and the traditional military justice system.

Word of the decision infuriated human rights groups, which argued that any trials under the system created by President George W. Bush would be widely viewed as tainted. They said President Obama was duplicating Bush’s mistakes.

The announcement would follow other moves by Obama that have disappointed his administration’s liberal allies but heartened Bush supporters, including his decisions to withhold photos depicting alleged abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers and to retain the option of using a limited form of rendition, the practice of turning terrorism suspects over to other countries for questioning.

 I mean, one of the reasons

these techniques have survived for about 500 years

is apparently they work.  

Sen. Lindsey Graham Moron(R-SC)

Obama Urges Rules on Investments Tied to Crisis



By STEPHEN LABATON and JACKIE CALMES

Published: May 13, 2009

WASHINGTON – In its first detailed effort to overhaul financial regulations, the Obama administration on Wednesday sought new authority over the complex financial instruments, known as derivatives, that were a major cause of the financial crisis and have gone largely unregulated for decades.

The administration asked Congress to move quickly on legislation that would allow federal oversight of many kinds of exotic instruments, including credit-default swaps, the insurance contracts that caused the near-collapse of the American International Group.

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said the measure should require swaps and other types of derivatives to be traded on exchanges or clearinghouses and backed by capital reserves, much like the capital cushions that banks must set aside in case a borrower defaults on a loan.

Mumbai terror group exploits refugee crisis

Pakistan comes under fire for failure to shut ‘charity’

By Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich in Mardan, Pakistan

Thursday, 14 May 2009

An Islamist charity accused of links to the militant fundamentalists blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks has resurfaced at the centre of the aid effort to help hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Pakistan’s war on the Taliban.

Six months after Pakistan, under international pressure, outlawed the charity said to be a front for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), The Independent has discovered that scores of volunteers from the charity are openly working to ferry refugees from the edge of the conflict zone to emergency camps and hospitals. They are also providing food, water and first aid.

Despite a government undertaking that it had cracked down on Jamaat-ud-Dawa – described as the charitable arm of LeT – and pledged that it would not allow it to operate under a different name, volunteers say they are providing crucial services in an area where the government’s resources are stretched.

USA

As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince



By Dan Balz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, May 14, 2009

As vice president, Richard B. Cheney famously spent much of the past eight years in undisclosed locations and offering private advice to President George W. Bush. But past was not prologue.

Today Cheney is the most visible — and controversial — critic of President Obama’s national security policies and, to the alarm of many people in the Republican Party, the most forceful and uncompromising defender of the Bush administration’s record. His running argument with the new administration has spawned a noisy side debate all its own: By leading the criticism, is Cheney doing more harm than good to the causes he has taken up and to the political well-being of his party?

His defenders believe he has sparked a discussion of vital importance to the safety of the country, and they hold up Obama’s reversal of a decision to release photos of detainee abuse as a sign that Cheney is having an effect.

The Lone Voice

Of The Republican

Party Dick Cheney

Rush’s Towards The 19th Century  

Commander’s Ouster Is Tied to Shift in Afghan War



By ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER

Published: May 11, 2009

WASHINGTON – The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, was forced out Monday in an abrupt shake-up intended to bring a more aggressive and innovative approach to a worsening seven-year war.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced the decision in terse comments at the Pentagon, saying that “fresh eyes were needed” and that “a new approach was probably in our best interest.” When asked if the dismissal ended the general’s military career, Mr. Gates replied, “Probably.”

The move reflects a belief that the war in Afghanistan, waged against an increasingly strong Taliban and its supporters across a rugged, sprawling country, is growing ever more complex.

Taliban on the run in Swat



By Syed Saleem Shahzad  

ISLAMABAD – Following a barrage of American pressure, Pakistan abruptly abandoned all its existing plans to thwart insurgents and, in a televised speech by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, promptly declared all-out was against the Pakistani Taliban.

Within hours, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Ashfaq Kiani, launched an aggressive military operation – supported by gunship helicopters, heavy artillery and fighters jets – into northern North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), ransacking Taliban sanctuaries in Swat and other areas. Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the BBC that an estimated 200 militants were killed over the weekend, bringing the total killed in fighting in the region to 700.

