Docudharma Times Saturday December 27

Sometimes It Makes You Wonder

What Bush Is Thinking

No You Don’t

Abduction Illuminates Criminality In Mexico

U.S. Expert’s Case An Embarrassment

By William Booth

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, December 27, 2008; Page A01

SALTILLO, Mexico — They ordered the goat. That’s what the kitchen is famous for at the upscale La Principal restaurant in Saltillo, a prosperous manufacturing city in the high desert of northern Mexico. And so it was only natural that Felix Batista, an American expert in corporate security, and his new friends decided to get it. But Batista never finished his meal.

Instead, after a series of quick cellphone calls and whispered conversations, Batista excused himself from the table. On his way out, he gave the well-heeled businessmen he was meeting with his laptop, shoulder bag and a contact.

“If I’m not back,” he told his companions, according to one of them, “call these numbers.”

Like Many States, Ohio Reaches for A Lifeline

Official Says Stimulus Is ‘Essential to the Salvation of America’

By Peter Slevin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, December 27, 2008; Page A0

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As the economy sputters and tax revenue plummets, governors and mayors across the United States are lining up to ask President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to plug holes in their budgets, arguing that services will suffer and joblessness will rise if Washington does not come to the rescue.

In Ohio, which has shed 100,000 jobs in the past year, Gov.  Ted Strickland (D) and his budget team spend a lot of time delivering bad news to constituents and plotting ways to wring money from the federal government.

USA

Pardon would have cleared way for scammer to re-enter real estate biz



BY ERIK GERMAN | [email protected]

December 27, 2008

The presidential pardon Isaac Toussie came close to receiving would have cleared the way for the man who orchestrated a housing scam in Suffolk to legally re-enter the real estate industry in New York State.

Toussie pleaded guilty in 2001 to using false documents to have mortgages insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, admitting that he persuaded officials in Suffolk to overpay for land. He was sentenced in 2003 to 5 months in prison and 5 months of home detention for both cases.

Like any felon, Toussie, 37, can’t legally vote or serve on juries. State law also bars him from holding a long list of state-issued licenses, including those for private investigators, public notaries, and those issued to brokers and sellers of real estate.

The pardon that President George W. Bush awarded on Dec. 23 – and rescinded on Christmas Eve – would have allowed Toussie to ask New York’s Department of State to give back his real estate license.

Student loans turn into crushing burden for unwary borrowers

Some who think they are getting a federal loan find out later that they hold a private loan. The difference can be costly.

Kathy M. Kristof, Personal Finance

December 27, 2008

Natalie Hickey left her small hometown in Ohio six years ago and aimed her beat-up Dodge Intrepid for the West Coast. Four years later, she realized a long-held dream and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in photography from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara.

She also picked up $140,000 in student debt, some of it at interest rates as high as 18%. Her monthly payments are roughly $1,700, more than her rent and car payment combined.

“I don’t have all this debt because I was buying stuff,” said Hickey, who now lives in Texas. “I was just trying to pay tuition, living on ramen noodles and doing everything as cheaply as I could.”

Hickey got caught in an increasingly common trap in the nation’s $85-billion student loan market. She borrowed heavily, presuming that all her debt was part of the federal student loan program.

Europe

Russia renews tax bill to ousted British offices



Tom Parfitt in Moscow

The Guardian, Saturday 27 December 2008

A court in Moscow has reinstated a £2.3m tax bill for the British Council, threatening a brief thaw in Russo-British relations.

The British cultural body’s operation in Russia became the target of a Kremlin campaign last year in the wake of diplomatic skirmishes between the two countries following the murder in London of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

Its two regional offices were closed down in what the Russian foreign ministry admitted was a direct response to Britain’s “unfriendly acts”, leading to the extradition demand for Andrei Lugovoi, the businessman suspected of poisoning Litvinenko. Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, described the British Council as a “nest of spies” and the Russian head of the organisation’s alumni group was arrested on suspicion of industrial espionage in March.

Tricky times for EU as Sarkozy hands presidency to Czechs

Hyperactive French leader, who took command during series of crises, passes baton to weak and divided Prague

By John Lichfield in Paris

Saturday, 27 December 2008

The European Union faces one of the oddest baton changes in its history next week. France, in the inexhaustible shape of Nicolas Sarkozy, will hand over the presidency of the EU to an inexperienced Czech government split between a Euro-negative President and a Euro-positive Prime Minister.

