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ec0a2246883a86ef5ace5ca5b1b75231 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-18-fi-music18-story.html | Record labels want bigger cut of action | Record labels want bigger cut of action
Many music industry executives facing a CD sales slump love the sound of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
The video games have millions of followers who memorize every note of songs so they can jam along -- and they often buy the original version of their favorites. In addition to the publicity, the record labels get licensing fees from the game publishers.
But not all music industry executives are singing “Hallelujah.”
Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman and chief executive of Warner Music Group, recently grumbled that the record labels deserved a bigger piece of the spoils from the games’ success.
“The amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small,” he said during an Aug. 7 earnings call.
Bronfman suggested that he wanted Warner to be less a supplier than a partner. “If that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games,” he said.
The recording industry has long complained that it doesn’t receive its fair share of the proceeds from successful businesses built on music, such as MTV, the iPod and the iTunes store.
Apple Inc.'s products and MTV were “ecosystems [from which] people other than the recording industry have derived the majority of value created,” Bronfman said.
Such tensions often arise when new business models sprout in the digital world, said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets.
“Music publishers see music-based games as a growth opportunity in an otherwise struggling music business, and they’re trying to grab as much of that growth as they can,” he said.
There is a lot of money at stake. Sales of music-themed games should hit $1.5 billion this year and grow as much as 35% next year, according to analysts’ estimates.
But there are a lot of hands in the cookie jar, including those of game console makers such as Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp.
Guitar Hero, which costs $50 to $100, is published by Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard Inc. Since its debut in 2005, the game has sold 20 million copies and generated more than $1 billion in retail sales.
MTV Networks published Rock Band in 2007. The $170 game comes with a guitar controller, drum kit and microphone.
Both games involve mastering “playing” a song before moving to the next level.
The game publishers pay the record labels about $10,000 for the rights to re-record a song and up to about $25,000 for master recordings by the original artist or new releases, according to executives close to the negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the terms are confidential.
More recently, music companies have sought a royalty of 4 to 8 cents for each copy of a game sold.
Labels also sometimes see a resurgence of older music. “Same Old Song and Dance,” a 34-year-old Aerosmith tune, saw a 446% jump in downloads on iTunes and other online stores in the two months after its release on Guitar Hero 3, according to Tim Riley, vice president of music affairs at Activision Blizzard.
In some cases, sales of the game version of a song outsell those of the real thing. In the week after releasing its single “Saints of Los Angeles,” Motley Crue sold 47,000 copies of the Rock Band version for Xbox 360 while selling just 10,000 copies of the original song as a digital download.
“We get the content, and they get a financial royalty and the promotion and exposure for their bands,” Riley said.
Music industry executives declined to comment publicly. Some privately expressed surprise that Bronfman had spoken out, but said they too wanted better deals with game makers.
In a prepared statement, Warner said it had “enormous respect” for the investment and creativity of game publishers.
“We hope that our partners in the gaming space appreciate not only the value of their own contributions but also those of the recording artists, songwriters, record labels and music publishers on which their games are significantly based,” the company said.
Laura Martin, a senior media analyst at Soleil Securities Group, said she expected to see “more of the economics shared with the content creators.”
But IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian said the “major music labels need to reposition themselves as proactive players in developing digital music businesses rather than victims. They have a lot of power.”
Not as much as they once had. The games have moved from niche to phenomenon, and musicians want in.
“The number of people interested in being associated with the game is probably a thousand times more than we can get into the game,” Riley said.
“Our in-boxes are full with CDs every day.”
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michelle.quinn@latimes.com
alex.pham@latimes.com
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161584fef269aaaf86b5c30c62dca936 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-18-me-oncal18-story.html | After two decades, Zyzzyva magazine still has last word | After two decades, Zyzzyva magazine still has last word
And now, from the boats-against-the-current file, comes the improbable story of Howard Junker and his strangely named literary magazine, Zyzzyva -- a rare tale of success from that imperiled realm known as the printed word.
It begins in the early 1980s. Nuclear plant construction in the United States was becoming an endangered enterprise. Because of this trend, Bechtel Corp., the San Francisco-based construction behemoth, commenced a round of company downsizing.
Soon enough Dr. Layoff reached his long, cold finger into Bechtel’s public relations department and put the touch on Junker, a fortysomething technical writer. His response then would be woefully familiar today in this, another epoch of job cuts.
“I was devastated,” he recalled, sipping hot chocolate in a cafe called Bittersweet. “I needed a job.”
What he had instead fell somewhere between an idea and an impulse.
Another cog in the Bechtel publicity department, an older fellow from Ohio, used to speak lovingly about a literary magazine he had published long ago in Columbus. Junker had been intrigued and now, out of work, decided to make a stab at starting up a litmag, as they are called, of his own.
“It was a redemptive gesture,” he said. “Something that I thought I could do and that I could admire. It was like a midlife crisis.”
He’d written for magazines and produced pamphlets for Bechtel. And he bore an uncanny resemblance to John Updike, whom he met once at a party. These were Junker’s literary qualifications as he began to canvass San Francisco’s vibrant literary scene, looking to scrape together money and manuscripts for a magazine he would name Zyzzyva, which rhymes with dizzy-va.
“Zyzzyva,” as Junker explained in his initial editor’s note, “is the last word, at least in the American Heritage Dictionary, which claims it’s a tropical weevil. Unlike its namesake, Zyzzyva has no appetite for the wanton destruction of plants. It does aspire to be, if not the last word, at least an important vehicle for West Coast writers. . . .”
And so, in April 1985, the magazine was launched -- a 150-page paperback collection of short stories, memoirs, snatches of screenplays, excerpts from novels in progress, poems and artwork. The future was anything but certain, yet it was launched.
And now the pages flip forward.
On a gorgeous Wednesday morning last week, Junker arrived in the Fillmore District at his chosen meeting spot -- one of a long succession of cafes and restaurants in the bustling, gentrified district. He carried a copy of Zyzzyva under his arm. It was Volume 24, No. 2, to be circulated in the fall. As the numbers imply, Junker’s still at it.
Four times a year, every year since 1985, he and his magazine have beaten on through all sorts of dire currents. They have survived earthquakes and dot-com booms and busts, the explosion of the Internet and the advent of Amazon and e-zines, of text messages and Twitter.
With changes in the landscape have come changes in the magazine, and also in the stories that would-be authors send Junker’s way. Immigration, AIDS, war, economic uncertainty -- the full parade of social turmoil and personal crises have passed through Zyzzyva’s pages, but at the odd angles and lagging pace of literature.
Junker doesn’t do news or reviews, but picking through back copies of Zyzzyva it’s possible to develop a pretty good sense of what has been happening in this part of the world. For example, Junker said, with the large influx of Spanish speakers into California, “we no longer consider Spanish a foreign language” in the magazine. “We don’t italicize it in print. We just print it, like English. And that is a huge change.”
In the beginning, Junker tried to publish established writers. Now he leans toward the works of the previously unpublished. Zyzzyva has provided a literary debut for writers as varied as the late F.X. Toole (“Million Dollar Baby”), Chitra Divakaruni (“Mistress of Spices”) and Po Bronson (“Bombardiers”).
“One of the things I have kind of specialized in,” Junker said, “is discovering new writers, and what that really means is giving them their first time in print. In print! They can see it! That is the impact of the printed word.”
He picked up the fall issue from the table and bounced it in his hand, as if weighing it: “This is real. It’s physical. And it draws from the tradition of 500 years or, if you want to go way back, to the doodles on the caves. It is about making a mark in the world. And certainly the cyberworld has its own reality, but it is not a reality that yet feels substantial.”
Junker’s enthusiasms aside, it would be a mistake to classify him as some ink-stained dinosaur. “The digital revolution marches on,” he concedes in his latest editor’s note. He marvels at his college daughter’s ability to touch-tap messages with her thumbs. Junker himself posts a daily blog on the Zyzzyva website and can be found on YouTube, dancing to the Rolling Stones.
But he draws a distinction between communication and literature: “Twittering and texting is fine, but it is not literary. And that is what really worries me. The idea of spending time alone, by yourself, without listening to any music, imagining things -- this is something that seems to be being beaten out of people.
“Both reading and writing are very solitary. The whole idea is that you are hearing a voice. And there is no subtlety possible on e-mails or blogs and certainly not in texting. You cannot be nuanced in any way.”
Still, Junker is an optimist. Would he have started his litmag if he wasn’t? He sees literature, the printed word, surviving -- but more and more as a luxury item. His view is that a transition is underway, not unlike that from carriages to cars a century ago. He figures publishers and writers who can hang on will become like high-priced farriers back then, able to charge $100 to shoe a horse “since there were no longer any other farriers.”
For Junker, at least, this look to the future has become somewhat abstract. In the fall edition, he announces plans to step down as Zyzzyva’s editor after next year. The plan is to find a successor and keep the magazine afloat. When he departs, it will have been a quarter of a century since he took the plunge, “and 25 years is a good, round number.”
He built no empire. The press run for the first edition was 2,500. The press run for the latest is the same. And Junker still salvages the paper clips from any manuscript that comes his way. Yet he has survived, and on his terms, which seems to amaze even Junker.
Every time Zyzzyva seemed destined for the teeming graves of failed magazines, a new grant or new donor or some other form of manna would emerge, and Junker would paddle on.
Throughout, Zyzzyva has remained a nonprofit, funded by ads and supporters.
“People give money to pay me,” said Junker, who operates out of the basement of his home here, along with a managing editor and two assistants. “They are kind enough and courageous enough and silly enough to say, ‘We want to keep Junker in the fray.’ ”
He is a witty man, with a bounce to his step and an infectious smile.
He’ll be 68 in October, “but don’t call me grizzled. I am not grizzled, yet.” He has chased his dream to the end and now, as he sits and sips his hot chocolate, he seems, in a word, content. And in this uneasy, uneven time, content is a mighty fine word, as last words go.
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peter.king@latimes.com
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c6177421dc737da0b197188069207947 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-19-fg-protests19-story.html | China fails to approve 77 protest applications | China fails to approve 77 protest applications
Chinese authorities have not approved any of the 77 applications they received from people who wanted to hold protests during the Beijing Olympics, state media reported.
According to the rules governing protests, today is the last day anyone could apply for permission to demonstrate during the Olympic Games.
The state-run New China News Agency said Monday that the applications received since Aug. 1, a week before the Games opened, included such things as labor disputes and inadequate welfare.
But 74 of the applications were withdrawn because the problems “were properly addressed by relevant authorities or departments through consultations,” the news agency said, citing an unidentified spokesman for the Public Security Bureau.
Two other applications were suspended because they did not provide sufficient information and one was rejected because it violated laws against demonstrations and protests, the spokesman said.
Protests have become common in China, including workers upset about factory layoffs and farmers angry about land confiscation. But the Communist leadership remains wary about large demonstrations, fearing that they could snowball into anti-government movements.
In July, China said protests would be allowed in three parks far from Games venues.
But there were also rules: Applications with detailed paperwork had to be filed five days in advance and protests must not harm “national, social and collective interests.” A response would be provided 48 hours before the requested rally time, officials promised.
There have been no demonstrations in the designated areas since the Games started, though small unregulated protests have occurred in other parts of the city. Most have been conducted by foreigners who were swiftly deported after unfurling “Free Tibet” banners.
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bd17690dd18a8c970766eb13c3dbb9bf | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-19-fi-ea19-story.html | EA lets Take-Two bid expire | EA lets Take-Two bid expire
Electronic Arts Inc. on Monday let its $2-billion hostile buyout offer for Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. expire.
But the video game companies plan to keep discussing a deal that would combine EA, the world’s largest game publisher, with the maker of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
The tender offer would have paid stockholders of New York-based Take-Two $25.74 a share. Redwood City, Calif.-based EA, which makes such games as Madden Football and the Sims, had extended the offer five times.
EA, which launched its bid in March after several friendly takeover attempts, said too much time had lapsed since the offer was made. “Our model assumed that we could integrate Take-Two’s products in our holiday portfolio this year,” spokesman Jeff Brown said. “We are now at a point where that is no longer possible.”
Take-Two’s shares dropped $1.09, or 4.4%, to $23.75. EA’s shares fell 48 cents to $47.76.
But the deal isn’t completely dead. After EA notified Take-Two on Friday of its decision to let its offer expire, Take-Two’s board invited EA to a formal meeting -- the first face-to-face discussion between the two companies since EA initiated its tender offer.
EA agreed to the meeting, which has yet to be scheduled. Take-Two is expected to share its confidential business plans, product pipeline and financial projections.
“We welcome EA into our formal process and look forward to demonstrating . . . the significant strides made by Take-Two since they last undertook a detailed review of our business in early 2007,” Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick said in a statement.
Zelnick has insisted that Take-Two was worth far more than EA’s bid.
“Price had been the key sticking point,” UBS Securities analyst Ben Schachter wrote in a research note Monday. He said Take-Two’s board members had privately indicated that their company was worth $35 a share or more.
EA didn’t budge. “We’re hopeful that the diligence [meeting] will support the price of $25.74" a share, Brown said. “However, we have been price disciplined throughout this process and will continue to be so.”
Any merger would require the blessing of the Federal Trade Commission, which is scheduled to conclude its antitrust investigation of the deal Thursday.
“There’s nothing that leads us to believe the transaction would not be cleared by the FTC,” Brown said.
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alex.pham@latimes.com
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f68c242d71f69a3bcb017d1622327332 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-19-me-parsons19-story.html | Star of the candidate forum: the moderator | Star of the candidate forum: the moderator
Let me suggest the creation of a new governmental position: Moderator General.
And it just so happens I have a nominee: Rick Warren.
Yes, he already has a job as pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County, but based on his performance Saturday in interviewing John McCain and Barack Obama, the young man has another talent that needs to be tapped.
Forty-eight hours after the event, I’m still overly bubbly because I feared that Warren’s back-to-back interviews with the presidential aspirants would fall flat. I admired his intentions in injecting questions of faith into the presidential mix. I had wondered whether either McCain or Obama would open up in front of an evangelical pastor and his congregants. Not to mention a national TV audience. Another concern was whether Warren had the chops to nudge the two men to say more and dig deeper into their souls than we’re used to hearing.
I wouldn’t call it a virtuoso performance by Warren, but it was darn good. I made several notes at times that I wish he’d ask the tough follow-up question, but he didn’t. He even said during the Obama hour that he could ask more about abortion but wanted to move on to other questions. I’d have preferred the added question or two, just to see how Obama would react.
Same with McCain. When Warren asked him what it meant on a daily basis to be a Christian, McCain gave the Sunday School response that it meant he was “saved and forgiven.” But then he immediately switched tacks to tell an oft-told story about a prison guard who helped him when he was a captive in Vietnam.
Warren might well have asked McCain why he seemed so reluctant to elaborate on the here and now. McCain’s brevity, in fact, contrasted with an extended answer to the same question from Obama.
And to continue with my nitpicking, Warren gave them some easy ones with questions about orphans or victims of human trafficking. No way to look bad in answering those questions, but they are subjects that matter to Warren, and who can blame him for giving them exposure?
So, what did Warren do well?
Just about everything else. For starters, he set the perfect tone. He was conversational, he was earnest, he was funny when appropriate, he was knowledgeable.
The idea wasn’t to make anyone squirm; it was to ask questions they presumably couldn’t rehearse for and to show us sides we don’t see when they’re talking about offshore drilling or tax increases.
Those questions are vital in an election season, but Warren’s genius is to understand that more goes into presidential picking than position papers. In fact, he told each candidate that he didn’t want to hear their standard stump speech on a given question.
Warren got them to be reflective, at times. If some questions were softballs, asking them to identify their greatest moral failures and America’s greatest moral failure were not.
McCain said without elaboration that it was his first marriage (follow-up question, Pastor Warren!), and Obama said it was his teenage experimentation with drugs and alcohol that stemmed from his self-pity. That is good stuff.
Obama showed the “He’s a closet Muslim” crowd that if he is, he sure knows his Christian catechism, too. He invoked the Book of Matthew and seemingly easy familiarity with expressions like “walking humbly with our God.” Those kinds of answers, mixed in naturally during the hour, got much more to his core than if someone were to ask, “People have said you’re a closet Muslim. Are you?”
McCain struck me as more austere during his hour but also showed his Main Street brand of humor when he was asked to name the three wisest people he knows. He gave a thoughtful reply and before the next question, quipped: “I hope they get easier.”
But it came back to Warren. He created a mood in which both candidates opened up. In this context, nothing wrong with him high-fiving Obama after the senator deadpanned a reference to Warren’s profits from his book sales.
Sure, the conversations could have been more enlightening, but this was far from an idle exercise. Warren showed it is possible to get candidates to move beyond sound bites and to reveal a bit of themselves. The best interviewers get people to say things we don’t normally hear from them.
“These are the kinds of forums we need,” Obama said at the end, “where we have a conversation.” He went on to say, “I want people to know me well, and I’m sure John McCain feels the same way.”
Rick Warren helped that cause. When you think how dull the evening could have been, you realize what a good job he did.
And although this was probably just a one-night stand, I found myself wanting a couple more hours with Obama, McCain and Warren.
On a Saturday night, they made for delightful company.
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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.
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5b370c4c669b406f32ddb41c853e5788 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-19-oe-cagaptay19-story.html | Turkey bows to the dark side | Turkey bows to the dark side
Praying in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on Friday, I witnessed firsthand Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s international publicity coup.
Ahmadinejad’s visit produced little in terms of substantive policy; the signing of a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline deal was put off. But Ahmadinejad got something just as valuable: a chance to spin his own image, court popularity and bash the United States and Israel.
I’ve long been fond of the Blue Mosque because it is where, many years ago, I attended my first Friday prayers. Last Friday, though, I felt uncomfortable in the prayer hall, where I found myself in front of God but next to Ahmadinejad, who turned the ritual into a political show.
Departing from established practice of having visiting Muslim heads of state pray in a smaller mosque in Istanbul, the government allowed Ahmadinejad to pray in the Blue Mosque, Turkey’s symbol of tolerant Ottoman Islam. With permission from Turkish authorities, he also allowed Iranian television to videotape him during the entire prayer, in violation of Islamic tradition, which requires quiet and intimate communion between God and the faithful. There was so much commotion around Ahmadinejad that the imam had to chide the congregants. Then, as he left the mosque, Ahmadinejad got out of his car to encourage a crowd of about 300 to chant, “Death to Israel! Death to America!”
Even without this behavior, any visit from a leader representing an authoritarian, anti-Western autocracy would have created controversy in Turkey just a few years ago. Not today. The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government not only opened the Blue Mosque to Ahmadinejad but accommodated his refusal to pay respects at the mausoleum of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern, secular Turkey -- a major violation of protocol for an official visit.
In 1996, when Iran’s president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, refused to go to Ataturk’s mausoleum, snubbing Turkey’s identity as a secular pro-Western state, it led to a public outcry and sharp criticism of Iran. Relations soured. When the Iranian ambassador suggested a few months later that Turkey should follow Sharia law, he was forced to leave the country.
This time, though, the AKP government has taken a different stance, playing down the diplomatic insult. It moved the meeting from the capital, Ankara, to Istanbul and labeled it a “working” meeting rather than an official visit. Yet all sorts of AKP officials flocked to Istanbul to meet with the Iranian president.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan asked the Turkish public to ignore the snub and instead “focus on the big picture.” It is the “big picture,” though, that is most disconcerting. By extending an invitation to Ahmadinejad, the first such move by any NATO or European Union member country, Turkey has broken ranks with the West. The West can no longer take Turkey for granted as a staunch ally against Tehran.
In the past, Turkey stood with the West, especially after the 1979 Islamist revolution in Iran. Also, Tehran gave refuge to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which carried out terror attacks in Turkey from bases in Iran. Since the Iraq war began, however, Iran has shifted tactics to win Turkey’s heart. While the U.S. delayed taking action, Iran actually bombed PKK camps in northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, since the AKP assumed power in Turkey in 2002, bilateral visits with Iran have boomed; Ahmadinejad’s trip crowns dozens of visits by high-level officials. Trade has boomed as well, increasing from $1.2 billion in 2002 to $8 billion today. And even though the two countries didn’t formalize the deal last week, plans are still going forward for a $3.5-billion Turkish investment in Iranian gas fields -- this at a time when the West is adopting financial sanctions against Iran to cripple Tehran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. If there were any doubts about a Turkish-Iranian rapprochement, they were laid to rest last week: During Ahmadinejad’s visit, the two countries agreed to make 2009 an “Iran-Turkey year of culture” -- marked by regular cultural and political programs and exchanges -- to bring the two countries closer.
Ahmadinejad’s visit also speaks volumes about the future of Turkish-U.S. ties regarding Iran. According to a recent opinion poll in Turkey, when asked what the country should do in the event of a U.S. attack against Iran, only 4% of respondents said Turkey should support the U.S., while 33% wanted to back Iran and 63% chose neutrality.
As I shared the canopy of the Blue Mosque’s divine dome with Ahmadinejad, I could not help but ponder how far Turkish foreign policy has shifted since 2002. Before, Turkey picked allies based on shared values -- democracy, Western identity, secular politics and the principle of open society -- that appeared to reflect the Turkish soul. Iran has not become a pro-Western, secular democracy since 1996, nor have Tehran’s mullahs accepted gender equality or the idea of a free society. Yet Ankara has had a change of heart toward Tehran. Years from now, Ahmadinejad’s visit to Istanbul will be remembered as the tipping point at which the West lost Turkey, and Turkey lost its soul.
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db5a26169ede439428a7712f7c455dd5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-20-ed-lending20-story.html | Housing’s good news | Housing’s good news
A glimmer of sunlight poked through the housing market gloom this week, when the latest statistics on sales, prices and defaults in Southern California were released. Home sales were nearly 14% higher last month than in July 2007, the first year-over-year increase in almost three years. And although foreclosures continued at more than twice the pace of last summer, the number in July was 8% lower than in June.
A revived housing market would be good for everyone, given how large a role it plays in the general economy. But even if last month’s data are a hopeful harbinger, there’s still plenty of bad news to come. Defaults in “liar loans” and “pick-a-payment” mortgages are just starting to ramp up, and the collapsing stock prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could lead to a costly government bailout. Based on the 1990s housing bust in California, Times blogger Peter Viles predicts that property values will continue to fall for several more years, even though the pace of sales may be starting to pick up.
Against this backdrop, leaders of the Legislature have reached a compromise with consumer and lending groups on a measure to guard against a repeat of the subprime meltdown that precipitated the current crisis. The bill -- a modified version of AB 1830 by Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) -- would bar pick-a-payment loans to subprime borrowers, limit the size and duration of prepayment penalties on subprime loans and prohibit brokers from steering subprime borrowers into costlier loans than they qualified for. Taking aim at the financial incentives behind predatory subprime lending, it would forbid lenders to pay brokers more when they persuaded people to take loans with prepayment penalties or higher interest rates. And it would require mortgage brokers to place their customers’ financial interests ahead of their own -- a provision that would apply to prime and subprime borrowers alike. Finally, it would let California regulators enforce federal lending laws as well as state rules, while giving the victims of predatory lending more access to the courts.
The bill doesn’t go far enough to satisfy some consumer groups, and it does have some unfortunate omissions. In particular, we wish legislators would crack down on mortgage “flipping,” in which lenders refinance mortgages to generate fees for themselves but no benefits for the borrowers. We’d also like to see a requirement for simpler, clearer disclosures in borrowers’ native languages. But the modified Lieu bill would still give Californians significantly more protection against the egregious lending practices that helped create the mess the housing market is in today.
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cd3cd7642a08d82d5a48f33136514841 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-21-et-galaxycraze21-story.html | At long last, just the right voice is found | At long last, just the right voice is found
NEW YORK -- A decade ago, Galaxy Craze was a rising starlet who turned her back on movies to write “By the Shore,” a coming-of-age novel about two children in 1970s England. The book was greeted with acclaim -- reviews and profiles featured a winsome photograph of the then-28-year-old, alongside rapturous descriptions of her work.
Then, Craze seemed to disappear. She married, had two children and began a second novel, which she struggled to write.
That novel, “Tiger, Tiger,” was finally published last month. It picks up, several years later, the main characters from “By the Shore”: The narrator, May, is now a teenage girl. May’s mother, as flighty as she was in the first novel, has left her husband and taken her children to an ashram near Los Angeles. The time is the 1980s, although it is only halfway through the book that cultural references make this clear. It is a deceptively slight, simple, haunting story, a meditation on a disintegrating family.
During a recent heat wave in New York, Craze, who is visiting from Massachusetts, finds herself with her 10-week-old daughter at Angelica’s Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant in the East Village that she frequented when she lived in the city.
“Don’t worry,” she says, pointing to her daughter. “She’s usually pretty cooperative.”
In much the same style as her two books, Craze can be funny in a deadpan and self-deprecating way. “I know I shouldn’t be disparaging myself,” she says about the years she spent trying to write “Tiger, Tiger,” “but I’m not joking. I’m not trying to be like a pretty girl who says, ‘Oh, I’m so ugly!’
“Everyone said a second book is really hard,” she continues. “At first I was trying a whole new voice, and it wasn’t me. Right before I got married, I handed my editor a complete 380-page manuscript. She wrote back with a few edits and I threw it all away and started over again. I did that twice. That’s why it took eight years.”
Craze’s editor is Elisabeth Schmitz, the executive editor at Grove/Atlantic who discovered Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain.” She signed Craze to a two-book deal in 1999. “I remember feeling so confident about her gift as a writer,” Schmitz recalls, “that I bought two books even though there wasn’t a word to read of the second -- I was too curious to know what she would do next.” What drew her to the work, Schmitz adds, is that “she has this unique ability to be lyrical and lovely and also surprisingly suspenseful.”
The trickiest part of writing “Tiger, Tiger,” Craze says, was getting the feel of the ashram right. As a child, she too spent time in such a place with her mother and younger brother.
“It was hard to get the tone of the ashram so it didn’t sound hokey. You know, it was like here” -- she waves an arm around the vegetarian restaurant -- “like when you meet people who describe themselves as spiritual but they’re the most uptight people you ever met.”
For a writer so concerned with the sad dynamics of a failing marriage and its effect on children, Craze is very open about her own family. She mentions that she uses cloth diapers and has a clothesline in her garden. “I have some homesteading roots in me,” she says, which makes sense in light of her childhood. Galaxy, after all, is her given name.
Craze grew up in England in the 1970s and moved back and forth to America as her mother left and returned to her father. Her father was a hairdresser during the 1960s, working on the likes of Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix. Being a mother herself, Craze sees her own mother more sympathetically than she once did. “She was 19 when she had me, so I wouldn’t say she had a lot of impulse control. She just did things as she thought about them. She wasn’t like a disciplinarian.”
When “By the Shore” came out, Craze insisted that her work was not autobiographical. “Did I really say that?” she asks now. “I guess that book was a little bit autobiographical. But with this book, the setting is not made up. You could never say this is a memoir, but some of the things in the book really did happen. We were there at the ashram for quite a long time. I took a lot of pieces from it. I have a lot of love for that guru still. I’m not going to say the name of the guru, because it can be a little bit dangerous dealing with people like that.”
Craze has always been a reluctant success story. As a student at Barnard, she stayed at the apartment of Joe Dolce, who was then the editor of Details magazine. She wrote a few essays for Details and went on to intern at Interview, where she was profiled as a rising unpublished author. On the strength of an accompanying photo, she was offered a part in Michael Almereyda’s “Nadja.”
This led to agents, casting calls and auditions. Although Craze appeared in a few films, her heart wasn’t in it, and eventually she enrolled in the creative writing program at New York University. Dolce, meanwhile, showed chapters of her work-in-progress to book editor Jonathan Burnham. He passed the material on to agent Kim Witherspoon, who informed her that “By the Shore” would be a hard book to sell.
As Craze remembers, her voice grows quiet, but the tone is not complaining so much as it is resigned.
“When I was younger,” she says, “I had more ego attached to writing. I’ve accepted that I am not going to be a famous writer. I don’t think I am ever going to be in the New Yorker, and I’m not a part of any literary circle.”
She picks up her baby, who has started crying. “I’m not ambitious like you need to be. Even if I write a good book again, I don’t think I’ll get a profile in Vogue. That’s not what’s important to me now. The important thing is to write a good book, and what really sells books is word of mouth. I’m happy in other parts of my life now, and I’m just so happy this book is done. I feel really lucky. I always thought it was a guilty pleasure to enjoy life.”
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96fed76728f5d26ec1ea0eb5b59b009f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-21-fg-poland21-story.html | U.S., Poland sign missile deal | U.S., Poland sign missile deal
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a missile defense deal with Poland on Wednesday and predicted that future presidents would not undo the controversial program.
Speaking to reporters, Rice said that though legally the pact could be voided by a future White House, it has a rationale and diplomatic momentum that make that unlikely.
“I believe that the administrations of the future will recognize both the threat that we face and the substantial commitment that our allies have now taken for missile defense,” she told a Polish journalist.
When the Bush administration entered office, it placed top priority on the goal of developing the missile defense program in such a way that it could not be dismantled.
The U.S.-Polish effort is part of a controversial worldwide antimissile program that critics consider unworkable and destabilizing. In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration slowed the program because of concern about its value.
Rice cited U.S. concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the rationale for the antimissile program, and the willingness of Poland and the Czech Republic to participate as the momentum for the effort.
Rice signed the deal, which culminates a year and a half of talks, with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk were also present.
Kaczynski declared that the deal “strengthens the global positioning of the most powerful country in the world.” Rice called it a “landmark.”
Under the agreement, the United States will build and operate 10 interceptor missiles in Poland that the administration says are intended for shooting down any long-range missiles from nations such as Iran.
Russian officials believe that though the plan is modest, it is the first step in construction of a huge interceptor system that could neutralize Russia’s vast missile force, leaving it vulnerable to a first-strike nuclear attack.
They have reacted angrily, and a Russian general said last week that by approving the deal Poland was opening itself to a potential Russian nuclear attack.
Rice responded Wednesday to that threat by saying such comments “border on the bizarre.”
The Poland-based interceptors would work in conjunction with a planned U.S. radar system in the Czech Republic that would track missiles.
Two Polish governments have weighed the U.S. proposal, in light of the risk of antagonizing a powerful neighbor that previously has overrun their nation. Polish officials intermittently suggested that the deal might be scuttled.
But Russia’s military advance into Georgia on Aug. 8 has strengthened Polish public support for the deal. It was less than 50% for many months, but is now more than 60%, a Polish poll showed.
Polish officials believe that though their country is already a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, this program will give them an added measure of commitment from the United States. Along with the 10 long-range interceptor missiles, they will receive a Patriot missile battery, staffed by the U.S. Army, that will be designed to protect against short-range missiles and warplanes.
The Patriot battery is to be deployed next year, and by 2012 the U.S. is to build a garrison to protect it.
The deal as signed was exactly as it was when announced last week, officials said.
Rice and Sikorski also signed a separate “strategic cooperation agreement” that the State Department said would “elevate cooperation to a new and higher level.”
A statement said that the U.S. remained committed to helping improve Poland’s military forces.
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paul.richter@latimes.com
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532aeb77d1274121b4f6f63b1fb33e29 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-21-me-sprawl21-story.html | Legislature takes aim at urban sprawl | Legislature takes aim at urban sprawl
Will Californians drive less to reduce global warming? Maybe not on our own -- but state officials are ready to nudge us.
The Legislature is on the verge of adopting the nation’s first law to control planet-warming gases by curbing sprawl. The bill, sponsored by incoming state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), is expected to pass the Assembly today and the Senate on Friday.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill, but sponsors expect him to sign it once the state passes a budget.
The legislation, SB 375, would offer incentives to steer public funds away from sprawled development. The state spends about $20 billion a year on transportation, and under the new law, projects that meet climate goals would get priority.
An earlier version of the bill was blocked last year by the building industry and by organizations representing cities and counties. Developers feared their suburban projects would be delayed or halted. Local officials were wary of ceding zoning powers and transportation planning to the state.
But momentum for the legislation has grown as the state seeks to implement its landmark 2006 global warming law, which would slash California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a 30% cut from expected emissions. To accomplish that, state officials say, fuel-efficient cars and factories won’t be enough. Subdivisions, commercial centers and highways must be planned so that Californians can live and work closer together, reducing the amount they drive.
“Our communities must change the way they grow,” Steinberg said.
A compromise 17,000-word bill was hammered out this month and endorsed by builders, environmentalists and local officials. It requires the state’s 17 metropolitan planning organizations and its regional transportation plans to meet concrete targets to reduce global-warming emissions. The targets will be set by the state Air Resources Board. “California led the way into our culture of car dependence, so it is only appropriate that the state lead the way out,” said David Goldberg, a spokesman for Smart Growth America, a Washington-based nonprofit. The law could “provide a model for other states,” he added, noting that the number of miles Americans drive has risen at more than double the rate of population growth in recent decades.
Scientists agree that the earth is heating up at a dangerous pace, in part because of excess carbon dioxide and other gases from vehicles, power plants and other human sources. The expected effects in California include coastal flooding from rising sea levels, reduced water supply and the disappearance of many species of plants and animals, according to researchers.
The legislation would lead to better-designed communities and save consumers on gas bills, advocates said. Thomas Adams, board president of the California League of Conservation Voters, called it the most important land-use bill in California since the Coastal Act in the 1970s. “It is also the first legislation to link transportation funding with climate policy,” he said.
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margot.roosevelt@latimes.com
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91da4c35fcfb894322043efc68d29584 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-21-na-mailbox21-story.html | Awaiting delivery from far, far away | Awaiting delivery from far, far away
The only landmark for about 40 miles on a barren stretch of highway is a mailbox battered by time and desert gusts. It’s known as the Black Mailbox, though it’s actually a faded white.
Over the years, hundreds of people have converged here in south-central Nevada to photograph the box -- the size of a small television, held up by a chipped metal pole. They camp next to it. They try to break into it. They debate its significance, or simply huddle by it for hours, staring into the night.
Some think the mailbox is linked to nearby Area 51, a military installation and purported hotbed of extraterrestrial activity. At the very least, they consider the box a prime magnet for flying saucers.
A few visitors have claimed they saw celestial oddities. But most enjoy even uneventful nights at the mailbox, about midway between the towns of Alamo and Rachel. Alien hunters here are surrounded by like-minded -- meaning open-minded -- company. In a place where the welcome sign to Rachel reads, Humans: 98, Aliens: ?, few roll their eyes at tales of spaceships, military conspiracies and extraterrestrials that abduct and impregnate tourists.
Tonight, Lester Arnold, a 59-year-old industrial mechanic, is in Rachel offering to show visitors Mailbox Road. He traveled from Declo, Idaho, for the annual UFO Friendship Conference Camp Out (sample lecture: “Teleportation and Esoteric Consciousness”). A few years ago at the mailbox, Arnold says, he saw a fireball-like object shoot over the mountains, stop and shrink until it vanished.
He meets Steve Crosby at a double-wide named the Little A’Le’Inn, a Rachel restaurant, bar and tourist stop. Crosby, 57, is debating whether the “Earthlings Always Welcome” T-shirt looks better in purple or black. He lives in Bedford, Texas, and hopes to spot his second spacecraft here (his first was a bluish oval that he says zipped over Atlanta).
The guys and three others caravan to the mailbox on the state-christened Extraterrestrial Highway, a two-lane road that tumbleweeds cross more frequently than cars. The cows grazing alongside it, conspiracy theorists whisper, are mounted with spy cameras. The men park near the mailbox and a bullet-dinged stop sign, and open their doors to silence.
The box is made of quarter-inch-thick bulletproof metal, and its door is clamped shut with a Master Lock. Its owner, say the black letters printed on its side, is STEVE MEDLIN, HC 61, BOX 80. Visitors have added bumper stickers and their own musings:
“Trust no one.”
“I am the last alien.”
“It’s become this mecca,” says a Las Vegas man who’s admiring the weathered box. He wears a Johnnie Walker RVs ball cap and declines to give his name.
“That’s probably the most photographed mailbox in the world,” Arnold says, his gruff voice tinged with awe.
The owners of the mailbox, Steve and Glenda Medlin, moved in 1973 to a cattle ranch in Tikaboo Valley, about 80 miles north of Las Vegas. There was no talk of aliens, and no home mail delivery.
A few years later, a local tungsten quarry reopened. Some miners moved to a trailer park near the Medlins; it grew into the town of Rachel. Postal carriers began delivery, and the couple put up a common black rural mailbox about six miles from their home, near Highway 375.
In 1989, according to a history of Rachel, a man named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television station that he had worked with alien spacecraft at nearby Nellis Air Force Range. He and his buddies, Lazar claimed, also watched saucer test flights in Tikaboo Valley.
So many tourists soon descended on Rachel -- on the edge of the valley -- that the Rachel Bar & Grill was renamed the Little A’Le’Inn. People would down Alien Burgers and beer there before making their way to the mailbox, the only landmark in Tikaboo Valley. The mailbox acquired a cult-like following.
“For some reason, Tuesday nights was when they thought the aliens came out. Then it was Wednesdays,” Glenda Medlin says with notable disdain. UFO tourists left messages in the mailbox for the aliens -- on business cards, napkins and notebook scraps. “They were waiting for the aliens to abduct them, and they were anxious to meet them. . . . We’d just shake our heads,” says Medlin, who long ago stopped reading the notes. “It was so asinine.”
Some people opened the couple’s mail, hoping to intercept classified correspondence. Some camped at the mailbox -- for weeks. A few shot the mailbox, leaving holes in the Medlins’ bills and junk mail. That was too much for the ranchers.
Medlin doesn’t remember when her husband swapped the black mailbox for the larger white bulletproof one, but an online posting pegs the date as March 27, 1996. The next month, the state baptized Highway 375 as the Extraterrestrial Highway, making headlines internationally.
Steve Medlin attached a second box solely for the alien-seekers: It has a mail slot and is labeled ALIEN and DROP BOX; some people slide in dollar bills.
Despite years passing, the Black Mailbox remains an enigma, puzzled over on Internet message boards:
6/27/03: the farmer painted it white in hopes that people would stop being fascinated with this mysterious black mailbox in the middle of nowhere
5/3/05: Steve Medlin has a government contract to provide cattle for the space aliens to mutilate
2/25/08: Can anybody give me any info on the rancher. . . . I know his mailbox is famous and his cattle look strange. . . . I bet he has stories.
The sun disappears, and the surrounding Groom, Timpahute and Pahranagat mountains blacken. Stars peek through clouds. It’s 52 degrees -- unseasonably cold for spring -- and Arnold and the other sky watchers are shivering through lined gloves and wool ponchos. They pace near the mailbox, one of the few things visible in the dark.
They clutch digital cameras and night-vision binoculars that tint everything green. They tilt back their heads, training their lenses on the sky. Someone clicks on a scanner, but it broadcasts only silence. Becky Spidell, 60, and her husband join the group, which passes time trading stories that, back home, are usually pooh-poohed.
“My mother was a UFO person. We had a big telescope in the living room,” says Spidell, who runs a mobile home park in Phoenix. “I was so embarrassed -- I wouldn’t bring friends over.”
But three years ago, after seeing the Little A’Le’Inn on television, Spidell and her husband headed to Tikaboo Valley in early summer. She said that she peered out her car window and glimpsed three orange UFOs, followed by a giant saucer.
“We watched it for a little bit,” she says, “and then it went over the mountain and it glowed for two or three minutes. It landed at Area 51.” The Spidells have returned every year since.
“My youngest daughter thinks I’m nuts,” she says. “I think this is the mother’s curse.”
Minutes pass; the sky watchers never lower their gazes.
Spidell: “It’s a big sky, big universe.”
Arnold: “It would be naive to think we’re the only ones.”
Spidell: “I’d like to know the games they’re playing with us. The abductions and all.”
They continue the UFO chatter.
“After I see one, I always check my clock,” Spidell says.
Pause.
“In case I’ve been abducted.”
That way, she says, she could figure out afterward how long she’d been missing.
The others nod in understanding.
The pauses lengthen. Two hours crawl by. It’s so dark now the mailbox seems like a mirage. There’s a glow emanating from behind the mountains, but the group decides it’s merely the Las Vegas Strip.
Crosby clutches a half-filled Coors, quietly surveying the night. A friend wanders off, and his flashlight occasionally blinks, jarring the group.
“We’re not counting on seeing anything,” Crosby finally says.
Wait.
There’s a light in the sky. A fast-moving light.
The group debates in hushed tones: Is it a shooting star? A spaceship?
They train their binoculars on it, hoping.
“Probably a commercial jet,” someone concludes.
Crosby slumps.
“Well,” he says, “I can say I was here.”
After Crosby’s friend returns, the group disbands -- it’s too frigid to camp until dawn. They start their cars and warm their fingers, the mailbox flickering in their headlights. They drive away, united in their certainty that the sky is hiding something.
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ashley.powers@latimes.com
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fc0ea9a78f90a7176ab9b987f00b93f0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-et-book22-story.html | One mom’s gleeful rant | One mom’s gleeful rant
Selecting schools in L.A. is the seventh circle of hell. The process is so unnervingly difficult that even the most Zen of parents can be worked into frightened paranoiacs, usually around the time their kids are learning to put on their own underwear.
Should they send their spawn to private school or public? Pay the exorbitant tuition that will sequester them amongst the children of the monied and educated or pay nothing and throw them to the wolves with the kids of the working class?
So many decisions. All of them frustrating.
Sandra Tsing Loh has been there. She’s also been quite vocal about her experience. The public radio commentator, performance artist and writer has talked about it on the air. She’s performed it in a one-woman show. And she’s written about it. And written about it. And written about it, most recently -- and thoroughly -- in her new memoir, “Mother on Fire.”
Until 2004, Loh was a marginally famous humorist. Then she “exploded into flames,” as she writes on the book’s opening page, transforming herself into the foaming mouthpiece of dissent and outrage over the state of public education in the U.S. Loh was 42 at the time -- a working and married mother of two young girls who was on the prowl for a good kindergarten.
Ask any educated, middle-class parent in L.A. who happened to buy real estate in a neighborhood with low-scoring public schools: It ain’t easy. Loh lives in “the Nuys,” a.k.a. Van Nuys, but it could be almost anywhere in this sprawling megalopolis that 12 million of us call home. Loh’s local elementary school is populated with students who have yet to learn English. The lawn that rings the facility “isn’t emerald-green lush” but “hairy, weedy, leathery crabgrass that is much like Don King’s hair.”
Loh’s story is the classic comic tragedy of L.A. She’s famous but not famous enough for her children to be granted access to the most premium of schools. Even if her daughters had been waved through in a puff of magic fairy dust, she and her musician husband wouldn’t have been able to afford the $20,000-plus annual tuition per child per year -- and that’s just for kindergarten. That fee would likely double for high school.
So off Loh goes with her husband, braving the wilds of the woolly Los Angeles Unified School District -- a beast so foul it often inspires tears. In Loh’s comedically gifted hands, however, LAUSD is also hugely entertaining as Loh attaches herself to alpha mothers who are trying to game the system and does her own research into just how bad the system really is.
It’s really, really bad, of course, which makes it all the funnier. Reading “Mother on Fire,” you can almost hear Loh speaking the words out loud. The text shares the same cadence and comedic timing as her radio commentaries. Loh is a cunning linguist who’s honed her craft over 20 years, and it shows. Her language is imaginatively twisted and fearless in its presentation of inconvenient truths about life in sprawling, status-conscious L.A. -- whether it be schools, which is the main through line of the book, or her personal life.
“Yea, we can hold it together in our thirties with a raft of hair products . . . ,” writes Loh, who is now 46. “Come the forties, though, cracks begin to appear.”
A good amount of space in “Mother on Fire” explores those cracks, with Loh musing on her own midlife reassessment of who she is, where she is and what she values: wife, mother, friend, artist. Like most middle-aged women, Loh wears a lot of hats, and those hats have started to morph with the inevitable drift of pre-motherhood friendships, the auto-piloting of a long-lasting marriage, the emotional divides among friends caused by disparate incomes and the transformation of middle-aged bodies into barely recognizable incarnations of their former selves.
Chock-full of relatable moments -- many of them laugh-out-loud funny -- “Mother on Fire” is likely to resonate with fellow left-leaning, middle-class, stressed-out moms -- particularly those who live in L.A., which is its own special freak show. It’s also likely to resonate with fans of Loh’s radio and theater work or anyone who wants to know the lowdown on Loh, because there’s a good amount of autobiographical information.
Loh, whose ancestry is half-Chinese, half-German, was raised in Malibu. Her father is an eccentric, Dumpster-diving Chinese immigrant. Loh went to Caltech, where she earned an undergraduate degree in, of all things, physics. Although physics and humor don’t often go hand in hand, it was at Caltech that Loh began writing the comedic essays that would later jell into a career. (One of those essays is included in the book.)
Of particular interest is Loh’s side of the incident that brought her national attention in 2004.
After uttering an obscenity during a pre-recorded commentary on Santa Monica public radio station KCRW-FM, she was fired -- a situation that not only catapulted Loh to fame as a 1st Amendment poster child but had the perverse, and utterly L.A., effect of granting her access to one of L.A.'s most elite private schools for her elder daughter.
Throughout “Mother on Fire,” Loh does an excellent job of weaving back and forth between her professional and parenting lives with one exception.
To bridge the psychological divide between the “wheels-came-off” Loh at the beginning of the book and the optimistic note with which it concludes, she employs a cliche: that emotional progression is addressed with a long chapter that takes place in her therapist’s office, a device which is a little too trite for such an original voice and outside-the-box thinker.
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susan.carpenter@latimes.com
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6ee7940fc1250bc5a6ef958ae1d61b44 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-et-trouble22-story.html | Katrina, from the front lines | Katrina, from the front lines
“Trouble the Water,” a stirring documentary on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is more than a keenly dramatic look at how this country treats the poor and dispossessed. It’s also a film that was hijacked by its subjects. They saw an opportunity, they took it, and the grand jury prize at Sundance was the result.
In fact, the opening scene of “Trouble” shows exactly how it happened. New York documentarians Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, longtime associates of Michael Moore, were in Alexandria, La., interviewing people at a Red Cross shelter when Kim Roberts and her husband, Scott, literally walked into the frame.
“I want to tell people what I been through,” Kim says on camera about home movie footage she shot in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward as the flood unfolded. “This needs to be worldwide. Nobody’s got what I got.” Which turned out to be both true as well as no more than half the story.
Kim Roberts’ footage, shot with a video camera she’d bought on the street for $20 only the week before, gives a rare from-the-ground-up look at what it’s like to be flooded out of your house. We watch in hypnotized horror as the waters rise so high they almost obliterate the corner stop sign, forcing the Roberts and their extended family to take precarious refuge in their attic.
Startling as that footage is, however, it takes up only about 15 minutes of “Trouble the Water.” The documentary’s best asset is not what Kim shot, but the woman herself.
With her buoyant, naturally dramatic personality (she ended up giving birth to a daughter in Utah just days before the Sundance award ceremony), bold, nervy Kim has the kind of intensely charismatic spirit documentary directors dream about. With her as our guide, “Trouble the Water” looks at the reality of New Orleans from the inside.
The tour starts before the flood does, with Kim showing us a hard-scrabble neighborhood of genuine poverty, but revealing the spirit and sense of community of “the world we had before the storm.”
“Trouble” really kicks into gear after the flood, when the Roberts’ experiences and those of family members and friends expose how things went down. As Danny Glover, one of the film’s executive producers, has said, Katrina “did not turn the region into a Third World country. . . . It revealed one.”
It’s clear from those opening frames that Kim and Scott are not exactly babes in the woods. As Kim said at Sundance, “we’re hustlers; we’ve done what we had to do to survive.” But the magnitude of government incompetence and neglect, the way the citizens of New Orleans were simply abandoned, takes their breath away, as it will yours.
We see, courtesy of rarely broadcast network footage, the despairing looks of distraught and shell-shocked residents outside the Superdome, almost literally hung out to dry. We travel with the Roberts to Alexandria, where she has relatives, and then back to her New Orleans neighborhood, hearing stories along the way of the death of a grandmother in a city hospital (“people left behind like they were trash” someone says) and the trials of a brother all but abandoned by authorities in a local prison.
All of this is presented in the context of the war in Iraq, the place that is getting the resources -- as well as the National Guard troops -- that the New Orleans residents desperately need.
“It’s like we’re un-American, like we lost our citizenship,” Kim laments, and a cousin puts it even more plainly: “If you don’t have money, if you don’t have status, you don’t have the government.”
What you do have, if you’re fortunate, is a film like “Trouble the Water” to tell your story to the world.
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kenneth.turan@latimes.com
“Trouble the Water.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. In limited release.
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fbb86e9ccf2501155992f0c2c5d9d0e6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-fg-syria22-story.html | Russian arms sale to Syria feared | Russian arms sale to Syria feared
Fears that Russia might sell advanced weaponry to Syria kicked up a mini-storm of concern in Israel on Thursday.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, in Russia for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, has been campaigning to acquire weapons systems that include long-range surface-to-surface missiles, according to Russian media reports.
The news of Assad’s reported ambitions prompted immediate hand-wringing among Israeli officials and analysts. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was “analyzing the ramifications” of Assad’s visit.
Knesset member Silvan Shalom said Israel should demand that Moscow refrain from “arming its enemies.”
“Arming Syria would lead to a strategic change and could destabilize the Middle East and the world,” said Shalom, a member of the right-wing opposition Likud party.
The deal, however, is far from done.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country was “ready to consider requests from the Syrian side” on buying more arms. But Lavrov added, “We are indeed prepared to sell only defensive weapons which do not violate the regional balance of power.”
Anatoly Yurkov, Russia’s acting ambassador to Israel, was even more direct.
“Why in the world would we need to deploy our missiles [in Syria]? Against whom? We have no enemies in the region,” Yurkov told the Israeli news site Ynet.
Medvedev phoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday evening to affirm ties between the two countries, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Olmert specifically asked the Russian leader not to approve any sales of advanced weapons to Syria, the paper reported.
The Russian weapons that most concern Israeli officials are the S-300 surface-to-air missile and the Iskander-E, a surface-to-surface missile with a reported maximum range of 170 miles.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing Russian media, said Assad offered to let Moscow deploy Iskander missiles in Syria as a response to a deal signed by Washington and Warsaw this week to place elements of a U.S. missile defense system in Poland, which has aggravated Moscow’s ties with the West.
Although Russian officials remained noncommittal about specific weapons sales, analysts said that closer Russian-Syrian military cooperation was a very real possibility for a variety of reasons.
Moscow remains upset by the nearly universal condemnation it has received for its recent military campaign against Georgia in support of two breakaway regions. Israel helped supply weapons to Georgia, and Assad made a point of defending Moscow’s actions during his meeting with Medvedev in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
“We understand Russia’s stance regarding the breakaway regions and understand that it came in retaliation to Georgian provocation,” Assad said.
Moscow also seeks to regain some of its Cold War regional sway, when Syria (under Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad) was one of its primary client states.
“The timing of Assad’s visit is very important. It happens at the time when Russia is very angry at the United States,” said Alexander Golts, a defense analyst for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, an independent Russian online publication. “It is highly possible that Russia, being so angered by the West and the United States, now may sell something very nasty to Syria.”
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ashraf.khalil@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow contributed to this report.
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0e922cee03666da54f23057551c43718 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-fi-projector22-story.html | ‘House Bunny’ set to rule box office | ‘House Bunny’ set to rule box office
Universal Pictures is gunning for No. 1 at the box office this weekend with the high-octane thriller “Death Race.” Focus Features, the studio’s specialty arm, just hopes to rev up some buzz for “Hamlet 2,” its irreverent comedy opening in limited release.
Produced for $45 million, the R-rated “Death Race” is a loose remake -- “re-imagining” is the term Hollywood types favor -- of the violent, futuristic 1975 B movie “Death Race 2000.” It stars Jason Statham, who is building a following playing rough-edged heroes in the McQueen-Bogart-Projector mold, and the ever-classy Joan Allen as you’ve never heard her before, cursing a blue streak. The movie looks headed for a $16-million launch, based on consumer tracking.
That could be enough to top the charts, although “Death Race” faces competition from Sony Pictures’ comedy “The House Bunny,” starring Anna Faris as a former Playboy bunny who becomes house mother to a clueless pack of sorority sisters, and DreamWorks/Paramount’s holdover action farce “Tropic Thunder.”
Projector’s hunch is that female empowerment plus sex appeal will enable the PG-13-rated “House Bunny” to hop off with bragging rights.
For the R-rated “Hamlet 2,” opening at only 103 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, the goal is to create chatter ahead of Wednesday’s expansion to 1,500-plus locations. Focus, which snapped up worldwide rights for $10 million at January’s Sundance Film Festival, hopes it has a breakout hit. The comedy stars Steve Coogan as a Tucson high school drama teacher who stages an absurd musical sequel to the Bard’s original play.
Indie blockbusters such as “Brokeback Mountain” and “Juno” have been rare in today’s crowded market, but Focus says it already has recouped much of its initial investment in “Hamlet 2" through foreign territory sales, so it doesn’t need the film to be a smash. Even so, the relatively light competition in late August and throughout September has been “merciful” to past Focus releases including the 2005 thriller “The Constant Gardener,” said Jack Foley, president of distribution.
Strong business for the recent string of R-rated comedies “Step Brothers,” “Pineapple Express” and now “Tropic Thunder” has audiences primed for more, Foley says: “We’re playing into that vortex of satisfaction.”
The back story of “Hamlet 2" could be worthy of Hollywood. With a $9-million budget, it was the first major film from the producing team of Eric Eisner (son of former Walt Disney Co. honcho Michael Eisner) and Russian tycoon Leonid Rozhetskin, who brought in experienced producer Aaron Ryder to help shepherd the project.
After wrapping the shoot, director Andy Fleming and the postproduction team whipped up a rough cut in three weeks to show the Sundance brass and a spiffier version a few weeks later. Executive producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, who produced “Little Miss Sunshine,” helped persuade Sundance to hold a slot open for the late entry, which ended up wowing the hipster crowd.
Two months after toasting the film’s sale to Focus, Rozhetskin vanished from his Latvian vacation home. Authorities fear he was slain, but no remains have been found and the case is unsolved.
Coogan, whose hapless character hopes to save the school’s drama department with his ill-conceived play, says “Hamlet 2" can click with mass audiences as well as those in search of something different.
