Docudharma Times Thursday October 16

What The Pundits See And Hear

John McCain On The Attack How Wonderful

He’s A Winner

What The People Who Count Want. That Would Be The Voters

A Discussion Of The Actual Issues

Barack Obama Is The Real Winner    

McCain Presses Obama in Final Debate

 

By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: October 15, 2008  

Senator John McCain used the final debate of the presidential election on Wednesday night to raise persistent and pointed questions about Senator Barack Obama’s character, judgment and policy prescriptions in a session that was by far the most spirited and combative of their encounters this fall.

At times showing anger and at others a methodical determination to make all his points, Mr. McCain pressed his Democratic rival on taxes, spending, the tone of the campaign and his association with the former Weather Underground leader William Ayers, using nearly every argument at his disposal in an effort to alter the course of a contest that has increasingly gone Mr. Obama’s way.

Draft agreement promises troop withdrawal by 2011

 

Simon Tisdall

The Guardian, Thursday October 16 2008

US troops will withdraw from Iraq by December 31 2011 and American and British soldiers deployed there in the interim period could face prosecution in Iraq’s courts for serious, premeditated “off-duty” crimes under the terms of a draft status of forces agreement outlined yesterday by officials in Baghdad and Washington.

The draft agreement, which is intended to replace the UN security council mandate that legitimised the US-led invasion in March 2003, and subsequent occupation, follows months of fraught negotiations. It must be ratified by the Iraqi parliament before the end of the year.

USA

Stocks Sink as Gloom Seizes Wall St.

Bernanke Forecasts Prolonged Economic Turmoil; Dow Plunges 7.9%

  By David Cho and Ylan Q. Mui

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, October 16, 2008; Page A0

Troubling new signs of a deep economic malaise touched off some of the worst stock market losses in history yesterday, a day after the government announced a massive intervention that officials hoped would boost investor confidence.

New data showed that consumers stayed away from malls, nixed plans for new cars and made do with old clothes in September, forcing the largest monthly decline in retail sales in three years. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke added to the gloom, cautioning that the nation should not expect an economic rebound any time soon.

Report: Taxpayers paid for GOP politicking in 2006 elections

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By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – The White House dispatched cabinet members and other agency officials to more than 300 events nationwide to help Republican candidates in the run-up to the 2006 midterm elections, according to a House of Representatives committee report.

Taxpayers paid for more than half of the events, the report said.

The draft report, issued Wednesday by California Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, accuses the White House of requesting the travel to save money for the Republican congressional campaigns.

Europe

Russian lawyer at centre of poisoning investigation

• Substance found in car believed to be mercury

• Putin critic forced to miss start of Politkovskaya case

Luke Harding in Moscow

The Guardian, Thursday October 16 2008  

Russia’s leading human rights lawyer is at the centre of an investigation by French police after claiming she had been poisoned by a suspicious substance found hidden in her car.

Detectives in the town of Strasbourg were examining whether Karinna Moskalenko – the country’s most prominent defender of Kremlin opponents – had been deliberately poisoned.

Moskalenko said on Monday her husband discovered “large” quantities of a mercury-like substance hidden under her car seat. Moskalenko had been due yesterday to attend the Moscow trial of three men accused of involvement in the murder of the crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, was shot dead two years ago outside her Moscow flat.

From public enemy to Turkey’s national hero

Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was persecuted in Turkey. Now he is a global ambassador for his homeland. Boyd Tonkin meets him

Thursday, 16 October 2008

The route that takes an enemy of the state on to the global stage as a national icon can be as short as the flight from Istanbul to Frankfurt. This week, Turkey is enjoying its status as “country of honour” at the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair. The programme, backed by the government in Ankara, began with an address by a writer who knows that parts of his country’s armed forces once plotted to assassinate him. Orhan Pamuk may have won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, but in that year he also survived a prosecution for “insulting Turkish identity”, under the infamous but now reformed Article 301 of the penal code, after he spoke abroad about the Armenian massacres of the First World War

Asia  

Thai and Cambodia temple dispute spills over into deadly fighting



From The Times

October 16, 2008

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor

Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged rockets and gunfire across their shared border yesterday in a deadly battle over a trifling cause: a small and remote plot of jungle adjoining an ancient Hindu temple.

