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abe11b8bff9dc19513694e8352195a98 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/07/federal-judge-rules-bitcoin-is-real-money/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter | Federal Judge Rules Bitcoin Is Real Money | Federal Judge Rules Bitcoin Is Real Money
It's actually money, says judge (and SEC)
Trendon Shavers is accused of being the Bernie Madoff of Bitcoin. The SEC is going after him for allegedly running a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme from 2011 to 2012. Through his Texas-based "Bitcoin Savings & Trust," he, under the name "pirateat40," took in 700,000 Bitcoin -- worth $4.5 million at the time -- from investors to whom he promised an up to 7% return. In fact, he was paying out Bitcoin from later investors to the earlier investors, taking a hefty cut for himself, and the scheme all eventually fell apart.
Shavers "misappropriated" over 150,000 Bitcoin, according to the SEC, but made poor Bitcoin-for-dollar day trades and wound up only making about $150,000 off of them. He used that money for "rent, car-related expenses, utilities, retail purchases, casinos, and meals," according to the SEC. His 66 investors from across the country lost a total of 263,104 Bitcoin, worth almost $3 million at the time Bitcoin Savings & Trust (BTCST) went belly up, and worth $26 million today. Protip: Don't invest your money with a self-termed "pirate."
In defending himself against the SEC suit, Shavers argued that Bitcoin isn't actually money and that the SEC shouldn't be able to prosecute him. "Shavers argues that the BTCST investments are not securities because Bitcoin is not money, and is not part of anything regulated by the United States," writes Magistrate Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas. "Shavers also contends that his transactions were all Bitcoin transactions and that no money ever exchanged hands."
So Shavers essentially tried to say that Bitcoin is a bauble and that he was taking in digital points and giving out digital points that had no real world value. The prosecutors at the SEC disagree, arguing that investment of Bitcoins into Shaver's company were "both investment contracts and notes, and, thus, are securities.” (That bodes well for the Winklevoss twins who are currently trying to get the SEC to approve their Bitcoin exchange traded fund so that institutional investors can get their hands in the digital currency.)
Like Tinkerbell the blue fairy turning Pinocchio into a real boy, the judge sided with the SEC, giving Bitcoin his stamp of approval as real world money.
"It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money," writes Judge Mazzant in a ruling on Tuesday. "It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses."
Yup.
"The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, and Yuan," writes Mazzant. "Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money."
Bad news for Shavers, but good news for Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their proposed Bitcoin ETF -- which will hopefully be better run than Bitcoin Savings & Trust.
Hattip: Venkat Balasubramani
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550edd39d97f74c2029a61806552f925 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/05/loveroom-willed-into-existence-by-journalists-eager-to-bash-an-airbnb-for-hotties/ | 'LoveRoom' Willed Into Existence By Journalists Eager To Bash An Airbnb For Hotties | 'LoveRoom' Willed Into Existence By Journalists Eager To Bash An Airbnb For Hotties
LoveRoom 'launched' a week ago and quickly changed its splash image to the one at left when it... [+] realized it had grabbed a photo of someone famous
Last week, several media organizations got very excited about something called "LoveRoom." "No uglies," screamed a Betabeat headline."'LoveRoom' ensures only hotties will rent your extra bedroom." Mashable followed up with a report on the "new startup sure to spark a lot of hate." The New York Post put the "startup" in its paper over the weekend, leading CBS New York to blog about "the new app."
But the thing is, Loveroom doesn't really exist. It's an idea with a website attached, not a legitimate business (yet). Writing about it as if it is an existing service is like wandering into a bar and turning a drunken dude's wouldn't-it-be-crazy-if-this-thing-existed into a report about this crazy thing that exists.
I first grew suspicious after my colleague Jeff Bercovici emailed this link last Monday, asking, "Could this be real?" When I visited the LoveRoom site, I noted it was hosted by "LaunchRock," a website that offers people the opportunity to, essentially, 'turn your idea into an actual business' by seeing if people are interested in it. The homepage for the "start-up" was just a form asking people to hand over their email addresses if interested in the service. So I was a little surprised that much of the coverage of the app talked about it as if it was already well into existence, while debating the ethics of rejecting ugly people who want to be part of the share economy and a room rental service with a hint of brothel-ism. When I reached out to its "founder," he was equally surprised.
"Initially, I found the articles hilarious," said Josh Bocanegra, 23, who came up with the idea for LoveRoom just two weeks ago. "I didn’t think that they would cover it. It’s a thought experiment that I would work on if there was interest. But it was really more of a joke because I didn’t think people would really be interested."
The tools of the digital age lower the barrier for creating an app or a business -- and create an equally low barrier to getting something written about you if there's some controversy around the app you're introducing. Cue "Bang With Friends" which had equal outrageous-ness potential (but was at least a functioning app when people started writing about it). All the attention that app got led to a reported million-dollar funding round. But it starts making you wonder whether tech journalism is about covering tech that people actually use, or fueling bubbles through outsized attention to what -- at least in this case -- can be essentially a thought experiment.
"I was surprised and really unprepared. I didn’t think people would consider a LaunchRock page as something that would be covered," says Bocanegra. "I’m new to the tech world. So I’m like, okay, I guess this is how it works. I’ve read about tech start-ups with just a landing page before. I just didn’t think it would happen to us."
The New York Post did at least quote tech journo Seth Porges saying that he was "not totally convinced it’s anything more than an attention-getting digital art project" in an article that otherwise treated it as a tech company on the verge of launching. Bocanegra and his girlfriend, Jeanine, recent transplants to Los Angeles from Buffalo, NY came up with the idea after noting that the air mattress on the floor of their Hollywood apartment got way more offers on Airbnb when paired with a photo of the attractive Jeanine. Bocanegra, who makes his living selling beats to R&B and hip hop artists, says he's put other ideas onto LaunchRock before -- including InterestHer, a video based dating site; DebateMe, a website for debating people; and a weekly stylist service -- none of which have been fully developed, or that got the kind of attention that LoveRoom got.
There wasn't a ton of planning that went into the Launchrock page. Bocanegra had done a Google image search for a "hot girl" when putting the website together, but accidentally grabbed a photo belonging to Smallville actress Kristin Kreuk. After the attention he worried about copyright issues and swapped it out for a different hot girl found in a Google image search -- who he hopes is not famous. He originally posted the Launchrock link to a Facebook page for Silicon Beach, the nickname for LA's tech scene, and "then it went crazy on Twitter."
It was a thought experiment not a start-up, but now that it has gotten so much attention, Bocanegra says he and his girlfriend are actually going to try to create it. Bocanegra says he's taught himself programming over the last year and that his girlfriend is working on the design, and that they hope to have a beta product in coming weeks. His plan is to do a kind of overlay on the Airbnb site where people can register with an Airbnb account and then list themselves as single (a checkbox not offered via Airbnb), ala Padmapper to Craigslist. However, he noted that he's been told that Airbnb doesn't have an API and that he's going to need a developer to help him do a script to scrape info from the site. He has not yet run this plan by Airbnb.
"I’m pretty much almost done with the beta and I’m hoping to get it out by next week," says Bocanegra who has email addresses from 800 people who expressed interest in the service. "The actual app I’m not sure of yet. We’re still looking for developers. Hopefully, we’ll have it out by Valentine’s Day."
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54b128befc2a8a5bbb8a07dacc5f02a1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/your-phone-number-is-going-to-be-scored/ | Your Phone Number Is Going To Get A Reputation Score | Your Phone Number Is Going To Get A Reputation Score
The report Telesign will generate for every phone number. Hopefully yours doesn't look like this... [+] one.
Telesign is one of those companies that you've probably never heard of but that provides services you likely use on a regular basis, especially if you have two-factor authentication set up for any of your online accounts. Based out of L.A.'s "Silicon Beach," Telesign helps companies verify that a mobile number belongs to a user (sending those oh-so-familiar "verify that you received this code" texts) and takes care of the mobile part of two-factor authenticating or password changes. Among their over 300 clients are nine of the ten largest websites in the U.S., says Telesign's CEO Steve Jillings, though he's shy about naming them (at least on the record). He says that fraudulent and fake accounts are greatly reduced for customers who require a mobile number be attached to an account.
The company has had massive growth over the last three years thanks to online security concerns and breaches. Communication companies such as Google , Facebook and Twitter have famously enabled two-factor authentication. "The tide turned when Google started offering two-factor in 2010. When free email providers started doing two-factor, a lot of people asked why their financial services weren't doing the same thing," says Jillings, a tall New Zealander whose accent has faded thanks to years spent in the U.S., including a stint heading an email security company that did spam detection that sold to Microsoft in 2005 for $200 million.
Now Telesign wants to leverage the data -- and billions of phone numbers -- it sees deals with daily to provide a new service: a PhoneID Score, a reputation-based score for every number in the world that looks at the metadata Telesign has on those numbers to weed out the burner phones from the high-quality ones. Yes, there's yet another company out there with an inscrutable system making decisions about you that will effect the kinds of services you're offered.
"Companies simply send a user’s phone number to TeleSign via its REST API to receive a real-time score, risk level and a recommendation," says the company in a press release. "TeleSign’s clients use this predictive data to prevent scammers and fraudsters from abusing services such as creating fake accounts, and for approving online transactions with greater confidence."
“We each have a unique mobile identity tied to our phone number that is linked to a wealth of information, from where we live to our online activities. This makes the phone number the most efficient and conclusive method to identify fraud online,” said Telesign's CTO Charles McColgan in the release. “PhoneID Score introduces a new way for companies to quickly verify transactions, block fake accounts, and prevent eCommerce fraud, based simply on a phone number.”
Telesign sees phone numbers as a replacement for social security numbers -- a form of identification that can be instantly verified (thanks to your holding it in the hand), that comes with details about who owns it, what kind of phone it is (land line, mobile, VOIP, etc), how long they've had it, where they get their service, and which companies and apps they're attached to.
The Telesign rating system
I asked the company to score me and a few of my colleagues to get a sense of how this will work. The range is 0 to 1000, with 0 being a gold iPhone and 1000 being a burner phone that’s only used to order drugs and kill people. Luckily, none of us got that latter score. My office landline scored a 100. Two of us got 10s for our mobiles, and two others got a 200. I also got to see where all of the numbers had been registered and who provided their service.
These are all high quality scores, says Jillings, who explained that anything below 200 will tell a company to roll out the red carpet for you. He didn't seem to think the differences in the scores mattered and could not explain what might account for the 10 - 200 range, though one of those 200-scored accounts is less than a year old. Between 400 and 600 would lead to a fuller review, and anything over 600 would be flagged as a potentially fraudulent or abusive account, and likely blocked from signing up for that service. So what determines the score?
Telesign pulls where the phones were registered and who provides the service. The older an account is, the better. And if the number shows up as attached to legitimate accounts with companies, apps, and websites to which Telesign provides services, that's a good thing. Having a newly-opened account results in a lower score, or using a less-well known carrier, or having a number that’s not registered with some of the customers for which this company does two-factor authentication.
"A lot of the data comes from Telesign’s proprietary network data," says Jillings. “We see very interesting traffic patterns in our closed network of clients.”
Jillings emphasizes that they're not directly using their clients' data, but they are using the metadata around numbers. If for example, a particular number applies for accounts rapid fire with a bunch of their clients, that's a bad sign. Their clients also contribute data back to their network, such as known fraud associated with a particular number.
Jillings also says that because Telesign is a a mobile network operation licensed out of UK, it gets access to network oriented data. "If I’m roaming in France, for example," says Jillings," the French operator can do a network analysis to see if that's a pre-paid account or not before deciding to put a call through to it. We're using that data with a different spin."
It's a self-serving prediction, but Jillings thinks there will be a time when every account will require an associated mobile phone number, in which case Telesign's scoring system will be important.
"The current user name/password system is broken," says Jillings. “Eventually the mobile phone as authenticator of identity will be everywhere, because it's immediately verifiable. You’ll have to provide your phone number for every site.”
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93d08f33527f7406bb974913ce4bbaba | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/14/silicon-valley-data-handover-infographic/ | Thanks, Snowden! Now All The Major Tech Companies Reveal How Often They Give Data To Government | Thanks, Snowden! Now All The Major Tech Companies Reveal How Often They Give Data To Government
Graphic credit: David Lada.
Google has been pumping out a transparency report for years, telling its users how often the feds and local law enforcement ask for information about its users. Up until this year, it was one of the few companies that did so. Then NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden happened. Amid allegations of programs like PRISM and the intel community having backdoor taps to the country's most popular Internet companies -- allegations the companies denied -- Silicon Valley's heavyweights started using transparency as a damage control tactic. Yahoo, Apple, and Facebook released transparency reports for the very first time this fall. Now there is a fuller industry perspective on how often these companies get government search queries and how many of their users are affected.
It is only with Google that we get a compelling historical perspective. With the release Thursday of its transparency report for the first half of 2013, it says that requests for users' information have doubled over the last two years. This chart includes all of the companies' reports for the first half of this year, with a focus on the United States.* The companies have released them over the last few months; Google's report was the latest coming out this morning. The chart shows how many requests came in from U.S. feds and po-po, how many users/accounts were included in those requests and the percentage of requests for which the companies actually handed over their users' data.
The challenge now is that the companies release their information in slightly different ways. Facebook and Apple have ranges because they include secretive National Security Letters in their reports (on the condition that they not be too specific about their numbers). We took the uppermost numbers from their ranges. Meanwhile, Google used to have a separate tallying of their NSLs, separate from other requests but has now been asked not to do that; same goes for Microsoft.
That makes the comparison process a little clunky, but one big takeaway is that Yahoo gets far broader information requests from the government than other tech companies, resulting in a comparable number of data requests affecting a significantly higher number of users. And Apple's low number suggest that law enforcement is more likely to go to your mobile carrier than your mobile device maker for intel. Unfortunately, from a data perspective, companies such as Verizon and AT&T don't do transparency reports. When we did get a little peek in 2011, the numbers were pretty astonishing, as noted by Chris Calabrese of the ACLU. "[A]ccording to disclosures they've made to members of Congress, law enforcement sought information from them on a mind-blowing 1.3 million users in 2011," he wrote over at the ACLU blog.
There's currently a bill being pushed by Sen. Al Franken, and supported by the tech giants, that would bring more transparency to government information requests, particularly the number coming from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which infamously ordered Verizon (and likely other phone companies) to hand over call records for millions of customers. The tech companies contend that if users could see how often they're actually getting requests for info, they'd be less freaked out by the NSA stuff.
Sources:
Google
Apple
Yahoo
Facebook
Twitter
Microsoft
* Changed chart included in post initially to reflect Microsoft and Skype numbers for 2013.
Gallery: 10 Incredibly Simple Things You Can Do To Protect Your Privacy 10 images View gallery
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d6b96c91fc5974cdeb2735afe6ee9633 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/12/10/your-iphone-is-now-a-homing-beacon/ | Your iPhone Is Now A Homing Beacon (But It's Ridiculously Easy To Turn Off) | Your iPhone Is Now A Homing Beacon (But It's Ridiculously Easy To Turn Off)
Your phone is now a homing iBeacon.
If you carry around a device that can be tracked, people will do their best to track it, whether it's the EZ-Pass in your car or those tracking devices we can't leave home without, our phones. Many stores have started tracking how often you come in and how long you stay by registering the presence of your phone's unique i.d. Apple is now getting into the in-store tracking game with iBeacon, a technology in iOS 7 that turns your Apple devices into, as the name indicates, homing beacons.
Your (newish) Apple devices with iOS 7 send out a signal using Bluetooth that says, "Hey, I'm here." Anybody with the right permissions can then sense where you are, interact with you, send a message to your phone or cause an app to open up and start doing things. Apple started using the technology in its 254 U.S. retail stores this month, but it's taking a very conservative, extreme-permission-asking approach. Those who have the Apple Store app on their phones have to opt in to iBeacon use; if they do, when they're in an Apple store, Apple will send their phones 'Hey, what up, Machead?' messages and invite them to open the app for help, service, etc. An Apple spokesperson confirmed that it’s a one-way communication with the phone and that Apple is not tracking users in stores or collecting personal information. They will, though, keep track of how many devices are activated this way.
But Apple creating this technology opens the door to more aggressive monitoring, tracking and communication from people with apps on your phone, which will vary from convenient to invasive. MLB has already gone to bat with iBeacon, experimenting at Citifield with helping to guide people to their seats and to enable easier food runs. Expect more apps to slip permission to track you with iBeacon into those terms of service and privacy policies you don't read. Hypothetically, a retailer with its app on your phone could tell iBeacon to turn the app on when you're in or near the store, send information about your being there to a database and then pop up some advertising.
At this point, every party that wants to communicate with you needs its app on your phone. Inevitably, some monster advertising network will develop a one-stop-iBeacon-shop app that will allow it to act as the conduit for lots of different people to ping your phone. (I'm sure Facebook is already at least thinking about this.)
"Consumers are going to start seeing these iBeacons everywhere," says Jules Polonetsky of the Future of Privacy Forum.
"We’re really excited about Apple’s iBeacon,” says Nathan Pettyjohn, CEO of Aisle411, a company that provides in-store maps and coupons. "It can wake up an app running in the background. We can create engagement that way."
The good news, if this freaks you out, is that this is easy to avoid. You don't have to get a burner phone for when you want to go out to do some private shopping. The iBeacon relies on low energy Bluetooth signals, so if you want to be invisible, at least to iBeacon, just turn Bluetooth off on your phone. You will have to actually do that, because the recent iOS update turned on Bluetooth by default. Clever girl, Apple, clever girl....
As a general practice, it's a good idea to have Bluetooth turned off to avoid random devices connecting to your phone or worse. That won't however protect you from all the other phone tracking systems out there.
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beec1d54492f086b5f1472cd1c4e2aae | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/12/12/bitcoin-wallet-coinbase-deposits-25-million-from-andreessen-horowitz/ | Bitcoin's Biggest Investment: Coinbase Deposits $25 Million From Andreessen Horowitz | Bitcoin's Biggest Investment: Coinbase Deposits $25 Million From Andreessen Horowitz
These guys have received $31 million in venture capital for their Bitcoin wallet business
If you ever meet Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, ask him to hook you up with some Bitcoin. “I’ll give $5 worth of Bitcoin to anyone who asks to help them get familiar with it,” he says, estimating that he’s given out at least 50 to 100 Bitcoin over the last year. When Armstrong left his engineering job at Airbnb in June 2012 to start a company that would allow people to buy and store Bitcoin, he gave a bunch of his colleagues one bitcoin each. They were worth $5 at the time. “I’ve been getting a lot of emails recently thanking me,” says Armstrong, as the price of Bitcoin went over $1,000 in December.
This week, though, Armstrong is the one being handed money. Coinbase announced a $25 million Series B round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon. On top of a Series A from Union Square Ventures and Ribbit Capital, it makes Coinbase the most-well-funded start-up in Bitcoin, with a total of 31 million real world dollars sunk into it. “It was much easier to fundraise this time,” says Armstrong. “When we were going to meetings to get our Series A [at the beginning of the year], people had never heard of Bitcoin.”
"Right now Bitcoin is limited to a group of technology enthusiasts and early adopters," says Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz. "In the next one to five years, we want to see it brought into more mainstream use cases."
The San Francisco-based company, founded by Armstrong and former Goldman Sachs trader Fred Ehrsam, offers over 16,000 merchants, such as OkCupid and Reddit, tools to accept Bitcoin for payment (like its competitor Bitpay), but it’s better known for being the easiest way to buy and sell Bitcoin in the U.S. It’s no longer public about how much Bitcoin is being bought and sold through its platform, but back in April, when it had one sixth of its current users and Bitcoin was a quarter of its current value, Coinbase processed $15 million worth of transactions, from which it takes a 1% cut.
It’s benefited from a dearth of competition in the U.S. in the last year when it comes to offering people an easy way to buy and store the increasingly popular digital currency. Japan-based Mt. Gox got raided by the feds for running an unlicensed money transmitter business in the U.S. Winklevoss-funded BitInstant has been down for months, after trouble with its bank accounts, tech problems, and a class-action lawsuit. Other companies offering ways to buy Bitcoins have also been dormant, complaining of banks that don’t want to deal with their accounts. Coinbase’s only real competition in the U.S. has been the option of meeting up with a Bitcoin holder and handing them cash. They’ve flourished as a result. When I visited Coinbase’s office back in May when I was living on Bitcoin, they had just 115,000 users. Half a year later, they have over 600,000. That’s likely a healthy percentage of the total number of Bitcoin holders in the U.S.