“Underneath, it’s an old story about a guy who’s trying to do the right thing,” he said. “It has a lot of heart but there’s a proper sense of anarchy and edginess to it.”
“Death Race” could benefit from Universal’s maneuvering through the release calendar. The young- and male-skewing film had been set for Sept. 26, but the studio moved it to steer clear of the DreamWorks/Paramount thriller “Eagle Eye,” starring Shia LaBeouf, and to seize summer play dates with some schools and colleges not yet back in session.
Under-25 females will be the main audience for “The House Bunny,” which was produced for $25 million and comes from the screenwriting team behind the 2001 success “Legally Blonde.” Faris, from “The Hot Chick” and the “Scary Movie” series, could be on the brink of becoming a major star.
Box-office prospects look softer for two other releases.
Dimension Films and MGM’s “The Longshots,” a PG-rated, football-themed family movie starring Ice Cube and Keke Palmer, is tracking for a $7-million opening. That would be enough for a spot in the top 10 but not another hit on the scale of 2005’s “Are We There Yet?”
“The Rocker,” a PG-13 comedy from 20th Century Fox starring Rainn Wilson, opened Wednesday to $577,000, indicating that forecasts of a $6-million weekend from some analysts might be optimistic.
But the film is certainly striking a chord with the Lyons clan. In print ads, reviewer Jeffrey Lyons of NBC’s “Reel Talk” calls Wilson “hilarious,” and his son, Ben, of the E! network, declares the film “the surprise comedy hit of the summer!”
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josh.friedman@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Weekend Forecast
The new films “The House Bunny” and “Death Race” and the holdover “Tropic Thunder” could battle for No. 1 in a three-way scramble at the box office this weekend. Along with the movies listed below, contenders to make the top 10 include “The Rocker.” These figures are The Times’ predictions. Studios will issue estimated grosses Sunday and actual results Monday.
*--* Movie 3-day prediction Through the Weeks (studio) (millions) weekend
1 The House Bunny (Sony) $16.3 $16.3 1
2 Tropic Thunder 15.8 66.3 2 (DreamWorks/Paramount)
3 Death Race (Universal) 15.7 15.7 1
4 The Dark Knight (Warner 10.5 489.8 6 Bros.)
5 The Longshots (MGM) 7.4 7.4 1
6 Star Wars: The Clone Wars 5.8 25.7 2 (Warner Bros.)
7 Mirrors (20th Century Fox) 5.1 20.8 2
8 Mamma Mia! (Universal) 4.7 124.6 6
9 Pineapple Express (Sony) 4.7 73.6 3
10 The Mummy: Tomb of the 4.2 94.2 4 Dragon Emperor (Universal) *--*
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Source: Times research
Los Angeles Times
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560e2f455842bf248e2bd5227cef4033 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-na-ticketless22-story.html | Wanna-be witnesses to history | Wanna-be witnesses to history
Early Saturday morning Dermot Givens will load suitcases -- and his 8-year-old son, Damian -- into a rented van and begin his journey to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
The Los Angeles attorney is going even though he doesn’t have a ticket to any of next week’s events. He doesn’t plan to volunteer. He’s not a delegate, doesn’t hold political office and is not on anyone’s VIP list.
But Dermot and Damian Givens expect to arrive in Denver in plenty of time to somehow watch Barack Obama step up to the podium Thursday and accept his party’s nomination for president in front of 75,000 people at Invesco Field, home to the Denver Broncos.
They will be joined by hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of others who have no tickets but are drawn to the Mile-High City to be part of current events.
For Givens it will be an opportunity to hear Obama on the anniversary of another storied event: the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. Givens’ memory of that event is the car ride he took with his parents, who were driving from Detroit to the march.
“They dropped me off at my aunt’s house in Pittsburgh,” he recalled. “I grew up a kid of the civil rights movements, and I could have said ‘I went to the March on Washington.’ But I didn’t. They dropped me off in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh!”
The ranks of those who plan to just show up in Denver include a New York City lobbyist for social programs who said she had been energized by the Obama campaign to fight even harder for the poor; the head of an economic development program in South Los Angeles who said the campaign had rekindled emotions she hadn’t felt since the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 run for the presidency; and a Jackson, Miss., lawyer who wasn’t an Obama supporter but now finds herself drawn to the candidate and to Denver.
They will all have to work hard to achieve their dream.
The convention is expected to draw at least 50,000 people (5,000 delegates, 15,000 members of the media and 30,000 others) from out of state, and most of the area’s 42,000 hotel rooms are booked. In addition, a lion’s share of the tickets to Obama’s speech Thursday have been distributed to residents of such battleground states as Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and New Mexico.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way. “There will be a large screen on the side of the convention center, and ‘watch parties’ ” are being staged throughout the city, said Jennifer Backus, a senior aide to the Obama campaign for the convention. “The goal is to bring as many people into the process as possible.”
Jackie Dupont Walker, president of the Ward Economic Development Corp. in South Los Angeles, put the word out that she was looking for inside seats but said she wouldn’t be too disappointed if she didn’t get in. She said that she had attended several conventions and that this time she would be content to be in the vicinity of the action.
“I just want to be somewhere on the grounds,” she said.
Carolyn Webb de Macias, a retired USC vice president, found last-minute low-cost accommodations for herself, her husband and three adult sons. And she too is asking around for tickets to any of the scheduled events.
“The five of us will be bunked together family-style,” she said. “When people say ‘Where were you on Aug. 28?’ we want to be able to say we were in the noise.”
Clarence Clemons, a Ladera Heights public insurance adjuster, plans to fly to Denver and then rent a mobile home for the duration of the convention. And he’s looking for a ticket.
“The day Martin Luther King spoke in Washington, I was a young man in the Navy, watching the speech on television with my grandparents,” he recalled. “I said, ‘If I ever get an opportunity to experience history like this in my life, I will take it.’ And now I’m 70, and I never imagined something like this happening in my lifetime.”
In Los Angeles lately, when the call goes out for seats at the convention, it’s frequently Kerman Maddox on the other end of the line. The political consultant, longtime Obama supporter and member of Obama’s national finance committee has received 200 requests for convention tickets in the last 10 days, mostly from celebrities, elected officials, religious leaders and party activists. The requests have a familiar ring.
“I hear people say, ‘Hey, can you hook a brother up?’ or ‘Can you help a guy out?’ or ‘I need tickets. I need floor passes,’ ” Maddox said. “I tell them, ‘I’ll do what I can, but please don’t ask for floor passes.’ ”
Recently he received a request that was a little different. In a letter, Lark Galloway-Gilliam, a longtime friend and executive director of Community Health Councils in South Los Angeles, asked for help for her older brother, “a devoted Democrat and Obama supporter.”
Lloyd Edward Galloway Jr., 59, has suffered from cerebral palsy since childhood. Unable to walk or talk, he has a vibrant mind and spends hours each day following the news reports and analyses of the campaign. For his Aug. 4 birthday, the family bought airline tickets and arranged hotel accommodations for a trip to Denver with younger brother Mark.
“All that we need now are two passes to the acceptance speech,” Galloway-Gilliam wrote. “I know it’s asking a lot -- but dreams do come true, and his life is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. I’m asking everyone I know because it’s that important to him.”
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john.mitchell@latimes.com
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bb51ebccb886eb47e62f7de7ba585e08 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-sci-undecided22-story.html | Actually, they’re not that unsure | Actually, they’re not that unsure
Can’t decide between Barack Obama and John McCain? Chances are your brain already has.
Using a simple word association test to look inside voters’ heads, Canadian and Italian researchers found that many voters who thought they were undecided had unconsciously made up their minds.
Their decisions arise less from careful deliberation of the facts than from deep-seated attitudes that they have little awareness of, the study found.
Inside their brains, undecideds are often partisans, although “they do not know it yet,” said Bertram Gawronski, a University of Western Ontario psychologist and senior author of the study.
The researchers said it was all part of an unconscious decisiveness that manifests itself in the hundreds of mundane and snap decisions people make every day, such as choosing which shoe to put on first or which seat to take on an empty bus.
The study focused on a minor political debate in Italy, but the method is being used in an Internet experiment peering into the minds of undecided American voters. Those voters -- about 10% of the electorate -- could decide the outcome of what is expected to be a close presidential election.
The research, to be published today in the journal Science, used a computerized test in which participants were asked to react as quickly as possible to images arbitrarily deemed “good” or “bad.” The test measured how long it took to respond.
Scientists selected 33 residents of Vicenza, Italy, who stated they were undecided about a controversial proposal to expand a nearby U.S. military base.
They were instructed to press the letter D when they saw a picture of a military base or one of five positive words, such as joy, pleasure or happiness, and the letter K when they saw one of the negative words, which included pain, ugly or danger.
The researchers then reversed the test so that the image of the military base was linked to the negative words.
The theory behind the test is that people will hesitate when required to perform actions incompatible with their unconscious attitudes. So subjects who unconsciously favored the base expansion took more time to react when it was associated with negative words, and subjects against the expansion delayed when it was associated with positive words.
The lag in reaction time averaged between 100 and 200 milliseconds, said Gawronski, who collaborated on the project with scientists from the University of Padova in Italy.
One week after the test was administered, nine previously undecided subjects said they now favored the base, 10 said they had decided against it and 14 remained undecided. Participants’ responses on the week-earlier computerized test and an accompanying opinion survey were about 70% accurate in predicting their decisions, researchers said.
The test hasn’t been adopted by political consultants, although one, TargetPoint Consulting Inc. in Virginia, experimented with it during the Republican presidential primary campaign.
A research team from the University of Virginia, the University of Washington and Harvard University is offering an https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html of the test, tracking reactions to the presidential candidates.
Brian A. Nosek, a University of Virginia assistant professor of psychology who is working on the project, said some undecided voters were demonstrating subconscious support for Obama or McCain, but it was too soon to decide what that might mean.
“We don’t know yet if that will translate into actual support later,” he said. “We shall see.”
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denise.gellene@latimes.com
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429cde49f1b5eb4d6110dd2fe36983b0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-22-sp-olygym22-story.html | IOC asks panel to revisit 3 Chinese gymnasts’ ages | IOC asks panel to revisit 3 Chinese gymnasts’ ages
The International Olympic Committee today asked the international gymnastics federation to reexamine whether gold-medal-winning gymnast He Kexin and two of her teammates were too young to compete in the Beijing Games.
“You shouldn’t regard this as a formal investigation, but we have asked the international gymnastics federation to look into a number of questions and discrepancies on these cases,” IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said. “We have been working with the [Chinese] national federation to really have a full clarification on this topic. We did discuss it earlier in the Games, and we believed we had addressed the issue.”
In the Olympics, a gymnast must turn 16 during the year the Games are held.
If He is determined to be too young, she would be stripped of her medals. In the uneven bars competition Monday, she narrowly beat Nastia Liukin of the United States for the gold. She also has a team gold medal.
It is also possible that all of the Chinese women could be stripped of their team gold medals.
The decision to further look into the allegations comes after a series of articles, most recently by the Times of London, said that documents from Chinese sports agencies that had been posted on the Internet showed He is not 16. The British article was based on a Web report by a computer security expert who said he had obtained the documents.
Among those documents are gymnastics registration lists showing that He was born Jan. 1, 1994, though the passport China submitted for Olympic entry listed her birth date as Jan. 1, 1992.
Some of these online documents were the basis of articles last month in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times raising questions about the ages of Chinese athletes, including He.
Several of these documents and stories have since been deleted from websites, including a Chinese news agency report in November that quoted a Chinese sports federation official as saying that He was 13 and a 2012 Olympic prospect.
He was reported to have started her training at the Ditan Sports School in Beijing in 1997 when she was either 3 or 5 years old.
“I don’t know who is her mother,” said Shang Chunyan, who trained He for three years at Ditan. Shang refused to talk about He’s age, referring questions to officials with the Dongcheng District of Beijing, which oversees the school.
Some accounts say He’s mother is an employee in the psychological research unit of the elite Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Bulletin board postings list her mother’s name as Yang Xiaoyan. The academy said Yang was on vacation and could not be reached for comment.
Wang Wei of the Chinese Olympic committee said the matter of athletes’ ages was looked into and the athletes in question had been cleared to compete.
“Eligibility has already been investigated by authorities in the international federation,” Wang said. “If the athletes hadn’t been cleared, they wouldn’t have participated.”
U.S. officials welcomed the news of the inquiry.
“USA Gymnastics has always believed this issue needed to be addressed by the FIG [the international gymnastics federation] and IOC,” said Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics. “An investigation would help bring closure to the issue and remove any cloud of speculation from this competition.”
In addition, documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times gave ages of 13 or 14 for gymnasts Yang Yilin and Jiang Yuyuan as recently as last fall.
When the Chinese gymnastics federation turned in passports to FIG, He’s age was listed as 16. On the documents, Yang and Jiang also had varying birthdays.
FIG spokesmen insisted throughout the gymnastics competition that it was not the federation’s job to be investigators and that as long as a country was able to issue a valid passport for an athlete, FIG would do no further checking.
Among Chinese sports fans on the Web, there is a vigorous debate about not only the gymnasts’ age but also the ethics of lying.
One writer on a popular Tianya news site accused the Western media of “making a fuss to demonize China,” but most contributors expressed the desire to have the gymnasts’ true age revealed.
“I hope my country will win gold medals, but the rest of the world must be convinced,” wrote one contributor.
Another wrote, “Fake medals represent true shame.”
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diane.pucin@latimes.com
barbara.demick@latimes.com
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31e07031316ab4873d2bd04ea2487034 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-23-et-bowl23-story.html | Khachaturian a la Thibaudet | Khachaturian a la Thibaudet
Although Thursday night’s Hollywood Bowl performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic had a mostly Russian feeling, its program was more complicated than that.
Sure, the pioneering Glinka and the reliable crowd-pleaser Tchaikovsky run down the middle of Russian musical culture, and the Hungarian Zoltan Kodaly qualifies as compatible kin from the former Eastern Bloc.
But Aram Khachaturian, whose Piano Concerto was the concert’s centerpiece, was both Moscow-trained and proudly from and of Armenia. And it was Khachaturian -- who worked in the shadows of Glinka, Armenian traditional music and, to a lesser extent, Stravinsky -- who dominated the concert.
Indeed, Khachaturian, long considered a lighter-weight participant among 20th century composers, may be ripe for reconsideration, or at least that was a notion strengthened by Thursday’s controlled and passion-powered reading of the concerto by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
A three-movement piece written in 1936, the work is a solid example of the composer’s personalized mix of blustery sentimentality, folkish colors and teasing Modernist spice. Thibaudet mastered the score handily, deftly working the extremes of flashy dynamism and feathery ruminations, which he somehow projected into the Bowl’s expanse.
Like Khachaturian, Kodaly has sometimes been cast as an also-ran among 20th century masters, overshadowed by fellow Hungarian Bartok. His “Dances of Galanta,” the concert’s closer, suggests a softer-edged Bartok, its indigenous folk themes intact and plushly padded.
Standard-brand orchestral taste treats, which can sound better when consumed in the Bowl’s great outdoorsy setting, served as supportive pillars on the program. Glinka’s “Russlan and Ludmilla” started things off with all the gleaming, boisterous energy expected of it. Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet,” for its part, retained its charms and loveliness.
On the podium, Lionel Bringuier, all of 21 and about to begin his second season as the Phil’s assistant conductor, acquitted himself and marshaled the ensemble forces beautifully. It appears that this mighty orchestra -- on the verge of Venezuelan wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel’s tenure at the helm -- is in the assured clutches of ultra-talented twentysomethings.
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70c9e3c1290b73cfc49fdcdd657e1fd8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-23-fg-diary23-story.html | Entry into the soul of a wanderer | Entry into the soul of a wanderer
Joe Sanderson left his Midwestern hometown in his 20s with a backpack, a notepad and a dream of being a writer.
Starting in the mid-1960s, he crossed the Pacific on a freighter, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and kept going, for two decades in all, traipsing across more than 60 countries. Everywhere he went, he kept a diary and wrote to Mom and Dad back home in Urbana, Ill.
Shortly after arriving in this Central American country in 1979, Sanderson pulled off his most audacious feat yet: He joined a guerrilla army.
“Not much cover in the rocks, and the bullets, as they say, came thick and fast,” Sanderson wrote in his diary, describing a helicopter attack against his column of rebel fighters. “Sounded like little kids trying to whistle after eating cracker crumbs. Pfffittt! Pfffittt!”
Not long after he wrote those words in 1982, Sanderson’s wanderings ended, 17 days short of his 40th birthday, in a makeshift field hospital with his diary still in his backpack.
Joe Sanderson is one of two Americans known to have fought and died with the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the leftist rebels whose war against El Salvador’s U.S.-backed military junta was one of the last conflicts of the Cold War.
Rescued from the battlefield by a rebel historian, Sanderson’s 330-page diary and other writings lay neglected and unread for decades. The guerrilla veteran who saved the diary recently allowed me access to it, the first time an outsider had seen it.
The diary and the hundreds of missives Sanderson wrote home tell an unlikely American adventure story. They chronicle a peripatetic Midwesterner who joked and charmed his way across five continents, and eventually fought against an army backed by his own government.
Sanderson grew up in a comfortable neighborhood of Urbana, home to the University of Illinois, where his father was a professor of entomology, specializing in beetles.
The future film critic Roger Ebert lived on the same block and graduated with Sanderson in the Urbana High class of 1960. Ebert remembers Joe as a friend who collected butterflies and reptiles, and who left home with $100 bills his mother had sewn into his clothes. “From a nice little house surrounded by evergreens at the other end of Washington Street, he left to look for something he needed to find,” Ebert wrote in a 2007 review of the film “Into the Wild.” The movie, he told his readers, reminded him of a childhood friend with a similar story.
“Into the Wild” tells the story of a man’s solitary and ultimately fatal journey into the Alaskan wilderness. Sanderson spent the final months of his life in the pine forests that surround the town of Perquin, in northeastern El Salvador.
He had joined an army made up mostly of peasants, college students and union activists -- along with a smattering of foreigners recruited by the international solidarity movement that supported the rebels’ cause against a military government associated with right-wing death squads.
“It seems strange to call the M-1 I’m using La Virgencita [the Little Virgin],” Sanderson wrote in his diary after a crazed firefight in which he and enemy soldiers shouted insults at each other in Spanish. “Polished stock, definitely a beauty . . . at least as guns go.”
Sanderson’s nom de guerre among his companions was “Lucas.” He often worked alongside Carlos Consalvi, alias “Santiago,” a Venezuelan-born activist who ran the rebels’ clandestine radio station, Radio Venceremos. Consalvi rescued the diary and has it in the collection of the San Salvador museum he founded to preserve the rebels’ history.
“Lucas was a good friend, a person who lifted our spirits with his optimism,” Consalvi said recently. “The American government spent millions of dollars fighting us. But we had one American on our side.”
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Writing over the course of several weeks in the inexpensive spiral notebooks used by Salvadoran schoolchildren, Sanderson recounts his adventures in English spiced with a liberal flavoring of Salvadoran idioms and guerrilla slang, quickly moving from the mundane to horrific as he describes the daily details of rebel life: the joys of being able to drink coffee after days without, and the 17 army corpses that lay for hours on the battlefield after a rebel victory.
“And now a new phase begins,” Sanderson wrote on March 22, 1982, as his column of rebels marched toward the mountainous province of Morazan. “And with a little luck and good strategy planning on our part, and bad luck to the cuilios [army soldiers] -- even the last phase.”
He took note of the many ironies and absurdities seen in a poor country at war: the rebels pausing during a retreat to eat mangoes in a grove; the peasants venturing out on their daily market routines and doing their best to ignore the rival forces marching among them.
In his last entry, on April 27, 1982, he described the death and burial by flashlight of a fellow rebel the night before.
There was “no weeping or sadness,” Sanderson wrote, just fighters inspecting the dead man’s wound as if it were the “tropical bud” of a flower and checking the pockets of his bloodied pants to find “stray buttons . . . and a crumpled package of Kool-Aid.”
In his home in the United States, Steve Sanderson keeps a box of mementos of his kid brother: the Star Scout certificate Joe earned when he was 15; his “Water Safety Instructor” badge; the logbook of Joe’s flights across Illinois after he earned a pilot’s license; three boxes and 10 binders that contain a few hundred of Joe’s letters.
There are several photos of teenage Joe in the horn-rimmed glasses of the day. One shows him clowning on a motorcycle in the driveway, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a set of bongo drums in another: This was Joe’s idea of what it was like to be a wandering bohemian.
“He was the intellectual and idealist in the family, and was more like my father,” said Steve, now 68. “I was the more practical and conservative one and more like our mother.”
Steve graduated from college and became an accountant, like his mother, Virginia Coleman. Joe studied theology at Hanover College in Indiana, but dropped out his senior year. Then he hit the road.
In the years that followed, Joe filled Urbana mailboxes with postcards and envelopes emblazoned with colorful stamps: a gray parrot from Nigeria, a zooming jet from the Republiek van Suid-Afrika, a mosque from Jordan.
Steve says the arrival of a letter from Joe was an occasion usually celebrated with a family dinner. “My mother would call and say, ‘Come on over, we got a letter from Joe.’ ”
After the meal, the family would listen to Coleman read Joe’s letters. His words brought exotic locales into their living room: the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, the dun plains of Iraq, the waters of Lake Victoria in Uganda.
In 1969, Joe reached Nigeria, then in the midst of civil war. He got a job administering vaccines to babies in refugee camps. The job was grim, but Sanderson’s letters home described his duties and the war with his usual sardonic humor. “The Red Cross,” he wrote in one, “is desperate for workers to hit the bush and drink gin, contract malaria and get shot at for breakfast.”
He also journeyed to the 38th Parallel separating the Koreas, founded a “hippie hospital” in the Bolivian mountain town of Sorata and posed as a journalist covering the Vietnam War.
When he returned home to the U.S. periodically, he painted flagpoles and church steeples -- the hazardous work allowed him to raise cash for his travels.
His mother tried to get him to settle down and pursue a career.
“When your kid is 19 and he’s a wandering hippie, that’s OK,” Steve said. “But when your kid is 30, or 40, and he’s still a wandering hippie, you realize that’s what he’s going to be.”
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Sanderson left for El Salvador as a tourist in 1979. At first, it seemed like any of his other adventures.
“Howdy all,” he wrote from La Libertad, El Salvador, in January 1980. “Out here on the beach an hour outside the capital . . . and in the midst of a suspended revolution what do I find but a damn surfer colony! Some revolution!
” . . . My first night in town got drunk out at the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard house, so I want you to know your taxpayer’s money is being well spent.”
Not long afterward, Sanderson found himself in an impoverished district of San Salvador, partially controlled by the revolutionaries. An armored vehicle had opened fire on a rebel barricade, and a group of rebels was seeking treatment for a wounded comrade.
Sanderson said he could help -- he had been a medic in the U.S. Army Reserves. He treated the wounded man, then told the rebels that he wanted to “participate in the struggle.”
“I never thought he might be a spy,” said former rebel Adolfo Sanchez, then known as “Comandante Fito.” “The kindness with which he treated our comrade’s wounds told me he couldn’t be a spy.”
The rebels liked the earnest Sanderson, but took precautions. They made him stay in a San Salvador hide-out for weeks, and had him run “training” laps at a local soccer stadium.
Eventually, he was assigned to a rebel column that marched eastward to Morazan province.
At 5-foot-11, with blue eyes and sandy hair, he stood out. In an army made up mostly of teenagers and 20-year-olds, he was a wise viejo, or old man.
Veterans of his rebel column still recount stories of his wartime deeds. They remember him as a “metaphysical” philosopher and raconteur who loved the works of Ernest Hemingway.
“He’d wear jeans and a beige shirt, and a red bandanna . . . but never a uniform, because he wasn’t a military-type guy,” said “Eduardo,” a Mexico City surgeon who staffed a rebel hospital and asked that his real name not be printed. The two men talked for hours about religion and flying.
Several of the skills Sanderson had mastered as an Illinois youth turned out to be quite handy to the guerrillas.
“I always wanted Lucas next to me, because he was an excellent shot,” said Jose Ismael Romero, then a 25-year-old rebel leader known as “Comandante Bracamontes.”
Once, Sanderson challenged the comandante to a shooting contest -- and won.
Unbeknownst to his comrades, Sanderson had taken and passed a National Rifle Assn. marksmanship test in Illinois. Jorge Melendez, a.k.a. “Comandante Jonas,” a rebel commander Joe refers to as “the Whale” in his diary, remembers a long discussion with Sanderson over the rebels’ poor shooting skills.
“Look, hombre,” he remembers Sanderson telling him. “The M-16 is a good weapon, a very versatile weapon. The problem is that the comrades don’t know how to use the M-16. You have to teach them how to use it properly.”
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‘Moon’s on the wane, flashlight batteries on the wane, but wanted to scribble [a] quick message Arizona-way,” Sanderson wrote on Feb. 14, 1982, in his last letter to his father, who was living in Arizona after a divorce.
“So here I be -- still fat and healthy (on tortillas and beans),” he wrote. “Still grinning my grin -- still ready to swap my Salvadoran butterfly net for an Arizona fishing pole.”
Two months later, while rushing to capture an enemy machine gun in the deceptively quiet aftermath of another battle, he was injured when a grenade or mortar shell exploded nearby.
Eduardo, the volunteer Mexican surgeon, worked to stem the bleeding from a shrapnel wound, even as army troops advanced on the makeshift operating room.
But for a shortage of plasma that plagued the rebel hospital, the doctor says, he would probably have saved Sanderson’s life.
“He had a deep stare and he took my hand,” the doctor recalled earlier this year. “We looked at each other and he told me: ‘Don’t worry, Eduardo. It’s all going to be OK.’ ”
Retreating fighters quickly buried Sanderson by a river that ran through rebel territory. Consalvi saved his diaries and had them smuggled to an FMLN archive in Nicaragua by a courier who risked death to ferry them past army lines.
When news of Sanderson’s death arrived in Urbana, it was incomplete, vague and never entirely convincing.
An initial news agency story named the American killed as “Joe S. Anderson.”
The FMLN never contacted the Sanderson family. The U.S. Embassy could provide little information, other than to confirm that Sanderson was dead.
The Salvador war ended with a peace treaty in 1992. But for more than two decades, the Sandersons -- his father is in his 90s now; his mother died years ago -- never learned the exact circumstances of Joe’s death, or where he was buried, until I told them this year.
Even though a life insurance company paid the Sandersons on a policy Joe had taken out, the possibility that he might still be traveling the world someplace never quite left his brother.
“The first time I was ever convinced that there was no possibility that he could come knocking at my door,” Steve told me, “was when I talked to you.”
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hector.tobar@latimes.com
Special correspondent Alex Renderos in San Salvador contributed to this report.
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c2acdd3bd582042fa2c7aeb802d1f1b8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-23-fg-sons23-story.html | Iraq seeks breakup of Sunni fighters | Iraq seeks breakup of Sunni fighters
An emboldened Iraqi government has launched an aggressive campaign to disband a U.S.-funded force of Sunni Arab fighters that has been key to Iraq’s fragile peace, arresting prominent members and sending others into hiding or exile as their former patrons in the American military reluctantly stand by.
The Shiite Muslim-led government has long distrusted the fighters, many of whom are former insurgents. Senior Shiite politicians label some of the members murderers, and warn that there is no long-term obligation to employ them after their units are disbanded.
“The ones in Baghdad and Diyala province just changed their T-shirts. There are large numbers who were really Al Qaeda. We have to really look hard for those elements without blood on their hands,” said Haidar Abadi, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party.
Amid fears that the Sunnis’ treatment could rekindle Iraq’s insurgency, the Americans are caught between their wish to support the fighters and their stronger ties to Maliki’s government, which has challenged the Sunni paramilitaries in recent months as it grows increasingly confident about its fledgling army.
“We want to have our cake and eat it too, support Maliki and the Sons of Iraq. . . . Maliki wants to make that as hard for us as possible. He wants us to choose him,” said Stephen Biddle, a Council on Foreign Relations defense expert who has served as an advisor on strategy to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq. “What it looks like we are getting is a Maliki government that won’t behave itself and wants to crush the Sons of Iraq.”
The chief U.S. military spokesman here denied Maliki was targeting the Sons of Iraq, or that the Americans were tilting toward the government at the expense of the Sunni fighters.
“Just last week, the prime minister gave his personal commitment to the program,” Brig. Gen. David Perkins said. “They are well aware of the sacrifices the Sons of Iraq have made, that they were a critical element in bringing the security situation under control and that it is in their strategic advantage to assimilate them peacefully and orderly into Iraqi society.”
Maliki has grown powerful after successful military operations in spring against Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s militia in southern Iraq and Baghdad. His transformation has provided the Americans a partner they can work with as they look for a way to hand over the reins in Iraq, the long-term U.S. goal here.
A Western advisor to the Iraqi government said the U.S. military couldn’t stop the Iraqi security forces now even if it wanted to -- they are larger in size and have their own chain of command.
The Iraqi government first challenged the U.S. military over the Sons of Iraq program in the spring -- basically freezing the activities of the Iraqi reconciliation committee charged with integrating the 99,000 fighters into the security forces and civilian jobs, according to a Shiite advisor to the government.
In July, Maliki informed the Americans that he wanted the entire program handed over to him as soon as possible, said Mohammed Salman, the head of the committee. In response, the U.S. military has drafted plans to dissolve the group by next summer, integrating 20% of its members into the police and finding the rest such jobs as mechanics, electricians and carpenters. The Americans want to slash the Sons of Iraq to 60,000 by the end of the year.
“Our goal is that by June 2009, the Sons of Iraq are out of business,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer, who is charged with the Sunni paramilitary file.
Just over 9,000 of the Sunni fighters have been hired into the security forces so far. And the government has warned that any program to provide the majority of the fighters job training once their paramilitary units are disbanded will be temporary.
“We have the same problems around the country. We can’t just create a program to pay some people and not others,” said Abadi, the lawmaker.
Such comments raise concerns in U.S. military circles that the men will be pushed back to joining dwindling militant groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
“If the government of Iraq doesn’t decide to employ all of them, you have jobless rates that skyrocket,” said a U.S. intelligence analyst who, like some others who spoke for this report, did so on condition of anonymity. “I don’t know what will happen.”
Many of the fighters are now on the run. The Iraqi military has mostly dismantled the group in the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, once a hub for militant attacks, and it has arrested Sunni fighters in Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of the capital. Influential Sunni paramilitary leaders, from the Baghdad and Baqubah areas, have gone into hiding or are in exile.
In the past, U.S. commanders had deflected arrest warrants for key fighters, but there has been an apparent shift. “We don’t have a ‘get out of jail free’ card for the Sons of Iraq. There is law and order in this country, and we respect the Iraqi government,” Kulmayer said.
The men feel increasingly vulnerable -- they have been attacked by Al Qaeda and Shiite militias and subjected to Iraqi army raids. Since January, 462 of them have been killed in attacks by militants. If disbanded, their leaders warn, the men could revolt, but the Sons of Iraq are holding out hope that local elections, still without a date, will improve their lot.
“In the event that the U.S. military and government don’t live up to their promises, it could turn back to a violent form of resistance,” said a leader, Abu Abed, from the north Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. “Every action breeds a reaction.”
In Abu Ghraib, there are no Sons of Iraq on the street in the Nasr Salam district, only Iraqi army checkpoints. Soldiers with sunglasses and Kalashnikov rifles stand by concrete barriers with graffiti identifying them as the Muthanna Brigade, a force feared by the local Sunni population. Asked about the Sons of Iraq, locals and an Iraqi army officer say the movement doesn’t exist there anymore.
Until May, Abu Azzam, a former stockbroker and onetime Islamic Army insurgent leader, headed the 700-man Sons of Iraq branch in the district. He fled the area in May when the Americans informed him that the Muthanna Brigade was taking security responsibility there.
He says the brigade raided his members’ houses and detained up to 10 leaders. His foot soldiers fled. Some haven’t seen their families in more than a month. He is stunned about what happened. But the former insurgent has plotted his next move, establishing a political party called Dignity, which he hopes will turn the tables on his opponents in the still-to-be-scheduled elections.
“We have to get rid of the Iranian influence in Iraq and rebuild the democratic state,” he said, baring his suspicions about the current government, dominated by religious parties.
Abu Azzam suspects that some of his fighters have already gone back to war, but he doesn’t believe the violence will return to its previous levels. Still, the fact that his old allies are on the lam has him worried. “Anyone who feels disappointed will go back,” he said. “Definitely, he will go to the resistance. He will go back to violence.”
While some have fled their posts, other leaders of the Sons of Iraq are behind bars. Mullah Shihab Safi, the commander of the Sons of Iraq in Baqubah, turned himself in to the government Aug. 15. He had gone into hiding when the Iraqi army launched an offensive in Baqubah in late July and sent soldiers to arrest not only Al Qaeda members but also Sons of Iraq leaders.
The Iraqi army shut down most of the group’s checkpoints there, raided its members’ homes and closed all but one of its offices. Then, last week, Maliki announced that gunmen could apply for amnesty. Safi decided to take the government up on its offer. He showed up at the local government’s headquarters, accompanied by a tribal sheik to vouch for him, and submitted his application. At least 13 Sunni fighters remain in jail, Safi said.
The Sunni commander has accepted the situation -- if only because his options are limited. “We feel this is a political game to embarrass and expel us,” he said. “We are just dealing with the matter because we have no choice.”
He hints that some could restart the fight against the Americans and the Iraqi government if things continue to deteriorate. Like most, he has his eyes on elections as a way for his group to gain power -- yet even that target seems elusive after parliament failed to pass an election law this summer.
“We don’t know what our stance will be if other things happen from the security forces, the Iraqi government or the Americans,” Safi said. He recognizes that things have changed with his U.S. allies. “The Americans have made their compromises. They want the Iraqi central government authority to prevail, so they can withdraw to their bases.”
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ned.parker@latimes.com
A Times special correspondent in Diyala province and Times staff writers Said Rifai and Saif Hameed contributed to this report.
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dc23da4a6c259c0e4fd1bd9003c3d79e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-23-na-biden23-story.html | Biden’s the pick, sources confirm | Biden’s the pick, sources confirm
Barack Obama has tapped Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate, bringing to the Democratic ticket a veteran senator with deep expertise in international relations, two high-level Democratic operatives told The Times on Friday.
The news broke after a full day of intense media speculation that included stakeouts at the homes of the top three contenders. The Obama campaign had hoped to keep the selection secret until the Illinois senator could reveal it to his supporters in text messages.
Late in the day, media reports indicated that the other main candidates -- Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine -- had been told they were out of the running, and attention turned to Biden, who remained secluded.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden could help offset Obama’s relative inexperience in foreign policy. Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator, has been ridiculed by his Republican rival, John McCain, as too naive to be president.
Biden, 65, emerged earlier this week as a top choice. The Times reported Wednesday that the Delaware senator had met repeatedly with campaign officials and that the Secret Service was preparing to protect him.
On Friday, one of the Democrats working with the campaign said the Secret Service had been dispatched and a plane readied to take Biden to Springfield, Ill., where Obama plans to roll out his vice presidential pick today at a rally at the Old State Capitol.
Obama campaign officials declined to confirm Friday night that Biden was Obama’s selection as his running mate.
A Roman Catholic born to a working-class family in Scranton, Pa., Biden might also help Obama draw blue-collar Catholic voters who formed a core constituency for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her primary battle with Obama.
Biden has already demonstrated an appetite for defending Obama and taking on McCain, particularly on foreign policy issues. In May, he criticized President Bush for attacking those like Obama who favor reaching out diplomatically to regimes like Iran and North Korea.
The senator also offers a compelling personal story. His first wife, Neilia Hunter, died in a car accident in 1972 as she was driving their three children shortly after his election as U.S. senator. Their infant daughter was also killed but their two sons -- Beau and Hunter -- survived their injuries.
Biden, then 30, was sworn in as a first-term senator at his sons’ bedside.
Biden has long harbored aspirations to be president himself. He ran this year, but dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in January after a lackluster showing in the Iowa caucuses. “I’m not a superstar,” he said while stumping in Iowa. “People say they like me, people tell me they think I’d be a good president but that they just don’t think I can win.”
Along with his Senate Foreign Relations post, which recently took him on a trip to Georgia after the Russian invasion, Biden has been chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and has had a hand in legislation on crime, terrorism and drug policy.
At the same time, as a 36-year Senate veteran, Biden is a Washington insider, an image that is at odds with the theme of change Obama has promoted. Still, he is popular with many Democratic Party activists and may help Obama with less affluent voters who have been cool to him.
One issue that could prove problematic is that Biden supported the 2002 resolution in favor of military action in Iraq. Obama has made his opposition to the war a centerpiece of his campaign. But Biden has become a persistent critic of the handling of the war.
One of the main roles of the Democratic vice presidential nominee will be to attack McCain and his running mate. The Arizona senator is expected to name his No. 2 after the Democrats end their national convention in Denver on Thursday.
The McCain campaign responded quickly to media reports that Obama had picked Biden. “There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden. Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing -- that Barack Obama is not ready to be president,” said McCain spokesman Ben Porritt.
In an August 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Biden said that he believed Obama was “fully capable of being ready” to be president, but added: “He hasn’t demonstrated it yet. This is early in the campaign.” In other interviews, Biden demurred from criticizing Obama directly and emphasized his own extensive experience on the world stage.
In the Democratic debates, Biden also uttered some of the most stinging lines about the Republicans, calling Rudolph W. Giuliani “probably the most under-qualified person since George Bush to seek the presidency” and saying that the former New York mayor only used three words in a sentence -- “a noun and a verb and 9/11.”
While Biden is a skilled orator, he is often mocked for being verbose. His words have also come back to haunt him.
He created a stir early in the past year’s Democratic presidential race when he told a reporter for the New York Observer that Obama was “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” He apologized, saying, “I deeply regret any offense my remark . . . might have caused anyone.”
Last year, referring to Indian immigrants, Biden said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. It’s a point. I’m not joking!”
And when he ran for president in 1988, Biden was accused of plagiarism when he did not credit Neil Kinnock, then leader of the British Labor Party, for much of his stump speech.
Before heading to the convention, Obama and Biden are expected to make appearances in a series of critical states, arriving in Denver on Wednesday. Obama’s vice presidential choice is slated to speak that night and Obama will address his supporters on Thursday in a football stadium that can seat 76,000 people.
In recent days, Obama was said to be focusing on Biden, Bayh and Kaine, though other names continued to surface.
In looking for a vice presidential candidate, Obama sought to remedy several vulnerabilities as a candidate. As a first-term U.S. senator, his legislative record is thin, and he has little experience in foreign policy or military affairs.
Politically, Obama has yet to demonstrate deep strength among white working-class voters, a weakness that was exposed during his long battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. He also has aimed to win over women voters and others who supported his primary rival, Sen. Clinton.
The selection of Biden caps a screening process managed in secrecy by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the former president, and Eric Holder, a former U.S. deputy attorney general, since June, when Obama clinched the delegates he needed for the nomination.
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stuart.silverstein@latimes.com
johanna.neuman@latimes.com
Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Dan Morain contributed to this report. Silverstein reported from Chicago, Neuman from Washington.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
About Biden
Name: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
Age: 65; born Nov. 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pa.
Experience: U.S. senator since 1973. Sought presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008.
Education: Bachelor’s in history and political science, University of Delaware, 1965; law degree, Syracuse University, 1968.
Family: Married Neilia Hunter in 1966 and had three children, Beau, Hunter and Naomi. His wife and daughter Naomi died in a car crash in 1972. Married Jill Jacobs in 1977; they have one daughter, Ashley. Beau Biden is now Delaware’s attorney general.
Source: Associated Press
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1df820654cd5186456d6ca434f4d8c05 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-23-sci-gymnasts23-story.html | X-rays good as gold in telling age | X-rays good as gold in telling age
How do you tell the age of a Chinese gymnast?
Don’t bother with those government-issued passports or birth certificates.
Go for the X-rays.
For all the global hand-wringing over how international gymnastics officials will ever figure out whether three members of the Chinese women’s team were old enough to compete, doctors and forensics experts said it’s actually not too difficult.
The science of determining age is has been honed by decades of treating patients with growth disorders, identifying youthful homicide victims and determining the deportation status of illegal immigrants.
“It would be relatively easy,” said Dr. David Senn, a forensic odontologist at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center who has analyzed numerous X-rays of immigrants apprehended at the border.
The science is based on measuring the growth of bones and teeth as children mature. Decades of data have been distilled into detailed tables recording the precise size and shape of skeletal components broken down by age, sex and race.
The task is so straightforward that Dr. Peter Hampl, president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, said the Chinese government should just consent to X-rays and let the films speak for themselves.
“If there is nothing to be afraid of, let their kids be X-rayed,” he said. “It’s almost incriminating if they don’t.”
It may seem strange that amid the outsized pageantry of the Beijing Games, the biggest controversy has surrounded three tiny Chinese gymnasts whose combined weight is 216 pounds.
The ages of He Kexin, Yang Yilin and Jiang Yuyuan came into question weeks ago after the discovery of online registration records listing birth dates that would make all three girls 14 years old. Olympic rules require that a gymnast be at least 16 during the year the Games are held. The government attempted to put the issue to rest by producing passports that declared the girls met the age requirement.
The controversy reached Olympian proportions after the Chinese team beat the American gymnasts in the team competition. In addition to the team gold, He edged American Nastia Liukin for the top prize in uneven bars by a tiebreaker, and Yang won the bronze medal in that event and in the all-around competition.
After new complaints surfaced, the International Olympic Committee announced Friday that it was asking the International Gymnastics Federation to reexamine the Chinese gymnasts’ age.
Instead of searching through documents, the matter could be settled with X-rays, said Dr. Gil Brogdon, a professor emeritus of radiology at the University of South Alabama in Mobile and author of the textbook “Forensic Radiology.”
Bones fuse together according to a well-documented schedule. For girls between the ages of 13 and 17, the best places to look are the knee, wrist, elbow and iliac crest on the pelvis, he said. The younger they are, the more obvious the evidence.
“A Caucasian girl is going to fuse her knee centers at about age 15; they’re going to fuse their iliac crest at about age 16; and part of the elbow will start fusing around 13 or 14,” he said. “That’s the way you do it.”
For the Chinese gymnasts, investigators would have to consult growth tables for Asian girls, Brogdon said.
One complication with teenage girls is that strenuous exercise can suppress estrogen production, delaying bone development and making them appear to belong to a younger person, said Dr. Vicente Gilsanz, a professor of radiology and pediatrics at USC.
But Brogdon said that by comparing multiple bones, “you could come pretty close” to distinguishing a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old.
Teeth are also useful. U.S. immigration authorities often rely on dental X-rays to determine for deportation purposes whether an illegal immigrant is an adult or a minor.
“Of course, everybody who gets arrested says they are 17,” Senn said.
He said he can pinpoint ages within 18 months using images of a person’s wisdom teeth, which start forming around age 9 and are not fully developed until around 19. For the Chinese gymnasts, Senn said, he would also look at their second molars, which grow until age 15 or so.
Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police, said that with both teeth and skeletal X-rays, “you should be able to get within 12 months” of someone’s age.
All this science probably won’t mean much because Chinese authorities are not likely to agree to let independent doctors take X-rays of their gymnasts.
In that case, sports fans will be left to contemplate the girls’ physical appearance.
“I must say, they do look kind of young,” Baden said.
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karen.kaplan@latimes.com
alan.zarembo@latimes.com
Times staff writers Mary Engel and John Johnson Jr. contributed to this report.
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e9261dccf21bac84df8afdad624ea068 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-ca-paul-auster24-story.html | Enough to keep you up at night | Enough to keep you up at night
As PAUL AUSTER’S new novel, “Man in the Dark,” opens, August Brill, 73, knows well that every member of his small family is in bad shape. Worried, grieving, in pain, they reflect the condition of the United States, mired in a pointless war that magnifies rather than relieves the dangers it was meant to address.
Nevertheless, Brill’s first-person narration maintains an even, almost idle, tone as each member of the family does something or other to pass the days. Brill and his granddaughter, Katya, critique old movies. (She has dropped out of film school.) His daughter, Miriam, works on a book. Nights are the problem -- Brill is beset with insomnia. In lieu of sleep, he concocts a story about an alternative reality in which the Iraq war is taking place in America: Various regions have seceded, and all sorts of services once taken for granted, like television and Internet access, are no longer available. His protagonist is a young man named Owen Brick. Brick’s antagonist is a man named Frisk.
Auster’s narrative flips back and forth between Brick’s story and Brill’s personal thoughts. When we first meet Brick, he is trapped in a deep hole, with no memory of how he got there. He is rescued, only to find that the war-torn world he inhabits is not at all like the America he remembers. Moreover, he is expected to execute the assassination of a complete stranger.
Brill, Brick, Frisk, darkness, metafiction, sinuous and elegant style. Yup, it’s Paul Auster.
The Brick narrative is the one that builds suspense. The character is not prepared to understand his situation, but his enemies don’t care about that: He’s expected to follow orders, or to face punishment if he does not. His new world is chaotic; he has no idea who the good guys or the bad guys are. He is left in the dark, to decide between the two baldest choices, murder and suicide.
A narrative built of layers and layers of disorientation is not new for Auster -- this is, in fact, his specialty. It used to be that his young men were disoriented and that their disorientation afforded the reader a new way of seeing the world. Now it is his old men who are disoriented, but their way of seeing the world is more weary than fresh. Frankly, this book could be funnier. Or darker. Or meaner. Or something.
Whatever August Brill has done in the past (promiscuity and adultery seem to be the main things), at 73, he has changed his ways. He is patient and affectionate toward his daughter and his granddaughter, and they love him in return. He has regrets about his marriage, detailed toward the end of the novel, but those too have been resolved. His wife is dead, and he grieves for her, but reparations and redemption have been accomplished. His only tasks now would seem to be getting to sleep and helping his daughter and granddaughter emerge from their own crises.
And yet, Auster isn’t up to it. When I was first casting about for why this novel fails, I thought it was the tone. Auster stumbles into an elegiac, sonorous rhythm in the very first paragraph and can never shake it, even by means of the sinister Owen Brick narrative.
Brick is young and active, and he actually has a task -- saving himself.
One clever motif is that the man he is assigned to assassinate is . . . August Brill! As soon as Auster introduces this twist, the two narratives begin to relate in promising ways. But no. Brick commits adultery, and his creator kills him off.
The night is advancing, and soon there is a scratching at Brill’s bedroom door. Katya is awake too, and she comes in for a chat. She wants to know what Brill’s marriage was like. Yet even as he speaks at length, his story has the flavor of a synopsis. What’s really important is Katya’s secret, but this is a secret the reader doesn’t yet know -- a dramatic, horrifying connection between Brill’s family and the misbegotten Iraq war that none of them support.
But where is the rest of the novel? The revelation of Katya’s secret should be more than a punch line; it should be the catalyst for a shift in the lives of the family members. The most Brill can come up with is to imagine leasing a camper and going on a road trip. What I would like him to do, once he defines the kernel of the problem, is to get up and go through the rest of the day. The novel as we have it is 180 pages. The gravity of Brill’s concerns are well worth an additional 100 pages.
The great drawback of the novel as a form is that all serious dilemmas are as difficult to resolve on the page as they are in life, but readers like their characters to transform somehow in the course of the narrative. In “Man in the Dark,” we have a beautiful setup concerning the intersection of the personal and the political. The Brills are good people, by and large, and not in imminent physical or moral danger. When Auster kills off Owen Brick and then ends August Brill’s story with the coming of dawn, he backs away from really engaging with the dilemma he has set.
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4394e51f168e0278e20e1ca5dd84ea5c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-ca-tie-ins24-story.html | The lure of the tie-in | The lure of the tie-in
You COULD spend your entire life sitting in Starbucks next to people hunched over laptops, and you’d never hear a single one of them divulge that their dream is to write a television or movie tie-in; you know, those novelizations that magically appear in the airport bookstore rack with the screen stars on their covers.
Me? I’ve published two novels and a collection of stories that have afforded the kind of notoriety one rarely reads about: I’ve lost all the awards I’ve ever been nominated for, my most ardent fans number in the tens of hundreds, and I’d need the Jaws of Life to pull me onto the bestseller list. In short, a career in the literary fiction trenches, where acclaim is something you hang your hat on, since you haven’t made enough money to buy a hat rack.
Then I received a midnight call from my brother, Lee, asking whether I might be interested in writing original novels based on “Burn Notice,” the popular show on USA about a blacklisted spy named Michael Westen, who uses his training to help people out of bad situations (with the mob, drug dealers, pimps, etc.).
My first reaction was muted. I was finishing a short story about very depressed people doing very depressing things and trying to figure out another word for “desperation.” My brother, in addition to writing and producing television shows, has written 14 tie-ins, including the current spate of “Monk” books. He was approached by his publisher, Penguin, to see whether he’d be interested in doing “Burn Notice” too, but he declined, saying he knew just the right person.
Lee had called before with similar opportunities, and I always demurred, mostly because I don’t work particularly well with other people, don’t really care for a lot of television shows and consider myself far too literary to ever do such a commercial thing. Why, I’ve even lost the Los Angeles Times Book Prize!
The difference this time was the show itself: I am a huge fan of “Burn Notice.” It’s smart, funny, visually arresting and has the tone and style of my favorite Elmore Leonard novels.
Plus, the show was created by Matt Nix, a person I’d known casually since college, who I felt shared a similar creative aesthetic. My brother was right: I was the perfect person. The only problem was my advanced sense of artistic self. I had long, twisting conversations with my agent, my wife and the kid who makes my sandwiches at Quiznos about the literary equity I’d accrued, about how writing a tie-in might somehow sully my career and other topics concerning my navel. My agent told me to take a deep breath, get lucid and call her back after I did some research.
So I did. I learned that Jim Thompson wasn’t just an iconic noir writer but also the man who brought “Ironside” from the small screen to print, that Travis McGee creator John D. MacDonald had novelized the Judy Garland vehicle “I Could Go On Singing” and that, inexplicably, there was a line of “Partridge Family” tie-ins that sounded like Steven Seagal films (notably No. 10 in the series, “Marked for Terror”) and which featured Danny, Keith and the gang solving crimes. And of course there were the countless authors who’ve embodied James Bond over the years, most recently Sebastian Faulks.
I also saw a rather significant golden egg (and with the three books being dangled before me due within a year, becoming a magical goose would be the rough creative equivalent): Tie-ins sell exceptionally well. My brother had long regaled me with the sales numbers he’d racked up with his “Diagnosis Murder” and “Monk” books -- each selling roughly what all of my books have sold, combined -- and how his tie-ins had dragged along his other books too. It would be like a quarterly annuity to even out the five free copies of the Santa Monica Review I’d receive for the depressing story I was finishing at the time.
More than anything, it sounded like great fun. One man can write only so much short fiction detailing terrific abuse before the idea of blowing up stuff and coming up with witty rejoinders begins to have a certain allure. Who wouldn’t want to be Michael Westen?
Three days later, I was on the job. Sixty-four days and I was trying to figure out whom to dedicate the book to: my wife or the Starbucks barista who’d been pulling me extra shots at no charge every day, since apparently I looked like I needed it. Eight months and “Burn Notice: The Fix” is on the shelves, and I am now, apparently, a briskly selling crime writer. How briskly? I’m not exactly Troy Denning, whose last Star Wars original tie-in, “Invincible,” was released in May and has sold more than 58,000 copies in hardback, according to Nielsen BookScan. In literary circles Denning’s sales would make him one of those people other people throw cocktail parties for.
Bestselling thriller writer James Rollins of “Sigma Force” fame certainly wasn’t facing the same conundrums I had when he agreed to write the novelization of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
“I’m a huge Indiana Jones fan,” Rollins says, whose 2007 novel “The Judas Strain” has sold more than 200,000 copies. “To be able to even put a fingerprint upon that legacy, what more could an adventure writer want? I was only paid a fraction of what I get for one of my regular novels, but I could not pass up this chance. If they asked me to, I would’ve written this in my own blood.”
Max Allan Collins practically did write a book with his own blood. Collins is the undisputed king of the media tie-in, having written more than 50 of them (including 10 “CSI” novels and several puzzles, video games and comics also based on the program) since 1990, but he nearly ripped a hole in the fabric of the time/space continuum by novelizing the screenplay based on his graphic novel “Road to Perdition.” (Do the math in your head for that one.)
“The ‘Road to Perdition’ novelization was a nightmare, frankly,” Collins says. “I went after it for obvious reasons -- I didn’t want a ‘Perdition’ novel written by someone else out there. I proceeded to write the best novelization of my career, staying faithful to David Self’s script -- which was already fairly faithful to my graphic novel -- but fleshed out the script with characterization, expanded dialogue scenes and just generally turning it into a quality novel of around 100,000 words. After I submitted it and had the New York editor say it was the best tie-in novel he’d ever read, the licensing person at DreamWorks required me to cut everything in the novel that wasn’t in the script. That I was the creator of the property held no sway. I was made to butcher the book down to 40,000 words.”
Going into writing “The Fix” I pledged that I was going to be emotionless about the process. It was silly to think this, of course, because it’s hard for me not to feel dominion over a character once I’ve inhabited his skin, even when, unlike for Collins, the characters in “The Fix” belong in whole cloth to someone else. But I challenge anyone to spend 64 straight days and nights with anyone or anything without developing a Patty Hearstian level of attachment. I came to the conclusion that I had to start thinking of myself like a musician covering a hit song -- in order to make it my own, I had to tweak it a little, give something of myself in the process and make it fresh and new to the fans who already love the original by adding additional elements they might not be expecting. Think “Walk This Way” by Run-DMC versus Aerosmith’s original. Same song, different experience.
My brother once told me he couldn’t do a tie-in for something he wasn’t emotionally invested in, but for me it feels like the opposite has occurred. I’ve become fond of the show in a new way. I want to protect it.
At a book signing recently, a man walked up to me, after waiting in line for 10 minutes, to tell me how much he hated the show, how it made him twitch, and how he wouldn’t be reading my book, either. It was a level of antipathy I wasn’t previously familiar with -- loathing that gets you out of bed on a Saturday to tell someone that you hate them. I didn’t mind that he wasn’t going to buy my book, but his slight against the show felt far more personal. Now, I find myself feeling defensive if it receives a bad television review somewhere and am growing concerned that my obsessive self-Googling might turn a dark corner into obsessive “Burn Notice” Googling too, which is not a train I want to ride.
