Docudharma Times Monday October 20

What Is Real America?

Its All Americans No Matter Who

Or What They Are    

Barack Obama has advantage of big bucks, a big name: Colin Powell

 News of the Republican’s endorsement and a record $150 million raised in a month propel the Democrat as he campaigns in GOP country.

By Mark Z. Barabak and Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 20, 2008

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Barack Obama strongly boosted his presidential prospects on Sunday, winning the coveted endorsement of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and ringing up a staggering $150 million in contributions in a single month of fundraising.

The endorsement from one of the country’s most respected statesman-soldiers enhances Obama’s credibility on national security issues, and his huge cash haul allows him to extend his crucial advantage on the television airwaves.

The Illinois senator’s showing came as he continued to drive deep into Republican territory, stumping in North Carolina, which has not backed a Democrat for president since 1976.

Republican John McCain campaigned Sunday in must-win Ohio, where polls show a close race, and spent part of the day defending running mate Sarah Palin’s qualifications on national television and in a call with Jewish leaders.

Call Centers Are Fodder For India’s Pop Culture

 Bollywood Movie Is Latest Manifestation

By Rama Lakshmi

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, October 20, 2008; Page A10

NEW DELHI

In a training session at a suburban call center, groups of fresh-faced Indian recruits jettison their Indian names and thick accents and practice speaking English just like the Americans do. They have hesitant conversations with imaginary American customers who complain angrily about their broken appliance or computer glitch.

The instructor writes “35 = 10” on the board, as though he is gifting the recruits with a magic mantra.

“A 35-year-old American’s brain and IQ is the same as a 10-year-old Indian’s,” he explains, and urges the agents to be patient with the callers.

USA

As Fuel Prices Fall, Will Push For Alternatives Lose Steam?

OIL SHOCK

 By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, October 20, 2008; Page A01

Just four months ago, a conference here on electric cars drew four times as many people as expected. District fire marshals ordered some of the crowd to leave, and the atmosphere was more like that of a rock concert than an energy conference. A brief film depicted an electric car owner driving off with a beautiful woman to the strains of “The Power of Love” while her original companion struggles to pay for gasoline. The audience cheered.

One discordant note in the series of enthusiastic speeches came from Bill Reinert, one of the Toyota Prius designers. He cautioned that designing and ramping up production of a new car takes five years.

Yosemite glacier on thin ice

?

By Tom Knudson

[email protected]

ON THE LYELL GLACIER – As melting water gushed off the ice in a tinseled maze of rivulets and tumbled through a gaping chasm, the hikers watched, wondered and worried.

Unlike most backcountry travelers who pitch their tents along the John Muir Trail in the upper reaches of the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River, these visitors had not pushed on to scale the summit of Mount Lyell – Yosemite’s highest peak.

Instead, they scrambled up a ridge of rose-tinted granite and over a mound of dark, unstable boulders to tromp across this less well-known corner of the national park, a silvery-white sheet of ice fast becoming one of the first California landmarks to succumb to climate change.

Asia

What started as the road to recovery has turned into a highway of terror in Afghanistan

A project that was to bring economic prosperity has become a symbol of failure

 James Palmer in Kandahar

The Guardian, Monday October 20 2008

The mood inside the bus is grave. It is just before 3am. The passengers – burdened with suitcases, cardboard boxes, cloth bundles and flasks of green tea – have the air of prisoners of war being transported to an uncertain fate.

“When you’re on the bus, you don’t talk with the people you don’t know in case they’re with the Taliban,” said 19-year-old Asadullah, an electronic spare parts dealer who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.

Asadullah and his fellow 55 passengers are taking a ride along the 483-km highway that many believe is the most dangerous stretch of road on the planet. Linking Kandahar and Kabul – Afghanistan’s two largest and most economically vital cities – and completed almost five years ago, the road was meant to open a gateway to economic development and improve the quality of life for Afghans.

David Davis: We are losing Taliban battle

In an alarming dispatch from Afghanistan, the Conservative MP reveals the rampant corruption that has infected public life and threatens to destroy Nato’s hopes of bringing peace to this traumatised country

Monday, 20 October 2008

It is time to face facts in Afghanistan: the situation is spiralling downwards, and if we do not change our approach, we face disaster. Violence is up in two-thirds of the country, narcotics are the main contributor to the economy, criminality is out of control and the government is weak, corrupt and incompetent. The international coalition is seen as a squabbling bunch of foreigners who have not delivered on their promises. Although the Taliban have nowhere near majority support, their standing is growing rapidly among some ordinary Afghans.

