Docudharma Times Tuesday November 18

Someday The Bush

Nightmare Will End

Too Bad Only Fortune Tellers And The Physic Network

Know For Sure When  

Administration Moves to Protect Key Appointees

Political Positions Shifted To Career Civil Service Jobs

By Juliet Eilperin and Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, November 18, 2008; Page A01

Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department’s top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies — including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions — into senior civil service posts.

The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called “burrowing” by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs.

Similar efforts are taking place at other agencies. Two political hires at the Labor Department have already secured career posts there, and one at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to make the switch.

Top judge: US and UK acted as ‘vigilantes’ in Iraq invasion

Former senior law lord condemns ‘serious violation of international law’

Richard Norton-Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 00.01 GMT

One of Britain’s most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a “world vigilante”.

Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general’s defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.

Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith’s advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham stated: “It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had.” Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions “passes belief”

USA

Clout Has Plunged for Automakers and Union, Too



By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: November 17, 2008

DETROIT – When the leaders of the three Detroit auto companies and the United Automobile Workers union travel to Washington to make their case for a federal bailout, they will be flying into stiff headwinds of public opinion.

Thus far, much of the commentary in Washington, in the pages of major newspapers and on the Web, has been against providing financial support for the companies, which they will say they desperately need in hearings beginning on Tuesday.

The waves of criticism have been so strong that Susan Tompor, a columnist for The Detroit Free Press, was moved to write on Sunday’s front page: “I never knew Detroit was a dirty word.”

Malia and Sasha’s big move

As the Obama girls get ready to move into the White House, their parents must decide how to help them live in the fishbowl of the presidency.

By Faye Fiore and Geraldine Baum

November 18, 2008

Reporting from Washington and New York — One of the few times Barack Obama lost his famous cool during the presidential campaign was the day photographers got too close as he walked his youngest daughter, who was dressed as a corpse bride, to a Halloween party near their Chicago home.”You’ve got a shot. Leave us alone,” Obama barked.

The moment revealed Obama’s ambivalence even as he prepared to move his daughters — Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 — into the fishbowl known as the American presidency: when to share them with the country and when to snap the curtains shut.

As the youngest children to occupy the White House since the Kennedys’, the Obama daughters — or Rosebud and Radiance, as the Secret Service dubs them — are poised to serve a dual role in America’s new first family. They humanize a future president seen by some as aloof, while presenting an image of vitality to a nation mired in economic despair.

Europe

Accused appear in Russian court as Politkovskaya trial begins

• Men alleged to have aided journalist’s murderer

• Shock ruling comes after another reporter targeted

Luke Harding in Moscow

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 00.01 GMT

The trial of three men allegedly involved in the murder of the campaigning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya will be held in an open court, a judge ruled yesterday.

The unusual decision by the military court in Moscow stunned Politkovskaya’s family and lawyers, and means that for the first time details of the much-criticised police investigation will be made public.

Prosecutors had wanted the case to be heard behind closed doors, but the evidence in Russia’s most high-profile journalistic killing will now be laid out in a small, overcrowded Moscow courtroom.

Three of the men accused of acting as accomplices in her murder appeared there yesterday, inside a cage.

Georgia’s rearguard action in face of Amnesty report



By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

Fresh witness accounts have undermined Georgia’s portrayal of its onslaught on the breakaway territory of South Ossetia as a purely defensive operation, and prompted authorities to launch a fightback to counter allegations that it is rewriting the history of its six-day war with Russia.

Amnesty International will today be the latest to challenge the Georgian narrative in an authoritative 76-page report which accuses Georgia and Russia of war crimes during the short, sharp war triggered by the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on 7 August.

Middle East

Baghdad goes underground with $3bn metro plan

Rail proposal to connect Shia and Sunni areas seen as sign of growing confidence

Martin Chulov in Baghdad

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 00.01 GMT

A year ago it would have been unthinkable. After all it was a city where driving to work became a life or death decision and where residents were cooped in enclaves amid murder and mayhem.

But yesterday the mayor of Baghdad surprised everyone by announcing plans for an underground train network that will literally carve a swathe through the city’s sectarian lines.

If investors sign up, the world’s most violent capital will soon have a $3bn (£2bn) metro. Sabir al-Issawi, Baghdad’s mayor, said money had been set aside in next year’s budget for a feasibility study.

And if that goes ahead, the Iraqi government has earmarked funding that it claims could build most of the two mooted train lines without private help. Even the country’s eternal optimists were last night calling the plan ambitious, but lauding its audacity

Pills blamed for Gulf War syndrome



By Kim Sengupta

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

A landmark investigation into the causes of Gulf War syndrome has concluded that the illness was caused by troops being given nerve gas pills and exposed to pesticides.