None of this is what I could have predicted, but with two more books to write in the series, I’ve learned that writing about a cool ex-spy I didn’t create can be a gratifying experience. Now, if I could just find out who owns the “Partridge Family” rights, I could really get happy.
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Tod Goldberg’s other books are “Living Dead Girl,” “Fake Liar Cheat” and “Simplify.”
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2ebee6e01015b7c7561ef553582b0c99 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-fg-hunger24-story.html | India’s gnawing pain | India’s gnawing pain
Sitting in the basket of a hanging scale, 20-month-old Deep Kumar epitomizes the silent but monumental crisis gripping this country: The needle stops at 14 pounds.
A healthy child his age ought to weigh nearly twice as much. But very little about Deep is healthy. Whereas a normal toddler would run around, the boy seems to struggle to keep his stunted frame sitting upright. His limbs are pitifully thin, the bones within as fragile as glass.
These are classic signs of severe malnutrition, and they are branded on the wasted bodies of millions of youngsters across India.
Astonishingly, an estimated 40% of all the world’s severely malnourished children younger than 5 live in this country, a dark stain on the record of a nation that touts its high rate of economic growth and fancies itself a rising power.
Soaring food prices and ineffectual government threaten to push that figure even higher. Officials are beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the emergency, as experts warn of grave consequences for the future of India’s economic boom if the state fails to improve the well-being of its youngest citizens.
Already, the proportion of malnourished children is several times greater than in China, Asia’s other developing giant, and double the rate found in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
“This is a stunning fact,” said Abhijit Banerjee, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the problem.
To its credit, India has in the last several decades succeeded in warding off the specter of famine that regularly haunted the subcontinent well into the 20th century. As a result of better farming techniques and food-security policies, mass starvation is no longer the dread concern it once was.
But that achievement, as well as the recent euphoria over India’s rapid economic expansion, has obscured the government’s failure to help provide its people, particularly the young, with the nutrients needed to build healthy, productive lives.
Many officials were shocked when a 2005-06 government study revealed hardly any progress in reducing child malnutrition over the last decade and a half -- exactly when the Indian economy was exploding and attracting international attention.
“This has not been a policy priority for this country for the last 40 years,” said Victor M. Aguayo, chief of child nutrition and development at the United Nations Children’s Fund office in New Delhi. “There was an underlying assumption that as soon as economic growth takes place, this will vanish. So let’s focus on economic growth; let’s focus on getting rich.”
Instead, India’s performance in combating child malnutrition has been worse than that of other countries with similar economic conditions. Close to half of all young children in India -- or a staggering 60 million -- are malnourished. Only Bangladesh and Nepal have a higher percentage of underweight children.
In a speech last year, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged the gravity of the situation, calling it a “national shame.”
“We cannot deny that it is a crisis,” said Loveleen Kacker, a senior official at the central Ministry for Women and Child Development. “Maybe we didn’t treat it like a crisis earlier, which we should have. Then we would have taken corrective steps much earlier than now. And what we’re thinking of doing now we should’ve started 10 years back.”
The World Bank estimates that malnutrition and its negative effects on health and productivity cost India as much as 3% of GDP a year. Beyond the economic fallout is the damage to India’s image and credibility as it tries to assert itself as an important player on the world stage.
“It’s not nice to want to have an international role and then find that you’re having to defend such an indefensible position,” Kacker said.
Just why malnutrition remains such a stubborn problem here is due to a constellation of causes that tend to reinforce and aggravate each other, creating “the perfect storm of risk factors,” as Aguayo put it.
At root is the abject poverty so pervasive in India, where one-third of the population of 1.1 billion squeaks by on less than $1 a day. Another third makes do with $2 a day.
That deprivation can stack the cards against a child before he or she is even born. Too many women here are underweight and undernourished themselves, the major reason why 30% of Indian babies enter the world weighing less than 5 1/2 pounds. Afterward, in the crucial first two years of life, many children are fed sugary water, animal milk, rice and other foods lacking the fat, protein and vitamins necessary for proper physical and mental growth.
“Women too thin and anemic, giving birth to tiny babies, who are poorly fed in the first two years of life: That’s the synopsis of the tragedy,” Aguayo said. “India needs to break this intergenerational cycle of malnutrition.”
That cycle is plainly evident with 20-month-old Deep and his mother, Bachiya Devi, here in the dirt-poor eastern state of Bihar, where the proportion of malnourished children younger than 3 has actually risen, not dropped, in recent years, from 54% to 58%.
Like her son’s, Devi’s arms are stick-thin, the bangles adorning them sliding up and down with no resistance. The sinews of her neck protrude, while her chest seems lost far below the folds of her canary-yellow sari. Her careworn face suggests an age much older than her 45 years.
With a blind husband who is unable to work, Devi depends on her parents to help out with buying food. She reckons that 100 rupees a day would be enough to guarantee two square meals for her husband, herself and the three of their five children who live at home. But from her modest vegetable stall she earns an average of 30 rupees a day, the equivalent of 70 cents.
“There are four or five days a month when the pot doesn’t boil and we go hungry,” Devi said. At home, little Deep, her youngest child and only son, eats one roti, or piece of flatbread, a day, plus some rice and occasionally some vegetables.
“I’m a poor woman,” Devi said.
“What more can I afford?”
As she spoke, her sleeping son twitched fitfully on a bed in a “nutrition rehabilitation center” here in Saraiya sponsored by UNICEF, which in effect provides triage for the worst-hit.
The ward is a study in cheated childhood. Mumta, at 22 months, looks less than half her age; her rib cage can be easily felt beneath her clothes. Muskan, 1 1/2 , lies still under her mother’s watchful gaze, a blue hand towel covering nearly her entire body. Vikas, almost 4 and suffering from cerebral palsy, can barely sit up without help from his gaunt mother, who is 45 and pregnant with her fifth child.
There are flickers of hope. After 10 days of eating nutrient-laden eggs and other foods not available at home, Deep has gained almost a pound and a bit more energy. Other children in the ward also exhibit small signs of improvement.
All the youngsters are so chronically malnourished that they belong to a category known as “severely wasted.” India is home to 8 million such cases needing immediate therapeutic feeding and treatment.
However, the government accepts no foreign food aid and has not imported any of the high-energy, ready-to-eat food packets on the market that can be administered to badly malnourished youngsters to jump-start their recovery, Aguayo said. None of the country’s biotechnology firms -- among the most advanced in the world -- manufactures them, though the cost would probably be only about a dollar a pound.
These triage packets would help the worst-off cases. But if India fails to cut its overall rate of child malnutrition, experts warn, it faces a future dragged down by an underproductive workforce and ballooning numbers of malnourished youngsters.
As Farhat Saiyed, a nutritionist here in Bihar state, put it: “We are entering a dangerous world.”
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henry.chu@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Underfed in India
Despite a booming economy, India is one of the nations whose children have low weights for their age:
Nepal: 48%
Bangladesh: 48%
India: 47%
East Timor: 46%
Yemen: 46%
Burundi: 45%
Madagascar: 42%
Sudan: 41%
Laos: 40%
Niger: 40%
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Note: Data for the period 1996-2005; numbers apply to most recent year available in the period.
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Source: World Development Indicators, 2007
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Los Angeles Times
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b2e5900986903469761b9f6f7c9438f9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-me-griffith24-story.html | Man is arrested in fire at Griffith Park | Man is arrested in fire at Griffith Park
A 43-year-old Glendale man on probation for arson was arrested on suspicion of starting a fire in Griffith Park on Saturday, the eighth such blaze in a month at one of the nation’s largest urban parks, officials said.
“We have probable cause to believe he started today’s fire and also may have started the other fires as well that have occurred over the last month here,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference at the park Saturday afternoon.
Gary Allen Lintz was spotted by hikers leaving an area near Griffith Park Drive where a slow-moving brush fire broke out shortly after 2 p.m. Saturday, said John Miller, battalion chief for the arson and counter-terrorism unit of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Undercover arson investigators then observed Lintz riding in a group of bicyclists and stopped him for questioning, Miller said. Lintz stood out because he was not dressed in racing apparel.
“He didn’t fit in with the other bicyclers,” Miller said.
Miller said that after questioning Lintz, investigators came to believe he had a connection to all eight recent fires. Miller noted, however, that Lintz was arrested only in connection with the Saturday fire.
The fire was reported near Griffith Park and Mt. Hollywood drives. Within an hour, 75 firefighters had the three-acre blaze 60% contained, and soon after it was declared “knocked down” by a fire official.
Almost immediately, fire officials called the blaze suspicious.
“This would not have been an accidental cause,” said Los Angeles city Fire Battalion Chief Ray Gomez.
Authorities described Lintz as a transient who lives in Glendale. In February 2007, Lintz was convicted of arson resulting in a structure or forest land fire, according to court records and officials who spoke at Saturday’s news conference.
In addition, court records indicate Lintz had at least two convictions on charges of drinking in public, in 2006 and 2007, and a 1996 conviction for trespassing on railroad property.
Villaraigosa thanked the public and law enforcement officials for apprehending Lintz, who is being held in lieu of $75,000 bail.
Lintz was arrested at 3 p.m. and booked into a Los Angeles jail shortly after 5 p.m., according to jail records.
Lintz’s arrest came the same day that stepped-up patrols began in the park, less than a week after fire officials said they suspected a single person was responsible for five fires in two hours Aug. 16 and may have had a hand in two previous suspicious fires.
In part because all five blazes began near roadsides, fire officials said earlier this week that they suspected that someone either on foot or bicycle was responsible.
Los Angeles Councilman Tom LaBonge called the arrest “a great relief.”
“This has been a pattern, either Saturday, Sunday and Monday between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. a fire would start at Griffith Park in that region of the park, the northwest region west of the zoo near Travel Town,” LaBonge said.
LaBonge said the additional resources deployed in the 4,218-acre park -- including park rangers, brush fire units and arson investigators -- made it possible to act quickly, particularly on a day when temperatures near 100 degrees were expected.
“We had good karma today,” he said.
The outbreak of fires over the last month was the most in a short period in the recent history of the park, Senior Arson Investigator David Liske, a 26-year veteran, told The Times last week.
* A fire July 27 burned 25 acres and led to the evacuation of thousands of Los Angeles Zoo visitors. The fast-moving fire, which threatened a breeding center for endangered condors, took firefighters three hours to contain.
* On Aug. 4 a three-acre blaze burned in the northeast part of the park near Mineral Wells Trail. Firefighters brought the fire under control in 1 1/2 hours.
* Five fires broke out Aug. 16 near Travel Town, forcing the evacuation of the attraction. The fires burned about 50 acres and took 300 firefighters several hours to control.
Last year, Griffith Park suffered its worst fire in three decades. That fire burned one-quarter of the park, about 1,200 acres, destroying popular hiking areas.
At the time, a man in his 20s who lived out of state was questioned and eventually cited on suspicion of smoking in a restricted area. No criminal charges have been filed in the case, which remains under investigation.
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jason.song@latimes.com
tami.abdollah@latimes.com
Times staff writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.
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0026454f9dd56c54101b3f4aeb7e4dfc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-me-lopez24-story.html | L.A.'s hitchhike rating: 2 thumbs down | L.A.'s hitchhike rating: 2 thumbs down
All I was trying to do was catch a lift at City Hall. I was an innocent man, hoping for one small act of human kindness in the cold, cruel city.
And it almost got me arrested.
“That’s illegal,” a uniformed cop barked, trying to run me from the parking lot exit where I was thumbing for a ride.
What’s illegal about it? I asked.
“You can’t hitchhike here,” he insisted. He had a real mouth on him for a City Hall General Services Department cop with a nice shiny badge but no gun. “It’s illegal.”
What?
After decades of horrible land-use and transit planning by legions of public officials, someone should have been thanking me for trying to take one more car off the massively congested streets. Instead, Barney Fife was ready to have me locked up.
I’d been hoping to catch the eye of Jaime de la Vega, the creativity-challenged deputy mayor for transportation under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Surely he’d have plenty of room for me in his big honking Hummer, and I could ask what he’s done for us lately besides chug around town at 12 miles to the gallon.
But there was no sign of De la Vega, and one driver after another left the City Hall garage without giving me more than a glance. Even City Councilman Bill Rosendahl pulled out of the lot, shot me a quick look and hit the gas.
I thought he was a better man than that.
And then Officer George Ebroyan came marching over to run me off, pulling out his little black book to show me hitchhiking is illegal.
There it is, he said. Section 21957 of the vehicle code.
“No person shall stand in a roadway for the purpose of soliciting a ride from the driver of any vehicle.”
“I’m not in the roadway,” I said. “I’m on the sidewalk”
Ebroyan insisted it was still illegal.
“You’re just trying to make us look bad,” he said, and then he went to make a call.
“I owe you an apology,” he said when he came back, finally convinced I was a law-abiding citizen.
I didn’t want an apology. I wanted a ride.
Tami Abdollah was right. She’s a tough young reporter at The Times who was worked into a lather one day because she couldn’t get a ride to the office. She’d dropped her car off for repairs and tried to hitchhike to work, but one driver after another blew right past her.
What is it with L.A.? Tami asked. She’s hitchhiked all over the world, no problem. Lots of cities even encourage hitchers to use established pickup stations.
But in the city of a million single-occupant cars, many of them big enough to cart soccer teams, poor Tami kept striking out.
Three or four decades ago, a lot of us thought nothing of thumbing it. Sure, it can be dangerous to pick up a hitchhiker, and maybe even more dangerous to be picked up. I’m not suggesting that everyone take a risk and begin thumbing it to work tomorrow, but how could things have changed so much?
The day after I struck out downtown, I went to 26th and Colorado in Santa Monica and tried again.
Why there? Because that’s the epicenter of one of the worst urban planning disasters in all of Southern California. The Water Garden complex and other humongous offices provide thousands of jobs, but public officials utterly failed to make sure there was enough additional transit to avoid the crippling gridlock.
So did that mean that commuters would take pity on an old graybeard who was trying to buck the trend? Nope. One lone driver after another cruised under the palms and right past me and my weary thumb. BMW convertibles. Mercedes shimmering like black pearls. Escalades lumbering like painted tanks.
I got down on my knees, pleading.
Nothing.
Would I have to throw myself in front of a car?
My editor had one more bright idea. After striking out in West L.A., I went to an art supply store for some poster board and a marker, then stationed myself at the southbound entrance to the 405 on Ventura Boulevard with my sign:
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PICK ME UP
CARPOOL LANE MUCH FASTER
To help emphasize the point, I stood next to a sign that said “Carpool Vanpool Info, Call (213) 380-RIDE.”
What is hitchhiking, after all, but a form of carpooling? Why can’t we have neighborhood pickup stations where, once a week, you leave the car at home and catch a ride with a neighbor? Given the flat terrain and great weather, why don’t we have more bike paths like the great cities of the world, and why can’t the long-abandoned Expo right-of-way be developed for cyclists?
Because any creative solution would take a little imagination and political leadership, and we’re more likely to find large gold nuggets in the Los Angeles River than we are to have public officials who work together to solve our transit needs. In the latest act of cowardice and double-speak, some of the L.A. County supervisors are on the fence about a proposed half-cent sales tax increase to pay for billions in transit projects.
After 20 minutes of developing lung disease near the onramp, I was losing hope of catching a ride on Ventura Boulevard, and half expecting to be arrested for trying. Then, a gray Honda Accord pulled over.
“Where you headed?” asked the driver.
I had to think fast.
“Santa Monica,” I said.
The middle-aged driver smiled. He was headed there to pick up his daughter. So I climbed in and we were on our way.
I know what you’re thinking.
What kind of irresponsible person picks up a hitchhiker?
Richard Sarradet was his name.
And his profession?
Come on, what city do we live in?
He played attorney Howard Lansing on “General Hospital” and was in “Knots Landing,” “Quincy,” “Simon & Simon,” “The Bionic Woman” and “The Waltons,” to name a few. Now 62, he’s a special education teacher and heads the drama and history departments at Westview School in West Los Angeles.
So why did he pick me up?
“I guess because you just, you looked OK,” Sarradet said, “and I didn’t think you were a risk.”
Sarradet said he grew up hitchhiking and still occasionally picks up hitchhikers, though he wouldn’t have taken a chance if his daughter were in the car. Not everyone can afford a car and insurance, he reasoned, and there isn’t enough public transportation, so every once in a while he’ll pull over and take a chance.
One rider, a woman, turned out to be a hooker, so he dropped her off. Several times, he had to explain to male riders that he was not interested in a business transaction.
And now he’d really hit rock bottom, picking up a guy cruising for a column.
“It’s interesting to see who you run into,” he said, “and you catch a flavor of somebody else’s life.”
Exactly. We had a nice conversation on our drive, and I may even get another column out of it. Sarradet told me about his exhausting fight against state bureaucracy to become credentialed for a job he’s been doing for years.
When his cellphone rang, Sarradet told the caller he’d picked up a hitchhiker who claimed to be not an ax murderer, but a columnist.
The caller wondered if that was safe.
“I’m lookin’ for the ax in his back pocket,” Sarradet said.
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steve.lopez@latimes.com
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07e499f62b7f1931cccd38506ea57dde | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-me-timber24-story.html | A truce amid the redwoods | A truce amid the redwoods
Beneath the gnarled green-needled boughs of the North Coast redwoods, a remarkable encounter one recent day shook the roots of the forest’s fiercest struggle.
A top timber company executive hiked into the woods with a message for the latest generation of tree sitters perched on platforms high in the massive limbs of the ancient trees they’ve campaigned to protect.
Come down out of the sky, he told them. The war is over.
With that, a cautious transformation has begun: For the first time in the memory of even the grayest of locals, the vast lands of Humboldt County’s most storied timber firm could soon be devoid of protest.
Ever since Texas millionaire Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam Inc. used junk bonds to finance the hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber Co. in 1986, the logging concern has been the focus of a stubborn series of demonstrations -- from the “Redwood Summer” civil-disobedience arrests in 1990 and Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s celebrated two-year tree-sit in Luna to the latest encampments aloft in the Nanning Creek and Fern Gully groves.
Now a bankruptcy and new ownership group have uprooted the status quo. A timber firm owned largely by the Fisher family, of Gap stores fame, acquired Pacific Lumber through bankruptcy court, renamed it Humboldt Redwood Co. and set upon a new path away from the more aggressive logging practices of the Hurwitz days.
Mike Jani, Humboldt Redwood president and chief forester, vowed to the tree sitters during his recent meetings beneath the conifers to hew hard to the tenets of sustainable logging: essentially cutting no more wood per year than the forest can grow. Jani told them he would spare the oldest of the old-growth redwoods, the world’s tallest living organisms.
In the days since Jani’s unheralded Aug. 12 walk into the woods, word has spread among the activists behind the redwood curtain of the North Coast.
“This is excellent news, to say the least,” said Jeanette Jungers, who has fought to spare these forests for more than a quarter-century. “We’ve gone from being characterized as environmental terrorists to being embraced. This is like falling down a rabbit hole. I feel like Alice in Wonderland.”
More than just deliver news, Jani offered a humane embrace. He applauded the activists’ perseverance and dedication to a worthy cause. He voiced heartfelt assurances. In one case, he talked a balky sitter out of a tree and then offered a hug.
His visit, Jani said later, was “an issue of human respect.”
The last of the tree sitters, now toiling 150 feet above the fern-decked forest floor to pack up their high-altitude encampments, took time off one recent afternoon to share their glee.
“This is a huge, huge milestone,” said a 22-year-old woman who identified herself only as Cedar and has been perched aloft since she arrived from Edmonton, Canada, nearly a year ago. “It’s been unbelievable to me that this has happened. But this isn’t my victory -- I just sat on guard.”
Signs of change can be spotted in the gloaming of the forest floor. Tape reading “no cut” adorns the old growth in Nanning Creek grove, which sits on a hillside overlooking the old Pacific Lumber mill in Scotia, 15 miles south of Eureka. Marks targeting trees to be cut have been stripped clean.
The authenticity of Jani’s gesture was burnished by a stark absence of forest industry PR: no press releases from the company, no invitation for news reporters to watch.
Officials at Humboldt Redwood Co. say Jani’s message to the young activists of the trees was old news.
The new firm is an offshoot of Mendocino Redwood Co., which also is owned by the Fisher clan. Over the course of a decade’s ownership, Mendocino Redwood has won over many forest activists with a brand of logging that’s lighter on the land.
The firm’s directives to avoid axing old growth trees or clear-cutting vast groves were among the selling points it used to win the right to acquire Pacific Lumber.
“We hope to duplicate the things we do well one county away,” said Sandy Dean, chairman of the timber firms. “The intent is to operate with a high standard of environmental stewardship.”
Pacific Lumber under Hurwitz mowed down trees in vast clear cuts to maximize profits and hungered to cut mammoth thousand-year-old trees; the new company intends to wield the chain saw far more selectively on its sprawling 328 square miles of coastal forest and won’t cut any redwood born prior to 1800 with a diameter of 4 feet or more.
Such practices have earned the company certification by the Forest Stewardship Council, a stamp of approval required by retailers of “green” products such as Home Depot, Lowe’s and Kinko’s. Dean said it’s a more expensive way to manage a forest, but the family-owned firm believes “having a healthy, well-stocked forest will be a good investment over the long term.”
Scott Greacen, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center in nearby Garberville, called the meeting in the woods “a really important moment.”
“It doesn’t negate the tragedy that has already happened,” he said. “But the hope is it’ll show the industry there is a better way.”
Shunka Wakan, who runs the North Coast Earth First! media project, said there is “this amazing sense almost of, ‘The war is over.’ ”
In each of the groves, the last of the tree sitters are taking it slowly.
On the hillside near Scotia, Cedar and another tree sitter, who preferred to go by the single name of Billy, are cautiously decommissioning their encampment in the limbs. They expect to be on the ground for good in less than a month, nearly a year since they took to tree boughs like the elves of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lothlorien.
They cooked and ate meals aloft, bathed in rainwater, watched the clouds roll overhead. They’ve come to the ground only to retrieve supplies ferried in by the scores of activists who make up the tree-sit support crew.
Winter storm winds rocked each giant redwood like a metronome. Cedar’s small platform shifted badly in the worst gale, threatening to pitch her off. She huddled under a tarp for weeks, cocooning to escape the winds and rains.
Now they can hardly believe it is nearly over.
“This is like such a huge step,” Billy said. “I was expecting the run-around, but as soon as the new company arrived it was like -- bam -- overnight they made what seemed sincere promises.”
Neither one talked with Jani when he appeared on the forest floor. Those negotiations were left to Amy Arcuri, one of the first tree sitters at Nanning grove three years ago.
“Before, the company wasn’t in it for the future,” said Arcuri, who continued to climb the old growth even during the early months of her pregnancy with daughter River, now 21 months old. “But these new people appreciate the priceless value in these old trees beyond just selling lumber.”
She knows there are bound to be squabbles with the new owners but hopes trust can prevail.
And there are always the two other big timber firms in the region, Green Diamond Resource Company and Sierra Pacific Industries.
In September, activists are holding a weeklong training camp for new recruits to learn climbing, rappelling and the art of nonviolent civil disobedience in the woods.
The battle against old Pacific Lumber may be over. But the war over the North Coast forest continues.
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eric.bailey@latimes.com
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cb62aab02c146a5cafc6d1226251c949 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-24-sp-olytrack24-story.html | Their run of the place | Their run of the place
Her loss in the Olympic 200-meter final was not surprising if you looked at it dispassionately, not after the ups and downs Allyson Felix had all season. She accepted the silver medal Thursday night with her customary graciousness, saying that being unhappy over a prize so few people have would make her ungrateful.
It was tearing Felix up inside. “For two days after we got done crying after the race, she didn’t talk to me,” said her coach, Bob Kersee.
He sent text messages. Felix responded with only two words: “I’m OK.”
“I was heartbroken,” Felix acknowledged Saturday night after winning a gold medal by running the second leg of a 1,600-meter relay that ended with Sanya Richards’ dramatic rally on the anchor to beat Russia by a stride for the gold medal at Olympic National Stadium.
The men’s 1,600 relay team followed with a victory over the Bahamas by nearly three seconds, no surprise since the U.S. team included the 1-2-3 finishers in the open 400 -- LaShawn Merritt, Jeremy Wariner and David Neville -- plus 400 hurdles champion Angelo Taylor. Their time -- 2 minutes 55.39 seconds -- was an Olympic record and second-fastest ever.
Felix had wanted to win the 200 gold badly since finishing second as an 18-year-old to Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown at the 2004 Olympics. She had beaten Campbell-Brown resoundingly at the 2007 worlds, gone on to run two excellent relay legs and become the face of U.S. women’s track and field heading into the Olympic year.
But her 2008 season had been all loose ends, for a lot of little reasons and no big ones.
There was the funeral of her boyfriend’s father and then her graduation from USC, all in one week. After the U.S. Olympic trials, she traveled back and forth twice, from Santa Clarita to Europe, squeezing in a maid-of-honor role in a friend’s wedding between meets on the Grand Prix circuit.
Felix ran poorly in Europe and thought it was because of all the travel. She thought she would get to China and be over the fatigue, that somehow she could pull it all together. It didn’t happen, as Felix ran slower than she had at the 2007 worlds while the Jamaican had a personal best.
“To work for four years and be beaten by the same person, it felt like there wasn’t much improvement,” Felix said. “I know I’ve grown a lot, I know I’ve matured, but there was really nothing to show for that.”
It would get worse 90 minutes later Thursday, when Lauryn Williams dropped the baton on the final leg of the 400-meter relay preliminaries. Felix was going to run with that relay in the final.
“I was still grieving my 200,” Felix said with a laugh, “and then it seemed like nothing was really going our way. To be able to have a second chance, to be able to come together with these girls was great.”
Richards felt the same way about her disappointing bronze-medal performance in the 400, and U.S. Olympic women’s Coach Jeanette Bolden of UCLA sensed all her athletes were thinking the meet had been a bummer.
So Bolden called the relay team together at 4 p.m. Saturday, about five hours before their race, to remind Felix and Richards and Mary Wineberg and one of her former collegiate runners, Monique Henderson, how well the U.S. women actually were doing, how they already had won more medals than at any Olympics since 1992.
“They had no idea,” Bolden said, “but when I told them and they left the meeting at 5 p.m., they could have run right then.”
In his final text message, Kersee told Felix: “If we’re in front, keep us in front. If not, get us in front.”
Felix was third, 0.62 of a second behind Russia, when she got the baton from Wineberg. She turned it over to Henderson with a lead of 0.25 of a second by running the fastest leg, 48.55 seconds, of anyone in the relay final.
But the Russians pulled ahead again, by 0.61 (about five meters), when Richards began the anchor leg.
She pulled close to Russian anchor Anastasia Kapachinskaya almost immediately, then dropped a couple of steps back. Her coach, Clyde Hart, had told Richards to wait until she was sure of being able to carry a move all the way to the finish. “It’s so much easier to be the chaser than the chased,” Richards said. “I was having fun.”
Richards made the move with 120 meters to go, sure she could sustain it, unsure if it would be enough to beat the Russian, whom she finally passed with 30 meters to go.
“When I saw it was going to happen, I was really excited,” Richards said. She showed it by pumping the baton at the finish, having run the anchor in 48.93. The overall winning time was 3:18.54 to 3:18.82 for Russia, with Jamaica third at 3:20:40. Richards and Henderson also had won 1,600 relay golds in 2004.
“Everyone had their individual disappointments, but we were still able to come together as a team,” Felix said.
One of the disappointed was 400-meter silver medalist Wariner, whose 43.18 anchor was fastest among the men.
“I don’t use things as redemption,” Wariner said. “I’m not out there as an individual, I’m out there with three other guys going to run their hearts out. I pushed aside what happened in the open 400.”
Bernard Lagat, reigning world champion in the 1,500 and the 5,000, could not redeem himself in Saturday’s longer race after failing to make the final of the 1,500. After winning medals for Kenya in 2000 and 2004, Lagat’s first Olympics as a U.S. citizen were a washout when he finished ninth in the 5,000 final.
Lagat said after the 5,000 that he had a virus after mentioning a sore Achilles’ tendon following the 1,500.
“I knew I was not ready,” Lagat said. “Before this race, I was having nightmares.”
Lagat was a close fifth when Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele pushed the pace with three laps to go, but the U.S. runner lost seven seconds in the next lap and wound up nearly 30 seconds behind Bekele’s Olympic-record time of 12:57.82.
Bekele became the first man to win both the 5,000 and 10,000 since countryman Miruts Yifter in 1980.
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Hersh covers Olympic sports for The Times and the Chicago Tribune.
TRACK AND FIELD
Men’s
1,600 Relay
*--* Medal winners G: United States Time: 2:55.39 S: Bahamas Time: 2:58.03 B: Russia Time: 2:58.06 *--*
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TRACK AND FIELD
Women’s
1,600 Relay
*--* Medal winners G: United States Time: 3:18.54 S: Russia Time: 3:18.82 B: Jamaica Time: 3:20.40 *--*
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829949ed0eec1624f8af1de703d24fbe | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-25-et-book25-story.html | Spying for Stalin: An American’s deadly game | Spying for Stalin: An American’s deadly game
On the night of Feb. 20, 1939, three Soviet secret policemen knocked on a door at the Hotel Moskva in the Russian capital, asked to see the (fake) passport of its occupant, gave him a few minutes to gather some belongings and whisked him away to the notorious Lubyanka prison. Charged with espionage, he was questioned for almost a year before being sentenced to eight years in Norilsk, a mining center hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle and one of the bleakest islands in the Gulag Archipelago.
So far, so routine. Something like this occurred to millions of Russians during Stalin’s paranoid regime. But this arrestee was different. He was an American citizen named Isaiah Oggins. And he was not spying for his native land. Since the 1920s, he had been a Russian spy, working in several countries, including his own. Andrew Meier’s “The Lost Spy,” a biography of Oggins, is, necessarily, a little vague on those matters. Putting it mildly, it is not in the nature of a secret agent’s work to leave an easily documented record of his clandestine activities.
Nevertheless, “The Lost Spy” is utterly fascinating, a sad and sinuous study of true belief carried beyond all reason by a man who committed himself to the labyrinthine way without once, so far as Meier can determine, openly discussing what motivated him or offering an ideological rationale. That makes him, in some sense, a perfect spy, a guy who took his secrets with him to his unmarked grave.
In retrospect, it is easy to imagine Cy -- the name he formally adopted -- Oggins leading an entirely different life. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Willimantic, Conn., where his father was a shopkeeper. Meier speculates that his radicalization may have begun when the Industrial Workers of the World attempted to organize the American Thread Co., Willimantic’s dominant employer, during the radical agitations that preceded America’s entry into World War I. Maybe so, but Cy entered Columbia University in 1917 intent upon becoming a historian. He probably supported the antiwar movement that preceded the U.S. declaration of war, and he was certainly influenced by the oppressive campaign against radicals in the postwar years, but one suspects it was his courtship and marriage to Nerma Berman, a tiny, noisy, radical firebrand, that completed his conversion to communism. Still, for a time he pursued his doctorate at Columbia, while Nerma worked and studied at the Rand Institute, then the nation’s most famous leftist school. When his money ran out, he took an editorial job at the Yale University Press. By 1928, the couple were in Berlin, working for the Soviets.
There, they rented a house the Russians used as its headquarters for decoding and disseminating stolen documents. Later, they were in Paris, keeping an eye on a Romanov relative active in resistance to the Soviets. Still later, Cy was in Manchuria, helping to manage a rather wonky aircraft business but actually keeping an eye on Japanese expansion in the region. Much of this time, Cy pretended to be a dealer in art and antiquities. This provided him cover for his work as a Soviet courier and with a reason for carrying large sums of money meant to finance the activities of other secret agents. It was very hush-hush but quite low-level.
It’s hard to see what of import Cy accomplished in these posts. Indeed, it’s hard to determine what any spy did that changed the world in those years. They may have played a sometimes deadly game, but it was largely a feckless one. Cy Oggins was, to borrow a phrase, a “man without qualities,” for whom dull, if secretive, commitment became a substitute for personality.
Espionage, however, seems almost incidental to Meier’s book. What it offers that is more interesting is a tour of the more public world of left-wing intellectuals at the time. At Columbia, Cy knew Charles Beard (he of the Constitution’s economic interpretation) and Whittaker Chambers. At Rand, Scott Nearing, the golden throat of American radicalism, twitterpated Nerma. The couple were close with Sidney Hook, beginning his famous, journey from left to right in these years, and in Meier’s account as in others, he is a man of charismatic civility. He had the clearest, earliest eye for the monstrousness that lay behind Soviet propaganda. Later, Oggins’ life at least briefly touched those of “grand illegals” such as Walter Krivitsky, master spies whose deeds (and defections) made their way into more general histories, and such “grand legals” as Chip Bohlen, the American diplomat who played a role in trying to return Oggins to the U.S.
Still, this was a gray little life lived in a deeply shadowed world, where even the politicians and public intellectuals largely prated nonsense, befuddled as they were by the contrast between the party line and the horrors many of them had to know lay behind it in the Soviet police state. One suspects that even Cy Oggins finally accepted the uselessness of his life. In the gulag, he liked to be called “The Professor,” pretending that he actually had been one a couple of decades earlier in New York.
Despite the stumbling efforts of the State Department to secure his release, it never happened. By 1947, when his prison term was up, the Russians suspected, possibly rightly, that he would spill such secrets as he had to McCarthy and his burgeoning ilk. They executed Oggins in a particularly painful manner, by lethal injection, thus bringing to an end what is, if I may borrow another literary phrase, “the saddest story I know” -- or at least one of them.
One wishes that Meier might have found more eyewitnesses to this story, more revelatory documents, for there are times when his “must have, might have” constructions irritate. Still, he’s done what he can. The history of Communist Russia is one of huge, sickening and infinitely deadly betrayals, so perhaps Cy Oggins’ story is only a minor one. Or perhaps not. You could as well argue that it tells us all we really need to know about how the totalitarian spirit perfected itself in the middle of the 20th century.
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Richard Schickel is the author of many books, including “Elia Kazan: A Biography.” His forthcoming “You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story” will be published to coincide with his five-hour documentary about the studio airing next month on PBS.
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10d9842e02c643348c356ed9a83593ba | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-25-et-second25-story.html | Watching TV, a job with regrets | Watching TV, a job with regrets
Everyone has had the experience of disagreeing with a critic, but do critics ever second-guess themselves? We asked Calendar’s critics whether there are any reviews they regret. One in a series of occasional articles.
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When you watch television for a living, the pleasures are many. I was able to watch the entire season of “In Treatment” before the first episode aired, and I spent weeks immersing myself in “Battlestar Galactica” to refresh the old memory before the final season premiered.
But there are, of course, disappointments, even regrets.
Although I can’t really think of a review that I would have done differently, I do wish the rest of NBC’s “Bionic Woman” had been as good as the pilot and that they had given Katee Sackhoff the lead. In fact, it would be nice if the networks sent out more than the pilot for review; sometimes it’s difficult to tell which way things are going to go from just one episode.
I wish someone else could have reviewed “John Adams,” because I knew people would hate me for not loving it (I still get the occasional irate e-mail), but I really didn’t, so what else could I say?
I wish I understood why so many people watched the new “Knight Rider,” which was terrible, while so few watched “In Treatment,” which was wonderful. (Actually I really don’t want to know because it would probably be too upsetting.)
I wish “New Amsterdam” had settled for being a cop procedural with a twist rather than some philosophical-exploration-of-true-love story because I really liked the main character and the time-bounce concept.
After being bombarded by fanatic e-mails, I finally had to agree that “Moonlight” was getting better, but alas, not quite enough better. Which just goes to show you that in television, you should never save the best for last.
I still loathe “Californication,” but so many people whose opinions I respect like it that I am willing to concede it may be simply a matter of taste.
Although I don’t mind writing a negative review of a bad show, I hate it when one of my favorite shows has a terrible season because, as a critic, I have to remark on this and it makes me feel disloyal.
Likewise, I still have not recovered from the emotional trauma of falling in love with new shows like “Life” and “Pushing Daisies” only to have them yanked away by the writers strike. In fact, I never gave much thought to the emotional construct of the television season until it was maimed by the strike; when the season finales showed up after just two or three new episodes it just felt wrong.
But then I am a trained professional, so in the end, I did manage to cope.
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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com
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9a6c5d4157b5bf10630c7468bd365693 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-25-fg-crash25-story.html | Dozens killed as airplane crashes in Kyrgyzstan | Dozens killed as airplane crashes in Kyrgyzstan
Dozens of people were killed Sunday when a passenger jet chartered by an Iranian tourism company crashed and burned after taking off from Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan.
Ninety people were aboard the plane, which was bound for Tehran, Asylvek Abdygulov, senior expert at the Kyrgyzstan Emergency Situations Ministry, said by telephone from Bishkek, the capital. Of those, only 25 people were confirmed to have survived by late Sunday, he said. Five passengers were hospitalized in extremely critical condition.
Survivors included seven out of 17 players from a Bishkek high school basketball team aboard the flight, government spokeswoman Roza Daudova told the Associated Press.
“Our specialists and rescue teams are working at the site of the crash, and of course we are doing everything possible to save lives,” Abdygulov said. “It’s too early to say what caused the crash.”
The Boeing 737 had taken off about 8:30 p.m. from Manas airport, near the village of Dzhangi-Dzher, about 18 miles from Bishkek.
“Shortly after takeoff the crew got in touch with the airport and requested to land back at the airport due to an emergency situation on board,” Abdygulov said. “Apparently they realized they could not get back to the airport and tried to crash-land.”
Communication was lost at 8:42 p.m., he said. The plane crashed into a field and caught fire.
Fourteen ambulances raced to the crash site, the Kyrgyzstan Health Ministry told Interfax news agency. Those were all the ambulances available in the capital, a spokeswoman said.
Aboard the plane were 83 passengers, six crew members and one representative of the Iranian company, Aseman.
A mountainous, desperately poor former Soviet republic, Kyrgyzstan borders China to the east and Kazakhstan to the north. The country has a U.S. air base, which is near Sunday’s crash site. The base dispatched ambulances and firefighting equipment in response to a request for help, the Associated Press reported.
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megan.stack@latimes.com
Loiko reported from Moscow and Times Moscow Bureau Chief Stack from Tbilisi, Georgia.
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86b63f012eb8cbd03ffea170eda17273 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-25-fg-shabab25-story.html | Conditions may be ripe for Al Qaeda to gain in Somalia | Conditions may be ripe for Al Qaeda to gain in Somalia
Conventional wisdom long held that Somalia was so inhospitable that even Al Qaeda gave up trying to gain a foothold amid feuding clans, erratic warlords and a wily population hardened by years of anarchy.
Now, in the wake of an aggressive U.S. counter-terrorism program that has alienated many Somalis, there are signs that Al Qaeda may have its best chance in years to win over Islamic hard-liners in the Horn of Africa nation.
After once denying or downplaying links to the terrorist network, a senior leader of Somalia’s most notorious Islamic militia now acknowledges that his group has long-standing ties to Al Qaeda and says he is seeking to forge a closer relationship.
“We are negotiating how we can unite into one,” said Muktar Robow, a top military commander of Shabab, which the U.S. State Department designated a terrorist organization this year. “We will take our orders from Sheik Osama bin Laden because we are his students.”
Merging with Al Qaeda operatives in the region makes sense, he said, given the recent U.S. crackdown, including a May 1 airstrike that killed Shabab’s previous commander.
“Al Qaeda is the mother of the holy war in Somalia,” he said. “Most of our leaders were trained in Al Qaeda camps. We get our tactics and guidelines from them. Many have spent time with Osama bin Laden.”
U.S. officials said it’s unclear whether Shabab’s threat is real or just anti-Western rhetoric intended to rattle U.S. intelligence officials. Analysts note that Al Qaeda faces the same challenges that prevented it from establishing a Somalia base before, including power struggles among the country’s Islamists, competition from local clan networks and differences between those seeking to focus attacks in Somalia and those favoring Al Qaeda’s global agenda.
U.S. Ambassador Michael E. Ranneberger acknowledged growing links between Shabab and Al Qaeda, but said ties remained in the early stages.
“There are indications of a fairly close Shabab-Al Qaeda connection, though it’s not clear to what extent they’ve been operationalized,” he said. “Is Shabab taking orders from Al Qaeda? I would say no. They are still running their own show.”
Robow said Shabab has been boosting its forces in recent months with an influx of fighters from around the world, including Kenya, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Indonesia, Chechnya and even the United States. Al Jazeera recently aired footage of a masked Shabab commander who called himself Abu Mansur al-Amriki and spoke with an American accent. His identity could not be confirmed.
Robow declined to comment on the number of foreigners or the size of Shabab’s militia. One analyst recently estimated its forces at 1,000 to 3,000 fighters.
Robow also spoke for the first time about eventually expanding Shabab’s activities outside Somalia’s borders, saying Americans, even journalists and aid workers, were not immune from attack because of what he called “the aggression of the American government.”
“Once we end the holy war in Somalia, we will take it to any government that participated in the fighting against Somalia or gave assistance to those attacking us,” he said.
Analysts say such talk highlights a growing radicalization of Somalia’s Islamists. Although Somalia has long had hard-liners, most of the population practiced a moderate form of Islam, and even extremists limited attacks to inside the country or against Ethiopia, a longtime rival.
But some worry a more radical agenda in Somalia has been aided by U.S. counter-terrorism efforts during the last two years, including half a dozen airstrikes against suspected terrorist targets that often killed civilians.
Somalia’s citizens are also outraged by the ongoing occupation of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops, who came in 2006 to defeat a short-lived Islamic government that had taken power largely with help from Shabab fighters.
“For Al Qaeda, the projection seems good now,” said Richard Barno, counter-terrorism analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, noting that Somalia’s U.N.-backed transitional government has been weakened by infighting.
But Barno cautioned that Al Qaeda still faced resistance from Somalia’s major clans, which so far have been less interested in radical anti-Western attacks and frown upon Al Qaeda’s signature large-scale attacks, particularly when they result in civilian casualties. Clan leaders also have been reluctant to send their men to fight with Al Qaeda outside Somalia, he said.
“Any moving to Al Qaeda might alienate the clans,” Barno said. “And they can’t afford to do that because the clans provide their foot soldiers.”
Robow said Shabab’s roots lay with the collapse of Mohamed Siad Barre’s military regime in 1991, the last time Somalia had a functioning government. With help from a team of fighters sent by Bin Laden, he said, future Shabab leaders cut their teeth killing U.S. forces in 1993, including the downing of a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter, which led to the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers.
U.S. intelligence agencies took note after the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Somalia’s Islamic hard-liners were accused of harboring the Al Qaeda operatives who executed the attacks.
Ambassador Ranneberger asserted that U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, combined with efforts by Ethiopia and Kenya, have diminished the Al Qaeda threat and thwarted several plots. “They are still a threat, but clearly their network and operations have been degraded,” the ambassador said.
But Robow said U.S. counter-terrorism efforts over the last two years have only strengthened his group. “I’m telling you,” he said, “the more Americans move against us, the more popular we become.”
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edmund.sanders@latimes.com
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49b52a21a114d6e1e59a8fa0845ce0f8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-25-he-pelvic25-story.html | That sinking feeling | That sinking feeling
Maria Stubbs, a 44-year-old mother from Carson, wasn’t surprised when she leaked a little urine after the birth of her third daughter 10 years ago; she had experienced a bit of leakage during and immediately after all three of her pregnancies. But when a full year had passed and she was still crossing her legs to stave off leakage every time she coughed, she knew she had a problem.
Her low point occurred when she was washing dishes and suddenly urinated on the kitchen floor. “After I cried, I told my husband I had to do something,” she said.
Stubbs’ experience is surprisingly common, but researchers are only now beginning to realize just how widespread it is. Problems such as incontinence and dropped pelvic organs -- together called pelvic floor disorders -- affect 1 in 3 women, according to a 4,000-person Kaiser Permanente study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Other research shows that at least 11% of women end up having surgery for a pelvic floor disorder.
The pelvic floor is a group of muscles, ligaments and nerves that form a sling across the opening of a women’s pelvis. A strong pelvic floor holds the bladder, uterus, bowel and rectum in place and allows them to function properly.
Muscles in the pelvic floor tend to weaken as women grow older, with pregnancy and obesity adding extra pressure. Childbirth may also stretch or damage the muscles, especially if forceps are used or severe tearing occurs. The result can be incontinence, which refers to leakage of urine or stool, or pelvic organ prolapse, in which pelvic organs sag into the vagina. In severe cases, the uterus may even herniate between the legs.
Many women avoid seeking treatment because they’re embarrassed to talk about their condition or don’t think anything can be done. Fortunately, a variety of therapies are available -- many of them introduced just a few years ago.
“Things have improved a lot in the past 10 years,” said Dr. Mary McLennan, director of urogynecology at St. Louis University in Missouri.
Open procedures are being replaced by minimally invasive ones, new medications are now available, and researchers are gaining a better understanding of what causes pelvic floor problems -- and how to treat them.
Urinary incontinence
The mainstays of treatment for urinary incontinence are pelvic floor exercises and bladder training. “Surgery should be at the very end of the list,” said Dr. Jeanette Brown, a uro- gynecologist who directs the Women’s Continence Center at UC San Francisco.
Pelvic floor exercises are especially helpful for stress incontinence, in which urine leaks from the strain of laughing, coughing, sneezing or lifting. Bladder training is used for urge incontinence, in which involuntary bladder-muscle contractions cause a sudden urge to urinate. In bladder training, women learn to go to the bathroom on a specific schedule, gradually increasing the amount of time between visits.
If incontinence persists, one option is medication. None have been approved to treat stress incontinence, but women with urge incontinence can choose from a variety of medications to reduce nerve impulses that trigger bladder emptying: Ditropan, Detrol, Enablex, Sanctura and Vesicare. A common side effect with these is dry mouth.
Surgery for stress incontinence used to require opening up the abdomen, but the current procedure of choice -- in which a surgeon places a long piece of mesh under the urethra to support it -- is performed through tiny incisions.
“If they have [the surgery] on a Friday, most people can be back to work the next week as long as they’re not doing heavy lifting,” said Dr. Karl Luber, a urogynecologist who directs the female continence program for Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. He said that the success rate two years after the procedure is about 85%. Possible side effects include bleeding and infection.
Surgery for urge incontinence is riskier and less effective. One technique involves implanting a device called InterStim that stimulates the sacral nerve in the lower back. Although experts don’t fully understand how the device works, the sacral nerve plays a role in bladder function. Possible side effects include pain and infection at the implant site.
Additional treatments for stress incontinence include attempts to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles with magnetic or electrical stimulation, and bulking up the tissues around the urethra with collagen injections. Although these treatments may help some women, studies have been mixed on whether they work. Some doctors are injecting Botox into overactive bladder muscles as a treatment for severe urge incontinence, although it hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this use.
Pelvic organ prolapse
Some women with urinary incontinence also have pelvic organ prolapse, although having one condition doesn’t mean that one will develop the other.
People with pelvic organ prolapse have fewer treatment options than those with urinary incontinence and are more likely to have surgery.
“It’s harder for me to help prolapse than stress incontinence,” said Dr. John DeLancey, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of pelvic floor research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Treatment options for pelvic organ prolapse are limited to using a pessary or having surgery. A pessary is a diaphragm-like device that’s used to support internal organs. Although pessaries have come a long way since 400 BC, when Hippocrates described inserting half a pomegranate into the vagina to correct prolapse, they don’t fit everyone well.
If a pessary doesn’t work, surgery becomes an option. In it, sutures or mesh are used to support the vagina and restore the prolapsed organs to their proper positions. Although nearly a third of all prolapse operations are repeats, this doesn’t necessarily mean the operation was a failure. “That person may have had 15 years of good relief,” DeLancey said.
Fecal incontinence
Fecal incontinence is the least understood and most difficult to treat of the pelvic floor disorders. “We’ve just started to study this in the last 10 years, so we don’t always know what works,” said Donna Bliss, a professor of nursing at the University of Minnesota.
The first therapies used are nonsurgical measures, such as pelvic floor exercises that target the anal sphincter. Another treatment is bowel habit retraining, which involves getting to a toilet at regular intervals. Some people may benefit from dietary changes or antidiarrheal drugs to bulk up the stool and make it easier to control.
Although several surgical procedures are available, “we don’t have an ideal surgery therapy for fecal incontinence yet,” said Dr. Howard S. Kaufman, chief of colorectal and pelvic floor surgery at USC in Los Angeles. A procedure to tighten the anal sphincter has high failure rates, and implanting an artificial bowel sphincter can cause infections and other complications.
Some doctors are attempting to correct fecal incontinence by injecting bulking agents into the anal muscle. Another experimental treatment is sacral nerve stimulation, which is already approved for use in urinary incontinence.
A dramatic difference
DeLancey pointed out that women have plenty of time to weigh their options when it comes to treating pelvic floor disorders. “They’re not dangerous; they’re not going to harm your health,” he said. But he emphasized that treatment can make a dramatic difference in people’s lives.
Maria Stubbs, who recently had a piece of mesh implanted to stop her leakage after an earlier surgery failed six years out, advised women with symptoms like hers to talk to their doctor. “Get help, because it’s out there,” she said.
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392d32c8c3f000a32ce4923569992ad0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-25-na-gym25-story.html | Calories come off and lights come on | Calories come off and lights come on
As Adam Boesel pedals an exercise bike, he sends power to a generator that converts his workout calories into electricity. Across the room in his small eco-friendly gym are half a dozen energy-efficient treadmills. On the roof, solar arrays gather more natural energy.
In Boesel’s new gym, people will not only slim their waistlines, they will also shrink their carbon footprint.
Welcome to people-powered exercise for a small planet.
Boesel says the Green Microgym -- which is to open Friday in the eclectic Alberta Arts district of northeast Portland -- is the first fitness center in the country to use solar power as well as human-powered cycling and cardio machines to generate renewable energy.
“We are creating a neighborhood gym that is as comfortable and effective as any other,” he said. “At the same time, our members are doing their part to help the Earth.”
Boesel recently showed off the Human Dynamo prototype, an exercise machine consisting of four spin bikes attached to a small generator. As he pedaled one of the human-powered bikes, a digital readout showed the amount of watts, a measure of power, that he was producing by pedaling and turning an arm crank that strengthens the upper body, he said. As many as four riders can propel the prototype system, which can produce 200 watts to 600 watts of energy an hour.
It’s not only the exercise machines that exude green -- so does the entire gym, which is about 3,000 square feet. Yoga enthusiasts can practice sun salutations on cork-lined floors. Cardio fans can jog, run intervals on treadmills or spin on recycled rubber flooring.
The 37-year-old fitness entrepreneur revels in his belief that he has designed an ideal energy-efficient gym that will appeal to a new generation of young, healthy and environmentally-conscious Portlanders.
Most gyms are energy hogs, with sweeping floor space, high heating costs and hot showers always steaming in the locker rooms. Boesel doesn’t know how much energy the solar arrays and human-powered equipment will produce, but he expects his fitness center to use about half the energy of most gyms its size by providing as much as 40% of its energy needs. His goal is to have the gym run solely on the energy it generates.
In years past, when fitness companies looked at human-powered machines, they calculated there wasn’t much energy savings, said Mike Taggett, owner of Henry Works in El Paso, which designed the Human Dynamo prototype.
“Yes, it isn’t a lot of power, but it is better than nothing, and there is gratification in actually doing something during your workout,” he said.
The gym also features treadmills that use nearly one-third less energy than most of their counterparts because they have energy-efficient, self-regulating, brushless motor drive systems that run more cleanly than traditional motors. And they’ll be switched off when not in use.
Although one gym in Hong Kong and another in Australia have prototype systems that harness some human power, Boesel’s gym is believed to be the first to integrate such equipment and eco-philosophy into its business model.
Green Microgym uses only energy-efficient lighting, ceiling fans and televisions. It has a mostly paperless membership system. Its five elliptical machines are non-motorized and don’t require electricity; Boesel is working on getting them hooked up to generators.
Gym members will be asked to either turn off or lower lighting systems and fans when not in use. Boesel said many commercial gyms could save electricity by turning off treadmills when not in use, but most don’t.
“I’ve noticed in the past year or two that more club owners are becoming more interested in going green,” said Pamela Kufahl, editor of Club Industry’s Fitness Business Pro magazine, based in Overland Park, Kan.
“People in general are paying more attention to being more environmentally friendly,” she said. “Club owners and their staffs are aware of this and they know their members are too.”
The trade magazine in recent months has detailed the efforts of YMCAs, military fitness centers and university recreation centers to go green, as most have focused on installing water-efficient toilets and recycled floor products. But none have attempted to energy from human exercisers and use it to power a gym, Kufahl said.
So far, about 50 people, eager to sweat it out and still conserve energy, have signed up for membership at Green Microgym. Most of them live in the neighborhood, which is another green advantage: no parking lot, no energy-consuming showers.
“It appeals to people who want to walk or bike to the gym and then go home and shower,” Boesel said.
Maggie Vail, 34, works within easy walking distance at Kill Rock Stars, an independent record label. She signed up because she liked the proximity and the green ethos.
“It’s the perfect business for Portland, and the timing is perfect,” she said. “It’s time to be more conscious about everything we do.”
The new business fits in nicely with Portland’s young, urban and environmentally mindful culture, said Ethan Seltzer, an urban studies professor at Portland State University.
“There is tremendous interest in our community in energy conservation, alternative transportation, fitness and healthy eating and lifestyles,” he said. “We have a large and growing population of college-educated, 25- to 35-year-olds, and they are here because they care about being green, need affordable places to live and want to create, not just consume, the local culture.”
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stuart.glascock@latimes.com
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7dd413bdcb348e1c2e9a2b838450a61f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-et-pal26-story.html | This wasn’t just for effect | This wasn’t just for effect
Baby boomers have a soft spot in their hearts for filmmaker and special-effects pioneer George Pal.
Long before impersonal computers began creating special effects, Pal brought science fiction and fantasy films to the big screen with his personal vision to create the magical otherworldly experiences in such films as “The War of the Worlds,” “The Time Machine,” “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm,” “Tom Thumb” and “7 Faces of Dr. Lao.”
“His movies are so humanistic in a genre that frequently passes by that element,” noted director Joe Dante (“The Howling,” “Gremlins”).
Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is throwing a centennial celebration, “George Pal: Discovering the Fantastic,” at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Dante hosts the event, which features a panel discussion with some of Pal’s collaborators, including puppeteer Bob Baker and actors Barbara Eden, Ann Robinson, Russ Tamblyn and Alan Young.
The tribute will also include new prints of Pal’s “Puppetoons” -- live-action shorts that featured stop-motion-animated puppets in fairy-tale situations -- 1941’s “Rhythm in the Ranks” and 1946’s “John Henry and Inky Poo,” as well as Pal’s 1953 production of “The War of the Worlds” with Robinson and Gene Barry, which won an Oscar for best special effects.
“There wasn’t a lot of darkness in George Pal,” said Dante, who became acquainted with the filmmaker watching the old “Puppetoons” on TV as a child. “All of his movies became kind of funny and bright. Even mistakes like ‘Atlantis: The Lost Continent,’ which is sort of an Italian movie that isn’t an Italian movie and is really a pretty silly picture, there is a geniality to his movies. He stamped his personality on them whether he directed them or not.”
Dante singled out 1960’s “The Time Machine” as his favorite Pal film. “There is wistfulness about it that’s really absent from most science-fiction films,” he explained. “It’s a moving film on a level that most movies of that type didn’t even try to reach.”
Born in Cegled, Hungary, in 1908, Pal began making movies for Hunnia Films in Budapest in 1928. He moved to Berlin in 1931, but when the Nazis came to power he left Germany and began working at Paramount. He won an honorary Oscar in 1944 for “the development and novel methods and techniques in the production of short subjects known as ‘Puppetoons.’ ” Six years later, he made his first foray into live-action filmmaking with “The Great Rupert.”
Baker, of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in downtown Los Angeles, was just a teenager when he began working for Pal’s studio on the “Puppetoons.”
“He was wonderful,” recalled Baker. “He was very European . . . you enjoyed him for that reason. Consequently some of his stories got a very European twist, which, as I look back on it, was a different way of storytelling.”
“He was just perfect,” echoed Young, who worked with Pal on 1958’s “Tom Thumb” and 1960’s “The Time Machine.” “He was the gentlest, nicest man outside of directing, and when he was directing he was the same way.”
“George had a twinkle in his brain,” added Tamblyn, who played the title role in “Tom Thumb” and had a role in Pal’s 1962 production of “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.” “When he would shoot, he would come up with this smirk on his face and say, ‘I think it would be cute if you would do . . . . He was very playful.”
Eden worked with Pal on “Brothers Grimm,” which was directed by Henry Levin, and 1964’s “7 Faces of Dr. Lao,” which Pal directed and featured Tony Randall in the lead role.
“He had a great sense of humor,” recalled Eden, who added that Pal would often get flummoxed by Randall’s antics, especially when the actor started chasing Eden around the set.
“I think he threatened me with something unspeakable,” Eden said, laughing. “I believe we ran around the cameras and George was saying, ‘Wait a minute! Stop.’ But we couldn’t stop, we were laughing so hard. Tony would always do some sort of escapade that would take George back a bit.”
“Dr. Lao,” which won an Oscar for makeup for William Tuttle, was Pal’s last hurrah. The swinging ‘60s didn’t really mesh with the filmmaker’s fantasy universe. “He wanted me to do a TV series based on the ‘7 Faces of Dr. Lao,’ ” said Young. “I was flattered, but he couldn’t get it off the ground.”
Pal died of a heart attack in 1980 at age 72. That same year, the academy created the “George Pal Lecture on Fantasy in Film” series in his memory.
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susan.king@latimes.com
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‘George Pal: Discovering the Fantastic’
Where: Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
Price: $5
Contact: (310) 247-3600 or www.oscars.org
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5158b1e57ceea8d86f4bae0627f3e1a1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-fg-darfur26-story.html | Sudan soldiers’ raid on Darfur camp triggers deadly clash | Sudan soldiers’ raid on Darfur camp triggers deadly clash
Sudanese troops raided one of Darfur’s biggest and most volatile camps early Monday, setting off a deadly clash that killed an unknown number of people and wounded dozens, according to U.N. and humanitarian officials.
More than 20 people were believed to be dead, but that estimate could not be confirmed because access to the camp for 90,000 displaced people remains restricted. At least 48 gunshot victims, two-thirds of whom were women and children, were evacuated Monday evening to nearby hospitals, a United Nations spokeswoman said.
Details remained unclear, but the fighting began after more than 70 government vehicles surrounded the sprawling southern Darfur camp known as Kalma, located near the city of Nyala.
“They went apparently with the intent to conduct a cordon-and-search because of allegations there may have been weapons in the camp,” said Kemal Saiki, spokesman for the U.N.-African Union Mission in Darfur.
The government said soldiers faced gunfire from militants inside the camp.
“Civilians were brought into the streets as human shields,” the government said in a statement, which put the number of injured at 12, including five soldiers.
Others claim soldiers opened fire without warning from positions outside the camp perimeter. During a six-hour confrontation, dozens of mud-and-straw huts were burned and destroyed, according to aid officials and rebel leaders. Hundreds of camp residents fled into the surrounding desert.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Ameerah Haq, said in a statement that she was “gravely concerned” and called for government troops, which remained positioned around the camp, to permit evacuation of the wounded.
Darfur, in western Sudan, is dotted with camps for residents of the region driven from their homes by fighting between rebels and forces loyal to the central government in Khartoum.
Government officials have long sought to close Kalma, which they complain has grown too large and unwieldy. On several occasions over the last few years, government troops have been accused of forcibly relocating Kalma residents.
“This has been coming for a while,” said one aid official who did not want to be identified for fear of government retribution. “The government has been waiting for an opportunity to close the camp down.”
In recent months, government officials have restricted the amount of food, fuel and supplies that could enter the overcrowded camp, the aid official said.
Government representatives could not be reached for comment.
By most accounts, Kalma is awash in weapons and has become a haven for rebels, and government officials have warned in recent months that they would disarm the camp. In a similar raid of Kalma last month, local Sudanese police said they seized cannons, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
Early this year, Amnesty International said the majority of Kalma residents were armed and warned that gangs of displaced youths were fighting one another. Rebel groups frequently use the camp to recruit fighters.
This militarization of Kalma and other camps highlights a rising risk in Darfur, experts say.
“The camps could become the new front line,” said Sudan analyst Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College. If camp dwellers continue to arm themselves because they are losing faith in the ability of the U.N. to resolve the crisis, the Sudanese government could use the presence of weapons as a reason to attack.
“If people start to have the feeling that the war has been taken to the camps, then you’re talking about a tinderbox,” Reeves said.
Camp leaders deny that they have weapons and accuse the government of fabricating the recent arms seizure.
“The government wants to evacuate the camp by any means, peacefully or by force,” said Najmaldin Abdulkarim, a London-based spokesman for a newly created Darfur refugee union. “Kalma is seen as a stronghold and that’s why the government targeted this camp.”
The Darfur conflict began in 2003 with a rebel attack on government facilities. The government in Khartoum is accused of unleashing counterinsurgency militias that attacked hundreds of villages, displacing more than 2 million people and leading to the deaths of more than 200,000.
Kalma has been a pressure cooker since 2005, when residents burned a police station.
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edmund.sanders@latimes.com
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4864bde8180f010ce620f31ace524ff4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-fg-hardship26-story.html | A high price for Chinese gold | A high price for Chinese gold
If anybody feels a pang of jealousy over China’s haul of Olympic gold medals, they need only pause to consider what the athletes went through to get them.
The only mother on China’s team, Xian Dongmei, told reporters after she won her gold medal in judo that she had not seen her 18-month-old daughter in one year, monitoring the girl’s growth only by webcam. Another gold medalist, weightlifter Cao Lei, was kept in such seclusion training for the Olympics that she wasn’t told her mother was dying. She found out only after she had missed the funeral.
Chen Ruolin, a 15-year-old diver, was ordered to skip dinner for one year to keep her body sharp as a razor slicing into the water. The girl weighs 66 pounds.
“To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist Party central,” is how Chinese Sports Minister Liu Peng put it at the beginning of the Games.
The contrast couldn’t be greater than between the Chinese and U.S. athletes. In their post-match interviews, the Americans rambled on about their parents, their siblings, their pets, their hobbies. They repeatedly used the word fun. Shawn Johnson, the 16-year-old gymnast, waxed enthusiastic about the classes she’ll take when she returns to her public high school in West Des Moines, Iowa.
The Chinese athletes generally don’t have pets or hobbies. Or brothers or sisters (since most are products of China’s one-child policy).
While many U.S. team members hauled their parents to Beijing, most Chinese parents had to settle for watching the Games on television. Chinese athletes train up to 10 hours a day, and even the children have only a few hours a day for academic instruction.
“You have no control over your own life. Coaches are with you all the time. People are always watching you, the doctors, even the chefs in the cafeteria. You have no choice but to train so as not to let the others down,” gymnast Chen Yibing told Chinese reporters last week after winning a gold medal on the rings. He said he could count the amount of time he’d spent with his parents “by hours . . . very few hours.”
The Chinese sports system was inspired by the Soviet Union. Whereas many U.S. athletes have ambitious parents to nurture their talents, China’s future champions are drafted as young children for state-run boarding schools. Scouts trawl through the population of schoolchildren for potential champions, plucking out the extremely tall for basketball, the slim and double-jointed for diving -- regardless of whether they know how to swim.
“I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but they said pingpong was right for me,” said Lu Lu, a 20-year-old player at the Xuanwu Sports Academy in Beijing.
After Beijing was chosen in 2001 to host this summer’s Games, China’s sports authorities launched Project 119 (after the number of medals available in track and field, canoeing, sailing, rowing and swimming that were not Chinese strengths) and assigned promising young athletes to focus exclusively on these sports, some of which they’d never heard of.
The final tally gave China 51 gold medals to the United States’ 36, and although the Americans won more medals overall (110 to 100), the statistics allowed the Chinese government to claim victory for what Liu called its “scientific” methods.
“The sports systems of the United States and China are very accurate metaphors for our societies. China is a society run by engineers, based on planning and coordination and central planning,” said Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the New York-based Asia Society and an Ironman triathlete. “The state is the supreme entity and the role of the individual is to support the state.
“Truth be told, this old Soviet system works. If you are going to scan the whole population of 1.3 billion for a certain body type and then throw vast resources into training them, you will produce champions.”
But the costs are higher than many Westerners would tolerate. China is suspected of using 14-year-old gymnasts and falsifying their ages to get around a rule designed to protect girls’ health during the transition into puberty. In sports where younger athletes are permitted, they often take risks that elsewhere would be unacceptable.
“It’s too dangerous,” diving coach Zhou Jihong said to a Chinese newspaper, speaking of the extreme diet that kept his 15-year-old athlete at 66 pounds. “She has superhuman willpower.”
Chinese athletes, particularly women, tend to be much thinner than their Western counterparts. Guo Jingjing, a gold medalist in diving who weighs 108 pounds, pointed out as much rather ungraciously when she referred to competitor Blythe Hartley as “the fat Canadian.” The 5-foot-5 Hartley weighs 123 pounds.
Guo, 27, suffers from health problems related to diving and is said to have such bad eyesight she can barely see the diving board. It is a common hazard for Chinese divers, who are recruited as young as 6.
“Divers who start at an early age before the eye is fully developed have great chance for injuries,” said Li Fenglian, doctor for the Chinese national diving team. She published a study last year reporting that 26 of 184 divers on the team had retina damage.
Despite the validation provided by the Olympic medal count, China is probably heading in the direction of a more open system where the athletes have more freedom. Having tasted celebrity and the wealth it can bring, many athletes have balked at remaining in a system where they are treated like rank-and-file soldiers.
More sophisticated Chinese are also mindful that being an Olympic superpower doesn’t necessarily translate into world dominance. The 1988 Olympics in Seoul were a huge triumph for the Soviet Union and East Germany, which won 55 and 37 gold medals, respectively.
By the time the next Olympics took place in 1992, both countries were defunct.
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barbara.demick@latimes.com
Angelina Qu, Nicole Liu and Eliot Gao of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
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d175c836c21ace588a836378b92f2116 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-fg-iran26-story.html | Iran leader seems to get reelection nod of top cleric | Iran leader seems to get reelection nod of top cleric
Iran’s supreme leader appears to have strongly endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as president, a development sure to unsettle Iranian liberals and Western officials hoping for an end to his term in elections next spring.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the cleric who is the nation’s ultimate authority on matters of religion and security, told Iranian officials to begin planning for another four-year term, Iranian state media reported Monday.
“Do not think that this year is your final year,” Khamenei told Cabinet ministers on Saturday, according to a report by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. “In other words, imagine that in addition to this year, another four years will be under your management, and plan and act accordingly.”
Relations between the U.S. and Iran have reached a nadir with the rise of Ahmadinejad’s ideologically fervent team in Tehran and ambitious neoconservative policymakers in Washington. Ahmadinejad’s reelection would damp hopes that new administrations in Washington and Tehran could untangle 30 years of hostility and defuse a crisis over Iran’s nuclear program without military confrontation.
Khamenei also implicitly praised Ahmadinejad’s handling of the nuclear issue, saying the president has stood up to the West and rejected its demands for concessions.
Iran and the West are at a standoff over Tehran’s drive to master the enrichment of uranium, a step in building a nuclear energy program or an atomic bomb. Iran’s pursuit of the technology has incurred three rounds of relatively mild United Nations Security Council sanctions, further isolated Iranian businesses and scared off foreign investment in the country’s vital energy sector.
Iran’s political system blends elements of a theocracy and a democratic republic, with candidates for office vetted by committees of jurists and clerics. Though the supreme leader exercises enormous influence, an elected parliament proposes laws and the president and his Cabinet run day-to-day matters of state.
Khamenei’s endorsement of cleric Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri for president failed to sway voters in 1997, when a massive tide of discontent brought reformer Mohammad Khatami to power. But most analysts say Khamenei successfully tilted the table in favor of Ahmadinejad in 2005.
Though Ahmadinejad was elected on an agenda of improving the lives of poor Iranians, he instead dived headfirst into foreign policy, taking the lead in lambasting the United States and Israel, and traveling the world.
He is scheduled to travel this week to Tajikistan, to participate as an observer at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and then to the United Nations next month. The new U.N. session is likely to have another round of sanctions against Iran on its agenda.
Ahmadinejad’s allies fared poorly in 2008 parliamentary and 2006 local elections, which were dominated by so-called pragmatic conservatives.
He is often the butt of jokes, and even some conservatives describe him and his team with derision. “I feel infuriated whenever I hear him talking on state television,” said Saeed abu Taleb, a conservative filmmaker and former lawmaker. “He speaks in an immature way. He has no economic or political plan for the country.”
Recently, a conservative Iranian website reported that Ahmadinejad’s new interior minister, Ali Kordan, had submitted a fake honorary degree filled with spelling errors from Oxford University as evidence of his qualifications.
Critics accuse Ahmadinejad of badly mismanaging the country’s affairs. In a nation blessed with enormous oil and gas reserves, daily power outages have become the norm.
“This has nothing to do with sanctions. It was just Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement,” said Said Laylaz, a Tehran economist and journalist often critical of the president.
Ahmadinejad’s brash style and willingness to ladle out low-interest loans and grants to key constituents have endeared him to some conservative voters in rural and poor urban districts. But some observers warn that the largesse may not ultimately pay off.
“Ahmadinejad is spending oil revenues on populist policies,” said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, a Tehran social scientist. “He is giving money to the poor, but they have seen no improvement in their living conditions. Real estate prices have jumped, and the poor are getting poorer.”
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daragahi@latimes.com
Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.
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8244ea3efce405161795172fc7c77d87 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-me-books26-story.html | Digital textbooks may not be cheaper, report finds | Digital textbooks may not be cheaper, report finds
Over the past year, seemingly everyone from Congress to the California auditor have decried college textbook costs, which have soared to an average of $700 to $1,000 per student each year. Many of these critics have pointed to online digital textbooks, which typically sell for half the price of print editions, as an affordable alternative.
But a sharply critical report released Monday asserts that commercial publishers are going about the digital textbook revolution the wrong way. Commercial e-textbooks are no cheaper than hard-copy editions when you take into account that students can sell print books back to the bookstore for half the cover price, according to the report from a national coalition of student public interest research groups. And restrictions on printing and online access make commercial e-books unfeasible for many students, the report said.
“Right now, publishers are on a crash course with e-textbooks,” the report said. “They are expensive and impractical for a large portion of the student population.”
Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart, which released 4,000 digital titles from major publishers this fall, said not all college bookstores pay 50% for used textbooks. And digital textbooks offer advantages such as cut-and-paste and search functions that make them an attractive option.
“My overarching question is: How does the availability of this new choice hurt students?” Lyman said.
The report was based on a survey of 504 students from Portland State University and the City Colleges of Chicago. Fifty commonly assigned introductory textbooks were also reviewed. The author of the study is Nicole Allen, campaign director for Make Textbooks Affordable, a public interest research groups project.
Perhaps the report’s most surprising finding -- at least to parents who can barely peel their college-age children away from their Facebook or MySpace pages -- was that only one-third of students said they were comfortable reading textbooks on a computer screen. Three-fourths said they would prefer a print textbook to an electronic one if the costs were equal.
The report said commercial publishers, however, have made it cumbersome and expensive to print out digital texts. “Biology,” 8th edition, from Pearson publishers, sells for $173, and the e-book goes for $86.50. But buying and printing out the text would cost $211.87, the report said.
“The cost is totally dependent on which book they’re talking about, the cost of printer cartridges and other things,” Lyman said. In any case, his company has heard from students who say they only want to print out short sections, for note summaries or other purposes. “A student who wants to print out a whole book should buy a whole book.”
The report also dinged commercial publishers for setting expiration dates on digital book subscriptions. “Calculus,” 6th edition, from the publisher Cengage, is priced at $207.95 for a new hard copy; the e-text version is $103.99. Access expires after 180 days, although students typically study the book over two semesters, the report said.
“Once a student buys a textbook, it should be theirs to keep and access wherever and whenever they want,” the study said. “Anything less than complete access would make digital books impractical for large numbers of students with limited access to computers and/or the Internet.”
Lyman said most subscription periods match how long students need a text, and discrepancies are subject to review. “Chemistry: The Central Science,” 10th edition, from Prentice Hall goes for $90.67 for a 540-day subscription.
“It’s not a bad deal,” Lyman said in an e-mail message.
The report called on college systems and faculty to support open digital textbooks, which are given away online without restrictions on use.
Lyman said he doubted that free online textbooks are a practical solution.
“I know the work that goes into creating a textbook, from the authorship to the infographics,” Lyman said. “Let’s let the students decide what they want.”
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gale.holland@latimes.com
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df8abffb5606878c98b7a19da08191b7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-me-school26-story.html | A school transformed | A school transformed
With classes in Mandarin, overseas trips to China and France, bus transportation for commuters and individualized fitness instruction that includes salsa and tai chi, new students at St. Genevieve High School quickly come to realize that things are a bit different at this Panorama City campus.
A recent daylong pep rally celebrating 157 incoming freshmen that featured singing, dance routines, speeches and a pancake breakfast served by upper classmen sealed the deal.
The school has gained a reputation as one of the most innovative high schools in Los Angeles -- one that is bucking the trend of many other urban Catholic schools that have closed or are teetering on the brink due to crumbling facilities and declining enrollments.
A decade ago, St. Genevieve, too, was on the precipice before officials set about changing the nature of the school with fresh ideas that are now being replicated by other Catholic campuses. The school is well-known for its character-education curriculum instituted by Principal Daniel Horn, but it is also gaining recognition for a theater arts program that puts on two full orchestra plays each year.
And though 10 years ago only about 35% of St. Genevieve graduates went to college, last year’s college enrollment was 100%, with 65% of students entering four-year universities.
The school this year had a waiting list for its freshman class and saw overall enrollment increase 13% from last year, with a current enrollment of 565 students. It is the only school in the Los Angeles Archdiocese with a bus system, picking up students from four areas in Los Angeles, including one stop near Daniel Murphy Catholic High School, an urban campus that closed at the end of May because of financial and enrollment pressures.
St. Genevieve’s unorthodox methods had an immediate impression on freshman Victoria Abaunza.
“When I first came and my brother dropped me off and said ‘Have a good day,’ I was scared,” said the 14-year-old. “It’s so different than elementary school. But right away, all these new people, juniors and seniors, said ‘hi’ and treated me like family. Right away I felt like it was home.”
Unlike some other schools, St. Genevieve’s teachers and administrators are willing to take some risks, said academic counselor Allan Shatkin.
“People don’t like change,” said Shatkin, who has been teaching for 40 years, including the last eight at St. Genevieve. “You get people with vested interests that don’t have anything to do with education. And in the public arena, people have tenure and there are political pressures. But people have to know that there are other ways of doing things that work. We are constantly experimenting.”
That is seen in such initiatives as weekend and evening sessions, which occur several times per year. For night classes, students report to campus at 2 or 3 p.m. There is a dinner break and parents are invited to share in activities such as Mass or guest speakers.
The school closes for a week each year for a teachers retreat to discuss educational goals, but also to foster cooperation and trust. Last week, the entire student body was taken -- via 13 buses -- to a Los Angeles conference of governors from states that border Mexico to get a real-life civics lesson. Next month, everyone is going to see a “Sound Of Music” sing-along at the Hollywood Bowl. Part of the goal is to teach the teenagers comportment at such events.
The school is experimenting with starting classes an hour later, in line with research that has shown that teenagers don’t absorb information as well during early morning hours. Classwork would be spread out over an extra 20 days at the end of the school calendar, alleviating nightly homework demands as well as student and teacher stress.
St. Genevieve is not without its challenges. Located on Roscoe Boulevard just west of Woodman Avenue in a troubled area known as the Witch’s Hat, it inhabits one of the more crime-prone corners of the San Fernando Valley. But by nearly everyone’s account, it is a haven from the tagging, theft, destruction of property and break-ins that are sometimes common in the neighborhood.
It has no metal detectors and police are not a daily presence.
“If there’s any crime at St. Genevieve, I would be very surprised,” said Tom Iaccino, a 1970 graduate who sent seven children to the school. “What Dan brought in was the idea that all of these kids are going to get a good education and go to college and that has a positive impact in this area of people respecting the school. For many of the families, their kids are the first ones to go to college and that gives them hope.”
Other schools are beginning to take notice. St. Genevieve last week hosted the visiting head of a Van Nuys school who had come to check out programs. An administrator at a Catholic school in Lancaster is doing his doctoral dissertation on St. Genevieve’s character-education program.
The school has found a way to present and market itself as an attractive alternative to higher-priced private schools and public charter schools, which also have the ability to innovate but lack spiritual and moral instruction that many parents seek, said Shane Martin, dean of the school of education at Loyola Marymount University. Other Catholic schools will have to follow suit to survive.
“St. Genevieve has a strong faculty, good leadership, clear vision and a success rate,” said Martin. “Location is a big part of it. They provide one of the best options for parents looking for schools in that area.”
Increasingly, though, families from outlying areas such as Sherman Oaks, Encino and Palmdale as well as Hollywood and South Los Angeles are enrolling students at the school, which charges an annual tuition of $6,775. The student body used to be predominantly Filipino and Latino, reflecting the surrounding neighborhood; it now includes a larger population of other Asian groups as well as whites and African Americans.
The biggest feeder school is St. Genevieve Elementary School, located next door. But that transfer has not always been automatic. Ten years ago, during its nadir, the school was noted only for its mediocrity -- and worse, the thuggish behavior of its athletes. Enrollment had declined to 359, students struggled academically, and St. Genevieve was at the top of no one’s list -- including its sister elementary school.
“I was a teacher at the elementary school before the change in administration and we would encourage students to attend any other school but St. Genevieve High,” said Juan Jasso, who is now the high school’s director of admissions.
In 1999, Horn joined the school as principal and, responding to the Columbine school shootings that year, he instituted a character-education program.
In 2003, St. Genevieve was the first Catholic school in the nation to be named a National School of Character by the Character Education Partnership based in Washington, D.C., and soon enrollment began to grow.
Character education has its skeptics. A 2007 report released under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education found that many programs have failed to prove their effectiveness. But Horn cites the turnaround of his school as the best evidence.
“We’re trying to create a model high school to provide an example for others as a place where . . . we bring out the best in students,” Horn said. “Daily attendance went up, enrollment went up, the number of students on the honor role has gone up. But more important are things that are hard to put a measuring stick to, like students who look you in the eye and are confident.”
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carla.rivera@latimes.com
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8e575965c93e9325e793cc5842d85b4f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-na-campaign26-story.html | Obama is cast as an everyman | Obama is cast as an everyman
Turning the personal into the political, Democrats opened their presidential nominating convention Monday with testimonials to Barack Obama as a husband, father, brother and, above all, a leader able to transcend the nation’s long divide across racial and gender lines.
It was a parade of the past and future, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts -- ailing in the twilight of his 46-year career -- vouching for Obama, who dawned on the national scene at the Democrats’ convention four years ago.
Playing the role of chief character witness was Obama’s wife, Michelle, who cast herself and her husband as symbols of America’s potential and its promise.
“I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president,” Michelle Obama said, though she never mentioned his effort to break the ultimate racial barrier by winning the White House.
For all of the upbeat talk, tensions continued to stir between supporters of the Illinois senator and Hillary Rodham Clinton, threatening the unity that Democrats desperately seek as they face a rugged fight against Republican John McCain.
None of that friction was visible, however, during the official program beamed worldwide from the star-spangled inside of Denver’s Pepsi Center sports arena. The agenda was clear and two-pronged: Build an image of Obama as an everyman and start ripping McCain apart.
The getting-to-know-you phase featured several branches of Obama’s family tree, including his brother-in-law, his sister and several longtime friends and associates from his adopted home state of Illinois.
The advocate in chief was Michelle Obama, whose own ascension to the national political stage -- and sometimes tart commentary -- has not always been smooth, or helpful to her husband.
Reaching for the transcendence of her husband’s 2004 address at the party’s last national gathering -- and his disavowal of a red-and-blue America -- she declared: “Barack doesn’t care where you’re from, or what your background is, or what party, if any, you belong to. That’s not how he sees the world. He knows that thread that connects us -- our belief in America’s promise, our commitment to our children’s future -- is strong enough to hold us together as one nation even when we disagree.”
Much of her 20-minute speech was simple and plain-spoken, delivered in a crisp tone. To those who would question her patriotism, as some have, Obama offered a long and passionate paean to America’s possibility, ending with the affirmation: “That is why I love this country.”
Michelle Obama is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, now on leave from her job as an executive at one of Chicago’s largest medical centers. Still, she stressed her blue-collar upbringing on the city’s Southside and her concerns for her daughters’ futures.
She described meeting her husband and discovering that, despite his “funny name,” they shared the same values, in his case instilled by the single mother and grandparents who raised him: “That you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”
She also reached out to Clinton’s supporters, even before she praised her husband’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, saying the votes cast for New York’s senator “put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling so that our daughters -- and sons -- can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher.” The crowd roared its approval.
The emotional high point of the evening was a surprise appearance by Kennedy, 76, who is battling brain cancer. He walked gingerly across the stage flashing his thumbs up to delegates, who leaped to their feet in an exuberant ovation.
When he spoke, his voice was strong. Looking out on a sea of blue-and-white “Kennedy” signs, the snowy-haired senator summoned memories of his brother, the late President John F. Kennedy, and the man-on-the-moon challenge he laid down for his countrymen.
Kennedy urged Americans to “rise to our best ideals” in November and offered Obama as the embodiment of that aspiration. “Barack Obama will close the book on the old politics of race and gender, of group against group, of straight against gay,” Kennedy said.
Delaware Sen. Biden was among those rising to their feet in tribute. Kennedy’s niece, California First Lady Maria Shriver, looked on with tears in her eyes.
But it was not all high tone and uplifting oratory.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was among those who took up a cudgel against McCain, criticizing the Arizona senator’s positions on issues including the economy, healthcare and energy policy.
“Republicans say John McCain has experience,” Pelosi told the crowd. “We say John McCain has the experience of being wrong!” She led delegates in a call and response: “Barack Obama is right,” Pelosi said, and the faithful responded, “John McCain is wrong!”
As part of the two-track strategy, Obama’s campaign launched a TV spot in battleground states jabbing McCain on the economy and tying him to President Bush. The ad rewrote lyrics from Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” -- “Don’t know much about industry / Really can’t explain the price of gas / Or what has happened to the middle class” -- and featured several pictures of McCain and Bush. One showed the two men embracing, with McCain’s face buried in the president’s shoulder.
The McCain camp put up a spot featuring a Clinton supporter, Wisconsin’s Debra Bartoshevich, saying she had switched her allegiance to the GOP nominee-to-be. “A lot of Democrats will vote McCain,” she says. “It’s OK, really.”
Clinton responded with a statement strongly endorsing Obama yet again. “I just want to make it absolutely clear, we cannot afford four more years of George W. Bush’s failed policies in America, and that’s what we would get with John McCain.”
But after a long and bitter primary, the lingering resentments are not easily papered over with sunny press statements.
Publicly, the two camps worked to minimize any hint of hard feelings. “There is no stronger surrogate for Sen. Obama than Sen. Clinton,” Valerie Jarrett, a friend and close advisor to Obama, told reporters. Jarrett did allow that “it may take a little time for some people to come around.”
Privately, aides to the Clintons and Obama continued to take potshots and grumble about perceived slights and the seeming presumptuousness of the other side.
One irritant is the speech that Bill Clinton is to give Wednesday night, a session devoted to national security issues. A former advisor to the Clintons said Monday that the former president was not happy being told he should stick to that topic. Obama sought to quiet the rumblings as he campaigned in Iowa, telling reporters he told Clinton that he was free to say whatever he wished.
“Bill Clinton knows a little bit about trying to yank an economy out of the doldrums and helping middle-class families. And it wouldn’t make much sense for me to want to edit his remarks to prevent him from making a strong case about why we need fundamental economic change in this country,” Obama said.
Another sticking point was the choreography of Wednesday’s roll call of states, which will formally install Obama as the Democratic nominee. It is a traditional piece of political theater usually given over to cornball testimonials to the folks back home. Clinton is expected to urge her delegates to back Obama, but told reporters some of them “feel an obligation to the people who sent them here” to cast their ballots for the New York senator.
The evening ended with a made-for-TV scene of family togetherness, as Obama’s image was beamed into the convention hall from Kansas City, where he plans to campaign today.
“Hi, Daddy!” his daughter Sasha, 7, called out to his image on a giant video screen.
“Michelle, you were unbelievable,” Obama said. “And you also look very cute.”
“That’s Sasha,” Michelle Obama said.
“Daddy, what city are you in?” Sasha asked.
“I’m in Kansas City, sweetie. And Malia, Sasha, how do you think Mom did?”
“I think she did good,” Sasha said.
Obama laughed with the convention audience. “I think so too,” he said.
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mark.barabak@latimes.com
Times staff writers Robin Abcarian, Michael Finnegan, Doyle McManus and Peter Nicholas and Chicago Tribune staff writers Jim Tankersley, John D. McCormick and Christi Parsons contributed to this report.
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On latimes.com
Top of the Ticket
Times reporters are blogging daily from Denver in Top of the Ticket. Follow the news as it happens, and see photos and video from inside and around the convention venues at latimes.com/ticket.
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629a5f373ba1819f334eb1db36bed318 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-26-sci-cows26-story.html | Tip them over and they still point north | Tip them over and they still point north
Birds do it, bees do it, and so, apparently, do . . . cows?
No, it’s not that. We’re talking about sensing the Earth’s magnetic field.
German scientists using satellite images posted online by the Google Earth software program have observed something that has escaped the notice of farmers, herders and hunters for thousands of years: Cattle grazing or at rest tend to orient their bodies in a north-south direction just like a compass needle.
Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen and their colleagues found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north.
The resolution of the images was not sufficient to tell which ends of the cows were pointing north, however.
Asked whether he had ever observed such behavior in cows, dairy farmer Rob Fletcher of Tulare, Calif., said, “Absolutely not.” But, he added, “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like that.”
Similar results were found in field studies of 2,974 red and roe deer in the Czech Republic, the researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers had been studying magnetism in smaller animals and were looking for a way to extend their work to larger species.
Cows are known to align their bodies facing uphill, facing into a strong wind to minimize heat loss or broadside to the sun on cold mornings to absorb heat, but the fact that the pictures were taken at many locations, at different times of day and in generally calm weather minimized the effect of environmental factors, the researchers said.
Researchers have long known that certain bacteria, birds, fish, whales and even rodents have minute organs in their brains containing particles of magnetite that can act like a compass.
But the new results are the first hint that larger land-based mammals may also have such organs, said biologist Kenneth J. Lohmann of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the research.
The findings are “very interesting and not at all implausible,” said Caltech geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink, who was also not involved in the research. “We have to remember that whales are descended from a common ancestor of [cows], so this is not a surprise given what we know about whales.”
And, he added, “this is an incredibly neat use of Google Earth. This is a study we would not have dreamed about doing five years ago.”
Bats, birds, bees and whales all use their magnetic sense to help navigate. Kirschvink recently reported, for example, that if a pulsing magnetic field is applied to bats perpendi- cular to the Earth’s field, the animals will change the direction of their flight by 90 degrees.
What the benefit could be for cows, however, remains a mystery. It might help them find their way home, experts said, or perhaps it is simply a vestigial sense that is no longer used for any purpose.
Furthermore, the authors noted, no one has examined cows or deer to determine whether their brains contain magnetic particles.
Experts acknowledged that the research almost certain- ly has no practical applications.
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thomas.maugh@latimes.com
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5377c8de62407d7c27ab4f97774c02b9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-27-fg-iraq27-story.html | Suicide bomber targeting Iraqi police recruits kills 28 | Suicide bomber targeting Iraqi police recruits kills 28
A suicide bomber attacked recruits waiting outside a police station Tuesday in Iraq’s restive Diyala province, killing 28 people and wounding 45, witnesses and Interior Ministry officials said.
The bomber walked up to the line of recruits in the province’s mainly Arab district of Jalawla, about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, and set off his explosives. The bombing bore the hallmarks of an attack by Sunni Arab militant groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
“There was black smoke everywhere, dead bodies on the ground, and people panicking and helping to transfer the injured to the hospital,” witness Mohammed Adnan said.
The Iraqi security forces and U.S. military have been conducting a monthlong offensive in Diyala against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Relations are tense there among Sunni Muslim Arabs, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. The governor of the province, Raad Tamimi, said militants were trying to create an impression that they remained strong.
Jalawla had been under the control of Kurdish fighters, or peshmerga, from northern Iraq, who were replaced this month by an Iraqi army unit. The army is also taking over from peshmerga in the province’s largely Kurdish district of Khanaqin.
The attack followed a suicide bombing Sunday night that killed 25 people at a tribal sheik’s banquet in Abu Ghraib, a western Baghdad suburb.
The nearly back-to-back attacks in Abu Ghraib and Diyala were a reminder that Sunni militant groups remain a threat despite a dramatic decline in violence in the last year.
A car bomb also exploded in Tikrit, the hometown of the late dictator Saddam Hussein. The blast killed five civilians and wounded eight in the city center, a security official said.
The violence comes amid widespread frustration with the perceived lack of political progress in Baghdad.
The parliament ended its summer session this month without passing legislation on holding provincial elections, raising questions about how soon the vote can be held. Former Sunni insurgents, who boycotted the last local polling in January 2005, are eager to run for office and get a voice in government.
Negotiators for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are bogged down in talks over a long-term security agreement with the United States, despite a December deadline for a deal.
The Shiite-led government has also initiated a crackdown on leaders and members of the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq movement, which includes many former Sunni insurgents who allied themselves with American forces in 2007 to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq. Since May, Iraqi security forces have started arresting Sunni fighters.
Leaders of the Sons of Iraq have warned that the measures could drive some of their men back to fighting the government.
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ned.parker@latimes.com.
Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed and Raheem Salman contributed to this report.
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On latimes.com
Fears for the future
An attempt to kill a cleric adds to fears that gangland-style violence is returning to Basra, Iraq. latimes.com/babylon
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8ab8d61015cae9257fe62adb4e71aa08 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-27-fi-pennywise27-story.html | Tying the knot on a shoestring budget | Tying the knot on a shoestring budget
A typical bride-to-be, Katrina Macrae has bought a dress, browsed different varieties of flowers and settled on a date and location for her April nuptials.
But her bridal gown is actually an ivory-colored prom dress that she picked up for $160. The flowers will be purchased wholesale from the flower district in downtown Los Angeles the day before the wedding. And she’s getting married to her fiance, Scott Smith, on a Sunday, when location fees are usually cheaper.
At a time when the average wedding costs about $30,000, Macrae, of Redondo Beach, plans to spend $8,000.
“Planning a big, expensive wedding was kind of an unnecessary expense,” said Macrae, 26, a quality analyst for Sony Pictures. “We didn’t want to be exorbitant, and definitely the economic crunch makes us feel that more strongly.”
Planning a cut-rate wedding might seem out of step with the gauzy dream of the big day, but lately, more brides have been thinking thrifty as the economic slowdown has left them worried more about the higher cost of living than whether to serve chicken or filet mignon.
“There’s no question that the recession has affected the wedding industry,” said Jolene Rae Harrington, director of creative content at Here Comes The Guide, a wedding planning resource. “Brides still want to realize their wedding dream -- they just need to be more creative in how they achieve it.”
That includes inviting fewer guests, getting married on off-peak days such as Fridays and Sundays, crafting handmade wedding favors and holding receptions at low-cost or no-cost venues such as parks and beaches.
Concerned about rising fuel and food costs, bride-to-be Megan Turner already was driving and dining out less and reducing vacation travel. Then, in April, she was laid off from her job at an architectural firm because of the cooling housing market, and Turner said she realized more than ever that a wedding shouldn’t mean “starting your life off with debt.”
“You want to give your family and friends a nice evening, but also, there’s got to be some lines drawn,” said Turner, 30, an architectural project planner from Orange. “It’s really important for us to start saving because we don’t know what the future is going to bring.”
So Turner held a garage sale with proceeds going toward her wedding. Instead of buying wedding favors, Turner’s sister, a student at a culinary school, will bake sugar cookies for guests to take home. And when Turner learned she’d have to fork over $4.25 per guest for a cake-cutting fee, she scrapped plans for a wedding cake and ordered cupcakes.
“If it saves us money, then I’m all for it,” she said.
At stationery showroom Artiface in Costa Mesa, where custom invitations average $9 a set, an increasing number of budget-conscious brides are ordering unassembled invitations to save money, said owner Kristy McTaggart. The invites are printed and cut to size, but brides use do-it-yourself kits to affix the ribbons, jewels and layers themselves.
“A lot of times, on a typical wedding order, a bride will save $300 from doing that,” McTaggart said. “We’ll show them how to do it, and off they go.”
Other times, brides simply forgo traditional wedding details -- usually choices that are made toward the end of the planning process such as photography, flowers and music, Harrington said. Instead of hiring a DJ, “now we’re hearing of couples just throwing on their own mix tapes.”
Even companies that advertise low-cost wedding services are feeling the pinch.
Jan Sanders, owner of Budget Wedding Photography in Los Angeles, said that despite charging hundreds of dollars less than elite photographers and allowing clients to name their own price, business has been slow. This is happening even though it’s peak wedding season and the weddings taking place seem smaller.
“They’re looking at every angle to save,” said Sanders, who charges $1,350 for a seven-hour wedding package. “I don’t blame them at all.”
Last year, Sanders was booked for six or seven weddings in June -- so many that he split the work with other photographers. In the same month this year, he had only three weddings to shoot.
One prospective bride called Sanders back after he quoted her a price, saying she’d changed her mind about hiring a professional photographer and had asked a relative to take the pictures instead.
But couples should be wary of cutting too many corners.
“There is no substitute for an experienced professional,” Harrington said. “That’s something you can never turn the page back on.”
Like many young women, Krista Lenggiere dreamed of an extravagant fairy tale wedding. But after getting engaged this year, she and fiance Kevin Ward began looking for ways to trim expenses.
At first they considered dipping into Ward’s savings for their May wedding but decided to save the money “for a rainy day -- in case I lose my job or he loses his,” Lenggiere, 26, said.
The Santa Ana couple also want to take advantage of the real estate slump by buying a house before prices rise.
“We shouldn’t spend our down payment on a house on our wedding,” said Lenggiere, an office manager at a plastic surgeon’s office. “We’re doing the whole want-and-need thing right now -- I really want a horse-drawn carriage to take me away, but I don’t need it.”
So Lenggiere has had to make some concessions. She bought her wedding dress on sale and negotiated a lower location fee. A friend will be doing her hair and makeup free, and guests will receive homemade CDs as wedding favors.
“After a certain age, you can’t live in Fantasyland anymore. You have to live a real life,” Lenggiere said. “I -- for the most part -- am still getting my dream wedding.”
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andrea.chang@latimes.com
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7e4f58701e207a48dddf4e00fce8733c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-28-fg-iraq28-story.html | Brass wants Marines in Afghanistan | Brass wants Marines in Afghanistan
Marines in western Iraq’s Anbar province no longer face a serious threat from insurgents and would be better used in increasingly violent regions of southern Afghanistan, the top Marine Corps officer said Wednesday.
Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, said that gains made by two Marine units sent to Afghanistan’s volatile southern provinces this year could be lost if the troops are not replaced in November, and suggested that a drawdown in Iraq would allow him to send fresh units to the region.
“Everyone seems to agree that additional forces are the ideal course of action for preventing a Taliban comeback, but just where they’re going to come from is still up for discussion,” Conway said at a Pentagon news conference. “It’s no secret that the Marine Corps would be proud to be part of that undertaking.”
There are 25,000 Marines in once-restive Anbar province, but despite Conway’s assessment, any withdrawal is expected to be minimal. Military officials said they were likely to request a reduction of about 1,500 Marines. That is the number needed to replace one of the departing Marine units in Afghanistan, the Twentynine Palms-based 2nd Battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment, which is in southern Farah province.
Still, Conway’s comments were the most direct yet by a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in favor of a drawdown in Iraq. He joins a chorus of military leaders in Washington -- including Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the Joint Chiefs’ chairman -- who believe withdrawals should resume next month. Mullen said last month that he expected to recommend additional reductions.
Conway’s comments come as U.S. officials prepare to hand control of Anbar province, once a leading insurgent stronghold, to the Iraqi government.
Remarks by Conway and Mullen have intensified pressure on Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the outgoing U.S. commander in Iraq, to allow further reductions to free up troops for the troubled Afghanistan mission.
Petraeus is scheduled in about two weeks to deliver his recommendation to President Bush on troop levels in Iraq for the remainder of the year. Petraeus said in May that additional troop reductions were possible in the fall, after the return home this summer of extra forces sent as part of Bush’s troop buildup.
But a senior military official involved in Iraq troop level discussions said Petraeus has expressed increasing concern about withdrawals by U.S. allies. The unexpected departure of 2,000 Georgian troops, which came as Poland and Britain also announced significant drawdowns, have complicated plans for further U.S. withdrawals, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing internal Pentagon debates.
The official said Petraeus also is worried about the stability of a cease-fire called by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, who in recent weeks has been harshly critical of the Iraqi government’s dealings with the U.S. over troop levels.
In a sign of improving conditions, Pentagon officials had been considering redirecting the next Army unit scheduled to depart for Iraq -- the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division -- to Afghanistan.
But because of the changing circumstances, that unit is expected to go to Iraq as planned, the military official said. The next unit in line for Iraq duty -- the 3rd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division -- may instead be redirected to Afghanistan. The shifting deployments are likely to delay any significant reduction in the level of Army units in Iraq until next year.
Pentagon officials for months have tried to find additional troops to send to Afghanistan. Dealing with strains and shortages, military planners have identified only a few hundred, whereas Afghan commanders have requested about 10,000 more.
Conway, who traveled to Iraq last week, said the upcoming transfer of Anbar province to Iraqi government control supports his assessment that the region no longer requires a large number of Marines. Mowaffak Rubaie, the Iraqi national security advisor, said the transfer is scheduled for Monday.
“There aren’t a whole heck of a lot of bad guys there left to fight,” Conway said, adding that attacks had fallen to a low of two or three a day. “Our vehicles seemed to go largely unnoticed.”
Still, tensions remain, particularly between rival Sunni Muslim factions. The provincial government is made up mostly of members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group that holds 36 of the provincial council’s 41 seats. But the party has seen relations with tribal chieftains and former insurgent fighters, now part of patrols known as the Sons of Iraq, grow increasingly tense.
In the latest sign of the tensions, the province’s police chief, Maj. Gen. Tariq Yusif Mohammed, was ousted from his job recently, said Abdul Kareem Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman.
Mohammed had the backing of tribal leaders, and the provincial council had been trying to force him out since early June, alleging that he was weak on security. The move needed approval from the central government.
The police chief had said that the move to fire him was politically motivated because of his support from tribal leaders. He had accused politicians of wanting to push out all potential opponents and critics before provincial elections, which U.S. officials hope will be held by the end of the year.
Marine officials acknowledge the tensions, noting that members of the Anbar council have asked the Marines not to leave and have warned of increased violence if they depart.
In Baghdad, the U.S. military on Wednesday announced the death of another soldier after a bomb blast Tuesday in the northeastern part of the capital. The death brought to 4,148 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, according to icasualties.org.
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peter.spiegel@latimes.com
tina.susman@latimes.com
Spiegel reported from Washington and Susman from Baghdad.
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684088bf33e2e54cea79cd2386694465 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-28-fg-missiles28-story.html | Pentagon OKs anti-ship missile sale to Taiwan | Pentagon OKs anti-ship missile sale to Taiwan
Washington will sell $90 million worth of anti-ship missiles to Taiwan, ending what some analysts said has been a U.S. freeze on arms sales that was designed to ease cross-strait tension between China and Taiwan.
The Department of Defense has given the go-ahead for the purchase of 60 Harpoon Air Launch missiles made by McDonnell Douglas Corp. for delivery in 2009, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported Wednesday.
The announcement comes at a time of improved relations between China and Taiwan. Since taking office in May, Taiwanese President Ma Ying- jeou has pledged to improve economic and political relations with China even as he has promised to maintain the island’s defense capabilities.
The Harpoon missile deal is in addition to a $12-billion arms package sought for Taiwan that has been stalled for years.
“This sends a message that Washington is committed to Taiwan’s defense,” said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a think tank in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital. “And with some sort of framework for improved cross-strait relations under consideration, Taiwan needs to bargain from a position of strength.”
Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war. Beijing considers the island part of its territory and has threatened to use force if necessary to prevent the Taipei government from declaring independence.
Analysts said China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, is spending aggressively to modernize, putting pressure on Taiwan to maintain a credible deterrent. Ma also wants to send a signal to Taiwanese voters that he is paying attention to the island’s safety and well-being amid concern that he might become too cozy with Beijing.
The Harpoons are designed to raise the potential cost of a Chinese amphibious attack and deter a maritime blockade.
“But the fact is, unless these Harpoons have some sort of magical power, anything that costs $90 million isn’t going to dramatically tip the balance one way or the other,” said Justin Logan, an analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington.
Taiwan has successfully launched Harpoon missiles from F-16 aircraft, but the weapons are ideally suited for P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, designed to skim the surface before sinking ocean-going warships.
This suggests that the U.S. will go ahead and deliver 12 P3-C aircraft tentatively approved in 2007. These are used in anti-submarine warfare, a perceived weakness in Taiwan’s defensive posture, as well as in anti-surface warfare, maritime surveillance, naval fleet support and search-and-rescue work.
Analysts said the timing of the Harpoon announcement appeared aimed at lessening the blow in Beijing. Some added that there has been no outright freeze on arms sales to Taiwan.
“My guess is that the administration was waiting until the Olympics were over so as not to embarrass President Hu Jintao and the Chinese leadership,” said Richard Bush, a Brookings Institution analyst and former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, the United States’ de facto embassy.
President Bush presumably used his trip to the Olympics this month to warn the Chinese that this was coming, analysts added.
“Now that Bush has returned, my expectation is that we will see a number of sales move ahead to Congress for review in the weeks ahead,” said Alan Romberg, a senior associate at Washington’s Henry L. Stimson Center.
The U.S. is committed by law to defending Taiwan, although exactly what that means and how much responsibility the island bears is subject to interpretation.
One weapon system the U.S. will probably think twice about is the F-16 C/D fighter aircraft, 66 of which were requested by Ma to replace aging F-5s. Their sophistication probably would elicit protests from Beijing that could increase tensions, analysts said.
“It seems there isn’t urgency to move forward and perhaps even a preference to leave this decision to Bush’s successor,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, an analyst with Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Harpoon deal also signals improved relations between Washington and Taiwan. These were strained under former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, known for his provocative policies and inflammatory statements.
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mark.magnier@latimes.com
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143957b4d07a6ebe793c51771b035b80 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-28-me-gaymarriage28-story.html | Bid to ban gay marriage trailing | Bid to ban gay marriage trailing
California voters remain closely divided on the concept of gay marriage, but a significant majority of likely voters oppose a measure to ban it, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Proposition 8, which would amend the state Constitution to allow marriage only between a man and a woman, is trailing 40% to 54% among likely voters, according to the poll. In a separate question, pollsters asked respondents if they support or oppose allowing gay men and lesbians to marry. On that question, Californians were evenly split, 47% to 47%.
Mark Baldassare, president of the policy institute, said the election probably will be close, in part because of the even split in the general attitude toward gay marriage, but also because those supporting Proposition 8 were more likely to describe the issue as important to them than were voters on the other side.
The polling, he said, “shows a deeply divided electorate.”
Wednesday’s poll was in line with previous surveys. Support for Proposition 8 has slipped slightly in the institute’s poll since a survey last month that showed 51% of voters against and 42% in favor.
In other findings, the poll found:
* Barack Obama was leading John McCain by 48% to 39% among likely voters in the state -- a margin that was down six points since July, with most of the decline coming among self-described independents. The survey was taken before the Democratic convention began.
* An overwhelming majority, 84%, say the state’s budget impasse is a serious problem, but likely voters were more closely divided on solutions. The largest group, 44%, favored a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, while 38% would close the state deficit by cutting spending. A solution that relied mostly on increasing taxes drew only 8% support, while 4% would support borrowing money and running a deficit.
* On abortion, likely voters were divided 47% in favor, 44% opposed on Proposition 4, a measure that would require parents to be notified 48 hours before a minor has an abortion. Voters rejected similar proposals in 2005 and 2006.
* Another ballot measure, on legislative redistricting, is drawing support from about four in 10 likely voters. Proposition 11, which is backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would give a commission of registered voters the authority to determine state legislative districts. The survey showed 39% in favor, 36% against and 25% undecided.
Campaign strategists frequently say ballot measures that begin the fall campaign with less than 50% support face long odds because propositions usually lose support as the campaign proceeds.
The findings are based on a telephone survey of 1,047 likely voters between Aug. 12 and 19. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
On same-sex marriage, the poll did not reveal why the split on the ballot measure differed from attitudes on the general issue of gay marriage. But Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for the Proposition 8 campaign, cited the language voters will see on the ballot, which pollsters also read to respondents, that describes the proposition as a measure to “eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.”
That legal right has existed since May, when the California Supreme Court ruled that the state Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the same access to marriage that heterosexual couples have. That ruling overturned Proposition 22, passed by voters in 2000, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
The Protect Marriage coalition circulated petitions for Proposition 8 this spring in order to amend the Constitution and take the issue away from the courts. At the time, the petitions said the measure would amend the state Constitution “to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
Earlier this summer, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown altered the ballot language, saying the change was necessary to accurately reflect the effect the measure would have in overturning the court’s decision. The Protect Marriage coalition filed a lawsuit to block that change, but lost.
Both sides predicted an intense campaign between now and election day.
Supporters of Proposition 8 had raised more than $10.1 million as of 4 p.m. Wednesday. Opponents had raised more than $9.4 million.
Both sides were dependent on dollars from out of state, with opponents of the measure getting $4.9 million -- more than half of their money -- from outside of California. Proponents collected $3.8 million from outside the state.
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jessica.garrison@latimes.com
Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.
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On latimes.com
Financial battle
To see how much money supporters and opponents of Proposition 8 have raised, as well as who has donated and where they live, go to latimes .com/prop8map.
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4f47e158ab1791e8230da8c99f896de1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-28-na-protest28-story.html | Protest led by Iraq war veterans ends in talk with Obama liaison | Protest led by Iraq war veterans ends in talk with Obama liaison
About 50 Iraq war veterans led a boisterous crowd of about 4,000 protesters to the gates of the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday evening, demanding to speak at the podium inside.
The four-mile march began at the site of a concert by leftist rock group Rage Against the Machine. It ended five hours later, after the Obama campaign resolved a tense standoff outside the Pepsi Center by agreeing to meet with representatives of the group, Iraq Veterans Against the War.
The marchers said they wanted to hold Obama to his promise to end the Iraq war and called for him to pull troops out immediately. The Democratic presidential candidate has instead vowed to bring all combat troops home within 16 months of taking office.
“We’re here to hold the Democrat Party accountable,” said Jason Hurd, one of the veterans at the front of the procession. “We voted them in to end this war. They’ve not done that. . . . We want our brothers and sisters to come home now, not later. Now.”
The veterans march was the largest demonstration so far in what otherwise has proven to be a generally subdued week; injuries were reported, but no arrests were made.
On Monday night, police used pepper spray against a crowd of about 200 activists they said were blocking traffic; otherwise the daily demonstrations have drawn little notice.
The war protesters made their mark throughout a wide swath of Denver. They left the packed rock concert at a stadium about four miles northeast of the Democratic National Convention at about 3 p.m. local time. The Iraq war veterans, many in full uniform and chanting in a military cadence, led the procession.
“My buddy’s in the foxhole with a bullet in his head,” they chanted. “I called to get the medic, but he’s already dead.”
Behind them strung a ragtag, motley crew of concert-goers. Some were dressed in the orange uniforms of Guantanamo Bay prisoners; others carried cardboard headstones bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq. One woman held a sign that said: “I’ll pay MORE for gas!”
The veterans drew cheers from pedestrians and delegates who crowded the sidewalks to watch them as they snaked toward the Pepsi Center. But as they approached the convention site, tensions heightened. Scores of riot police followed them to the barricades that separated the public from the convention site.