At least two Cambodian soldiers were reported to have been killed and five Thais and two Cambodians were injured in the afternoon battle at the mountain-top Preah Vihear temple, a tourist attraction and World Heritage Site, which is 1,100 years old.

The Thai Foreign Minister urged his countrymen to flee Cambodia for fear of reprisals after an incident that will enrage nationalists further in both countries and make a diplomatic solution to the decades-old border dispute more difficult than ever.

Each side accused the other of opening fire first and gave a different account of the duration of the battle

Amid Low Morale, Germany Set to Extend Afghanistan Mandate

The German parliament is set to extend the Bundeswehr’s mandate in Afghanistan on Thursday, but with increased security threats, morale among troops on the ground is low.

AFGHANISTAN | 16.10.2008

Five years ago, when the German army began its mission in northern Afghanistan, the region was regarded as one of the country’s safest. Now, the solders run the daily risk of “being caught in an explosive or being shot at,” one officer said.

During the last year, the security situation has deteriorated not only in the north, but all across Afghanistan.

Germany’s parliament is set to extend the mandate for the German mission to Afghanistan on Thursday, Oct. 16, by 14 months instead of the usual 12, in order to bridge a gap caused by upcoming elections in autumn 2009.

The Afghan presidential election, likely to shape the country’s future for years to come, is scheduled around the same time, making a further escalation of violence in the coming year more than likely.

Middle East

In global crisis, oil insulates Gulf

 Economists say that Arab states such as Saudi Arabia will feel the pinch, but a year of record oil prices provides a deep cushion

By Caryle Murphy | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 16, 2008 edition

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – Against the backdrop of an imploding global financial system, one of the world’s richest men unveiled plans to build the world’s tallest building in Saudi Arabia.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz revealed a display model of Kingdom City, a $26.7 billion mini-city to be constructed near the Red Sea port of Jeddah. At its center will be a tower more than a kilometer high (the exact height is a secret) for offices, luxury residences, and a five-star hotel.

With a fortune estimated by Forbes at $21 billion, Prince Alwaleed, chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, doesn’t have to worry about getting a line of credit, even in these financially shaky times.

Still, his apparent confidence about the future reflects the predominant view in oil-rich Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors about how the fiscal tsunami sweeping the rest of the globe may affect them.

Despite repercussions here that have included a downward slide in oil prices and trouble in stock markets, government officials and outside experts forecast that their region will suffer, but not as much as most.

Up North, Hothouse of Tension in Lebanon >



By ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: October 15, 2008

TRIPOLI, Lebanon – The crumbling streets of this ancient northern city are starting to resemble a battleground.

A string of bombings over the past two months has left at least 20 people dead, most of them Lebanese Army soldiers, and scores of wounded. Hard-line Sunni Islamist leaders have gained new followers here, fueling sectarian violence that has scarred the city and its economy. Already, the president of neighboring Syria has warned that northern Lebanon has become “a real source of extremism and a danger to Syria.”

Africa

Zimbabwe foes ‘near cabinet deal’

 Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and a top opposition official have said a deal could be reached shortly to name a power-sharing government.

The BBC  

One of Mr Mugabe’s officials says changes could be made to the cabinet posts named last week, the state-owned Herald newspaper reports.

However, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was less optimistic, saying the talks had been “quite circuitous”.

Former South Africa leader Thabo Mbeki has led two days of crisis talks.

Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai signed a deal to share power last month but they have since been unable to agree on which party should hold which cabinet posts.

EU grants 15 million euro food aid for east Africa



16/10/2008 08:38 BRUSSELS, Oct 16 (AFP)

he European Commision on Thursday announced 15 million euros (20 million dollars) of emergency food aid for victims of drought and soaring food prices in five east African countries.

More than 10 million people will benefit from the new funding, with the biggest share going to Ethiopia and Somalia and smaller amounts to Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti.

The money released by the EU’s executive arm will help provide food aid, including supplies for malnourished children, along with short-term support for farmers, including the distribution of seeds and tools.