Docudharma Times Tuesday December 16

The Bush Legacy

So What

Meaning I Don’t Care

What You Think

Big Oil Projects Put in Jeopardy by Fall in Prices



By JAD MOUAWAD

Published: December 15, 2008

From the plains of North Dakota to the deep waters of Brazil, dozens of major oil and gas projects have been suspended or canceled in recent weeks as companies scramble to adjust to the collapse in energy markets.

In the short run, falling oil prices are leading to welcome relief at the pump for American families ahead of the holidays, with gasoline down from its summer record of just over $4 to an average of $1.66 a gallon, and still falling.

But the project delays are likely to reduce future energy supplies – and analysts believe they may set the stage for another surge in oil prices once the global economy recovers.

Arctic melt passes the point of no return



By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

USA

Obama Picks Chicago’s Schools Chief For Cabinet



By Anne E. Kornblut and Philip Rucker

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, December 16, 2008; Page A01

President-elect  Barack Obama will nominate Chicago schools executive Arne Duncan as his education secretary at an event in the city today, transition aides said, and is expected to tap Sen.  Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) later this week to serve as secretary of the interior, all but finalizing his selections for major Cabinet posts.

Obama plans to introduce Duncan this morning at Dodge Renaissance Academy, a Chicago elementary school that the two visited together in 2005.

Duncan, 44, has been chief executive of the Chicago public schools since 2001, steering the nation’s third-largest school district, which has more than 400,000 students.

A gray future for a black college in Georgia?

Students wonder whether Albany State University will lose its culture, and special status, under a plan to merge with a majority-white school.

By Richard Fausset

December 16, 2008

Reporting from Albany, Ga. — Every freshman who enrolls at Albany State University knows the saga of this small, proud school.

In a mandatory class, they learn how Joseph Winthrop Holley, a son of slaves, built the campus in 1903 to educate his fellow African Americans here along the banks of the Flint River. They learn how the historically black school survived the roiling race issues of the 20th century — from Jim Crow to desegregation and beyond — and how it survived the muddy Flint, which has flooded the campus time and again.

But today, there is talk of a new kind of deluge at this public school, one that many students fear would do even greater harm: The potential influx of white students from a nearby two-year college, who could go to Albany State under a proposal to merge the campuses that is floating around the Georgia Statehouse.

Asia

‘I was still holding my grandson’s hand – the rest was gone’

In the second of our series of dispatches from the ravaged country, Afghans explain how mounting civilian casualties are aiding Taliban recruiting

Clancy Chassay

The Guardian, Tuesday 16 December 2008

It was 7.30 on a hot July morning when the plane came swooping low over the remote ravine. Below, a bridal party was making its way to the groom’s village in an area called Kamala, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, to prepare for the celebrations later that day.

The first bomb hit a large group of children who had run on ahead of the main procession. It killed most of them instantly.

A few minutes later, the plane returned and dropped another bomb, right in the centre of the group. This time the victims were almost all women. Somehow the bride and two girls survived but as they scrambled down the hillside, desperately trying to get away from the plane, a third bomb caught them. Hajj Khan was one of four elderly men escorting the bride’s party that day.

The monster in India’s mirror



By Arundhati Roy

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11”. And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the “bad guys”, he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

Europe

Russian skinhead gang jailed for murder of 20 migrants



Luke Harding in Moscow

The Guardian, Tuesday 16 December 2008

Russia’s most sensational skinhead trial ended yesterday when a gang of teenagers who murdered 20 migrant workers and attempted to kill 12 others were given lengthy prison terms.

The gang, which had been led by Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, both students then aged 17, picked on non-Russian workers living in Moscow. The victims were selected randomly and stabbed to death.