Marchers demanded to be allowed to read a letter to the convention from the podium.
“They are running a campaign based on an anti-war platform,” said former Marine Lance Cpl. Jeff Key. “We want to send one veteran to read [our] letter from the podium.”
As armored vehicles filled with riot police pulled up and onlookers began to crowd the marchers, the police said Key and another veteran could go inside the convention perimeter. They emerged and said the Obama campaign’s veterans liaison, Phil Carter, had agreed to meet with them.
The crowd cheered and broke into the protest chant the Obama campaign has adopted: “Yes, we can!” And then the veterans marched off into the night.
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nicholas.riccardi@ latimes.com
deedee.correll@latimes.com
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0ea08a3ff263c1d8f57c8d82f15f455b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-28-sp-dufresne28-story.html | Second string | Second string
Wouldn’t it be something if 2008 could match last year’s trip-wire to trip-wire action?
Forget about it.
“I don’t think there can ever be a season like last year,” Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel said this week.
Daniel was in the huddle for a lot of the muddle.
His Tigers went from No. 1 in the nation on Dec. 1 to not even making it to a Bowl Championship Series game.
Three-loss Illinois, which lost to Missouri in the season opener, played its season-ender in the Rose Bowl.
You could look it all up in “Ripped Knee’s Believe It Or Not,” published by University of Oregon Press.
It was the season Appalachian State shocked Michigan, Stanford jaw-dropped USC, Hawaii finished 12-1 and Notre Dame finished 3-9.
The No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the Associated Press media poll lost on the same weekend three times, and USC, California, South Florida, Boston College and Oregon all climbed to No. 2 before losing grip.
Cal was a granola-bar toss from No. 1 when its backup quarterback let the clock expire in a home loss to Oregon State. Cal then skidded, Tedford over heels, out of the poll.
Missouri and West Virginia entered the final weekend 1-2 before both were hit with 1-2 sucker punches.
Ohio State was No. 7 in the BCS in mid-November, yet somehow climbed to No. 1, and Louisiana State hilariously advanced from No. 7 on Dec. 1 to No. 2 on the evening of Dec. 2 in a circus-like circuitous route to its second BCS national title in five years.
Georgia got by-passed in the standings without playing and did not take kindly to it, responding with an eight-team playoff proposal that had the legs of an abalone.
Such is the ruinous state of this playoff-less sport that ESPN was willing this week to offer the Southeastern Conference $2.25 billion over the next 15 years to televise field chunks of this organized fraudulence.
It’s not that 2008, to be unveiled in five acts starting tonight over a long Labor Day weekend, doesn’t hold promise.
The Pacific 10 Conference campaign, for season’s sake, opens tonight, with Oregon State traveling to Stanford.
“I suppose you’ve got to jump into it sometime,” Beavers Coach Mike Riley said.
June Jones (remember him?), who left Hawaii for Southern Methodist, a Phony Express football operation since getting hammered with the NCAA death penalty two decades ago, makes his debut at Rice on Friday.
If Jones, who led one of the most outrageous turnarounds in history at Hawaii, can’t fix SMU, no one can -- not even the boosters.
“Everyone here feels like there’s hope now,” Jones said.
Hope is such an August word.
Art Briles left Houston for Baylor to get under the hood of another jalopy. And the prospect actually excites him.
“Yeah, it does,” he said. “Stupidly, it does.”
Saturday, in Baton Rouge, the LSU Tigers play their first game as defending national champions against some rag-tag team from Boone, N.C. . . . Appalachian State.
Can Labor Day weekend history repeat itself?
Isn’t deja vu a French phrase?
Nah, it could never happen again in a hundred years . . .
Meanwhile, in Ann Arbor, scene of last year’s debacle, first-year Michigan Coach Rich Rodriguez makes his Big House debut against Utah, a school near a mountain range (Wasatch) that could rekindle that haunting from the Appalachians.
USC, which hasn’t lost a regular-season game outside the Pac-10 since a Sept. 21, 2002 defeat to Kansas State, makes its first-ever trip to the University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson and once a campus stroll for Edgar Allan Poe.
The game features two former one-year New York Jets coaches, Pete Carroll and Al Groh, who combined to go 16-17 in the Big Apple. Of course, neither of them had Brett Favre at quarterback.
Opening weekend is only the window crack.
Joe Paterno, entering season No. 43 at Penn State, gets an opening coaster against Coastal Carolina, with more pertinent questions coming down the road.
Brigham Young’s quest for a BCS bowl bid could end almost before it starts if it looks past Northern Iowa toward Washington and UCLA.
Washington plays at Oregon, affording Ducks Coach Mike Bellotti the random chance to call Huskies quarterback Jake Locker “the most dangerous quarterback in college football.”
Alabama plays Clemson on Saturday in an early game hugely important to the programs and coaches, while Illinois and Missouri reunite in St. Louis for a game that could tie up some last-year loose ends regarding which school belonged in the BCS.
Sunday rouses in-state blood with Kentucky at Louisville and Colorado State at Colorado, and Monday introduces relative strangers with Fresno State playing at Rutgers and Tennessee headed toward UCLA.
Opening weekend never gets old.
Daniel can’t wait to burn his first Illinois defensive back.
“I’m just excited,” he said. “Everyone is excited about hitting someone, banging someone else’s pads other than your team. . . . It’s about time to play a game.”
Rick Neuheisel was once MVP of a Rose Bowl, but he’ll have a lump in his throat larger than Minnie Pearl’s hat when he leads UCLA out of the tunnel against Tennessee.
The pundits smell a train wreck, but Neuheisel said, “We get to decide how well we play.”
Just don’t ask 2008 to live up to 2007.
It’s like asking Nadal and Federer to “do that Wimbledon final thing” again.
Take it one week at a time, 2008.
Be the best season you can be.
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chris.dufresne@latimes.com
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46c65afed2352ae150883c6b0cc0f4b9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-29-fg-bussi29-story.html | Two Argentine ex-generals guilty in ‘dirty war’ death | Two Argentine ex-generals guilty in ‘dirty war’ death
A pair of octogenarian ex-generals who served during Argentina’s “dirty war” against internal dissent were sentenced to life in prison Thursday after defiantly declaring they were innocent of the murder charges on which they were convicted.
“I am being pursued politically by those defeated in yesterday’s war,” white-haired ex-Gen. Antonio Domingo Bussi, 82, testified before being sentenced in the northern province of Tucuman.
Also sentenced by the same three-judge panel was Bussi’s former boss, former Gen. Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 81, who testified that he had done what was necessary to confront “international communism.”
Human rights advocates called for the pair to be sent to prison, but Bussi was immediately returned to house arrest at his residence in an exclusive gated community. Menendez was dispatched to military custody.
The pair were convicted of murder and related charges in connection with the disappearance of provincial Sen. Guillermo Vargas Aignasse. He vanished after being arrested March 24, 1976, the day of Argentina’s last military coup.
The military takeover kicked off Argentina’s 1976-83 dirty war against suspected leftists, which resulted in as many as 30,000 killings, according to human rights activists. Many bodies have never been found.
Bussi, who served as both a general and military governor in Tucuman, acquired a reputation for being especially brutal, in a regime notorious for its cruelty. He allegedly oversaw executions at a clandestine detention facility. In one case, Bussi is reputed to have personally executed a young female suspect with a shot to the head.
Like other former military leaders, Bussi and his boss evaded prosecution for years because of amnesties and pardons that shielded alleged rights abusers. But Argentina has since revoked those legal protections, leading to the trials of hundreds of dirty war-era security officials.
The case of Bussi has been among the most closely watched, both because of his notoriety and his combative proclamations. Thursday’s court session was nationally televised.
“I have a right to think that this trial is about vengeance,” Bussi declared in his hoarse, feeble voice, reading from a statement through black-rimmed spectacles with thick lenses. “My physical disabilities do not allow me to confront this last combat.”
Bussi was rolled in on a wheelchair and had plastic tubes attached to his nose from an oxygen tank. A medical team monitored his vital signs. He occasionally interrupted his testimony to request more oxygen. On several occasions, Bussi broke into tears.
Human rights advocates called the medical scenario a fraud designed to win sympathy for a killer.
Bussi headed a powerful political bloc that long held sway in Tucuman. He was even elected governor of the province after Argentina’s return to democracy.
Bussi and his former superior denied having anything to do with the disappearance of the former provincial senator. “This cannot be dealt with outside the context of the war,” Bussi said.
Ex-commanders have insisted that Argentina was at war against communism. Human rights advocates say it was less a war than a lawless regime’s reliance on torture and extrajudicial killings to eliminate dissent.
Ricardo Bussi, son of the ex-general, called the trial “the revenge of the Montonero groups that now govern the country,” a reference to a former left-wing guerrilla faction. Argentina’s current left-center government includes onetime left-wing militants in key positions.
In the courtroom, relatives of the “disappeared” hoisted placards with black-and-white photos of their long-missing loved ones, including images of the former provincial senator.
His son, Geronimo Vargas Aignasse, now a federal congressman, told local news media that a conviction “would give me inner peace that I don’t have.” His father disappeared when he was 5.
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patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
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f41cb10f8e7e15c20640750a33e057f8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-29-fg-ecuador29-story.html | Ecuador urges Colombia to boost troops at border | Ecuador urges Colombia to boost troops at border
With no sign of a thaw in their frozen diplomatic relations, Ecuador this week called on Colombia to increase its military presence along their shared border to check the spillover of rebel groups, drug trafficking and war refugees.
The demand was one of several laid out by officials as they argued that their nation had paid too high a price for its neighbor’s decades-long civil conflict and that Colombia must take more responsibility for the encroaching violence.
The two nations seem far from repairing the rift triggered six months ago, when Colombian troops crossed the border to kill a rebel leader holed up in Ecuador. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa deployed troops along the border and two days later cut diplomatic ties.
Despite the intercession of the Organization of American States and the Carter Center and a meeting this month between the two nations’ foreign ministers, relations remain icy.
In an interview this week, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Maria Isabel Salvador said her country wanted Colombia to send an unspecified number of additional troops to the 450-mile border accompanied by international observers.
Ecuador has 11,000 soldiers stationed along the border -- twice as many as Colombia, Salvador said -- and maintains three times as many bases.
Even so, the Ecuadorean border zone is largely unpoliced and continues to serve as a haven for Colombia’s “irregular” fighters. Ecuadorean patrols have destroyed more than 100 clandestine bases on their territory this year, compared with the 47 camps destroyed in all of 2007, Defense Minister Javier Ponce said.
Partly to put to rest its suspicion that Colombia acted with direct U.S. assistance in the March 1 raid, Ecuador also has asked to see videos from aircraft that flew in the operation, which killed Raul Reyes, the second-ranking leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Ecuador also is demanding millions of dollars in reparations for 3,600 families whose farms in the border zone allegedly have been damaged by Colombia’s spraying of defoliants to kill coca shrubs, from which cocaine is made. In May 2007, Colombia suspended such anti-coca spraying within six miles of the border.
Colombia has offered little help in financing refugee camps for 18,000 Colombians who fled as a result of the violence, Ecuador said.
“We want Colombia to take concrete steps to meet its obligations,” Salvador said during a visit to this coastal town 30 miles south of the border. “Ecuador is doing its part to impede the entry of narcos and armed irregulars and Colombia should do more to impede their departure.”
In response to Ecuador’s demands, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that “the communication channels remain open. . . . The Colombian government is disposed to advance in the mechanisms that would permit a prompt normalization of relations with Ecuador.”
As for the request for the flight videos, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in an e-mailed statement that “pertinent information” regarding the raid had been handed over to Ecuadorean military officials
The killing of Reyes at his camp two miles inside Ecuadorean territory resulted in a crisis in which Ecuador and Venezuela briefly mobilized for war. Tensions have eased but bitterness lingers over what Ecuadorean Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea terms Colombia’s “smear campaign.”
Colombia alleged after the raid that Ecuadorean leaders were too cozy with FARC leaders, citing e-mails it said were recovered from Reyes’ laptop that indicated Larrea had met with Reyes without Colombia’s knowledge.
Bruce Bagley, a political science professor at the University of Miami, said the government of President Correa “clearly held conversations with Reyes and the FARC to guarantee the FARC would not operate in his country. This tactic has given the impression his government is pro-FARC. It is not.”
In an interview, Larrea said he met with Reyes “in a third country” in early January strictly on humanitarian grounds to effect the release of hostages held by the FARC.
At a Latin American summit in March to deal with the crisis, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe scolded Correa, saying he offered little help in fighting drugs and terrorism, a charge Correa bitterly denied.
Uribe’s charge surprised others besides Correa. In the weeks leading up to the raid, Colombian and U.S. officials heaped praise on Correa for the high level of Ecuadorean cooperation in counter-narcotics operations.
Ecuador insists that its anti-drugs efforts are continuing. Adm. Fernando Zurita, who commands Ecuador’s northernmost naval base here, said his forces had destroyed four major cocaine laboratories this year; none were destroyed last year.
The government this week unveiled Plan Ecuador, a three-year, $200-million economic program to stimulate development in five northern border states and to offer residents there alternatives to drug trafficking.
Salvador and Larrea acknowledged that Ecuador was concerned it could lose trade preferences that the United States has granted Andean nations that help in the war on drugs. Tens of thousands of fishing and agricultural jobs could be at stake.
Some members of the U.S. Congress have proposed that Ecuador be cut out of the trade deal, saying the nation must be punished for the presence of Reyes’ camp, its 2006 nationalization of U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum’s operations and its refusal to renew the lease at its Manta air base for U.S. anti-drug flights.
Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington said Thursday that despite concerns about Correa in some corners of Congress, Ecuador’s trade preferences, known by the abbreviation ATPDEA, would almost certainly be renewed.
“Those concerns are trumped by a general desire to remain engaged with Ecuador and the ATPDEA is seen as one of the few instruments with which to do so,” Shifter said.
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chris.kraul@latimes.com
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f241499d9f65a6caa764db32aa1ca8d9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-29-fi-projector29-story.html | ‘Disaster’ will try to steal ‘Tropic’s’ thunder | ‘Disaster’ will try to steal ‘Tropic’s’ thunder
Hollywood’s 18-week summer season ends this weekend with two new flicks in the fight for No. 1 at the box office: “Disaster Movie” and a movie that critics -- and even the director -- call a disaster of a movie, the sci-fi thriller “Babylon A.D.”
Both are tracking to open at $10 million to $13 million through Labor Day. They will tussle for the top spot with DreamWorks/Paramount’s action comedy “Tropic Thunder,” which could win a third straight weekend thanks to the soft competition.
With folks surely primed for mindless laughter after a week of Democratic speeches and Republican responses, Projector gives a slight edge to “Tropic Thunder” over “Disaster Movie,” from the spoof-meisters who brought you “Meet the Spartans” -- whether you wanted it or not.
The R-rated “Tropic Thunder,” starring Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr., is far from a blockbuster, considering its production cost of more than $90 million. But it has hung tough in the market and looks headed for $12 million to $15 million over four days with a modest third-weekend drop, and ultimately more than $100 million in domestic grosses.
Consumer tracking shows “Disaster Movie” and “Babylon A.D.,” both rated PG-13, drawing young moviegoers.
“Disaster Movie,” produced for $20 million by Grosvenor Park and distributed domestically by Lionsgate Films, features an ensemble including Vanessa Minnillo, G. Thang and Carmen Electra surviving a series of natural disasters and, of course, a string of gags parodying “Juno,” “Enchanted” and other recent movies.
Writer-director-producers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have built a bankable brand, not unlike Jim Abrahams and the brothers David and Jerry Zucker, the “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun” guys, did in the 1980s. Since helping to write the first “Scary Movie,” Friedberg and Seltzer went on to make “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie” and “Meet the Spartans,” which opened to weekend totals of $19.1 million, $18.6 million and $18.5 million, respectively.
The March release “Superhero Movie,” from different filmmakers, launched to only $9.5 million, and “Disaster Movie” hasn’t tracked quite as well as “Spartans,” raising the specter that audiences could finally be suffering from SGFS, or spoof genre fatigue syndrome.
Yet even with a dip from the Friedberg-Seltzer norm, “Disaster Movie” could be No. 1.
“Babylon A.D.,” a post-apocalyptic adventure starring Vin Diesel, shows tracking strength with males under 25. Twentieth Century Fox, which financed the film with European partners, says the production cost $45 million, though reports speculate it was higher.
As of Thursday, all 10 reviews compiled by RottenTomatoes.com were negative. In an interview with a blog at AMCTV.com, director Mathieu Kassovitz slammed Fox and the film’s producers, calling the movie “pure violence and stupidity” and blaming editing-room interference. The French auteur, whose world view appears to be shaped by pop songs, said the film was “supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet.”
Kassovitz could not be reached. Fox declined to comment on the kerfuffle.
Among this weekend’s other releases is the spy thriller “Traitor,” starring Don Cheadle as a mysterious terrorism suspect and Guy Pearce as a straight-laced FBI agent.
The PG-13 “Traitor,” made for about $22 million, is Overture Films’ first in-house production to hit screens. Overture, a Liberty Media Corp. subsidiary, opened the film Wednesday to encourage word-of-mouth for a picture it sees as appealing to serious-minded and popcorn crowds alike.
“We have a shot at establishing ourselves as the quality alternative for a more discerning, older audience,” said Chris McGurk, the mini-studio’s chief executive.
Overture’s first four releases were acquisitions. Up next are a high-profile acquisition, the Robert De Niro-Al Pacino crime thriller “Righteous Kill,” followed by two more original productions, “Nothing Like the Holidays” and “Last Chance Harvey.”
“We’re getting into the meat of our batting order,” McGurk said. After opening Wednesday to $800,000, however, “Traitor” appears unlikely to start out with a home run.
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josh.friedman@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Weekend Forecast
The holdover action comedy “Tropic Thunder” could battle the new spoof “Disaster Movie” and the science-fiction thriller “Babylon A.D.” for No. 1 at the box office. Along with the films listed below, contenders to make the top 10 include “Hamlet 2" and “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” These figures are The Times’ predictions. Studios will release four-day estimates Monday and actual results Tuesday.
*--* Movie 4-day Through the Weeks prediction (studio) (millions) weekend
1 Tropic Thunder $14.1 $87.4 3 (DreamWorks/Paramount)
2 Disaster Movie (Lionsgate) 12.8 12.8 1
3 Babylon A.D. (20th Century Fox) 11.5 11.5 1
4 The House Bunny (Sony) 11.1 31.3 2
5 The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) 9.8 503.7 7
6 Death Race (Universal) 7.4 24.9 2
7 Traitor (Overture) 5.9 7.3 1
8 Mamma Mia! (Universal) 5.5 132.4 7
9 Pineapple Express (Sony) 4.4 81.1 4
10 College (MGM) 4.4 4.4 1 *--*
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Source: Times research
Los Angeles Times
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422cc198f998039084023016c5311779 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-29-sp-simers29-story.html | Dodgers’ play is real joke for the McCourts | Dodgers’ play is real joke for the McCourts
WASHINGTON -- The letter to all Dodgers season-ticket holders is signed by well-known comedians Frank & Jamie McCourt.
It went out this week, coinciding with the Dogs’ trip to Philadelphia and Washington, which makes Sonny & Cher’s routine even funnier.
“We bring you heart-felt greetings as these last days of August usher in baseball’s most exciting time of year,” the letter begins, and nothing is more exciting than a seven-game losing streak.
“As we watch our modern ‘Boys of Summer’ evolve, emerge and energize our city,” the McCourts wax poetic, “we see a brand of civic enthusiasm families can only enjoy at the ballpark.”
You know what’s coming next -- an attempt to capitalize on that civic enthusiasm families can only enjoy at the ballpark if they buy their tickets, but not before Sonny & Cher do some tap dancing.
“The additions of Casey Blake, Manny Ramirez and now Greg Maddux,” while no mention, of course, that they come here free of charge, “bring substantial October experience to a team whose blossoming youth are developing before our eyes.”
Since Blake’s arrival, the Dodgers are 15-17, 11-15 since Ramirez put on a Dodgers uniform, and 1-9 since acquiring Maddux, who we were told makes such a difference in the clubhouse.
But now for a really good belly laugh to begin the day.
“We are grateful that Ned Colletti and his baseball operations staff,” the letter reads, “have been able to make such substantial improvements . . . “
No telling how badly the Nationals might have pummeled the Dogs had substantial improvements not been made.
“These kids,” the letter goes on to say, “together with Russell Martin (equally young), Nomar Garciaparra, future Hall of Famer Jeff Kent (young at heart), and speedster Juan Pierre have helped keep us in the thick of the race . . . “
Amazingly, no mention of Arizona, which has done the best job of keeping the Dogs in the thick of the race.
The letter continues with a mention of just about everyone’s name on the team because Andruw Jones is in Las Vegas.
“Such a ‘fall ball’ veteran as Mark Sweeney,” and I wonder if that was a typo and it was supposed to read, “such a ‘foul ball’ veteran as Mark Sweeney, “is a wonderful influence on a supporting cast anticipating an extended season for the first time.”
Sweeney is hitting .141, and he’s having a tremendous influence on the supporting cast, which is hitting .100 with runners in scoring position during this losing streak.
“As we march through September in hopes of a long stay in October,” Sonny & Cher coo, “we are filled with gratitude that these men have become a team . . . “
Stop, you’re killing me. Pierre spends most of his time with the opposition before a game, while Kent spends most of his time with himself. There are old players on one side of the room, the others at the kiddies’ table in the lunch room.
Before concluding that the McCourts are some kind of joke, the letter goes on to a second page with talk of community service, alumni appearances and autographs -- the McCourts declining to take credit for keeping the unwashed from mixing with the rich folk.
Then comes the big finish, the comic duo’s thanks to everyone for being such a good audience while passing the hat at the same time.
“To help illustrate that appreciation, we are inviting you to renew your commitment and renew your faith without an increase in price,” they write.
Apparently, it’s not good enough to renew your faith in the Dogs after two decades of misery; it must also be your commitment.
“While we must continue to grow our revenues to compete with our opponents,” the letter continues, which suggests a ticket increase for everyone else is in the making, “we are inviting you to renew your ticket plan for 2009 at 2008 prices.”
There have been reports the McCourts are short on cash, and now comes word they want some money for 2009 season tickets before the 2008 season is over. OK, so right now it looks as if it’s over.
A spokesman for the Dogs said ticket holders are being asked to put down as little as $250 a ticket by Sept. 5, so maybe the Screaming Meanie just needs a new dress.
As you know, they seem to get honored a lot at fancy dinners by organizations who apparently have run out of folks to honor.
“Whether you enjoy the warmth of sun-filled days or the majestic feel of enchanted evenings,” Frank & Jamie conclude, and please, if you’re going to be sick -- step outside, “we want to make this home your house of happiness.”
Well, let me tell you about the majestic feel of this enchanted evening, Cristian Guzman hitting for the cycle against the Dogs, the Nationals winning, 11-2, in their house of happiness and the team with the worst record in baseball sweeping our modern Boys of Summer.
Badum-bum!
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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.
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bc13e8cc292b73f28f8f8e36f099f797 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-et-bowl30-story.html | Fill-ins fire up the Bowl | Fill-ins fire up the Bowl
Those who arrived at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday night expecting to see and hear conductor Edo de Waart and violinist Julian Rachlin play some Russian music were hit with a double whammy.
First, De Waart had canceled his Bowl appearances this week because of illness, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya -- who led two concerts at the Bowl only a month ago -- was rushed back to fill Thursday’s slot. Then Rachlin canceled because of illness, and Augustin Hadelich -- who played in Carnegie Hall with Harth-Bedoya’s Fort Worth Symphony in January -- was granted an unexpected Bowl debut.
And the late wave of cancellations in this strange summer wasn’t over: Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor Joana Carneiro has since withdrawn from her “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” concerts next weekend -- again because of illness.
Now, the good news. Hadelich, 24, born in Italy to German parents, with only one Naxos CD of Haydn concertos out so far, is a real find.
Inheriting the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 from Rachlin, he displayed complete command of the material. He had a sure grasp of the arching lines of the first movement and the freedom to indulge in impulsive gusts of energy without losing contact with the line. He drew a beautiful, pure, dark-shaded tone from his 1683 vintage Stradivarius, illuminating the songful stretches and shadowy flutterings of the second movement. He allowed a touch of roughness to creep into his tone in the finale, yet his rhythm was firm -- firmer than that of the orchestral accompaniment -- and he didn’t neglect the movement’s playfulness.
This is not a sure-fire concerto to wow a Bowl audience with, and Hadelich is not one of those showboating types who flaunt exaggerated intensity on the Bowl’s huge video screens, but wow the crowd he did. And with a silken tone and dead-on multiple stops, he added an impressive solo encore, Paganini’s Caprice No. 21.
For Harth-Bedoya, inheriting De Waart’s program meant another crack at a Tchaikovsky symphony. Having done No. 4 in July, he took on No. 5 on Thursday.
Harth-Bedoya chose to organize the Tchaikovsky into two parts, running the first and second movements together with little pause and the third and fourth with virtually none (he divided Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in the same way here in July).
Again, he liked things to move, discouraging sentimentality and receiving excellent playing from his old colleagues in the Philharmonic, where he was an assistant and then associate conductor from 1998 to 2004. And again, he couldn’t quite rouse the ensemble to dig deeply into the music with short rehearsal time.
Yet Harth-Bedoya did get the concert off to a rousing, galloping start with Shostakovich’s Festive Overture -- about as uninhibitedly joyful a piece as you’ll ever hear.
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b12144933ba2ab8765d1abc39092e873 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-et-dorman30-story.html | His map quest: self-discovery | His map quest: self-discovery
Josh Dorman’s show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum opens with a warning, but not the usual sober sign you see at the entrance to certain exhibitions, aiming to shelter the unprepared from “inappropriate” content.
The notice, painted in sprightly letters on a plum-colored wall, alerts visitors that viewing Dorman’s collaged paintings may cause them to experience instability or dislocation. They might lose track of scale, gravity, time. “While clear answers may or may not reveal themselves,” the wall text declares, “the loose logic of a dream state will surely reveal much truth.”
Most of the work in “Within Four Miles: The World of Josh Dorman” is based on old topographical maps that the artist has cut out and collaged onto panels or canvas, drawn into and painted over. Typically, maps offer certitude and a clear sense of positional relationships. Dorman’s versions shed the anchors of rational order. They trade scientific method for poetic instinct. In finding a new use for old materials, Dorman has also resuscitated an obsolete definition of the word “map”: “to bewilder.”
For Dorman, losing oneself and finding oneself aren’t such contrary propositions. “Most of the time I have no idea where a piece is going to go or what it’s going to end up as,” he said in a conversation during the opening weekend of his first museum show. As deliberate in his speech as he is spontaneous on the page, he added: “I don’t trust the idea of forcing something. I want to find ideas organically. I find an entry point, like an edge of a landscape element, and just add things and sometimes subtract things. It’s like an adventure, discovering stuff in the process.”
Dorman’s works are all journey, no destination -- or perhaps multiple destinations. He toys with place names on maps, adding or blocking out letters to spell puns or playful descriptions. From old books, he cuts out diagrams of machine parts, botanical specimens and microorganisms, charts of celestial schema and ancient languages, weaving them together into a fluid, fictive realm. Forms give way to other forms with free-associative ease. Planes tilt and warp; scale and perspective shift radically. Epic themes infiltrate raw sensation. The antiquated and schematic merge with the new and immediate.
With his boyish face and earnest, old soul, the New York-based Dorman, 42, is of a piece with his work. He gravitated toward outdated printed matter nearly 10 years ago, when he was painting what he calls “invented landscapes” and feeling trapped by the medium -- “Something about covering the entire surface, and though I didn’t think about it consciously, the weight of the history of oil paint.” Finding a stash of old ledger papers inspired him to pick up ink and draw again. “The yellowed, weathered quality of the paper really opened up something. It took me back, almost to childhood, the freedom of being able to include everything and anything. It opened up the space. I didn’t need horizon lines. I could have figures and creatures and landscape.”
The L.A. show picks up where the ledger drawings left off, when Dorman started incorporating topographical maps into his work. He had used such maps as a boy at camp and was drawn to the beauty of their veiny, sepia lines, but it took some time before he felt brave enough to treat them as raw material for his art, first using single maps as a base for drawing and painting, and then cutting them up and collaging them.
He usually has four or five works in progress at a time, small “poems” he draws and collages fairly quickly and large, multipanel spectacles like the nearly 8-foot-tall “Tower of Babel.” He “messes with” the panel pieces while riding the subway and during his day job teaching art to middle and high school students at a private school in Manhattan. He had a panel of “Babel” with him at the hospital when his 7-month-old twin daughters were born. One of the infant’s footprints graces the painting’s moody sapphire sky. Mostly, though, he works lying on the floor, a posture common to children when they draw. “I literally lie on top of [the works]. And sometimes I nap on them, which I think is somehow like getting my dreams in there,” he says, laughing.
It’s a practical method as well, since Dorman needs to be close to the surface to work on dense networks of detail. This intimate dialogue with surface, ink and paint is, in part, what attracted Maryna Hrushetska, director of the Craft and Folk Art Museum, to organize the show: “His love of materials, his commitment to working by hand, his love of storytelling. It may sound a little outdated in the 21st century, but the work is made with a lot of love and meaning. There’s an honesty to his work that’s very touching.”
In 2005, Dorman’s work caught the attention of the founder of Memory Bridge, dedicated to reasserting the individuality and humanity of those with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. He was flown to Chicago, where he listened, sketched and took notes while foundation staff interviewed patients of a rehabilitation center. The organization produced a documentary, “There Is a Bridge,” which continues to air on PBS stations. Dorman created interpretations of each subject, map-based portraits of his or her interior world, which turned out to have a lot in common with the cosmos in his work. Several Memory Bridge commissions are in the show.
The CAFAM invitation was both an honor and a surprise, considering that he is well-schooled and widely shown in commercial galleries. (The George Billis Gallery, in Culver City, opens its third show of Dorman’s work on Oct. 7.)
“I’m flattered to feel that my work can be viewed as ‘folk art,’ as some sort of natural product,” he wrote in a recent e-mail. The contrivances, slickness and irony of much contemporary art puts him out of sync with the current moment, though he feels some kinship with James Siena and Daniel Zeller, whose meticulous line drawings, he surmises, have something to do with asserting control of a small, self-contained world when “we’ve lost control and we’ve lost having our say in the greater world.”
The timeless theme of hubris threads through Dorman’s work and, as with “Tower of Babel,” he frequently reaches back to biblical metaphors to address recent cataclysms.
Art of the past consistently nourishes him: the unpretentious, inventive watercolors of Paul Klee; the precisely rendered parables of Bosch and Bruegel; as well as the murkier, ambiguous atmospherics of J.M.W. Turner, Odilon Redon and Albert Pinkham Ryder.
Lately he’s been reading Italo Calvino and marveling at the connection with his own sensibility. “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” Calvino’s 1979 novel, “feels exactly like my work to me. A million stories in one. They might not be complete, but you sense that there are overlaps and connections. You know it’s going to leave you hanging a bunch of times, but it’s really satisfying.”
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“Within Four Miles: The World of Josh Dorman,” Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 937-4230, through Jan. 11, 2009. Dorman will talk at 3 p.m. Oct. 12.
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082966147b3d1b3fc3f2412d1349c9a6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-et-notebook30-story.html | Obama pledges Greek | Obama pledges Greek
In 1960, after John F. Kennedy decided to move his convention acceptance speech from the brand-new Sports Arena to the larger Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum next door, he addressed a crowd of 80,000 from a stage that seen through 21st century eyes looks innocent and modest, if not clumsy. On the front of the lectern, just beneath the microphones, was a simple sign, its capital letters as skinny as Kennedy’s tie, reading “Democratic National Convention.” Below that, a large painted eagle spread its wings.
American political stagecraft is more cunning and aggressive these days. During the last eight years, George W. Bush and his top set dresser, the former ABC producer Scott Sforza, teamed up to produce a number of multimedia backdrops mixing Orwellian message control with enough bunting to fill Omaha.
But even the most dedicated member of the Bush White House would have to admit the boldness -- the weird, allusive, surprising boldness -- of the set built for Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night inside Denver’s Invesco Field. Not content with a basic combination of video screens and slogans, Obama’s campaign produced a full-on neoclassical temple facade: four imposing Doric columns and 10 sizable pilasters, all connected by a frieze and arranged in a gently curving arc. From the center of this colonnaded contraption extended a long peninsular walkway, lined with blue carpeting and capped by a circular stage and wedding-cake steps. Like a nervous parent dropping a child off at school, the set seemed to protect Obama and push him forward at the same time.
John McCain’s advisors were quick to ridicule the setup as overblown, reflective of Obama’s generous self-regard. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who got an up-close look, noted that “the columns turned out to be made of drywall and laminated plywood.”
Still, however oddly Athenian the whole thing seemed at first glance on television, the set did manage to distract viewers’ attention from the gigantic scale of the stadium. The Obama campaign made the decision to move the acceptance speech from the indoor Pepsi Center to the 76,000-seat Invesco Field months ago. That was well before Obama’s European tour left him vulnerable to charges that he is a rock-star candidate who loves to soak up cheers from adoring crowds.
If his advisors felt they couldn’t move the speech out of the stadium, however, they apparently realized they could at least make the stadium look less like itself. The set managed to bring this 2001 structure -- designed by the Kansas City firm HNTB Architects in a sleek, ornament-free style -- down to size.
Classicism offers an almost bottomless pool of symbolism, and the campaign dipped into it with a number of goals. For an American viewer, a row of columns can suggest stability or even martial strength, which may have appealed to counselors eager to use Thursday’s speech to take on charges that their candidate is soft on national security. Such columns can also suggest populism and public participation -- the highest-minded ideals of democratic government.
Obama clearly wanted to forge a link to the 1960 Kennedy appearance, which conveniently enough took place inside a neoclassical stadium. Even more obvious was the way the four big columns -- two on either side of the stage, framing a pair of video screens -- and the frieze suggested the imposing facade of Henry Bacon’s Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech 45 years to the day before Obama’s address.
Nearly as impossible to miss were the set’s visual connections to the White House. The false windows in the center were clearly meant to suggest those at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They were warmly illuminated, suggesting that a family was at home -- Obama’s. When his wife and daughters emerged to greet the candidate at the end of his address, they came out from behind those windows. On the whole, the set tried to do what the White House itself does better than most architectural symbols: strike a balance between grand, imposing touches and approachable, domestic scale.
The set also offered fainter allusions, including some to Soldier Field, not far from where the Obama family lives on the south side of Chicago. Completed in 1928 -- six years after the Lincoln Memorial -- the stadium was designed by the Chicago firm Holabird & Root in a full-throated, somewhat militaristic neoclassical style. It was updated rather controversially in 2003, with architects Ben Wood and Carlos Zapata dropping a modern, steel-and-glass seating bowl inside.
Obama’s strategists essentially did the reverse, inserting a neoclassical backdrop into a steel-and-glass stadium. That meant they were moving against the grain of history, a fact that produced the most jarring meeting of the night between visuals and rhetoric. When Obama, near the end of his speech, declared, “America, we cannot turn back” and then repeated the line for emphasis, I found myself thinking about those columns and their echoes of the deep architectural past -- about how they were employed primarily to suggest time rolling backward all the way to the Greeks. Somehow, for Obama, a candidate whose campaign is sleek and modern in the same way Kennedy’s was -- whose appeal is based in large part on his youthful energy and the freshness of his image -- sleek and modern architectural symbolism simply will not do. His charisma needs some balancing heft, and in Denver his campaign found it in the solidity of classical architecture.
The set thus seemed a preview of the way his campaign will proceed. He seems unlikely to jettison the change mantra altogether: It has been too effective. But if the Denver stage design was any indication, once the summer is officially over he may start using the language -- and the symbolism -- of tradition and reassurance a good deal more than we’ve seen so far.
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christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com
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dc34efa0da72d587733f6a254e1e1f04 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-me-death30-story.html | Death penalty upheld in O.C. hate killing | Death penalty upheld in O.C. hate killing
The California Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for a self-proclaimed white supremacist from Orange County who was the first person in the state condemned to die for a racially motivated murder.
Gunner Lindberg, 33, was convicted in the 1996 slaying of Thien Minh Ly, 24, who was stabbed more than 50 times and had his throat slashed.
Lindberg was convicted in Orange County Superior Court of first-degree murder with a special circumstance that the crime was based on the victim’s race.
Lindberg’s attorney sought to have the special circumstance overturned on appeal because of lack of evidence.
But the state high court ruled Thursday that “the evidence overwhelmingly showed that the defendant was a racist who regarded nonwhites as subhuman and who, by his own admission, callously murdered victim Ly for the ‘racial movement.’ ”
Ly was in-line skating on a tennis court at Tustin High School when he was attacked by Lindberg and an accomplice.
In an obscenity-laced letter to a cousin full of misspellings and grammatical errors, Lindberg nonchalantly wrote, using an epithet: “Oh, I killed a . . . a while ago.”
“I stabbed him in the side about 7 or 8 times he rolled over a little so I stabbed his back about 18 or 19 times then he layed flat and I slit one side of his throught on his jugular vain,” Lindberg wrote. “Oh, the sounds the guy was making were like uhhh . . .”
Authorities also found racist materials, including anti-Semitic paraphernalia, in Lindberg’s Tustin apartment.
During his trial, prosecutors said, Lindberg wore the same Dallas Cowboys jersey to court that he wore the day he killed Ly.
Ly was a graduate of UCLA and Georgetown University whose goal was to become U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.
During the trial, his family described him as the “backbone and pillar” of the family and said they had visited the high school tennis court to try to imagine what Ly’s final moment must have been like.
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mike.anton@latimes.com
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c80d6dfda3d97818578f06a8d0ae3b4c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-me-legis30-story.html | GOP fails to block plan to upgrade courthouses | GOP fails to block plan to upgrade courthouses
Assembly Republicans, criticizing the state’s top judge for rulings on same-sex marriage and parole for murderers, tried Friday to block a $5-billion plan to upgrade California courthouses.
The move failed as Democrats, who hold a majority, passed the measure 43 to 16, without any Republican votes.
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange), who abstained, cited state Chief Justice Ronald M. George’s May opinion sanctioning same-sex marriage and another this month curbing the state’s power to deny parole to murderers. Spitzer described George, a fellow Republican, as an “activist” judge.
“I think those two opinions written by Justice George really soured people on the court issue,” Spitzer said, “even though intellectually we all understand that the funding of the courts really has nothing to do with Justice George’s writing of a particular legal opinion.”
The bill was one of dozens approved by legislators Friday on topics including public financing of political campaigns and electronic bingo.
Lawmakers, whose work has been overshadowed by their failure to approve a budget two months past the deadline, plan to work over the weekend so they can finish voting on bills before their session ends at midnight Sunday.
The courthouse measure, SB 1407 by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland), would pay for renovations and construction of court facilities by borrowing $5 billion. The money would be repaid with revenue generated by raising court filing fees and penalties for criminal and traffic offenses.
“I find it ironic that the same people who say the courts should not legislate from the bench attempted to hold the judicial system hostage through the legislative process,” Perata said.
The Senate passed a similar version of the bill in May with Republican support, shortly after the state’s high court ruled 4 to 3, in an opinion written by George, that people of the same sex have a constitutional right to marry. The legislation, as amended by the Assembly, returns now to the Senate for final approval.
Philip Carrizosa, a spokesman for the court, said George would not comment.
Assemblyman Mike Villines (R-Clovis), the lower house’s minority leader, said some of his members were concerned not by the rulings but by the idea of higher fees and borrowing money, which would put “an undue burden on hard-working people.”
Other action Friday:
* The Senate voted 25 to 13 to allow Los Angeles County to put a half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax increase on the Nov. 4 ballot to fund transit and highway projects. The Assembly had approved the bill, AB 2321 by Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), and is expected to sign off on minor amendments before sending it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is unclear when bills might be sent to him, because he has said he will veto legislation until a budget is passed.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board voted in July to seek the sales tax hike from 8.25 to 8.75 cents on the dollar. The increase could raise up to $40 billion over 30 years, according to MTA officials.
* Making a foray into public campaign financing, the Senate approved a “fair elections” bill that would -- with voter approval -- give state funding to candidates for secretary of state in 2014 if they agree not to accept donations greater than $5 per person from the public. Voters would have to approve the pilot program in 2010. Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said the measure was a response to the role of special interests in campaigns.
“We talk a lot about campaign finance reform and try to come up with a system that is fair,” Steinberg said. “This is a very modest proposal to try a different way.”
Sen. Jim Battin (R-La Quinta), who voted against the proposal, complained that money for the candidates would come from a $350 annual fee on lobbyists, lobbying firms and their employers.
“They don’t think it’s fair that you are going to put a tax on them, because they have nothing to do with the secretary of state,” Battin said.
The bill, AB 583 by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), was approved 21 to 18 and will go to the governor if the Assembly agrees to minor changes made by the Senate.
* In a decision that favored one of Sacramento’s most influential interest groups, the Senate voted 24 to 9 to outlaw electronic bingo machines that compete with slot machines owned by Indian tribes, which contribute heavily to lawmakers’ campaigns. Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), the author of SB 1369, likened the bingo machines to slots, which in California may be operated only by tribes.
“We must honor agreements we have entered into,” Cedillo said. Opponents objected that the bill would hurt small charities that make money from electronic bingo machines.
* The Assembly defeated a measure that would have made it easier for consumers to comparison-shop for health insurance plans. It would have banned plans that cover only hospitalization.
“Most people don’t realize how much care they need may come outside of a hospital,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Health Access California, which supported the bill.
Insurance companies and health maintenance organizations opposed the bill, SB 1522 by Steinberg. It failed 36 to 35.
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nancy.vogel@latimes.com
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com
Times staff writer Michael Rothfeld contributed to this report.
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0d4c4b7ea088db0e21034e04408b3bd8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-na-mccainveepbio30-story.html | She’s no good ol’ boy | She’s no good ol’ boy
The country, most of it anyway, got its first glimpse Friday of Sarah Heath Palin, John McCain’s selection as his running mate, and the reaction was nearly universal:
Who?
Palin is breathtakingly unlike any other vice presidential pick in American history -- a gun-toting, mooseburger-eating former Miss Wasilla, an Alaska governor whose parents nearly missed her national unveiling because they were out hunting caribou.
The first woman to grace a Republican ticket stepped onto the stage with McCain in Dayton, Ohio, surrounded by her husband and four of their five children, including a baby born in April. The tableau of everyday mom-ness, however, may have masked the ambition and grit that have marked Palin’s meteoric rise in Alaska.
Two years ago, she knocked off the sitting Republican governor in the primary and a former Democratic governor in the general. Her relations with Alaska officialdom have not always been sunny, resuscitating a nickname given when, as a high schooler, she led her basketball team to the state championship: “Sarah Barracuda.”
By her own telling, Palin’s political rise has been improbable.
Born in Idaho, she moved as a baby to Alaska with her science teacher father and school secretary mother, part-time trappers who seemed to personify the quirky Alaska spirit. (Her father, Chuck, to a Vogue magazine reporter recently angling for an interview: “Come on over, unless you have a problem with small dead animals.” The magazine reported that a thousand caribou antlers were piled near the driveway of their home.)
Palin was baptized as a Catholic but later began attending the Wasilla Assembly of God church. At age 12 she, her mother and sisters were re-baptized in nearby Beaver Lake. The former pastor of her new church would give the invocation at her inauguration.
As a child, sports gave a structure to her ambition, she told the Anchorage Daily News shortly before her election as governor.
“I know this sounds hokey, but basketball was a life-changing experience for me,” she said. “It’s all about setting a goal, about discipline, teamwork and then success.”
Palin led her school basketball team to the state championship in 1982 and was a runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest two years later. (She reported with some consternation that the judges were too interested in the contestants’ derrieres.) In 1988, she and her high school boyfriend, Todd Palin, eloped and began raising a family.
Throughout, her pursuits appeared to be typically Alaskan: She spent a summer working at the Alyeska Seafoods processing plant in Dutch Harbor, America’s largest seafood port.
“She used to work for me,” said Frank Kelty, who at the time was the plant manager. “She took butchered crab portions and arranged them in a basket for cooking.”
She enjoyed hunting, she told Vogue, and felt no qualms about shooting caribou.
“That caribou has had a good life. It’s been free out there on the tundra, not caged up on a farm with no place to go,” she said.
While her husband fished and worked in the oil fields, she moved quickly from the PTA to the Wasilla City Council, in 1992. Four years later, she bumped off a three-term incumbent to become mayor of the town, near Anchorage.
During her tenure, the flashes of the future governor arose: not terribly communicative, running a little roughshod.
“Some of the things I’m doing, it’s obvious I’m not running for Miss Congeniality,” she said, citing a title she had won in the Miss Alaska contest. “I’m running the city.”
It was not until her term-limited departure from that job that she burnished her reformist credentials, much cited by the McCain campaign Friday.
After being appointed to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she filed an ethics complaint against a fellow panelist, who happened to be the state Republican Party chairman. That presaged her 2006 gubernatorial race, when she defeated Republican incumbent Frank Murkowski and another candidate in the primary, and former Democratic governor Tony Knowles in November.
As governor, she has struck populist positions. She laid off the chef in the governor’s mansion -- no need for that, she said -- and often drives herself around town.
“She’s got perfect political pitch,” said Jake Metcalf, former chairman of the state Democratic Party. “She’s just been able to get in with issues and get press on it, and she knows sort of what the public wants to hear and has been able to place her positions around those sort of issues that are important to people here, the values that are important to people here.
“I don’t think you can underestimate her as a politician,” he said.
Two years after taking office, Palin remains enormously popular, in large part because many of the state’s other politicians have been embroiled in ethics scandals.
“The people of Alaska, many of them got tired of the ego issues out there with longer-term federal and state officials and said enough is enough,” said John Harris, the Republican speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives.
But he added that Palin has proved to be, as she was in Wasilla, “not a great communicator.” She has alienated enough Republicans that “without a very large contingent of Democrats supporting her positions, she can’t get anything accomplished,” Harris said.
Palin is also embroiled in an ongoing investigation over the firing of the state public safety commissioner, who said he was pressured by Palin’s husband and her staff to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law. The former brother-in-law, a state trooper, has been involved in a messy divorce and child custody dispute with the governor’s sister.
McCain campaign surrogates were spreading the word Friday that Palin would appeal to women because of her ability to juggle five children and her political career.
Her bookends, the oldest and the youngest, have made this a bittersweet season for Palin.
Her oldest, Track, joined the Army last Sept. 11 and will depart for Iraq shortly. Her youngest, Trig, was born this spring with Down syndrome, a condition his parents were aware of before his birth.
“Many people will express sympathy, but you don’t want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You have to trust me on this,” the Anchorage Daily News said she wrote in an e-mail to relatives and friends, in the voice of “Trig’s Creator, your Heavenly Father.”
Palin’s evangelical faith shapes her social views; she opposes abortion and believes creationism should be taught in public schools.
The vice presidential selection came as a surprise not only to the political establishment but to Palin’s family. A CBS News producer said Chuck and Sally Heath were called Friday morning by Palin’s husband and told to “listen to the radio.”
This spring, when the governor’s name surfaced as a potential running mate, Palin told the Anchorage paper that her advantage was that she happened to “fit a demographic” in the Republican Party.
“That’s the reality,” she said. “It’s gender, it’s age, it’s kind of the maverick being from the outside.”
On Friday she was as far on the inside as she could get.
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cathleen.decker@latimes.com
michael.finnegan@latimes.com
Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Kim Murphy and Maura Reynolds contributed to this article.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
A timeline of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s life and career
1964: Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, to Sally Heath, a secretary, and Charles Heath, a teacher. A few months later, the family moves to Alaska.
1982: Graduates from Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska. A star point guard, she earns the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” and leads the Wasilla girls’ basketball team to the state championship.
1984: Wins the Miss Wasilla beauty contest (where she is also named Miss Congeniality). Later that year she is a runner-up in the Miss Alaska competition.
1987: Graduates with a bachelor’s degree in journalism (with a minor in political science) from the University of Idaho.
1988: Marries Todd Palin, her high school sweetheart. They go on to have five children, Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig.
1992: Is elected to the Wasilla City Council, where she serves two terms.
1996: Elected mayor of Wasilla; serves two terms.
2002: Loses her first statewide campaign, for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second in a five-way race. Named chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission by then-Gov. Frank Murkowski.
2003: Resigns from the commission in protest over what she calls the “lack of ethics” of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, including Randy Ruedrich, the head of Alaska’s Republican Party.
2006: Elected governor, after defeating Murkowski in the GOP primary, becoming the state’s youngest and first female chief executive.
2007: Successfully pressures lawmakers to pass the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act to build a pipeline to deliver to market natural gas from the North Slope, which has 35 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves.
Aug. 29, 2008: Chosen as Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
Sources: Associated Press and Times reporting
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8cc150cec23c950c52e2b4679bba1df2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-na-mccainveepenviro30-story.html | Gov. Palin has favored drilling over environment | Gov. Palin has favored drilling over environment
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may have swept into office as an independent thinker willing to challenge the establishment, but she has fallen in line with other Alaska politicians when it comes to environmental policies, according to interviews and a review of her record.
Palin, who was chosen Friday as presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate, favored increased oil and gas drilling in sensitive lands and waterways, opposed federal action to list the polar bear as a species threatened with extinction and supports a controversial program to allow aerial shooting of wolves and bears as a means of predator control.
Alaskan natural resources have long served as a larder for the Lower 48. The state’s vast gold deposits sparked a 19th century rush akin to California’s, and when the trans-Alaska pipeline was completed in 1977 it supplied 20% of the country’s oil. Alaskan waters today support a powerhouse fishing industry.
In her two years in office, Palin has given every indication that she intends to continue stocking the larder. She favors the construction of one of the world’s largest mining complexes at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. Palin opposes greater protections for beluga whales found in the Cook Inlet, where oil and gas drilling and other development is proposed. And unlike her running mate, Palin favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a recurring issue of debate during the Bush administration.
“She’s continued the extractive political ideology that has defined Alaska for decades,” said Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska marine biologist.
Palin also has provided glimpses of an independent streak. Last year she tinkered with the state Petroleum Profits Tax, an oil tax structure that Palin said contained loopholes that allowed oil and gas companies to avoid paying a fair share to the state. The Alaska Oil and Gas Assn. criticized the plan, which it says equates to a $700-million tax hike on the oil industry.
Palin eventually said no to the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” the $398-million Gravina Island Bridge project that was highlighted as quintessential pork-barrel spending of federal tax money. She also jump-started a natural gas pipeline project that many of her predecessors had failed to get off the ground. The pipeline would deliver “stranded gas” that is a byproduct of crude oil pumping on Alaska’s North Slope to Alberta, Canada. To get the deal done, Palin put up $500 million in state money to help a company, TransCanada, research the potential for the 1,700-mile pipeline, which could cost as much as $30 billion.
Described as the holy grail of Alaskan politics, the pipeline was a political coup for Palin.
She has stood up to the federal government, a politically popular posture in Alaska. In May, the state gave notice that it would sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prevent the inclusion of the polar bear on the endangered species list as “threatened” as a consequence of shrinking Arctic ice caused by global warming.
Such a listing could be used to block drilling in the Arctic, which Palin supports.
Palin told federal officials that the state did a “comprehensive review” of the science and found no reason to support a listing. But an internal e-mail message from the head of the state Department of Fish and Game’s marine mammals program and two other staff biologists agreed with the Department of Interior’s conclusions that the science justified the listing. Palin did not publicly release the state’s report.
“The governor’s decision was clearly based on politics, not on science, and was primarily designed to protect the oil and gas industry stampede into the Arctic Ocean,” said Steiner, the University of Alaska marine biologist.
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julie.cart@latimes.com
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b1de173ad5d97bb2d33b7b68e7e7493f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-30-oe-kirwan30-story.html | Tackling fantasy leagues | Tackling fantasy leagues
This weekend, Terrapins, Trojans, Mustangs and more take to the gridiron, kicking off the college football season. This week also marks the start of a new era in college football, one in which fantasy leagues run by commercial entities exploit college players as their virtual game pieces.
These online fantasy leagues, which use the real names and statistics of collegiate athletes, raise a crucial question for higher education leaders: Is it amateurism in college sports that has become a fantasy?
The National Collegiate Athletic Assn. -- the organization of colleges, universities and conferences that governs sports programs -- has long upheld the principle of amateurism. NCAA bylaws establish that students participating in college sports “should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.” Clearly, these fantasy contests violate that tenet.
To fulfill its fundamental purpose of retaining a “clear line of demarcation between college athletics and professional sports,” the NCAA and its member universities need to combat these infringements on athletes’ rights and the principles of amateur sports.
Fantasy games allow fans to draft a personal “dream team” of players that earns points based on the real performances of chosen players. There are many such start-up games online, but CBS Sports’ is the most prominent. That raises particularly thorny questions for the NCAA and its member institutions because the network essentially funds the NCAA through a broadcast contract worth half a billion dollars a year.
Although CBS Sports’ Fantasy College Football is free, other companies charge entry fees of up to $19.95 a team and offer cash prizes of up to $25,000 for winning teams. One company goes so far as to assign salaries to top-rated college players because its game requires each team to stay under a pay cap.
The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, on which we serve as co-chairmen, is opposed to the use of players’ names and statistics in these games and has urged the NCAA board of directors to explore possible remedies, either legal or contractual.
Since it was founded in 1989, the commission, which consists of university presidents and trustees and former college athletes, has advocated policies that protect college athletes from commercial exploitation. We believe that the creation of college sports fantasy leagues, if unchecked, is a step toward undermining the NCAA’s bedrock amateurism principles, which require colleges and their business partners to treat athletes like other students and not as commodities whose names, likenesses and/or images can be sold or licensed.
NCAA rules allow the names and images of athletes to be used only to promote their teams and their games. In fact, neither the NCAA nor the universities acquire any other publicity rights to athletes; they simply cannot license the use of their names or images -- not to fantasy leagues, not to video game companies, not to sportswear companies.
However, CBS Sports and other fantasy league operators believe that they have found a loophole. A recent court ruling found that Major League Baseball players’ names and stats are not owned by the individual players or the leagues, but instead are in the public domain. This ruling was made by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving Major League Baseball Advanced Media and a fantasy league operator. The court decision describes these professional players as being “handsomely” compensated and able to earn “additional large sums” through endorsement contracts.
