Docudharma Times Tuesday October 21

Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama

The Racist Republicans Go Running To

Every Microphone In Sight    

3 Agencies Vie for Oversight of Swaps Market



By David Cho and Zachary A. Goldfarb

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, October 21, 2008; Page D01

The government is moving forward with its first significant effort to bring oversight to a vast, unregulated corner of Wall Street that has severely exacerbated the financial crisis.

But a turf war is brewing among three leading federal agencies that have contrasting visions for how the $55 trillion market for speculative financial instruments known as credit-default swaps should be regulated.

While the credit crisis has upended global financial markets and given a lift to advocates of heightened regulation, it has not resolved traditional disputes in Washington over how deeply the government should be involved in free markets.

Iraqi fishermen face tough times

 They complain of smaller catches, and harassment by the coast guards of Iran and Kuwait.

By Raheem Salman

October 21, 2008

Reported from Faw, Iraq — Some days, fisherman Aoun Saleh loves life on the seas: the friendships, the jokes, the singing, especially when they have a big catch. But some days he rues the day he first walked onto the docks.

Like the time, he says, the Kuwaiti sailors stopped his boat in midwinter and forced the entire crew to swim in the cold waters. Or when the Iranian coast guard held him and other fishermen captive, forcing them to cook and clean for them. More recently, he said, Iranian sailors stopped his boat in Iraqi waters, stole the fish and threatened to take the Iraqis to Iran.

Saleh thinks the lack of respect is a sign of how far Iraq has fallen since Saddam Hussein was overthrown five years ago.

“They didn’t dare to do that during Saddam’s time,” he bristles. “Now we don’t know who can protect us — the British? The Americans? The government? Or none of them?

USA

An eroding model for health insurance

Working Americans once could rely on employer-based benefits. But more people are being forced into the individual market, where coverage is costly, bare-bones and precarious.

 By Lisa Girion and Michael A. Hiltzik

October 21, 2008

First of three parts

Jennifer and Greg Danylyshyn of Pasadena are conscientious parents. They keep proper car seats in their used BMW, organic vegetables in the family diet and the pediatrician’s number by the phone.

They don’t have access to the group medical insurance offered by many employers. She’s a stay-at-home mom. He’s a self-employed music supervisor in the TV and film industry. So they buy individual policies for each family member.

As careful consumers, they shopped for the best deals, weighed premium costs against benefits and always assumed they could keep their family covered.

Then last spring Blue Shield of California stunned them with a rejection notice. Baby Ava, their happy, healthy 7-pounder, was born with a minor hip joint misalignment. Her pediatrician said it was nothing serious and probably temporary.

Obama to take break to see sick grandmother

?He is scheduled to fly to Hawaii Thursday and Friday to visit her

Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama is canceling nearly all his campaign events Thursday and Friday to fly to Hawaii to visit his suddenly ill 85-year-old grandmother, his spokesman said.

Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday that Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, who helped raise him, was released from the hospital late last week. But he said her health had deteriorated “to the point where her situation is very serious.”

Middle East

A new breed grabs reins in Anbar

U.S.-backed sheiks reshaping own areas and, potentially, Iraq’s future

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post

RAMADI, Iraq – As the day crossed into dusk, Jassim Muhammed al-Sweidawi sat on brown floor cushions, chain-smoking, calmly watching the tribesmen argue over blood money.

A man from the Dulaimi tribe had killed a man from the Jenabi tribe. The elders of both tribes could have sought justice in a provincial court. They could have conferred with traditional sheiks versed in centuries-old ways of resolving disputes. But they didn’t. They came to Sweidawi, a sunburned, American-backed chieftain who in less than two years had become the most powerful man in this patch of eastern Ramadi.

Palestinian group says Israelis killed 68 children in Gaza in year



Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

The Guardian, Tuesday October 21 2008

A prominent Palestinian human rights group says it has found evidence that 68 children were killed in the Gaza Strip in the 12 months to June this year as a result of “disproportionate and excessive lethal force” by the Israeli military.

The deaths are documented, with witness testimony, in a report published today by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Many of the deaths resulted from an Israeli military incursion into Jabaliya, in eastern Gaza, in late February and early March, in which more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of them civilians, died in what Israel said was an operation to stop rockets being fired into southern Israeli towns.

Others were killed in smaller strikes before a ceasefire was reached in June between Gaza’s Hamas administration and Israel

Europe

Turkish courtroom chaos delays trial of alleged coup plotters

• Nationalist backers of 86 indicted swamp chamber

• Spate of bombings ‘aimed to provoke army uprising

Robert Tait in Istanbul

The Guardian, Tuesday October 21 2008

The start of a long-awaited trial billed as an attempt to expose Turkey’s so-called “deep state” was delayed yesterday after the court was overwhelmed by nationalist demonstrators and journalists. In an atmosphere of rising tension, the hearing in the town of Silivri, near Istanbul, was adjourned for several hours after the judges decided the tiny courtroom was too overcrowded for the trial to begin.