Water, electricity and lines of communications were completely cut; the Taliban had no option but to flee.

USA

Prices Fall To Match A New Frugality

Retailers Respond To Shopping Habits Forged in Recession

By Ylan Q. Mui

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The nation’s retailers have begun to embrace the new cost-conscious consumer, developing products they can sell at lower prices without driving themselves out of business in the post-splurge era.

Starbucks dropped the price of a medium iced coffee last week to just under $2. American Eagle cut out the ribbon from the inside waistband of its khakis and lowered the cost. Pottery Barn launched a new “Comfort Collection” sofa that starts at $999.99, which is $300 less than the “Basic Collection” sofa. Even Rock & Republic, whose trendy denim has graced the backsides of celebrities such as Victoria Beckham, recently unveiled a line of recessionista jeans selling for $128, a 29 percent reduction.

CRC Public Relations Who

Brought You

Harry And Louise And The Swift Boat

Ads Are Back

Attacking Health Care

Reform

Health Care Is A Right

Not A Privilege  

King Abdullah of Jordan’s ultimatum: peace now or it’s war next year

From The Times

May 11, 2009

Richard Beeston and Michael Binyon in Amman

America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Arabs, according to Jordan’s King Abdullah, who is helping to bring the parties together.

The Obama Administration is pushing for a comprehensive peace agreement that would include settling Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its territorial disputes with Syria and Lebanon, King Abdullah II told The Times. Failure to reach agreement at this critical juncture would draw the world into a new Middle East war next year. “If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months,” the King said.

Details of the plan are likely to be thrashed out in a series of diplomatic moves this month. Chief among them is President Obama’s meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, in Washington a week today.

Pakistani civilians flee Swat valley as major ground offensive draws closer

• Army orders residents to leave during lull in fighting

• Exodus prompts warning of humanitarian crisis

Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Sana ul Haq in Mingora

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 May 2009 23.03 BST

The Pakistani army ordered residents to flee the Swat Valley during a lull in fighting , triggering a further exodus of frightened people and raising expectations of a significant ground offensive against the Taliban.

Miles of traffic jams snaked out of the war-torn valley as tens of thousands of people fled using all available means, from donkey-drawn carts to rickshaws.

In the battlezone the army said it had killed another 200 militants, most of them in a strike on a training camp in Shangla district and 55 in Swat. The fight is being closely watched from the US.

USA

Health Groups Vow Cost Control

$2 Trillion in Savings Offered Over Decade, White House Says

By Michael A. Fletcher and Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, May 11, 2009

Volunteering to “do our part” to tackle runaway health costs, leading groups in the health-care industry have offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade, White House officials said yesterday.

The pledge comes amid a debate over how, or whether, to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, and Obama administration officials predicted that it will significantly increase momentum for passing such changes this year.

The groups aim to achieve the proposed savings by using new efficiencies to trim the rise in health-care costs by 1.5 percent a year, the officials said. That would carry huge implications for the national economy and the federal budget, both of which are significantly affected by health-care expenses.

Bill O’Reilly Don’t Know

Much About History

Don’t Know Much

About Anything

Taliban-Style Justice Stirs Growing Anger

Sharia Being Perverted, Pakistanis Say

By Pamela Constable

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, May 10, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 9 — When black-turbaned Taliban fighters demanded in January that Islamic sharia law be imposed in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, few alarm bells went off in this Muslim nation of about 170 million.

Sharia, after all, is the legal framework that guides the lives of all Muslims.

Officials said people in Swat were fed up with the slow and corrupt state courts, scholars said the sharia system would bring swift justice, and commentators said critics in the West had no right to interfere.

Today, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Swat and Pakistani troops launching an offensive to drive out the Taliban forces, the pendulum of public opinion has swung dramatically.

Iran court hears reporter appeal

A court in Iran is hearing an appeal from jailed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi, two days earlier than originally expected.

