Docudharma Times Sunday October 19

McCarthy And Cold War Era Fear And Paranoia

Return Thanks To The Irresponsible McCain/Palin

Campaign

This Is Not How One Shows Leadership    

Arduous Transition Awaits Next President

 Inherited Problems Bring Crushing Pressure

By Michael D. Shear, Michael Abramowitz, Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, October 19, 2008; Page A01

If Sen. Barack Obama wakes up as the president-elect on Nov. 5, he will immediately assume responsibility for fixing a shredded economy while the Bush administration is still in office. If Sen. John McCain wins the election, he will face an imminent confrontation over spending with a Democratic Congress called back into special session with the goal of passing a new economic stimulus package.

The man who knows too much

 He exposed the My Lai massacre, revealed Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia and has hounded Bush and Cheney over the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib… No wonder the Republicans describe Seymour Hersh as ‘the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist’.

Rachel Cooke

The Observer, Sunday October 19 2008

Every so often, a famous actor or producer will contact Seymour Hersh, wanting to make a movie about his most famous story: his single-handed uncovering, in 1969, of the My Lai massacre, in which an American platoon stormed a village in South Vietnam and, finding only its elderly, women and children, launched into a frenzy of shooting, stabbing and gang-raping. It won him a Pulitzer prize and hastened the end of the Vietnam war. Mostly, they come to see him in his office in downtown Washington, a two-room suite that he has occupied for the past 17 years. Do they like what they see? You bet they do, even if the movie has yet to be made. ‘Brad Pitt loved this place,’ says Hersh with a wolfish grin. ‘It totally fits the cliché of the grungy reporter’s den!’ When last he renewed the lease, he tells me, he made it a condition of signing that the office would not be redecorated – the idea of moving all his stuff was too much.

USA

Building Flawed American Dreams

THE RECKONING

By DAVID STREITFELD and GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Published: October 18, 2008  

SAN ANTONIO – A grandson of Mexican immigrants and a former mayor of this town, Henry G. Cisneros has spent years trying to make the dream of homeownership come true for low-income families.

As the Clinton administration’s top housing official in the mid-1990s, Mr. Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before.

Then, capitalizing on a housing expansion he helped unleash, he joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial – two companies that rode the housing boom, drawing criticism along the way for abusive business practices.

Prop. 8 battle rages over whether gay marriage would be taught in schools

?Proponents say defeat of the measure would lead to such lessons. Foes cry fear-mongering and say there’s no mention of marriage in the ballot item. The reality is complicated.

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

It was supposed to be a 90-minute excursion, a noontime field trip for a group of San Francisco charter school students and their parents to see the kids’ lesbian teacher marry her partner in a wedding performed by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

But after the event was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and picked up by cable television and the Internet, the first-graders at Creative Arts Charter School found themselves at the center of the hottest battle in the campaign over gay marriage: the question of whether failure to pass Proposition 8 would result in widespread classroom discussions of same-sex unions.

Supporters of the constitutional amendment, under which marriage would be defined as only between a man and a woman, contend that if Proposition 8 does not pass, gay marriage will be taught in public schools. “We are already seeing that happen,” said Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Yes on 8.

Asia

Convert or we will kill you, Hindu lynch mobs tell fleeing Christians

As a fresh wave of sectarian violence is unleashed across the Indian state of Orissa, Gethin Chamberlain talks to homeless survivors in Kandhamal district who were forced to abandon their religion

 Gethin Chamberlain

The Observer, Sunday October 19 2008

Hundreds of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa have been forced to renounce their religion and become Hindus after lynch mobs issued them with a stark ultimatum: convert or die.

The wave of forced conversions marks a dramatic escalation in a two-month orgy of sectarian violence which has left at least 59 people dead, 50,000 homeless and thousands of houses and churches burnt to the ground. As neighbour has turned on neighbour, thousands more Christians have sought sanctuary in refugee camps, unable to return to the wreckage of their homes unless they, too, agree to abandon their faith.

TV’s Koran Idol keeps Afghan clerics at bay





From The Sunday Times

October 19, 2008

Christina Lamb in Kabul

It is just before dusk at the Marco Polo wedding hall on the outskirts of Kabul and an excited crowd is gathering for the final of Afghanistan’s latest reality television show.

Over the past two months the contestants have been whittled down from 250 to just two men and a schoolgirl, each hoping to receive the most votes from viewers.

One of the finalists is Ahmad Hasib Kazemi, 31, who sells shoes in the bazaar. He had to go without food to buy his suit and has spent the day fixing the generator so his wife, three children and assorted cousins can watch the show. “I really hope I win,” he says. “I’ve told all my friends and family to vote.

