Docudharma Times Friday February 22

This is an Open Thread:

Dawn changes everything

Everything

And the delta sun

Burns bright and violet

Friday’s Headlines:Crack Offenders Set for Release Mostly Nonviolent, Study Says: Soaring prices threaten economy: Africa: Zimbabwe inflation passes 100,000%, officials say: Kenyan beer stirs Obamamania: Europe:Serb rioters invade US embassy:Germany’s ‘Red Oskar’ set for more electoral success: Middle East: TV executive faces jail in Dubai for barely visible cannabis speck: Starbucks mother flouted the law, say religious police in Saudi Arabia: Latin America: Cubans hope for more self-employment

FEC Warns McCain on Campaign Spending



The nation’s top federal election official told Sen. John McCain yesterday that he cannot immediately withdraw from the presidential public financing system as he had requested, a decision that threatens to dramatically restrict his spending until the general election campaign begins in the fall.

The prospect of being financially hamstrung by the very fundraising system he helped create is the latest in a series of bitter challenges for the presumed GOP nominee, who still faces a fractured conservative coalition as he assumes the mantle of party leadership.

USA

Crack Offenders Set for Release

Mostly Nonviolent, Study Says

Most of the more than 1,500 crack cocaine offenders who are immediately eligible to petition courts to be released from federal prisons under new guidelines issued by the U.S. Sentencing Commission are small-time dealers or addicts who are not career criminals and whose charges did not involve violence or firearms, according to a new analysis by the commission staff.

About 6 percent of the inmates were supervisors or leaders of drug rings, and about 5 percent were convicted of obstructing justice, generally by trying to get rid of their drugs as they were being arrested or contacting witnesses or co-defendants before trial, according to the analysis being circulated on Capitol Hill by the commission to counter Bush administration assertions that the guidelines would prompt the release of thousands of dangerous criminals.

Soaring prices threaten economy

Inflation can undo antirecession effort

Consumer prices rose sharply last month and oil prices hit a record above $100 a barrel yesterday, fueling inflationary pressures that could complicate efforts to steer the US economy away from recession.

Despite a weakening economy that many analysts, including Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Benanke, say should put a damper on inflation, prices have kept rising at a worrisome pace. Over the past three months, inflation has surged at an annual rate of nearly 7 percent, more than double the pace in the previous three months, the Labor Department said yesterday.

Fueling the surge are energy costs, which have soared at a 44 percent annual rate since November, according to the Labor Department.

Africa

Zimbabwe inflation passes 100,000%, officials say

The official rate of annual inflation in Zimbabwe has rocketed past the 100,000% barrier, by far the highest in the world, the state central statistical office said yesterday. Second-placed Iraq has inflation of 60%, according to international estimates.

In a brief statement, the statistics office said inflation rose to 100,580% in January, up from 66,212% in December.

The new official figure was still well below the rate calculated by independent analysts. They estimate the real inflation is closer to 150,000%, citing supermarket receipts showing that the price of chicken rose more than 236,000% to 15m Zimbabwe dollars a kilogram between January 2007 and January 2008. Slower increases in prices of sugar, tea and other basics bring down the average to around 150,000%.

Kenyan beer stirs Obamamania

The close battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to secure the Democratic nomination for the US presidency is captivating many across the world.

The charismatic Illinois senator is drawing big crowds at campaign rallies in a phenomenon known as Obamamania.

Kenya, where Senator Obama’s father came from, is not immune from this either, but here, another Obama is riding on the crest of a wave.

This one, though, comes in the form of a brown bottle and is called Senator beer.

Europe

Serb rioters invade US embassy

· Body of alleged protester found in burned office

· Violence sweeps Belgrade after state rally on Kosovo

Furious Serbs protesting at western support for Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence set fire to the American embassy in Belgrade last night, as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converged on the Serbian capital. The attack on the embassy came after hundreds of protesters, watched passively by police, peeled away from the main rally to invade the building in the centre of the capital, using sticks and metal bars.

Witnesses described how the doors to the unprotected embassy – closed after being attacked earlier this week – were knocked in and used to start a fire in an office while demonstrators cheered. Firefighters swiftly put out the flames.

A charred body was later found in the embassy. “It was found at the part of the building set on fire by the protesters,” an embassy spokeswoman, Rian Harris, said. She said all embassy employees were accounted for. Belgrade’s Pink TV said the body appeared to be that of a rioter.

