Docudharma Times Tuesday Nov. 13

(Timing or placement problems this morning.  This is repair work.  Robyn – promoted by Robyn)

This is an Open Thread: No hidden fees

Todays Headlines, ‘Hidden Costs’ Double Price Of Two Wars, Sticky issues for Coast Guard, Chalabi returns to prominence and power, Bhutto Put Under House Arrest, Panel Decries Terrorism Blacklist Process, Airline websites ‘are misleading’, The ANC is not known for its fondness of multinationals, plight of Zimbabwean refugees, Japan’s Leader Cites Limits In Global Security Abilities, Vietnam struggles with new flood disaster

USA

‘Hidden Costs’ Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say

By Josh White

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page A14

The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts’ “hidden costs”– including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.

Sticky issues for Coast Guard

By Eric Bailey, Louis Sahagun and Tim Reiterman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

November 13, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO — — The oil spill plaguing San Francisco Bay has raised fresh questions about the changing mission of the U.S. Coast Guard, with critics Monday saying the agency’s new homeland security duties have eroded its ability to tackle such environmental disasters.

In recent years, Coast Guard staff and institutional emphasis have been shifted more toward port and coastal protection duties than marine safety and environmental response. Meanwhile, important equipment used in spill response has aged, insiders say, and training drills — routine in the years after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska — are fewer and farther between.

Middle East

Chalabi returns to prominence and power

By Christian Berthelsen, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 13, 2007

BAGHDAD — Ahmad Chalabi sits in the conference room of his compound in the Green Zone preparing to meet with Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. military officer in Iraq.

Sunlight streams over expensive Persian carpets and modern Iraqi furniture. Chalabi wears a sober charcoal suit, but there’s a touch of the dandy in his lime-colored polka-dot tie.

Bhutto Put Under House Arrest

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page A12

LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov. 13 — The Pakistani government early Tuesday placed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for seven days and said her party would be barred from holding a major procession to protest emergency rule.

Bhutto had planned to lead the procession later Tuesday from Lahore to Islamabad, the capital, more than 200 miles to the west by road. But the government said it had intelligence suggesting that a suicide bombing targeting Bhutto had been planned and that her detention, in a party activist’s home in Lahore, was for her own safety.

Europe

Panel Decries Terrorism Blacklist Process

PARIS, Nov. 12 — The methods used by the United Nations and the European Union for blacklisting terrorism suspects are “totally arbitrary” and “violate the fundamental principles of human rights and rule of law,” a European human rights panel said Monday.

The Council of Europe’s legal committee urged an overhaul of international regulations so that individuals and groups being blacklisted — which imposes a freeze on assets and a ban on traveling — would have access to evidence against them, rights to a fair trial or impartial review within a reasonable time and compensation for wrongful designation as a terrorist.

Airline websites ‘are misleading’

At least 200 European airline websites are misleading the consumer, a study by the European Commission has found.

Websites are failing to show taxes and charges, and refusing to advertise the lowest fare prominently, according to the report.

The Commission has refused to name any airlines involved in order to give them time to improve their service.

Africa

Double standards

Thabo Mbeki is not big on globalisation. The South African president can reel off the names of multinationals that are ill serving the world by exploiting developing countries and the poor. Top of his list are the big pharmaceutical companies, which he accuses of profiteering on the back of misery by overstating the link between HIV and Aids in order to sell drugs that he says poison and kill more people than they save.

Starved to death: migrant’s tragic story highlights plight of Zimbabwean refugees

By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg

Published: 13 November 2007

A Zimbabwean job-seeker has died of starvation in Cape Town, in a case that has brought home the suffering faced by millions forced to flee their homeland in search of the often elusive greener pastures in neighbouring countries.

Adonis Musati, 23, worked as a police officer in eastern Zimbabwe until recently before joining the great trek of those fleeing economic hardships and political persecution to settle mostly in South Africa.

Asia

Japan’s Leader Cites Limits In Global Security Abilities

By Blaine Harden

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page A12

TOKYO, Nov. 13 — Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda affirmed on Monday the singular importance of Japan’s alliance with the United States, but also made it clear that his government’s reach in global security affairs would not be as expansive as the Bush administration wants.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Fukuda, who this week will make his first foreign visit as prime minister to Washington to meet with President Bush, said that Japan-U.S. relations are the “very foundation” of his foreign policy.

Central Vietnam struggles with new flood disaster

HANOI (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of homes were submerged in central Vietnam, the fifth major floods since August in which hundreds of people have died, roads and railways inundated, crops damaged and water-borne diseases spread. Relief workers delivered emergency supplies of household kits, clean water containers and mosquito nets in the coastal cities of Hue and Danang and the provinces of Quang Tri, Quang Ngai and Binh Dinh.

“The water is at very dangerous levels and we are not very clear on what all the needs are,” said spokesman Tao Van Dang of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Hanoi.

Latin America

‘Oldest American mural’ is found in Peruvian temple

By David Usborne in New York

Published: 13 November 2007

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed the ruins of a pre-Incan temple which appears to date back to about 2,000 years before the time of Jesus Christ and features colourful murals which may be the oldest found anywhere in the Americas.

“It’s a temple that is about 4,000 years old,” said Walter Alva, who in the 1980s led excavations of the nearby Sipan temple complex that includes the tomb of a pre-Incan king dating from about 1,700 years ago. Both sites are in the Lambayeque valley, a desert area close to the Pacific Ocean in the north of the country.