Down In Flames Or Up In Smoke Goes That Bill
Perhaps The Congress Will Listen To The People
Oh Never Mind Money And Power Is More
Important
Lawmakers Grope for Resolution as They Attempt to Avoid Economic Calamity
By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: September 29, 2008
WASHINGTON – Defying President Bush and the leaders of both parties, rank-and-file lawmakers in the House on Monday rejected a $700 billion economic rescue plan in a revolt that rocked the Capitol, sent markets plunging and left top lawmakers groping for a resolution.
The stunning defeat of the proposal on a 228-205 vote after marathon talks by senior Congressional and Bush administration officials lowered a fog of uncertainty over economies around the globe. Its authors had described the measure as essential to preventing widespread economic calamity.
Panic grips world’s markets
Shock as American rescue plan rejected on a day of nationalisations and bail-outs
Andrew Clark in New York
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 30 2008
The US government’s $700bn bail-out of the banking industry collapsed yesterday as Congress defied the White House by voting down the plan, sending Wall Street stocks plummeting and spreading shockwaves through the global economy.In a snub to George Bush’s authority, Republicans in the House of Representatives led a rebellion which defeated the rescue by 228 votes to 205.
As alarm mounted on Wall Street about the stability of the financial system, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by 777 points to 10,365 – its biggest percentage fall for seven years and its worst drop ever in terms of points.
USA
In Nevada, Democrats are on a roll
Obama has built one of the most formidable political operations the state has ever seen, and party registration is up. Even so, the presidential race there remains a dead heat.
By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 30, 2008
RENO — By just about any measure, now is a fine time to be a Democrat in Nevada.Barack Obama has built one of the most formidable political operations the state has ever seen. Party registration is soaring. The Republican governor, Jim Gibbons, may be the most unpopular state executive in the country.
The economy, which thrived for decades, is in frightfully poor shape — for months Nevada has led the nation in home foreclosures, and unemployment stands at a 23-year high — handing Democrats a bludgeon with which to pound the GOP.For all of that, however, the state’s presidential race is a dead heat, making Nevada one of a dozen or so states that could decide the contest between Sen. John McCain and the senator from Illinois.
Gates Criticizes Conventional Focus At Start of Iraq War
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By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 30, 2008; Page A04
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday criticized the shock-and-awe strategy of the 2003 Iraq invasion and said the Pentagon’s narrow focus on conventional combat operations proved costly when U.S. ground troops had to switch gears to try to stabilize that country.The Pentagon bureaucracy failed to respond quickly enough to the military’s need for innovative counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates said, and he called for reforms to make the institution more agile and flexible.
Middle East
Olmert: Israel has to return occupied lands to achieve peace
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 30 2008
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said his country would have to withdraw from “almost all” the land it captured in the 1967 war and divide Jerusalem in order to agree long-awaited peace deals with the Palestinians and Syria.His comments came in a newspaper interview ahead of the Jewish new year but days after his resignation. He remains in his post as a caretaker prime minister, but is thought unlikely to be able to follow through with any of his proposals.
In the interview with Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer, two senior political columnists for Yedioth Ahronoth, Olmert talked about peace with the Palestinians and the Syrians, as well as continuing to maintain his innocence over a series of high-profile corruption investigations, which forced him to step down.
Young Iraqi girls turned into perfect weapon
From The Times
September 30, 2008
Deborah Haynes in Baquba
The teenage girl, handcuffed to an iron railing, hangs her head as an Iraqi explosives expert cuts the trigger cords on a suicide vest strapped to her body. Gunshots echo in the distance as the white vest, carrying about 30lb (15kg) of explosives, is peeled off the 15-year-old, leaving her standing in the street in a sleeveless, orange frock.The footage was taken in August, when police said they found Rania Ibrahim Mutlib in a side road in Baquba, north of Baghdad, having failed to detonate her charge.
When The Times met her in a police interrogation cell this week with her mother and grandmother, she claimed that she had been drugged and had no intention of killing herself or of becoming the 16th teenage girl bomber said to have struck in the past year.
Asia
Sumo hit by match-fixing claims
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday September 30 2008 08:12 BST
A sumo wrestler who was banned for life after allegedly smoking marijuana stunned the ancient sport again yesterday with accusations that he had been forced to throw bouts in exchange for cash.“I was forced to accept money and put in unfair bouts,” said Russian-born Wakanoho, who is suing the Japan sumo association in an attempt to rescue his career.
“If I refused I was bullied. I want to make the sumo world clean again.”
The association is suing Shukan Gendai, a weekly magazine, for defamation after it printed allegations of match-fixing last year.
Chinese arrests over milk scandal
Chinese police have arrested 22 people suspected of producing melamine – the chemical found in milk products which have made thousands of babies ill.
The BBC
The arrests took place on 17 September, but were only reported widely on Monday evening.Police are said to have raided dairy farms and milk purchasing stations in northern Hebei province, and seized more than 220kg (485lb) of melamine.
Chinese milk products have been recalled from all around the world.
Click here to see a map of countries affected
As well as making about 50,000 babies ill, the tainted milk products have also been blamed for the deaths of four babies.
The Chinese news agency Xinhua said that of the 22 people detained, 19 were managers of 17 pastures, breeding farms and milk purchasing stations.