Legal scholars disagree about whether this ruling applies to amateur athletes who are not compensated for their participation and cannot earn money from endorsements.
We believe that the NCAA, universities and college athletes should take firm positions that this ruling does not apply to amateur sports -- and that all those groups should contact fantasy game operators to formally demand they stop using students’ names in these games. Unless the courts clearly decide that amateur athletes’ names can be used without consent and for purely commercial purposes, the NCAA and universities have the responsibility to stand up for their athletes and the amateurism principles that should guide college sports.
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d433d5543e7973dd2f320160be932d3f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-31-ca-conversation31-story.html | Resolving some issues | Resolving some issues
Mark-PAUL GOSSELAAR stars in TNT’s “Raising the Bar,” the new Steven Bochco legal drama that debuts Monday. He previously worked for Bochco on “NYPD Blue.” In the intervening years, he was on the adorable yet canceled “Commander in Chief” and “John From Cincinnati.” He was also the star of “Saved by the Bell.”
When did you very first meet Steven Bochco?
2001, for his project about -- I believe it was a public defender. Kim Delaney played a public defender, a show called “Philly.” I went in to meet Steven for that role, and I didn’t get it, but I got something better: “NYPD Blue.” And he had absolutely no idea what my past was, that I was a child star. He was looking to replace Rick Schroder, who was a child star, and he replaced him with another child star and I was like, what are you doing?
There’s sort of a mythology about him.
Maybe it’s the white hair. I love having discussions with him, completely off-base, just about life in general, when we’re not working.
But you don’t go off-road racing together?
There was a period there where I had to ride a motorcycle when I was doing “NYPD Blue,” and I had to take the 405 to Century City, that was the only freeway I could take, any other would take me in the opposite direction. Every day I was on the 405 south or 405 north. Steven saw me one day -- he doesn’t come by the set that much, he stays away and allows us to do our work -- and he saw me at a stoplight. I pull up next to this Mercedes and I looked at him and he looked at me and I thought, “Holy . . . that’s my boss.” . . . . Next day I get a call: Steven wants to see me in the office. . . . He started off by saying, “I was once like you! I used to ride motorcycles and do all that stuff.” But he was like, “I don’t want you doing that . . . . I need you alive, so we can finish these episodes.”
Were you acting out over being on “Saved by the Bell”?
No! Actually I started riding motorcycles when I was 3 and racing when I was 5.
I wonder what would have happened to a cast like the “Saved by the Bell” gang in our modern tabloid era.
That question was asked to me by [Bill] O’Reilly. . . . I was like, no, we don’t have the mediums that the kids nowadays do. We didn’t have paparazzi. Was I in a club at 16, smoking cigarettes, taking a drink from people? Yeah I was! I did the thing that normal kids do. Did I go to house parties and do keg stands and beer bongs? That’s what kids do! I didn’t live in a bubble, but I was a normal kid. Nowadays these kids are trying to have an ounce of normalcy and they have a camera in their face. . . . Should be interesting what one of my cast-mates writes in his book. You heard about that?
No?
Dustin [“Screech”] Diamond is writing a book. Just Google that. He’s going to tell all the dirty laundry that was in “Saved by the Bell.” I can’t wait!
So now there’s another TV show about lawyers. Why lawyers? Have you met lawyers? They’re not that interesting!
The thing that makes this show stand apart is we’re showing it from the other side of the system, from people in the system every day, with their clients who are bearers of the destructive criminal justice system. . . . We’re allowing the audience to, for themselves, say what’s good and what’s evil.
What are you going to do this weekend?
My wife and I are celebrating our 12th wedding anniversary. We are going to do press for the show in Chicago.
Romantic!
We’re gonna make it into an anniversary dinner and go from there. Our weekends are pretty quiet with two kids. We try to get a baby-sitter for one of the nights and go to a nice restaurant. We’re in that phase of our lives -- the kids are that age where we’re taking vacations together now. We just came back last week -- we were gone two weeks -- and I said to my wife, “It sure would be nice to go vacation.”
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44ee164badf7fbfca62ec4e7266745f5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-31-ca-nin31-story.html | A long road back to being Trent Reznor | A long road back to being Trent Reznor
Showtime was still a few hours away, and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was sitting in a hushed, candlelit room backstage at the Air Canada Centre trying to find his scream. Nails’ music sounds like a massive nightmare machine, but, on this day, Reznor woke up with his voice small and croaky. As a humidifier gently chugged away in the corner, the rock star smiled faintly and asked, “How old am I again?”
The answer is 43, but Reznor, who clawed through some dark years of drug addiction, is a picture of vitality these days with his brawny shoulders and clear-eyed confidence. He is also serious and candid. Asked about the time when the backstage scene at a Nails show would have been less seance and more human sacrifice, Reznor squinted down at his palms like a farsighted fortune- teller.
“I got so bad that I couldn’t even write down songs that were caught in my head,” he said. “And then I would feel depressed, so I would go and get more messed up. I finally pulled out of it. Then it was great to discover that I hadn’t killed myself and my liver still worked and eventually my brain started functioning again, and then [I] was enjoying the process again.”
That process is, in simple terms, caging up the songs that swim through his stormy and considerable imagination. Reznor, whose band will play a sold-out show at the Forum on Saturday, is one of the acclaimed creative figures of his generation in rock, a showman who occupies a territory somewhere between the digital throb of the dance club and the thunderous amps of arena rock. There’s always been a melding, too, of the tribal and the technological in his work, and that has been the most fascinating subplot of Reznor’s career here in 2008.
The first week in May, Reznor typed the words, “This one’s on me,” and posted the message on his website, NIN.com, along with an entire new album’s worth of raw, twitchy music titled “The Slip.” There was no advance notice given, no advertising or anything that remotely resembled a conventional record-label approach. More than 1 million fans downloaded “The Slip” by the end of the month.
It was the second Nine Inch Nails release in two months. Reznor posted the 36-track “Ghosts I-IV,” an unsettling instrumental collection, in similar fashion earlier in the year.
Nine Inch Nails -- which is the name Reznor records under; it’s more of a brand-name for him than a traditional band -- finished off a contractual commitment to Interscope Records last year, and Reznor walked away and found the fear of a truly liberated man.
“There was a moment of rejoicing, but at the same time it was also quickly followed by panic, because there is nothing real clear or right to do today,” Reznor said. “I mean, it’s obvious what record labels are doing is wrong, but it’s not entirely clear what the right thing is to do.”
Reznor’s “right thing” appears to be relentless work. He doesn’t just follow his muse, he chases it and wrestles it to the ground. In addition to those two albums released this year, he has been meeting with HBO to pitch his idea of writing a two-year series called “Year Zero,” which would be based on the intricate science-fiction tale that he created for a 2007 album of the same title. It also came alive for fans as an alternate-reality game on the Internet.
If the television show moves forward as Reznor expects, he will add new chapters to “Year Zero” through another album, another game and a concert tour.
Reznor was giddy talking about this 21st century creative life that allows him to be a rock star but also weave tales that can be watched on screens, pursued through the Internet and performed on stage: “That’s my grand ambition. Will it happen? I don’t know. But it’s the most exciting thing on the horizon when I wake up in the mornings. I mean, think about it; being able to integrate different forms of media to tell a story with music.”
Just then his cellphone went mad with lights and vibrations. “Ugh. Sorry, the whole world is calling me.” He turned the phone off without looking at the name of the caller. “It can wait. Sometimes you just have to take a breath.”
He smirked, and for a moment the only sound was the humidifier gurgling away. “OK, what were we talking about?”
Computer geek
Michael TRENT Reznor was born in leafy central Pennsylvania in a little town called Mercer. His dad had the same first name, so the son went by his middle name. The youngster loved music and computers and, in the early 1980s, he was part of a generation that began to truly meld the two for its own pop-culture pursuits.
“I’ve always been into computers,” said Reznor, whose latest album began on a laptop. “When I was getting out of high school and forming my identity musically, all of it was really coming into the fold, computers and drum machines. It felt like, you know, I’m in the right place at the right time. I liked the collision.”
Reznor found his way to Cleveland, where he worked as an assistant engineer and the janitor at Right Track, a recording studio. He’d heard how Prince, the R&B; and funk superstar, created entire soundscapes on his own by playing each instrument and layering them over one another in the studio. He set out to do the same -- the result was 1989’s “Pretty Hate Machine,” written, arranged and performed by Reznor.
The music was harrowing human emotion within the pulse and crash of an industrial soundscape. It wasn’t man versus machine, it was man vis-a-vis machine, as disturbing at times as living tissue pinned down in an angry laboratory. Take the song “Down in It”: “So what does it matter now / I was swimming in the hate now I crawl on the ground / And everything I never liked about you / Is kinda seeping into me.”
During the tour for the 1994 album, “The Downward Spiral,” Reznor slipped into a destructive cycle of addiction. “I was ill-equipped for social situations and found that having a few drinks made it easier. Then I found out I liked cocaine too. And try living in New Orleans, where the bars don’t close. You come home in the morning and you always see some guy jogging. That’s the worst when you’re stumbling in and the sun is coming up. The sound of the birds in the morning. . . .”
It’s become a common error in articles about Reznor to report that he was a heroin user -- maybe it’s his lyrics about jabbing needles -- but he hasn’t asked for corrections. “That’s kind of a sad conversation to have; ‘I’m not a junkie, I’m a coke head’. . . . “
How far has Reznor come? At dinner in Toronto, the Los Angeles transplant -- he left Louisiana a few years back and now lives near Beverly Hills -- was joined by a surprise guest, his father, Michael Reznor, who had driven up from Pennsylvania. “This is my chance for one-on-one time with Trent, I have to share him with the rest of the family when he comes down and plays Cleveland and Philadelphia. I didn’t tell anybody I was coming up. His nephew is going to be mad. He just started playing the guitar.”
The elder Reznor got hung up at the Canadian border; a guard recognized the last name and, as a line of traffic started to form, the female officer asked questions about the celebrity in the family. The rock star looked pained as his father told the story, but he didn’t complain. He just ate his supper and smiled.
Financially secure
Reznor became rich and famous thanks to the traditional music industry and now has the ability to give his music away because of the money he makes from touring and from die-hard fans who will still buy CDs even after downloading the music. That’s made him a target of criticism from some newer artists who have the less fortunate timing of starting their careers after platinum albums have become truly rare.
Reznor has mixed feelings; he enjoys working outside the larger corporate system, but his pride hates to think of art discounted.
“As an artist, I don’t feel that it should be free; it’s my life’s work,” he said. “Record labels trained [fans] to mistrust them and feel ripped off by them, and now the technology exists that you can just take stuff. I understand why people feel it’s OK, and I say, ‘I can’t fight that fight.’ I look at the way the cards have been dealt and make the most of it. There is also another side of me that wants the world to hear the music, whether you’ve paid for it or not, I want you to hear it. And people are hearing it.”
“The Slip” debuted at No. 13 on the U.S. pop charts and the reviews have been good, although Reznor said he believes this quickly assembled album is more of a sketch than a painting. He anticipates he will spend many months putting together his next collection.
At the show in Toronto, Reznor’s performance was startling -- he can still tap into the anger and fear of the old songs even though he’s in a saner place in his own life. The stage production is impressive too, with digital effects and a cage-like curtain that descends from the rafters to make it seem as if Reznor is in a parallel, static-filled dimension, peering into the real world.
There’s also a quieter subset of the show, a sequence in which the mastermind of Nine Inch Nails peels away the industrial power tools and the computer hard drives to show the man inside the machine.
“Sometimes,” he explained earlier, “it’s just about the song and the singer.”
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geoff.boucher@latimes.com
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bd5ab0e18ad68db5d9a61c44cb34c6b7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-31-fg-iraq31-story.html | Iraq shakes up talks on U.S. troop pullout | Iraq shakes up talks on U.S. troop pullout
At the “make-or-break” stage of talks with the U.S. on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has swept aside his negotiating team and replaced it with three of his closest aides, a reshuffle that some Iraqi officials warn risks sabotaging the agreement.
The decision on the team negotiating the pact, which the Americans have described as the basis of a long-term strategic alliance between the United States and Iraq, remains so sensitive that it has not been announced. In disclosing the switch to the Los Angeles Times this weekend, a senior Iraqi official close to Maliki also suggested that the two sides remained deadlocked on key issues.
The shake-up comes just four months before the expiration of the United Nations mandate that authorizes the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the country recently, expectations rose that an agreement was imminent. But Iraq and the United States remain far apart on the matter of immunity for U.S. forces in Iraqi courts, the official said.
“People gave the impression we were close when Rice was here, but it’s not over. We would have a serious problem if we took it to the parliament right now,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue.
The official insisted that if U.S. troops remained exempt from Iraqi rule of law, the pact would never get passed by the lawmakers.
The sides also are still negotiating a withdrawal date, the official said.
The latest version of the agreement, which was read to The Times by the Maliki confidant, says all U.S. forces will leave Iraq by the end of 2011, unless Iraq requests otherwise. It also says the Americans will withdraw from cities in June 2009, unless the Iraqis ask them to stay.
The new wording is a departure from the White House’s insistence on a conditions-based timeline for a pullout. Under the new language, Iraq, not the U.S. military, decides when the troops will leave. U.S. officials have gone back to Washington to consult on the language, the Maliki confidant said.
Some Iraqi lawmakers have reacted angrily to the dismissal of the original negotiating team.
“These are diversionary tactics to avoid a decision. It’s not a question of negotiating teams. It’s a matter of, do you want it or don’t you?” said an Iraqi familiar with the talks. “They are avoiding the issue. They don’t want a status of forces agreement. They don’t want a security agreement.”
Maliki’s confidant defended the shake-up, saying the prime minister needs those closest to him to lead the talks because they have the authority to make decisions that the original team did not possess.
Iraqi and Western officials monitoring the talks have said Maliki is afraid of accepting terms that could brand him as an American puppet. Iran, which is fiercely opposed to an agreement, has also exerted intense pressure.
Shiite Muslim lawmakers have also said some members in the prime minister’s Islamic Dawa Party believe that Iraq can survive without the Americans if the White House doesn’t meet Maliki’s demands.
In the reshuffle last week, Maliki dismissed the delegation headed by the Foreign Ministry and picked his national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie; his chief of staff, Tariq Najim; and political advisor Sadiq Rikabi to conduct the negotiations’ final stage, the Maliki confidant said.
“The talks have reached a critical point now. They need a political decision, not a technical one,” the official said. “The discussions have reached the make-or-break stage.”
Rikabi, Rubaie and Najim report directly to the prime minister; Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Haj Hamoud, who led the original negotiations, has been removed, the official said. Western diplomats previously have criticized the prime minister for governing through his inner circle and shutting out other factions.
“Hamoud had to deal with too many people and then comes to a meeting with the prime minister,” the official said. “It was a big process.”
Iraq’s politics are often turbulent, with the country’s Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish politicians regularly plotting against one another. Until he took on the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia, in the southern city of Basra in March, Maliki was considered politically weak and had been accused by Sunni Arab and Kurdish officials of hoarding power and executing a sectarian agenda.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh declined to comment on the shake-up, saying the Iraqi government had the right to choose the negotiators that it wanted.
A State Department spokesman in Washington told reporters last week that the United States hoped to finish an agreement by December. The sides had aimed to complete it by July. The Iraqi official close to Maliki said Iraq could always request an extension from the U.N. if they did not reach a deal before the end of the year.
Some Western and Iraqi officials blame the Americans for sending a team in the spring that demanded more than 50 long-term bases, the ability to launch operations without permission from the Iraqi government and immunity for security contractors and U.S. troops. Their opening stance played into the hands of Shiite lawmakers in Maliki’s coalition, who want the Americans to leave, officials said.
Mithal Alusi, an independent Sunni lawmaker who has advised Maliki in the past, accused the prime minister of trying to wreck the talks.
“Why does he have to change the leaders of the negotiating team, and now? Why? We had reached the last part. Why does he have to change it?” Alusi asked. “He doesn’t want it.”
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ned.parker@latimes.com
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b4beb2fb67ad7d3dfc2d4764e57dc009 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-31-na-gopdelegation31-story.html | California delegates laud Palin | California delegates laud Palin
California Republicans are outnumbered. Their president is unpopular. But as they arrive here for the GOP national convention, John McCain has given them a jolt of excitement by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
“She is a hero for us,” said Mike Spence, head of the California Republican Assembly, whose members are among the most the state’s conservative voters. “She took on the Republican sellouts who just want to hold onto power.”
Spence, who initially backed Mitt Romney’s candidacy, figures he and McCain are in accord on maybe 80% of the issues.
But on Friday, Spence was in the hotel banquet room with the Council on National Policy, the influential group of religious and other conservatives, when Palin’s selection was announced. Like others there, he stood and applauded. “This energizes disaffected Republicans,” Spence said. “This is exactly the message of change that was needed.”
California’s Republican Party long has been split into conservative and moderate factions. Moderates tended to embrace McCain. Conservatives were critical. Whether the state’s most conservative Republicans would fall in line behind McCain had been in doubt. Not now, though, with Palin on his ticket.
Several delegates cited Palin’s decision to have a baby, 4-month-old Trig, knowing he had Down syndrome.
“We have a lot of pro-life rhetoric,” said delegate Tom Bordonaro, the San Luis Obispo County assessor. “She has been there and made the choice. She made the choice for life.”
Delegate Miryam Mora, 26, will be voting for the first time in November, having gained citizenship a few months ago. Mora grew up in El Monte, the daughter of migrant farm and garment workers, and was the first in her family to graduate from college.
She is taking leave from her job to volunteer full-time for McCain. When McCain selected Palin, Mora became more certain that she had made the right choice in supporting the Republican ticket. “I’m so amazed by her story,” she said, noting that Palin is a mother of five, was involved in the PTA and “took on her party” by running against Gov. Frank Murkowski.
Her decision to have Trig affected Mora too: “She was faced with a decision of having an abortion, and she decided she was going to be there for him. . . . It shows a lot about her character.”
As the Republican National Convention opens, many of the 343 California delegates and alternates originally backed candidates other than McCain.
But they said their objections to Democrat Barack Obama provided the glue that united them behind their soon-to-be nominee.
Former Gov. Pete Wilson, who started out supporting former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, headed into the convention confident.
“It is a combination of enthusiasm for John McCain and the prospect of an Obama administration that is, to say the least, sobering,” Wilson said. “It scares the hell out of people, rightly so.”
California delegates saw a potential gain, but also some risk, in McCain’s selection of Palin.
Wilson lauded the choice, saying that although Palin lacks foreign policy experience, “she is a very gutsy young woman willing to take on special interests . . . [and] corruption, even when it was in her own party.”
In 2003, after Palin was appointed to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she led an ethics investigation against a fellow panelist, the state Republican Party chairman, who later admitted to violations.
Some analysts contend that Palin’s inexperience could undermine the McCain contention that Obama lacks the experience to lead the nation. Democrats have wasted no time citing her limited world travels and tenure in office -- she took office in 2006, and Alaska’s population is less than one-fourth that of Orange County.
But California delegates who are Palin fans brushed that issue aside, saying that she has balanced state budgets and vetoed bills.
“If they want to put a spotlight on Sarah Palin’s experience, it will turn into a mirror for Obama,” said delegate Tim LeFever, chairman of the Christian conservative group Capitol Resource Institute in Sacramento.
“She wasn’t put on the ticket because she has 36 years of experience,” he said. “Maybe that’s why Barack Obama put Joe Biden on his ticket.”
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dan.morain@latimes.com
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c4138e2805bcf72f35f7d3dacbbc9048 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-01-fg-clinton1-story.html | Mideast weighs the Clinton prospect | Mideast weighs the Clinton prospect
Nearly a month after Barack Obama’s election, his reported decision to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of State is causing Arabs and Israelis to readjust expectations of his administration’s policies toward the Middle East.
During the campaign, Obama carried the hopes of many Arabs for a new brand of diplomacy more open to their views, one that would revive America’s power and prestige in the region and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israelis viewed Obama as a less reliable friend than John McCain, his Republican rival, or Clinton, who touted a deep affinity for the Jewish state in her bid for the Democratic nomination.
Cautiously, Israelis are now applauding Clinton’s all-but-certain nomination as a sign that Obama can be trusted to act firmly against Iran’s nuclear ambitions and to refrain from pressing Israel to accept a weak, violence-prone Palestinian state on its borders.
Arabs and especially Palestinians, on the other hand, say the news has damped their optimism that Obama will veer from the Bush administration’s hawkish policies and from what they call America’s long-standing pro-Israel tilt.
“I was frankly surprised by this choice,” said Manar Shorbagy, an expert on American foreign policy who teaches at the American University in Cairo. “Obama’s talking about bringing diplomacy back to a U.S. foreign policy that has been militarized under President Bush. Sen. Clinton has different ideas. She voted for the Iraq war and has supported many things Bush has done in his two terms.”
The Palestinian Authority, which is engaged in a U.S.-backed effort to negotiate peace with Israel, has refrained from such criticism. “The peace process is a bipartisan issue in American politics,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “We hope that Madame Clinton will continue the effort to achieve a two-state solution.”
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said there would be no official comment before Obama announces his choice, expected to come today at a news conference in Chicago.
Clinton is widely viewed in the region as a likely heir to President Clinton’s unfinished Middle East business: the all-out push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that eluded his administration. Those efforts were resumed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice only in the last two years.
But analysts on both sides say it’s unclear how much responsibility or leeway Obama would give Clinton to conduct Middle East policy. They note that other officials, including Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who has extensive foreign policy experience, and Gen. James L. Jones Jr., whom Obama is expected to name today as his choice for national security advisor, might also weigh heavily in decisions about the region after the administration takes office in January.
Because Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq pose more immediate problems, it is also uncertain how swiftly the administration will pursue an Israeli-Palestinian accord, a goal often portrayed as the key to peace in a region where that conflict is used as justification for militancy. The talks are bogged down in differences over borders, Palestinian refugees and rival claims to Jerusalem.
Criticism of Obama
Nonetheless, Clinton’s long record of public pronouncements on the Middle East is being studied across the region for clues about America’s diplomatic direction here.
As first lady and as New York’s junior senator, she has taken positions, some at odds with Obama’s, that appeal to Israelis and Jewish voters at home. She was an early advocate of the barrier separating Israel from the West Bank (Obama has yet to voice support for it) and of Jerusalem as the “eternal and indivisible capital of Israel.”
Like Obama, she has said the United States should not negotiate with Hamas, the Iranian-backed militant group that runs the Gaza Strip. During the primary campaign she criticized Obama’s willingness to negotiate with Iran and declared that the United States could “obliterate” Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel.
“Her friendship and support of the Jewish people and Israel is second to none,” said Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.
The Arab world sees two Hillary Clintons: one, the first lady who famously got ahead of U.S. policy a decade ago by advocating Palestinian statehood and remains at least verbally wedded to the goal of a U.S.-brokered peace deal; the other, a politician with lingering presidential ambitions and a BlackBerry that holds too many pro-Israeli connections.
“My impression is that before agreeing to take the job, she fought quite hard for a real role in formulating American policy,” said Mouin Rabbani, an independent analyst based in Amman, Jordan. “But she’ll be acting with at least one eye on her own political future. It’s not all that difficult to imagine her on issues like Iran and Israel staking out positions that could be used for a future election campaign.”
Speculation about Clinton’s views may be beside the point, some experts contend. “It really doesn’t matter,” said Aaron David Miller, who has advised six secretaries of State on Middle East issues and is now a public policy specialist at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “She’s no longer her own actor in this. . . . She’ll need to be empowered by the president.”
Even so, Israelis say they’re more comfortable about Obama with Clinton on the team, an added reassurance after the appointment of Rahm Emanuel, a Jew whose father once had links to a militant Zionist organization, as White House chief of staff.
“Israel would get a fair hearing with her,” said Israeli historian Michael Oren, as Obama plots diplomatic overtures to Iran and decides how hard to press for concessions to the Palestinians.
After a year of fruitless talks brokered by the Bush administration, Israelis are in no mood to be pushed into a deal with the Palestinian Authority while its leadership is in disarray and Hamas militants rule Gaza. The front-runner in Israel’s Feb. 10 election, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud Party, opposes continuing the peace talks.
Realism expected
Although Obama has promised Palestinian leaders that he will strive for an accord, the question is how much effort he or Clinton would invest.
“There’s not likely to be coercion in the [U.S.-Israeli] relationship,” said Eran Lerman, who directs the Israel office of the American Jewish Committee. “I think Hillary would be fairly realistic as to what can be done and what cannot be done given the political climate on our side and on the Palestinian side.”
Ali Jarbawi, an independent West Bank political scientist who advises the Palestinian leadership, shares that assessment.
“We need a new American vision, an evenhandedness in dealing with the conflict,” he said. “The Arab world is practically begging for an end to the conflict and Israel is saying no. Is Clinton prepared to push Israel? I’m skeptical.”
Some analysts predict the Obama administration will try instead to broker an Israeli-Syrian accord, aimed at drawing Syria away from Iran’s influence and diminishing Iran as a threat to the Jewish state.
Watching Rice
Edward S. Walker Jr., who was assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs during the Clinton administration, said even if Obama gives Hillary Clinton wide leeway over Israeli-Arab issues, “she may not want to put all of her eggs in that basket. Most administrations don’t like to follow too closely in the exact footsteps of their predecessors.”
“Hillary Clinton has watched Condi Rice make 23 visits to the region over the past two years and achieve nothing,” said Oren, the Israeli historian. “She is going to think many times before investing personally in a process where a very good chance of success is not guaranteed.”
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Boudreaux, Fleishman and Richter are Times staff writers.
Richard Boudreaux
reporting from jerusalem
Jeffrey Fleishman
reporting from cairo
Paul Richter
reporting from washington
boudreaux@latimes.com
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.
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c01baa5f5372a6020b32430adba02838 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-01-fg-graves1-story.html | Kurds get remains but no closure | Kurds get remains but no closure
For more than 20 years, Aska Ali Ameen waited for her husband to come home.
She knew he was dead, but getting his corpse would be better than having nothing. At least she could give him a decent burial.
When Ameen finally got a peek inside the coffin given to her by government officials, though, she felt no relief.
“As I look inside the coffin, I wonder, is the man inside my husband or not?” said Ameen, standing on an airport tarmac where the coffins of 150 long-deceased Kurds had just been unloaded from a cargo plane in the northern city of Irbil, capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.
After so many years, Shareef Ali’s remains were like the others that arrived from Najaf last month: bones and dust.
There were no shreds of clothing, no jewelry, nothing personal -- only a slip of paper stating that an identification document proved these were Ali’s remains.
An estimated 180,000 Kurds died in the 1980s in what came to be known as the Anfal campaign, or “spoils of war.” The campaign included gas attacks on the Kurds’ northern homeland and the transfer of Kurds to southern Iraq, where many were killed.
As with most of the crackdowns designed to bolster President Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Arab-led dictatorship, most victims were civilians.
The remains of Anfal victims have stayed beneath the country’s sandy soil, in the deep holes where the Kurds fell after being gunned down. Identification cards are mixed among bones or tucked in pockets of whatever remains of clothing.
Since Hussein’s ouster in 2003, the graves have been uncovered one by one. So many, in fact, that the Iraqi government has designated May 16 as Mass Graves Day, a national day of remembrance.
The latest discovery was about three months ago in a farmer’s field near Najaf. Many of the bodies were identified through documentation found nearby. For others, there were no clues. But each set of remains was placed in a coffin and sent to Irbil, about 290 miles north, where relatives waited on a chilly, overcast afternoon, hoping that their lost loved ones were among those whose identities had been confirmed.
“For 22 years I am waiting for the return of my brother’s corpse,” Ali Mohammed said, crying as he spoke of Fraydoon Mohammed. “Today I see him among many corpses, yet I cannot identify him.”
Like Ameen, he had hoped for some physical reminder to set his brother’s remains apart from the other piles of bones. His wailing continued.
“This is unfair,” Mohammed said. “We did not recover his corpse so we can bury it and visit it every now and then. We were deprived of many things. Even the graves.”
Kurdistan’s president, Massoud Barzani, attended along with victims’ families and representatives of the Iraqi government. The Kurdish and the Iraqi anthems were played, an effort to demonstrate unity between Baghdad’s central government and the Kurdish regional government.
But some relatives of the deceased accused Iraqi and Kurdish officials of using the corpse return for political gain. Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are engaged in a feud over what each says is the other’s attempts to horn in on his sovereignty.
Neither has helped Kurdish people, contended Shareef Salih, who was waiting for the remains of three cousins.
“They talk about prosperity, but I wish they could give me one example of that,” he said of the leaders. “They did nothing for us, but they’ve made good political gains out of Anfal.”
As he spoke, the sounds of women crying mixed with the anthems. Each coffin was draped with a Kurdish flag, its huge and brilliant yellow sun a jarring contrast to the grim proceedings and ashen faces.
Barzani, in a brief speech, vowed to bring all Anfal victims home.
Said Salih, clutching a picture of his missing father, Salih Mahmoud, will be waiting. He had found coffins carrying remains of people from his Kurdish village, based on identification found with their skeletons.
“But, unfortunately,” Salih said, “I could not find my father.”
Times staff writer Tina Susman in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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f72890076e2ffe020f1ec7651f4a4f43 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-01-fi-retail1-story.html | Rise in sales seen as a one-time gift | Rise in sales seen as a one-time gift
Bargain-hungry consumers gave the nation’s retailers a much-needed early holiday boost with surprisingly healthy sales on Black Friday that tapered off Saturday and Sunday.
“It was a retail manager’s dream,” said Marissa Marks, store manager at the Beverly Center’s L’Occitane boutique, which saw Black Friday sales double to $4,000 from last year. But, she added Sunday, “yesterday and today are not so good.”
Analysts and retailers alike noted packed shopping centers and larger-than-expected crowds.
Nationwide, more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over the four-day weekend, up from 147 million last year, the National Retail Federation said Sunday.
More deals come today as online merchants roll out Web-only specials and free shipping offers on what they call Cyber Monday.
But analysts expressed doubts that a healthy Black Friday signaled a turnaround for the nation’s beleaguered retailers. Many called it a one-time wonder, a bright note in what is expected to be one of the bleakest holiday shopping seasons in decades.
“In the past, if you did well on Black Friday, the retailer knew they would do well the rest of the season,” said Jackie Fernandez, a retail partner at Deloitte & Touche. “I don’t think that is the same kind of comparison this year.”
Desperate for a strong day of sales, retailers took no chances on Black Friday and opened their stores earlier, slashed prices even further and offered discounts on entire purchases. And that was after weeks of already steep promotions designed to attract wary shoppers.
Day-after-Thanksgiving retail sales alone rose 3% over last year to $10.6 billion, according to early figures released by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which monitors sales at more than 50,000 stores.
Another tracking firm, ComScore, said online retail sales rose 1% on Black Friday to $534 million compared with 2007.
Even as they shopped for toys and TVs, consumers continued to watch their wallets.
“Though retailers should be encouraged by strong traffic and sales over the weekend, consumers are still being cautious,” said Phil Rist, executive vice president of strategic initiatives for BIGresearch, which conducted the National Retail Federation’s survey. “Weekend shoppers indicated that they are still sticking to a budget and thinking carefully before making any holiday purchases.”
For Maricel Cruz, a teacher from Rosemead, the weak economy meant cutting her holiday budget by hundreds of dollars. And, for the first time, she bought most of her gifts from Wal-Mart.
“Normally we spend well over a thousand, more like two thousand,” Cruz, 40, said while loading up on gifts at a Wal-Mart in Rosemead on Friday. “But everything in there is so cheap, which is why we finally came here to do our shopping.”
Among the weekend’s top sellers: clothing and accessories; books, DVDs, CDs and video games; consumer electronics; and toys.
Despite being the most-requested present, gift card purchasing dropped 10%, with about 1 in 5 shoppers buying a gift card over the weekend, the National Retail Federation said. With a wave of retail bankruptcies expected early next year, consumers may be worried about buying gift cards from stores that might not be around for much longer, experts said.
Major retailers are slated to release November sales results Thursday.
Although analysts have questioned the profitability of so many discounts, retailers have signaled that the huge markdowns won’t end soon.
John Braeger, vice president of Garys Cos., which operates a handful of upscale retail stores in Southern California, said the Gary shops had offered more coupons and markdowns lately to lure shoppers.
“It’s been somewhat challenging so far this season,” he said. “We’ve had to discount a little more than typical, just to be competitive in today’s market with everything going on.”
Even though Black Friday is over, Braeger said the stores would continue to do “whatever we need to do to get people in.”
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Times staff writer Nathan Olivarez-Giles contributed to this report.
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andrea.chang@latimes.com
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7e11fb3d24d75f9c1ae4f4a3b5035a63 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-02-me-ocvote2-story.html | Vietnamese Americans join panels in final tally | Vietnamese Americans join panels in final tally
Westminster became the first city in America with a Vietnamese-majority city council after a final tabulation of votes Monday shifted the winners in two Orange County cities.
Two Vietnamese American candidates who had been trailing after initial vote counts on election day emerged as winners when the Orange County registrar certified the final results of the Nov. 4 election.
In Westminster, Truong Diep initially trailed Penny Loomer by 1,500 votes. But the final vote count put Diep, 25, a member of the Midway City Sanitary District board, ahead by a few dozen votes, giving him the second-place win.
Loomer said Monday that she may seek a recount.
Diep’s election stands as a milestone for the small, conservative city that has been transformed by Vietnamese refugees into the thriving enclave of Little Saigon.
The election once again shows the Vietnamese community’s propensity for voting absentee. Diep said his win was a surprise, that he had not known if the absentee ballots sent in by Vietnamese voters could overcome the 1,500-vote margin he was behind by.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it into the winning column,” Diep said. “My gut feeling was that the gap could not be as wide as it was.”
In neighboring Garden Grove, after thousands of absentee and provisional ballots were counted, Andrew Do secured a second-place finish for a seat on the City Council, edging out Robin Peace Marcario.
Do, chief of staff of Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen, became the second Vietnamese American City Council member in Garden Grove. He could not be reached for comment Monday.
Tran is a Times staff writer.
my-thuan.tran@latimes.com
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6874bf45c4b7dca751cab1744ff71a61 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-02-na-conscience2-story.html | Broader medical refusal rule may go far beyond abortion | Broader medical refusal rule may go far beyond abortion
The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new “right of conscience” rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.
For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.
It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to “an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments,” the draft rule said.
The “conscience” rule could set the stage for an abortion controversy in the early months of Barack Obama’s administration.
During the campaign, President-elect Obama sought to find a middle ground on the issue. He said there is a “moral dimension to abortion” that cannot be ignored, but he also promised to protect the rights of women who seek abortion.
While the rule could eventually be overturned by the new administration, the process might open a wound that could take months of wrangling to close again.
Health and Human Services Department officials said the rule would apply to “any entity” that receives federal funds. It estimated 584,000 entities could be covered, including 4,800 hospitals, 234,000 doctor’s offices and 58,000 pharmacies.
Proponents, including the Christian Medical Assn. and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say the rule is not limited to abortion. It will protect doctors who do not wish to prescribe birth control or to provide artificial insemination, said Dr. David Stevens, president of CMA.
“The real battle line is the morning-after pill,” he said. “This prevents the embryo from implanting. This involves moral complicity. Doctors should not be required to dispense a medication they have a moral objection to.”
Critics of the rule say it will sacrifice patients’ health to the religious beliefs of providers.
The American Medical Assn. and the American Hospital Assn. in October urged HHS to drop the regulation. The Planned Parenthood Foundation and other backers of abortion rights condemned the rule as a last-gasp effort by the Bush administration to please social conservatives.
“It’s unconscionable that the Bush administration, while promising a smooth transition, would take a final opportunity to politicize women’s health,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.
Despite the controversy, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said he intends to issue the rule as a final regulation before the Obama administration takes office, to protect the moral conscience of persons in the healthcare industry. Abortion-rights advocates are just as insistent that the rights of a patient come first.
If the regulation is issued before Dec. 20, it will be final when the new administration takes office, HHS officials say. Overturning it would require publishing a proposed new rule for public comment and then waiting months to accept comments before drafting a final rule.
Abortion-rights advocates think it might be easier to get Congress to reject the rule. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), before being nominated Monday for secretary of State, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have said they would move to reverse it.
The HHS proposal has set off a sharp debate about medical ethics and the duties of healthcare workers.
Last year, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology said a “patient’s well-being must be paramount” when a conflict arises over a medical professional’s beliefs.
In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim’s prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.
“Although respect for conscience is important, conscientious refusals should be limited if they constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients [or] negatively affect a patient’s health,” ACOG’s Committee on Ethics said. It also said physicians have a “duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that patients request.”
Leavitt said ACOG threatened to brand as “unprofessional” those who do not share its attitudes toward abortion. In August, he criticized “the development of an environment in the healthcare field that is intolerant of individual conscience, certain religious beliefs, ethnic and cultural traditions and moral convictions.”
In its announcement, HHS said the proposed rule was needed because of an attitude “that healthcare professionals should be required to provide or assist in the provision of medicine or procedures to which they object, or else risk being subjected to discrimination.”
In a media briefing, Leavitt said the rule was focused on abortion, not contraception. But others said its broad language goes beyond abortion.
Since the 1970s, Congress has said no person may be compelled to perform or assist in performing an abortion or sterilization. One law says no person may be required to assist in a “health service program or research activity” that is “contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The HHS rule says that law should be enforced “broadly” to cover any “activity related in any way to providing medicine, healthcare or any other service related to health or welfare.”
Judith Waxman, a lawyer for the National Women’s Law Center, said Leavitt’s office has extended the law far beyond what was understood. “This goes way beyond abortion,” she said. It could reach disputes over contraception, sperm donations and end-of-life care.
“This kind of rule could wreak havoc in a hospital if any employee can declare they are not willing to do certain parts of their job,” she said.
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david.savage@latimes.com
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b5f432468beffe32378be8194bc7ced7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-03-fg-hunger3-story.html | Hunting and gathering - and starving in rural Zimbabwe | Hunting and gathering - and starving in rural Zimbabwe
The child’s name is Godknows, and his mother smiles softly when she explains the choice: Only God knows whether he will live or die.
“I’m leaving everything in God’s hands because the child is always ill,” she whispers.
Godknows is 2 but looks like a frail 6-month-old, wrists and ankles like twigs, dark hollows under his solemn eyes, sores on his face. He flops in his mother’s arms like an exhausted old man, a victim of Zimbabwe’s silent hunger crisis.
The twin miseries of crop failure and economic collapse have left Zimbabwe’s villages without food. Millions survive on nothing but wild fruit, and many have died.
There are no official statistics. But ask people here in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South province whether they know anyone who died of hunger recently, and the answer is nearly always yes. Sometimes it’s four or six people in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes they just say “plenty.”
“Children are dying out in the bush,” one foreign doctor says, on condition of anonymity. “We are all guarded. We have to keep quiet or else we’ll be kicked out” by the government.
The crisis has been exacerbated by President Robert Mugabe’s decision in June to suspend humanitarian aid during the run-up to his one-man presidential runoff. The long-ruling Mugabe, stunned when he won fewer votes than opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round in March, accused aid agencies of supporting the opposition and didn’t lift the ban until August. Critics say the regime, which has a history of denying food to opposition areas, was using hunger as a political tool to force people to vote for Mugabe.
In past years, groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Zimbabwean rights group Solidarity Peace Trust have reported that the Grain Marketing Board, the state monopoly responsible for distribution of maize, the nation’s staple, has routinely denied food to opposition supporters. But this year, there is virtually no grain from the board -- and in many areas, no humanitarian aid either.
“The food always ends up in the hands of ZANU-PF,” says villager Solomon Nsinga, 66, referring to Mugabe’s ruling party. “The guys in charge of distribution are ZANU-PF. This is where the problem is. ZANU-PF gets it first.”
(The locations of the Matabeleland South villages have not been disclosed, to protect the identities of villagers, who fear repercussions for speaking out.)
Nsinga says he’s lost count of how many people have died in his village.
“There are plenty of people who have died this year. Plenty people,” he says. “They are dying a lot more than usual. This is not normal.
“I feel angry, sad.” He sighs and pauses. “I don’t know what to feel.”
With the hunger crisis in the rural areas and a cholera epidemic raging in urban areas, former President Carter, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Graca Machel, wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, tried to visit Zimbabwe a week and a half ago to report on the humanitarian situation. But they were denied visas by Mugabe’s regime.
Nearly 5 million people desperately need food aid, but the hunger is expected to worsen. The World Food Program said recently that there were no funds for food distribution in the months of most severe hunger, January and February, because of a lack of donations. With a funding shortfall of $140 million, the U.N. agency already has cut rations in the food aid being distributed now.
One agency, CARE, reached only half its 500,000 intended aid recipients last month, citing bureaucratic hurdles and the paralysis of Zimbabwe’s currency and banking system.
McDonald Lewanika of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition says U.N. reports don’t reflect the scale of the crisis.
“People have been reduced to hunters and gatherers who have to look for wild food to survive,” he says.
He recently traveled to Wedza, a town only 60 miles from the capital, Harare. “You see people fighting with each other and even with wild animals like wart hogs just to take some food back to their children,” he says.
In the village where Godknows lives, six people died of hunger in October.
“Three were children aged about 8 or 10. The others were aged about 60. They were just buried in the village. They were living on wild berries. There was no food, other than wild fruits,” says Godknows’ mother, Phumuzile Moyo, 21. Her village has had one food handout, from World Vision, but only the most vulnerable people were helped, about a third of the population of 50.
Moyo got a food handout, but her son, who is HIV-positive, was already so frail that he continued to go downhill. She took him to a clinic, where he is getting treatment.
People search for scraps in garbage dumps, working shoulder-to-shoulder with baboons. Young men throng frantically at the entrances of dumps, dashing up to trash-laden pickup trucks, tearing bags down from their loads and ripping them open.
Everyone has a desperate story, even people seen as “privileged,” like soldiers.
An army lance corporal, hitchhiking on the road to Binga, in western Zimbabwe, says his monthly pay, which is the equivalent of less than 50 cents at the black-market rate, buys virtually nothing. His parents have no food, and he can’t help them.
“I went to see my parents, and they said their son doesn’t love them anymore. When I got there, they were just sitting there with nothing. They said, ‘What have you brought us?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ It was very painful. I feel sad!” he says, but the words come out sounding angry.
In a Matabeleland South clinic, a woman with a scarf on her head watches over her malnourished granddaughter. The child’s limbs are swollen; she wears a lacy blue and white party dress meant for happier times.
The woman, Dorothy Mkwananzi, 66, stares blankly into the distance as she murmurs in numb despair.
“We don’t know how things are going to end,” she says. “We just feel helpless. We can’t even help ourselves. I think this hunger will just go on and on. No matter how we feel, there’s nothing we can do. We’re only human beings.”
When the food aid does not come, people get desperate. Everyone watches the wild fruit trees, so as to be there first when the fruit is ripe enough to eat.
People in Simo Mpofu’s village waited and waited, but no food trucks came.
“A lot of people have died in our village due to hunger,” she says. “A lot of people are sick because of hunger. It’s worse than I’ve ever seen.”
Mpofu relates the story of one woman in her village, with three children to feed, who faced a terrible choice early in November.
Unable to find any food for days on end, the woman went into the bush and carefully selected the fruit she knew to be poisonous. Then she took the fruit home, cooked it and fed it to her children and herself.
The four were buried together. Everyone in the village went to the funeral. Then they went out to watch the wild fruit trees, waiting for the fruit to ripen.
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robyn.dixon@latimes.com
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b04a7a9def294ae885e47dd35c60a9ae | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-03-me-election3-story.html | More than 60% of eligible California voters went to polls | More than 60% of eligible California voters went to polls
More than 60% of Californians who were eligible to vote cast ballots in the Nov. 4 presidential election, the highest turnout since Richard Nixon and George McGovern competed for the office in 1972, elections officials reported Tuesday.
The total includes all qualified citizens, including those who had not registered to vote. The percentage of registered voters who cast ballots statewide was 80.6% -- 81.9% in Los Angeles County.
The state’s 58 counties were required to finish counting ballots Tuesday, and the results put to rest a few close races, showing that Tony Strickland defeated Hannah Beth Jackson in the 19th Senate District and Tom McClintock beat Charlie Brown in the 4th Congressional District.
Proposition 11, the statewide redistricting measure, passed by a narrow margin, though a few small counties were still tallying ballots into the evening.
And the Beverly Hilton narrowly won approval from Beverly Hills voters to expand its complex with a Waldorf-Astoria hotel and two luxury condo towers, though opponents contend that the drawn-out vote was tainted by irregularities and have vowed to continue their battle in court.
The Los Angeles County Registrar’s office spent weeks counting provisional and absentee ballots that ended up swinging the results in favor of the Hilton’s proposal by a 129-vote margin. The final tally was 7,972 votes in favor, or 50.41%, and 7,843 votes opposed, 49.59%.
“That’s because they were counting questionable provisional ballots, including a number we challenged,” said Larry Larson, treasurer of the Citizens Right to Decide Committee, which opposed the measure.
Marie Garvey, a Beverly Hilton spokeswoman, said: “We have full faith in the county’s process.”
She said that the Hilton planned to begin construction on the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in 2009 and that the aim is to “develop a world-class project worthy of Beverly Hills.”
The high turnout in Los Angeles County, not seen since 1968, was a result of several factors, including strong voter interest in the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain, according to Dean Logan, the county’s Registrar-Recorder.
“It was the combination of an election that has historic significance to both major parties’ tickets, the economic situation and the fact that there was no sitting president or vice president on the ballot,” Logan said.
Controversial ballot measures, including a ban on gay marriage, also attracted Californians to the polls in high numbers.
The secretary of state will not post the voter totals until next week, but a survey of the counties indicates the highest turnout since 64.5% of all those eligible to vote cast ballots in 1972.
One of the closest statewide contests involved Proposition 11, which takes the drawing of state legislative districts away from the state Legislature and gives it to a bipartisan citizens panel.
The measure received support from 51% of the voters, winning by more than a quarter of a million ballots.
Supporters said the state Legislature’s failure to deal with a projected $28-billion budget shortfall helped in the victory, as did the broad-based coalition of government reform groups, including AARP.
The budget failure “was a very sad example of what’s wrong and that made it very clear to folks who were voting that we do have a problem,” said Jeannine English, California president of AARP.
However, civil rights groups including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund are considering options, which could include asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in or filing a lawsuit arguing that changes to the redistricting plan could harm minority voters.
“We are disappointed and we are considering all of our options,” said Nancy Ramirez, an attorney for the group.
Los Angeles County’s Measure R, a half-cent sales tax increase for transportation projects, received 67.9% of the vote, a little more than the two-thirds needed for passage.
Proposition A, a parcel tax proposal to raise money for gang programs in Los Angeles, received 66.27% of the vote, a little less than the two-thirds margin needed.
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patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com
martha.groves@latimes.com
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Patrick McGreevy reporting from Sacramento
Martha Groves reporting from Los Angeles
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193216a2e8171481cbe64a932362152a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-03-na-gates3-story.html | Gates on board with Iraq plan | Gates on board with Iraq plan
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he accepted President-elect Barack Obama’s approach to scheduled troop reductions in Iraq, arguing Tuesday that the hotly debated subject of timelines for withdrawal largely had been settled by a new U.S.-Iraq security agreement.
“That bridge has been crossed,” Gates said a day after he formally agreed to remain as Obama’s Defense secretary. “And so the question is: How do we do this in a responsible way?”
The security agreement, approved last week by Iraqi officials, requires U.S. combat troops to leave Iraqi cities and towns by June 30 and to withdraw completely by the end of 2011. Obama wants combat troops out within 16 months, but has indicated he would take security considerations and advice from commanders into account.
By staying, Gates becomes the first U.S. Pentagon chief to be carried over from one administration to the next. In a Gallup poll released Tuesday, 80% of Americans surveyed supported Obama’s decision to keep Gates.
But Gates will have to manage a sharp change in policy, shifting from working for a president who has supported a high number of troops in Iraq to one who has repeatedly said he intends to quickly withdraw combat troops.
Saying that his tenure would be “open-ended,” Gates promised during a Pentagon news conference that he would not be merely a caretaker as secretary. He hinted that he planned to put some muscle behind his rhetorical critique of Pentagon spending priorities and to overhaul the way the military buys weapons.
He also said that closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be a high priority, but could require new legislation, such as a measure preventing former detainees from seeking asylum in the United States.
And Gates said that the next request for emergency war funding, an estimated $83 billion, would be delivered to Congress in a matter of weeks. If approved, it would bring the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to about $947 billion.
Obama assembled an experienced team of strong-willed national security experts, and Gates said that he expected there would be differences of opinion. But he emphasized that Obama would make the big strategic decisions.
“The president-elect has made it pretty clear that he wanted a team of people around him who would tell him what they thought and give him their best advice,” Gates said. “There will no doubt be differences among the team, and it will be up to the president to make the decisions.”
Although he is remaining in his job, Gates has told other political appointees that they should expect to be replaced as the Obama transition team moves to install its own team in the Pentagon.
“The truth of the matter is, when I came here two years ago every single position was filled by somebody who had been appointed by somebody else,” Gates said. “And I think it’s worked out OK.”
After the news conference, Gordon R. England, the deputy Defense secretary, announced that he would leave his post. Transition team members have said that Richard Danzig, a close Obama advisor, is the leading candidate to replace England.
In Washington, there had been debate over whether Gates, who was not registered in a political party, would fulfill Obama’s promise of placing a Republican in his Cabinet. Gates, who worked at the CIA from 1966 to 1993, said he had not registered as a member of a political party because he believed that politics should not color the job of an intelligence analyst.
But he added that before now, his senior appointments in government had been under Republican administrations, and that he considered himself a Republican.
Gates first spoke with Obama about remaining on the job at a secret meeting inside the firehouse at Reagan National Airport, shortly after the president-elect met with President Bush last month at the White House. Aides to Obama never revealed that the airport meeting involved Gates.
“They pulled the trucks out so that our cars could go in,” Gates said.
For months, advisors to Obama, including Danzig, had raised the possibility of keeping Gates on. Publicly, Gates had said that remaining in his post was “inconceivable,” and he repeatedly referred to a clock he kept to count down the days to the end of the Bush administration.
On Tuesday, Gates said he had “thrown away the clock.”
The question of troop withdrawal timetables has been deeply divisive. Many Republicans and military officers have bitterly opposed Obama’s stance. Now, however, with the U.S.-Iraq agreement in place, Gates said he could subscribe to Obama’s view. He noted that the president-elect had indicated a willingness to be flexible.
“He did talk about the 16 months in terms of combat forces,” Gates said. “But he also talked about a responsible drawdown and that he was willing to listen to the commanders.”
Gates also faces internal battles over Pentagon spending. He has long criticized the Pentagon, saying it favors complex and costly cutting-edge weapons at the expense of cheaper systems that could be produced quickly and sent to the field.
With the Bush administration’s time in office limited, Gates has deferred a string of important decisions dealing with the future of the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jets and refueling tankers.
He reiterated his support for building up American “soft power” by investing more in the State Department.
Gates said that the new administration would need to discuss how to improve those capabilities, how to work with Congress to find more funding, and where that money should come from.
“That’s all still out in front of us,” Gates said.
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julian.barnes@latimes.com
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ce46e7790e811e77f3aba2ba9657e403 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-03-na-nixon3-story.html | Archives show Nixon’s targeting of foes | Archives show Nixon’s targeting of foes
As part of a release of archival tapes and documents Monday, the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum revealed fresh records that reflect the 37th president’s heated campaign to investigate, intimidate and smear political rivals and opponents of the Vietnam War.
Among the documents is a handwritten note from Nixon’s top aide, H.R. Haldeman, on June 23, 1971, which may shed light on the origins of Nixon’s infamous “enemies list.” In the note, Haldeman records Nixon’s order to bring the weight of the IRS down on attorney and former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who had been critical of Nixon’s Vietnam policy, and on the antiwar movement.
“Pull Clark Clifford & top supporters of doves,” Haldeman writes. “Full list . . . full field audit.”
In the next paragraph, Haldeman reminds himself to take action against “TK,” believed to be Sen. Ted Kennedy. Haldeman writes: “Get him -- compromising situation . . . Get evidence -- use another Dem as front.”
The documents, along with hundreds of hours of tape recordings, mark the largest release of Nixon’s presidential papers and recordings since the Yorba Linda library shifted from a privately run facility -- controlled by Nixon loyalists -- to a National Archives institution last year.
From the White House, the documents show, Nixon was directing aggressive investigations of his rivals soon after taking office in January 1969. Central to the effort was Clark R. Mollenhoff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who had come to work for Nixon.
In an April 1, 1970, memo, Mollenhoff reported to Haldeman that he was “probably involved in something over 100 investigations.” They included probes of “the political opposition,” “potential problem areas,” and “areas of corruption or mismanagement.”
Among the key targets of Mollenhoff’s investigations were political rivals such as Sens. Kennedy and Edmund Muskie, former Alabama Governor George Wallace, Democratic chairman Lawrence O’Brien and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
The newly released documents also illustrate Nixon’s interest in the “across-the-board loyalty” of White House staff. In a memo to Nixon on Jan. 16, 1970, presidential staffer Alexander Butterfield reported on the progress of Nixon’s order to remove all pictures of past presidents from White House walls. Butterfield noted that of 35 offices occupied by White House support staff, six had displayed one or more former presidents.
Nixon, the memo reveals, had expressed special concern about an office in which he saw two pictures of John F. Kennedy. Butterfield discovered the office belonged to Edna Rosenberg, a low-level civil servant who had been on the White House staff for 41 years, longer than any other staffer. Butterfield said he “checked her file very carefully” and found the CIA, FBI and Secret Service all considered her a loyal American.
One of the Kennedy portraits, it turned out, bore a personal inscription. Still, she was made to take it down.
“On January 14th,” Butterfield reported to Nixon, “the project was completed and all 35 offices displayed only your photograph.”
The documents are part of about 90,000 pages of materials from Nixon’s presidential years released Monday by the Nixon Library, along with 198 hours of Nixon White House tapes.
