Docudharma Times Monday Nov. 19

This is an Open Thread: Where amusing stories are told

Monday’s Headlines, Goldman Sachs Rakes in Profit in Credit Crisis, Giuliani Hoping NASCAR Fans May Provide an Edge in the Race, Vote nears for ID card plan in S.F., Powell: Iran far from nuclear weapon, Court begins Musharraf rule deliberations

Challenges to Musharraf rejected

Pakistan’s reshaped Supreme Court has dismissed the main challenges to Gen Pervez Musharraf being allowed a second term as president.

He has promised to resign as head of the army after the court validates his victory in October’s presidency poll.

He sacked a number of independently-minded judges who had been due to consider the case.

USA

Goldman Sachs Rakes in Profit in Credit Crisis

For more than three months, as turmoil in the credit market has swept wildly through Wall Street, one mighty investment bank after another has been brought to its knees, leveled by multibillion-dollar blows to their bottom lines.

And then there is Goldman Sachs.

Rarely on Wall Street, where money travels in herds, has one firm gotten it so right when nearly everyone else was getting it so wrong. So far, three banking chief executives have been forced to resign after the debacle, and the pay for nearly all the survivors is expected to be cut deeply.

Giuliani Hoping NASCAR Fans May Provide an Edge in the Race

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 19, 2007; Page A04

HOMESTEAD, Fla., Nov. 18 — Now, Rudolph W. Giuliani says, he “really” is a NASCAR fan.

The Republican presidential candidate is better known as a New Yorker, of course, one who as the city’s mayor drew admiration associating with quintessentially New York passions — for attending the Metropolitan Opera and pulling unambiguously for the Yankees.

Vote nears for ID card plan in S.F.

The proposal, which would make the cards available to all local residents RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 17 – With the price of oil hovering near $100 a barrel, the discovery of the biggest deep-water oil field off the southeastern coast has the potential to transform Brazil into a global energy powerhouse and to reshape the politics of this energy-starved continent.regardless of immigration status, isn’t big news in liberal enclave.

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 19, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO — The Board of Supervisors in this famously liberal enclave is expected to give final approval Tuesday to an ordinance that would be controversial nearly anywhere but here.

Only one other American city — tiny New Haven, Conn., with just one-sixth the population — has taken such a bold step: mandating that identification cards be made available to all local residents whether they are in the country legally or not.

Big news, right?

Not really. In a city that has turned municipal foreign policy into well-nigh a civic art form, this latest initiative never even cracked Page 1 of the local newspaper.

Middle East

Powell: Iran far from nuclear weapon

KUWAIT CITY – Iran is far from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and despite U.S. fears about its atomic intentions, an American military strike against the Islamic Republic is unlikely, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

Tehran rejects claims by the United States and some European Union countries that its nuclear program is aimed at secretly producing weapons, insisting it is for peaceful purposes only.

“I think Iran is a long way from having anything that could be anything like a nuclear weapon,” said Powell, who was invited by the National Bank of Kuwait to speak on economic opportunity and crisis in the Middle East.

Sects unite to battle Al Qaeda in Iraq

QARGHULIA, IRAQ — Despite persistent sectarian tensions in the Iraqi government, war-weary Sunnis and Shiites are joining hands at the local level to protect their communities from militants on both sides, U.S. military officials say.

In the last two months, a U.S.-backed policing movement called Concerned Citizens, launched last year in Sunni-dominated Anbar province under the banner of the Awakening movement, has spread rapidly into the mixed Iraqi heartland.

Of the nearly 70,000 Iraqi men in the Awakening movement, started by Sunni Muslim sheiks who turned their followers against Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are now more in Baghdad and its environs than anywhere else, and a growing number of those are Shiite Muslims.

Europe

In Europe, weak dollar wrecks Americans’ dreams

BERLIN (Reuters) – Andrew Curry once loved going out for dinner and drinks in Berlin, feeling far wealthier in the German capital than he did at home in the United States.

With the dollar now worth about 20 percent less than when he first arrived in 2005, the 30-year-old freelance journalist has a leaner lifestyle.

“I used to be able to brag that Berlin was really affordable but now my rent actually works out on par with Washington and New York. It’s pretty terrible,” said Curry, whose income is almost exclusively in the devaluing currency.

“I do everything to try to spend fewer euros now.”

French protest enters sixth day

A French transport strike is continuing into a second week, despite some signs of a movement towards negotiations.

Six out of seven unions agreed to extend the walk-out to Monday, though more services are expected to run than at the beginning of the strike.

Africa

Zimbabwe government seeks 25 percent stakes in mining firms

HARARE (Reuters) – President Robert Mugabe’s government published a draft bill on Monday forcing mining firms to transfer majority shareholdings to local owners, including giving the Zimbabwe government a free 25-percent stake.

The mines and minerals amendment bill is expected to be presented to parliament and to be approved before the end of the year, and follows the passing of a general bill giving 51 percent stakes in foreign-owned firms to locals.

Analysts say the latest drive by Mugabe’s government is likely to worsen an economic crisis that has left the southern African state with the highest inflation rate in the world at nearly 8,000 percent, and to discourage foreign investment.

In Zimbabwe, dissent wears the mask of theater

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The stage was a small room in the Harare Central Police Station. The audience, about 20 bored policemen and plainclothes intelligence officers.

The two actors were shaking, not with stage fright but the real thing. Anthony Tongani stammered and forgot his lines. Silvanos Mudzvova was so afraid that he didn’t dare make a mistake.

They stumbled to the end. Then they were ordered to start again.

And again.

Asia

Court begins Musharraf rule deliberations

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A reconstituted Supreme Court loaded with justices chosen by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf began deliberations Monday on the legality of his emergency rule and his eligibility to serve a third term as head of state.

With pressure mounting to get the country on a path to democracy, the government set Jan. 8 as the date for elections. But there was no evidence that Musharraf intended to lift his state of emergency – a key demand of both the opposition and Washington – before the vote.

Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs

JIANMIN VILLAGE, China – Last year, Chinese officials celebrated the completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of 10 world records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world’s biggest dam, biggest power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel. Ever. Even the project’s official tally of 1.13 million displaced people made the list as record No. 10.

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China’s biggest folly. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have admitted that the dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials want to begin a new relocation program that would be bigger than the first.

Latin America

Mexicans Ask Where Flood Aid Went

Corruption, Incompetence Alleged After Devastating Downpours

By Manuel Roig-Franzia

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, November 19, 2007; Page A12

MEXICO CITY — Long before the devastating flooding this month in the state of Tabasco, Mexico’s behemoth state-run oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, was pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into local government coffers for flood abatement projects.

From 1997 to 2001, at least $3 million was donated to build dikes, raise levees and move poor residents from low-lying areas, according to analysts and independent investigators. But a crescendo of questions about whether the oil money was ever used for the intended projects is raising the possibility that corruption and incompetence might have played as much of a role in the tragedy as historically torrential rains.

Brazil Discovers an Oil Field Can Be a Political Tool

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 17 – With the price of oil hovering near $100 a barrel, the discovery of the biggest deep-water oil field off the southeastern coast has the potential to transform Brazil into a global energy powerhouse and to reshape the politics of this energy-starved continent.

While Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, has known of the field for more than a year, it only finished assessing its full potential in recent months. It announced on Nov. 8 that the field held some five billion to eight billion barrels of crude oil and natural gas.