The past six months have produced a noisy collision in Brussels between M. Sarkozy’s activism and vanity, and a flurry of crises, ranging from the war in Georgia to the global recession and the Irish rejection of the EU reform treaty. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Although President Sarkozy has ruffled many feathers (especially German plumage), he has also redefined the rotating presidency of the European Union. Rarely has there been an EU president who has a) wanted to be seen to be doing so much and b) been blessed with so many problems to solve.

Africa

Police accused of torturing jailed activists



Chris McGreal, Africa correspondent

The Guardian, Saturday 27 December 2008

Lawyers for leading Zimbabwean human rights activists and political detainees abducted by the state, held incommunicado for weeks and then imprisoned in defiance of a court order have accused the police of torturing them in an attempt to extract false confessions of a plot against President Robert Mugabe.

The lawyers are demanding the release of Jestina Mukoko, one of the country’s most prominent activists and head of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, and eight others who were jailed on Christmas Eve despite a judge ruling that they should be moved to hospital and examined by doctors for signs of torture.

Drug smugglers threaten to destroy democracy in Ghana

From The Times

December 27, 2008

Tristan McConnell in Accra

Ghanaians go to the polls tomorrow to vote in a presidential run-off but many fear that the amount of cocaine trafficked through the country threatens to overshadow the result and the country’s democracy.

Ghana is said to be the staging post of the cocaine route from South American coca growers to European consumers. Drug enforcement officials estimate that as much as £1.3 billion of cocaine is trafficked through West Africa each year, roughly a quarter of all the cocaine imported into Europe, and much of it destined for Britain.

Asia

From crisis to crisis: Zardari’s Pakistan

One year since Benazir Bhutto’s death, the frenzied grief that propelled her husband to the presidency is replaced by uncertainty and a creeping radicalisation. Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich report

Saturday, 27 December 2008

When the assassin struck, Asif Ali Zardari was a thousand miles away. As his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was fatally attacked at an election rally in Rawalpindi a year ago today, Mr Zardari was at one of the family homes in Dubai, out of sight and out of the political plans of the woman who was seeking her third term as Pakistan’s prime minister.

That chaotic, frenzied night – as he and the couple’s son, Bilawal, flew back to Pakistan to take charge of both the funeral arrangements of Ms Bhutto and the reins of her party – fate and the explicit wishes of his wife were conspiring to push him centre-stage in the country’s political arena.

Pakistan sends 20,000 troops to Indian frontier >

From The Times

December 27, 2008

Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

Pakistan moved thousands of troops away from its border with Afghanistan towards its Indian frontier yesterday, marking a big increase in tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours after the Mumbai terror attacks.

The move of 20,000 troops – the army’s 14th Division was being redeployed to Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border – struck a blow against attempts to thwart al-Qaeda and Taleban extremists along the Afghan border. All troop leave has also been cancelled.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, met the chiefs of his army, navy and air force to discuss “the prevailing security situation,” according to an official statement.

Middle East

Israelis reopen Gaza’s crossings

Israel has reopened crossings into the Gaza Strip to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid.



Israeli officials said Defence Minister Ehud Barak took the decision after talks with security chiefs and requests from the international community.

About 80 trucks with supplies such as medicine, food and other goods are expected to cross on Friday.

The move comes despite Israeli warnings to Palestinian militants in Gaza to stop their rocket attacks on Israel.

On Friday, two Palestinian sisters – aged five and 12 – were killed when a mortar, apparently fired by Palestinian gunmen targeting Israel, hit their home in northern Gaza.

Iraq prison riot leaves 13 dead

Authorities say a suspected Sunni Arab insurgent with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq persuaded a guard to open his cell door, then overpowered him, setting off the riot in Ramadi.

By Kimi Yoshino

December 27, 2008

Reporting from Baghdad — A suspected Sunni Arab insurgent with ties to the group Al Qaeda in Iraq persuaded a prison guard to open his cell door, then overpowered him and stole his weapon, setting off a deadly riot that left 13 people dead in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, authorities said.

Seven detainees, including the suspected insurgent, and six police officers were killed in the clash early Friday.

Three suspected Islamist militants escaped and a fourth turned himself in without incident, said Tareq Yusuf Dulaimi, Anbar province police chief. One of the escapees is considered a high-ranking leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq and has confessed to killing at least three police officers, authorities said.

Ramadi Mayor Latif Obaid Ayada blamed a negligent prison guard, who unlocked a cell while carrying his AK-47 assault rifle. “They attacked our policeman and killed him,” Ayada said. “They did their dirty trick and exploited his humanity for trying to help the sick prisoner.”