U.S. to Demand Inspection of New Iran Plant ‘Within Weeks’

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: September 26, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open a newly revealed nuclear enrichment site to international inspectors “within weeks,” according to senior administration officials. The administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction, the officials said Saturday.
The demands, following the revelation Friday of the secret facility at a military base near the holy city of Qum, set the stage for the next chapter of a diplomatic drama that has toughened the West’s posture and heightened tensions with Iran. The first direct negotiations between the United States and Iran in 30 years are scheduled to open in Geneva on Thursday.

Dust storms spread deadly diseases worldwide

Dust storms like the one that plagued Sydney are blowing bacteria to all corners of the globe, with viruses that will attack the human body. Yet these scourges can also help mitigate climate change

John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 27 September 2009

Huge dust storms, like the ones that blanketed Sydney twice last week, hit Queensland yesterday and turned the air red across much of eastern Australia, are spreading lethal epidemics around the world. However, they can also absorb climate change emissions, say researchers studying the little understood but growing phenomenon.

The Sydney storm, which left millions of people choking on some of the worst air pollution in 70 years, was a consequence of the 10-year drought that has turned parts of Australia's interior into a giant dust bowl, providing perfect conditions for high winds to whip loose soil into the air and carry it thousands of miles across the continent.

It followed major dust storms this year in northern China, Iraq and Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, east Africa, Arizona and other arid areas.

Read more

Military growing impatient with Obama on Afghanistan

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Six months after it announced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Obama administration is sending mixed signals about its objectives there and how many troops are needed to achieve them.

The conflicting messages are drawing increasing ire from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and frustrating military leaders, who're trying to figure out how to demonstrate that they're making progress in the 12-18 months that the administration has given them.

Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn't ready for it.

Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost to Health

TOXIC WATERS

By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: September 12, 2009

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.
In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

England village covers Google lens

When a car with a camera on a pole got to work in Broughton to collect imagery for Google Street View, locals put a stop to it. The data-recording program has raised hackles across Europe.

Read more

Fears for Barack Obama's safety as healthcare

debate fuels extremism

As storm over Barack Obama's healthcare reforms rages, surge in

rightwing extremism is fanned by opponents

Paul Harris in New York

The Observer, Sunday 16 August 2009

The message was clear. The sign carried by a 51-year-old man last week outside a raucous town hall meeting on healthcare in Hagerstown, Maryland, read "Death to Obama". Just to emphasise his point, a second message was also scrawled on the cardboard placard. "Death to Obama, Michelle and 2 stupid kids," it stated.

Welcome to the disturbing new face of the radical right in America. Across the country, extremism is surging, inflamed by conservative talkshow hosts, encouraged by Republican leaders and propagating a series of wild conspiracy theories. Many fear it might end in tragedy.

Obama has been labelled as a threat to democracy and an anti-white racist by senior presenters on the TV channel Fox News.

Republicans, seizing on the fierce debate over Obama's plans to reform healthcare, have called him a socialist who plans "death panels" for the elderly. Rumours have circulated that Obama was not born in America and that he plans to ban firearms. Despite having no basis in fact, they have become widely believed.

Congress' to-do list when it's back from August recess

When it reconvenes Sept. 8, healthcare reform is likely to dominate most of the fall. But don't forget climate change, financial services regulation, appropriations and defense policy.

August 9, 2009

What's on Congress' to-do list

The Senate left town Friday for its August recess, a week after the House. Both chambers are scheduled to reconvene Sept. 8. When the lawmakers return, a proposed overhaul of the nation's healthcare system will be just one of the weighty matters on their agenda. Here is a look at the status of several measures before Congress.

Healthcare reform

President Obama's effort to expand and improve insurance coverage is likely to dominate Capitol Hill for most of the fall. The House, where three committees have drafted legislation, is aiming to bring a blended version of the bill to the floor soon after lawmakers return to Washington. In the Senate, where the pivotal Finance Committee has not yet agreed on a bill, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working toward a Sept. 15 deadline imposed by Democrats for coming to terms on the panel's version of the legislation. Obama and congressional leaders hope for final action before the end   of this year.

Cemetery scandal makes blacks think twice

‘Ground is not sacred’ after desecration of historical burial plots

Aug. 2, 2009

CHICAGO - Harold Lucas was raised with the stories about his grandparents, who rode segregated railroad cars from Missouri to Chicago in the 1930s and worked tirelessly to raise their family into the middle class.