In Kabul, foreign delegations huddle behind concrete and barbed wire, often with the Afghans’ main roads shut. That causes jams throughout the city, exacerbated by convoys of armoured four-wheel drives loaded with bodyguards that push their way through the traffic

Middle East

Israel considers reviving Saudi peace plan to resolve conflict



Toni O’Loughlin in Jerusalem

The Guardian, Monday October 20 2008

Israeli leaders are considering reviving a 2002 peace plan that offered the Jewish nation a comprehensive end to its conflict with the Arab world, Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said yesterday.

Talks with the Palestinians and Syrians have yielded little in almost a year so it may be time to consider the Saudi plan which offers Israel normal relations with all 22 Arab countries in exchange for a Palestinian state, Barak said. “We have a mutual interest with moderate Arab elements on the issues of Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas,” Barak told Israeli radio.

He added that he had discussed the plan with Israel’s prime minister elect, Tzipi Livni, who has also indicated a willingness to resuscitate the plan.

US-Iraqi security pact still unsettled

Amid growing opposition, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on Sunday for more time to negotiate a plan that could begin US troop withdrawals in June 2009.

 By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 20, 2008 edition

BAGHDAD – Opposition is growing here to a draft US-Iraq security pact that would shape the future of America’s military role in Iraq.

After months of negotiations and an end-of-year deadline looming, the ruling Shiite coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Sunday that some points “need more time, more discussion, more dialogue, and amendments to some articles.”

As Iraqi and US leaders try to sell the pact to lawmakers in Baghdad and Washington, the deal exposes a potent mix of political and military risks. Upcoming US elections and a nationwide Iraq vote in January further complicate matters.

“We’re going through a smoke-and-mirrors process,” says Toby Dodge, an Iraq analyst at Queen Mary, University of London. “Maliki is positioning himself for the most nationalistic result [but he also] knows how much he needs the Americans.”

Europe

Democracy on trial in Turkey as 86 face coup attempt charge



?By Nicholas Birch

Monday, 20 October 2008

Turkey’s most important political trial in more than a decade starts near Istanbul today, amid hopes the country may finally be able to crush shadowy criminal groups that, for decades, have hobbled its democratic development.

The 86 defendants, prominent secularists and right-wingers united only by their authoritarian ultra-nationalism, stand accused of attempting to remove the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan by force. The indictment against them, a 2,455-page door-stopper, reads like a Dan Brown novel.

Banking crisis gives added capital to Karl Marx’s writings>



From The Times

October 20, 2008

Roger Boyes in Berlin

Bankers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your bonuses, houses in Esher, holidays in the Caribbean and your Jermyn Street shirts. The upside is that you have the time, at last, to read the complete works of Karl Marx.

The prophet of revolutionaries everywhere, the scourge of capitalism, is enjoying a comeback.

In Germany Das Kapital, which for the past decade has been used mainly as a doorstop, is flying off the shelves as the newly disenfranchised business class tries to work out the root of the present crisis.

Africa

Regional leaders discuss Zimbabwe

Southern African leaders are to meet in Swaziland to try to break the deadlock over the formation of a power-sharing government in Zimbabwe.

 

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains hopeful a power-sharing deal with President Robert Mugabe can work, despite an impasse in talks last week.

Mr Tsvangirai said the deal was sound but there was “a problem of trust” between himself and Mr Mugabe.

President Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party said Zimbabwe would not bow to pressure.

Monday’s meeting is being hosted by the ruler of Swaziland, King Mswati; with the leaders of Angola and Mozambique, he forms the security panel of the Southern African Development Community.

Turmoil in Southern Africa

Our view: The world has a big stake in not letting Zimbabwe and South Africa slide into chaos

October 20, 2008

The fate of Southern Africa is hanging in the balance as a result of continuing upheavals in Zimbabwe and South Africa, where political instability and economic uncertainty are threatening to unravel the promise both nations once held out of being models for the region after emerging from white minority rule more than a decade ago. It’s a situation that demands international attention.

In Zimbabwe, negotiations between President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change collapsed over Mr. Mugabe’s refusal to make good on a power-sharing deal signed last month that would have given Mr. Tsvangirai’s party a significant role in the government.

Latin America

Drug Killings Haunt Mexican Schoolchildren



By MARC LACEY

Published: October 19, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico – The little boy, his school uniform neatly pressed and his friends gathered around, held up 10 little fingers, each one representing a dead body he said he saw outside his school one recent morning. He was not finished, though. He put down the 10 fingers and then put up 2 more. Twelve bodies in all.

“They chopped out the tongues,” the boy said, seemingly fascinated by what he saw at the mass-killing scene outside Valentín Gómez Farías Primary School three weeks ago.

“I saw the blood,” offered a classmate, enthusiastically.

“They were tied,” piped in another.