Europe

Black MP in warning to ‘racist’ Italy

The spectre of fascism is ‘haunting the country’ after a spate of attacks on African immigrants

Tom Kington in Rome

The Observer, Sunday October 19 2008

Italy’s only black MP has warned of growing racism after a surge in attacks on immigrants across the country.

‘Immigrants are becoming the enemy,’ said Jean-Léonard Touadi, 49, who was born in Congo and went to Italy in 1979. ‘With an economic crisis under way, Italy has found a scapegoat to blame its woes on.’

Touadi, a member of the opposition Values party, spoke out after a spate of assaults on immigrants. In Milan last month Abdul William Guibre, 19, originally from Burkina Faso, was beaten to death in an attack which made headlines across Italy. After accusing Guibre of stealing a packet of biscuits, a bar owner and his son called him a ‘dirty black’ and set on him with a metal pole.

Haider goes to his grave, pursued by controversy

As 25,000 mourn, a German tabloid reveals where the Austrian right-winger spent his final hours

By Sylvia Westall in Klagenfurt

Sunday, 19 October 2008  

About 25,000 people filled the streets of Klagenfurt, Jörg Haider’s former political stronghold, for the funeral rites yesterday of Austria’s far-right populist leader, who died last weekend in a car crash while drunk.

The controversial man was newsworthy to the last. Even as lederhosen-clad mourners left wreaths in tribute to their political hero, a German tabloid was revealing details of his final night out. Bild published pictures of him at the launch of a new newspaper, posing with a mini-dressed blonde draped all over him. Then, said Bild, he headed not for home, but for Stadtkrämer, a local gay bar.

Africa

Five million people face starvation in troubled Zimbabwe

Power-sharing talks deadlocked while UN warns of humanitarian emergency caused by failed harvest

?By Raymond Whitaker

Sunday, 19 October 2008

Aid experts are warning that millions of Zimbabwe’s people face starvation as the country’s political leaders remain deadlocked over a power-sharing deal and the economy heads for total collapse.

While officials of the Southern African Development Community prepare for a meeting tomorrow in Swaziland, where they will try to persuade President Robert Mugabe and opposition leaders to resume negotiations, the United Nations World Food Programme has warned that the number of Zimbabweans needing food aid is expected to double by early next year, to just over five million. The UN has appealed for an extra $140m (£81m) to deal with the crisis.

Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota threatens to topple the ANC >

The leader of a breakaway party explains his bid to halt tribalism and white flight



From The Sunday Times

October 19, 2008

RW Johnson in Pretoria

The former defence minister who is set to smash the mould of South African politics by breaking away from the African National Congress (ANC) and founding a new party will welcome whites, Indians and other minorities into its leadership.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, 60, vowed to make a clean break with the past through a party that will be pro-business, free from the rhetoric of Marxism and determined to end the “white flight” that drains talent from South Africa.

The country is estimated to have lost more than 800,000 whites since 1995, many of them disillusioned by violent crime and a government that discriminates against them.Would he put a stop to white flight?

Middle East

Hamas strengthens hold on Gaza Strip

Political split between two Palestinian territories appears irreversible  

Associated Press  

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip is now virtually complete.

Since the summer, the Islamic militants have silenced and disarmed their remaining opponents, filled the bureaucracy with their supporters, and kept Gaza’s economy afloat, even if just barely, despite a 16-month-old international embargo and border blockades by Israel and Egypt.

With nothing in sight to weaken Hamas’ grip, the political split between Gaza and the West Bank – the two territories meant to make up a future Palestinian state – looks increasingly irreversible.

‘I Can’t Live Here Anymore’

In a Baghdad District, Scars of Sectarian Violence Run Deep

By K.I. Ibrahim

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, October 19, 2008; Page A20

BAGHDAD — The sectarian violence that raged in Baghdad during the past three years has left the city polarized, with mixed neighborhoods undergoing what amounts to sectarian cleansing. The few Sunni families in Shiite neighborhoods were forced to move to areas where Sunnis predominate, while Shiites in largely Sunni neighborhoods took the opposite path.

Sectarianism has taken hold, despite the government’s efforts to undo the process by allowing the displaced families to return to their homes. A psychological barrier has been established that looks set to remain in force, maybe for several generations, no matter what the authorities do.

Latin America

Oil-Fueled Nation Feels Pinch

As the Price of Crude Plunges, Venezuela Is Poised to Face a Lot of Pain

By Juan Forero

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, October 19, 2008; Page A18

BOGOTA, Colombia — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has delighted in the economic meltdown in the United States, mocking the Bush administration for its bailout plan and predicting the end of American economic dominance.

“The U.S. model of capitalism is collapsing,” Chávez, a self-avowed socialist, told reporters recently.

But Venezuela’s oil-fueled economy is deeply intertwined with the United States and is poised to face major challenges as the crisis pushes down the price of crude, economic analysts and oil experts say