 Jeff and Ida Lucas were buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, alongside thousands of black Americans who made up the Great Migration — a movement from the south to the north during the first half of the 20th century.

 Burr Oak, once one of the only burial places for blacks in the Chicago area, holds a sacred spot in African-American history — making all the worse allegations that workers there dug up bodies and dumped them to resell the burial plots.

People like Lucas see desecration of the cemetery as evidence their people's history is slipping away and forgotten. He and others say they don't know how to tell young blacks to be proud of their heritage when it has been treated so carelessly.

 "We need these physical reminders," said Lucas, 66. "This is about emancipation. About breaking the cycle of poverty."

Political Memo

Partisan or Not, a Tough Course on Health Care

ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON — The decision by Senate Democratic leaders last week to devote more time to winning Republican support for a health care overhaul has allowed President Obama to keep alive the possibility of bipartisanship on one of the most contentious issues on his agenda.

But Mr. Obama is under growing pressure to choose between wooing a small band of Republicans or struggling to rally his party to use its big majorities in Congress to get the job done. The bipartisanship exhibited in the passage of two other ambitious domestic programs that offer one historical backdrop for this debate — Social Security in 1935 and Medicare andMedicaid 30 years later — seems increasingly improbable in today’s Washington.

Dying boy forced out of Belfast home by racists

Son of Ivory Coast footballer taken to hospice

Henry Mcdonald, Ireland editor

The Observer, Sunday 26 July 2009

An African footballer and his wife have had to leave their terminally ill son in a children's hospice, after they fled their home in the wake of racist intimidation.

Cross-community worker Thomas Mockey, originally from Ivory Coast, left his house in east Belfast last week after a row with neighbours degenerated into racial abuse.

Speaking this weekend while staying in a north Belfast hostel, the Mockey family said that they were forced to place their blind and terminally ill son, Andre, in the hospice for two days because they were temporarily homeless.

Andre's mother, Jean Mockey, told the Observer this weekend that an incident outside her house in the Knocknagoney area of east Belfast two weeks ago had left her "ashamed to be a Protestant and ashamed of my community".

The Police Service of Northern Ireland has told the family that it is treating the threats as a hate crime. The incident comes a month after 120 men, women and children from the Roma community were driven from their homes in south Belfast by a racist gang. They opted to leave Northern Ireland and later returned to their native Romania.

Bush's key men face grilling on torture and death squads

Former vice-president Dick Cheney could be forced to testify to Congress over allegations that a secret hit squad was set up on his orders, as Democrats press for inquiries into the conduct of the 'war on terror'. Paul Harris reports from New York

Paul Harris in New York

The Observer, Sunday 19 July 2009

America is bracing itself for a series of investigations that could see top officials from the administration of President George W Bush hauled in front of Congress, grilled by a special prosecutor and possibly facing criminal charges.

Several investigations will now cast a spotlight on Bush-era torture policy and a secret CIA assassination programme, examining the role played by big names such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In one investigation into the controversial firing of federal prosecutors, Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, has already been forced to appear before Congress and give testimony behind closed doors. Another investigation, by the House of Representatives' intelligence committee, has already asked for documents from the CIA and has now announced that it will examine the legality of keeping a secret CIA hit squad hidden from Congress, something alleged to have been ordered by Cheney himself.

Due to an unexpected technical error the original version of the World News Sunday as posted by Mishima (originally at 2009-07-12 05:16:20 -0400) was damaged. We're resolving it by using a similar post by Mishima from Docudharma (Docudharma Times Sunday July 12) which may differ slightly from the original content. Our apologies for any and all inconvenience; we appreciate your patience and understanding. -- GH

Probe of Alleged Torture Weighed
White House Has Resisted Inquiry
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is leaning toward appointing a criminal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA personnel tortured terrorism suspects after Sept. 11, 2001, setting the stage for a conflict with administration officials who would prefer the issues remain in the past, according to three sources familiar with his thinking.

Naming a prosecutor to probe alleged abuses during the darkest period in the Bush era would run counter to President Obama's oft-repeated desire to be "looking forward and not backwards." Top political aides have expressed concern that such an investigation might spawn partisan debates that could overtake Obama's ambitious legislative agenda.