Germany’s ‘Red Oskar’ set for more electoral success

By Tony Paterson in Hamburg

Friday, 22 February 2008

The Factory, an “alternative” venue in Hamburg’s hip Altona district, was so full that police had to stop more people entering. Inside, crimson-faced and in front of a banner of the same hue, “Red Oskar” Lafontaine, the undisputed king of Germany’s radical new “The Left” party was deep into a tirade against warmongers and capitalist neo-liberals.

The event was The Left’s final rally in the party’s campaign for Hamburg city state elections on Sunday in which Germany’s mainstream political parties are set to lose votes to the new movement for the third time in just over a month. In similar elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony in January, The Left won seats in west Germany’s main provinces for the first time in its brief history.

Middle East

TV executive faces jail in Dubai for barely visible cannabis speck

A London-based television executive is facing four years in jail after an amount of cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar was found in his bag at Dubai airport.

Cat Le-Huy, 31, a German national and head of technology at the television production company Endemol, has been held for three weeks without charge after flying to the United Arab Emirates on 26 January.

Friends and family have been told he can expect to face the minimum jail sentence for drug possession in the tiny Arab emirate. Mr Le-Huy had been on a two-day visit to look into investing in the region. On Tuesday, the Radio 1 DJ Grooverider, whose real name is Raymond Bingham, was jailed in Dubai for four years for possession of 2.16g of cannabis with a street value of about £10.

Starbucks mother flouted the law

Say religious police in Saudi Arabia

A US businesswoman living in Saudi Arabia fears for her life after the religious police issued a rare statement defending her arrest this month for having coffee with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, a 37-year-old married mother of three, said that she was strip-searched, forced to sign false confessions and told by a judge that she would “burn in hell”, before she was released on February 4.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice denounced her publicly with a statement posted on the internet on Monday night saying that her actions violated the Sharia of the country.

“It’s not allowed for any woman to travel alone and sit with a strange man and talk and laugh and drink coffee together like they are married,” it said.

Asia

Mickey Mouse turns grey as Japan runs out of children for its theme parks

After 25 years of successfully luring children through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland is finally yielding to the realities of modern Japan: Mickey Mouse has decided to chase the “silver yen”.

The move comes because Disney, along with the rest of Japan, is running out of children. According to a report released yesterday by the Health Ministry, the customer base that has kept the Disney turnstiles spinning since the theme park opened outside Tokyo in 1983 took another sharp dive last year.

With Japan’s birthrate in decline, Disney has accepted the stark economics of the new market: the largest group of customers with the money and the time to spend a day on Splash Mountain or Pooh’s Hunny Hunt is mostly retired.

Pakistani lawyers demonstrate for reinstatement of Chaudhry

Clad in their trademark black suits and ties, Pakistan’s lawyers took to the streets today to press the winners of a parliamentary election to re-instate the deposed Chief Justice and remove President Pervez Musharraf.

The lawyers clashed with police in four of Pakistan’s main cities just hours before the Pakistan People’s Party, which won the most seats, and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), which came second, announced a breakthrough in talks to form a coalition.

Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower and successor as PPP leader, and Nawaz Sharif, the PML (N) leader, have vowed to put aside decades of hostility and form a government of national consensus.

But the lawyers’ protests spotlighted the two most fundamental issues dividing the parties — how to handle Mr Musharraf and Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice he sacked in November.

Latin America

Plane Carrying 46 Missing in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Rescue crews were sent Friday to find a commercial airliner carrying 46 people that disappeared in southwestern Venezuela. Officials feared the worst after residents reported hearing a crash in the mountains.

The flight was reported missing 30 minutes after takeoff on Thursday from the city of Merida. The rescue crews were headed to the mountainous area of Collado del Condor, at an altitude of about 13,000 feet.

Residents in the area reported by phone ”that they heard a great crash,” said Noel Marquez, the emergency management director in Merida state.

The twin-engine plane, owned by Venezuelan airline Santa Barbara, failed to contact control towers in two cities as expected after it took off en route to Simon Bolivar International Airport near Caracas, said Gen. Antonio Rivero, Venezuela’s emergency management director.

Cubans hope for more self-employment

HAVANA – Juan Bautista Gonzalez’s living room was already crowded with customers when still more shuffled in, clutching gold necklaces with broken clasps and bent rhinestone earrings. He knew he would be skipping lunch again.

“If someone comes with a job, I’ll do it. No matter what time it is,” said Gonzalez, who gave up a government mechanic’s job four years ago and now earns more fixing his neighbors’ jewelry for $1.25 per repair. “Work more, earn more.”

Gonzalez is among the 150,000 or so Cubans – a meager 3 percent of the work force – who are allowed to be self-employed.