The BBC

Ms Saberi’s lawyer said it was not clear when a ruling would be announced, but that he was optimistic that the 32-year-old would be acquitted.

Ms Saberi was convicted of spying for the US – a charge she denied.

The case sparked international concern and US President Barack Obama has appealed on her behalf.

Appeal process

Unlike her original trial, the legal process this time has been arranged to appear fair and open, says the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran.

While Sunday’s hearing is still not open to the public, Ms Saberi’s appeal is being heard before a panel of three judges, and representatives of the Iranian Bar Association are being allowed to attend.

Her lawyer has also been given plenty of notice.

USA

For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid

THE SAFETY NET

By JASON DePARLE

Published: May 9, 2009

WASHINGTON – As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

Health care, housing, food stamps and cash – each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.

The result is a hit-or-miss system of relief, never designed to grapple with the pain of a recession so sudden and deep. Aid seekers often find the rules opaque and arbitrary. And officials often struggle to make policy through a system so complex and Balkanized.

Bill O’Reilly Don’t Know

Much About History

Don’t Know Much

About Anything

Taliban-Style Justice Stirs Growing Anger

Sharia Being Perverted, Pakistanis Say

By Pamela Constable

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, May 10, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 9 — When black-turbaned Taliban fighters demanded in January that Islamic sharia law be imposed in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, few alarm bells went off in this Muslim nation of about 170 million.

Sharia, after all, is the legal framework that guides the lives of all Muslims.

Officials said people in Swat were fed up with the slow and corrupt state courts, scholars said the sharia system would bring swift justice, and commentators said critics in the West had no right to interfere.

Today, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Swat and Pakistani troops launching an offensive to drive out the Taliban forces, the pendulum of public opinion has swung dramatically.

Iran court hears reporter appeal

A court in Iran is hearing an appeal from jailed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi, two days earlier than originally expected.

The BBC

Ms Saberi’s lawyer said it was not clear when a ruling would be announced, but that he was optimistic that the 32-year-old would be acquitted.

Ms Saberi was convicted of spying for the US – a charge she denied.

The case sparked international concern and US President Barack Obama has appealed on her behalf.

Appeal process

Unlike her original trial, the legal process this time has been arranged to appear fair and open, says the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran.

While Sunday’s hearing is still not open to the public, Ms Saberi’s appeal is being heard before a panel of three judges, and representatives of the Iranian Bar Association are being allowed to attend.

Her lawyer has also been given plenty of notice.

USA

For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid

THE SAFETY NET

By JASON DePARLE

Published: May 9, 2009

WASHINGTON – As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

Health care, housing, food stamps and cash – each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.

The result is a hit-or-miss system of relief, never designed to grapple with the pain of a recession so sudden and deep. Aid seekers often find the rules opaque and arbitrary. And officials often struggle to make policy through a system so complex and Balkanized.

Samuel ‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher

Leaves The Republican Party

What Will John McCain Do?

Pakistani planes bomb Taleban in Swat Valley

From Times Online

May 8, 2009

Times Online

Pakistani aircraft bombed Taleban positions in the Swat Valley today, hours after the Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani ordered the military to “eliminate militants and terrorists.”

Helicopter gunships, fighters and troops were all involved in operations in Swat, and up to 12 militants were killed after as many as 55 were killed the previous day, Major Nasir Khan, a military spokesman in Swat, said by telephone.

Mr Gilani said in a televised address late on Thursday that militants were trying to hold the country hostage at gunpoint.

“In order to restore honour and dignity of our homeland and to protect the people, the armed forces have been called in to eliminate the militants and terrorists,” he said, setting the stage for a major offensive against Taleban fighters battling security forces in Swat.

Afghans riot over air-strike atrocity

Witnesses say deaths of 147 people in three villages came after a sustained bombardment by American aircraft. Patrick Cockburn, in Herat, reports

Friday, 8 May 2009

Shouting “Death to America” and “Death to the Government”, thousands of Afghan villagers hurled stones at police yesterday as they vented their fury at American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians.

