Docudharma Times Sunday September 21

Sarah Palin Is Responsible For Nothing

As The McCain Campaign Now Governs Alaska And

The Up Coming Debate Will Have No Difficult Questions

Because Her “Expertise” May Shine Through  

Tab for financial bailout: $700 billion  

The White House submits a proposal to Congress seeking unprecedented authority with no oversight.

 By Peter G. Gosselin and Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

September 21, 2008    

WASHINGTON — Unveiling its plan to rescue the nation’s financial system from near-paralysis, the Bush administration is asking Congress for the authority to spend $700 billion and for powers to intervene in the economy so sweeping that they have virtually no precedent in U.S. history.

The proposal, set out in a spare 2 1/2 page document sent to congressional leaders Saturday, would in effect allow the Treasury secretary to set up a government investment bank to buy up the billions of dollars of the mortgagebacked securities now clogging the arteries of the global financial system.

The dollar figure alone is remarkable, amounting to 5% of the nation’s gross domestic product. But the most distinctive — and potentially most controversial — element of the plan is the extent to which it would allow Treasury to act unilaterally:

Alaskans angered that Palin is off-limits

Queries are directed through the McCain campaign machine. Her political capital at home is eroding.

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 21, 2008  

ANCHORAGE — Jerry McCutcheon went to Sarah Palin’s office here last week to request information about the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, the scandal that for weeks has threatened to overshadow the governor’s role as Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate.

McCutcheon was given a phone number in Virginia to call: the national headquarters of the McCain-Palin campaign.

Why, he wanted to know, did he have to call a campaign office 4,300 miles away to find out what was going on in Alaska government? The longtime civic activist phoned his local state representative, Les Gara, who quickly filed a protest.

These days, many such queries about Monegan — or anything else involving Palin’s record as governor — get diverted to McCain staffers.

USA

Candidates spend at record rate in August

$3 million a day; Obama leads McCain in fundraising, cash on hand

Associated Press  

WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain together spent $94 million in August, a record spree mostly aimed at about a dozen states that will probably decide their historic presidential contest.

Their campaign finance reports, filed before Saturday’s midnight deadline, shows that more than half of their $3-million-a-day spending rate was devoted to advertising that became increasingly negative during the month.

No Longer Ready to Retire

?In Economic Crisis, Nest Eggs Vanish, as Do Long-Held Dreams

By Brigid Schulte

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 21, 2008; Page C01  

The American Psychological Association released a report showing that the No. 1 cause of anxiety for Americans is money fears.

That was in June.

After last week — which saw volatile market swings, major bankruptcies of once-stable and venerated Wall Street firms and the largest government intervention in the market since the Depression — people across the Washington area reported not only heightened anxiety about money, but uncertainty, if not outright fear.

Asia

Hundreds feared dead in blast at Pakistan hotel



Jason Burke and Mubashir Zaidi in Islamabad

The Observer,

Sunday September 21 2008

A huge explosion ripped through part of a luxury hotel in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad yesterday, killing scores of people and injuring many more. The death toll may reach into the hundreds.

The blast, one of the biggest seen in Pakistan in recent years, happened at the Marriott hotel at around 8pm. The hotel was left burning fiercely all along its façade, with fears that it could totally collapse while other buildings in the vicinity were also left damaged.

Scores of bodies were being brought out of the flaming building as rescue workers battled the blaze in scenes of chaos. At least four Britons were injured in the attack, two of them children. Both sustained superficial injuries and were discharged from hospital last night while the two adults remained in hospital overnight for observation.

Milk scandal blows away China’s feel-good mood

Contaminated baby formula, the return of pollution and other troubles have led many to think the Olympics were a curse

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

Sunday, 21 September 2008    

The widening scandal over contamination of milk products in China, which spread last week from baby formula to liquid milk, ice-cream and yoghurt, has not only blown away the last lingering shreds of post-Olympics euphoria, but has also reinforced a widespread superstition involving the mascots for the Games.

For the Olympics and Paralympics, which ended last Wednesday, China came up with six cuddly fuwa, or mascots. But each has become associated in the public mind with recent troubles in the country.