The tapes reflect Nixon conversations between November and December 1972 and include discussions of the 1972 elections and the bombing of North Vietnam. The tapes can be heard online at www.nixonlibrary.gov "> www.nixonlibrary.gov .
The library opened in 1990 as a privately run facility in the hands of Nixon loyalists, containing only his pre- and post-presidential papers and featuring a Watergate exhibit, widely ridiculed by scholars, that portrayed the scandal as a “coup” hatched by Nixon’s enemies. The exhibit has since been dismantled.
The library entered the National Archives system last year, with its first federal director, Timothy Naftali, promising historical accuracy and openness. Although the library released a batch of Nixon’s personal and presidential documents last year, Monday marked the library’s largest release of materials so far.
“The strength of our democracy is that these kinds of documents get preserved, and they are released, whether or not they shed good light on the government,” Naftali said. “In many countries in the world, these documents would have been destroyed. We’re pleased we can make these documents available and others can judge.”
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christopher.goffard@latimes.com
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da7e783412a2c93b102c5f9a05cc1355 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-03-sci-residents3-story.html | More sleep for residents is urged | More sleep for residents is urged
Reforms imposed five years ago to rein in the long work hours put in by doctors in training don’t go far enough to reduce risks to both patients and sleep-deprived trainees, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report, produced by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academies, recommended that medical residents ideally should work no longer than 16 consecutive hours, considerably less than the 30-hour shifts now allowed.
If they have to go longer than 16 hours, they should be required to take a five-hour nap, which would count toward a maximum 30-hour cap.
The institute also recommended that any hours spent moonlighting should count against the maximum 80 work hours allowed per week (averaged over four weeks). That could eliminate a popular practice for residents, who make about $40,000 a year and are often burdened with large educational loans.
Dr. L. Toni Lewis, who recently completed a residency in family practice and now heads a union representing residents in five states, called the report “historic.”
“We’re really excited that they’re focusing so much on the 16-hour work limit,” she said. “And [the report] addresses not just the hours but the quality of resident education and patient care.”
But others viewed the recommendations as still too weak. Dr. Peter Lurie of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said the mandated five-hour nap was just a ruse to make sure residents could still work a 30-hour shift.
“No one is going to get anything approaching five hours of sleep,” Lurie said. “It’s just an elaborate effort to keep alive the current guidelines while requiring organized medicine to make as few changes as possible.”
Residents -- so called because in the late 1800s, they actually lived in hospitals -- are medical school graduates who care for patients under the supervision of experienced physicians.
A form of apprenticeship, residency has long been notorious for brutal hours and minimal pay. Residency can last three to seven years, depending on the specialization.
The move to limit those hours began in 1984 with the much-publicized death of Libby Zion shortly after she was admitted to a New York hospital. Her father, a well-known lawyer and journalist, became convinced that the 18-year-old died because the residents on duty that night were working 36-hour shifts and caring for too many patients.
In recent years, studies have shown that residents who go too long without sleep are more likely to injure themselves and others through needle sticks or car accidents.
New York hospitals first imposed 80-hour work weeks in 1989. After Congress threatened to intervene, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 2003 made it a condition of accreditation.
But the 80-hour restriction has been expensive for hospitals, which have had to hire more residents to make up for the lost hours.
The new recommendations would add even more costs. Hiring additional staff to allow residents to work shorter shifts would cost about $1.7 billion annually, according to the medical experts who prepared the institute’s report.
“We believe that the additional $1.7 billion a year is a necessary investment in patient safety and better healthcare outcomes,” said Dr. Michael M.E. Johns, the panel’s chairman and chancellor of Emory University in Atlanta. “The science clearly shows that fatigue increases the chances of errors, and residents often work long hours without rest and regular time off.”
Saying that reducing hours alone would not improve doctor training or patient safety, the report also proposed protocols to improve “handoffs” of patients from one resident to another during shift changes, a period notorious for introducing errors.
It also called for closer supervision of residents by fully licensed physicians and warned against merely expecting residents to take care of the same number of patients over a shorter period of time.
Dr. Mark I. Langdorf, medical director of the emergency department at UC Irvine Medical Center and associate director of the residency program, called the recommendations “nuts.”
“The problem here is balancing the need for patient safety, which I acknowledge, with the need to have the training in medicine be an apprenticeship,” he said. “It sells the educational process short to make training so intermittent that you don’t really get continuity.”
Langdorf also said that any advantage of working shorter shifts is outweighed by the disadvantage of having to turn over patient care to doctors who don’t know the patient’s history, particularly given the lack of computerized patient records.
One of the report’s strengths is that it calls for monitoring both the five-hour naps and the increased handoffs for unintended consequences, said Dr. Christopher Landrigan, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who has conducted research on residents and sleep.
“There’s no question that there’s still a large cohort of doctors who do think that these 30-hour shifts are essential,” Landrigan said. “But there are a growing number of doctors who accept that sleep deprivation plays a role in patient safety. There’s been a real shift in the culture in the last five years.”
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mary.engel@latimes.com
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cf4faf5b1dc3c6e9ed09a5b42eab28c9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-04-na-craigslist-libel4-story.html | Criminal charge filed in libel case | Criminal charge filed in libel case
Locked in a visitation dispute with his former girlfriend over their young daughter, J.P. Weichel wanted to vent, court records say.
Weichel, 40, allegedly posted comments about the woman on the Craigslist “rants and raves” forum, accusing her of child abuse and welfare fraud and making crude comments about her sex life.
The woman said the postings were defamatory. But unlike the majority of libel cases, which are tried in civil court, local authorities have taken the unusual step of charging Weichel with a crime.
Colorado is one of a dwindling number of states with a criminal law against libel. The statute dates to the 19th century and is rarely used.
But Larimer County Dist. Atty. Larry Abrahamson said Colorado’s statute applied precisely to what Weichel was accused of doing.
“This is what the Legislature of the state of Colorado has determined is criminal,” Abrahamson said. “We’re obligated to enforce the laws in the state of Colorado.”
Weichel could not be reached for comment, and his lawyer, Michael Liggett, has a policy of not speaking with reporters, an assistant in his law office said.
But several lawyers said the case should be handled in civil court. Bringing the government into the dispute, they said, is a troubling infringement on free speech.
“Being a jerk isn’t necessarily grounds for felony prosecution,” said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.
Gregory Lisby, a communications professor at Georgia State University, has tracked criminal libel prosecutions. He said the states that retained such statues -- there are 17, according to free-speech groups -- had simply not updated laws from English common law.
Criminal libel prosecutions are “a sledgehammer when a scalpel would do the same trick,” Lisby said.
His research shows that criminal libel cases have dropped, but the Internet could reverse that, he said. People don’t realize that scathing postings or e-mails can make them liable for defamation charges.
“More and more people view the online world as a free-rant place,” Lisby said. “They think it’s par for the course, but they’re setting themselves up for lawsuits” or prosecution.
In civil libel cases, truth is the best defense and the dead cannot be libeled. But Colorado’s criminal statute holds that it is illegal to “blacken the memory of one who is dead.” Truth is not a defense in such cases, or in ones that “expose the natural defects of one who is alive.”
The state Supreme Court upheld the law in 1991 but said its provisions would not apply to constitutionally protected political speech. In 2006, the ACLU successfully blocked the Greeley Police Department from using the statute to pursue a blogger who posted material critical of a professor at the University of Northern Colorado. The ACLU argued that prosecution would violate the 1st Amendment.
Police and court records say Weichel’s postings were purely personal.
Weichel’s former girlfriend contacted police in Loveland last December about anonymous postings that referred to her sometimes by her nickname and other times by her full name.
A police report said the postings alleged that she abused her child and concealed it from social workers, and that she committed welfare fraud and worked for a “crooked” Fort Collins lawyer whom she sexually serviced. The postings were laced with crude references to her body.
The woman told police that people who knew her read them and tried to defend her in online comments.
Police traced the postings to a computer that Weichel had access to. In August, Loveland police questioned Weichel at his workplace.
“Weichel stated he was ‘just venting,’ ” according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant.
Abrahamson’s office filed two criminal libel charges against Weichel on Oct. 21. The state’s libel law carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in jail.
As news of the prosecution circulated, it prompted critics of the law to call for a revision. David Lane, a 1st Amendment lawyer in Denver, said prosecutors almost never used the law because they knew it could easily be stricken by a federal court.
“It’s shocking the statute exists,” Lane said, “and that someone’s even using it is more shocking.”
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nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com
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887b460cac4688ed9abe36b3f3292a34 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-04-na-episcopal4-story.html | Episcopal split hits new level | Episcopal split hits new level
Hundreds of conservative Episcopal congregations in North America, rejecting liberal biblical views of others in the denomination, formed a breakaway church Wednesday that threatened to further divide a global Anglican body already torn by the ordination of an openly gay bishop.
Leaders of the new Anglican Church in North America said they took the extraordinary step to unify congregations and dioceses that had fled the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada over issues of Scripture.
The 700 renegade churches, mostly from the U.S., had already expressed their displeasure by placing themselves under the jurisdiction of Anglican leaders in vast, self-governing foreign provinces.
The festering disputes have prompted numerous lawsuits over church property, as well as spirited -- and prayerful -- debate over the role of gays and lesbians in church life.
Leaders of the churches and splinter groups, saying they represent 100,000 Christians, adopted a provisional constitution Wednesday to govern their new province. They acted at the behest of conservative global Anglican leaders who, during a gathering in Jerusalem last summer, called for the creation of a new independent North American province.
To gain official recognition, the new province must still get approval from two-thirds of the 38 provincial Anglican leaders who represent 77 million Christians worldwide. If approved, it would be the first such province based on theology, not geography, a dramatic departure from Anglican policy.
“This is a reformational movement,” said the Rev. Peter Frank, a spokesman for the Common Cause Partnership, which is spearheading the effort. “We believe that Anglicanism is a beautiful thing. Here in America it got on a track that was taking it farther and farther away from its core beliefs. We’re attempting to return to that.”
Leaders of the 2.1-million-member Episcopal Church lamented the loss but were uncertain about its effect on existing church bodies.
“We will not predict what will or will not come out of this meeting but simply continue to be clear that the Episcopal Church, along with the Anglican Church of Canada and La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, comprise the official, recognized presence of the Anglican Communion in North America,” the Rev. Charles Robertson, advisor to the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, said in a statement.
“And we reiterate what has been true of Anglicanism for centuries -- that there is room within the Episcopal Church for people with different views, and we regret that some have felt the need to depart from the diversity of our common life in Christ.”
The Rev. Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., predicted the move would have limited effect. “I do not think Wednesday’s event is as big a deal as the organizers think it is,” Douglas said.
He added that “while claiming more conservative tradition on human sexuality and biblical interpretation, their approach is radical and contrary to church polity.”
Four Episcopal dioceses -- in Pittsburgh; Fort Worth, Texas; Quincy, Ill.; and California’s San Joaquin Valley -- are among the religious bodies spearheading the creation of the province.
The dioceses -- and individual parishes -- had already taken steps to distance themselves from the Episcopal Church in recent years. Some parishes, including in Southern California, declared that they had placed themselves under the jurisdiction of conservative bishops overseas.
Some dioceses announced that they had aligned themselves with the Argentina-based Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of America. That alignment would no longer be necessary if the churches created their own province.
It was unclear whether the Anglican Communion or its leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, would agree to such a step.
The action comes almost a year after the Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno, voted to become the first diocese in the nation to secede from the Episcopal Church.
It also comes five years after the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Although some of the conservative churches split with the Episcopal Church before Robinson was installed in 2003, most cite the event as the catalyst that drove conservatives away.
The new province, they think, will provide a necessary alternative.
“We support this constitution as it reflects the very qualities that all of us . . . have hoped for in the new Anglican province -- biblically grounded, Christ-centered, mission-driven, outwardly focused, committed to evangelism and discipleship, and proudly Anglican,” said Bishop Martyn Minns of the group Convocation of Anglicans in North America and a key player in creating the province.
The differences go beyond the role of gays and lesbians in church life. San Joaquin, for instance, is one of just three of the church’s 110 dioceses that do not ordain women.
On the issue of gay rights, the diocese’s bishop has said he views homosexuality as contrary to the Bible’s teachings.
Conversely, California’s six leading Episcopal bishops this summer announced their opposition to Proposition 8, the measure banning gay marriage in the state.
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duke.helfand@latimes.com
Manya A. Brachear of the Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.
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6705288a9d9ff2c709bd0c51ccb0a418 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-05-fg-canada5-story.html | Canadian leader heads off defeat | Canadian leader heads off defeat
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday secured permission for a rare suspension of Parliament, a move that allows him to avoid an imminent vote that would have toppled his Conservative government, elected just two months ago.
But the narrow escape from a crisis that was largely self- inflicted has badly scarred a prime minister already widely regarded as a bully, and reawakened a national unity crisis in a country where regional grievances are sometimes dormant but easily stirred.
Governor General Michaelle Jean, the official head of state, who normally has only a ceremonial role, allowed Harper to suspend Parliament until Jan. 26, saving his government from defeat by a coalition of opposition parties that included one dedicated to splitting the province of Quebec from Canada.
Emerging from the governor general’s residence, Harper said he would use the breathing space to focus on the country’s economic troubles.
Opposition leaders vowed to defeat his government at the first opportunity after Parliament returns.
That ended one of the most raucous political weeks in Canadian memory. It began when Harper, governing with only a minority of seats in Parliament, introduced an economic plan Saturday that ignored the global trend toward stimulating the economy with new public spending.
More provocatively, he used the occasion to tack on a highly partisan measure: cutting the $22-million public subsidy to political parties. With his own Conservative Party flush with cash, it was widely seen as an underhanded strike at opposition parties far more dependent on public funds.
Unlikely coalition
Harper’s moves were seen as cynical and out of touch at a time when Canada is feeling the sting of the global economic crisis. And it prompted opposition parties to form an unlikely coalition to vote out the Conservatives and assume power, a legitimate parliamentary tactic.
“The coalition smelled blood,” political analyst Norman Spector said. “He wanted to finish them off. And now they want to finish him off.”
But many Canadians are uneasy about seeing a new government composed of a Liberal Party whose leader, Stephane Dion, had announced his decision to quit politics after being trounced in October’s elections, and the perennial also-ran socialist New Democrats.
Dion was widely derided after leading the Liberals to one of their worst electoral defeats, and even many in his own party blanched at the prospect of him now becoming prime minister. His perceived unsuitability to lead the country was reinforced by a botched videotaped speech to the nation aired Wednesday night in which he appeared off-center and overwrought.
The video, which the Liberals delivered to TV networks 10 minutes after its scheduled airtime, underscored the former university professor’s tortured English and generally off-putting communication skills. Prominent TV anchor Peter Mansbridge said the video looked as though it had been produced “on a cellphone.”
The coalition’s public relations woes were compounded by relying on support from the Bloc Quebecois, a party favoring the separation of Quebec. The prospect of a separatist party in power triggered outrage in the Conservative heartland of western Canada, which has long resented what it sees as Quebec’s disproportionate grip on federal power.
“Can you imagine the reaction in the United States if a group of politicians said they wanted to run Congress with a party that is dedicated to the breakup of the United States?” asked an incredulous Rick Bell, a political columnist for the Calgary Sun.
Harper exploited that western resentment, suggesting the Liberals were trying to gain power through stealth after failing at the ballot box. In his own nationally televised address Wednesday, he said he would use “every legal means to protect democracy,” implying his opponents were using undemocratic methods.
Separation anxiety
He also hammered away at the prospect of “separatists” getting their hands on the levers of federal power. The attacks, in turn, angered many Quebecers, furious that the Bloc Quebecois representatives they had elected were being dismissed as illegitimate.
Harper was slightly more contrite Thursday as he stood in sleet outside the governor general’s residence, pledging to behave in a more consensual fashion. “Obviously we have to do some trust-building on both sides,” he said.
But Brian Masse, a member of Parliament from Windsor West in Ontario province, said in a phone interview that Harper would have difficulty regaining the confidence of coalition leaders by late January.
“By padlocking the doors of Parliament when so many people in Canada are facing challenges, losing their homes, their jobs or their pensions, he’s decided that his job is far more important” than theirs, said Masse, whose district is known as the auto manufacturing capital of Canada.
The cost to the country may be greater than to any one party. By demonizing the Bloc Quebecois, Harper has awakened Canada’s ghosts of regional grievance, reviving the national nightmare of a fracturing country.
“People say Canadian politics are boring,” Bell said. “Well, it isn’t, but maybe people feel a little bit of boring would be OK after all this.”
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geraldine.baum@latimes.com
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Special correspondent Andrew Brooks in Toronto contributed to this report.
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244447fc26147afdfccd09b6a5915194 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-05-fg-pakistan5-story.html | India airports put on high alert over hijack threat | India airports put on high alert over hijack threat
India remains on edge amid reports of a threat of an attack by air, adding to people’s fears of vulnerability after last week’s brazen rampage by gunmen who landed on Mumbai’s famed shoreline by boat.
Indian intelligence agencies warned Thursday of a possible hijack threat that would coincide with the anniversary Saturday of one of the most inflammatory events in India’s recent history: the destruction of a centuries-old mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya by Hindu mobs in 1992. That incident has been an element of religious tension throughout South Asia.
Survivors of last week’s attacks in Mumbai, which left more than 170 people dead, have been quoted as saying that at least one of the gunmen cited revenge for what happened in Ayodhya as a motive for their assault on luxury hotels and other busy spots in India’s biggest metropolis.
Early today, Indian commandos combed New Delhi’s international airport after reports that shots had been fired there. The cause of the scare remained unclear, but an airport official reached by telephone said that no one had been killed; an initial report by the British Broadcasting Corp. said Indian security forces had killed six gunmen.
The airport, which serves many international flights in the early morning hours, was operating normally by 3 a.m, Reuters news agency reported.
Although the threat of an airborne attack focused on the capital, New Delhi, and the southern cities of Bangalore and Chennai, formerly known as Madras, airports across the country went on high alert. Authorities added extra layers of security, including beefed-up patrols of armed guards and sniffer dogs and more thorough inspections of passengers and their belongings.
“We are prepared as usual,” Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major, head of the Indian Air Force, told reporters.
That statement, however, was not likely to reassure many Indians, who have reacted with incredulity and growing anger to news that their government failed to act on repeated intelligence, including a warning from the United States, indicating that a terrorist attack on Mumbai by sea was possible. Tens of thousands of Indians have taken to the streets in protest, accusing the government of failing to protect its citizens.
Most of the investigation has focused on the lone captured suspect, who was seized after he and an accomplice allegedly fired indiscriminately into the crowd at a bustling railway station.
Investigators have said he has given details of the role of Lashkar-e-Taiba, saying the assailants trained at its camps in Pakistan. Investigators also allege that Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, a senior Lashkar leader, helped mastermind the plot. Indian officials have also named another Lashkar leader, Yusuf Muzammil. Pakistan has said nothing about the charges, other than indicating it will not accede to India’s demand to hand them over.
Indian news media reported today that an Indian suspected of having links to Lashkar-e-Taiba was arrested this year and found to have hand-drawn maps of some of the sites, which he apparently scouted out sometime last fall.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a visit Thursday to Islamabad, said Pakistan “understands its responsibilities” in responding to terrorism in the wake of the attacks.
Rice said the sophisticated nature of the 60-hour assault underscored the need for a swift and thorough investigation.
“That means there is urgency to getting to the bottom of it,” she said, " . . . to bringing the perpetrators to justice, and there is urgency to using the information to disrupt and prevent further attacks.”
Rice, who visited India a day earlier, was publicly supportive of Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government and its response to the attacks, telling reporters she was “quite satisfied” with her talks with senior government and military officials.
But a senior Pakistani official said the tone was tougher in private, with Rice emphasizing U.S. expectations that Pakistan aggressively pursue evidence against militant groups. A similar message was delivered a day earlier by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen.
President Asif Ali Zardari reiterated a willingness to cooperate, his office said, pledging “strong action” against any Pakistanis found to have been involved in the attack.
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henry.chu@latimes.com
laura.king@latimes.com
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1f31d9a6ad075dcfeee97bd31191b9bb | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-05-na-becerra5-story.html | Cabinet picks put focus on drug case | Cabinet picks put focus on drug case
President-elect Barack Obama’s offer to make Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) the next U.S. trade representative makes him the second Cabinet-level candidate to have been involved in President Clinton’s controversial 2001 commutation of a Los Angeles cocaine dealer’s prison sentence.
The other is Eric H. Holder Jr., whom Obama has nominated to be attorney general.
The dealer, Carlos Vignali, was convicted in 1994 for his role in a drug ring that delivered more than 800 pounds of cocaine -- worth about $5 million at the time -- from Los Angeles to Minneapolis. He was released after serving less than half of his 14 1/2 -year sentence.
Becerra was one of a number of Southern California political leaders who urged Clinton to consider commuting Vignali’s prison term in response to a campaign by Vignali’s father, Horacio, a Los Angeles businessman and developer who contributed to Becerra’s political campaigns. The senior Vignali also paid Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Hugh Rodham, $204,000 to lobby for his son’s release.
Holder was Clinton’s deputy attorney general at the time of the clemency order. The Justice Department’s pardon attorney recommended that Clinton not commute the sentence, but Holder did not sign the letter to the White House.
Holder has denied any wrongdoing. He declined to comment Thursday night. But a transition official said complaints about the former judge and prosecutor amounted to partisan sniping by Republicans.
Becerra, a leading California Latino political figure who has been in Congress since 1993, also declined to comment.
But in the past, he has said that his communications with the White House were not meant as an explicit request for clemency but rather as a request that the case be reviewed.
On Thursday, Becerra met privately with Obama to discuss an offer to become the nation’s chief trade negotiator, but he is not certain whether he wants the job, according to a Democrat familiar with the matter.
A third official whose name surfaced in Vignali’s clemency case, Alejandro Mayorkas, now serves on the Obama Justice Department transition team.
At the time of the clemency grant, Mayorkas was the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and was one of the Southern California officials who contacted the White House to urge consideration of Vignali’s release.
This and other controversial pardons and commutations occurred while Holder was in charge of the department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which reviews requests for pardons and commutations and passes along recommendations to the White House.
Pardon Attorney Roger Adams felt strongly that the department should be on record as opposing a commutation for Vignali, in concurrence with the prosecutors who had convicted him. Holder’s failure to sign the Pardon Office’s recommendation against clemency meant it went to the White House with the signature of a civil servant, giving the rejection recommendation less weight.
A 2002 congressional report by a Republican-led committee described Holder’s handling of the matter -- including his failure to follow the Justice Department’s usual process by signing the recommendation -- as “disturbing.”
It criticized Holder for “refusing to go on the record against a commutation the president apparently wanted to grant and the president’s own brother-in-law supported.”
The report suggested that Holder did so to please his superiors in the White House while trying to maintain his credibility as a prosecutor serious about law and order.
“Carlos Vignali satisfies none of the appropriate grounds for commutation identified in Justice Department regulations,” according to the report.
Holder’s signature on the recommendation was not required, the report noted. But the referral came at a time when the White House was complaining to Justice Department officials about receiving too many clemency applications with recommendations that they be denied.
“Apparently, he didn’t want to sign any more pardon denials,” Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the chairman of the House investigative committee, said at the time. “He was the deputy attorney general, and he didn’t want to sign a memo opposing a pardon of a major drug dealer. Why?”
An Obama transition official, Stephanie Cutter, said Thursday: “Dan Burton’s allegations are false. In his distinguished career in public service, Eric Holder has earned the support of prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and leaders of both parties because of his record of integrity.”
A second official with the Obama transition team said that Holder “doesn’t have any great recollection of this. It’s one of a million documents that went past his desk. We would love to give a detailed response, but this is an 8-year-old case and we are trying to put together the facts.”
The House committee report concluded that the Vignali commutation “mocked law enforcement” and “sent a message that there is a double standard of justice between the rich and the poor.” The report noted that 28 others in the same case who received equally stiff or stiffer sentences received no clemency, because their relatives did not have the political and economic pull to hire the president’s brother-in-law and make large campaign donations.
The federal judge who sentenced Vignali later complained that the commutation was inappropriate.
“Vignali was not a low-level operator in the conspiracy,” said U.S. District Judge David S. Doty in a statement reported by the Associated Press. “He played a major role in the financing, transport and procurement of the drugs.”
Horacio Vignali gave more than $160,000 in political donations, according to the House Committee report. Included in that total was more than $14,000 to Becerra’s congressional and mayoral campaign accounts.
Despite public attention to Becerra’s role in the Vignali case, the congressman has risen in power and influence in the House and in California.
As the White House was weighing what do about the Vignali petition in 2001, Mayorkas was among the most influential advocates of clemency.
According to the committee report -- which Democrats have decried as biased -- Los Angeles’ then-U.S. attorney spoke with several White House staffers to argue for Vignali’s release. One, Eric Angel, recalled Mayorkas saying that Vignali’s sentence was too long.
Another White House staffer said that Mayorkas’ advocacy was significant because it was unusual to receive a recommendation for clemency from a prosecutor.
Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey testified that the calls and letters from California leaders turned around his initial opposition to the clemency “given the community support.”
Mayorkas could not be reached for comment for this article. In the past, however, he has acknowledged making an error.
“It is reasonable to expect that someone in my position would do his or her due diligence to learn that information,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. “I made a mistake.”
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
tom.hamburger@latimes.com
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
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e5ae05b75ab0b351b146187693c97aae | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-05-sci-happy5-story.html | Your whole world smiles with you | Your whole world smiles with you
They say misery loves company, but the same may be even more true of happiness.
In a study published online today by the British Medical Journal, scientists from Harvard University and UC San Diego showed that happiness spreads readily through social networks of family members, friends and neighbors.
Knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself, the study found. A happy friend of a friend increases your odds of happiness by 9.8%, and even your neighbor’s sister’s friend can give you a 5.6% boost.
“Your emotional state depends not just on actions and choices that you make, but also on actions and choices of other people, many of which you don’t even know,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and medical sociologist at Harvard who co-wrote the study.
The research is part of a growing trend to measure well-being as a crucial component of public health. Scientists have documented that people who describe themselves as happy are likely to live longer, even if they have a chronic illness.
The new study “has serious implications for our understanding of the determinants of health and for the design of policies and interventions,” wrote psychologist Andrew Steptoe of University College London and epidemiologist Ana Diez Roux of the University of Michigan in an accompanying editorial.
Christakis and UCSD political scientist James H. Fowler examined the relationships of nearly 5,000 people who were tracked for decades as part of the landmark Framingham Heart Study.
They discovered that happy people in geographic proximity were most effective in spreading their good cheer. They also found the happiest people were at the center of large social networks.
In many regards, they concluded, happiness is like a contagious disease.
“We know people who are most susceptible to HIV are people who have lots of partners,” Fowler said. “This is the same thing.”
This isn’t the first evidence that emotions can spread like a virus. Studies have found that waiters who offer service with a smile are rewarded with bigger tips. On the flip side, having a mildly depressed roommate made college freshmen increasingly depressed themselves.
Fowler and Christakis thought they could document the spread of happiness more convincingly by studying the copious records of participants in the Framingham study, a massive effort launched by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in 1948 to find common causes of cardiovascular disease. Participants gave researchers the names of their parents, spouses, siblings, children and close friends, including many who were also study volunteers. That allowed the researchers to track multiple relationships for each participant out to several degrees of separation.
Fowler and Christakis focused on 4,739 people who were part of the second-generation cohort that joined the study in 1971, in part because many of them had parents and children in other cohorts. The researchers rounded out their networks by using home addresses to locate neighbors and employment information to identify co-workers. Altogether, they constructed a social network that included 12,067 study volunteers who were linked to each other through 53,228 ties.
In earlier studies of the network, Fowler and Christakis showed that obesity and smoking spread among groups of friends and relatives.
To assess happiness, the researchers relied on how much the volunteers said they agreed with four statements like “I was happy” and “I enjoyed life.” The questions were asked three times between 1983 and 2003.
The results were striking:
A happy friend who lives within a half-mile makes you 42% more likely to be happy yourself. If that same friend lives two miles away, his impact drops to 22%. Happy friends who are more distant have no discernible impact, according to the study.
Similarly, happy siblings make you 14% more likely to be happy yourself, but only if they live within one mile. Happy spouses provide an 8% boost -- if they live under the same roof. Next-door neighbors who are happy make you 34% more likely to be happy too, but no other neighbors have an effect, even if they live on the same block.
“We suspect emotions spread through frequency of contact,” Fowler said. As a result, he said, people who live too far away to be seen on a regular basis don’t have much effect.
The one exception was co-workers, perhaps because something in the work environment prevented their happiness from spreading, the study found.
The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Shigehiro Oishi, a University of Virginia psychologist who studies the causes and consequences well-being, said the importance of geography was a profound finding.
“Although we are connected with friends and family members who live far away via cellphone and the Internet, these results indicate that there is nothing like a face-to-face interaction,” Oishi said. “We are told to get connected by cellphone companies, but in order to get connected you really have to live close by and interact face to face.”
Fowler and Christakis said they didn’t know the mechanism by which happiness spreads. One possibility is that happy people spread their good fortune directly by being generous with their time and money. Evolution may have encouraged infectious happiness if it helped hominids and early humans enhance their social bonds so they could form successful groups, the researchers said.
UC Irvine sociologist Katherine Faust, who studies social networks, said the study might overstate the role of social ties in transmitting happiness. Many of the Framingham volunteers are the parents, siblings and children of other volunteers, and their propensity toward happiness could be grounded in their genes, she said.
But Richard Suzman, director of behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, said Fowler’s and Christakis’ work was persuasive enough to force policymakers to rethink the importance of social ties when contemplating happiness or obesity or smoking.
“You can’t just treat individuals; you have to treat networks or communities,” he said.
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karen.kaplan@latimes.com
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d365a4515ae00d1f420e4ef09cae330b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-06-et-heath6-story.html | Studio is carefully balancing Ledger | Studio is carefully balancing Ledger
How do you run an Oscar campaign for Heath Ledger, the widely admired young actor who died last January of an overdose of prescription drugs?
Very carefully, it seems, as Warner Bros., the studio behind “The Dark Knight,” tries to tread the line between tribute and exploitation in rallying academy support for Ledger’s performance as the maniacal, nihilistic Joker.
Oscar campaigning is serious business in Hollywood, as studios have been known to spend as much as $50 million in a quest for those golden statuettes. The mantra from Warner Bros. sources -- though no one will go on the record -- is that the studio is running a campaign for all members of the filmmaking team and all the actors. The film, which earned almost a billion dollars, was a critical darling.
But consider one Internet ad featuring Ledger in his ghoulish Joker outfit, with a shaded Christian Bale looming in the background in his Batman gear: The ad touts both actors, but it’s clearly the white-faced Ledger whose Joker leer is front and center.
It is a near-consensus in Hollywood that Ledger is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for supporting actor and might even win, which would make the forever young Australian the only actor besides “Network’s” Peter Finch to earn an acting Oscar posthumously. Still, he faces strong competition from other contenders, who could include Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Doubt”) and Michael Shannon (for his breakout performance in “Revolutionary Road”).
Already, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members say that if Ledger is nominated, his spectral presence could help reverse the ratings slide for the Academy Awards show as fans tune in to see if his riveting turn as the demonic Joker is honored.
Eleven months after Ledger’s death at age 28, still not much is known about his final days or why he had ingested the six drugs the autopsy detected. Ledger apparently suffered from insomnia, and theories were floated through the Internet and the media that his ferocious commitment to the crazed Joker had taken an emotional toll on him. But, for the most part, Hollywood has succeeded with an improbable media blackout, with almost no real information (aside from a few unsourced quotes in tabloids) leaking out about Ledger’s death.
The fascination with the actor has hardly abated, and interest will probably be juiced again when Warner Bros. releases “The Dark Knight” on DVD next week and stages another nationwide theatrical release of the movie Jan. 23 -- the day after the Oscar nominations are announced and the first anniversary of Ledger’s death.
Forbes recently named Ledger the third highest-earning dead celebrity, after Elvis and “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz, estimating that Ledger’s estate will earn at least $20 million from “The Dark Knight” (his deal included a cut of the film and merchandising revenue).
In Australia, there’s been an ongoing controversy over whether to name a new theater complex in Perth, Ledger’s hometown, after the actor. Ledger’s estate filed suit against the insurance company ReliaStar after the firm stalled on paying the actor’s $10-million life insurance policy while it investigated whether the actor committed suicide. (The New York City medical examiner has ruled his death accidental.)
Warner Bros. was deft in its initial marketing push for “The Dark Knight,” for the campaign neither hid Ledger’s presence nor overly hyped it. (The family asked the studio not to take down any ads using Ledger’s image in the aftermath of his death, according to one studio source.) In fact, word of mouth did most of the work as Ledger’s creepy and brilliant tour de force caught the public’s imagination. It’s impossible to know how much his untimely death added to the studio’s bottom line.
Running an Oscar campaign is even trickier, though, because there are more pointed questions of taste and propriety. Last summer, Terry Gilliam, Ledger’s friend and the director of his final film, “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” complained to the Telegraph of London that such a campaign was inherently exploitative.
“They’ll do anything to publicize their film,” Gilliam said of the studio. “That’s just what they do, and you can’t get upset. . . . They’re like a great white shark which devours whatever it can.”
An Oscar consultant who represents other competitors and who declined to be named because of the sensitive nature of the Ledger situation said: “There is sadness to the situation, but you don’t use it. It just exists.”
One challenge to a full-fledged award campaign is Ledger’s absence. Doing the screening-party circuit is usually a must for any would-be nominee, notes another competing Oscar strategist who also asked for anonymity: “One of the biggest challenges is, obviously, not having Heath. You don’t have the person to be the face of the campaign.”
This week, the studio threw a de rigueur Oscar fete at a swank Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. Chocolate-covered strawberries and plates of fusilli swirled by as stars Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart and director Christopher Nolan chatted with the crowd of journalists. “I miss Heath,” said producer Charles Roven before telling a funny story about Ledger accessorizing his nurse outfit -- one of the Joker’s disguises -- with a Harvey Dent campaign sticker he’d gotten from the film’s Internet campaign. “He was such a fearless actor.”
When the film was released in July, Nolan, various actors and Roven attended special question-and-answer sessions for the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America. The studio is already conducting special academy screenings in regular format and Imax, and has offered to send the academy and guild members their screening copies in Blu-Ray if they prefer.
Still, the topic of Ledger is a sensitive one for Warner Bros., which refused to comment for this article. A publicist for Nolan said that he too would be unavailable.
But working in Ledger’s favor is the fact that the academy is familiar with his work, having nominated him for 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain.”
One of “The Dark Knight’s” primary Oscar rivals is “Slumdog Millionaire,” a film that Warner Bros. initially bought the domestic rights for. After the conglomerate closed its art-house division Warner Independent Pictures last summer, it opted to split the rights with Fox Searchlight, which is now marketing and distributing the film. The $15-million Hindi-English movie tells the story of a slum kid from Mumbai who improbably ends up on the Indian version of the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” “Slumdog Millionaire” has already begun to sweep the various critics’ awards and appears destined for nominations, possibly including one for star Dev Patel, who would be a rival of Ledger in the supporting actor category.
As for “The Dark Knight’s” Oscar prospects, rivals tend to be dismissive of Warner Bros.’ hopes to turn it into the first Oscar-winning comic-book movie, in part because the demographic makeup of the 5,800-member academy skews older -- not the traditional superhero fan base. Said one, who also declined to be named given the contentiousness of the off-screen jockeying: “Until we wake up one day and we no longer are making any good movies -- dramas -- then the academy will not go this route, unless it’s outrageously different . . . . This picture is not so different from the first one. It’s still the Batman story. He wears a hat with ears, a cape that can fly.”
It’s hard to imagine Oscar nominations adding even more lucre to “The Dark Knight’s” box-office bonanza. The entity that would probably benefit the most from some Ledger fairy dust is the academy itself.
History has shown that Oscar TV viewership is related to the popularity of the nominees, reaching a high of 55.3 million viewers in 1998 when “Titanic” swept the awards. Last year was the smallest audience in Oscar history, with only 32 million viewers tuning in to watch the arty “No Country for Old Men” win top honors. This year, the academy is making a push to broaden the show’s appeal by showing snippets of box-office hits during the broadcast, whether nominated or not.
The academy also ended the ban on commercials for upcoming movies, with the hope of creating a Super Bowl-type climate in which splashy ads generate almost as much buzz as the show.
Over the years, a number of actors have been nominated after death, among them Spencer Tracy, Ralph Richardson and James Dean, who was recognized for both “East of Eden” and “Giant.” The last actor to be nominated for a posthumous Oscar was Massimo Troisi, who died after the filming of “Il Postino” in 1994. Yet the campaign was different, because Troisi, who had specifically delayed a heart operation in order to complete the film, was unknown to U.S. audiences. “A key part of the publicity campaign was introducing American audiences to Massimo,” recalls 42West publicist Cynthia Swartz, who worked on the campaign. “Everything we did was a celebration of what he accomplished.”
Clearly, celebration will also be the leitmotif of the Batman filmmakers as they invariably field questions about Ledger during Oscar season. When asked about a possible Oscar for Ledger, director Nolan recently told The Times’ Geoff Boucher: “The thing that has always been important to me in light of Heath’s death is the responsibility I’ve felt to his work. . . . It’s easy to forget, with everything that has happened, what an enormous challenge it was for Heath to take on this iconic role. He rose to that challenge so admirably that any expression of people being moved or excited by his performance is a wonderful thing.”
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rachel.abramowitz@ latimes.com
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b7a4b473b1422bda6e57de6ddfbfc5d3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-06-fi-foreclose6-story.html | 1 in 10 loans past due | 1 in 10 loans past due
A record 10% of the nation’s mortgage-burdened homeowners fell behind on their loan payments or were in foreclosure during the third quarter, according to a survey released Friday by the Mortgage Bankers Assn., which said California and Florida were the biggest contributors to the worsening picture.
The percentage of loans at least a month overdue or in foreclosure was up from 9.2% in the second quarter and 7.3% a year earlier, the trade group said. In Florida, 7.3% of home loans were in foreclosure at the end of September. The figure was 3.9% in California and just under 3% for the nation.
Officials at the trade group said the number of loans entering foreclosure -- more than 1% of all residential mortgages nationally -- would have been higher if not for programs intended to save lenders and loan investors money by modifying the terms of troubled loans.
With the mortgage business already ripped apart by easy-money lending during the housing boom, the recession has added a more traditional creator of bad loans: losing a job.
In a grim report Friday, the government said U.S. employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the weakest performance in 34 years, sending the jobless rate to a 15-year high of 6.7%. California unemployment is now well over 8%.
Combined with a 40% decline in California’s median home price, the faltering economy is resulting in the highest rate on record of troubled home loans actually going into foreclosure, said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Assn.
California represents 13% of the loans in the country, Brinkmann said, but is recording 19% of all new foreclosures.
“California has lost more than 100,000 jobs over the past year, compared to Michigan, the usual poster child for unemployment, which only lost 70,000,” Brinkmann said.
The group’s report shows conditions on Sept. 30. Since then, the stock market has tumbled and the economy has gotten weaker.
“Things are going to get worse before they get better,” said Thomas Lawler, a housing economist based in Virginia.
At first glance, California’s troubles seem little different from those anywhere else, because just under 7% of borrowers in both California and the nation are behind on payments. But Brinkmann said a clearer picture emerges when you compare the number of newly delinquent loans in one quarter with the number of loans entering the foreclosure process the following quarter.
That foreclosure “roll rate” was about 10% to 12% nationally in the 1990s and ran from 12% to 15% for most of this decade, Brinkmann said. The percentage is now 30% nationally but has reached 79% in California and 65% in Florida, he said.
“This is nothing like anything we’ve ever seen before,” Brinkmann said. “We were shocked when we saw the California roll rates.”
Delinquencies on all loan types, including fixed-rate prime loans to the worthiest borrowers, remain on the rise. But the bankers group said the most intense problems are attributable to boom-era adjustable-rate mortgages -- which include tricky pay-option loans to prime borrowers as well as the riskiest subprime loans.
“Prime and subprime ARMs continue to have the highest share of foreclosures, and California and Florida have about 54% and 41% of the prime and subprime ARM foreclosure starts, respectively,” Brinkmann said. “Until those two markets turn around, they will continue to drive the national numbers.”
If the report had a bright spot, it was that foreclosure starts tapered off a bit, perhaps reflecting more efforts by lenders and loan servicers to modify loans.
State data provided to The Times by the mortgage trade group showed that 92,711 homes in California entered foreclosure proceedings during the third quarter, down from 110,023 in the second quarter and about the same as the 92,729 in the first quarter.
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The Associated Press was used in compiling this report.
scott.reckard@latimes.com
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94f2f4b4c00de6193f870a8070d11de7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-06-na-oj-sentencing6-story.html | Sentencing reveals a contrite Simpson | Sentencing reveals a contrite Simpson
This was not the O.J. Simpson of old.
His wrists shackled, eyes reddened and husky voice cracking, the fallen football star -- who famously was acquitted of double murder in Los Angeles -- was sentenced Friday to up to 33 years in prison for robbing a pair of memorabilia dealers. He will be eligible for parole in nine years.
Surprising even Judge Jackie Glass, Simpson delivered a tearful five-minute apology to a packed courtroom down the street from the casinos and pawnshops of downtown Las Vegas.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it,” Simpson said, in a moment that may have marked the end of a saga that the nation has watched for years: Simpson’s journey from gridiron icon to social pariah after the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. He was acquitted of their slayings in 1995, but a civil jury in 1997 found Simpson liable in their deaths.
Simpson, 61, told the judge that he went to a down-market Las Vegas hotel on Sept. 13, 2007, to recover family heirlooms -- including his slain ex-wife’s wedding ring -- to pass down to his children.
“This was the first time I had an opportunity to catch the guys red-handed who had been stealing from my family,” said the NFL Hall of Fame running back, dressed in navy jail garb, his hair graying at the temples.
“In no way did I mean to hurt anybody, to steal anything from anybody. I just wanted my personal things,” he said. When Simpson finished, his shoulders slumped and his face fell.
In the spectators’ gallery during Simpson’s apology, Goldman’s sister, Kim, gripped her father’s hand and leaned into his shoulder. Afterward, outside the courthouse, the pair were greeted by a Santa, a Wonder Woman, an Elvis and a man shouting: “We’re sorry, Goldmans, about your son being murdered by O.J.”
There was also a chorus of boos.
“Where are you going to get your money now, Goldman?” shouted Las Vegas resident John Post, who carried a “Free O.J.” sign. “You going to go after his ramen noodles, Goldman?”
Fred Goldman ignored him. “There is no closure,” he said. “Ron is always gone. What we have is satisfaction that this monster is where he belongs.”
Simpson’s broken demeanor and words of regret Friday capped a trial that had stripped him of much of his remaining sheen.
The former Heisman Trophy winner, Hertz rent-a-car pitchman and sports commentator was accused of leading a ragtag band of men -- two carrying handguns -- to confront dealers hawking mementos from him and other sports stars.
“I didn’t ask anybody to do anything but stand behind me, have me yell at the guys and help me remove my things,” Simpson told the judge.
Dist. Atty. David Roger and prosecutor Chris Owens -- who said they had never tried such a high-profile case -- argued that the robbery’s origins could be traced to the $33.5-million civil judgment.
Simpson stashed things with friends to keep them from the family, which he had nicknamed “the Gold Diggers,” but he grew frustrated when the items were not returned, prosecutors said.
On Friday, Simpson insisted that he was acting on behalf of his children, and said he had even told his former in-laws of his plans.
“In Mr. Simpson’s mind . . . what he was doing truly was a retrieval of his own property,” defense attorney Yale Galanter said. “What it was, was a highly emotional, stupid act that violated the law.
“Stupidity,” he added, “is not criminality.”
Glass rejected the defense’s protestations -- and made it clear that her sentence was not payback for the double-murder acquittal that polarized Americans.
“When you take a gun with you and you take men with you in a show of force, that is not just a ‘Hey, give me my stuff back.’ That’s something else, and that’s what happened here,” Glass said.
The evidence against Simpson, she said, was “overwhelming” because of surreptitious audiotapes -- made by cohorts who testified for the prosecution -- that captured the planning, execution and aftermath of the six-minute encounter. On one tape, Simpson casually talks about “the piece” -- the gun he purportedly asked an associate to bring.
“It is your own words, Mr. Simpson -- your own words that could be heard throughout those events that have brought you here to this seat in my courtroom,” Glass said.
Simpson winced.
Glass sentenced codefendant Clarence Stewart, whom Roger described as less culpable than Simpson, to at least 7 1/2 years behind bars, with a maximum sentence of 27 years. State parole authorities had recommended the men serve at least 18 years.
Roger told reporters Friday that he twice had offered the men a plea deal -- once during the trial -- but that “Mr. Simpson wanted something just short of a public apology.” His sentence, Roger said, is lengthier than what prosecutors had proposed.
Simpson, who is planning an appeal, will be eligible for parole in 2017.
In Nevada, half of all eligible inmates are denied parole and serve out their maximum sentence, a corrections department spokeswoman said. Any good-behavior credits Simpson earns will only reduce his maximum sentence.
Simpson will spend his first three weeks in an 8-by-10 cell at High Desert State Prison, an all-male medium-security facility about 40 minutes from Las Vegas. While in county jail, his attorneys said, Simpson bought other inmates snacks from the commissary.
“He thinks that ultimately he will prevail,” Galanter told reporters, promising to exhaust all possible legal challenges and calling his client “resilient.”
Indeed, before he was led from Glass’ courtroom, Simpson mustered a weak smile.
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ashley.powers@latimes.com
harriet.ryan@latimes.com
Times staff writer Kevin Baxter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
O.J. Simpson’s legal saga
June 12, 1994: Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman are stabbed to death outside her Brentwood town house.
June 17: O.J. Simpson is arrested on suspicion of murder after he leads police on a two-hour car chase.
Jan. 24, 1995: Simpson’s trial begins.
June 14: Simpson tries on the pair of leather gloves that prosecutors allege he wore during the killings. Simpson says they are “too tight.”
Sept. 27: Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. urges jurors to deliver a verdict that “talks about justice in America.” Of the gloves, he says, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
Oct. 3: After less than a day of deliberations, the jury’s not-guilty verdict is announced on national TV.
Jan. 22, 1996: Simpson testifies for the first time in a pretrial deposition for wrongful-death suits that the victims’ families and estates have filed against him.
Feb. 10, 1997: The civil jury orders Simpson to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman.
Dec. 4, 2000: Simpson is involved in an altercation with another driver in a Miami suburb. A jury later acquits Simpson.
Dec. 4, 2001: Federal authorities and Florida police raid Simpson’s Miami-area home as part of a probe into a drug ring. No charges are filed against Simpson.
Sept. 13, 2007: Simpson and an entourage confront two collectors in a Las Vegas hotel room over memorabilia that Simpson said had been stolen from him.
Sept. 18: Simpson and three others are charged with felonies, including kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.
Oct. 3, 2008: A jury convicts Simpson on all charges.
Dec. 5: Simpson is sentenced to a maximum of 33 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in nine years.
Source: Times research
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59d55460cf86dec843da2d894498a042 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-adfg-euhunger7-story.html | Portugal is stark example of EU’s hunger plight | Portugal is stark example of EU’s hunger plight
Maria de Assuncao Cunha and her two small boys come out of a hilltop church carrying a handout of rice, cereals, milk and cookies.
“It helps a little bit, but it’s not enough by a long way,” says the 43-year-old, who has three children ages 5 to 14. “Things are just really, really tight.”
The mothers, elderly people and middle-aged men standing in line at the Church of the Sacred Family in Lisbon offer grim evidence of how the economic crisis is hurting one of the world’s wealthiest continents.
The European Union, long a giver of aid to less-developed nations, is turning its attention to its own needy citizens. The bloc’s farm ministers are considering a 67% increase in internal food aid, to $631 million a year. A decision is due this month.
Officials estimate 43 million people in the 27-nation bloc -- about 8.5% -- cannot afford a balanced nutritional meal, including some type of meat, at least every other day.
“This is completely unacceptable,” European Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said recently.
The Portuguese are especially vulnerable.
Portugal is Western Europe’s poorest country. The minimum monthly wage, taken home by several hundred thousand workers, trails the rest of the region at just $538 before tax.
Rising interest rates punished families with debt, which ran at 129% of household income last year -- the second-highest among the 15 countries using the euro. And, according to the government, 1 million older people have to get by on pensions of less than $380 a month.
Yet prices are comparable to those in wealthier EU countries.
Cunha, one of more than 150 people receiving relief in a parish stacked with tall apartment blocks, is unemployed and on welfare. Her husband works in the construction industry, where jobs are increasingly scarce. Together they bring home slightly less than $900 a month.
“How can a family of five live on that much nowadays? You can’t,” she says. “Things have been getting worse and worse.”
The country’s economic woes began at the end of the past century. Portugal had stuck too long with an economic development policy based on cheap labor costs and failed to prepare for competition from developing nations. Economic growth this century has averaged only around 1% a year.
Julio Paiva, a Portuguese who sits on the executive committee of the Brussels-based European Anti-Poverty Network, says the crisis is felt much more keenly here than elsewhere in Western Europe.
An EU study in July found that 71% of Portuguese had difficulty paying their monthly bills.
The government is digging deep to find extra welfare payments for the poor, including more than 160,000 elderly. But with the country generating little wealth, there’s a crunch on state finances.
Charities are taking up the slack.
Much of the aid comes from the Food Bank, a volunteer organization that collects unsold products donated by retail chains and wholesale markets. The Portuguese Food Bank is the largest on the continent.
The Lisbon operation, one of 14 nationally, is run out of three warehouses converted from train sheds. Each morning food is stacked up for delivery to more than 300 centers around the Atlantic port city. More than 60 other centers are on a lengthening waiting list.
The center provides help for 67,000 people in the Lisbon metropolitan area, sending out 35 tons of food every weekday, mostly to suburbs where the economic downturn has exposed pockets of poverty.
When it opened in 1992, the Food Bank mostly helped old people. But now families squeezed by soaring prices and debt are joining them, says head Isabel Jonet.
“They’re the new poor. These are people who have a job, a wage, but still can’t meet their family’s needs,” she says.
Jonet says requests for help have increased “exponentially” over the last six months. And she expects the plight will worsen as companies scale back their production and less surplus stock reaches the Food Bank.
“Next year is going to be very tough,” she says. “I don’t doubt that for a minute.”
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b9aae24c2d1d6088a0094a6550c4a7c0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-ca-favoritebooks-childrens7-story.html | A turn to the serious | A turn to the serious
2008 was a year of dark thoughts -- although very good reading -- in young adult books. There were a great many dystopian novels; authors seem to be feeling grim indeed about the state of the world.
In “The Hunger Games” (Scholastic, ages 14 and up), Suzanne Collins imagines a future in which reality television has run amok. Every year, the subjugated districts that occupy the remains of North America are forced to send a boy and a girl to participate in a televised battle to the death -- but first, the combatants’ public images must be burnished by a battery of stylists and cheery talk-show hosts.
Allegra Goodman’s “The Other Side of the Island” (Razorbill, ages 12 and up) offers an Orwellian tale in which a paranoid, double-speaking government recasts environmental disaster for its own purposes.
Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” (Tor Teen, ages 12 and up) posits a near future (that might, the author suggests, already be our reality), in which a terrorist attack on San Francisco provides the government with an excuse to impose extreme security measures, until teen hackers have the knowledge or gumption to defend our liberties.
In Kristin Cashore’s “Graceling” (Harcourt, ages 14 and up), some people are born with extreme skills called “graces,” which obligate them to the service of their king. Katsa, a girl graced with extreme fighting and killing abilities, has been trained as an assassin and enforcer, but as she matures, she begins to develop a conscience and assemble, Robin Hood-style, a secret underground to oppose the ruthless kings. “Graceling” offers a fresh view of the process of learning self-mastery and has a knee-weakening romance that easily rivals that of “Twilight.”
In novels for younger readers, “Julia Gillian (and the Art of Knowing)” by Alison McGhee (Scholastic, ages 9-12) introduces a heroine who promises to be a series character, and is easily the most thoughtful character in recent fiction. Much of the novel takes place in Julia’s head while she is walking her dog -- it’s the first summer she’s been allowed to do so on her own -- and she has plenty of time to consider things: what she’s good at, what she’s afraid of, how her parents are not quite as perfect as she thought, how she dreads finishing her summer reading book because she can see a sad ending on the horizon. McGhee’s book may sound slow-paced, but this is exactly what kids this age are thinking about, and boys have been as crazy about this book as girls.
Three wonderful series established themselves with a second book this year. They are:
“The Mysterious Benedict Society” by Trenton Lee Stewart and Carson Ellis (Little, Brown), and “The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey” by Trenton Lee Stewart and Diana Sudyka (Little, Brown). Ages 9-12.
“The Penderwicks” (Yearling) and “The Penderwicks on Gardam Street” by Jeanne Birdsall (Alfred A. Knopf). Ages 9-12.
“The Seems: The Glitch in Sleep” (Bloomsbury) and “The Seems: The Split Second” by John Hulme and Michael Wexler (Bloomsbury). Ages 10-14.
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Bolle’s Word Play column appears monthly at latimes.com/books.
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f05c890db291077fdc7155a8f4e7dd62 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-ca-favoritebooks-mysteries7-story.html | They’re very crafty killers | They’re very crafty killers
The cream of the crime fiction crop this year runs the gamut from the expected to the eclectic, the dark to the light, the work of stars to that of writers on the verge of making a name for themselves.
Two standout novels don’t even qualify as crime fiction exactly, although each revolves around the ramifications of criminal acts. “Black & White” (Subterranean), the first novel in a decade from Lewis Shiner, offers up a fence-swinging array of viewpoints and time periods that merge into a murky shade of contemporary gray. The novel incorporates urban planning, long-buried family secrets and race riots in the black North Carolina enclave of Hayti.
Stewart O’Nan’s “Song From the Missing” (Viking), meanwhile, is predicated on the disappearance of a teenage girl, but it steers clear of tabloid lures to delve into the small details; the story rings with quiet emotional truth.
For a strong brew of noir, “The Finder” (Sarah Crichton/FSG) is a pungent, high-octane New York story by Colin Harrison, one of the sleekest crime novelists around. Don Winslow drops pitch-perfect sentences to brilliant effect in “The Dawn Patrol” (Alfred A. Knopf), recoding the traditional private-eye novel through a surfer community lens.