The riot started when people from three villages struck by US bombers in the early hours of Tuesday, brought 15 newly-discovered bodies in a truck to the house of the provincial governor. As the crowd pressed forward in Farah, police opened fire, wounding four protesters. Traders in the rest of Farah city, the capital of the province of the same name where the bombing took place, closed their shops, vowing they would not reopen them until there is an investigation.

A local official Abdul Basir Khan said yesterday that he had collected the names of 147 people who had died, making it the worst such incident since the US intervened in Afghanistan started in 2001. A phone call from the governor of Farah province, Rohul Amin, in which he said that 130 people had died, was played over the loudspeaker in the Afghan parliament in Kabul, sparking demands for more control over US operations.

USA

U.S. to Wind Down Help for Some Banks

Stress Tests Find Most Can Absorb Losses

By Binyamin Appelbaum and Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, May 8, 2009

The government signaled yesterday that its financial rescue efforts may have reached their high-water mark, announcing that the much-anticipated “stress tests” of 19 large banks showed that only one, GMAC, was likely to need additional taxpayer aid and that it would begin to unwind assistance for the healthiest firms.

Despite a deepening recession and projections that banks will continue to lose money, the government will require the firms to increase their combined capital by as little as $9.5 billion. The government will require the banks to further strengthen their capacity to absorb losses by adding $74.6 billion to the portion of their capital that comes from common equity. Banks are likely to raise some of that money from investors and some by converting other forms of capital.

Cheney Defends The

Little People Involved

With Torture.

The  

People Who Approved

The Program

You Know The

Little People

Obama’s Budget Knife Yields Modest Trims

Plan Likely to Face Tough Fight on the Hill

By Lori Montgomery and Amy Goldstein

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, May 7, 2009

President Obama has said for weeks that his staff is scouring the federal budget, “line by line,” for savings. Today, they will release the results: a plan to trim 121 programs by $17 billion, a tiny fraction of next year’s $3.4 trillion budget.

The plan is less ambitious than the hit list former president George W. Bush produced last year, targeting 151 programs for $34 billion in savings. And like most of the cuts Bush sought, congressional sources and independent budget analysts yesterday predicted that Obama’s, too, would be a tough sell.

“Even if you got all of those things, it would be saving pennies, not dollars.

China ready for post-Kyoto deal on climate change

Dramatic reversal in US position under Obama has brought Beijing to the table on emission cuts, says UK climate secretary

Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent

China is ready to abandon its resistance to limits on its carbon emissions and wants to reach an international deal to fight global warming, the Guardian has learned.

According to Britain’s climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, who met senior officials in Beijing this week, China is ready to “do business” with developed countries to reach an agreement to replace the Kyoto treaty.

Miliband said he was encouraged by the change in tone since late last year in the country that emits more greenhouse gases than any other. “I think they’re up for a deal. I get the strong impression that they want an agreement,” he told the Guardian.

“They see the impact of climate change on China and they know the world is moving towards a low-carbon economy and see the business opportunities that will come with that.”

USA

As Stress Tests Are Revealed, Markets Sense a Turning Point



By ERIC DASH and LOUISE STORY

Published: May 6, 2009

The results of the bank stress tests have been trickling out for days, from Washington and from Wall Street, and the leaks seem to confirm what many bankers feel in their bones: despite all those bailouts, some of the nation’s largest banks still need more money.

But that does not necessarily mean the banks will get that money from the government. The findings, to be released Thursday by the Obama administration, suggest that the rescue money that Congress has already approved will be enough to fill the gaps. If so, the big bailouts for the banks may be over.

All of this assumes that the economy does not take another turn for the worse, which would result in even more losses at the banks – and the need for even more money to prop them up. But hopes that the tests will be a turning point in this financial crisis electrified Wall Street on Wednesday and some overseas markets the next day. Financial shares soared, lifting the broader American stock market to its highest level in four months.

Arlen Specter Which Political

Party Do You

Belong Too?

The Party Of What’s

Best For Arlen

Murtha’s Nephew Got Defense Contracts

Millions in Work Came Without Competition

By Carol D. Leonnig and Alice Crites

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The headquarters of Murtech, in a low-slung, bland building in a Glen Burnie business park, has its blinds drawn tight and few signs of life. On several days of visits, a handful of cars sit in the parking lot, and no trucks arrive at the 10 loading bays at the back of the building.

Yet last year, Murtech received $4 million in Pentagon work, all of it without competition, for a variety of warehousing and engineering services. With its long corridor of sparsely occupied offices and an unmanned reception area, Murtech’s most striking feature is its owner — Robert C. Murtha Jr., 49. He is the nephew of  Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has significant sway over the Defense Department’s spending as chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Swine flu fears subside, but second wave looms

In previous outbreaks, new infections in fall and winter were most deadly

By JoNel Aleccia

Health writer

msnbc.com

The rest of the world may be exhaling at the apparent easing of a potential swine flu pandemic, but some global experts are tempering their optimism with concerns about what one calls “the fall question.”

That’s the uncertainty over whether the current outbreak is only a preview of what’s to come, an echo of previous epidemics – including the 1918 flu – that saw mild first cases of infection in the spring followed by more severe second and third bouts in the fall and winter that brought widespread infection, illness and death.

“Right now, you have to wait and watch,” said Ann Marie Kimball, professor of epidemiology and an expert in emerging infectious disease at the University of Washington in Seattle.

USA

Where Home Prices Crashed Early, Signs of a Rebound



By DAVID STREITFELD

Published: May 4, 2009

SACRAMENTO – Is this what a bottom looks like?

This city was among the first in the nation to fall victim to the real estate collapse. Now it seems to be in the earliest stages of a recovery, a hopeful sign for an economy mired in trouble and anxiety.

Investors and first-time buyers, the traditional harbingers of a housing rebound, are out in force here, competing for bargain-price foreclosures. With sales up 45 percent from last year, the vast backlog of inventory has diminished. Even prices, which have plummeted to levels not seen since the beginning of the decade, show evidence of stabilizing.

Misha Lerner has a question

for  Condoleezza Rice  

What did Rice think about the things President Obama’s

administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration

had used to get information from detainees?

Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms



By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: May 3, 2009

WASHINGTON – As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital.

Mexico complains of swine flu backlash

• Travellers isolated under ‘unacceptable’ conditions

• Four Latin American countries restrict Mexico flights

Rory Carroll in Mexico City and Tania Branigan in Beijing

Mexico has protested about an international backlash against Mexican travellers who have been quarantined and banned from several countries as suspected flu carriers.

Mexican authorities tonight singled out China for its draconian measures and criticised four Latin American countries for restricting air links. More than 70 Mexican travellers were quarantined in hospitals and hotels in China as part of sweeping measures against swine flu.

“Mexican citizens showing no signs at all of being ill have been isolated under unacceptable conditions,” said Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s foreign minister. “These are discriminatory measures, without foundation. The foreign ministry recommends avoiding travelling to China until these measures are corrected.”

USA

4th-Grader Questions Rice on Waterboarding

Ex-Secretary of State Stresses Legality

By Alec MacGillis

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, May 4, 2009

Days after telling students at Stanford University that waterboarding was legal “by definition if it was authorized by the president,” former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was pressed again on the subject yesterday by a fourth-grader at a Washington school.

Rice, in her first appearance in Washington since leaving government, was at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital before giving an evening lecture at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. She held forth amiably before a few dozen students about her love of Israel, travel abroad and the importance of learning languages, then opened the floor to their questions.

Ben Nelson Has Gold

Standard Health Care

But Doesn’t Want

Anyone Else To Have It    

It’s all on Obama now

Political observers say that with the events of the last week, accountability for the nation and its current problems has clearly shifted from Bush.

By Peter Nicholas

May 3, 2009

Reporting from Washington — In the span of a single week — from the day Arlen Specter turned Democratic to the moment Congress passed the White House’s budget blueprint and on through the opening of a spot on the Supreme Court — President Obama crossed a fateful line: From now on, it’s his country.

Every president inherits a tangle of problems from his predecessor. War and recession, natural disaster and foreign crises. And for some undefined interval, new presidents argue that they should not be accountable for the troubles that arose on another’s watch.

But inevitably, responsibility shifts. And for Obama, that time came last week, bringing both greater opportunities and greater risks.

On the economy, Obama won approval Wednesday of a $3.5-trillion budget plan that aims to help pull the country out of the worst recession in decades. It also smooths the way for one of the president’s signature domestic priorities — overhauling the nation’s healthcare system.

Tiananmen: The flame burns on

Twenty years ago tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to crush the biggest pro-democracy movement in history. Hundreds were killed, thousands jailed and many fled to escape persecution. Here exiled leaders of the student revolution tell their remarkable stories and reveal how, after being forced to build new lives, they remain haunted by its bloody legacy



Isabel Hilton

The Observer, Sunday 3 May 2009

Over seven tumultuous weeks of nationwide demonstrations and protests, beginning with the death of the sacked reformer, Hu Yaobang, on 15 April 1989 and ending with the movement’s violent suppression on 4 June, an estimated 100 million people across China demonstrated in support of political reform. The movement was inchoate, contradictory and politically confused but it remains the biggest peaceful pro-democracy movement in human history. For the millions who took part, life would never be the same again.

Last week I listened to a man in his 40s unburden himself of a secret he had carried for two decades. He was a student leader in a major provincial city, and although he was arrested in mid-June 1989, he was released after a month of enforced confessions. He moved to another city and eventually made a successful career. But for 20 years the burden of the hopes that were shattered on 4 June, and the apprehension that he could be targeted at any time by a regime that never forgets and rarely forgives, has weighed on his spirit. It is part fear, part depression, part rage.

USA

U.S. Workers’ Wages Stagnate As Firms Rush to Slash Costs



By Annys Shin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, May 3, 2009

In December, Timothy Owner, a trombone player with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, called his landlord to tell her he might have trouble paying rent around May. He and the orchestra’s 53 other full-time members, many of whom are paid less than $30,000 a year, had agreed to a month-long furlough.

The furlough, which ended yesterday, was rough, Owner said. But he and other musicians acknowledged that the alternative could have been worse. “We’re less unhappy if this means the orchestra will survive,” he said.

Across the country, workers’ earnings are stagnating or, in some cases, declining.

With No Nominee’s

Name Forwarded

The Republicans Are

Already Complaining    

In Pakistan, U.S. Courts Leader of Opposition



By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI

Published: May 1, 2009

WASHINGTON – As American confidence in the Pakistani government wanes, the Obama administration is reaching out more directly than before to Nawaz Sharif, the chief rival of Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, administration officials said Friday.

American officials have long held Mr. Sharif at arm’s length because of his close ties to Islamists in Pakistan, but some Obama administration officials now say those ties could be useful in helping Mr. Zardari’s government to confront the stiffening challenge by Taliban insurgents.

The move reflects the heightened concern in the Obama administration about the survivability of the Zardari government.

‘Abu Ghraib US prison guards were scapegoats for Bush’ lawyers claim

From The Times

May 2, 2009

Tim Reid in Washington

Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.

The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking “bad apples” who were acting on their own.

The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.

USA

Obama calls ’empathy’ key to Supreme Court pick

Interest groups are already lobbying for a woman, minority or solid liberal to succeed Justice David Souter. Obama says he puts empathy, intelligence and independence before ideology.

By Janet Hook and Christi Parsons

May 2, 2009

Reporting from Washington — A debate among Democrats over who should replace Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court began emerging Friday between those eager to return the court to its liberal era of 40 years ago and those who are wary of tacking too far to the left.

But President Obama, who will choose the nominee, focused not on volatile ideological questions but on personal character, saying he wanted someone with “empathy” for “people’s hopes and struggles.”

Making a surprise appearance in the White House press briefing room, Obama told reporters that he had just talked with Souter by phone about his retirement, which is to take effect at the end of this court term, probably in June. It was the first official confirmation of the justice’s departure.

Obama said that in considering a successor for Souter, he was looking for a “sharp and independent mind” and a sense of compassion.