The study in the United States, mandated by Congress and described as one of the most wide-ranging undertaken on the subject, found that the most likely cause of the illness was pyridostigmine bromide (PB) in protection pills given to American and British troops to counter the Soman nerve gas Saddam Hussein could have used in the 1991 Gulf War. US soldiers were also affected by neurotoxins in pesticides extensively used in preparation for operations.

The findings led to immediate calls for official action on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, troops’ welfare groups said the British Government must do more to help those affected and carry out its own comprehensive research. The British Government has insisted there is not enough scientific evidence so far to prove the existence of Gulf War syndrome.

Asia

In Beijing, author treads fine line as she tells Tibet’s story

Woeser has sued the government, investigated Tibet’s March uprising, and flouted the official line about Tibet.

?By Carol Huang | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the November 18, 2008 edition

BEIJING – Woeser’s fans have plenty of reasons to worry that she’ll be thrown in jail soon.

The famed Tibetan writer has sued the Chinese government. She’s investigating the March uprising in Tibet. She articulates the repression that many Tibetans feel, flouting the official line that they like Chinese rule – all from a modest, high-rise apartment in Beijing.

The government here bans her work. But from Tennessee to Tibet, her fans hang on every unauthorized poem, essay, and blog. To them, she risks her life to tell the “real” Tibetan story – a narrative that unites the Tibetan community even as it diverges over politics, a hot topic this week at a rare summit in Dharamsala, India, called by the Dalai Lama.

“She brings a unique combination of experience and ability at the moment, [and] she’s willing to stand up,” says Elliot Sperling, a Tibet expert at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her writings “contribute significantly to the general perception of what’s going on in Tibet.”

Asia, once a piracy hotspot, sees calmer waters>

 

By Mark McDonald Published: November 18, 2008

HONG KONG: The brazen hijacking of a Saudi supertanker – the largest maritime hijacking anywhere, ever, and the latest in a rash of violent seizures by pirates in East Africa – has not led to alerts and alarms in Asia, which has weathered its own previous storms of piracy.

“It will be very difficult to copycat the Somalia situation in Asia,” said Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center at the International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur. “The governments here are more committed and have more resources. In fact, the attacks here are coming down.”

A regional piracy-monitoring agency in Singapore said maritime attacks in Asia in the first nine months of the year dropped 11 percent compared to 2007 and 32 percent from 2006.

Meanwhile, the hijacking of the Saudi oil tanker, which is triple the size of an aircraft carrier, is just another red push-pin on the 2008 master piracy map maintained by the maritime bureau, a private group in the Malaysian capital.

Africa

Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas



By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: November 17, 2008

BULENGO, Congo – Jean-Marie Serundori wakes up every morning with gorillas on his mind.

“I wash my face, I stare at the mountains and I think of them,” he said. “They are like our cousins.”

But Mr. Serundori, a Congolese wildlife ranger entrusted with protecting some of the most majestic – and most endangered – animals on the planet, is far from the broad-backed mountain gorillas he loves.

Instead, he is stuck in a wet and filthy camp for internally displaced people where the only wildlife are the cockroaches that scurry across the mud floors.

Congo-Kinshasa: Nkunda Objects to Monuc Taking Part in DRC Talks



The New Times (Kigali)

18 November 2008

Posted to the web 18 November 2008

George Kagame and George Baryamwisaki

General Laurent Nkunda has said he objects to the inclusion of the United Nations’ peace keeping forces-MONUC in the negotiation talks to stop the war in DR Congo.

The talks between the National Congress for the Defence of the people (CNDP) and the DR Congo government will be mediated by Olusegun Obasanjo, the UN General Secretary’s special envoy in Eastern Congo.

Nkunda was Sunday evening speaking to journalists in Jomba Catholic mission, (part of the Eastern Congo territory under the control of the CNDP). This was after the first meeting between his CNDP and Obasanjo.

The CNDP leader said that he does not trust MONUC to be objective if they participated in the talks because they are fighting alongside DR Congo forces.

Latin America

US case highlights Cuban ‘slaves’ in Curaçao

A federal judge in Miami last month ordered a shipping firm to pay $80 million for conspiring with Cuba to abuse workers.

By Colin Woodard | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the November 18, 2008 edition

WILLEMSTAD, NETHERLANDS ANTILLES – Olivia Ocampo well remembers the night the two Cuban workers came to her house in January 2005.

Exhausted and afraid, they had escaped from the premises of the nearby Curaçao Drydock Company, where they said they and some 100 other Cubans had been forced to work 112 hours a week fixing ships for three cents an hour.

Ms. Ocampo approached the police and government authorities in Willemstad, the capital of the Netherlands Antilles, a Dutch dependency in the southern Caribbean, but “they just wanted to push all the trash under the carpet and say that everything is fine,” she said.

But last month, a federal judge in Miami ordered the shipyard to pay the workers and one of their colleagues a total of $80 million in damages, after finding it had conspired with the government of Cuba to force them into what was, in effect, slave labor.