Police had no clue about the pair’s prolific racist killing spree until April 2007 when the teenagers attacked Karen Abramian, 46, an Armenian businessman, who they stabbed as he entered his Moscow apartment block. Police captured Ryno and Skachevsky as they fled, finding them with blood-soaked clothes and carrying 25cm (10in) knives.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Tina Fey hates it. Mark Twain railed against it. Now Germans are so worried about their language’s future that campaigners want it safeguarded in the constitution. Tony Paterson reports from Berlin

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Hollywood and Hitler made it the language of on-screen baddies. Before that Mark Twain had already famously dismissed it as “awful”. Now American comedian Tina Fey has added her insult to decades of injury by saying the language of Goethe and Schiller is “so uncool”. For decades, Germans have glumly accepted routine abuse of their language and taken insults about it lying down, but not any more, it seems.

Piqued to the point of carpet-biting indignation, the once-slumbering Teutonic giant has been roused into action and begun a counter-attack. The campaign to defend Die deutsche Sprache has not been launched by some obscure group of language professors, but from one of the main centres of German political power: the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her ruling conservative Christian Democrats are poised to copy France and enshrine the nation’s language in the constitution.

Middle East

‘Shoe-thrower of Baghdad’ brings Iraqis on to the streets

As Muntazer al-Zaidi remains in detention, his countrymen demonstrate their support for his anti-Bush protes

By Patrick Cockburn

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Thousands of Iraqis poured into the streets of Baghdad yesterday in support of Muntazer al-Zaidi, who was catapulted from obscurity to worldwide celebrity after hurling his shoes at the US President, George Bush. As the Iraqi journalist remained in detention for what authorities called “a barbaric and ignominious act”, a crowd in Baghdad pelted US troops with their shoes in one of many street protests called in support of the reporter’s action.

“Thanks be to God, Muntazer’s act fills Iraqi hearts with pride,” the journalist’s brother, Udai al-Zaidi, said. “I’m sure many Iraqis want to do what Muntazer did.”

New face of law and order in the West Bank >

From The Times

December 16, 2008

Mick Hume in Ramallah

The traffic policeman doing Michael Jackson-esque moves outside the Stars and Bucks café in busy Ramallah attracts a lot of attention. To many however, the sight of any Palestinian uniform in the West Bank is still a novelty. The dancing policeman is the face of a new force – trained in Jordan with US and European support – in an attempt to establish Palestinian law and order in the West Bank.

Today Gordon Brown meets Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, after talks in London with Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, yesterday. Meanwhile, mainly out of sight in Ramallah, senior British soldiers, police officers and officials including Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy, are trying to help to build a new Palestinian state “from the bottom up”.

Africa

Zimbabwe cholera deaths soar to 978

The death toll from cholera in Zimbabwe has soared to 978 with another 18,413 suspected cases.

16 Dec 2008

The country’s capital Harare is the worst-hit district, with 208 deaths and 8,454 suspected cases, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

Beitbridge, which border South Africa, was also badly affected. Some 91 people in the border town have been killed by the disease, while 3,546 are suspected to be suffering from it.

The latest toll came even as the United States and Britain were expected to lobby the UN Security Council to turn up the heat on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

 New South Africa party to launch

A new political party is being formally launched in South Africa, made up largely of defectors from the governing African National Congress.

The BBC  

The Congress of the People, or Cope, poses the first serious opposition challenge in South Africa after 14 years of government by the ANC.

It says it will run against the ANC in national elections next year.

Cope emerged after Thabo Mbeki left the presidency in September amid a power struggle with ANC leader Jacob Zuma.

Many supporters of the new party were unhappy at the way in which Mr Mbeki was forced to step down.

Latin America

Latin nations fight economic slump with stimulus

The region had been enjoying a commodities-driven boom. Measures’ success may hinge on a global recovery.

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Chris Kraul

December 16, 2008

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Buenos Aires — Facing an economic slowdown after years of brisk growth, Latin American nations from Mexico to Argentina have launched stimulus plans amid fears of recession, rising poverty and social unrest.

Central banks have moved to stabilize currencies, boost employment and bolster consumer confidence in an attempt to limit the fallout from the global economic crisis.

Brazil, the region’s largest economy, has pumped tens of billions of dollars into shoring up its currency and once-booming housing and auto sectors, while announcing an additional $3.6 billion in tax cuts last week, along with $10 billion in credit for indebted Brazilian firms.

Mexico, dependent on the flagging U.S. economy, has backed loans to small and medium-size companies.