Europe
Flawed victory for ‘last dictator’ Lukashenko as Belarus elections denounced
From The Times
September 30, 2008
Roger Boyes in Moscow
It should have been a triumph for the black arts of spin-doctoring. For months Alexander Lukashenko, often dubbed the last European dictator, has been advised by the veteran British consultant Lord Bell on how to appear to be the very model of a modern democratic statesman.Today however Western monitors denounced the Belarussian parliamentary elections – in which all the President’s men swept to victory – as flawed.
Far-right leader claims he is ‘real victor’ in Austria >
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
He has been linked to neo-Nazi groups, says women in Islamic dress are “female ninjas” and wants to take Austria out of the EU. But after his huge gains in Sunday’s general election, the far-right leader Heinz- Christian Strache is bidding to become his country’s next chancellor.The extreme right romped home with a record 29 per cent of the vote, inflicting disaster on Austria’s two main parties, the Social Democrats and the centre-right People’s Party, whose grand coalition government collapsed due to in-fighting.
Africa
Stolen tanks add urgency to piracy fight
U.S. warships surrounded the hijacked MV Faina and its military cargo off Somalia’s coast Monday.
By ROB CRILLY | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 30, 2008 edition
Nairobi, Kenya – American and European warships surrounded a hijacked Ukrainian freighter anchored off the coast of Somalia Monday, after the MV Faina – with its cargo of Russian tanks, antiaircraft guns, and rocket-propelled grenades – was snatched last Thursday by pirates apparently linked to Somalia’s Islamist movement.The prospect of insurgents controlling a ship loaded with weapons seems to have prompted international navies to get serious about fighting piracy in what have become the world’s most dangerous waters.
“The sheer volume of weapons on board, and the fact that it could even represent the turning point in the Islamists’ war on land, could serve to force the international community to get serious, albeit rather later,” says Bruno Schiemsky, a recent chairman of the United Nations’ Monitoring Group on Somalia.
Obama’s Plans to Fight Poverty in Africa
Is it legitimate to think that Barrack Obama as President of the United States would dessociate himself from Africa and behave instead like prior European American Presidents who have been privileging Western interests over African interests in their foreign policies?
New York – États-UnisObama’s strongest commitment is eliminating the malaria disease within the next seven years, which will be achieved through two important projects: the Small and Medium Enterprise Fund and the Health Initiative 2020. He is committed to a goal of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He will embrace the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 by fighting corruption, which he will make a human rights issue. Obama believes that terrorism and poverty have ties. His other commitment is that he will work to erase the global primary education gap by 2015 by establishing a two billion dollar Global Education Fund. He has demonstrated a passion to help indigent people, on the footsteps of his father and his mother. Yet African skeptics still warn that Obama is not one of theirs.
Latin America
Ecuador votes to lock in its shift to the left
Ecuadoreans easily approved a new socialist-leaning charter Sunday.
By Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 30, 2008 edition
Bogotá, Colombia – The overwhelming approval by Ecuadoreans of a new Constitution that gives leftist President Rafael Correa a tighter grip on the economy puts the country firmly on a socialist track similar to Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.
“Today Ecuador decided to found a new country,” Mr. Correa said Sunday after nearly 70 percent of Ecuadoreans voted for the new charter. “The old power structures have been defeated.”
With the passage of the new Constitution, Ecuador became the first country after Venezuela in the region to institutionalize its leftward shift, says Larry Birns, director of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs in Washington.
“This is a lurch to the left on the part of Correa,” he says.
But Mr. Birns warns that Ecuador’s move does not make it a lackey of Venezuela, which under Mr. Chávez has tried to take leadership of Latin America’s leftward shift. “Ecuador is marching in a similar direction as Venezuela, but to a different beat,” Birns says.
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could you tell me if the asian stock market fell apart and plummeted today?
i keep hearing people say that without this bail-out ALL the world will crash. Are the asian markets crashing?
China’s reputation is suffering from its economic growing pains. The inherent ugliness of unfettered capitalism is apparent to all who live outside their society. Whatever it takes to make a buck. But there is so much more to consider about China.
My friend Zhao is the daughter of a brilliant man who, at twenty, barely an adult, was pulled from school during the Cultural Revolution and given charge of running a town. He didn’t want that life–he is an academic who now serves as Dean of Education at his university in Wuhan–but he was given no choice. Zhao is in the U.S. studying ESL, and she will return to China to teach and to take care of her parents in their old age–such respect. Zhao came here, 24 years old, afraid–it was the first time she ever left her home except to visit relatives in other parts of China. She lived in a neighborhood that was not hospitable to foreign students. Lots of muggings. She is a sweet person who misses her family and friends. She is a rational person. I’m glad that we can keep our friendship alive over the internet when she returns home.
We have an office of the Confuscious Institute on our campus, an organization with the responsibility of spreading an understanding of Chinese language and culture to the west. Six new teachers arrived from China this year (school year): friendly people. The head of the institute is a campus faculty member who was moved from mainland China to Taiwan when he was a child. He never knew a Communist before he moved to the U.S., but he has been the mentor for the Chinese students and visiting faculty members, and he keeps his home open for them.
Another Asian friend from South Korea told me that there is a saying in her country, “Governments are bad; people are good.” To me, when I think of globalization, it’s all about the people. Am I alone in this?