One fuwa is a panda, the symbol of Sichuan, which was struck by an earthquake. Another resembles a torch, which is said to represent the protests against the international Olympic torch relay. A Tibetan antelope is seen as a symbol of the unrest in that region in March; a swallow that looks like a kite has been linked to a deadly train crash in Shandong province; and a fish was taken to represent widespread flooding in southern and central China.

Europe

Spain braced for opening of civil war’s mass graves



Giles Tremlett in Madrid

The Observer,

Sunday September 21 2008

Investigators digging into the brutal repression unleashed by General Francisco Franco will this week complete a list of 130,000 names of those killed during and after Spain’s civil war as the country prepares to face the full horror of what has often been treated as a shameful national secret.

The list will be handed over to the controversial magistrate, Baltasar Garzón, whose preliminary investigations have already provoked a fierce row over whether a mass grave thought to contain the remains of the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca should be exhumed.

Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago has become the latest intellectual heavyweight to join the clamour for graves across the country, including that of Lorca, to be opened up so that the victims can be properly identified and their remains handed to relatives.

Secret files point to Markov’s killer



From The Sunday Times

September 21, 2008  

David Leppard

SCOTLAND YARD detectives investigating the unsolved murder of Georgi Markov, the dissident from Bulgaria killed with a poison-tipped umbrella in London 30 years ago, are preparing to examine secret files showing how the Bulgarian spy service spent £50,000 setting up the attack.

In an attempt to resolve one of the cold war’s most enduring mysteries, a team from the Yard’s counterterrorist command travelled to Sofia earlier this year to request the files from the archives of the Bulgarian secret service.

Yard sources have indicated that police are now hoping to press charges against the key suspect in the case, a Danish petty crook codenamed Agent Piccadilly.

Africa

Intimidation and fear as Mugabe says he is in the ‘driving seat’

 Despite Zimbabwe’s President agreeing to share cabinet posts with the opposition, a sense of mistrust still exists. By Raymond Whitaker

 Sunday, 21 September 2008

Berison Bvirivindi, a street vendor, thought the peace deal signed by Zimbabwe’s leaders last week meant it was safe to wear a T-shirt showing support for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). He ended up in hospital.

Still in severe pain from his injuries, Mr Bvirivindi said he had been seized at his stall in Harare’s Road Port bus station by a gang from Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF youth militia – the same thugs who terrorised Zimbabweans earlier this year to such an extent that the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, quit the second round of a presidential election he was leading to spare his followers further violence.

Thabo Mbeki forced out as rival Jacob Zuma seizes power>

An epic battle for power has ended with a ‘Zulu peasant’ ousting a president in South Africa

 From The Sunday Times

September 21, 2008

RW Johnsonin Cape Town

SOUTH AFRICA’S president, Thabo Mbeki, was toppled from power yesterday by his rival Jacob Zuma, president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), when its national executive committee took the decision to sack him.

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, announced that the executive had “decided to recall the president of the republic before his term of office expires”.

Mbeki, 66, instructed his office to issue a statement saying: “The president has obliged and will step down after all constitutional requirements have been met.”

Middle East

Tucked in a Tehran Neighborhood, One Man’s Temple of Modern Art



By Thomas Erdbrink

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, September 21, 2008; Page A19

TEHRAN — It’s the statue of a lion in the front yard, welded from old engine parts, that makes 31 Soheil Alley stand out in a Tehran neighborhood of palatial houses surrounded by high walls. Unlike the barricaded, burglar-alarmed entrances of its neighbors, the door to 31 is wide open, inviting all to enter.

A modest hall gives way to an astonishing seven-story labyrinth of layered-brick passageways, rugged steel staircases and rooms with hidden alcoves. Visitors come upon collections of experimental video art, couches shaped like octopuses and abstract warriors made from pieces of wire.

Scandal-hit Olmert announces resignation



By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced his resignation at a cabinet meeting on Sunday, but the scandal-hit leader could remain in office for weeks or months until a new government is formed.

In broadcast remarks, Olmert said he was announcing his decision “to resign from my post as prime minister of Israel”.

Olmert, who faces criminal indictment in corruption investigations, said at the weekly cabinet session that he believed he was acting “properly and in accordance with good governance” in stepping down.