As hundreds of Turkish flag-waving supporters of the 86 accused gathered outside, lawyers inside complained that the crowded conditions prevented them from working properly. When the trial eventually started several hours later, it was adjourned until Thursday.

Orange Revolution implodes to leave a nation in despair



 By Askold Krushelnycky in Kiev

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

Their leaders are at war, their country is verging on bankruptcy and the Russians are growling on their doorstep. Ukrainians have been plunged into disillusion and despair by the lethal combination as they witness the death throes of the Orange Revolution that brought President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko to power.

Now, it seems, the last vestiges of the idealism which fuelled the peaceful revolution four years ago are going to the wall as Mr Yushchenko insists on calling a third parliamentary election in as many years, in a move blocked by his rival, the Prime Minister.

Africa

Power-sharing talks postponed as Tsvangirai is denied passport



?By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

Zimbabwe’s ill-fated power-sharing deal lurched closer to collapse yesterday as southern African leaders were forced to postpone an emergency summit for a week following a boycott by the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Mr Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, accused President Robert Mugabe of denying him a passport and said he would therefore not be able to travel to Swaziland for the meeting.

Mr Tsvangirai’s passport ran out of pages more than six months ago. Instead of issuing him a new one, the Mugabe regime has been handing out short-term emergency travel documents for specific trips abroad, in what the opposition sees as a campaign to curb his diplomatic forays.

South Africa’s rainbow dims >

Disillusionment creeps in more than a decade after diversity and democracy were enshrined, writes the Tribune’s Paul Salopek

By Paul Salopek | Chicago Tribune correspondent

October 21, 2008

PRETORIA, South Africa – The South Africa admired by the world-a beacon of hope and racial harmony-is getting some polish on a hilltop outside this capital city.

Freedom Park, a sprawling, $75 million monument approved nine years ago by Nelson Mandela, will formally open its gates next year, just in time for a key national election. Some 130 acres of tranquil gardens, soaring rock walls and lily-pad-dappled ponds will honor those who died in South Africa’s long struggles against colonialism, imperialism and the racist policies of apartheid.

But there are a few problems with timing.

The leader who was slated to unveil it-former President Thabo Mbeki-was toppled last month in disgrace. His party, the venerable African National Congress that guided the nation’s liberation movement, is busy chewing itself apart in tawdry power struggles. And many South Africans, disillusioned by woes ranging from mismanaged electrical plants to the proliferation of fat-cat cronyism, aren’t looking back anymore, but worriedly forward-to a future that seems somehow dimmer, tarnished by a loss of innocence.

Asia

Chinese economic growth slows to single digits



 From The Times

October 21, 2008

Jane Macartney in Beijing

China’s economic growth slowed in the third quarter of the year, slipping into single digits for the first time in four years, as the impact of an international slowdown seeped into the world’s fastest-expanding big economy.

The GDP growth rate slowed more sharply than expected to 9 per cent in the period from July to September – from 10.1 per cent in the previous quarter – as the impact of the global credit crisis and weakness in the domestic property sector was felt.

A spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, said: “The international financial market is slowing down noticeably and there are more uncertain and volatile factors in the international climate. All these factors are starting to release their negative impact on China’s economy.”

British Aid worker in Afghanistan: aid agencies to review security

Aid agencies in Afghanistan are to review their security arrangements after the Taliban shot dead a British aid worker because she was trying to spread Christianity.

By Caroline Gammell and Chris Irvine

Last Updated: 8:15AM BST 21 Oct 2008

Gayle Williams, who had been in the country for three years, was killed by two men on a motorcycle as she walked to work in the capital, Kabul.

She recently moved from Kandahar back to Kabul because it was seen as safer.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, which took place at 8am local time.

Ms Williams, 34, who held dual British-South African nationality, was working for UK-based charity Serve Afghanistan, becoming the latest Western civilian to be targeted.

Other charities have warned the situation is becoming increasingly dangerous and they would be reviewing their security arrangements following the murder.

Dominic O’Reilly, UK director of Afghanaid, said they would review their security but continue to use female staff.

Latin America

Culiacan, Mexico, feels the pain of a drug-induced recession

The Mexican government’s crackdown on drug traffickers has sent the big players underground, along with all their free-flowing dollars.

By Tracy Wilkinson

October 21, 2008

Reported from Culiacan, Mexico — A ruby-red Hummer glistened idly on the quiet showroom floor, its only visitor a janitor polishing its doors and bumpers. The dealership had no customers.

Sales are down here and at scores of businesses across this western Mexico city. But this recession has nothing to do with stock-index dives on Wall Street, the weak peso or collapsing banks. This is a narco-recession.

When army troops rolled into Culiacan this year as part of a massive government campaign to fight drug traffickers, the big players went underground. From the looks of things, they took their free-flowing dollars with them.