Iranian Details Alleged Fraud

Mousavi Is Also Accused of Treason

Washington Post Foreign Service 
Sunday, July 5, 2009

TEHRAN, July 4 -- Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate in last month's disputed election, released documents Saturday detailing a campaign of alleged fraud by supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that assured his reelection, while an adviser to Iran's supreme leader accused Mousavi of treason.

Hossein Shariatmadari, a special adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Mousavi of being a "foreign agent" working for the United States and a member of a "fifth column" determined to topple Iran's Islamic system of governance. The accusation of treason was the highest and most direct issued by an Iranian official since the June 12 election.

Many in Iran say that government forces are laying the groundwork for arresting Mousavi, who has not been seen in public in more than a week.

Feds squabbling over military’s border role

Policing of U.S.-Mexico boundary becomes interagency ‘food fight’.

A proposal to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to counter drug trafficking has triggered a bureaucratic standoff between the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security over the military's role in domestic affairs, according to officials in both departments

The debate has engaged a pair of powerful personalities, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in what their subordinates describe as a turf fight over who should direct the use of troops to assist in the fight against Mexican cartels and who should pay for them.

 

Read more

Promoted.  Originally posted 2009-06-21 05:27:26 -0400. -- GH

Tehran protestors defy tear gas

From The Sunday Times, June 21, 2009
Marie Colvin in Tehran

IRAN’S reformist opposition leader declared yesterday he was “ready for martyrdom” as his supporters fought bloody battles with police on the streets of the capital, Tehran.

Thousands confronted riot police and militiamen who fired live bullets, tear gas and water cannon in a vain attempt to quell the most serious challenge to the regime since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Twenty-four hours after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, warned that further protests could lead to bloodshed, at least three demonstrators died and scores were beaten and injured.

The protesters were strengthened in their resolve when Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate in the country’s presidential election, issued his most forthright challenge so far to the outcome.

In a letter to Khamenei, he claimed that the voting had been rigged months ago. Last night he warned that he could face detention and urged his followers to stage a national strike if he is arrested.

Chanting “death to dictatorship”, large crowds gathered in a boulevard linking Tehran’s Freedom Square and Revolution Square. They threw stones, knocked members of the Basiji militia off their motorcycles and set the machines on fire.

Read more

 

Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care  By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: June 6, 2009

WASHINGTON — After months of insisting he would leave the details to Congress, President Obama has concluded that he must exert greater control over the health care debate and is preparing an intense push for legislation that will include speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers, senior White House officials say. Mindful of the failures of former President Bill Clinton, whose intricate proposal for universal care collapsed on Capitol Hill 15 years ago, Mr. Obama until now had charted a different course, setting forth broad principles and concentrating on bringing disparate factions — doctors, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, labor unions — to the negotiating table.

Tunnel fraud leaves Gazans on verge of financial ruin

  For years, a network of underground smugglers' routes from Egypt to the Gaza Strip has supplied a besieged population with everything from cement to cattle. But now a series of major scams has destroyed the dreams of desperate investors who saw the tunnels as a path out of poverty Peter Bradshaw in Gaza City The Observer, Sunday 7 June 2009 Jawad Tawfiq, a 52-year-old Gazan actor and director, was dubious at first, but his nephew insisted. If they could scrape together enough money, the nephew said, large profits could be made from investing in the tunnels that snake beneath the Egyptian border. "They were liars," Tawfiq said bitterly last week. "They took my money to put in their own pockets. And we are being offered a fraction of what we gave them." At first the tunnels emerged as smuggling routes; then they became the vital lifeline for a Gaza under economic siege by Israel. But many people who invested in the tunnels now see them quite differently - as a source of ruination. The tunnel schemes were advertised as opportunities for doubling and trebling money by unscrupulous figures linked to powerful businessmen in Gaza and, allegedly, to senior officials in Hamas, but have instead led to huge losses for ordinary residents of the Strip.

 

President Ahmadinejad's future could be bound up with the fortunes of the national soccer team Ian Black in Tehran

Read more

Speaking to Marines at Camp Leune today, President Obama committed to the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq within the next 18 months and the removal of all troops by the year 2011. Here are some of the important points that he made, especially regarding a new deal for veterans, and for the families of those in service. The full speech is available here.

On January 12th 2009 President bush gave his final Press Conference to the Nation.

In it he made a number of statements that have been analyzed by many, my take on his answers and spin was his showing how little a man, who is in total denial and lacking any compassion or moral feelings, of how big a failure as a person, and especially as the President, he has been!

In one of his answers he said this: