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FYI: Borderlands News, October 22-28, 2009 (9 items).  Compiled by Miguel
Juárez.  Additional information about sources available at the end of the
message.



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(1)

"Fight over who smashed the Wall," The Australian, October 22, 2009 Thursday, 2
- All-round First Edition, WORLD; Pg. 10, Copyright 2009 Nationwide News Pty
Limited, All Rights Reserved.



[Two newsmen claim credit for reuniting East and West Berlin, writes Marcus
Walker.  THE world believes Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev or peaceful
protests brought down the Berlin Wall. But for those who had front-row seats,
the argument boils down to Ehrman v Brinkmann.

Riccardo Ehrman, a veteran Italian foreign correspondent, and Peter Brinkmann,
a combative German tabloid reporter, both claim they asked the crucial
questions at a news conference on November 9, 1989, that led East German
Politburo member Gunter Schabowski to make one of the biggest fumbles in modern
history.  Schabowski was supposed to announce a temporary bureaucratic
procedure that would make it easier for East Germans to travel abroad, a tactic
aimed at shoring up the communist regime in the face of mass demonstrations. 
Instead, he inadvertently opened the Berlin Wall...The result, once East
Berliners had seen that night's news on West German television, was chaos at
border crossings across the city.  At Bornholmer Strasse, one of the main
checkpoints in central Berlin, confused border guards couldn't get clear orders
on how to deal with the crush, and debated whether to open fire. Instead, they
opened the barrier, and the Berlin Wall was history. The events have been
chronicled by Hans-Hermann Hertle, a historian who specialises in the fall of
East Germany. As the 20th anniversary of that tumultuous night nears, a dispute
is heating up over who flummoxed Schabowski]





(2)

"The new untouchables," The International Herald Tribune, October 22, 2009,
Thursday, EDIT; Pg. 11, Copyright 2009 International Herald Tribune, All Rights
Reserved.



[Last summer I attended a talk by Michelle Rhee, the dynamic chancellor of
public schools in Washington. Just before the session began, a man came up,
introduced himself as Todd Martin and whispered to me that what Rhee was about
to speak about - the struggling public schools - was actually a critical, but
unspoken, reason for the Great Recession.  There's something to that. While the
subprime mortgage mess involved a huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, it
coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street - precisely when
technology and open borders were enabling so many more people to compete with
Americans for middle-class jobs.  In our subprime era, we thought we could have
the American dream - a house and yard - with nothing down. This version of the
American dream was delivered not by improving education, productivity and
savings, but by Wall Street alchemy and borrowed money from Asia. A year ago,
it all exploded. Now that we are picking up the pieces, we need to understand
that it is not only our financial system that needs a reboot and an upgrade,
but also our public school system. Otherwise, the jobless recovery won't be
just a passing phase, but America's future... That is the key to understanding
America's full education challenge today. Those who are waiting for this
recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait.
Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables - to invent smarter
ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to
attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies - will
thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of kids graduating from
high school and college - more education - but we need more of them with the
right education...]





(3)

"U.S. strikes blow against Mexican drug cartel; Violent gang sees venture doing
God's work for poor," The Washington Times, October 23, 2009 Friday, : A,
NATION; Pg. 3, Copyright 2009 The Washington Times LLC, All Rights Reserved.



[In what authorities are calling the largest single operation in the United
States against a Mexican drug cartel, the Justice Department announced Thursday
it has struck a major blow against a violent gang with quasi-religious and
Robin Hood overtones.   La Familia is best known perhaps for practices that
resemble a religious sect and a readiness to behead its enemies, but
authorities say that the group is also responsible for the vast majority of
methamphetamine that pours across the Southwest border of the U.S.  In the past
two days, authorities said they have arrested 303 people during an operation
known as "Project Coronado," after the Spanish conquistador who explored what
is now part of the U.S. Southwest... Acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart
said the cartel refers to its violence as "divine justice."

"La Familia's narco-banner declared that they don't kill for money and they
don't kill innocent people," she said. "However, their delivery of that message
was accompanied by five severed heads rolled onto a dance floor in Uruapan,
Mexico."  She said the cartel also recently kidnapped and killed 12 Mexican
federal police officers...]







(4)

"Casualties of immigration war; Land, animals, plants pay price on the border,"
The Washington Times, October 25, 2009 Sunday, M, SUNDAY READ, COVER STORY; Pg.
4, Copyright 2009 The Washington Times LLC All Rights Reserved.



[BUENOS AIRES N.W.R., Arizona | Michael M. Hawkes, manager of the Buenos Aires
National Wildlife Refuge, reaches across his desk and pulls out  a homemade
blue-and-red bumper sticker that reads, "Littering is always a crime."  It
turns out that here on the U.S.-Mexico border, even that is a controversial
statement - because it's aimed at the humanitarian groups that drop gallon jugs
of water on public lands to help illegal immigrants crossing the rugged
borderlands.  Mr. Hawkes says dealing with those groups now takes up most of
his time, and it only builds on top of the pile of other pressures - an army of
illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, some of them armed, facing off against
the U.S. Border Patrol - that have transformed his wildlife sanctuary into
ground zero for the nation's immigration wars.  Situated in the middle of
southern Arizona, Buenos Aires is among the hardest-hit. But the same story is
repeated across the U.S.-Mexico border on refuges, Indian reservations,
national forests and the rest of the federal lands that make up 40 percent of
the boundary between the two countries... In the last two years, though, border
security has been built up, with more manpower and a fence across the entire
refuge boundary with Mexico. The result, according to Mr. Hawkes: The number of
illegal crossers dropped to 20,600 in fiscal year 2009, or just 7 percent of
what it was in 2007. Abandoned cars dropped from 100 in 2007 to zero in the
most recent 12-month period. The land near the fence is already recovering.

"I've heard a lot of conservationists down on the fence. From my standpoint,
it's been a blessing for this refuge, it really has," Mr. Hawkes said. "I'm the
black sheep of the bunch because I think [Border Patrol is] doing a great job."
 But environmentalists counter that while individual species might be helped -
the lesser long-nosed bat, for example, which had at one point been ousted from
its roosting cave on Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in western Arizona
- that's more than offset by the overall disruption to species migration...]





(5)

"A new North American union," The Washington Post, October 25, 2009 Sunday,
Regional Edition, EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A19, Copyright 2009, The Washington Post,
All Rights Reserved.



[OTTAWA - Candidate Barack Obama made the North American Free Trade Agreement
an early target. He promised union leaders to force a renegotiation of NAFTA on
his terms. Back then, I thought Obama went too far. Now I think he did not go
nearly far enough.  Canada, the United States and Mexico must form a more
perfect economic union to deal with a lingering international financial crisis
that drains the U.S. dollar of value and credibility and that fuels rising
unemployment. Regional integration is a rare effective response to faltering
globalization, dangerously volatile petroleum markets, and U.S. economic and
military overextension... French and British government ministers told me in
their capitals that only a rejuvenated European Union can prevent the United
States and China from forming a G-2 to dominate international economic
policymaking. And the new Japanese government is pushing the notion of an East
Asian community.  North America lags behind conceptually in addressing
regionalization as the next important global economic cycle, even as NAFTA has
led to major changes on the ground. No surprise: Both Canada and Mexico
routinely emphasize their differences with and independence from the behemoth
on their borders, and U.S. citizens have been proud of their God-given right to
be indifferent to their immediate neighbors.  But that is changing, for good
reasons and some not-so-good ones, as I learned at the annual North American
Forum meeting here. This group of Canadian, American and Mexican entrepreneurs,
politicians and academic experts has been working quietly for five years to
identify and advance regional understanding, with former secretary of state
George P. Shultz guiding the U.S. contribution...]





(6)

"Struggling Iraq vet may lose his anchor; His wife, whose family brought her to
the U.S. illegally at age 6, is about to be deported. 'She's my everything,'" 
Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2009 Monday, Home Edition, MAIN NEWS; Metro
Desk; Part A; Pg. 1, Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved.



[The nightmares still plague him. The terrifying mortar attacks. The loss of an
Albanian soldier and ally, mutilated by shrapnel. The Iraqi children, bloodied
and battered, lined up for medical care at the U.S. base at Mosul.  Two years
after returning from his service in Iraq, U.S. Army Spc. Jack Barrios, 26, is
fighting sleeplessness, sudden angry outbursts, aversion to emotional intimacy
and other fallout from his post-traumatic stress disorder.  But as he undergoes
counseling and swallows anti-depressants, the soldier is fighting an even
bigger battle: to keep his family from collapsing as his wife, an undocumented
immigrant from Guatemala, faces deportation.  His wife, 23-year-old Frances,
was illegally brought to the United States by her mother at age 6, learned of
her status in high school and discovered just last year that removal
proceedings have been started. Her possible deportation has left Barrios in
panic as he contemplates life without her... As his parents speak of their
pain, Matthew squeals with delight on his Playskool truck. Moon-faced Allanna
gurgles and smiles as she crawls across the living room.  Whatever happens, the
children, both U.S.-born citizens, will stay here. There is no future for them
in Guatemala.

But their mother's heart breaks at the thought of separation. "I'm with them
all day," Frances says of her children, sobbing. "I cook, I clean. It will be
too much for Jack. It's hard enough for him already."

Barrios said his wife never intentionally broke any laws. She was just a small
child when she was taken across the border without papers...]





(7)

"'THEY WILL KILL OUR PARENTS TONIGHT, WE MUST ESCAPE';  CAMBODIA'S KILLING
FIELDS 30 YEARS ON THE SURVIVOR'S STORY," The Mirror, October 27, 2009 Tuesday,
1 Star Edition, NEWS; Pg. 24, 25, Copyright 2009 MGN Ltd., All Rights Reserved.