In recent years, the mystery has become truly international. Zoe Ferraris’ “Finding Nouf” (Houghton Mifflin) conveys how Saudi Arabia perceives the United States, revealing this cloistered country’s heart and mind. Tom Rob Smith’s “Child 44" (Grand Central) sets a grisly serial killer saga against the last days of Stalin’s regime. It lives up to all of its considerable hype, as does Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (Alfred A. Knopf).
The gritty Botswana depicted in Michael Stanley’s “A Carrion Death” (Harper) differs from Alexander McCall Smith’s gentler vision, but the jovial, corpulent Det. Kubu is a winning creation. And the boom in Irish crime fiction is best represented by Tana French: Her first novel, “In the Woods,” won every major mystery award this year, and her follow-up, “The Likeness” (Viking) blends lyrical language and a leisurely, labyrinthine plot with even more confidence.
Finally, pick up Leonard Cassuto’s “Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Fiction” (Columbia University Press), a work of criticism that traces the lineage of hard-boiled writing back to Victorian-era sentimental novels -- finding common ground between tough men who are lambs underneath and cozy women with knitting-needle nerves of steel.
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Weinman’s Dark Passages column appears monthly at latimes.com/books.
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b916f9a6881e8be9008fcba3dfe0e8f5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-ca-favoritebooks-nonfiction7-story.html | Nonfiction | Nonfiction
The Ayatollah Begs
to Differ
The Paradox of Modern Iran
By Hooman Majd
Doubleday
In the “best book yet written on the contradictions of contemporary Iran,” according to our reviewer, Majd dissects a paradox of a country both ancient and modern, Persian and Islamic, morally lax in private and supremely puritanical in public.
The Bin Ladens
An Arabian Family
in the American Century
By Steve Coll
Penguin Press
While the name “Bin Laden” stirs up but one image in people’s minds, Coll’s stirring history centers on the wealth, prestige and power that Osama’s family wields and its deep interaction and shared strict interpretation of Islam with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Saud family.
The Bishop’s
Daughter
A Memoir
By Honor Moore
W.W. Norton
Moore tries to reconcile the public image of her father, a devoted family man and once Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York, with her discovery that he led a secret existence as a gay man. In the end, she realized “that to me his living of his passion was heroic.”
Claim of Privilege
A Mysterious Plane Crash,
a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets
By Barry Siegel
Harper
The Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter shows the vast implications of a 1953 Supreme Court case that ushered in the legal state secret. The decision enshrined the ability of the executive branch to refuse to turn over evidence to those suing the government simply by asserting that national security would be threatened.
Comfort
A Journey Through Grief
By Ann Hood
W.W. Norton
Hood rejects the concept of “closure” after the sudden death of her 5-year-old daughter from a virulent form of strep. She does not miss her daughter any less as time goes by, though the heart must stretch to accommodate new love.
The Eaves of Heaven
A Life in Three Wars
By Andrew X. Pham
Harmony
Pham’s story of his father’s fleeing occupation and war after a childhood of privilege in Vietnam is one of devastation and radiance, highlighting the history of a benighted land.
The Forever War
By Dexter Filkins
Alfred A. Knopf
In the witness tradition of combat journalism, Filkins’ meticulously constructed vignettes don’t claim to form a narrative but illuminate and humanize the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Hemingses
of Monticello
An American Family
By Annette Gordon-Reed
W.W. Norton
Starting with Thomas Jefferson and his slave and mistress Sally Hemings, Gordon-Reed explores master-slave relations in Virginia and the dichotomy of slavery’s presence in a society claiming to be based on freedom.
How Fiction Works
By James Wood
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Wood is our Edmund Wilson, unafraid to approach criticism with the seriousness and intention of art. Here, he looks at fiction’s mechanics and aesthetics, arguing in favor of literary realism.
Lincoln
The Biography of a Writer
By Fred Kaplan
Harper
Abraham Lincoln was, Kaplan tells us, “the Twain of politics.” In this charming and unexpected biography, he frames a part of the 16th president’s greatness in his having a “personality and a career forged in the crucible of language.”
Minders of
Make-Believe
Idealists, Entrepreneurs,
and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature
By Leonard S. Marcus
Houghton Mifflin
In this enlightening, vivid history, Marcus unravels many of the myths about children’s literature. Children’s books, he writes, are “messages forged at the crossroads of commerce and culture.”
Mustang
The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West
By Deanne Stillman
Houghton Mifflin
Inspired by the 1998 killing of 34 mustangs near Reno, Stillman’s tale of wild horses becomes a saga of the American West that blurs boundaries between essay and reporting, history and literature.
Nixonland
The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
By Rick Perlstein
Scribner
Richard Nixon, Perlstein tells us, worked on the resentments of the so-called Silent Majority to achieve his power, thus helping facilitate a culture war that we’re still fighting in which what separates us, rather than what unites us, defines who we are.
Obscene in
the Extreme
The Burning and Banning
of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”
By Rick Wartzman
PublicAffairs
In 1939, the board of supervisors of Kern County banned John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” A former Times editor and columnist uses that story as a lens on California labor history.
Orange County
A Personal History
By Gustavo Arellano
Scribner
Arellano, a contributing editor to The Times’ Op-Ed pages, grew up in Orange County and describes it as home to “Rep. Robert Dornan and Mickey Mouse, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and extraterrestrial basketballer Dennis Rodman, not to mention the largest community of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam.”
Pictures at
a Revolution
Five Movies and the Birth
of the New Hollywood
By Mark Harris
Penguin Press
Harris uses the five Academy Award nominees for best picture of 1967 as a window on a revolutionary moment in Hollywood, when the focus of the studios shifted, and film became more gritty and political.
Posthumous Keats
A Personal Biography
By Stanley Plumly
W.W. Norton
It took Plumly, an award-winning poet in his own right, more than 20 years to get a handle on this meditation on John Keats’ life, but the book is, as our reviewer noted, “very much worth the wait.”
The Soiling
of Old Glory
The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America
By Louis P. Masur
Bloomsbury
Many have seen the photograph: a white man, outside Boston City Hall during a 1976 anti-busing protest, about to spear a black lawyer with an American flag. Here, Masur tells the story behind that image.
The Suicide Index
By Joan Wickersham
Harcourt
In this understated memoir, Wickersham recalls the suicide of her father and her inability to come to terms with it. Her book resonates with the complexity of love and the inability of memory to sustain us, even (or especially) when it’s all we’ve got.
The Ten-Cent Plague
The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
By David Hajdu
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
The battle over comic books in the late 1940s and 1950s was really a battle over the soul of America, with the forces of tradition on one side and an anarchic youth culture on the other.
This Republic
of Suffering
Death and the American Civil War
By Drew Gilpin Faust
Alfred A. Knopf
The Civil War, Faust argues, was a turning point not just in the nation’s history, but also in the way we dealt with issues of “death and dying -- how Americans prepared for death, imagined it, risked it, endured it and worked to understand it.”
The Three of Us
A Family Story
By Julia Blackburn
Pantheon
The daughter of a poet and a painter, Blackburn was raised in a narcissistic household, rent by her parents’ battles. Here, she tells that story with an unflinching clarity.
Whatever It Takes
Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America
By Paul Tough
Houghton Mifflin
Tough offers an inspiring look at Geoffrey Canada, who created the Harlem Children’s Zone, a program to provide children with the support they need from birth until graduation from high school.
Words in Air
The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
Edited by Thomas Travisano with Saskia Hamilton
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Bishop and Lowell met in 1947 and remained confidants until Lowell’s death 30 years later. “Words in Air,” our reviewer wrote, is “not only an intimate, detailed history of American literary life . . . it’s also an exhilarating document on the art of friendship.”
The World
Is What It Is
The Authorized Biography
of V.S. Naipaul
By Patrick French
Alfred A. Knopf
French’s biography of the Nobel laureate may be authorized, but it is hardly sanitized. Rather, this is a candid account of the 20th century’s unlikeliest literary giant.
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75ec23df694f228da0ef71b64077e23c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-ca-horton-foote7-story.html | Taking life (and Broadway) at a leisurely pace | Taking life (and Broadway) at a leisurely pace
Horton Foote is sitting patiently in an orchestra seat at the Booth Theatre on Broadway before a Wednesday matinee of “Dividing the Estate.” He’s waiting to be interviewed but seems content just to stare at the set of the genteel family residence, the source of his economically strapped characters’ squabbling and backbiting.
There’s a look of concern on his face, but ask him what he’s thinking about and he’ll say he’s just amazed by his good fortune. “I can’t get over the fact that I can go into many places in New York, and people know who I am,” he says. “I never really know who I am myself. I’m impressed by that.”
At 92, Foote cuts a gentlemanly figure of somber serenity. Elegantly bundled in a sweater and overcoat, he exudes an uncommon grace and compassion for someone who has survived as long as he has in the treacherous shoals of the American theater. If there are scars, he isn’t flaunting them. Talking to him one-on-one amid sound checks and other distractions, you can feel his vision concentrating on you, absorbing your peculiar individuality the way an animal lover will stop and stare at a strange cat walking through a garden. Yet his gaze seems on loan from the higher precincts of memory and imagination, the forces that have combined in him to produce a distinguished body of work that has grown only richer with time.
This is Foote’s first play on Broadway since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Young Man From Atlanta” in 1997. But you wouldn’t know it from his manner, which is as steady, sensitive and slyly humorous as any of his dramas that have chronicled the hope and heartbreak of that little corner of Texas he long ago rechristened “Harrison.” (As literary ZIP Codes go, Harrison, Texas, is as well-mapped as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.)
“When I first tried writing a play, I was so naive I didn’t know that you couldn’t use the actual names,” Foote recalls. “So I wrote a one-act called ‘Wharton Dance’ and used all of my friends’ names. Some of them were doing things their parents didn’t know they did. No one told me that you couldn’t do this. I thought they’d be delighted, but they weren’t delighted, so I quickly changed the name of Wharton to Harrison.”
From Texas to Pasadena
The cadences of Foote’s sentences are those of a storyteller who respects his material too much to sensationalize it or rush it along. Listening to him talk is a little like sitting beside a brook that flows at its own leisurely pace, quietly transporting earthly life in its flow. When asked if he sees the rhythm of his plays as a corrective to the hyped-up barrage of modern life, he pauses courteously to consider before conceding, “I’m not aware of that mission, but I am aware that my plays have a certain tone.”
That tone stems from his small-town Gulf Coast-area beginnings. His father owned a clothing store in Wharton, a tight-knit community where everyone knew more than one another’s name. A year out of high school, amid the Great Depression, Foote headed out west to the theater school at Pasadena Playhouse. He was determined to realize his dream of becoming an actor, which took hold of him in his early adolescence.
“My parents liked the idea of Pasadena because they thought it would be a very safe place to study, and it was away from Broadway and New York,” he says with soft, nostalgic laughter.
Just a few years later, this young man from Texas would become a New Yorker and a founding member of the American Actors Company, where the dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille, who had been doing improvisational exercises with him, encouraged him to begin writing. These disciplines of acting and writing were in rivalry for a time, until a review helped him clarify which path to choose.
“Brooks Atkinson was the dean of the New York critics, and he came down to see my play ‘Texas Town,’ and for some reason he liked it very much,” Foote recalls. “He loved all the acting, except for one: me. I was playing the lead. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘I’ll show him. I’ll never write again, and I’ll become such a good actor that I’ll make him ashamed of what he wrote.’ But then we went away for the summer, and the desire to act left me as mysteriously as it had arrived.”
His apprenticeship as a playwright officially began. “If you read Atkinson’s review, you’d think I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t. I went to Agnes and said, ‘I’m stymied here.’ And she said, ‘Write about what you know,’ and whether for good or bad, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
When pressed on the subject of the relationship between fact and fiction in his plays, he offers no more than “I’m a storyteller. I don’t know what my method is. I only know that if material fascinates me, I’ll go to the ends of the Earth to do it. That’s really been the secret.”
Success for Foote has been more long haul than windfall. His plays “The Trip to Bountiful” (starring Lillian Gish) and “The Traveling Lady” (starring Kim Stanley) were presented on television and Broadway in the ‘50s, but it was his Oscar-winning screenplay for “To Kill a Mockingbird” in 1962 that considerably raised his profile. Yet even though he won a second Oscar for writing 1983’s “Tender Mercies” and Geraldine Page capped her glorious career with an Oscar for the 1985 movie version of “Bountiful,” Foote says he doesn’t think of himself as a film writer. When inspiration hits, his instinct typically tells him, “This would make a good play.”
“I got a message from Harper Lee today, and it was a wonderful experience adapting her novel, probably the film that means the most to me,” Foote says. “Tender Mercies,” which earned Robert Duvall an Oscar, is also very dear to him. “But I’m not a film person,” he says. “I’m in awe sometimes that they get done, but I don’t think of them as ‘my’ films.”
It’s the theater that still compels him to keep writing and seeking possibilities for what he’s already created. He’d like to see “The Orphan’s Home Cycle,” the series of nine plays he wrote after the death of his parents in the ‘70s and which many consider his greatest dramatic achievement, performed as a group. And “Dividing the Estate,” which was first produced at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., in 1989, couldn’t have emerged at a more apt time -- in fact, it’s uncanny how the work speaks to our current economic turmoil.
The play, set in Harrison in 1987 when the Greater Houston economy was reeling from the oil bust, explores the cumulative impact of financial woes on a family having difficulty relinquishing its notions of the past. Mortgage foreclosures, unemployment, the spread of artery-clogging fast-food chains, environmental degradation -- the subject matter, Foote acknowledges, could have been lifted from today’s headlines.
The production, directed by Michael Wilson, was rapturously received at its Primary Stages premiere last year off-Broadway, and the Broadway engagement, produced by Lincoln Center Theater, has been equally celebrated. Elizabeth Ashley, who plays the matriarch, heads a cast that includes Foote’s daughter, Hallie Foote, and her husband, Devon Abner.
The family affair nature of “Dividing the Estate” has intensified the excitement, but Foote says he’s more realistic now. “I know what the demands are. It’s not just a wish. It costs so much to do a play on Broadway, and it’s unfortunate that you have to pay $100 to see one. I’m not blaming anyone, because no one is getting rich this way. But I remember when 50 cents would get a seat in the balcony.”
Life, health and family
Hallie Foote, who has been celebrated for her comically ferocious portrayal of Mary Jo, the grasping daughter who wants the estate to be immediately chopped up so she can get her husband out of his financial hole, says she’s grateful for this opportunity to be in another of her father’s plays.
“I think he writes really great parts for actors, and especially for women,” she says. “He has a very feminine side to his talent, and I’ve noticed he has a great ear for how women speak.”
Foote says he divides his time among his children (he has four) now that he’s gotten on in years. When he’s in Los Angeles, he stays with Hallie and Devon Abner at their place in Pacific Palisades. Hallie, who seems far removed from the outrageously self-centered Mary Jo, says she appreciates this time with her father and keeps telling him that “90 is the new 70.”
Although he has taken up yoga and routinely faces an active day, Foote no longer drives and has become more dependent on his family. Asked how his health is holding up, he jokes, “Depends on your definition of ‘health,’ ” but he still seems hardy and sharp.
More complicated, perhaps, is the question of how his approach to playwriting may have altered since reaching his upper seniority. “Your whole focus changes, almost imperceptibly,” he says. “You know there are new forces, new interests at work, but you don’t know how. I’m just discovering all of this. I ask a lot of questions but get few answers.”
Foote holds on to advice given to him by theater critic Stark Young, who became a mentor to him at a crucial point early on in his career. “He taught me that talent was a sacred thing, and that you had better take care of it,” he says. “He knew a lot of wonderful people who didn’t take care of it, and he knew the ones who did.”
Young’s writings on legendary actresses Eleonora Duse and Pauline Lord helped Foote find the words to arrive at his own concept of theater, an art of commonplace realism shot through with profoundly lyrical meaning. About Lord, whom Foote considers one of the most talented actors he’s ever seen, Young once wrote: “By what process it is in Miss Lord’s portrayal that her opening of a door and standing there -- or any of that continuous perfection of her playing -- can begin our entrance into a region that we cannot explain, nor predict technically, no one can say. Her performance has a miraculous humility, a subtle variety and gradation and shy power that are indescribable.”
These words might be extended to Foote’s accomplishment as a playwright. But too modest for such comparison, Foote merely says of himself and of his characters, “Life is rough, and there are always things coming up that you just don’t know what to do about. You’re like a blind man, but you do the best you can, and that’s what I’m settling for.”
His goal? “To write a wonderful play,” he says, with the ardent fire of a young man just getting started.
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charles.mcnulty@latimes.com
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e45f58ae9200a27e73f9e372f45657ef | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-ca-network7-story.html | Sci Fi charts its course for future | Sci Fi charts its course for future
The end is in sight for “Battlestar Galactica” and the beleaguered humans of the 12 Twelve Colonies aren’t the only ones fretting about their survival -- there are also the executives at Sci Fi, the cable channel that has ridden “Galactica” as its esteemed flagship, who will now have to carry on without her.
The final 10 episodes of “Battlestar” begin Jan. 19, and though a prequel series called “Caprica” has been locked in for 2010, that show begins with a new cast, a new story and no guarantees. Dave Howe, the president of the cable station owned by NBC Universal, said there is anxiety about losing the award-winning drama that gave Sci Fi so much of its identity.
“Believe me, none of us could ever overestimate the success of ‘Battlestar’ in terms of putting us on the map with not just a critical audience but actually with a new audience,” Howe said. “I think all of us will be depressed when it’s over.”
On a recent visit to Los Angeles, Howe was plainly proud of the broader success of Sci Fi (formerly called the Sci Fi Channel), which for a considerable part of its 16-year history was known primarily as a fanboy corner of the cable dial with reruns of “The Incredible Hulk” and “Planet of the Apes.” Now the channel is in a different stratum.
“We’re at No. 5 for the year,” Howe said, “and within spitting distance of A&E; at No. 4, which I think has shocked some people who have assumed that we’re so niche and narrow that we don’t even register on the Richter scale.”
The question is how the channel will make the earth move again. Howe pointed to the new series “Sanctuary,” which premiered Oct. 3 and saw its pilot finish as the night’s No. 1 prime-time cable entertainment program among adults 25 to 54, as part of the answer.
The fantasy show -- about the mysterious 157-year-old researcher Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping), who tends to a refuge for magical beasties -- is also a symbol of Sci Fi’s eagerness to embrace new models.
“Sanctuary” began as an Internet series of webisodes and is filmed on a “virtual set” of green-screen technology and CGI effects. The show also uses “RED camera,” which records straight to a computer hard drive for a nimbler post-production process.
Howe and his team are pushing online as well and view the cable channel as just part of the hard-wiring needed to get today’s sci-fi and fantasy fans. Sci Fi is now working on a project for a 2010 premiere that Howe calls “the Holy Grail”: The channel is teaming television writers with video-game designers to create a franchise that is both a television series and a massive multi-player game on the Internet -- more than that, the fans who play the game will actually help shape the show’s story arc.
And although it has fiction in its name, Sci Fi is making a push into scripted reality shows, such as “Estate of Panic,” where contestants compete in a haunted house, and the delicately titled “Cash or Capture,” where “men in black” hunt players.
If anything, Sci Fi seems to be dealing with too many ideas with a staggering number of development deals. That may be a bit of anxious hyperactivity by a channel losing its go-to franchise. Howe clearly hopes there’s another “Galactica” in the stars.
“To take something that was a cheesy 1970s show and turn it into something like the ‘West Wing’ of outer space is not something that anybody set out to do,” he said.
“It brought in people who would have never touched us before. Now we have to build on that. That is our challenge.”
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geoff.boucher@latimes.com
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b5c580d0b6df9eec0d4ac3d8aed37147 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-fg-pakistan-india7-story.html | Hoax call prompted a Pakistani air alert | Hoax call prompted a Pakistani air alert
A hoax caller claiming to be India’s foreign minister threatened Pakistan’s president with war during the final hours of the Mumbai attacks, prompting Islamabad to put its air force on its highest alert for nearly 24 hours, a news report said Saturday.
Meanwhile, Indian authorities reported the first arrests since the end of last month’s siege in India’s commercial and entertainment capital, which killed more than 170 people. Police said they had detained two men, one in New Delhi and one in the eastern city of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, who owned the cellphone cards that were later used by the attackers.
Indian police have been interrogating the lone captured suspect, a young man they have identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab, who they say is from the Pakistani village of Faridkot. Pakistani officials have expressed doubt that the man is a Pakistani, but Britain’s Observer newspaper reported today that it had obtained voter registration rolls and the national identity card numbers of the man’s parents, confirming that he was from the village, which is in the Punjab province.
The hoax call and subsequent air force alert, reported by Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper, underscored the volatile atmosphere between the nuclear-armed neighbors during the 60-hour Mumbai rampage by gunmen that began the night of Nov. 26. Relations have remained tense.
The report also seemed certain to raise new questions about the competence of Pakistan’s government, elected less than a year ago. It has been criticized for promising to send the chief of its main spy agency to help India in the investigation, then reneging after objections from the opposition and the security establishment.
The Dawn account said it took the intercession of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others to establish that the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had not made the call to President Asif Ali Zardari threatening military action on the night of Nov. 28.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Lou Fintor, said he was not aware of such an incident. Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in a statement that the call in question was put through because it was believed to have come from a recognized exchange within India’s Foreign Ministry.
A Western diplomat and a Pakistani security official confirmed the broad outlines of the Dawn account.
India has blamed Pakistan-based militants for the attacks, but not the Pakistani state. Pakistan has denied any official involvement, and there is widespread public anger in the country over India’s accusations about Pakistani elements even before the siege ended.
During the alert, Pakistani warplanes patrolled with live weapons, Dawn said. At the time, senior intelligence officials also suggested to reporters that Pakistan might shift tens of thousands of troops to the Indian frontier.
Two arrests reported Saturday by Indian authorities could help support a thesis that the Pakistani militant group had local accomplices.
But a police official cautioned that the two men did not necessarily have direct links to the attackers or advance knowledge of the plot. And security officials later said that one of the men is a counter-insurgency police officer who may have been on an undercover mission, the Associated Press reported.
Officials said the arrested pair had bought large batches of cellphone SIM cards that included one later used by the gunmen during the attacks.
Police say the gunmen were in touch by cellphone with handlers in Pakistan during the siege, allegedly seeking advice.
Police have released information about another Indian who they say was recruited by the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba to scout possible target sites in Mumbai, including some of those that were hit during the attacks. Police say he had maps of the sites.
Although it has not been established whether the man was directly connected to the attacks, outrage in India has grown over the perceived failure of authorities to act on intelligence pointing to an imminent strike on Mumbai. On Friday, India’s new home minister acknowledged that there had been “lapses” in security.
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laura.king@latimes.com
henry.chu@latimes.com
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Laura King reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan
Henry Chu reporting from New Delhi
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d295bcadc6d82203b114ed6e936e79ba | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-07-na-cop-spy7-story.html | Spying on pacifists, greens and nuns | Spying on pacifists, greens and nuns
To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes.
Only one thing seemed strange.
“At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away,” said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. “We all thought that was odd.”
Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups.
Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by “Lucy” and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.
Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One suspect’s file warned that she was “involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her property for meetings.”
“There wasn’t a scintilla of illegal activity” going on, said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and in July obtained the first surveillance files. State police have released other heavily redacted documents.
Investigators, the files show, targeted groups that advocated against abortion, global warming, nuclear arms, military recruiting in high schools and biodefense research, among other issues.
“It was unconscionable conduct,” said Democratic state Sen. Brian Frosh, who is backing legislation to ban similar spying in Maryland unless the police superintendent can document a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” of criminal activity.
The case is the latest to emerge since the Sept. 11 attacks spurred a sharp increase in state and federal surveillance of Americans. Critics say such investigations violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly, and serve to inhibit lawful dissent.
In the largest known effort, the Pentagon monitored at least 186 lawful protests and meetings -- including church services and silent vigils -- in California and other states.
The military also compiled more than 2,800 reports on Americans in a database of supposed terrorist threats. That program, known as TALON, was ordered closed in 2007 after it was exposed in news reports.
The Maryland operation also has ended, but critics still question why police spent hundreds of hours spying on Quakers and other peace groups in a state that reported more than 36,000 violent crimes last year.
Stephen Sachs, a former state attorney general, investigated the scandal for Gov. Martin O’Malley -- a Democrat elected in 2006. He concluded that state police had violated federal regulations and “significantly overreached.”
According to Sachs’ 93-page report and other documents, state police launched the operation in March 2005 out of concern that the planned execution of a convicted murderer might lead to violent protests.
They sent Lucy to join local activists at Takoma Park’s Electrik Maid, a funky community center popular with punk rockers and slam poets. Ten people attended the gathering, including a local representative from Amnesty International.
“The meeting was primarily concerned with getting people to put up fliers and getting information out to local businesses and churches about the upcoming events,” the undercover officer reported later. “No other pertinent intelligence information was obtained.”
That proved true for all 29 meetings, rallies and protests that Lucy ultimately attended. Most drew only a handful of people, and none involved illegal or disruptive actions.
Using the aliases Lucy Shoup and Lucy McDonald, she befriended activists. “I want to get involved in different causes,” she wrote in an e-mail, citing her interest in “anti-death penalty, antiwar and pro-animal actions!!!”
Max Obuszewski, a Baltimore pacifist who leads antiwar protests, said Lucy asked about civil disobedience, but didn’t instigate any. “She never volunteered to do anything, not even hand out leaflets,” he said. “She was not an agent provocateur.”
Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman, said that no one in the department had been disciplined in connection with the spying program. Lucy, who has not been publicly identified, would not consent to an interview, he said.
The surveillance, Shipley said, was inappropriate. And the listing of lawful activity as terrorism “shouldn’t have happened, and has been corrected.”
Most of the files list terrorism as a “primary crime” and a “secondary crime,” then add subgroups for designations such as antiwar protester.
Some contain errors and inconsistencies that are almost comical.
Nancy Kricorian, 48, a novelist on the terrorist list, is coordinator for the New York City chapter of CodePink, an antiwar group. She serves as liaison with local police for group protests, and has never been arrested.
“I have no idea why I made the list,” she said. “I’ve never been to the state of Maryland, except maybe to stop for gas on the way to Washington.”
Josh Tulkin, 27, a registered lobbyist with the Virginia state Legislature, is cited under “terrorism -- environmental extremists.” Tulkin was deputy director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group that claims 15,000 members and regularly meets with governors and members of Congress.
“If asking your elected officials a question about public policy is a crime, then I’m guilty,” he said.
Barry Kissin, 57, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006, heads the Frederick Progressive Action Coalition, a group that works “for social, economic and environmental justice,” according to his police file. Their protests “are always peaceful,” it added.
He was labeled “Terrorism -- Anti-Government.”
Nadine Bloch, 47, runs workshops for protest groups that seek corporate responsibility and builds huge papier-mache puppets often used in street marches. Her terrorism file indicates she participated in a Taking Action for Animals conference in Washington on July 16-18, 2005.
Animal rights, Bloch said, is one of the few causes she doesn’t actively embrace. Besides, she was attending an educators conference in Hawaii that week as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“This whole thing,” she said, “is so absurd.”
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bob.drogin@latimes.com
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ce15f036c761a013b51d7868c0b0ca49 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-08-na-volcker8-story.html | It’ll hurt if Volcker has his way | It’ll hurt if Volcker has his way
A generation ago, Paul A. Volcker was a household name, the Federal Reserve chief who waged a hard-nosed but successful battle against virulent inflation that clouded the nation’s economic future. He did it by engineering a horrific recession, clamping on the financial brakes and sending the economy into a tailspin in 1981.
Nobody knew whether his strategy would work. It certainly caused widespread pain. But by 1986, double-digit inflation was gone and price increases had dropped to about 2% annually, setting the stage for the next two decades of economic stability.
Now Volcker is back, tapped by Barack Obama as a special economic advisor. And if the president-elect follows his advice on the current economic crisis, there could be pain again and no doubt many protests -- but also the possibility of long-term benefits.
In speeches, interviews, public policy reports and congressional testimony, Volcker, 81, has laid out a fairly clear outline of what he thinks is wrong with the present-day financial system and the government’s management of the economy.
His concerns go to the very core of how America lives and how Wall Street operates. A child of the Great Depression and a man of legendary personal thrift, Volcker thinks Americans have been living above their means for too long.
“It is the United States as a whole that became addicted to spending and consuming beyond its capacity to produce,” Volcker lectured the Economic Club of New York in April. “It all seemed so comfortable.”
Bringing consumption back in line with income would not only crimp individuals and families, but also require major readjustments in the global economy, which has relied on the U.S. as consumer of last resort.
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More oversight
Volcker has become a skeptic of modern Wall Street, worried that the nation’s entire financial system has evolved to a point that the government no longer has effective control over all of its important components. And the financial industry has become beholden to complex financial engineering that clouds the picture.
“The market was being run by mathematicians who didn’t know financial markets,” he said this year after the crisis struck.
Clearly, he wants tough new regulations on securities markets, including oversight of hedge funds, in order to avoid the need for a bailout effort by the Fed ever again. It seems likely that he will advise Obama that the growth of U.S. consumption -- everything from government spending to household outlays -- should not be financed by selling ever larger amounts of debt to foreign interests.
But he warns people not to expect an easy ride. “It’s going to be a tough period,” Volcker said in a speech at the Urban Land Institute in late October. “But when we dealt with inflation, it laid the groundwork for 20 years of growth. I’d like to see that happen this time.”
In pressing his case, economists and policy experts say, Volcker will have a level of experience, credibility and integrity that should carry great weight in the new administration.
“It is less about his ideas but more about his stature, wisdom and integrity,” said Princeton University economist Alan Blinder. “There is not another person on the planet who can match that combination.”
“Paul has a very quiet but forceful way of expressing his views,” said Princeton University economist Peter B. Kenen, who began working with Volcker during the Kennedy administration. “He can say, ‘I look back on 50 years of public service and I can count the times that Idea A worked and Idea B didn’t work.’ ”
Volcker will not occupy a position in the Obama administration that gives him any direct authority, a big change from the days when he ran the Fed with an iron grip. While the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies all have turf to protect, Volcker has no turf.
He also will have to work with some outsized egos and giant intellects on Obama’s economic team: Lawrence H. Summers, chairman-designate of the National Economic Council; Timothy F. Geithner, nominated to be Treasury secretary; and Christina Romer, chosen to lead the Council of Economic Advisors.
The group is generally not of one mind. Major differences exist in how they view regulation, monetary control and fiscal policy. Summers, for example, was among the Clinton administration officials who helped relax federal regulation on Wall Street, recalled David R. Henderson, a conservative economist at the Hoover Institution. Romer has questioned how well fiscal policy works at all, a central tenant of Democratic economic thinking.
Further complicating the picture, Volcker has an entirely new and untested organization to head.
The day before Thanksgiving, Obama named him chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, an entity seemingly created to bring Volcker, his experience, knowledge and credibility into the administration. The board is supposed to provide “fresh thinking and bold new ideas from the leading minds across America,” Obama said.
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Half-century career
Volcker is the chairman and Austan Goolsbee, a noted University of Chicago economist and longtime Obama advisor on economics, will be staff director.
But those who know Volcker think his influence will be clearly felt, regardless of his portfolio.
His career has spanned half a century. He began working at the New York Fed in the 1950s, and five years later went to Chase Manhattan Bank, where he became a lifelong confidant of the Rockefeller family. By the early 1960s, President Kennedy brought Volcker into the Treasury Department in his first government job at the policy-making level.
He later held top appointments under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter and Reagan.
In recent years, he has led investigations into how Swiss bankers handled the accounts of Holocaust victims, the United Nations’ troubled food-for-oil program and the accounting scandal surrounding the collapse of Enron Corp. He also chairs the Group of Thirty, a who’s who of world economists that examines complex public policy issues. It met over the weekend to discuss an upcoming report on the overhaul of financial regulations.
Volcker grew up during the Depression, raised by a father who taught him one lesson above everything else: Integrity is a person’s greatest asset, said Volcker’s sister, Virginia Streitfeld. She calls Volcker, who stands 6-foot-7, her “little brother.”
He is known for practicing what he preaches about the nation living within its means. He travels with one business suit and lives in the same Manhattan apartment that he bought decades ago.
When he was Fed chief, he lived in a modest Maryland apartment and did his laundry on Saturdays at his daughter’s house nearby, recalled Marina v.N.Whitman, a University of Michigan economist who has known Volcker for decades.
“Paul is one of the most frugal guys on Earth,” Whitman said. “The advice he gives and the way he views the world are entirely consistent with his personal ethics and lifestyle.”
He is outraged by executive compensation packages, seeing them as part of a larger breakdown on Wall Street.
“Paul can’t imagine anybody wanting or needing that much compensation for consumption purposes,” said Whitman, a member of the Group of Thirty. “It probably offends his sense of right and proper.”
As for the bigger picture, Volcker feels that tremendous changes in the financial system have eclipsed government regulators, allowing excesses to go unchecked and subjecting the economy to ever greater shocks. Over time, the U.S. has moved from a system of highly regulated banks that funded the economy to a system of highly engineered financial markets that operated outside the scope of regulators.
Complex financial instruments were created that attempted to slice and dice the risks, handing them to investors who would be most willing to accept them.
But the mathematical models that were supposed to measure those risks actually hid the true risk from the marketplace, Volcker has said: For one thing, no mathematical model can accurately predict human hysteria in a financial panic. “Simply stated, the bright new financial system . . . failed the test of the marketplace,” Volcker said this year.
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‘Old-fashioned’
“Paul has long been skeptical about financial engineering, which is another way of saying concocting schemes on Wall Street that nobody can understand,” economist Blinder said. “He has some old-fashioned ideas that banks should apply some common sense to loaning money -- like making sure borrowers can repay.”
The result of such problems was that the Federal Reserve, the linchpin of U.S. economic power, was forced to “take actions to the very edge of its lawful and implied powers” that violated “time-honored central bank practices,” Volcker told the Economic Club of New York.
“The only reason I sleep at night,” said a longtime friend and business partner of Volcker’s, speaking on background, “is that Paul Volcker will have the president’s ear.”
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ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com
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8923768c01c0377d1625d6fe371ec817 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-08-oe-fearing8-story.html | Fido can’t balance the budget | Fido can’t balance the budget
Across California, municipal animal shelters and humane societies are reporting increases in pet relinquishments this year as high as 30%. Families losing their homes in the credit crisis or losing their jobs are dropping off their Fluffies and Fidos, adding moral and emotional insult to economic injury.
And Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found a way to make matters worse. Included in his November budget proposal, but lost amid major political hot potatoes like the vehicle license fee, was a plan to add a sales tax to veterinary services as part of the solution to the state’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall. In other words, because state leaders failed in their basic responsibility to keep government functioning, pet owners may have to foot the bill, and pets themselves may pay the ultimate price.
Before anyone thinks pet owners are not a constituency to reckon with, consider this: California has the highest number of households of any state -- 7.3 million households, or 57% -- that own a pet, including an estimated 7 million dogs and nearly 9 million cats, according to the latest statistics from the American Veterinary Medical Assn. In 2006, Californians spent about $2.7 billion on veterinary services such as routine exams, vaccinations, prescription medications, surgery and emergency care.
This does not even include expenditures on veterinary services for the millions of animals that enter California animal shelters each year, the tens of millions of animals raised for food each year on California farms or the thousands of wild animals aided by local and state agencies every year. For example, the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services writes checks to area veterinarians totaling $2.4 million annually for spay/neuter and medical services. With a sales tax possibly increasing to 10.25% in Los Angeles County, the governor’s tax idea would thus take nearly a quarter of a million dollars from these critical local programs that help care for abandoned animals and prevent unwanted births.
Under Schwarzenegger’s proposal, these medical expenses now would be lumped into a proposed category of taxable services such as “appliance and furniture repair, vehicle repair.” Does the governor really think repairing dishwashers and Dodges is the same as “repairing” dogs?
The state doesn’t tax cosmetic surgeries, so why should we tax an essential medical cost for animals? We can’t skimp on veterinary care without jeopardizing the health and safety of our pets and other animals in our collective care.
We all know these are difficult times and that lawmakers are under the gun to close an $11-billion gap for this fiscal year alone. And those of us who can should be prepared to pitch in. But under the governor’s plan, many who are already making tough economic choices would be forced to add as much as 10.25% to the cost of veterinary care.
This new financial burden would not only result in less medical care for animals, it would almost certainly result in more dogs and cats being abandoned or relinquished to animal shelters. It is bad policy that would add to the taxpayers’ burden through higher animal-control and sheltering costs, increase the cost of caring for animals raised for food and be a step backward in the otherwise progressive trajectory toward our treatment of animals.
During a previous budget crisis, Schwarzenegger was dubbed the “pet terminator” for proposing to cut state-mandated funding for animal shelters. After an outcry from animal lovers across the state, he quickly scuttled the idea, crediting one of his daughters with pointing out the error of his ways.
Let’s hope the Schwarzenegger children are paying attention now. Our state’s animals are counting on their wise and compassionate counsel once again.
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070d9b54487e49a9963156fdba079ce4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-09-et-opie9-story.html | Sitting pretty | Sitting pretty
When an artist picks up dangling threads and ties them together, sometimes the result is a jolt as powerful as when electrical wires cross. Sparks fly, heads turn and a dangerous beauty is unleashed.
Catherine Opie is an artist who tied threads together in 1991. In a group of tight, close-up photographic portraits of friends, which she titled “Being and Having,” Opie touched established norms of Conceptual art to a strand of traditional documentary street photography. The startling result promptly blew a fuse.
At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, “Catherine Opie: American Photographer” shows what happened in the aftermath. It opens with a dozen “Being and Having” works, then continues with portrait and landscape series produced during the last 14 years.
Those cross wires too: There are portraits of places and landscapes of faces. Plus, a devastating narrative of quotidian American experience during the terror-soaked 21st century, written in 17 lush color pictures shot “In and Around Home,” interspersed with bleary Polaroids snapped off a TV set. It’s an acute portrayal of life’s joys and sorrows during the nation’s grim recent history.
The net result is the single most riveting solo retrospective I have seen in an American museum this year. “Catherine Opie: American Photographer” accomplishes what few manage: Through smart selection and scrupulous scholarship -- the catalog is just about perfect -- it secures the reputation of an important artist. Like many others, I’ve admired the Los Angeles-based artist’s work for a long time; but this show (through Jan. 7) made me see Opie’s photographs more fully, more deeply and in a provocative variety of new ways.
“Bo,” the self-portrait within “Being and Having,” is emblematic. In a frame-filling close-up, Opie shows herself in the guise of a masculine alter-ego. Her face is soft but her stare is hard, while the netting beneath the false mustache affixed above her upper lip betrays its status as chosen costume.
All 12 portraits place the sitter before a screaming, caution-yellow background, which ramps up a sense of confrontation. And all feature prominent facial hair, including sideburns, beards, goatees and assorted mustaches. Nameplates affixed to the frames -- Papa Bear, Whitey, Chicken, Chief, etc. -- aren’t much help in decoding who is male and who is female beneath the disguises. But the cocky facial hair asserts that the standard by which society measures identity is emphatically male.
And “real men” don’t play dress-up. Costume photography has been a staple from Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1860s to Cindy Sherman in the 1970s. Opie gives the tradition a distinctly queer twist, playing with gay and lesbian stereotypes.
But a strange thing happens. The in-your-face “Bo,” Opie’s self-portrait as a “drag king,” comes to seem at once touching, playful and absurd. All 12 faces become delicate, almost fragile in the poignancy of their predetermined social framing.
As its title implies, “Being and Having” locates the tensions between the identity one is born with and the identity constructed through the intricacies of social interaction -- between nature and culture. It became a template for subsequent portrait series as well as for Opie’s much-discussed interest in what community means.
As a lesbian, she lives simultaneously inside and outside American society. As an artist, she considers the complexity of that otherwise conventional experience.
It leads to marvelous surprises. Opie’s chronicle of L.A. freeways document the Herculean effort behind the creation of modern suburbia, which is what those roadways connect to the older communal model of the city. Horizontal in format, the sleek, sepia-toned photographs recall Francis Frith recording the colossal Egyptian pharaohs’ monuments at Luxor in the 1850s.
She has also made four urban portraits -- L.A., Minneapolis, St. Louis and New York. The latter is focused on Wall Street, the nation’s financial capital. Chilling in its beauty, the large-format series hugs the street, usually eliminating the sky and deftly contradicting the vertical city with a horizontal sweep reminiscent of William Henry Jackson photographing the canyons of Yellowstone. Elaborate, monumental buildings are juxtaposed with ugly urban detritus -- dumpsters, gutter trash, sterile plazas lined with security barricades -- all without a living soul in sight.
Opie works in series, and the exhibition is divided into discreet gallery spaces that each encapsulate a body of work. It’s effective, with one notable exception.
The show is not installed on the Guggenheim’s famous spiral ramp. The galleries are instead dispersed throughout the building on different floors, mostly in the annex, which chops up the experience of her artistic development. Given the boring group show currently in the spiral, one wishes the placement of the exhibitions had been reversed.
The most beautiful room pairs 14 landscape views of ice fishermen and their shacks on snowy frozen lakes in Minnesota with 14 seascape views of early-morning surfers bobbing in the Pacific Ocean along the misty Malibu shore. “Icehouses” (2001) and “Surfers” (2003) are monumental -- more than 4 1/2 feet tall -- and verge on abstraction.
Vast, grayish white expanses are striped across the middle with a horizon line and dotted with figures dwarfed by nature’s void. Both chart the shifting organization of temporary communities of sportsmen who have taken to the water, liquid and frozen. For land creatures this environment Opie possesses a distinct otherness. Play mingles with survival.
Opie, 47, first trained as a street photographer. When she then enrolled at California Institute of the Arts in 1986, she got a full academic education in Conceptual art. Her subsequent fusion of street photography with Conceptual art’s documentary uses of camera work is distinctive.
It has some precedent in the “New Topographics” movement of the 1970s, in which artists such as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore and the German duo of Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed the emerging post-industrial landscape. But Opie’s art not only accepts the potential for aesthetics in camera work, which Conceptual artists simply set aside and the New Topographics artists regarded as a problem to wrestle. Opie just dives right in, embracing art’s history as being potentially as meaningful as the subject being documented.
Perhaps the most extraordinary example is 1993’s “Self-Portrait/Cutting,” which plays with the history of painted portraiture while turning its back on it. Seated before a decorative green background like a royal icon by Holbein, she has a bleeding, childlike, stick-figure drawing of lesbian domestic bliss cut into the flesh of her back. (Artist Judie Bamber wielded the blade.) Art’s exalted tradition of the female nude floats into view.
Opie simultaneously accepts and rejects it. And she remakes it into a powerful document of humanist experience.
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christopher.knight@latimes.com
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a2f5ff87c54d1f65748065f48c16b63f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-09-fi-gas9-story.html | $1 a gallon is next barrier for gasoline, some predict | $1 a gallon is next barrier for gasoline, some predict
Pump prices headed toward five-year lows nationally and in California, the Energy Department said Monday. And despite a bump in crude prices, some analysts say the slide might not end until oil hits $25 a barrel and gasoline drops to $1 a gallon or below.
The hope for some good news from President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package and production-cut hints from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries were enough to keep crude above $40 for at least another day, analysts said.
Crude oil for January delivery climbed $2.90 to $43.71 a barrel Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But some experts didn’t see much momentum behind the increase because of expectations of a bleak jobs picture for January and weaker demand for oil.
“The world has changed. I don’t see any reason why $1 gasoline isn’t possible, and $25-a-barrel oil is not out of the question,” said Phil Flynn, vice president and senior market analyst for the Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. “I don’t think the downside is over. There is a lot of surplus oil out there.”
But Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst for Oppenheimer and Co., is one of the analysts saying that oil won’t stay down, even if the historic price drop isn’t quite over yet.
“Some of the same clowns who were predicting $200-a-barrel oil a few months ago are in the crowd predicting $25 a barrel. But just as we believed that oil above $100 was not sustainable by market fundamentals, oil below $30 isn’t sustainable either,” Gheit said.
“Even in the midst of this global recession, the world is still using 80 million barrels of oil a day. If production is cut back sharply and the oil companies keep reining in capital spending, it will come back to haunt us,” Gheit added, saying that the global economy would eventually improve and place greater demands on supplies.
Oil’s relative weakness -- down from highs above $145 a barrel in July -- continued to drive the price of a gallon of gasoline down at an astounding rate.
Nationally, the average price of self-serve regular gasoline fell 11.2 cents to $1.699 a gallon. That was $1.30 below the year-earlier price and was the lowest average since the $1.688 the Energy Department recorded on Feb. 23, 2004.
In California, the average fell to $1.805, down 15 cents during the past week. It was $1.52 lower than at this time last year and was the lowest recorded since the average stood at $1.753 on Feb. 2, 2004.
The sound of those additional coins in his pocket was music to the ears of motorist Bruce Coddington, 58, an electrical power plant operator from the logging country of McKinleyville, Calif., which is about 70 miles south of Crescent City.
Coddington had paid as much as $4.99 a gallon for diesel for his 2000 Ford truck and nearly as much for the premium gasoline required by his 350-horsepower 2004 Corvette.
“It used to cost me $100 just to fill up the truck. It hurt a lot of people up here who drive trucks and who work in the lumber industry,” Coddington said.
Told that some analysts were speculating on gasoline dropping under $1 a gallon nationally and just slightly higher in California, Coddington didn’t need time to think about what his reaction would be.
“I would be ecstatic,” said Coddington, who last filled up his Corvette on $2.20-a-gallon premium gas at the local Costco on Friday.
“Gas that cheap would be great for the economy, and it will help bring a lot of other prices for the things we have to buy down too,” he said.
Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service in New Jersey, said that more relief was probably on the way. Kloza noted that California wholesale gasoline prices were running at about 99.5 cents a gallon Monday.
Kloza wasn’t among those who saw gasoline dropping below $1 a gallon, but he said more price relief was on the way. Kloza predicted that the U.S. average would drop to about $1.50 a gallon, with California coming in slightly higher before stabilizing.
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ron.white@latimes.com
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449aeadfb33fb2abccc8489e27ee678f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-09-fi-tribune9-story.html | Owner of L.A. Times files for bankruptcy | Owner of L.A. Times files for bankruptcy
In perhaps the starkest sign yet of trouble in the news business, media giant Tribune Co. -- owner of the Los Angeles Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and other newspapers and TV stations -- filed Monday for bankruptcy protection from creditors.
Tribune’s woes stem from a combination of plunging advertising revenue and a heavy debt load of $12.9 billion, much of it incurred a year ago when it was taken private by Chicago real estate entrepreneur Sam Zell.
Tribune is far from being the only troubled media company. In the last week alone, the New York Times said it would mortgage its Manhattan headquarters for as much as $225 million to help cover operating costs, industry leader Gannett Co. pushed ahead with the layoff of 2,000 employees, and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and the Miami Herald were put up for sale.
“Everywhere you go, it’s the same story,” said Alan Mutter, a veteran newspaper editor and investor who writes the Newsosaur blog. “It’s all kind of appalling.”
But Tribune has become the first major news organization to file for bankruptcy, which could add a new dimension of uncertainty for the company and its 16,000 employees. During a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, major management decisions must pass muster with a bankruptcy judge, and the ultimate fate of a company -- including whether it remains intact or is sold off in pieces -- could be decided in part by its creditors.
Zell said Monday that Tribune’s business units would operate as normal and that the focus of the reorganization would be “on our debt, not on our operations.”
In its filing in Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, the company, which owns eight metropolitan daily newspapers and 23 television stations, said it had $7.6 billion in assets and debt of $12.9 billion.
Among the company’s top creditors were the banks that had lent it more than $8 billion to complete the Zell deal, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch & Co.
Another top creditor is Mark Willes, the former chief executive of Times Mirror Co., who is owed $11.2 million in deferred compensation from his severance package of more than $64 million, dating from Tribune’s acquisition of Times Mirror in 2000.
Industry analyst Ken Doctor of Outsell Inc. said Tribune “stands out like a sore thumb because of its outsize debt, which is far greater than any other newspaper company’s.” But Zell and other corporate executives said the company had a positive cash flow before debt service was taken into account. Its largest units, including The Times, are profitable on the same basis.
“The focus of the filing today is 100% on relieving the pressure on the company from its debt,” Zell told reporters. “By virtue of the filing today we will suspend making interest payments, which should give us added flexibility in order to continue moving forward.”
The company has been considering the possible purchase of the Orange County Register and the San Diego Union-Tribune in an effort to consolidate the Southern California market for print and online advertising.
Zell did not address any acquisition talks with Register owner Freedom Communications Inc. or Copley Press Inc., which owns the Union-Tribune. In response to a question about those possible purchases, he said that strategically sound deals probably would be approved by the bankruptcy judge.
Despite their struggles, many newspapers remain profitable. Before the bankruptcy filing, the Los Angeles Times projected it would make $100 million this year, down from about $240 million two years ago.
And newspapers are rapidly gaining millions of new readers on the Internet, although the ad revenue from online news has not kept pace.
With Tribune now in bankruptcy protection, its creditors will have to decide whether they’re willing to restructure the debt, as Zell hopes, or try to get at least some of their money back another way, such as by a sale of its assets.
A breakup seems unlikely, however. Even if buyers were to emerge for some of the company’s media properties, financing such purchases could be a major stumbling block given that credit remains tight.
In many bankruptcies, creditors exchange debt for an ownership stake in the business, in the hope of eventually selling that stake at a profit. Barring a breakup of the company, the issue facing Tribune’s creditors could come down to how much of a debt load to leave on the company’s balance sheet and how much of an equity stake to demand.
Tribune directors approved the action to file Chapter 11 in a meeting Monday, just as a $70-million payment on a medium-term loan was coming due. Although Tribune had about $300 million cash on hand, more than enough to make the installment payment, executives had been trying to achieve a broad restructuring of its debt in conjunction with the payment.
Those efforts failed in part because economic conditions have made projecting the course of the company’s revenue and earnings exceptionally difficult: Not only are projections of the length and depth of the recession hard to come by, but also the continuing credit crunch has injected uncertainty into even routine business transactions.
Tribune reported last month that its operating revenue for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 decreased 10%, to $1 billion, as advertising revenue fell 19% compared with a year earlier.
Tribune’s debt service costs have been running at about $1 billion a year. A $512-million principal payment related to the buyout is due in June.
Money for that payment was to come from asset sales, particularly the sale of the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise. That sale has been delayed in part because of the credit crisis and is now expected to take place in 2009.
Some analysts have estimated the value of the Cubs, the team’s landmark Wrigley Field ballpark and other associated real estate at more than $1 billion. The Cubs and the related properties were excluded from the bankruptcy filing, the company said, to enable the sale to proceed.
The big losers in the Tribune bankruptcy may be banks and bond investors that funded Zell’s buyout.
The credit analysis firm Fitch Ratings said Monday that the bank lenders that provided the bulk of the financing might recover as little as 31% of the investments.
For other debt holders, Fitch said, “0% recovery is realistic.”
The bond market had anticipated Tribune’s looming distress. As recently as two weeks ago, some Tribune bonds were trading as low as 14 cents on the dollar.
In most corporate bankruptcies, the holdings of equity investors are largely wiped out. In Tribune’s case, all of the company’s equity is held by an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. As yet, the company has not allocated any shares in the ESOP to employees.
Tribune said it hoped to preserve the ESOP structure, which gives it valuable tax exemptions.
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Times staff writers Tom Petruno and Tiffany Hsu contributed to this report.
james.rainey@latimes.com
michael.hiltzik@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Tribune Co. at a glance
The Chicago company, founded in 1847, is now controlled by real estate magnate Sam Zell.
Newspapers: Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and five other metropolitan dailies
Broadcasting: Twenty-three television stations including KTLA-TV Channel 5, as well as cable station WGN America
Sports: The Chicago Cubs baseball team, which is for sale and not part of the bankruptcy
Employees: About 16,000
What’s next: The company wants to renegotiate its debt with lenders and other creditors under the supervision of the Bankruptcy Court. Creditors will have to decide how much of a break they’re willing to give the company and what to demand in return. Typically in Chapter 11 bankruptcies, creditors exchange some portion of the debt for partial or total ownership of the business. The renegotiation process can take many months.
Sources: Tribune Co., Times research
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56dadc76ed1499112e1c92d3974088c5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-09-na-bush9-story.html | A few words about Bush | A few words about Bush
In case any Bush administration officials have trouble summing up the boss’ record, the White House is providing a few helpful suggestions.
A two-page memo that has been sent to Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials offers a guide for discussing Bush’s eight-year tenure during their public speeches.
Titled “Speech Topper on the Bush Record,” the talking points state that Bush “kept the American people safe” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained “the honor and the dignity of his office.”
The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success.
It mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his presidency: the collapse of the housing market and major financial services companies, the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
In a section on the economy, speakers are invited to say that Bush cut taxes after 2001, setting the stage for years of job growth.
As for the current economic crisis, the memo says that Bush “responded with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown.”
The document is otherwise silent on the recession, which claimed 533,000 jobs in November, the highest number in 34 years.
A copy of the memo was obtained by The Times’ Washington bureau. A spokesman for Bush said Monday that the White House routinely sends out suggestions to officials and allies on ways to talk about the administration’s record.
“What we have in mind with these documents is we feel the president’s many accomplishments haven’t been given the attention they deserve and in some cases have been purposely ignored,” said Carlton Carroll, a White House spokesman.
No one is required to recite the talking points laid out by the White House, Carroll said.
The memo closes with a reference to Bush’s 1999 memoir, “A Charge to Keep”:
“Above all, George W. Bush promised to uphold the honor and the dignity of his office. And through all the challenges and trials of his time in office, that is a charge that our president has kept.”
One accomplishment cited is passage of the No Child Left Behind law, Bush’s attempt to improve education. “He promised to raise standards and accountability in public schools -- and delivered the No Child Left Behind Act,” the talking points read.
On the presidential campaign trail this year, Democratic candidates found that any criticism of No Child Left Behind was a surefire applause line.
President-elect Barack Obama promised to revamp the program, contending that it elevated test-taking at the expense of a well-rounded education.
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peter.nicholas@latimes.com
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