Tag: Docudharma Times

The Axis

Of

Evil

Is Closed

Management

US plans to station diplomats in Iran for first time since 1979

Washington move signals thaw in relations

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian,

Thursday July 17, 2008

The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.

The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section – a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.

The news of the shift by Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his tenure comes at a critical time in US-Iranian relations. After weeks that have seen tensions rise with Israel conducting war games and Tehran carrying out long-range missile tests, a thaw appears to be under way.

Economic Fears Slice Oil Prices for Second Day  



By JAD MOUAWAD and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Published: July 17, 2008

Concerns about a slowing economy and rising inflation pushed oil prices down sharply for a second day on Wednesday, an unusual dip in the oil price rally that began more than six years ago.

The two-day decline totaled more than $10.50 a barrel, but analysts cautioned that it was still unclear how far prices would fall and that the respite may be temporary.

The drop in oil price contributed to a jump on Wall Street, with most major markets rising more than 2.5 percent. Investors were also buoyed by news that Wells Fargo planned to increase its dividend, easing some concerns about the stability of banks.

USA

Inflation surge puts Fed in a quandary

After the biggest monthly rise in consumer prices since 1991, the central bank can’t ignore the risks of inflation.

By Mark Trumbull  | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 17, 2008 edition

Consumer prices took their biggest upward jump in 17 years last month, a surge that highlights the squeeze on America’s standard of living and the difficult policy choices facing the Federal Reserve.

Fed officials are walking a fine line – and at the moment they’d rather not be forced to focus on inflation as their top priority. They’re also trying to revive a moribund economy and prevent a crisis in the financial industry from growing more severe.

Even as consumer prices surged 1.1 percent in June alone, some other news this week gives the central bank some leeway to balance those competing goals. Oil prices, which have been the big driver of inflation around the world this year, fell dramatically.

The Deciders

To Do List:

Reward Unsound Lending

Practices

Off Shore Oil Wells

He So Good

At Failure and Destruction

Sudanese president charged with genocide

CNN

Pakistan militants focus on Afghanistan

Jihadist groups are increasingly attacking U.S., NATO forces in Afghanistan

Associated Press

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – In early June, about 300 fighters from jihadist groups came together for a secret gathering here, in the same city that serves as headquarters to the Pakistani army.

The groups were launched long ago with the army’s clandestine support to fight against India in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. But at the meeting, they agreed to resolve their differences and commit more fighters to another front instead: Afghanistan.

Pakistan marble helps Taliban stay in business





By Pir Zubair Shah and Jane Perlez

Published: July 14, 2008

ZIARAT, Pakistan: The mountain of white marble shines with such brilliance in the sun it looks like snow. For four years, the quarry beneath it lay dormant, its riches captive to tribal squabbles and government ineptitude in this corner of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But in April, the Taliban appeared and imposed a firm hand. They settled the feud between the tribes, demanded a fat fee upfront and a tax on every truck that ferried the valuable treasure from the quarry. Since then, Mir Zaman, a contractor from the Masaud subtribe, which was picked by the Taliban to run the quarry, has watched contentedly as his trucks roll out of the quarry with colossal boulders bound for refining in nearby towns.

USA

Treasury Acts to Save Mortgage Giants  



By STEPHEN LABATON

Published: July 14, 2008

WASHINGTON – Alarmed by the sharply eroding confidence in the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, the Bush administration on Sunday asked Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject billions of federal dollars into the beleaguered companies through investments and loans.

In a separate announcement, the Federal Reserve said it would make one of its short-term lending programs available to the two companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Fed said that it had made its decision “to promote the availability of home mortgage credit during a period of stress in financial markets.”

Its Tough Being The Decider

That’s Why

I Do Nothing

U.S., Iraq scale down negotiations over forces

Any long-term deal on extended presence will wait for next administration

By Karen DeYoung

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a “bridge” document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.

President George W Bush lobbyist in ‘cash for access’ row



From The Sunday Times

July 13, 2008

Daniel Foggo

A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.

USA

Editorial

Posturing and Abdication



Published: July 13, 2008

The Bush administration made clear on Friday that it will do virtually nothing to regulate the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. With no shame and no apology, it stuck a thumb in the eye of the Supreme Court, repudiated its own scientists and exposed the hollowness of Mr. Bush’s claims to have seen the light on climate change.

That is the import of an announcement by Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, that the E.P.A. will continue to delay a decision on whether global warming threatens human health and welfare and requires regulations to address it. Mr. Johnson said his agency would seek further public comment on the matter, a process that will almost certainly stretch beyond the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

Look Mommy

It’s A

Japanese Enkai

Afghanistan’s ‘sons of the soil’ rise up



By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI – The resilient Taliban have proved unshakeable across Afghanistan over the past few months, making the chances of a coalition military victory against the popular tide of the insurgency in the majority Pashtun belt increasingly slim.

The alternative, though, of negotiating with radical Taliban leaders is not acceptable to the Western political leadership.

This stalemate suits Pakistan perfectly as it gives Islamabad the opportunity to once again step in to take a leading role in shaping the course of events in its neighboring country.

Return of the ivory trade



By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Saturday, 12 July 2008

The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.

Alarmed conservationists are warning of a new wave of elephant killing across both Africa and Asia if China is allowed to become a legal importer, as looks likely at a meeting in Geneva next week.

The unleashing of a massive Chinese demand for ivory, in the form of trinkets, name seals, expensive carvings and polished ivory tusks, is likely to give an enormous boost to the illegal trade, which is entirely poaching-based, conservationists say.

USA

U.S. Weighs Rescue of Mortgage Giants

After Allaying Anxiety About Fannie and Freddie, Officials Stop Short of Action

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, July 12, 2008; Page A01

Senior government officials prepared emergency steps yesterday to rescue troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but stopped short after a campaign of public statements eased immediate concerns about the stability of the institutions.

But federal regulators were forced yesterday to seize California-based IndyMac Bancorp after a run by depositors led to the second-largest failure ever of a U.S. financial institution. The bank, which was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., became the first major bank to shutter its doors since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s. One of the country’s largest home lenders, IndyMac saw its holdings battered by the downturn in the housing market.

Ex-Bush spokesman Tony Snow dies of cancer

Conservative commentator succumbed to illness at age 53

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush’s press secretary, has died of colon cancer, Fox News reported Saturday. Snow was 53 years old.

Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program “Fox News Sunday” from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

Cowboy George

Sure Loves

That Good Ole Fashion

Air Pollution

Sudan Leader To Be Charged With Genocide

Peace Efforts in Darfur Could Be Hampered, Some U.N. Officials Fear

By Colum Lynch and Nora Boustany

Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, July 11, 2008; Page A01

UNITED NATIONS, July 10 — The chief prosecutor of the Internationals Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant Monday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charging him with genocide and crimes against humanity in the orchestration of a campaign of violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the nation’s Darfur region during the past five years, according to U.N. officials and diplomats.

The action by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina, will mark the first time that the tribunal in The Hague charges a sitting head of state with such crimes, and represents a major step by the court to implicate the highest levels of the Sudanese government for the atrocities in Darfur.

South Korean tourist shot dead in North Korea



Jonathan Watts, east Asia correspondent

guardian.co.uk,

Friday July 11, 2008

A North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean tourist who wandered into a restricted zone today, casting a shadow over hopes of a resumption of bilateral talks between the two sides of the divided peninsular.

The fatal shooting at the Mount Kumgang resort this morning coincided with a breakthrough offer by the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, to resume dialogue and provide food aid to the North.

According to the Seoul-based Yonhap news agency, the soldier opened fire on the 53-year-old woman tourist surnamed Pak after she crossed into a military area.

USA

A Trickle That Turned Into a Torrent  



By CHARLES DUHIGG

Published: July 11, 2008

The word began spreading across Wall Street trading desks on Monday morning: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant companies at the heart of the nation’s housing market, might be in trouble.

The tumult, which continued on Thursday, started with a cautionary analyst’s report, one that might have caused few ripples in normal times. But these are not normal times. Within minutes, the price of the companies’ shares was plunging, sending shock waves through the financial markets, the economy and Washington.

The Fourth Amendment

Takes Its Leave

Founders Seen

Spinning In Graves

Pakistan Is Said to Be Attracting Insurgents



By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: July 10, 2008

WASHINGTON – American military and intelligence officials say there has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to join with militants there.

The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West, these officials say.

The American officials say the influx, which could be in the dozens but could also be higher, shows a further strengthening of the position of the forces of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, increasingly seen as an important base of support for the Taliban, whose forces in Afghanistan have become more aggressive in their campaign against American-led troops.

China’s Silencing Season

Activist Journalists and Lawyers Jailed, Harassed in Far-Reaching Pre-Olympic Operation

By Jill Drew

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, July 10, 2008; Page A08

BEIJING — Outside the small restaurant where he was having dinner, Huang Qi saw men he recognized, plainclothes police officers. He got on his cellphone to alert colleagues: Something might happen tonight, he said. We were followed.