[IT IS 30 years since John Pilger revealed the existence of the Cambodian
Killing Fields in the Daily Mirror. For Somaly Lun, the anniversary is
bittersweet.  Today, customers at the Oxfordshire supermarket checkout where
she works have no idea of her extraordinary story.  How she escaped US B-52
bombers as a child, a Khmer Rouge concentration camp as a teenager, and
Vietnamese soldiers as a young woman. How she lost her father and six brothers
to the Khmer Rouge.  Somaly owes her life in the UK to Oxfam's Marcus Thompson,
then a young humanitarian worker who had become friends with Somaly and her
husband Borithy.  "England gave me the first safe place I had ever lived,"
Somaly says.   By the time she was 10, her home town of Kratie was under
attack, even though Cambodia was neutral. Kratie was close to the border with
Vietnam which was at war with the States, and US President Richard Nixon
ordered 100,000 tonnes of secret bombings... But Cambodia was still dangerous -
and Borithy was warned to leave Phnom Penh. "He said he was in love with me and
refused to leave without me," Somaly says.

On March 16, 1980, the couple married in secret inside a destroyed pagoda. The
next day, they escaped. Passing through fields of landmines, they made it
through Vietnamese, then Khmer Rouge territory and even past the Thai border
guards to Khao I Dang, a squalid refugee camp on the border. Somaly wrote to
her family and to Marcus to tell them they were alive.  "I needed to go to
those camps as part of my work," Marcus says. Somaly says she will never forget
seeing Marcus walking through the camp. "I cried out 'Marcus!' and just hung on
to his neck," she says.  Marcus was shocked by their plight. "They couldn't go
back to Cambodia," he says. "The Thais wouldn't accept them. We had to do
something...]





(8)

"India, China need to show greater restraint; Recent tensions shouldn't be
allowed to spoil their growing convergence on key global issues," The Business
Times Singapore, October 27, 2009 Tuesday, VIEWS AND OPINIONS; Opinion,
Copyright 2009 Singapore Press Holdings Limited All Rights Reserved.



[THE Indian and Chinese premiers may have agreed that both India and China had
an 'obligation to maintain peace and tranquillity along the border' when they
met on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Thailand at the weekend. But
the fact is India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao are struggling to settle their countries' decades-old border dispute.
Each side claims vast swathes of the other's territory along their 3,500km
Himalayan boundary.   Even as the leaders smiled for the cameras, China was
turning on the heat on India on the status of Arunachal Pradesh, a state
bordering Tibet. China claims it is a disputed territory that was a part of
Tibet, while the Indian contention is that it is an integral part of India.  
Significantly, China objected to Mr Singh's visit to the state to campaign in
the election there - 10 days after he did so. On the day polling was taking
place in the remote north-eastern province, a Chinese Foreign Office spokesman
expressed 'strong dissatisfaction' for his visit to 'a disputed... But China's
official media is vociferous. For instance, an editorial in People's Daily, the
state-run newspaper, accused Indians of becoming 'more narrow-minded' sometimes
'even turning to hegemony' as can be 'proved by India's recent provocation on
border issues with China'.  The feelings provoked in China can be gauged by an
online poll conducted by the website of the Chinese Global Times newspaper
which showed 'about 96 per cent of the over 6,000 respondents agreed that they
felt agitated by the frequent visits by Indian leaders to the disputed area'.  
A further Chinese concern is that of India's growing military strength and its
close relationship with the United States and of being a member of the
US-Japan-Australia-India maritime alliance.   A columnist in People's Daily
stated last month that while 'at present, India is still a lesser power than
China in terms of economy and military . . . it is evident that the US has been
tipping the balance between China and India feeding India's ambition to match
China force for force by its ever-burgeoning arms sales...]





(9)

"Border not clogged by security: U.S. Official; 'Not fair to say it is hard or
thickened'," National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada), October 28,
2009 Wednesday, All But Toronto Edition, NEWS; Pg. A7, Copyright 2009 National
Post, All Rights Reserved.



[OTTAWA - A senior Obama administration official is dismissing critics who say
the American preoccupation with preventing terrorism has led to an unnecessary
"thickening" of the Canada-U. S. border, tying up trade and hampering commerce.
  "I'm aware of the charge, the thickening of the border and the sensitivities
around it. My perspective is, I don't share that view at all," said John T.
Morton who heads U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- or ICE -- a branch
of the much-criticized Homeland Security Department.  "In the grand scheme of
things, given the length of our border and you look at the immense trade and
travel that goes across our border every day, it's not fair to say it is hard
or thickened or militarized in any way," he told Canwest News Service
yesterday...ICE is the largest investigative agency within Homeland Security,
and has a broad mandate that includes fighting conventional crime and smuggling
and preventing terrorist attacks. Some of the agency's biggest headaches come
from policing the southern U.S. border with Mexico...]





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FYI: Borderlands News is a weekly resource compiled by the H-Borderlands staff.
 It features a sampling of new stories concerning Borderlands issues from
around the world.  In order to comply with Academic Fair Use and copyright
laws, only a summary of the new articles is offered here.  We will not
reproduce articles in whole.



Some stories may be accessed through the news source's website.  Access to the
stories can also be attained through online databases (Lexis-Nexis, ProQuest,
or Dialog) with full-text versions of these and other stories.



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