Huang, who had already served a five-year prison term for political material posted on his Web site, had just published an article about China’s latest forbidden topic: shoddy construction of school buildings in Sichuan province, where more than 9,000 children were killed when their classrooms collapsed in the May 12 earthquake.

Editors Note:

An article published in Sunday’s Guardian about this same issue was part of that mornings Docudharma Times as is another story in today’s Asian news section. It’s important that people realize just how far the Chinese government is willing to go to protect its image.

USA

Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers



By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: July 10, 2008

WASHINGTON – The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues.

The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Beijing Olympics

Arrests Of Dissedents

And

Air Pollution

The Perfect Sporting Event

For The Authoritarian Leader

Beijing ‘failing pollution test’

Just a month before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the city is still failing to meet international air quality standards, the BBC has found.

By James Reynolds

BBC News, Beijing

When Beijing bid for the Olympics in 2001, it said its air would meet World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

The BBC put this to the test using a hand-held detector to test for airborne particles known as PM10.

We found that the city’s air failed to meet the WHO’s air quality guidelines for PM10 on six days out of seven.

These particles are caused by traffic, construction work and factory emissions. They are responsible for much of this city’s pollution.

Industrial Nations Endorse Halving Emissions by 2050



By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 8, 2008

RUSUTSU, Japan (AP) — The Group of Eight leading industrial nations on Tuesday endorsed halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, edging forward in the battle against global warming but stopping short of tough, nearer-term targets.

The G-8 countries — the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy — also called on all major economies to join in the effort to stem the potentially dangerous rise in world temperatures.

”The G-8 nations came to a mutual recognition that this target — cutting global emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 — should be a global target,” said Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who announced the endorsement.

USA

U.S. Seeks Data Exchange

Newer European Union Countries Want Waiver From Visa Requirements

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 8, 2008; Page D01

The United States is negotiating deals with European countries to exchange fingerprint and DNA data in criminal and terrorist cases, and in some circumstances to transfer data on race or ethnic origin, political and religious beliefs, or sexual orientation.

Such agreements are a condition for granting citizens of newer European Union member states the right to enter the United States without visas, and for maintaining that right for older E.U. members. U.S. citizens already enjoy such a right when traveling to Europe.

Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles

The G-8

Doctors Press Senate to Undo Medicare Cuts



By ROBERT PEAR

Published: July 7, 2008

WASHINGTON – Congress returns to work this week with Medicare high on the agenda and Senate Republicans under pressure after a barrage of radio and television advertisements blamed them for a 10.6 percent cut in payments to doctors who care for millions of older Americans.

The advertisements, by the American Medical Association, urge Senate Republicans to reverse themselves and help pass legislation to fend off the cut.

How to pay doctors through the federal health insurance program is an issue that lawmakers are forced to confront every year because of what is widely agreed to be an outdated reimbursement formula.

Wall Street faces the bears of summer

Unemployment, inflation quash second-half rally forecasts

By Matthew Goldstein, Ben Steverman and Ben Levisohn

Business Week

The first six months of 2008 ended with U.S. stock markets in the dumps. Now, with the major indexes in or near bear market territory after touching highs in October, hopes for a happier second half are fading fast.

A toxic brew of sluggish economic growth, rising unemployment, and spiking inflation-otherwise known as stagflation-is prompting market watchers to backpedal furiously on earlier predictions of a rally later this year. Noticeably absent from the discussion are the traditional stock market drivers of strong earnings and interest-rate cuts, neither of which seem to be on the horizon.

USA

With Pride, Californians Step Up to Fight Fires  



By CAROL POGASH

Published: July 7, 2008

ELK, Calif. – When he spotted a small fire two weeks ago atop a steep hill outside this blocklong town, Charlie Acker, 57, the president of the local school board and a volunteer firefighter, jumped inside his stubby red 1965 fire truck and, with a skid and a prayer, drove up the nearly vertical incline to check out the situation.

Knowing that every other volunteer firefighter in this community of 100 residents was battling a larger blaze nearby, he used his cellphone to call his wife. She roused a crew of young kayakers who cater to tourists in this picturesque old logging town at the edge of the Pacific, some 140 miles north of San Francisco, and joined Mr. Acker on the line.

The state fire agency, CalFire, had promised to send a helicopter, but just as Mr. Acker was waiting for the whump-whump of the blades, it was diverted, he said, “to a higher rent district” in another county.

Failure Comes To Japan

On A 747 No Less

Prospects dim for G-8 climate change deal

Bush arrives in Japan for summit; no concessions expected from U.S.

MSNBC News Services

TOYAKO, Japan – Prospects that the G8 would reach a meaningful agreement to fight global warming at their annual summit dimmed on Sunday as leaders began arriving in northern Japan with a raft of global problems on their minds.

Climate change is high on the agenda of the summit of rich nations that begins Monday at a luxury hotel in Toyako, Hokkaido, and of a Major Economies Meeting on Wednesday that brings the G8 together with eight other countries, including China, India and Brazil.

‘To Be Busy Helps Them Forget’

Burma’s Storm Survivors Cobble Together a Meager Future

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page A01

BOGALAY, Burma — Two months after a cyclone savaged the fertile Irrawaddy Delta, in Burma’s southwest, the bones of drowning victims still clutter the muddy banks of waterways.

One bamboo stick at a time, survivors in hundreds of flattened villages are struggling to rebuild their lives. For shelter, they squeeze several families into a single tent. For drinking water, they collect monsoon rains that trickle off tarpaulin roof coverings into buckets or salvaged ceramic vases. For food, they cook communal meals with rice, beans and oil from handouts. Sometimes it is spoiled.

USA

Employers Fight Tough Measures on Immigration



By JULIA PRESTON

Published: July 6, 2008

Under pressure from the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in two decades, employers across the country are fighting back in state legislatures, the federal courts and city halls.

Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.

Though the pushback is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, in many places it is reopening the rift over immigration that troubled the Republican Party last year.

Give It Away Give It Away

Give It Away Now

Feds’ closed-door deal could ease development

New Forest Service rules could let largest private owner convert land

By Karl Vick

Washington Post

MISSOULA, Mont. – The Bush administration is preparing to ease the way for the nation’s largest private landowner to convert hundreds of thousands of acres of mountain forestland to residential subdivisions.

The deal was struck behind closed doors between Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, and Plum Creek Timber Co., a former logging company turned real estate investment trust that is building homes. Plum Creek owns more than 8 million acres nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana, where local officials were stunned and outraged at the deal.

Accounting Plan Would Allow Use of Foreign Rules



By STEPHEN LABATON

Published: July 5, 2008

WASHINGTON – Federal officials say they are preparing to propose a series of regulatory changes to enhance American competitiveness overseas, attract foreign investment and give American investors a broader selection of foreign stocks.

But critics say the changes appear to be a last-ditch push by appointees of President Bush to dilute securities rules passed after the collapse of Enron and other large companies – measures that were meant to forestall accounting gimmicks and corrupt practices that led to those corporate failures.

USA

Secretive Agency Under the Spotlight

Chief Tries to Repair CIA as Scrutiny Grows

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, July 5, 2008; Page A01  

Soon after accepting the post of CIA director two years ago, Michael V. Hayden set an unusual goal for his scandal-beset agency: virtual invisibility.

“CIA needs to get out of the news as source or subject,” he said in an internal memo to his staff in 2006.

Two years later, that goal is far from met, as Hayden has tacitly acknowledged. In a retirement ceremony last month marking the end of his military career, the Air Force general stressed the need for the agency to “stay in the shadows” while ignoring what he called the “sometimes shrill and uninformed voices of criticism.”

HAPPY

INDEPENDENCE DAY

AMERICA

On Iran, top military officer sounds like Obama

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen urges diplomacy, not use of force

By Tom Curry

National affairs writer

MSNBC

WASHINGTON – It could turn out to be one of the most significant comments of the 2008 campaign – but coming just ahead of a holiday weekend, it isn’t getting much notice.

Upon his return from a visit to Israel and Europe, the nation’s highest ranking military officer warned Wednesday that a military strike on Iran would be a very bad idea.

“This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to be more unstable,” said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.

White House debates the future of Guantanamo

Legislation could make it easier to move terror suspects to the U.S

By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 4, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is locked in an internal debate over whether to present Congress with proposed legislation that would allow suspected terrorists to be held in the United States — a possible first step toward closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — according to current and former officials.

The officials said the administration was not on the verge of shutting down Guantanamo. But the legislation under debate could make it easier to move some suspects to the United States by lessening the risk that federal courts would set them free in Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., or Charleston, S.C.

Last month’s Supreme Court decision granting federal courts the power to review the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo has thrown the administration’s detainee policy into doubt.

USA

Celebrity Passport Records Popular

State Dept. Audit Finds Snooping Was Frequent

By Glenn Kessler

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, July 4, 2008; Page A01

Government workers repeatedly snooped without authorization inside the electronic passport records of entertainers, athletes and other high-profile Americans, a State Department audit has found. One celebrity’s records were breached 356 times by more than six dozen people.

The audit, by State’s inspector general, was prompted by the discovery in March that three of the department’s contract workers had peeked at the private passport files of Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain and that a State Department trainee had examined the file of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.