As to what they’ll do with their latest cash infusion, Armstrong says they plan to build out their team (they have just 8 full-time employees now); expand internationally to make their services available beyond the U.S.; and continue funding their ‘free money’ referral program. (Armstrong’s policy of giving away $5 worth of BTC is also a company policy for those who refer a friend.) The company also hopes to expand as a platform, developing apps and services for the Bitcoin ecosystem and making the transaction process smoother. Right now, it involves scanning QR codes with your smartphone’s camera or a long string of letters and numbers for a Bitcoin wallet.
Bitcoin has had its bumps this year. Banks have been hesitant to work with Bitcoin companies given the uncertainty about how it fits into the existing regulatory system and how it might be used for illicit activity. This week, a Redditor posted a letter from his "rinky dink" Pennsylvania bank, First Trust saying it had seen him transacting with Coinbase and asking him not to “perform transaction with this company or others like it.”
The Forbes E-book On Bitcoin Secret Money: Living on Bitcoin in the Real World, by Forbes staff writer Kashmir Hill, can be bought in Bitcoin or legal tender.
Ehrsam waived the letter off. “It’s a rarity. I was much more nervous about the regulatory landscape 7 months ago,” he says. The Senate hearings in November, where federal agencies expressed few concerns about Bitcoin, have eased those concerns. Ehrsam says Coinbase’s regulatory officer did call First Trust Bank to smooth the waters.
Given Bitcoin’s big run up in value, exchanges and wallets that host it are increasingly becoming targets for hackers. Millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin have been stolen in recent months. “Cold storage helps us sleep at night,” says Armstrong.
The company keeps 87% of its Bitcoin holdings stored in safety deposits boxes offline. They turn the digital money physical by printing the cryptographic keys necessary to move money and storing the print-outs “geographically distributed around the world,” says Armstrong.
I asked him whether the company advises customers with particularly big holdings regarding security. “We tell them to put the credentials for accessing their Bitcoin into their wills,” he says.
Gallery: The Naughty And Nice Places To Spend Your Bitcoin 10 images View gallery
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26ee9fea41508ca7fb7a98c1e02f6dfd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/12/16/federal-judge-writes-epic-smackdown-of-unconstitutional-nsa-phone-record-collection/ | Federal Judge Writes Epic Smackdown Of 'Likely Unconstitutional' NSA Phone Record Collection | Federal Judge Writes Epic Smackdown Of 'Likely Unconstitutional' NSA Phone Record Collection
This federal judge says the NSA collection of Americans' phone records likely violates the... [+] Constitution.
Thanks to a leak of classified documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, we learned this summer that Verizon (and presumably other phone companies) were regularly handing over to the federal government metadata for all of their customers. Metadata being a fancy word for lists of all the phone calls made, which numbers were calling which numbers and how long those conversations lasted. While jaws were still on the floor regarding the scope of such collection, which would include hundreds of millions of people (including you, unless you don't have a phone), two Verizon subscribers got to work drafting up a lawsuit. Larry Klayman, a conservative activist, and Charles Strange, father of a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan, sued the federal government as well as Verizon, saying that the phone company handing over their information to the feds was a violation of the U.S. Constitution and an "outrageous" breach of privacy. In a scathing opinion out of the District Court of D.C. Monday, federal judge Richard Leon agreed with them, saying the phone metadata collection program is "almost certainly” unconstitutional.
Calling the wholesale download of America's phonecall activity "Orwellian," Judge Leon writes that the NSA's collection and querying efforts "likely violate the Fourth Amendment." This is a huge deal. This is a classified program that has been in place for seven years that has been collecting information about most anyone with a phone, reviewed only by judges from a secret surveillance court. Brought into the open only because of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a federal judge now says on an initial review that it is likely unconstitutional.
"To my knowledge, no court has ever recognized a special need sufficient to justify continuous, daily searches of virtually every American citizen without any particularized suspicion. In effect, the Government urges me to be the first non-[secret surveillance court] judge to sanction such a dragnet," writes Leon, who was particularly vexed that those people whose information is collected have no recourse to challenge that collection. Only phone companies knew this was happening and could object to it. "While Congress has great latitude to create statutory schemes like FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], it may not hang a cloak of secrecy over the Constitution."
It's hard now to argue that Snowden is not a whistleblower.
Leon, a George Bush appointee to the federal bench in 2001, ruled that Klayman and Strange should have their metadata excised from the database and that the NSA should stop collecting their phone information moving forward. But he also put a stay on his own opinion to give the government time to appeal.
"In the short run it means the surveillance continues while the government appeals to the D.C. Circuit," says Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer at EFF. "The appeal would go to the D.C. Circuit, a good place for this case."
Fakhoury points out the D.C. Circuit established the ground-breaking privacy case U.S. v. Jones, which eventually went to the Supreme Court and established our right to be free of warrantless GPS trackers on our cars.
Throughout Leon's opinion, it's obvious that he was horrified by what he learned from the Snowden leaks. The ACLU previously tried to wage a legal battle against this kind of dragnet phone surveillance, but its case was thrown out because it couldn't prove it had been surveilled. The documents leaked by Snowden, which led the federal government to release other opinions about its phone collection program, have changed that.
"It's one thing to say that people expect phone companies to occasionally provide information to law enforcement; it is quite another to suggest that our citizens expect all phone companies to operate what is effectively a joint intelligence-gathering operation with the Government," writes Leon. Klayman and Strange's suit against the government and against Verizon asked for $3 billion in damages. Leon isn't ruling on that yet, but Verizon did make clear that it wants out of this battle, filing for a dismissal based on the fact that it can't be held liable for complying with a court order.
Leon stuck to the constitutional issues, and lacerated the government's arguments in the case. The government mainly relied on the precedent from a 1979 Supreme Court case that found that police could get a phone company to tell it what numbers a person had dialed on their phone without violating the Fourth Amendment because people did not have a "legitimate expectation of privacy" over information they handed over to a third party. This is called the "third party doctrine" in legal circles, and given how much information we now keep with third parties (from our phone information to our email) some big legal dogs are starting to chew on it.
"Put simply, people in 2013 have an entirely different relationship with phones than they did thiry-four years ago," writes Leon. "I cannot possibly navigate these uncharted Fourth Amendment waters using as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cell phones."
Just like General Keith Alexander did in a puff piece on 60 Minutes Sunday night, the government argued that it needs quick access to these records in order to hunt down terrorists quickly. Leon was skeptical saying that he had not been presented with evidence showing that the telephony metadata was "immediately useful or that they prevented an impending attack," and that the government could always get the data through other constitutional ways.
"The question that I will ultimately have to answer when I reach the merits of this case someday is whether people have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government, without any basis whatsoever to suspect them of any wrongdoing, collects and stores for five years their telephony metadata for purposes of subjecting it to high-tech querying and analysis without any case-by-case judicial approval," writes Leon, who hints at the answer to the question: "I have little doubt that the author of our Consitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast."
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d6f0fe084dc7f259c23414ce26365e3b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/13/a-100-worth-of-litecoin-a-year-ago-is-worth-30000-today/ | A $100 Worth Of Litecoin A Year Ago Is Worth $30,000 Today | A $100 Worth Of Litecoin A Year Ago Is Worth $30,000 Today
The silver to Bitcoin's gold also has novelty physical coins
Last month, we subjected readers to a hindsight lament: How you should have spent $100 at the beginning of 2013. Using the Forbes time travel machine, we went back to last January and dropped Benjamins on a slew of investments, including gold, Google and Bitcoin. We thought the best choice was Bitcoin, which was worth 50 times as much by year end, but we were wrong. The best way to spend a c-note on January 1, 2013 was on competing cryptocurrency Litecoin. Worth seven cents then, its value increased along with Bitcoin's, reaching $23 by December, or 328 times its initial value. That means a $100 investment in Litecoin last year would be worth $30,000 now.
Litecoin is one of many alternative cryptocurrencies -- or altcoins -- that have popped up in Bitcoin's wake. The creators of at least 70 different altcoins took Bitcoin's source code and tweaked it. They created BBQCoin and Coinye -- much to Kanye West's disapproval -- and Dogecoin -- based on a meme -- and Stalwartbucks -- as a journalistic exercise from Business Insider. The Washington Post's Timothy Lee has a nice explainer on why people are creating these. Some are serious; some are not. But that's the thing that makes people so skeptical about digital currencies: they're pretty easy to create out of thin air. They remain as valuable as thin air until people invest faith in them, by loading code onto their computers and participating in their networks, or by spending actual money to buy them.
The Forbes E-book On Bitcoin Secret Money: Living on Bitcoin in the Real World, by Forbes staff writer Kashmir Hill, can be bought in Bitcoin or legal tender.
Litecoin, created two years ago, is one of the more serious altcoins, with a $600 million market cap. The infrastructure around it is not nearly as developed as that around Bitcoin, with few exchangers and processors and far fewer sites devoted to analyzing its activity and market fluctuations. BTC-e, an exchange based in Bulgaria, is one of the few institutional places where you can buy it. But optimistic speculators are hoping for the same spectacular returns from LTC as BTC given the way it's following in big brother Bitcoin's footsteps. Like its big bro, Litecoin is making a name for itself initially by hanging out on the corners of black markets. The Target credit card thieves, for example, were willing to take it in exchange for stolen financial deets. And like Bitcoin, it's subject to dramatic thefts, criminal schemes, and excitement around merchants accepting it online.
Charlie Lee, the Satoshi Nakamoto of Litecoin
"It’s a year and a half behind Bitcoin in age and maturity," says Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, 36, who was at Google when he released the Litecoin code to the world in October 2011, but is now an engineer for Coinbase, a Bitcoin start-up in San Francisco. "Litecoin is the silver to Bitcoin's gold. It has taken 2nd place in digital currency because it was created early and it was fair."
Litecoin is designed to produce more coins than Bitcoin (84 million total) and to create them four times as fast. Transactions (and the rewards to miners who facilitate those transactions) happen every 2.5 minutes, rather than every 10 minutes as with Bitcoin. Lee replaced Bitcoin's hash-based mining process with a scrypt-based one that's (hopefully) harder to ramp up with specially designed computing equipment, in the hopes that Litecoin won't have the hardware arms race that's happening in Bitcoin right now. That race was recently addressed in a BusinessWeek cover story, which was fronted by a unicorn scene that could have been ripped from a Mercedes Lackey fantasy novel, in a nod to the surreality of invented money systems that are making people rich.
Litecoin has not made Lee rich, he says. "When I released Litecoin there were a lot of other cryptocurrencies that were pre-mined by founders wanted to be super rich. I preannounced Litecoin on Bitcointalk, so people could mine it from the get go. It was more widely distributed from the start than Bitcoin," says Lee.
Bitcoin's mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto appears to own over a million of his coins, or $1 billion worth, mined in the currency's early days, though he hasn't touched them in years. Lee's not such a large holder of Litecoins. "“I’m sure there are Litecoin millionaires out there," says Lee, indicating he's not one of them. "I’ve sold some along the way. I sold a lot of Litecoin when they were 20 cents. I’m not the best person to ask when to buy or sell."
Litecoin investors say they are hedging their cryptocurrency bets or that they got in because they think the rising Bitcoin tide will lift other altcoin boats."I had been watching Litecoin for months to make sure it wasn't another pump and dump like many altcoins," says one investor who jumped in this fall when Litecoin was around $4. "I decided to buy litecoin because I figured if Visa and Mastercard can coexist so can bitcoin and litecoin."
Nakamoto may have kept his identity under wrap because he feared governments coming after him for creating a currency that could be used on black markets or for money laundering. The feds haven't come knocking on Lee's door yet. "So far, no calls from the government," he says. "I’m just working on it as a side project, not controlling the currency or anything. It’s open sourced and decentralized. I don’t think there will be any problems."
Lee is not the only one in his family banking on cryptocurrencies. He introduced his brother Bobby to Bitcoin, and Bobby went on to become the CEO of BTC China, previously the world's largest Bitcoin exchange.
Lee designed Litecoin because he wanted to make a better Bitcoin -- faster, more efficient and more democratic in wealth distribution -- but he doesn't expect it to kill Bitcoin.
"Litecoin versus Bitcoin is like Facebook versus Google Plus," says Lee. "It would be hard for Plus to overtake Facebook. But if something catastrophic happens to Bitcoin, I could see Litecoin positioned to overtake it."
Depending on the nature of the catastrophe, Litecoin might go down with Bitcoin rather than overtaking it. If the world collectively loses faith in cryptocurrencies, Litecoin will be LitesOutCoin, along with all the rest.
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5023b9569e1d2b82f05c97822aa79a0d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/27/winklevosses-bitcoin-community-shocked-by-arrest-of-bitinstant-ceo-charlie-shrem/ | Winklevosses, Bitcoin Community Shocked By Arrest of BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem | Winklevosses, Bitcoin Community Shocked By Arrest of BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem
This morning, the Bitcoin community was rocked by the news that a vaunted start-up CEO had been arrested for money laundering. BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem, 24, has been the subject of fawning profiles for his Bitcoin entrepreneurship. Bloomberg introduced him to the world as a Bitcoin millionaire last year. When Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss invested $1.5 million in his company, they made specific reference to his "impeccable reputation." On Monday, that reputation took a big hit when the feds arrested him at JFK airport in New York, alleging that he helped a man in Florida convert over a million dollars worth of Bitcoin for use on the drug bazaar Silk Road.
Arrested BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem.
BitInstant which was in operation from 2011 to 2013, before shutting down "temporarily" in July, was a site that allowed users to buy and sell Bitcoin. The indictment cites emails exchanged between Shrem and Robert Faiella of Cape Coral, Florida, in which Shrem advises Faiella on how to avoid getting flagged by BitInstant for potential illegal activity. Shrem says he knows Faiella is running a money exchange on Silk Road as BTCKing, where he charged Silk Road users a hefty 9% fee for Bitcoins that he was getting through BitInstant. Shrem told him, for example, to use different email addresses for different transactions so that company monitors -- including BitInstant co-founder Gareth Nelson -- wouldn't realize BTCKing was changing thousands of dollars of Bitcoin daily. That kind of activity would require the company to file a "suspicious activity report" with the government as required by FinCEN, with which it was registered as a money services business. Shrem was responsible for filing those reports as the compliance officer for BitInstant, according to the Southern District of New York Attorney's Office.
Nelson, who is named in the indictment only as a co-founder and described as deceived by Shrem, is based in the U.K. and says he is withholding comment until he speaks with legal counsel. The bank processing payments for BitInstant during the time it was helping out BTCKing is not named in the indictment, but the bank stopped working with BitInstant in October 2012 because it wasn't answering questions about its clients. BTCKing also stopped using BitInstant at that time.
People in the Bitcoin community were shocked by the news. There has been a divide in the Bitcoin world between the digital coin's dark side as a tool for assassination websites and online drug bazaars, and its light side as a "payment disrupter" that attracted legitimate entrepreneurs and venture capitalists eager to capitalize on the Internet's hottest new innovation. Linking Shrem, who holds a high-profile 'light side' position as vice chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, with BTCKing, who was in touch with the Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts and running an anonymous Bitcoin exchange on the drug bazaar, pulls that divide down.
Fellow Bitcoin entrepreneurs sent Shrem supportive messages via his Facebook wall
In December 2012, a year after he allegedly started working with BTCKing, Schrem wrote on Reddit, "No longer are we considered juvenile hacker kids looking to launder money and buy drugs online."
"This is a big surprise. I hope the news isn’t true," says Jered Kenna, another Bitcoin entrepreneur who also ran a Bitcoin exchange that's been shuttered for the past few months. "Charlie’s put more effort into legitimizing Bitcoin and moving it forward than most people."
The Winklevosses at a Bitcoin conference in 2013
BitInstant investors the Winklevosses issued this statement:
"When we invested in BitInstant in the fall of 2012, its management made a commitment to us that they would abide by all applicable laws - including money laundering laws - and we expected nothing less. Although BitInstant is not named in today’s indictment of Charlie Shrem, we are obviously deeply concerned about his arrest. We were passive investors in BitInstant and will do everything we can to help law enforcement officials. We fully support any and all governmental efforts to ensure that money laundering requirements are enforced, and look forward to clearer regulation being implemented on the purchase and sale of bitcoins."
Meanwhile, Bitcoin advocate Roger Ver, an early angel investor nicknamed "Bitcoin Jesus" for his efforts evangelizing the currency, had a libertarian take on the news. He doesn't think the feds should be going after Silk Road or any of the services that support it. "People own their own bodies, and have the absolute right to put anything they want into it," wrote Ver by email. "People like the FBI, and DEA agents who want to lock people in cages for buying, selling, or using drugs are the ones committing evil, and they need to stop. I look forward to the day when they see the error of their ways, and stop committing evil acts in the name of 'law enforcement'."
When I interviewed Charlie Shrem last year for a story about Bitcoin businesses having trouble getting bank accounts, he told me he'd been kicked out of every bank in New York. "The hardest obstacles for Bitcoin companies are banking and regulation," he said.
A woman who answered the phone at the house of a relative of Shrem's said, "This is a false rumor."
Robert Faiella, alleged to be BTCKing, is said to be 52 in the indictment. Public records show that a 54-year-old by that name lives in Cape Coral and has been prosecuted by the U.S. in the past for filing false tax returns. BTCKing (or "Bitcoin King") told Shrem he was old enough to be his father, an "ex businessman who was once worth millions." "You must understand that the people we pay taxes to have a long reach and I like to stay away from that," he emailed to Shrem.
A woman who answered the phone at the home of Robert Faiella would not comment.
Gallery: The Most Controversial Digital Busts 9 images View gallery
With reporting by Runa Sandvik in Washington, D.C.; and Andy Greenberg and Sue Radlauer in New York.
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913d74ed9a6233a1097a52716b990f83 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/03/07/why-you-need-to-rip-the-mailing-label-off-magazines-as-soon-as-they-arrive/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter | Why You Need To Rip The Mailing Label Off Magazines As Soon As They Arrive | Why You Need To Rip The Mailing Label Off Magazines As Soon As They Arrive
Until last week, if you wanted to see the password that New Yorker subscribers use to access their accounts online, all you needed was their name and address. That information, of course, is not hard to find; it’s on the label of every issue mailed out, meaning that a magazine with the label still attached passed on to someone on an airplane or in a waiting room is suddenly a security risk.
Independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani and I tested it on a series of accounts (including mine) last week with the subscribers’ permission, entering their names and addresses into the New Yorker’s subscription management website. And there it was, in plaintext: the throwaway password I use for many sites across the Web. As a frequent mover, I'm grateful that it's easy to get into magazines' subscription systems to change my address, but I was disturbed that it was quite this easy and that sensitive information like my password was available there.
Once in the account, a wannabe hacker could change the mailing address for the magazine and see the last 4 digits of a credit card associated with an account. The latter is useful for deeper hacking, as reported in 2012 by Mat Honan in New Yorker's sister magazine Wired; Honan faulted Amazon for displaying the last 4 digits of his credit card, which was a security key that let a hacker take over his Apple account, wresting control of his iPhone and laptop away from him. Honan faulted Amazon, Apple and the technology industry for failing him with "flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry." But those flaws are not unique to the tech industry; the magazines you subscribe to have them as well.
The New Yorker's case was particularly bad in that it displayed passwords in the clear, but the ease of access to accounts is an issue for the over 400 magazines using a Hearst Corporation-owned company called CDS Global for their subscription management and payment processing. That includes all Conde Nast magazines (Wired, Glamour, Allure, GQ, among others), Playboy, O, Garden and Gun, Forbes, and more, which cater to millions of magazine subscribers. Soltani and I couldn’t find other magazines displaying a person’s password the way the New Yorker was, but all of these magazines will let someone access your account with some variant of the information on your mailing label.
When the New Yorker issue was pointed out on a security mailing list, a developer for the magazine responded and said they were “fixing ASAP.” Passwords are not on display in the clear anymore, the characters replaced with *s. A spokesperson for the New Yorker says the fix was made by CDS Global at their request. "We are planning to email customers who have passwords and let them know about the issue," says New Yorker spokesperson Alexa Cassanos.
Update, March 14: The New Yorker sent an email to active subscribers on March 13th.
However, when you access a subscriber's account, the last 4 digits of their credit card are still there at last check. "This is not a New Yorker specific issue and should be addressed with CDS," says Cassanos.
Beth Roy, chief client officer for CDS Global, says that magazine publishers choose which information to require at log-in to grant access to their subscribers. Roy said she could not speak to the decisions other magazines had made, but did say that their platform has a feature for publishers allowing them to hash passwords. However, any system that’s designed in a way that ever allows passwords to be displayed in the clear has badly designed defaults.
“We have 11 different alternatives for access to subscriber accounts,” says Roy. “Forbes chose name and address, account number or email address and zip code.”
That means to get into a Forbes subscriber's account, you need one of those three combos.
I asked CDS Global if their clients had the option of using information beyond what appears on a mailing label to gate their subscribers' accounts. She said that information was “proprietary.” Soltani surveyed over 20 magazines that use CDS Global’s system and none appeared to be using any other “more secure” personal information than an email address. In most cases, that was simply an alternative to using mailing information.
A Fast Company subscriber was disturbed to find that someone could get access to his account by just entering his email address on the Fast Company subscription site. “What makes me uncomfortable is that somebody with my email address has access to my physical address,” he says. “Yes, the ability to change my address online is a nice convenience, but that convenience wouldn't be diminished if I had to set up a password to gain access to my account.”
When I expressed concern to CDS Global about the simplicity of accessing magazine subscribers’ accounts, she laid the blame on the magazine publishers.
“It’s their choice with their security team to decide what’s most appropriate for accessing their magazine information and their subscribers’ information,” Beth Roy said, referring to Forbes. “It was your decision to make. You can add multiple layers of information to allow you to access the page.”
When I asked what those layers might be, she again said they were proprietary. I asked the colleague at Forbes who handles our business relationship with CDS Global about other options we had to make the log-in process more secure, and she said there were not other more secure options available beyond name, address, email and account number – all of which are on the mailing label except the email address.
I asked Roy if CDS Global would advise its clients to reassess the security around their log-in systems now that the issue had been raised. She would not commit to that.
“They make decisions about the log-ins with their security teams,” she said. Saying "data security is extremely important to CDS Global," Roy explained that CDS Global conducts regular security audits and uses "Captcha, scans and penetration tests of our platforms." However it seems that the platform they've designed for their client magazines is fundamentally insecure.
"This is another example of a company sacrificing consumer privacy/security in order to simplify their workload. Relying on publicly available information like email or street address as a (weak) authenticator exposes pretty sensitive information about their subscribers," says Soltani. "For example, you can look up someone's physical address and last 4 of their credit card just by knowing their email address -- or determine what other magazines they subscribe to. That seems problematic from a privacy perspective."
For any publisher with multiple magazines, once you're in a subscriber's account, you can see which other ones they subscribe to.
"I can assure you that we are always reviewing our processes and will work with CDS Global to make any necessary changes to improve the customer experience," says Patricia Rockenwagner, spokesperson for Conde Nast magazines.
If nothing else, make sure you rip that mailing address off your magazine when it arrives. Because right now, for most magazines out there, that’s the gateway into your account.
Follow @kashhill
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000710ec17b6d9150c4f7a296176e3cd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/29/baby-monitor-hacker-still-terrorizing-babies-and-their-parents/ | Baby Monitor Hacker Still Terrorizing Babies And Their Parents | Baby Monitor Hacker Still Terrorizing Babies And Their Parents
Last summer, someone hacked into a Houston couple's baby monitor in order to yell at their daughter and tell her to "wake up, you little slut." The Gilbert family was using an Internet-connected Foscam product that had known vulnerabilities that would make it easy for a knowledgeable intruder to get into it and control it. (Think Heartbleed.) Foscam released a firmware update that fixed the problem but people like the Gilberts who bought their camera through a reseller did not get the company's email about the fix, and apparently didn't hear about the 'Babybleed' problem. At the time, I wrote that 40,000 other cams were still vulnerable to hacking, according to security researchers. Well, a hacker found one of those vulnerable cams -- again being used as a baby monitor -- in Cincinnati.
An Ohio couple was terrified when a hacker took over a 10-month-old baby’s video monitor and started screaming ‘Wake up baby!’ in the middle of the night. Adam and Heather Schreck were stunned, but Adam quickly rushed into their frightened daughter’s room — only to see the camera pointed at them and the “intruder” screaming obscenities. Via The Daily News
The infantile incident sounds very similar to the Gilberts': yelling obscenities at a baby and her dumbfounded parents. If it's not the same guy, it's a copycat. The media reports that the Schrecks unplugged the monitor to get the hacker out of their house. Marc Gilbert, the father of the Houston toddler, did the same thing. Unfortunately, when you power off the camera, it wipes its log of IP addresses. Disconnecting it eliminates the evidence that police might use to find out who is doing this.
A researcher told me last summer that Foscam could put a message in their Web interface telling people to update their firmware to protect themselves. It's unclear why the company hasn't done that yet. In the meanwhile, if you're at a breeding friend's house and you see a baby monitor that looks like this, you might want to warn them about boogeyhackermen in the night.
As we increasingly bring Internet-connected devices into our homes and workplaces, we have more devices that can be hacked if they are not properly designed. One family complained that a hacker started sending them harassing messages via their cable box. There's a whole slew of researchers looking for and pointing out vulnerabilities in these products, but their announcements don't come with a bleeding-heart logo that ensures consumers are aware of the problem.
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d512cb3ce3bfdec6a79234ebddd0f09d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/29/you-can-hide-your-pregnancy-online-but-youll-feel-like-a-criminal/ | You Can Hide Your Pregnancy Online, But You'll Feel Like A Criminal | You Can Hide Your Pregnancy Online, But You'll Feel Like A Criminal
Janet Vertesi is expecting to give birth on Saturday. She may be the only expectant woman in America not to see a single diaper ad over the course of her pregnancy.
That's because the Princeton sociology professor treated her impending birth as many people might treat online criminal activity. She paid for maternity clothes in cash, insisted friends and families not discuss the bump on Facebook, surfed baby sites only with the Tor browser (which masks a user's IP address), and used a code language to talk about the baby with her husband via text message. They definitely didn't have a baby registry.
"It was really just a personal project, to see if it’s possible to avoid detection. If you’re a pregnant woman, it’s usually impossible to make it through your pregnancy without a single diapers ad. We didn’t get a single baby mailing, which is why I think it worked," Vertesi said by phone. "You have to start early though before you're even pregnant: My husband and I bought prenatal vitamins with cash."
It's hard to hide this online.
Parents-to-be are incredibly valuable customers, guaranteed to drop lots of money for 18 years or more, so companies go to great lengths to identify them and to snag them as customers. After reading a story about Target predicting a teen girl was pregnant before her father knew based on seemingly random purchases, Vertesi decided she see if it was possible to keep her own pregnancy secret from companies and online data brokers.
It's not the first time Vertesi has rejected online data collection. When Google changed its privacy policy in 2012 to allow it to profile users across all of its products, Vertesi dumped the tech giant's products. "I went off Google entirely and that was pretty easy," she says. "So I assumed keeping the Internet from knowing I was pregnant would be like going from vegetarianism to veganism."
The web-browsing part was easy: "I was on BabyCenter.com constantly but through Tor, along with WebMD and 'Pick your baby name,'" she says. Where it got hard was 1) interacting with people on Facebook and 2) buying actual products. It would've been easy to delete her Facebook account, but she sees the socializing with family, friends and colleagues as an important part of her routine, so she asked them -- through secure channels -- not to talk about the pregnancy on Facebook. But she got two Facebook messages from family members, including a beloved uncle, congratulating her.
"I immediately deleted the messages and unfriended them," she says. "They didn't understand that private messages on Facebook are as bad as Wall posts. What’s amazing is how the platforms have disappeared into the background. They didn’t think about the platform being part of the interaction. I didn't want Facebook to know about the pregnancy, and they could do that by data-mining my private messages."
"I certainly had that years ago," she notes, "when Google knew I was engaged before my family and friends did, based on my chats."
Facebook says the private messages wouldn't have translated into pregnancy ads for Vertesi. "We don’t use the information people share in private messages to target ads on Facebook," says a spokesperson.
When it came to buying maternity and baby products, Vertesi avoided credit cards, either paying for items in person with cash -- which was often expensive in Manhattan, where she and her husband live -- or through Amazon. They created an email account on their own server solely to set up an Amazon account, and then used gift cards purchased with cash to pay for their purchases which they had shipped to an Amazon locker, so the company wouldn't have their home address. "Amazon knows that email address has babies,” says Vertesi. When they bought a fancy stroller on Amazon, her husband had to get over $500 in gift cards at a Rite Aid, where he noticed a warning that the Rite Aid might limit prepaid card purchases and was required to "report excessive transactions to the authorities." Between that and their excessive Tor use, they were starting to feel like miscreants.
"Opting out makes you look like a criminal," says Vertesi. "People have reasons for privacy that are not terrible ones. They just don’t want everything about them captured by a company and kept."
Vertesi doesn't recommend others try to do what she did. "It’s incredibly inconvenient. It isn’t sustainable and I don’t recommend that other people try fleeing Facebook and doing everything with Tor. I just wanted to show how we take for granted the mechanisms of the Internet economy, including constant tracking and monetizing of our data. My project wasn’t about not consuming; I just wanted to resist tracking in the act of consumption, and that was difficult to do."
Vertesi's motivations were to make a statement about how the Internet tracks and monetizes us, but there are parents who might not want their pregnancies tracked for other reasons. Sometimes data brokers accurately infer that a woman is pregnant, but they fail to recognize when someone has lost that child.
"Some how, some way, Target found out I was pregnant. And so did Gerber Life, and American Baby Magazine, and Similac," wrote a blogger in piece titled "Life After Miscarriage." "Unfortunately, none of them got the memo that I’m no longer pregnant. My trip to the mailbox has become a daily reminder that I should be getting ready to have a baby."
"Amazon can you please stop sending me deals on baby strollers and car seats? It kind of doesn’t help that corporate America is knocking on my door with daily reminders," wrote another miscarriage blogger in 2009.
"Big data is getting creepy and it’s invading people’s lives more and more. There’s been this tremendous rise of an invisible layer of the Internet that involves bots, beacons and cookies that build a profile of who we are online," says Vertesi. "I don’t know where that information is going, or who it’s going to, who those companies are and where they sell it."
Vertesi finds it "disconcerting" that the default business model for the Internet is to give everything away for free in exchange for personal information. "I'm a big fan of options," she says. "I want to see more innovative technologies that offer consumers the right to opt out. We need to think imaginatively about how consumers can manage their relationships with companies, and how their data is used."
Vertesi's pregnancy is no longer a secret thanks to a Mashable article about her talking about the project at a conference in Brooklyn.
"Now it’s more public than I could ever imagine," she says. "But I feel really strongly about the issue and am happy to talk about it. And as soon as you register the birth at the hospital, it’s all over anyway. We knew this was the natural end of the experiment."
*Updated to add comment from Facebook spokesperson.
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8383d96b32edace4d70e6e418a53ffa4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/05/08/government-tells-snapchat-to-stop-lying-about-photos-disappearing/ | FTC Tells Snapchat To Stop Lying About Photos Disappearing | FTC Tells Snapchat To Stop Lying About Photos Disappearing
Last year, when a forensics firm proved that Snapchats don't actually disappear, I speculated that the Federal Trade Commission — which is the federal agency responsible for investigating companies for deceptive or misleading practices — would likely be taking a close look at the popular "ephemeral" messaging app and its claims to users about photos going poof after they're viewed. Well, the FTC did and it wasn't happy about what it found. On Thursday, the FTC announced that the company made all kinds of false privacy and security claims, including the premise of the app: that it sends photos that self-destruct. The fact that photos do not always self-destruct is something unfortunate teenage girls have also discovered.
"Despite a security researcher warning the company... Snapchat continued to misrepresent that the sender controls how long a recipient can view a snap," says the FTC in a notice that it is settling a complaint it brought against the company that reportedly turned down $3 billion from Facebook. As part of the settlement, Snapchat agrees to "no longer misrepresent the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of users’ information," says the FTC. And like other tech companies that have drawn the ire of the agency, such as Facebook and Google , Snapchat now has to put in place a "comprehensive privacy program that will be monitored by an independent privacy professional for the next 20 years." Snapchat published a blog post about the settlement which translates, to, "Dude, we were just some college kids making a fun app and we may have made a mistake with that whole 'disappears forever' thing."
The description of their app in the iTunes store is now seriously toned down: "Snap a photo or a video, add a caption, and send it to a friend. They’ll view it, laugh, and then the Snap disappears from the screen – unless they take a screenshot!" [Bold is mine]
Meanwhile, Snapchat is getting even less ephemeral. In its last update, it gave users a "save" button -- though only for text messages and comments.
The FTC brings up a whole litany of ways Snapchat screwed up beyond just not actually being able to delete photos "forever" after 1 to 10 seconds. For example, there was no verification process for phone numbers when signing up, so someone could have registered using your phone number and started getting Snaps meant for you. "Numerous consumers complained that they had sent snaps to someone under the false impression that they were communicating with a friend," reports the FTC.
The company also had that big data breach that exposed information for millions of accounts and "collected iOS users’ contacts information from their address books without notice or consent."
Amazingly, they can do all that and not be fined given the state of privacy law in the U.S. Though under this settlement, they will be slapped with a fine if they make future privacy and security mistakes. Meanwhile, I do suspect that class action lawyers are eyeing the company closely and looking for teen girls interested in suing the company over their "ephemeral" racy snaps being part of someone's permanent collection.
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e72cffa71563d5f04a815c1364776bc9 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/02/sheryl-sandberg-apologizes-for-facebook-emotion-manipulation-study-kind-of/?sh=33ec9026149d | Sheryl Sandberg Apologizes For Facebook Emotion Manipulation Study... Kind Of | Sheryl Sandberg Apologizes For Facebook Emotion Manipulation Study... Kind Of
The Facebook emotion contagion study has finally reached the executive level. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said the word "apologize" in reference to the study that involved nearly 700,000 Facebook users in January 2012, but she made it into one of those classic corporate "We're sorry if this offended you" apologies. Via the Wall Street Journal:
“This was part of ongoing research companies do to test different products, and that was what it was; it was poorly communicated,” Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said while in New Delhi. “And for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you.”
Her wording is maybe not the best there. Part of why people are so upset is that Facebook did mean to upset some of them as part of the study. Translation: Facebook is not sorry for doing the emotion contagion study. It was done in the normal course of business. It is sorry that everyone is upset about the fact that it purposely made some users upset a couple years ago.
Executives at Facebook will likely need to say more about the study, as BBC News reports a UK regulator is pushing Ireland -- which has jurisdiction over Facebook in Europe -- to launch a formal probe into the study. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission which was formalizing a 20-year consent decree with Facebook at the time, may take issue with the involvement of users under the age of 18 in the study and the fact that Facebook didn't add notification about users' information being involved in "research" until after the study happened.
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c827d8c53d568c4b6017a3401453e177 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/10/after-the-freak-out-over-facebooks-emotion-manipulation-study-what-happens-now/ | After The Freak-Out Over Facebook's Emotion Manipulation Study, What Happens Now? | After The Freak-Out Over Facebook's Emotion Manipulation Study, What Happens Now?
The dust is finally starting to settle around the revelation that Facebook manipulated users' emotions for science. So what now?
Legally, I don't think much will come of this beyond Facebook's government liaisons working longer, harder hours for a while. On the other side of the pond, Facebook has to provide an in-depth explanation of procedures for all of its research to its local privacy regulator. Here in the U.S., at least one privacy group filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission saying that what Facebook did was "deceptive" and violated the agency's existing 20-year consent decree with the site for previous privacy mistakes (which would mean monetary penalties). But I think that's a dead end because Facebook didn't start its probation with the FTC until August 2012, seven months after the emotion manipulation study happened. So the FTC wouldn't be able to hit the company with fines; it would just be able to get a second, redundant consent decree. That's if the FTC even thought it was harmful to consumers to have their Facebook stream more negative than usual.
"It’s clear that people were upset by this study and we take responsibility for it. We want to do better in the future and are improving our process based on this feedback," says a Facebook spokesperson. "The study was done with appropriate protections for people’s information and we are happy to answer any questions regulators may have.”
Class-action lawyers are surely sniffing around the case, but it'd be hard to prove that a Facebook-using client was one of the 100,000+ whose News Feeds turned blue for a week. Facebook says it designed the study so that the test subjects stayed anonymous. And it'll be hard to argue that there was some kind of financial harm from a week of attempted sad-making.
Instead, the biggest result from all this is a long-needed discussion about companies running experiments on their users. Facebook has published quite a lot about its research but make no mistake, it's not the only company taking A/B testing to the extreme. Some other tech companies also publish -- such as Google when it combed through your search queries for illness trends or played with Google News links for 10,000 users to see if its predictions about what they wanted to see were right -- but lots of the experimenting is known only to the data scientists working behind the scenes and under NDAs at companies.
"A statistician who lives in Silicon Valley is a 'data scientist,'" says Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado. "Lots of companies -- Bitly, OKCupid – have this weird conflation of data research based on what their users are doing and corporate profit-making. The ethics have been begging to be discussed. There's A/B testing to better deliver a product a customer wants, but it's another thing for companies to consider users to be a willing and ready pool of lab rats that they can prod however they want."
Dating site OkCupid's OkTrends blog was a voyeuristic and often salacious look into what works in a dating profile and what doesn't and why people choose the people they choose. It was sadly discontinued after OkCupid was snatched up by IAC's Match.com for $50 million. Whether Match worried more about the competitive intelligence being leaked or the "ethics" of the blog was never announced.
"We haven't looked at the harms or invasiveness that comes along with these Big Data dives," says Ohm. Ohm was one of the first people to criticize the universally acclaimed Google Flu trends project, pointing out that while there may be some benefits to knowing where flu is going to strike, it came with the harm of the search engine combing through some of our most sensitive searches: our medical conditions. "Google breached a wall of trust by dipping into its users’ private search data in ways that went beyond traditional and historically accepted uses for search query data, such as those uses relating to security, fraud detection, and search engine design," he wrote last year. "While Google’s users likely would have acquiesced had Google asked them to add 'help avoid pandemics' or 'save lives' to the list of accepted uses, they never had the chance for public conversation. Instead, the privacy debate was held — if at all — within the walls of Google alone."
Medical ethicist Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin's Law School thinks the outcry over the Facebook study is overblown, but that it's worthy of discussion because of the ubiquity of Facebook and the sheer scale of experiments for companies that have a billion customers. "As a business practice, companies do research on consumer behavior all the time. Which colors work? Should a mailer start with happy story about candidate or an attack on competitor? This is not novel and not limited to Facebook," she says. "I think there’s a larger question about how much individualized information we have around each person. As a matter of ethics, it’s not at all hard for a company to simply announce, 'We constantly test our business practices, let us know if you never want to be part of that.'"
Many observers say this research is important, that they don't want it to go away, but that they want a clear understand of corporate research ethics, as companies are not subject to the same oversight that academic researchers are. It's a question of the technology and the extreme personalization that can happen in the Internet age, writes Zeynep Tufekci. "[I]t is clear that the powerful have increasingly more ways to engineer the public, and this is true for Facebook, this is true for presidential campaigns, this is true for other large actors: big corporations and governments."
Ryan Calo, an academic at the University of Washington, was writing about corporate lab rats even before it became a hot topic of conversation. "It's about information asymmetry," he says. "A company has all this information about the consumer, the ability to design every aspect of the interaction and an economic incentive to extract as much value as possible. And that makes consumers nervous."
Calo has a concrete ask. Facebook has said that it didn't have a formal review procedure in place for studies in January 2012 when the emotion manipulation one took place, but that it has one now. But we don't know anything specific about how that review works at Facebook or at other companies that know a lot about us and can run fascinating tests with that information. "I want all of these companies to treat consumer research like an ethical problem on par with all the other ethical problems they deal with all the time, like deciding whether to block a Chinese dissenter in another country. They're used to making ethical choices but not with their own data," says Calo. "I want Facebook and others to publish their criteria for greenlighting research."
An academic at Microsoft Research has a suggestion for what that might look like. It'd also be nice if after reading that criteria, consumers could decide whether they want to take part in research.
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43b37a2f6790160d1a10d5a452efd467 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/23/how-your-security-system-could-be-used-to-spy-on-you/ | How Your Security System Could Be Hacked To Spy On You | How Your Security System Could Be Hacked To Spy On You
On a recent Friday evening, Logan Lamb and his girlfriend turned up at a co-worker's birthday party in Knoxville, Tennessee with a 12-pack of cheap beer, 4 craft beers for the birthday boy, and some hacking tools, namely a software-defined radio (SDR) capable of monitoring wireless transmissions. Lamb had been doing research on the way popular security systems, such as those from Vivint and ADT, can be turned against their owners to spy on their activity or suppressed so that they fail to go off when an intruder enters the home. His co-worker had a 2GIG Go!Control panel from Utah-based Vivint and was willing to be a guinea pig. Lamb asked the birthday celebrant to arm the system and then let the guests wander normally. The alarm did not get triggered as it should when the system's armed and a door opens, and the Vivint central control station that would call the police when such a thing happened did not get a heads up. Lamb was able to suppress the alarm through intercepting the system's unencrypted wireless communications with the sensors around the home, and sending his own signals to the main controls. After about an hour, though, the alarm started shrieking. Logan had neglected to plug his computer in and it went to sleep to conserve battery power, allowing the system to do what it was meant to do. "It didn't ruin the party," says Lamb. But it did make the security system seem less secure.
Lamb is a cybersecurity researcher at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "I primarily break things," he explains. He started probing security systems in his spare time after a co-worker ordered one at the office. He was able to play around with an ADT system thanks to the graciousness of his girlfriend's father, who had one at home. The different vendors' products all had the same problem: legacy wireless communications from the 90s that failed to encrypt or authenticate signals. He could be pick up the signals being sent from sensors on windows and doors to the main control system using a cheap SDR, meaning he could see transmissions from sensors -- which are sent even when the system is unarmed -- and track when people were opening and closing windows and doors. With a more sophisticated SDR, he could interfere with transmissions, setting the alarm off falsely by telling it doors were opening when they weren't or jamming the system so that it wouldn't go off, even if doors did open. He could do this from 65 to 250 yards away-- basically a house over. Using his methods, a would-be tech-savvy thief could suppress an alarm while going in and out with your stuff; a prankster neighbor could set your alarm off; or someone could monitor when you're active at the house. At the very least, someone with an SDR could determine based on signals being sent whether you actually have an alarm system, or have just planted a "Protected by ADT" sign in your front yard.
Lamb plans to present his findings in Las Vegas next month. He's not the only presenter at the popular back-to-back hacker conferences there, Black Hat and Defcon, who has set his sites on the way security systems can be subverted to make their owners less secure. Researchers Colby Moore and Patrick Wardle of Synack turned their hacking skills against Dropcam, the wireless video monitoring device recently acquired by Google-owned Nest. "We saw Dropcams popping up all over here in Silicon Valley with tech incubators and big tech start-ups using them as security cameras," said Moore. "It seems like the future of where video monitoring for consumers is going."
Moore and Wardle discovered a small number of flaws in the Dropcam that could lead to it being compromised, but the attacker would need to get his or her hands on the cam to crack it. The most notable problem they discovered was a button on the back of the device that can be pressed when it's booting up to put the camera into receptive USB mode. Once in that mode, an attacker could install spyware to turn the surveillance camera into one that surveils audio and video of its owners, or install a program that could make them see video of the attackers' choosing. And as with another Black Hat presentation about jailbreaking the Nest, the security hack could be used to enhance consumer privacy -- allowing a data-protective Dropcam owner to install a program that would prevent their video feed from being sent to Dropcam's cloud. All in all, the researchers thought the Dropcam was far more secure than other Internet-connected cameras, some of which have been hacked remotely by strangers on the Internet -- ahem, Foscam -- but that Dropcam's security could be improved by only running signed software from the company. Your own Dropcam is probably secure, as long as it's never been in the hands of someone who might want to turn it against you. “Don’t accept cameras from strangers. It’s a good motto," says Wardle, who also advised against buying them used.
Both Dropcam and the security system vendors were dismissive of the hacks. Dropcam is more concerned about protecting customers from remote hacks than ones done by someone with the device in hand. The general rule of thumb in the security community is that if someone has physical access to your device, you're pwned. “All hardware devices – from laptops to smartphones – are susceptible to jailbreaking. If anything, Dropcam might actually provide the best solution for preventing physical access because we’ll notify you if someone were to approach or disconnect your camera," said Greg Duffy, Dropcam's CEO. "What’s far more important is preventing remote access, and Dropcam has excellent security to prevent this. Our cameras won’t communicate to anyone on the Internet – only Dropcam cloud servers, and we haven’t had any intrusions or access to private data to date.”
Meanwhile, the security system vendors said the hacks had never occurred in the wild, to their knowledge. “Safety and security is a top priority at ADT, and we have spent the past 140 years earning the trust of our customers," said ADT spokesperson Jason Shockley. "Because we have yet to see the details of this particular research, we are unable to comment on the specifics.”
Vivint and another security company with the vulnerability that asked the researcher not to name it both said they have a jamming detection feature in their wireless security systems, though Lamb says he was able to program around it and that the companies didn't detect his suppression of their alarms. Vivint's vice president of innovation Jeremy Warren said the company is investigating the vulnerability that Lamb found in the jamming detection with plans to fix it. He also said that Vivint has never actually detected anyone jamming a system's signal. As for the spying that could be done by a techno-lurker, Warren said it's easily replicated by a person without an SDR sitting outside the house watching people opening windows and doors. Lamb though says that an adversary could make an embedded system to stash in the vicinity of a home to gather information all the time.
"It’s in the realm of hypothetical possibilities but I think people just driving their car around and looking at a community is a simpler and less costly, exotic way of doing this. This requires someone to have sophisticated tools that are not widely available, and that mitigates the impact," said Warren by phone. "It shouldn't be a concern to consumers. We really think this is an extremely exotic thing that will have zero impact on our customer base."
Lamb argues though that SDRs are getting cheaper and more ubiquitious; a simple one goes for $10 on Amazon.
Warren said Vivint has looked at encrypting communications on the system but that it has a negative impact on "range and battery performance" and decided it wasn't worth it after "balancing that against a highly hypothetical situation where a person needs to be nearby anyway."
"Wireless transmissions by their nature are subject to potential risks," said one security system maker in a statement. "Our security systems meet or exceed industry standards and include a variety of protections, such as available encryption, tamper resistance and jamming detection, which when employed significantly improve security."
Those worried about this kind of monitoring may want to go ahead and employ those options.
"The idea of covering a home with more security sensors does not translate into a more secure home," says Lamb. “The end goal of all this is to make better systems.”
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7ade9113a798430601aaf22d410d6163 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/28/okcupid-experiment-compatibility-deception/ | OkCupid Lied To Users About Their Compatibility As An Experiment | OkCupid Lied To Users About Their Compatibility As An Experiment
Updated with additional details about the experiment via Christian Rudder.
Ever since the big kerfuffle over Facebook's emotion manipulation study -- and the defense that this happens all over the Web all the time -- we've been wondering what other experiments we may have been part of without knowing it. OkCupid came forward Monday with another one: it shot falsehood-tipped arrows through users' hearts as an experiment. The dating site exhumed its three-year dormant “OkTrends” blog which used to share insights into online daters' behavior, but went silent after the company was bought by IAC for $50 million. In a flippant entry that announces his upcoming book on data, OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder defends Facebook, brags about experiments OkCupid's done in the past, and reveals that at some point the site told people who were poor matches for each other that they were perfect pairs, and vice versa. The site wanted to see if OkCupid's matching algorithm actually predicted whether people would go gaga for each other, or if they were just slaves to an algorithm and would fall in love (or lust) because the data told them they should. In other words, it wanted to know if it had blinded users with data science.
"Guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work," wrote Rudder in the post titled, "We Experiment on Human Beings." Yes, but do we expect sites to lie to us about how they work as a test? This is that nebulous gray zone wherein lies the discomfort about how we're treated as users. OkCupid's privacy policy does warn that it does research to test the effectiveness of its site, but it's a little surprising to see the company brag about deceiving users. Facebook wanted users to have crappy days for science; OkCupid hoped they'd have crappy dates for science. What else are companies doing to us for the sake of experimentation?
OkCupid ran two experiments, involving its matching algorithm, which much like Facebook's Newsfeed algorithm is a bit mysterious to most users, but presumably reveals the degree to which you have things in common with another user, from books to sexual practices. In the first experiment, OkCupid "took pairs of bad matches (actual 30% match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90% match)." Unsurprisingly, the data-crossed lovers were more likely to email each other when OkCupid told them they were compatible. "But we took the analysis one step deeper," writes Rudder. "We asked: does the displayed match percentage cause more than just that first message—does the mere suggestion cause people to actually like each other? As far as we can measure, yes, it does. When we tell people they are a good match, they act as if they are. Even when they should be wrong for each other."
OkCupid based that on the fact that those users sent each other multiple messages as opposed to their convo petering off after that first one. That freaked OkCupid out, because it meant the matching algorithm might be BS. So it did the experiment again, reversing it to tell people who were near-perfect for each other (according to the algorithm) that they were not a particularly good match. And that reassured OkCupid, because those people still tended to have long conversations with one another, on average.
A footnote on the blog entry says that after the "experiment was concluded, the users were notified of the correct match percentage," but it doesn't say whether they were told they were part of an experiment or not. I emailed Christian Rudder about it. He says the experiment was "short" and involved fewer than 1,000 users. This is the message they got a few days after the experiment was over.
Dear [nameA] Because of a diagnostic test, your match percentage with [nameB] was misstated as [%]. It is actually [%]. We wanted to let you know! Best, OkCupid
"Because 'experiment' has become such an emotionally loaded word, we used the more neutral phrase 'diagnostic test,' which we felt had the same meaning," Rudder said by email.
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1dfe93847b148b12442efe056d946dd2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/08/18/ideas-for-charities-that-missed-out-on-the-ice-bucket-challenge/ | Ideas For Charities That Missed Out On The 'Ice Bucket Challenge' | Ideas For Charities That Missed Out On The 'Ice Bucket Challenge'
The bizarreness of the 'ice bucket challenge' is well-summarized by the skeptical child in this photoshop asking why people are wasting clean water to avoid giving money to charity, and also by Arielle Pardes at Vice. "It’s like a game of Would-You-Rather involving the entire internet where, appallingly, most Americans would rather dump ice water on their head than donate to charity," writes Pardes. "There are a lot of things wrong with the Ice Bucket Challenge, but the most annoying is that it's basically narcissism masked as altruism."
All true, but the thing is that it worked. When the meme first started, the person who poured a bucket of ice over his or her head -- and crucially uploaded video of the act to Facebook -- could challenge others to do the same or donate to a charity of the iced person's choice. But then a Boston athlete claimed the challenge for Lou Gehrig's disease, and managed to make the ALS Association the charity associated with the cold water. According to the New York Times, the ALS Association has now raised eight times more than it usually does, bringing in $11 million more than it did at this time last year. So it may be completely stupid but it is an effective fund-raising technique.
Narcissism is often part of philanthropy; we give because we want to make the world a better place and to be known as a person who helps the world become a better place. The ice bucket challenge ups the narcissism ante, because in addition to vaguely suggesting you care about philanthropy, you also get to post evidence to a social network that you're a zany person who appreciates memes. As the ice bucket challenge snowballs, the new challenge is to one-up your challenger. After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went into his backyard and poured some ice on his head, two of the people he challenged showed how boring he was. His COO Sheryl Sandberg recruited a celebrity guest and a bunch of Facebook employees for a mass ice water challenge, while Microsoft founder Bill Gates broke out serious cinematic skills and built a friggin' machine to dump a bucket of ice water on himself (while also noting that he didn't plan to avoid donating to the charity by undergoing the ice treatment). It's appropriate that Facebook's executives jumped on the challenge; Facebook's video auto-play in people's News Feeds has played no small part in causing the challenge to go viral.
So at this point many a charitable cause may be wishing it had its own icy viral way to raise millions. Here are some ideas for "Do this or/and give money to us" campaigns that might just go viral by tapping into people's social media narcissism:
The Plank Challenge: Remember planking? People loved taking photos of themselves in faux rigor mortis on some random object. That meme spread like wildfire and it didn't even have a cause associated with it. Some savvy charity should bring the plank back for a cause. The Cover-A-Cam Challenge: The Ice Bucket Challenge has little to do with the cause it's raising money for -- unless you make some kind of association between nerve paralysis from ALS and being numbed by ice water -- but the ACLU could raise funds with a challenge that's in line with its cause. The "Cover-A-Cam" challenge would ask participants to film themselves covering a surveillance camera with something funny, like a striped sock or the cover of a 1984 novel. Like the Ice Bucket Challenge there would be style points earned for creativity. Anti-surveillance activists previously played a game called "Camover" that involved actually destroying public surveillance cameras, but this one would be less destruction-of-property-esque and more light-hearted, in the vein of the Surveillance Camera Players, an acting group that used to perform plays in front of surveillance cameras in New York. The Romantic Movie Hair Blowing Challenge: Do your best "hair blowing in the wind" video. Upload it to every social network to prove you care about the World Wildlife Fund, and challenge five friends to join you in raising money and channeling 80s music videos. The Frozen Challenge: Disney shouldn't be the only one making money off the collective child obsession with this animated film. A charity that works on children's issues should "challenge" parents to make videos of their kids singing their favorite song from Frozen from heart, while challenging family and friends to do the same. Boom. Millions raised and no ice wasted. The No-Selfie Challenge: A charity should challenge all Instagrammers not to take any selfies for a full-month. If they do take a selfie, they have to donate $10 to the charity and do a text overlay on the selfie, e.g., "I'm selfie-ing for Komen for the Cure."
Good luck, charities. And readers, I'm sorry in advance for what happens to your Facebook feeds.
Also on Forbes:
Gallery: America’s 12 Most Generous Companies 13 images View gallery
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d1e142675eb72276e9631a2c17fbf95b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/29/the-privacy-lowdown-on-verizon-and-atts-permacookies/ | The Privacy Lowdown On Smartphone 'Permacookies' That Make You Trackable On The Web | The Privacy Lowdown On Smartphone 'Permacookies' That Make You Trackable On The Web
This week, researchers discovered that smartphone carriers have started inserting a unique code into their customers' network activity so that their customers can be tracked as they browse the Web and use smartphone apps; Verizon uses a customer's unique tag to deliver personalized ads to users, and AT&T plans to do the same. But the telecom giants are doing the tracking in a "boneheaded" way, said privacy scholar Jonathan Mayer: the code is publicly broadcast, meaning it's not just the wireless carrier who can use the code for tracking purposes but anyone who intercepts the information sent, including the website the person is visiting, any third parties on that site, or perhaps an all-seeing entity like the NSA, which famously used unique cookies placed by Google to target people for hacking.
"Putting public beacons on every user for every website that makes them trackable is a terrible idea," said Kenn White, a security consultant who built a website so people could find out whether they're being tracked this way. It's gotten over a million visits in the last 4 days. "For a lot of people, their smartphone carrier is their data provider. This is their ISP. I’m amazed we’re not seeing more of a response from the enterprise world. This is happening to their accounts."
I spoke with Verizon's senior privacy officer, Kathy Zanowic, and to AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel about the two carriers' tracking treatment. Unsurprisingly, they don't think this is a big deal, and don't think it violates their paying customers' privacy. Here's Verizon vs. AT&T:
How long have they been tagging their users this way?
Verizon: Two years. Given how long Verizon has been doing it, Kasowic said she was "surprised" by the attention this week.
AT&T: "A little while." AT&T is just "testing it" at this point.
Why are they tagging customers this way?
Verizon: To deliver ads, to authenticate users and allow them to avoid filling out forms, and for fraud prevention.
AT&T: To deliver ads.
Is there any privacy protection built in?
Verizon: The code is "dynamic" and will change on a "regular basis" -- at least once per week.
AT&T: The code is dynamic and will change daily.
Objection from security consultant Kenn White who has been analyzing the codes: White has been tracked for the past 6 days across 550 miles with a persistent code from both Verizon and AT&T. He has a smartphone with Verizon service and a hotspot with AT&T service. In AT&T's case, the code has four parts; only one part changes, he says. "It's like if you were identified by a birth month, a birth year, a birth day, and a zip code, and they remove one of those things," said White. You'd still be able to reasonably track that person with the other three. Verizon's code meanwhile hasn't changed for him, and it's been almost a week.
Can their customers get rid of the unique code?
Verizon: You can't remove it.
AT&T: You can't remove it during the 'test' period, but customers will be able to opt out and have it removed when AT&T rolls out its "Relevant Ad Program."
(Siegel had previously sent me an opt-out website AT&T customers could use but security researchers quickly learned it didn't work. I'm sure researchers will be testing again when the opt-out is real.)
“If you opt out, we won’t send you ads and won’t add the code”—ATT Opted out, rebooted device, new IP, same 6 day UID pic.twitter.com/X4rZAxqaMZ — Kenn White (@kennwhite) October 29, 2014
Can they opt out of anything?
Verizon: Customers can't opt out of the header code being sent "because it’s used for multiple purposes," says Kasowic. But they can opt out of it being used to show them relevant ads. "When it’s used for the advertising program, there’s a place where information is tied to the UIDH (Unique Identifier Header) -- such as 'Females in Alexandria, VA. between the ages of 25 and 50," said Kasowic. "It's just segments that other people wouldn’t understand. There's no personal identification. If you opt out, there’s no information stored there." But the tracking code remains.
AT&T: Siegel says customers will be able to opt out of ad delivery and tracking.
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4e77747b1fec1f435bce4511d02f7745 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kasiaborowska/2020/11/03/the-what-how-and-why-of-ai--part-1/?ss=ai&sh=a0894b25815e | Artificial Intelligence 101: Defining Your Business Objective | Artificial Intelligence 101: Defining Your Business Objective
Learnings from years of building artificial intelligence solutions for corporations.
Before you start building an Artificial Intelligence solution it is important to define clear ... [+] business objectives and success metrics. .
Business managers these days are challenged by the sheer scale of the learning curve presented by the artificial intelligence domain and many concepts such as machine learning, big data, cloud, data infrastructure and engineering that form part of the ecosystem and journey towards AI. The field of Artificial Intelligence is vast, the subject matter a fusion of multiple disciplines - from philosophy and behavioural economics to neuroscience and computer science - and is rapidly changing. What is more, it comes with a reputation and promise that few technologies other than perhaps the internet and blockchain could lay claim to: the promise to completely revolutionise society, industry and our lives.
So how something so revolutionary be so poorly understood to the public?
Start with a Why
In his famous book and TedTalk Start with Why, Simon Sinek explains how great business leaders have inspired and built business empires. The secret? Start with your why – the articulation of your purpose or vision that is at the core of everything you do - and let the how and the what emerge from this origin. The method is designed to create alignment between the brand and customer values, the result being a raison d'etre when combined with a great quality product or service results in a brand capable of capturing hearts and minds around the globe. Regardless of what you think of them (and their why), it’s easy to identify brands such as Apple, Amazon and Google who have found their why and combined it with a winning formula that they execute consistently and successfully (without going into details of their ethical objectives). They are the empires of modern times, and it is no coincidence these empires are also pioneering advancements in AI.
AI is a field that has captured the attention of millions with an endless stream of articles focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the latest innovations and use-cases which have fuelled speculation on the potential impact on industry, economy and our livelihood. Still, many business leaders struggle to understand what AI means for their business and where the opportunities lie. Why?
Whilst many business leaders are very aware of the advancement of AI and its growing importance in their future technological and commercial roadmap, many have yet to establish how AI relates to their organisations’ needs and objectives, problems and challenges. Our focus on technology and how it is being used has eclipsed questioning the potential relevance. Simon Sinek might say our obsession with the ‘what’ and ‘how’ has distracted us from the ‘why’.
Unfortunately, a large proportion of the literature focuses on the somewhat sensational and waffly aspects of AI or specific use cases. There is minimal opportunity for those intelligent yet ignorant on the matter to build a solid foundation and framework upon which to develop their knowledge on such a complex and diverse subject. The effect is that whilst it’s both exciting and useful to understand new and novel applications, without a framework for arranging new knowledge it winds up feeling as though one is accruing a lot of potentially vital information without much context: rather like having a puzzle pieces without the picture on the box to use as a reference to understand how they are related or might connect.
The goal for any AI consultancy should be to provide exactly that, a simple framework that establishes the foundational concepts necessary to build your AI knowledge. That way you can ensure any new puzzle pieces acquired while building your knowledge of AI can be readily assimilated and understood.
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4461dcd0bab5216267ad44843201a0be | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kasiaborowska/2021/01/18/the-great-compromise-in-ais-buy-vs-build-dilemma/ | The Great Compromise In AI’s Buy Vs Build Dilemma | The Great Compromise In AI’s Buy Vs Build Dilemma
The promise of Artificial Intelligence has been sold to companies for more than a decade, offering the ability to automate core business functions, and serve as a nearly unprecedented multiplier to enhance customer experience, efficiency, and scalability. Examples range from autonomous vehicles and AI-driven background checks to the processing of insurance claims and quality assurance scans for manufacturing.
Despite great advancements in AI technology over the last five years, mass adoption remains much slower than it needs to be to deliver the transformative impact we’ve been sold.
Repeated studies have found that a shocking 80-90% of AI projects that are launched fail to reach production. VentureBeat, for example, estimated an 87% failure rate; MITSloan’s Management Review report found that only 10% reached profitability.
These failure rates are not due to a lack of vision or talent. The field is rich in strategic thinkers who know exactly how AI can transform specific lines of business, with the technical know-how for delivery.
Companies generally understand that not embracing AI technology is akin to BlockBuster taking a pass on streaming video. MITSloan found that 71% of companies appreciated the importance of AI, 59% had an AI strategy, and 57% were currently piloting the technology’s deployment.
Some organizations have managed to break the barriers to adoption and improve profitability with AI, though this is the exception to the rule. Digital adopters face more apparent obstacles to implementing AI. These organisations are often members of more established less agile industries. Updating core processes is a long process and the introduction of technology has potential to disrupt critical business functions, through tech illiteracy and teething issues with new systems.
The problem that remains is that so many companies understand the importance of AI — backed up by strategies and talented teams — and still fail to successfully implement the needed solutions.
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As with any other breakthrough business technology, from websites to servers, there is a buy-versus-build dilemma in the world of AI. Companies must choose between making the difficult and expensive decision to create the technology from scratch or buying an off-the-shelf solution that may not be quite right. An organization selecting the right solution based on their needs can make the difference between successfully improving profitability, through automating core business functions and being another AI project that fails to reach production.
A Look at Building
Building AI in-house presents a variety of benefits. When done right, a built approach can lead to a stable, production-grade AI solution that is perfectly tailored to the specific needs and requirements of an industry or company.
Digital natives have shown the impact of building AI from scratch. IBM is a prominent example of a business that has launched successful in-house AI into production. A recent report found IBM’s Watson Assistant AI paid itself back in just 6 months, with a three-year ROI of 337%.
For digital adopters however, successfully building and implementing an AI solution in house is easier said than done without access to sizable capital and infrastructure.
“When building an AI solution in-house, companies typically hire a team without significantly investing in the foundational elements that are required to stabilize AI in complex and dynamic environments,” suggests Nurit Cohen Inger, VP of Products at AI company BeyondMinds. “This approach, unfortunately, has typically meant a long and costly process to reach ROI positivity or in the worst case, never achieving production. Before developing AI solutions, businesses must heavily invest in solving the barriers that hold them back from turning proof of concepts into successful solutions in production.”
Successfully bringing AI to production does not signal the end of the project or the investment it requires; companies still need to carry the costs of keeping the models “alive” and relevant. Building an AI model can be like hitting a moving target: the aim needs to be constantly recalibrated. Continual work is required to keep the models valid over time, evolving with live and often noisy datasets.
While time consuming, having the flexibility to develop and improve your model over time is a key strength of a built bespoke solution. Built systems offer businesses full ownership over the AI IP and therefore the control to adapt and improve the model with changing circumstances.
In order to accomplish this, companies should consider first building a full-stack AI “Center of Excellence”. A centralized AI team built on well-defined AI principles and goals. Serving as the foundation for in-house projects and their evolutions, this will provide the project with leadership and direction. This can be a long and resource-intensive process, requiring constant maintenance and monitoring from a dedicated team.
As it currently stands, most companies that have been successful at building their own AI solutions have been technology giants with the ability to invest in research, infrastructure, and talent; rather than small and medium-sized companies.
A Look at Buying
Given the cost, time, and human resources required for building a solution in house, off-the-shelf solutions have become a popular option. The ‘buy’ approach brings with it a number of advantages, such as a quicker delivery to market, less upfront investment, and often higher resiliency.
In too many cases, the one-size-fits-all approach does not truly fit anyone at all. As the most impactful AI products typically drill down to solve for uber-specific industry pitfalls, general AI solutions may miss the market. Cohen Inger explains that “many business problems worth solving with AI are industry-specific or unique to a company, the solution will be heavily defined by the data, environment, and customer requirements”. Bought solutions may be unable to provide the flexibility required to evolve with the market, the ability to deal with data outliers, or back-end to be able to seamlessly update as customer needs evolve.
Pervasive industry issues tend to be uniform, but companies' specific needs are not. Branding, value proposition, customer segment, and price point are all factors to consider before purchasing an off the shelf product. American Express and Discover credit cards, for example, operate in the same space, but offer significantly different value propositions to a different customer base. An off-the-shelf fintech solution that might be a good fit for Discover may not solve the root of the problem for American Express.
Despite off-the-shelf solutions inability to solve specific businesses challenges, they cater to the uniform industry pain-points. Organizations lacking the resources and talent required to build a bespoke AI product, may find built systems an appealing choice. Replacing core business principles with third party AI services however results in a lack of control. While taking the onus off of enterprises to continually develop their AI, the reliance upon outside organizations for both initial and ongoing development is a concern with off the shelf models. Adopters of bought AI risk becoming reliant on outside sources, to fix bugs and add new features for instance, as the effectiveness core business processes is dependent on how well product developers are able to meet their needs.
The Great Compromise of Customization
When buying a solution is not a sure bet for many companies and building something in-house is out of reach for most, a compromise must be met if an organization is to embrace AI capability.
As AI itself advances as an industry, a new approach has emerged: customization. This method of Artificial Intelligence development provides AI as a service. These platforms allow a member of an organizations tech team to define the parameters of an AI model based on customization levels of a range of out of the box solutions. The tailored product is then fed data by the company to create an AI which meets specific needs. Typically, the customer retains a high level of supervision over the AI, such as with monitoring and human-machine feedback loops, allowing for improved control over business processes without the maintenance costs.
This hybrid approach anchors the solution on a base AI technology with a core set of ready-built capabilities, leaving open specific aspects that need tailoring to the needs of a customer.
This method combines the benefits of building with the positive aspects of buying while eliminating the drawbacks of both. Customization is possible because AI solutions have common and overlapping core technology that serves as the foundation for deployment.
In an analogy to human skills: we all have 5 base senses, but each can be modified and trained to accomplish different goals. It’s less tricky and cost effective for a football team to hire someone who can already kick a ball, rather than trying to teach a child from scratch.
Through a customization approach, core capabilities can be continuously improved with feedback loops, training, and monitoring in order to meet the evolving needs of a line of business or customer base.
Cohen explains how this looks in the real word, “A company can deploy a customizable solution to classify text or detect certain objects. These fundamental capabilities can then be customized to specific use cases, changing with the types of texts or objects, without needing to invest in teaching the AI what each object is.”
Viewed another way: customizable AI solutions that can front-load these core technology capabilities are able to reduce risk and shorten the deployment timeline for customers.
Where We Go from Here
AI is still in its infancy; many advancements are yet to be seen or even imagined. While we are decades away from AI transforming every aspect of our lives, it is now the time for companies to begin developing, planning, and implementing AI solutions, lest they fall behind. The gap between AI-transformed companies and companies yet to adopt AI is getting wider.
As we debate the buy versus build dilemma, a hybrid approach may create a balance between the two in an optimal manner, democratizing AI to propel businesses and entire industries forward. As that happens, everyone will start to notice AI improving their everyday lives.
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614134f8e56eee8e1508e1f58c2a357a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kasperhulthin/2012/10/24/why-big-questions-and-bad-decisions-make-better-entrepreneurs/ | Why Big Questions And Bad Decisions Make Better Entrepreneurs | Why Big Questions And Bad Decisions Make Better Entrepreneurs
“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions."
This quote from an unknown author might be the most apt description of my life as an entrepreneur. Some decisions will change your life, but only if you ask the right questions.
In 2007 I was faced with one of those decisions -- what to do with my life. I was finishing my masters degree in Management of Innovation and Business Development at Copenhagen Business School. The economy was bullish, industry was growing and graduates were in high demand. Like many of my peers, I got a steady influx of news about recruiting events and even a few interview requests too. At the same time, there was my study-mate Gus.
Gus and I spent many nights enthusiastically discussing different startup ideas, which always lead me to the same perplexing question: "should I get a job, or should I start a company?”
I sought advice from friends and family, but informing my decision became a public opinion poll that made my head spin. The problem was, depending on who I asked, I would get a different answer. When I talked to my mom the answer was (obviously): “take the job, Kasper,” while some of my college friends would urge me to follow the startup dream.
One night I was sitting alone in my kitchen. A friend’s girlfriend had sublet me her apartment. She had for some inexplicable reason chosen to paint her kitchen walls a bright shade of pink. So, there I was, surrounded by this rosy hue and completely consumed by that nagging question: “what should I do with my life?”
Suddenly it occurred to me that the only person I had not yet asked was myself. So I did. In that moment I realized that I had ignored all the job related emails - to spend my evenings scrutinizing my many startup ideas! I had to do it. And, I reasoned, with the job market the way it was I could always find something to fall back on if my startup leap of faith turned out to be a disaster.
Ironically, my risk assessment turned out to be flawed, while the true argument -- the motivation for doing it -- has proved right ever since. The next morning I started my first company with Gus.
For me, the lesson was this; if you ask people for advice on big decisions, they will most likely tell you what they would do. That goes for launching companies, but is true for most of the advice I’ve gotten while scaling them as well. So while I truly support seeking counsel, I'm always cautious of the public opinion poll. I always have to remember to ask myself the question: "What would I do?" Quite often the answer then is simple.
Two years later, I was again sitting in my kitchen. By then I had moved and the pink walls were gone. I was faced with another big decision to make: "should I close my startup?" We had enjoyed great initial success and gotten seed investment, but ultimately we couldn't make it work. Our business model was based on job advertising, and for those who remember (but would rather forget), it was much harder to sell job ads in the fall of 2008 compared to the spring of 2008, when we launched a well-received beta.
We had borrowed about $25,000 each to start the company but our money was gone. Soon, our investors’ money would be gone too. We were faced with two options -- borrow more money to pivot, or close up shop. The question I finally asked myself was this; "Is this idea important enough for you to invest more of your life in it?” This time I knew the answer was no.
The best decision I ever made was to start my first company, the second best was to close it down.
I was broke, but the wisdom I had gained was priceless. After closing down, I did actually manage to find that real job and receive my first real paycheck. Two months later these two guys, Jon Froda and Anders Pollas, started talking to me about joining the founding team of their new startup. I did again ask around for advice, and most reactions where in the ballpark of; "Interesting, but do you really think that idea can be done?"
I decided to do it. I wanted to go back into a basement to build another company, knowing full well that it could either be big (hence worth investing my life in) or it could be a massive disaster. I sent my bank guy this email;
"I need to borrow more money. I realize that I already owe, but, as you know, I am an optimist and believe the best defense is an attack."
Luckily my bank guy trusted me and for that I will be forever thankful.
The company was Podio. The mission was to change how people work. Two and a half years later we had built an incredibly talented team comprised of 14 different nationalities in our offices in Copenhagen and San Francisco. We had changed how thousands and thousands of teams work together around the world, and we were acquired by Citrix.
Our lives and thereby our startups are based on the decisions we make but more importantly the questions we ask. So, what question did you ask yourself in your kitchen today?
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7ece3335d14ed4e47ada7af1db6cbe3a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kasperhulthin/2013/02/05/how-to-sell-without-being-a-salesperson/ | How To Sell Without Being A Salesperson | How To Sell Without Being A Salesperson
“You're always selling” is one of those sayings you often hear about building startups. But many entrepreneurs try to avoid being a salesperson, as it still has a bad connotation. I'll proudly admit, however, that I started my career – and learned the most tricks – in a job associated with the worst of all stereotypes: the used car salesperson.
I started selling when I was tall enough to look over the counter at my dad’s bike shop. After school, I'd help the customers so the bike mechanic could spend his time fixing the bikes, rather than selling parts to everyone that walked in from the street. During high school and university, I stuck around the store to help my dad, who would also sell cars.
The shop has been around for three generations with a very dedicated customer base. People would often come from far away to buy their cars there. They could easily have bought a new Range Rover elsewhere in a bigger city, but they enjoyed the experience of coming to our shop and felt they were getting great service. It still fascinate me that service can be such a strong differentiator for any business, it should should be as basic as doing your bookkeeping.
I clearly remember one customer that had taken a 5-hour train trip from Copenhagen to buy a 10-year-old Volkswagen Passat, a mid-class passenger car that he could have easily found for the same price at 10 other car shops. I drove 20 miles to the train station to pick him up so he could test-drive the car on our way back. It was a wonder to me why someone would spend this much time buying a car he could have surely purchased minutes from home, so I asked him why. He replied, "I did call all the other car shops, and every salesman I talked to told me the car was perfect. Your dad was the first one to say that his car wasn't."
This sentence has stuck with me ever since. The buyer knows that a perfect solution doesn't exist, so if you try to sell one, you'll only come across as less trustworthy. In the last few years, I've been selling software as part of building up Podio. And even though we don't deal with dents and rust in the software industry, we certainly deal with customers that ask for more than we can and will deliver. So knowing when to say no applies just as well.
Earlier this year I met with Educational Services of America, a potential customer. They had lined up pages of feature requests. Some were fair, but others just didn't fit our vision and design principles or help the customer achieve what he actually wanted. During the meeting, we went through the list, and they would ask, “Do you do X?” And I would often reply, “No, because Y.”
Afterwards, their CIO Alan Watson stepped back, pointed throughout the room and said: “You know, I like you guys, but I really like that guy.” Here he pointed at me. “Do you know why? Because when I ask him about a feature, he just says no - no more BS. Instead he help us understand where we need to go.” Alan is probably one of the more visionary CIOs I've met and I'm proud to have him as a customer. You can hear his story here.
The single best way to be good at sales is to do something you're really passionate about. That's why most entrepreneurs are actually great salespeople. But just like the guy who bought the older Volkswagen off my dad, I rarely believe those who present everything as perfect without any dents or challenges. Or as one of my friends, Max Marmer from Startup Genome, phased it the other day: "It is time Silicon Valley get over the "Everything is always good and awesome" pathology". If I were an investor, I'd be looking for people with a great vision and an trustworthy route to getting there.
Prominent angel investor Dave McClure once said that you need a developer, a designer and a hustler for young companies to succeed. No matter which role you fill, you’ll be selling your product, your company or yourself, so you better be good at it.
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c922af21a48c460f503cdb6ed571e4e6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateashford/2014/10/22/staples-breached/ | Staples May Have Been Breached. (Should You Just Cut Up All Your Cards?) | Staples May Have Been Breached. (Should You Just Cut Up All Your Cards?)
Staples may be the latest retailer affected by a data breach, according to recent reports. If it’s true, the company is just one more link in a chain of information thefts that has hit consumers of Target , Home Depot , Jimmy John’s, JP Morgan Chase , Michaels, and Kmart, among others. In fact, up to 6 in 10 Americans may be affected by all the pilfering of personal information, according to security experts.
In a recent survey by CreditCards.com, 45% of respondents with credit or debit cards said they would definitely or probably avoid retailers over the holidays who have experienced a recent data breach.
“I think we’re in a phase where we’re going to see something like this quite frequently,” says Beverly Harzog, a credit card expert and author of Confessions of a Credit Junkie. “So it’s never been more important to protect your information.”
Thankfully, you don't have to take the scissors to all of your plastic to defend yourself. Here’s how to stay safe:
Use credit, not debit. If you do shop at a retailer that gets targeted by data thieves, you’ll be much better off if they steal your credit card info. “You have more protections with a credit card,” says Harzog, whose debit card was hacked several months ago. “With a debit card, you might still get all of your money back, but it could get tied up for a couple of weeks. We had to wait about 10 days.”
Keeping your credit info safe doesn't have to be a headache. (Photo credit: B Rosen)
Check your account frequently. Don’t wait for your statements to verify that all of the charges on your card are yours. Log into your account online weekly—or even a couple of times a week—to make sure all the activity is legit. “If somebody hacks your account, that’s going to show up on your online statements,” Harzog says. “That is the best way to catch fraud in the very early stages.”
Get a credit report every four months. You’re entitled to a free credit report from each of the three bureaus— Equifax , Experian, and TransUnion—annually. For year-round monitoring, pull a report from one bureau every four months, using annualcreditreport.com, and make sure all of the activity is yours.
Take the free monitoring. Some retailers, such as Target and Home Depot, have offered free identity theft protection after a breach to consumers who might have had their information stolen. Free is nice. There’s no harm in taking them up on this.
Consider a freeze. If there’s been suspicious activity on any of your accounts or you’re merely petrified of dealing with fraudulent activity, a credit freeze might be something to think about. This prevents anyone from opening any new lines of credit in your name. However, it also keeps you from getting new credit. “It’s an inconvenience for you if you think you’re going to be applying for any type of credit at all—mortgage, car loan—but it really does protect you,” Harzog says. In some states there may be a fee—generally $10 or less—to freeze your credit, and another fee to thaw it, and you may have to pay that fee to each of the three bureaus.
Ponder a new card. It might also be smart to simply get a new credit card (or cards) if you know you’ve used it at a compromised retailer. Just remember to update your information on any automatic payments or charges that hit the card.
Keep card issuers informed. Now that information theft is so common, creditors are quick to shut down an account if they detect suspicious activity—like you, charging an espresso in Rome when you live in Florida. If you plan on taking a long-distance trip, let your credit card company know where you’re going and when you’ll be there. That way you can still pay for that margarita when you hear about the next data breach.
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40a6c48cec73d90a961e15c6956ce124 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateashford/2015/02/24/office-productivity/ | The Key To Office Productivity: Get Out Of The Office | The Key To Office Productivity: Get Out Of The Office
Productivity is a big topic these days. In an era of always-on technology and constant interruptions, getting more done in less time is the holy grail. Evidently, the answer is simple: Get out of the office.
Of employees who work remotely at least a few times per month, more than three-quarters of them report greater productivity while working off site, according to a recent survey from ConnectSolutions. Some 30% complete more work in less time, and 24% get more done in the same time, the survey found.
What makes the difference, you ask? No one is popping into your home office to ask if you watched the Oscars last night or if you can help them with that spreadsheet. “Clients have said to me that they get more work done on a two-hour flight than they do all day at the office, because they’re not being interrupted,” says Mitzi Weinman, founder of productivity company TimeFinder and author of It’s About Time.
Don't panic! There are ways to cut down on interruptions when you're on deadline. (Photo credit:... [+] star5112)
That’s great for those workers whose employers let them telecommute for work, of course. But what if you’re chained to your desk? What if you can’t do your job from someplace else, or your boss simply isn’t inclined to let you? There are ways to mimic the experience of working remotely—you just have to cut down on the interruptions in the workplace.
Here are some pointers:
Look at the big picture. Spend a little time thinking about why you’re getting interrupted at work. If it’s because you sit by the printer and people are constantly strolling by your desk, that’s one thing. But if you’re a manager and you’re fielding questions from the same people all day long, you might be at fault. “Are you giving your team enough information to be able to do what they need to do and enough authority to be able to move forward without having to come back to you?” Weinman says. If not, now is the time to figure out what needs to change.
Set no-interrupt times. If there’s a time of day when you really work efficiently and can get a lot accomplished, try to preserve it as your own. Post a sign on your cube or your door indicating that you’re working between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., and unless it’s an emergency, to please leave a note or come back later. If you’re consistent, your team will learn not to bug you during those hours.
Move. If you work in an open-space office or a cube farm, you might be better served by going elsewhere when you’re on a deadline—even if it’s just a quiet conference room or an unused office. “I had a client who used to hide under his desk and turn the lights out,” Weinman says.
Wear headphones or a headset. People are less likely to stop and chat if you look like you’re concentrating or that you’re already on the phone. You can also try setting up visual barriers, such as plants or a lamp, that make it harder for people to glance over and make eye contact.
Change your office culture. Suggest a no-meeting day once a week, or every other week. Or try this: “I was doing a workshop with a company and we put into place that once or twice a week, for the first two hours of the day, nobody could interrupt anybody in a particular department,” Weinman says. “Because they were yelling over cubes. That made them so much more productive for those two hours.”
Take advantage of quiet times. Think about the times that your office is deserted. Does everyone arrive at 9 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m.? Consider coming in at 8 a.m. a couple of times a week, or working until 6 p.m. now and then. You can get a lot done in an hour of focused time.
Silence all the beeps. Coworkers aren’t the only ones who interrupt. You’re probably also dealing with a steady stream of emails, texts and other notifications from your computer and smartphone. When you’re under the gun, close your email program and put your phone on silent to avoid getting thrown off track. “There’s a statistic that every time you’re interrupted, whether it’s something dinging or somebody standing in the door, that it takes 20 minutes to get back to where you were,” Weinman says. “It’s so frustrating.”
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b76085d9916f63ae48a189b207b548bc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateashford/2015/03/25/drinking-and-driving/ | Would You Buy A Car With A Built-In Breathalyzer? | Would You Buy A Car With A Built-In Breathalyzer?
What if there was a safety feature you could install in new cars that would prevent tens of thousands of deaths? Turns out, there is.
Researchers at the University of Michigan did some analysis to determine what impact in-car breathalyzers would have on fatal and nonfatal crashes over time. The devices prevent drivers from starting a car if their blood alcohol levels are above a certain limit.
The results: Installing breathalyzer technology in all new cars over 15 years would save more than 59,000 lives—an 85% drop in crash fatalities. It would also prevent more than 1.25 million nonfatal injuries, and save the country an estimated $342 billion in injury-related costs.
“We knew the results would be substantial, but our modeling far surpassed what we expected to see,” says Patrick Carter, M.D., study lead author and an assistant professor with the University of Michigan Injury Center in Ann Arbor. “And when we estimated the device cost to be around $400 per vehicle, we found that after three years of installing them in all new vehicles, the savings far outweighed the cost.”
(Photo credit: James Palinsad)
Current in-car breathalyzers are clunky and intrusive. “It’s basically a breathalyzer that’s attached to the engine of the vehicle,” Carter says. “And the person has to blow into it when they start the vehicle.”
One of the programs working to improve the technology is called the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety, or DADSS. The folks at DADSS are developing two different systems that will unobtrusively measure blood alcohol levels in drivers. The first is breath-based—as the driver breathes normally, the system takes readings from the vehicle cabin and would be designed to distinguish between driver and passenger breath.
The second is touch-based, and would require only that the driver touch the steering wheel or the car’s start button to take a reading. The experience would be the same for all drivers—seamless. “For this to actually work in consumer vehicles, we want to make sure it’s really fast in terms of reading measurements,” says Bud Zaouk, S.D., DADSS program manager and group director for QinetiQ North America. “Our target performance is less than half a second.”
Precision is also key. “Our accuracy is plus or minus 0.0003 percent,” Zaouk says. That means that if the device is set to block you from driving your car at a blood alcohol level of 0.08 or above, which is the legal limit, you won’t get tagged for a level of 0.06—one of the complaints against current interlock devices.
The potential for this kind of in-car technology is huge. And beyond life-saving benefits, there might also be financial perks. Imagine, for instance, getting a discount from an insurance company for having this installed in your car. Or states might consider offering tax discounts to drivers who adopt it, to improve public acceptability. “That might be a very valuable way to begin to introduce these types of devices,” Carter says.
Another way to potentially introduce the technology would be to tie it into graduated driver’s licensing. “So parents could put these devices in vehicles,” Carter says.
In fact, one of the groups that would be most affected by in-car breathalyzers, according to the University of Michigan’s research, would be young drivers. “The greatest impact was among two age groups: 21 to 29, and 16 to 21,” Carter says. “And those groups are often very difficult to intervene with.”
Unfortunately the technology won’t be ready anytime soon. “We’re probably about five to eight years away from it being in cars,” Zaouk says.
As a parent of young children who will be reaching driving age right about then, I will be one of the first in line.
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eb3491d6eac3052b469f06c724f8ae56 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateashford/2016/06/30/no-will/ | Horror Stories: When You Die Without A Will | Horror Stories: When You Die Without A Will
If you’re reading this story, there’s a good chance you don’t have a will or you don’t have one that’s up to date. That’s because nearly three-quarters of Americans fit this description: 63% do not have a will at all, and another 9% have a will that is out of date, according to a Google Consumer survey by USLegalWills.com.
It’s not just young people without a lot of assets. Among seniors age 65 and older, only half have up-to-date wills in place, the survey found.
“We really wanted to explore this group after hearing from people who had a will, but had it written before they got married or had children,” said Tim Hewson, CEO of USLegalWills.com, in the press release. “In essence, although they technically had a will, it was worthless.”
What’s the big deal, you ask? Wills are expensive, and states have rules for handling these kinds of things anyway, right? While that’s true, there can be serious consequences to not putting an estate plan in place.
Here are some real stories from financial planners who watched clients struggle:
Death causes sibling in-fighting:
"One client was a business owner with a $3 million estate. He passed away at age 62 with no will, no spouse and no kids. Nine siblings were left to fight over his assets. The family of siblings was probably dysfunctional before, but this brought out the worst in all of them. The whole process was ugly and it took 18 months to close the estate.” –David Jackson, CFP, Kansas City, MO
Children get nothing, new wife gets everything:
"I had a friend whose father had remarried years after his first wife had passed away. The father had just retired when he suddenly required hospitalization. A week later, he died. He had no will, and at that time in Massachusetts, the default was that the current spouse got everything. The children were left with nothing—the new widow was nervous about having sufficient assets for the rest of her life, and so would not disclaim any of the inheritance. As a result, the widow and the children didn’t speak to each other for years.” –George Gagliardi, CFP, Lexington, MA
Life partner left without legal standing:
“My maiden aunt lived, worked and died about 25 years ago in another state without leaving a will. I know her intentions were to leave her assets, including their home, to her life partner, but she never did the paperwork. It took three years to settle everything because her siblings and parents had passed and the nieces and nephews were scattered all over the country. Imagine the heartbreak for her partner of having to sell the home and move since she could not afford to buy the house from the estate. All the funds were eventually disbursed to 11 others after time spent gathering death certificates and piling up legal fees.” –June Ann Schroeder, CFP, Elm Grove, WI
Life insurance ends up in the wrong hands:
“I had a client who was a married couple with two young children. The husband was my primary contact and, eventually, he became completely unreachable. After several months, I lost total contact. Eventually I found out the husband ended up addicted to gambling and alcohol. They divorced and he committed suicide. His life insurance named ‘spouse’ as beneficiary, but she was no longer his wife. It ended up going to ‘next of kin,’ which was their children. Sounds great, but since they were minors and there was no will that established a trust, the state stepped in to manage the money. The mother had to go back to work and hire a nanny for the children. She asked the state if she could take the money that she was paying the nanny so she could stay at home with the kids. The answer was no.” –Clark Randall, CFP, Dallas
Heirs are left trying to find everything:
“As wise as my own father was, he never got around to creating a will, or documenting his assets and their locations. He died one day before 9/11 and all these years later, I am still trying to finish up his estate. It was a monumental detective work just to try to figure out exactly what he had and where. To make matters worse, the assets were in multiple countries, and continents.” –Kashif Ahmed, CFP, Woburn, MA
Partner owes enormous taxes on property:
“I had a new client come to me to file a tax return including the sale of the home she had occupied for 30 years with her late common-law husband. Not having a lot of assets, he never felt the need to draft a will; and in order to take care of his common-law wife, on his deathbed, he sold her the house for $1. Unfortunately, this state does not recognize common-law marriage, so she did not receive a step up in basis, and was liable for capital gains tax on the entire sale, less the commission and $1 basis.” –Nathan Zielonka, CFP, Newton, MA
Process is time consuming and expensive:
“I had a client who had been married to his wife over 35 years. His wife passed away in California without a will or trust, which meant court filings and probate, just to get him named as the rightful sole beneficiary of her assets. It took us quite a bit of legwork to get his wife’s assets transferred into his name, even once the court approved it. In the meantime, she had assets that we could not touch or manage. Her own death was an untimely accident, and she probably expected to live much longer than she did, but given the assets she and her husband had, not having an estate plan caused unnecessary expense and lost time.” –Juan Ros, CFP, Thousand Oaks, CA
In the end, an up-to-date will can save your loved ones a lot of time and trouble. “It shouldn’t be left to someone else to decide how an estate is divided,” Gagliardi says. “My plea to clients is: ‘Be nice to your survivors, and don’t go putting them in a difficult situation because you put off something that you should have done long ago.’"
(Photo from Britt-knee on Flickr)
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b8185553792cd8af18ce093884bba106 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateashford/2016/10/30/generation/ | The Generation With The Most Credit Card Debt? It's Not Millennials | The Generation With The Most Credit Card Debt? It's Not Millennials
Ever wonder which generation is carrying the most debt on plastic? Looks like it’s young Gen Xers, according to a new survey by GOBankingRates.com, carrying a median balance of about $4,000. That includes adults ages 35 to 44, and of that group, 46% are carrying a credit card balance.
This might be because of this generation’s stage of life, experts suggest. Between 35 and 44, young Gen Xers probably have families, mortgages and higher expenses in general. They may also be shouldering some of the financial burden of their aging parents.
Older Gen Xers, by contrast, have about half the median credit card debt, at $2,000. That includes people ages 45 to 54. And of older Millennials who carry a credit card balance, ages 25 to 34, the median balance is also about $2,000.
Credit card debt among other generations varies. For Baby Boomers carrying a balance, the median balance is about $3,000. Among adults 65 and over, it’s $1,600. For younger Millennials, ages 18 to 24, it’s $587.
(Shutterstock)
Interestingly, credit card debt is only the fourth largest source of debt for consumers overall, behind mortgages, student loans and auto loans. But credit cards are generally carrying the highest interest rate of all debt sources, with an average rate of 15.18%, according to CreditCards.com.
If credit card debt is weighing you down, here are some tips on getting things under control:
Track your cash flow. Carrying a credit card balance suggests that you’re spending more than you’re making—and the only way to see why that’s happening is to track where your money is going. If you use your credit cards for most purchases, it may be a matter of sitting down with your last few statements and categorizing your purchases. If cash is a black hole for you—you took money out at the ATM but have no idea where it went—you may have to keep a log on your smartphone or in a little notebook as you spend.
Identify the overages. What categories are sabotaging your monthly spending? Are you devoting too much money to babysitters and eating out? Are you spending more on clothes than you realized? Mindfulness is half the battle, and seeing your outlays in black and white can help you tighten the purse strings.
Consider putting the plastic away. If you can’t seem to make any headway on your credit card balance, think about putting your cards in a drawer for six months and switching to a cash system instead. Research suggests that using cash not only makes you more conscious of what you’re spending, but it’s literally impossible to spend more than you have.
Make a pay-off plan. Stop carrying that balance forward and calculate how much you’d have to put toward your card every month to pay it off within the year, or within 18 months. Need some motivation? Try a site like ReadyForZero.com, which will help you put together a debt pay-down plan and send you encouraging messages about all the interest you’re saving. Once you have an amount in mind, set up automatic payments to your credit card each month (many will let you do this from their site) and watch the balance disappear.
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db9e0e8cd596c4bbe5a0b94621326df3 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-nov-20-la-fg-spain-election-20111121-story.html | Spain ousts Socialists for center-right government | Spain ousts Socialists for center-right government
Spanish voters chucked out their ruling party Sunday in favor of a new center-right government that they hope will revive their moribund economy and keep Spain from being sucked into the vortex of Europe’s relentless debt crisis.
The Socialists, who have governed the country since 2004, were resoundingly defeated by the Popular Party, which will now enjoy a commanding majority in parliament. The drubbing added to the cascade of leaders and governments in Europe that have fallen within the last year — Spain’s turnover is the sixth — because of the crisis threatening the survival of the euro.
The Popular Party won 186 seats in the 350-member parliament, far ahead of the second-place Socialists’ 110.
The lopsided outcome means that the ascendancy of Socialist parties on the Iberian Peninsula is now over. In June, voters also ousted the Socialist government in Portugal, one of three nations forced to seek bailouts because of the euro debt crisis.
Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s incoming prime minister, will have little time to bask in his party’s return to power after seven years in opposition.
Unemployment has pushed past 21% and is particularly acute among the young, about half of whom are out of work. Global investors have rushed to unload Spanish bonds for fear the country won’t pay its debts; they are unlikely to heed Rajoy’s plea last week to give him “more than half an hour” to tame public spending and overhaul the economy to make it competitive again.
“There will be no enemies for me but unemployment, the deficit and the excessive debt,” Rajoy declared after returns showed his party’s unequivocal win.
“Today we celebrate,” he said. “Tomorrow is another day, and we will have to apply ourselves to the task.”
Seen as a bookish, uncharismatic leader, Rajoy studiously avoided making specific promises or outlining an action plan during the election campaign, preferring to surf the wave of public anger at the incumbent Socialists.
But analysts say his government will probably pursue, and perhaps expand, the public spending cuts that the previous administration adopted last year, following the tough austerity recipe the global markets have demanded of fiscally wayward nations.
“No one has a real clear sense of exactly what they have up their sleeve.... I think they’ll take advantage of the first 100 days to cut as much as they can,” said Ken Dubin, a political scientist at Carlos III University of Madrid. “Spain has been a more applied pupil of international finance than any of the other countries that have come under threat in this euro crisis.”
Where the ax will fall is the question. Healthcare, education and pensions are prime targets.
Rajoy, 56, is also expected to try to move quickly to streamline Spain’s labor laws, blamed by many economists for driving up production costs and protecting older workers at the expense of the young. One likely goal is to restrict collective-bargaining rights, which will meet with heavy resistance from unions.
But Rajoy will have a strong hand because of his large majority in parliament. His Popular Party already scored major victories this year in regional elections, giving him a broad mandate across the country.
Austerity has been unpopular in Spain, and a mass movement of young people known as the indignados has organized huge demonstrations in Madrid to protest the lack of job prospects.
But there has been none of the violence that has marred protests and strikes in Greece, the epicenter of the debt crisis. And though the Popular Party is expected to pile on even more austerity, many Spaniards cling to the perception that the party is better at handling the economy than its rivals.
That belief will now be put to the test.
“Without a return to growth, it’s hard to see how Spain is going to dig itself out of debt,” Dubin said. “It’s the same problem that everybody has.”
henry.chu@latimes.com
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f7636c0a8628a633f747cd3e5a4858b1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-nov-23-la-na-obama-tax-cut-20111123-story.html | Obama turns anti-tax message on GOP | Obama turns anti-tax message on GOP
President Obama visited New Hampshire to highlight the next big fight in Washington, as he urged Congress to not “be a Grinch” by allowing tax cuts to expire after the holidays, costing the average middle-class family $1,000 in 2012.
In a less-than-jolly assessment of Republican motives, Obama said Tuesday that the GOP’s votes against his jobs plan this fall were essentially votes to raise taxes, because one provision of the plan would have preserved the tax breaks.
“The question they’ll have to answer when they get back from Thanksgiving is this,” Obama said. “Are they really willing to break their oath to never raise taxes, and raise taxes on the middle class, just to play politics?”
The critique represented the start of a new campaign, begun a day after a bipartisan congressional “super committee” announced it could not agree on a 10-year plan to reduce federal deficits and called it quits a few days before its Thanksgiving deadline.
With Republicans asserting that Obama failed to lead during the super committee’s tenure, the president watched lawmakers leave Washington for the holidays, then flew to New England to speak at a high school in Manchester, N.H.
Obama’s comments were briefly interrupted by a group of protesters who began chanting as he started to speak, beginning with the words “Mic check!” — a phrase popular in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Obama supporters quickly drowned out the outburst.
Republicans also were ready for Obama in New Hampshire, where GOP presidential hopefuls are engaged in a furious race to the party’s January primary. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney timed the debut of a television ad targeting Obama’s record on the economy to air the night before the president’s visit.
The ad kicked up a controversy before Obama hit town. It includes footage of Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign race against Sen. John McCain saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
But while it was Obama speaking, he was quoting a McCain campaign aide, which the ad did not make clear. The full Obama comment was, “Sen. McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’ ”
“Seriously?” asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. “It’s a rather remarkable way to start. And an unfortunate way to start.”
But as Republicans see it, Obama engaged in his own misrepresentation when he told the crowd in New Hampshire that Republicans voted against extending the payroll tax cuts. They voted against his much larger $447-billion American Jobs Act, which included a provision to extend the tax cuts. The GOP objects to Obama’s call to increase taxes on the wealthy to help reduce deficits.
Republicans and Democrats don’t have much of a track record of collaboration over the last few months, and that could spell the end of the tax cuts. Republicans have raised concerns about the cost of extending the break — it could top $250 billion when combined with similar extensions on the table — but they have not ruled it out.
Approved in late 2010 as part of a deal to extend President George W. Bush’s income tax reductions for high earners, the payroll tax holiday reduces the amount of money that workers have taken out of their paychecks. The Bush income tax cuts continue through the end of 2012, but the payroll tax break expires at the end of 2011 and would bring an immediate tax increase.
“A lot of them have sworn an oath, ‘We’re never going to raise taxes on anybody for as long as we live,’ ” Obama said Tuesday, “even though they have already voted against these middle-class tax cuts once.”
But “in the spirit of Thanksgiving,” Obama said, “we are going to give them another chance. Next week, they’re going to get to take a simple vote.”
Senate Democrats haven’t quite settled on how simple the vote will be or when it will take place. But it could come shortly after the Thanksgiving break.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that he was ready to have an “honest and fruitful discussion” about the payroll tax extension.
“Meanwhile, the American people continue to await action on the more than 20 bipartisan jobs bills passed by the House that are currently stuck in the Democratic-controlled Senate,” Boehner said. “I hope the president will put country before party and call on the Senate to bring these bipartisan jobs bills to a vote immediately after Thanksgiving.”
christi.parsons@latimes.com
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50ab9edc5fb8ebe85f0c0ea0a355ccd1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-nov-25-la-fg-egypt-muslim-brotherhood-20111125-story.html | Political Islam at a crossroads in Egypt | Political Islam at a crossroads in Egypt
The call to prayer quiets in the minaret as Mohammad Abbas, a street protester turned candidate for parliament, steps out of a decrepit elevator and hurries to his office. He’s still learning the art of politics but he can spin a sound bite better than most of his elders. Ask away:
Facebook activists?
“They sit in air-conditioned rooms but don’t touch real Egyptians.”
Young Islamists?
“Not yet strong enough to influence change.”
The Muslim Brotherhood?
His eyes narrow, the banter hushes.
Abbas joined the Brotherhood, the Arab world’s largest Islamic movement, when he was in college. But the group that brought the 27-year-old closer to God and honed his social conscience booted Abbas out in July when he made clear that his ambitions for a new Egypt were much different from those of his mentors.
The Brotherhood’s moderate Freedom and Justice Party and its more conservative Islamic allies are likely to win big in parliamentary elections Monday; no other organizations are as disciplined or as connected to the masses. But the Brotherhood’s unity, which buttressed it for decades against bans and repression by Hosni Mubarak’s police state, is splintering as both young and established voices break away.
With about 6,000 candidates running for 498 seats, the elections are a crucial test for the Arab world’s most populous nation. The outcome, along with a presidential election scheduled for next year, will reveal whether Egypt emerges as a democratic inspiration in a region clamoring for change or slips back into a military-dominated autocracy where only the faces and illicit bank accounts have changed.
Abbas, who has shaved his beard in a symbolic break with the Brotherhood, joined with about 20 other former members to found the Current Party, a coalition of activists trying to keep alive the spirit that emboldened Egyptians during the uprising that overthrew Mubarak in February. It’s a vision of Egypt that is more tolerant and secular than the political ideology of the Brotherhood, which has turned mosques into campaign stops and is expected to seek a hardening of religious lines in daily life.
Drawing heavily from the educated and the middle class, the Brotherhood appears at once coy and inept at revealing what its brand of political Islam exactly is. Secularists allege the group is masking a more radical agenda than its Freedom and Justice Party promotes. The organization’s members often contradict themselves and at times operate with an opaque aloofness that comes from years of not caring about projecting media-friendly images.
The Brotherhood believes that this is its moment. And the chants of “Islam is the light, the Koran is the constitution” at a demonstration days ago in Tahrir Square left little doubt the organization wants Egypt’s new constitution and its identity indelibly stamped with sharia, or Islamic law.
Breakaway members such as Abbas are taking a “religiously unacceptable” path, says Zeinab Mohamed Kamel, a female member of the Brotherhood involved in preaching programs.
“It is the duty of every Muslim to vote for a group or a party that will make sure sharia law prevails,” she says. “It is forbidden to separate religion from politics.”
The Brotherhood is expected to win as much as 30% of the seats in parliament, but its political zeal has drawn criticism. The organization has so far not endorsed the protests in Tahrir Square, fearing that the chaos could derail Monday’s elections, and the strategy appears to have miscalculated public sentiment. Protesters blame the group for cooperating with Egypt’s military rulers to advance its ambitions at the expense of a new rebellion against the generals — a movement that Abbas has joined.
As a new political Islam emerges from the “Arab Spring,” religious parties, including some that receive funding and support from Wahabi fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia, are on the rise against secular voices. But the struggle is also an insular one between ultraconservative and moderate Islamists who have been at odds for generations over how deeply religion should permeate civil society.
“Political Islam faces a big challenge right now,” says Mohamed Shahawi, campaign manager for Abdel Monem Aboul Fotouh, who was expelled from the Brotherhood when he defied the group by announcing his candidacy for president. “It’s like the decompression sickness that happens to deep-sea divers when they’re lifted too quickly to the surface.”
In Tunisia, the moderate Islamist Nahda party, which won big in recent elections, has promised to adhere to that country’s strong dedication to women’s rights. But Islamist leaders in Libya are pushing to reinstate polygamy after the late Moammar Kadafi had banned it for decades. The Brotherhood espouses equality and pluralism, but its hard-line elements talk of revoking Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, rejecting the idea that a woman or a Christian could ever be president, and eventually outlawing alcohol at beach resorts.
Abbas’ drumming out of the Brotherhood illustrated an ideological divide that had been growing for years: Should the organization, which has 600,000 members, limit itself to its social and religious roots, or expand further into politics and risk losing its reputation? Egyptians are pious, but many want a state with wider civil liberties than the Brotherhood supports.
Yet even young progressives like Abbas don’t easily disparage an organization that for years gave them identity and a sense of mission; even in his estrangement there is an echo of loyalty.
“The Brotherhood taught me a lot. I could never deny this,” Abbas said. “The Brotherhood has the trust on the street. It has been shaken in recent months in Cairo, but not in the rest of the country. They are respected because they kept to ethics and moral principles at a time the Mubarak regime was doing just the opposite.”
Founded by schoolteacher Hassan Banna in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood became the Arab world’s preeminent Islamic movement. Its history of bloodshed, including the attempted assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954, was articulated by Sayyid Qutb and his book “Milestones,” which inspired Islamic radicalism across the region. The Brotherhood renounced violence at home decades ago but it supports Hamas and other militant groups against Israel.
The Brotherhood’s popularity springs from its education, healthcare and religious programs that sustained poor and middle-class Egyptians at a time when Mubarak’s regime was failing them. Mubarak, playing to Western fears, portrayed the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, imprisoning and torturing thousands of its members. But the then-banned group’s political strength was apparent in 2005, when its members ran as independents and won 20% of seats in parliament.
Today, the Brotherhood is competing against more parties as it tries to polish its image even as it confronts a Western-leaning young generation and schisms from within.
“It’s a different environment now,” says Amr Darrag, a member of the Freedom and Justice Party who is running for parliament in the Cairo district of Imbaba. “We know we have to keep improving our message and tactics.”
An engineering professor at Cairo University, Darrag, who unlike most Brotherhood members does not wear a beard, sits in a living room of ornate carpets and gold-brocaded chairs. His flawless English mixes with the traffic drifting in from several floors below. He criticizes Brotherhood members such as Abbas as idealistic, impatient and drifting away from religion’s hold on society.
“They tend to be more enthusiastic and want to achieve their goals quickly,” he says. “But you have to calculate and predict consequences.”
Darrag speaks of equality and civil rights but he anchors them in Islam more than democracy. He, like most candidates or for that matter most Egyptians, speaks carefully about religion and democratic rights, sensitive that any suggestion of diminishing Islam could label one an apostate. This dynamic, which has nearly all political persuasions agreeing that sharia should guide the constitution, constricts open-ended political discourse and is manipulated by ultraconservatives, such as Salafis.
“What I’m concerned about is the Salafi groups who are worried that the Westernization of society has taken us further away from Islam,” he says. “I think they’ve overreacted.”
Darrag has his religious limits too, although he blends them with pragmatism. He says he would personally accept a female president but “from a political point of view it’s not a winner.... People in Egypt are still conservative. They wouldn’t be happy with a woman running their affairs. In Eastern culture, men are not as comfortable with this.”
He offers similar qualifications on Coptic Christians, who are fearful of growing sectarianism that has resulted in deaths, riots and burned churches. Darrag says Christians should enjoy the same rights as Muslims, but added that the Coptic Church’s support of Mubarak over the years was a “serious mistake” that is “unacceptable to many Muslims.” Millions of Muslims, however, also supported Mubarak.
Darrag prefers to talk about Egypt’s more immediate problems. The nation’s economy is sliding, tourism is down, infrastructure is decaying and unemployment is up. It’s little wonder that during the Eid holy festival early this month the Brotherhood delivered cheap beef and lamb as part of its campaign to win votes. Questions of Islam’s deeper role in society are being put off until later.
“We have a big chance, and if we don’t succeed it will be our problem,” Darrag says. “After four or five years we hope that then we can start to achieve our political agenda.”
Abbas is cranking up his political agenda now.
“Egypt needs a renaissance so that by 2030 we are one of the highest-income countries in the world,” he says. “We have to concentrate on programs that will lift the nation, not on ideology or religion.... If the young are elected, it will fulfill the dreams of the revolution. Despite our youth, what has happened over the recent months has given us political experience.”
But does 10 months of experience outsmart a Brotherhood that has been waiting decades for this opportunity?
“Tahrir Square changed the thinking of so many people,” says Abbas, reflecting on the most tumultuous year of his young life. “But I believe the voices of young Islamists are not strong enough yet to influence change. The old organizations still hold the power. But we need everyone to come together. We can’t exclude.”
The revolution altered the perspectives of many young, educated Islamists. They joined Christians, secularists and communists in Tahrir Square, widening their ideological boundaries. Abbas, who has a degree in business, wants a clearer separation of mosque and state, a prospect inconceivable to the Brotherhood and its more ultraconservative Islamic allies.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision to make when you believe in your own principles and ideas,” Abbas says of his estrangement from the Brotherhood. “Young people of Egypt need to find a new way of doing things. Even the Brotherhood will have to change. Everyone is closely watching Egypt. What’s happening here will not just change the Middle East but the world.”
It sounds pretty; spoken like a man wearing jeans and a rumpled, untucked button-down shirt. But sitting in his office with his cellphone next to a miniature Koran, Abbas is the embodiment of passion and inexperience. Moved by days of revolution, he is in the thicket of real-life politics, and one gets the sense that he is the future, but the future is not now.
His office door opens. There are other meetings, places to be, activists to plot with. Men across the street hurry to the mosque; slipping off shoes, washing their hands and feet, prostrating themselves to God in a call to prayer that has echoed through the centuries. Abbas knows that Islam and the power of its politics will shape Egypt for years to come.
“We’ve been looking for God for 7,000 years,” he says. “Egyptians will never give up on this.”
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Amro Hassan of The Times’ Cairo bureau contributed to this report.
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744210dcd63101ebdd6db358daf36948 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-04-la-fg-china-cyber-theft-20111005-story.html | U.S. lawmakers demand action over alleged China cyber attacks | U.S. lawmakers demand action over alleged China cyber attacks
A chorus of congressional lawmakers is demanding that the Obama administration respond to what U.S. intelligence agencies say is an aggressive Chinese campaign of cyber attacks designed to steal commercial and defense secrets from U.S. companies.
At a hearing Tuesday, Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, accused the Chinese government of engaging in a “predatory” policy of cyber theft that he said has reached “an intolerable level.”
Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that she believed “a significant portion” of cyber intrusions on U.S. companies “emanate from China.”
She called on the administration to pursue the matter with Beijing “to bring these rampant cyber thefts and attacks under control.”
U.S. authorities have accused China of sponsoring cyber espionage in the past. Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment.
In recent years, the U.S. has created cyber-defense units in the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department. The U.S. role in offensive cyber attacks around the globe is little understood, but the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s eavesdropping arm, is responsible for code breaking and communications intercepts involving foreign targets.
The U.S. should confront Beijing, Rogers said by establishing international rules against stealing corporate secrets through cyber attacks.
Rogers said China sponsors teams of hackers who infiltrate computer networks and siphon commercial secrets from U.S. companies to benefit Chinese companies.
“I don’t believe that there is a precedent in history for such a massive and sustained intelligence effort by a government to blatantly steal commercial data and intellectual property,” he said at the hearing, adding later, “I feel very comfortable saying that Chinese nation state activities have led to the exfiltration of intellectual property at a staggering rate.”
“I step back in awe at the breadth, depth, sophistication and persistence of the Chinese espionage effort against the United States of America,” Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and NSA, said at the hearing.
China has repeatedly denied sponsoring cyber attacks. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to interview requests.
The National Security Agency cannot share classified intelligence with private companies, even if they are subject to an attack. And companies that are targeted often do not disclose attacks against them.
In some recent cases, hackers have tricked corporate users into clicking on computer links that open their computer networks to intrusion, said Arthur Coviello, executive chairman of RSA, the cyber-security division of information technology firm EMC, based in Hopkinton, Mass.
RSA disclosed in March that an attack compromised an authentication system used by defense contractors to protect their data. Coviello did not blame China at the hearing, but a report in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine said experts working for U.S. intelligence identified China as the culprit.
The U.S. government does not spy on behalf of individual companies or industries, current and former officials say.
The Chinese government, they say, conducts economic espionage to gain technology developed in the West.
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
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56b942a21fe41fa7f2aa903b6e11afa4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-06-la-fg-france-ketchup-20111006-story.html | France bans ketchup in cafeterias | France bans ketchup in cafeterias
First France built a wall around its language to protect it from pernicious Anglo-Saxon invaders. Now it is throwing up a shield against another perceived threat to its culture and civilization: ketchup.
In an effort to promote healthful eating and, it has been suggested, to protect traditional Gallic cuisine, the French government has banned school and college cafeterias nationwide from offering the American tomato-based condiment with any food but — of all things — French fries.
As a result, students can no longer use ketchup on such traditional dishes as veal stew, no matter how gristly, and boeuf bourguignon, regardless of its fat content.
Moreover, French fries can be offered only once a week, usually with steak hache, or burger. Not clear is whether the food police will send students to detention if they dip their burgers into the ketchup that accompanies their fries.
“France must be an example to the world in the quality of its food, starting with its children,” said Bruno Le Maire, the agriculture and food minister.
Ronald Reagan’s White House may have considered ketchup — made famous by Henry John “H J.” Heinz, who produced the first bottle in 1876 — a vegetable. But Gallic gastronomes view it with the same disdain as American television series, English words and McDonald’s restaurants: unwelcome cultural impostors.
Jacques Hazan, president of the Federation of School Pupils’ and College Students’ Parents Councils, told the Times of London that the new regulations are a “victory.”
The rules call for school officials to cut down on fatty foods and introduce more vegetables, fruit and dairy products. Four or five dishes must be offered each day with a serving of cooked or raw vegetables, preferably seasonal. Pupils can have unlimited amounts of bread and water.
Recommendations that included the ketchup cutback were made by government researchers more than four years ago, but the decree took effect only this week, a month after the start of the school year. It applies immediately to all cafeterias in schools and government buildings except those serving fewer than 80 meals a day. Cafeterias must keep records for school health officials of what has been served.
The rules leave young ketchup lovers here little choice. French schoolchildren are not allowed to bring home-prepared lunches to school and must either eat in the cafeteria or go home for lunch. School and college cafeterias serve 1 billion meals a year, according to the government.
Le Maire said the changes were introduced because common sense rules on nutrition have not been followed in the nation’s schools.
“Six million children eat in canteens every day, but 1 in 2 of them is still hungry when they leave,” he said. “Nutritional rules are neither applied or controlled. We are making them obligatory and we will be keeping an eye on the menus.”
The government acknowledges on its website that fewer than half of college and high school students think the food in school cafeterias is good. At the same time, figures published on the Ministry of Agriculture website say that fewer than half of France’s youngsters are getting enough dairy products in their home diet.
Christophe Hebert, chairman of the National Assn. of Directors of Collective Restaurants, suggested that a large portion of cultural chauvinism is also behind the new rules.
“Canteens have a public health mission and also an educative mission. We have to ensure that children become familiar with French recipes so that they can hand them down to the following generation,” he told the Times of London .
“We absolutely have to stop children from being able to serve those sorts of sauces to themselves with every meal. Children have a tendency to use them to mask the taste of whatever they are eating.”
“Food is very important here,” said Hazan of the parents federation, “and we can’t have children eating any old thing.”
Willsher is a special correspondent.
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c33f55bd9e60bafed455af7c084bd550 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-06-la-fg-nobel-poet-20111007-story.html | Sweden poet Tomas Transtromer awarded Nobel Prize in literature | Sweden poet Tomas Transtromer awarded Nobel Prize in literature
With the prize announcement moments away and the phone resolutely silent, Tomas Transtromer figured that his chance for Nobel glory had slipped by once again.
As Sweden’s most lauded poet and a perennial favorite for the literature prize, Transtromer was used to the feeling. But just a few minutes before the rest of the world heard it, the Stockholm native received the unexpected news Thursday that he had won after all. Word came in a slightly tardy (local) call from the Swedish Academy, which bestows the coveted award.
“We were very surprised,” Transtromer’s wife, Monica, told the regiment of reporters who swiftly converged on their home in the Swedish capital.
Now 80, Transtromer is in a wheelchair and can speak only a few words because of a stroke two decades ago. Although his literary output has since diminished, he had already built up a small but acclaimed body of verse famous in poetry circles for its intimate, evocative and sometimes mystical descriptions of nature and the human mind.
For such works as “Baltics” and “Windows and Stones,” literary critics have praised Transtromer’s gift for making fine, concentrated observations without ducking larger questions. Later in life, he began exploring complex themes of memory, aging and death.
The Nobel committee said that “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.”
Transtromer is the first Swedish writer since 1974 to be awarded the prize, which carries a financial award of about $1.4 million. When his name was read out at the academy’s headquarters in Stockholm, journalists and others who had gathered whooped and applauded.
The academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said the committee was mindful of potential charges of bias but that Transtromer’s worthiness was not in doubt.
“We have been quite thoughtful about this, not being rash in choosing a Swede,” Englund said, noting that Transtromer’s works have been translated into about 60 languages. “He is well known among people who read poetry.”
In the United States, Transtromer’s work has been championed since the 1960s by writer Robert Bly. The most recent U.S. publication of his work, a side-by-side English and Swedish edition of his 1990 collection “The Sorrow Gondola,” was published last year by the small Los Angeles-based independent house Green Integer.
“Our print run was very small, 1,000 copies,” said publisher Douglas Messerli. The Nobel will change that significantly. “I’ve just ordered today 5,000 more.”
Transtromer’s complete works can be found in a single English volume published by New Directions Press, the 288-page “The Great Enigma,” which includes a short memoir he wrote after his 1990 stroke.
The son of a teacher and a journalist, Transtromer studied history, poetry, religion and psychology at Stockholm University. At 23, he came out with a highly regarded debut collection titled “17 Poems.”
For many years, he worked as a psychologist, often with juvenile delinquents and drug addicts. The Nobel committee said Transtromer has in fact never been a full-time writer, which explains why his complete oeuvre is on the slim side.
To his admirers, any lack of quantity is more than compensated for by quality. And though the Swedish landscape, especially the Stockholm archipelago, looms large in his work, Transtromer’s lyricism transcends geography, said Mats Soderlund, director of the Swedish Writers’ Union.
“It’s very universal. He comes very close to what it means being human and being present in the world, in the moment,” Soderlund said. “It’s a very subtle poetry, no big gestures.”
But like many Swedes, Soderlund did not expect his countryman finally to win the prize after having been passed over for so many years.
Even Transtromer’s publisher, Eva Bonnier, held out little hope, deciding to skip the live announcement of the prizewinner on Swedish television at 1 p.m.
“I didn’t want to be disappointed another time. I thought, this is never going to happen,” Bonnier said by telephone from Transtromer’s home, where the situation was “slightly chaotic.”
When the Transtromers’ phone hadn’t rung by 12:30 p.m. — the point at which “it is usually said that the train has passed,” as Englund put it — the couple thought to themselves, “How nice, then there was nothing this year either,” Monica Transtromer told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
The call came through with only a few minutes to spare before the announcement.
Transtromer is the seventh European writer in 10 years to receive the Nobel, which has fueled criticism of the prize committee as too insular.
Others thought to have been in contention this year were Canadian Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient,” along with American Philip Roth and, more quixotically, U.S. songwriter Bob Dylan.
But in the end, it was the literary star in the Swedish Academy’s own backyard who captured the committee’s fancy.
“He is writing about big questions,” Englund said. “It’s about death and history and memory, watching us, creating us, and that makes us important, because human beings are sort of the prism where all these great entities meet.... You can never feel small after reading the poetry of Tomas Transtromer.”
henry.chu@latimes.com
Times staff writer Carolyn Kellogg in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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208a0094f8ba440e8db06fbdaeebc184 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-10-la-na-gop-debate-romney-20111011-story.html | Romney exudes confidence in New Hampshire | Romney exudes confidence in New Hampshire
On the eve of participating in his sixth Republican presidential debate Tuesday night, Mitt Romney returned to old haunts in New Hampshire, exuding the air of a candidate who is leading by double digits in the state.
His visit to a New Hampshire campaign landmark here — Robie’s Country Store — was a marked contrast to his previous stop in December 2007, not long before he lost his first bid for the presidential nomination.
Back then, the former Massachusetts governor was often on the defensive about his authenticity and his changed positions on such issues as abortion, gay rights and gun control. He had irritated voters by spending lavishly on television commercials long before anyone cast ballots. Some dismissed him as scripted and robotic.
This campaign cycle, he has been loose and confident. Outside Robie’s, he spoke on an unpainted plywood box stamped with his last name — a makeshift stage meant to represent his more understated campaign style.
Romney has been helped, in part, by the shift in focus from national security and foreign policy issues in 2007 to the nation’s economic troubles — a topic the former businessman likes to say is “in his wheelhouse.”
After listening Romney talk about shrinking incomes and unemployment Monday, 93-year-old Dorothy Robie, who has seen many candidates pass through the doors of her family’s store, said he was doing a better job of addressing voters’ anxieties: “He’s talking right to the people — what the people want to hear.”
Other, more subtle changes have worn well here. Instead of rushing out the door after events, he often mingles with voters until just a few stragglers remain.
He is running a more fiscally prudent effort. He has a little entourage and has yet to air a campaign ad. He boasts of flying budget-conscious airlines. His events rarely get fancier than a campaign banner, a flag or red, white and blue bunting.
Steve Duprey, the state’s former Republican Party chairman, calls it a more relaxed and “right-sized” campaign for New Hampshire.
“Last time, people had the sense that his town hall meetings were fairly scripted and that he really didn’t engage in the give and take. He’s completely changed that,” said Duprey, who remains neutral in the race, though his wife works with Ann Romney, the candidate’s wife. “People are getting to know him better.”
It will be months before Republicans settle on their nominee, but Romney enters Tuesday night’s forum in a strengthened position.
In New Hampshire, he outpaced his opponents by more than 20 percentage points in last week’s poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and television station WMUR. And after a series of smooth debate performances, Romney has also regained his front-runner position in national polling.
Even onetime critics like Steve Schmidt, who fashioned Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s strategy to defeat Romney in 2008, describe the former governor as a “remarkably better” candidate this time. By defending the healthcare program he sponsored in Massachusetts, Schmidt said, Romney is better equipped to withstand attacks on his authenticity, even if the program’s mandate for insurance coverage irritates many GOP voters.
“Four years ago he had a very transactional approach to issues. Four years later he has, seemingly, a very principled approach,” Schmidt said.
When opponents have challenged him in debates, Schmidt said, “He has swatted it down like it’s child play. He has showed humor. He has been coherent. He has been able to drive a message focusing on jobs and the economy.”
At this early stage, all of that could be fleeting. Romney’s opponents have sought in recent days to turn the discussion back to his shifts on social issues. Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a selectively edited Web ad Monday that accused Romney of being “a flip-flopper” on healthcare.
And Romney, whose net worth is valued at more than $190 million, is still having trouble connecting with undecided voters like Jim Belanger, 68, of Hollis, N.H. “I’m not sure that he feels what the common man feels,” Belanger said. “People who have always had money can’t think the same as people who haven’t. They can’t relate.”
Romney also has had a few gaffes that could follow him — such as his joke to a group of job seekers in Florida that he too was “unemployed,” though his status was voluntary.
And the verdict is still out on his 1950s-era humor. At a New Hampshire diner this summer, for example, he suggested that eggs Benedict should be served on hubcaps “because there’s no plates like chrome for the hollandaise.”
On Monday in Milford, when Ann Romney told the crowd her role with the campaign was to show voters “the other side of Mitt, which you might not all get to see,” her husband turned and showed his back to the audience.
Ann Romney paused as the crowd laughed. “Oh dear,” she said with a sigh.
maeve.reston@latimes.com
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45156d12b2f7486fd175bce3d6e9f246 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-16-la-na-gop-nevada-2012-20111017-story.html | Nevada all but ignored by GOP contenders | Nevada all but ignored by GOP contenders
When Nevada elbowed its way toward the front of the presidential calendar, the idea was simple: No longer would candidates ignore the West and its issues. Rather, they would come here and speak to the concerns of people like Victor Tingley.
At 56, the former assistant casino manager has been jobless for nearly three years. His home in North Las Vegas, purchased more than a decade ago when the neighborhood was more desert than development, is worth less than a third of its former value.
Yet Tingley, a Republican-leaning independent, has heard nothing meaningful from the GOP hopefuls about the collapse of the housing market or the resulting implosion of Nevada’s building industry, which, experts say, may take decades to recover. Not even from Mitt Romney, who took a well-publicized tour of Tingley’s foreclosure-wracked neighborhood in April and held it up as an example of the nation’s struggling economy.
“They don’t give a [damn] about us,” said Tingley, as he stood in his front yard surveying a gloomy landscape of empty and abandoned homes, many worth far less than their outstanding mortgages.
When the Republican hopefuls gather in Las Vegas on Tuesday for the eighth in their series of debates, it will be a rare Western appearance. Should they address the bursting of the housing bubble and its devastating effects, it will be rarer still.
The candidates have said little about the issue on the campaign trail and mentioned nothing on their campaign websites, save a veiled reference from businessman Herman Cain, who criticizes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage guarantor.
The topic has come up a handful of times in previous debates, but only in passing. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has offered the most concrete response, saying the federal government should abandon efforts to prop up home values and let prices sink until the market responds — hardly a salve to homeowners who have seen their equity and, in some cases, their life savings, wiped away.
The virtual silence from the GOP field is not just frustrating to Tingley and his neighbors — “They’re not really talking about it. Nobody is,” said Republican Shirley Ayala, 77 — but also puzzling to business and economic analysts. They say the economy will not fully recover, here in Nevada or elsewhere across the country, until housing rebounds and the construction industry mends.
“Job creation” — which the candidates have emphasized — “is not, in and of itself, the answer,” said John Restrepo, who runs a Las Vegas economic consulting firm. “You have to deal with the housing market, since that’s one of the biggest assets most people have.”
The Republican candidates have pinned the housing collapse on President Obama, whose stimulus plan was intended to spur growth and boost job creation, healing the real estate market in the process. Specific programs to help struggling homeowners have met with little success, experts say.
But beyond their criticism of the president, the GOP hopefuls have little incentive to raise the issue — or, for that matter, visit Nevada all that much. Compounding the snub, several said last week that they wouldboycott the state’s Jan. 14 caucuses in a dispute over their timing.
Although Nevada is tentatively third in line to vote, Iowa and New Hampshire are still far more consequential. So the candidates are spending the bulk of their time in those two states, where the housing issue rarely comes up. While Nevada ranks first in foreclosures, New Hampshire and Iowa rank 15th and 33rd, respectively. Joblessness in the two states is less than half of Nevada’s 13.4% rate, which also leads the country.
Moreover, the Republican belief in limited government and less regulation, which Paul enunciated in its purist form, does little to placate many of those who have lost their residence or who, unable to sell, face a decade or more trapped in a ghost town of stucco and red tile.
“The free market will work over an extended period of time,” Restrepo said. “The question is how long do you let the pain and suffering go on?”
Most of the GOP candidates have written off Nevada, believing that Romney has the state locked up after easily winning here four years ago. Of those boycotting — an effort to win favor with New Hampshire officials who want Nevada to caucus later — only Cain was potentially competitive in the state.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who entered the race in mid-August, has the support of the state’s governor, Brian Sandoval, and his political team. Paul also has a presence in the state and a following among the tea party faithful, who hold considerable sway in Nevada.
No candidate, however, has worked the state harder than Romney, who has a built-in base of support in the state’s large Mormon population.
He has visited repeatedly since he last ran, picked up local endorsements across Nevada, filmed a TV spot and last month used a North Las Vegas trucking company as the setting to announce a 59-point jobs program. The plan, however, made no mention of the housing crisis, even though in some nearby neighborhoods more than 80% of homeowners are “underwater,” owing more than their properties are worth.
Even while touring Tingley’s neighborhood last spring, Romney offered only vague solutions, saying greater job creation would perk up the economy and, eventually, boost home values.
Things have scarcely improved since that day in April. The couple that hosted Romney — Tingley’s former backyard neighbors — have moved to Texas and their home is in foreclosure. Leaves gather in cobwebs by the front door and a notice taped to the garage warns potential squatters away.
mark.barabak@latimes.com
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a7f148f01dcede1cc5236e43b7802a55 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-16-la-na-texas-dowser-20111016-story.html | ‘Water witcher’ is in high demand | ‘Water witcher’ is in high demand
Spencer Powell and his drilling crew assembled behind the Living Word Harvester Church at a spot where, according to Powell’s ancient craft, they would find water.
Powell, 59, learned to dowse for water more than 40 years ago from an old “water witcher” known simply as Mr. Ray. Now Powell runs a dowsing and drilling business, Diversified Water Well Drilling, and carries a notebook filled with the lengthening list of those seeking his services. Demand has skyrocketed in recent months here, about 180 miles west of Dallas, and statewide, fueled by the ongoing drought, heat wave and a boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a type of oil drilling that requires lots of water.
To find the best place to drill behind the church, Powell stopped by a few weeks earlier and grabbed two L-shaped divining rods he keeps stowed in the back of his 1950s drill rig. Slowly, gripping the short ends of the rods, he walked through the grass near a few mesquite trees until he felt the rods move. Then they crossed, signaling a potential water source.
Then he recited a short prayer.
Powell has encountered plenty of skeptics. Abilene, a city of about 120,000, is known for its conservative churches and Bible Belt politics. Powell assures doubters that water witching has nothing to do with witchcraft; it’s a skill that can be learned, though some people are born with the gift.
These days, people are less likely to ask questions, including the folks at Living Word, desperate as they are for water. Powell receives several calls a day, mostly from residents whose wells have run dry.
The drought has taken a toll on Abilene, withering everything from the lawn at the town’s chief tourist attraction, Frontier Texas!, to nearby Dyess Air Force Base. On the day Powell prepared to drill by the church, city officials were scheduled to meet to discuss whether to restrict outdoor watering to once a week because the level at Lake Fort Phantom Hill had dropped to 10 feet below the spillway. Residents had already been restricted to watering no more than twice a week.
Powell drills at least one well a day, mostly in rural yards, on farms and ranches. He charges $25 a foot for drilling a completed well, $10 a foot if the well turns out to be dry. He says he finds water about half of the time.
About 40 feet into the sticky red clay behind Living Word, he found it — although he wasn’t sure whether it was of sufficient quality and quantity to make a decent well.
He sent his brother, Kyle Caswell, 52, to find a hose while he and another worker began digging two pits near the drill. They would shoot water into the drill hole, softening the dirt as they drilled deeper. The overflow would gush into the pits.
A man from the church pulled up. He climbed down from his truck in black cowboy boots, surveyed the drill and asked about their progress.
Powell explained that they were about to reach the red bedrock, or “red bed.” Caswell arrived with a hose from the church building and started to sprinkle the dirt under the drill.
“It takes water to get water, don’t it?” the man said before he drove off.
Powell was nervous. It’s one thing to hit water, another to make a working well. He had sunk a well recently on nearby Anson Road, but the flow wasn’t very strong. On this morning, the temperature was climbing into the 80s. He had sweated through the rim of his cap and the back of his shirt.
At about 11 a.m., he hit the red bedrock, which shaded shading the pools of water a darker brown. The drill continued to churn, humming as dragonflies hovered over the pits of muddy overflow. About an hour later, they removed the drill and inserted a PVC pipe into the hole. Muddy water gushed through.
Powell smiled.
“It makes you feel good when you make somebody water,” he said. “That’s pretty much all well water. It will be more than enough to keep this tank full — probably 30, 40 gallons a minute.”
Powell and his crew shored up the new well with gravel and cement. By day’s end, the mayor had announced new watering restrictions, and Powell had moved on to the next water request on his growing list.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
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e9df47dce97695952e0fd2a4817b6f5a | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-18-la-na-dust-storm-20111019-story.html | Dust storm shrouds Texas city | Dust storm shrouds Texas city
Even by Texas standards the dark, dense, 8,000-foot-high behemoth of a dust storm that enveloped Lubbock had folks making comparisons Tuesday to the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
It was “Steinbeck-ish in its arrival,” said 71-year-old Paul Beane, a Lubbock city councilman, who watched the storm roll in Monday evening from his front porch. “I expected at any moment to see a line of Model Ts coming through headed to California. It really did look like pictures I had seen of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.”
Winds kicked up to 75 mph. The sky turned darker than a thunderstorm. And then a blinding, rust-colored cloud blew into town with a vengeance. In what meteorologists described as a rare event because of the size of the cloud, the dust storm knocked out power, tipped small planes, toppled trees, damaged an airport hangar and a fire department roof and had people sweeping and brushing off a thick coating of dirt.
With the ongoing drought across the Southwest, experts said, the dust clouds could become more commonplace.
Smaller dust storms are common in Lubbock, the “Hub City” of the South Plains, home to 230,000 people about 300 miles west of Dallas. But the conditions that caused Monday’s storm were unusual, similar to those that generated enormous dust clouds in Arizona in recent months.
The cloud formed what meteorologists call a haboob, an Arabic term used to describe a violent dust storm or sandstorm. Justin Weaver, a meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service office in Lubbock, said Arizona’s dust storms were driven by thunderstorms. “We have the same situation when we get a haboob — it’s driven by convection,” he said. “This one was a little different because it was driven by the leading edge of a cold front.”
The storms can be traced, at least in part, to the Southwest’s long-lasting drought, which the Texas climatologist has said could endure for a decade. As the dry spell continues, another cold front could stir up a similar dust cloud in coming months, Weaver said.
“There’s very few crops in the fields; almost all the cotton crops failed,” Weaver said. “It’s similar to what we saw during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.”
Councilman Beane said Lubbock residents still told stories about how Depression-era dust storms turned the town so dark, chickens went to roost in the middle of the day. Now he said the next generation had its own dust storm story.
Lubbock Mayor Tom Martin was selling pumpkins outside his church when he saw a dense, black cloud on the horizon.
“It looked like nighttime coming real quick. It got very, very dark in a hurry,” Martin said.
On Tuesday, crews were still working to restore power to some residents, and street sweepers were clearing the remaining layer of red dust, according to city spokesman Jeff McKito.
McKito was on his way home from picking up a pizza Monday night, driving the downtown highway loop, when the dust storm hit.
“It blocked out the sun,” he said. “I couldn’t even see the Sam’s Club right off the loop, there was so much dirt in the air.”
Over at Estacado High School, the football team watched in awe as the cloud approached, trying to figure out what it was. As soon as they did, they ran inside, where the girls’ volleyball team and the drama club were practicing. Then the school lost power and practice was cut short, according to Principal Sam Ayers. A nearby middle school canceled a volleyball game so students could take shelter.
“We had a lot of dirt to clean out this morning,” Ayers said, and the school was still trying to fix its bell and clock system, which were thrown off by the outage.
“Somehow,” he said, “students still seem to know when it’s time to get out of class.”
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
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e8825d422f37aa00c8b5ca72ca2513e4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-18-la-na-obama-nominates-judge-20111018-story.html | Obama nominates L.A. lawyer to 9th Circuit | Obama nominates L.A. lawyer to 9th Circuit
Paul J. Watford, a Los Angeles lawyer with broad experience and the support of some influential local conservatives, was nominated by President Obama on Monday to the busiest federal appeals court in the country.
The choice of Watford, 44, for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals drew praise from colleagues on both sides of the political aisle, and predictions that he would have a smoother path to Senate confirmation than some of the president’s more liberal nominees.
The 9th Circuit has long been the most overwhelmed of the 13 federal appellate circuits and has seen its burdens mount this year with the deaths of five judges. If confirmed, Watford will fill the vacancy created when Circuit Judge Pamela Ann Rymer, 70, died of cancer on Sept. 21.
The court is authorized to have 29 active judgeships but has four vacancies, with a fifth expected at the end of the year, when one judge plans to take senior status. Obama has three pending appointments to the 9th Circuit, with Watford joining Alaska Supreme Court Justice Morgan Christen and U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Nguyen of Los Angeles in what could be a contentious and protracted confirmation process.
Obama’s first nomination to the 9th Circuit, UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, led to more than a year of political squabbling in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans cast him as too liberal, grilling him in confirmation hearings over his writings for the American Constitution Society and his criticism of President George W. Bush’s choice of Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Republicans repeatedly blocked a confirmation vote on Liu, who withdrew from consideration this year. Gov. Jerry Brown then nominated him to the California Supreme Court, and Liu won quick confirmation.
Obama has succeeded in getting only one new jurist onto the 9th Circuit: U.S. District Judge Mary H. Murguia of Arizona.
Obama praised Watford’s credentials Monday.
“Paul J. Watford has displayed exceptional dedication to the legal profession through his work, and I am honored to nominate him to serve the American people,” Obama said in his announcement. “He will be a diligent, judicious and esteemed addition to the 9th Circuit bench.”
Colleagues at Munger, Tolles & Olson, the Los Angeles firm where Watford is a partner, described him as a great choice and a man ideally suited to being a judge.
“He’s incredibly intelligent and has solid integrity and great judgment,” said Daniel Collins, who recruited Watford back to the firm after a three-year stint at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles and a year at the rival firm of Sidley & Austin. “He just embodies the definition of judicial temperament — very level-headed and even-keeled.”
Collins, who clerked for conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and was a government lawyer in both Bush administrations, said he considered Watford a moderate who would be widely admired and respected.
“I don’t think he’ll approach the job with any kind of agenda other than to do what is right and consistent with precedent as he understands it,” Collins said.
Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who has known Watford for nearly 20 years, also expressed satisfaction.
“I’m a moderately conservative Republican who would like to see conservative judges named to the courts, but my guy lost in 2008,” Volokh said. “The question is, what can we get from President Obama? There are probably nominations I wouldn’t support. The best we can get is going to be someone calm and judicial and attentive to precedent. ... By all indications, Paul is going to be that kind of judge.”
Jeremy Rosen, a partner at Horvitz & Levy and former president of the Los Angeles Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, said Watford was a choice many conservatives could support.
“I know he has the respect of anyone who has come into contact with him. He is exceptionally bright and well qualified,” Rosen said.
Watford, an Orange County native who earned his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and his law degree at UCLA, has a practice focused on appellate litigation. He has been active before 9th Circuit panels in his previous role as a federal prosecutor.
His ties to the appellate court go back to 1994, when he clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski, who is now chief judge of the circuit, which handles more than 12,000 cases a year from across the court’s nine-state region.
Watford, who is married without children, also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in 1995-96.
carol.williams@latimes.com
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54aff0076b0b9ccae25be5f58c725b0a | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-19-la-fg-mexico-veracruz-killings-20111020-story.html | Shadowy group says it targets cartel; some in Veracruz are glad | Shadowy group says it targets cartel; some in Veracruz are glad
The callers to the radio program were voicing their support for the Matazetas, the Zeta killers.
Better they fight among themselves. Let them kill each other. Anything to rid us of the thugs who long ago took control of our city and are slaughtering our people.
It is a sign of the desperation and deep outrage over surging drug-war violence that a shadowy group of vigilante killers is not only tolerated but welcomed by many here in Mexico’s third-most populous state.
Full coverage: The drug war in Mexico
Yet it also comes with a disturbing question: Just who is behind the killings of Zetas — another drug gang? Agents acting on behalf of the government or military? An ad hoc group whose presence is being tolerated by authorities as well as the public?
Coastal Veracruz, the gateway to Mexico for centuries of immigrants from Europe and beyond, a laid-back beachfront vacation spot for legions of Mexicans, has in recent months become the latest state to be thoroughly sucked into the deadly and devastating drug war.
On Sept. 20, nearly three dozen half-naked bodies were dumped in broad daylight on a busy highway underpass in a well-to-do tourist area of the city of Veracruz. Fourteen more turned up a few days later — during a convention of the nation’s top state and federal prosecutors. Then, on Oct. 6, barely 48 hours after announcing a major security offensive, military and police found an additional 36 bodies, and 10 more turned up the following day.
In videotaped presentations, a group of masked men with military bearing has claimed responsibility for the spate of killings, portraying it as a cleansing operation. Many of the bodies had a “Z” for Zeta written on the back with ink marker, a witness said.
The mystery group announced that it was in Veracruz state as “the armed branch of the people, and for the people.”
“We are asking officials and authorities who support the Zetas to stop doing so, and let the armed forces know that our only objective is to finish the Zetas,” the spokesman for the group told the camera. “We are anonymous warriors, without faces, proudly Mexican.”
For years with the Zetas tightly in charge, and the public terrified into submission, the state had stayed relatively calm. But months ago, traffickers associated with top drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman are believed to have moved in from the north with an eye toward seizing territory from the Zetas, who had long controlled Veracruz’s valuable routes for smuggling drugs, migrants and contraband.
The “Zeta killers” burst on to the scene shortly before President Felipe Calderon deployed fresh military forces into Veracruz this month.
Their sudden rise and the surgical precision with which the killers systematically picked off nearly 100 people in 17 days has led to conjecture among some people that they may be operating with implicit or direct support of the government or military. Some suggest that the June kidnapping, torture and killing of three marine cadets in Veracruz might have propelled the marine corps to begin acting outside the law. Officials dismiss such speculation, and others wonder why a group aspiring to be a clandestine death squad would post videos on YouTube.
Indeed, some point to Guzman’s Sinaloa network, and say the military look to the killings may be an attempt to deflect attention.
If that’s true, the Zeta killers would simply be the latest of the many cartel-affiliated paramilitary gangs that have been fighting in Mexico since the beginning of the offensive that Calderon launched against the cartels at the start of his administration nearly five years ago.
The Zetas themselves started as the private military arm of the Gulf cartel, hired gunmen recruited from army elite forces to fight and kill the cartel’s enemies. They evolved into a full-fledged trafficking cartel after splitting violently from their former patrons.
Vigilante gangs purporting to be defending society and working with some level of official complicity have frequently acted in Mexico in recent years. La Familia in Michoacan, which surged in Calderon’s southwestern home state in 2005, claimed that it was protecting residents from the Zetas.
In 2009, Mauricio Fernandez, mayor of the affluent city of San Pedro Garza Garcia near the northern industrial hub of Monterrey, announced the formation of “intelligence squads” to “cleanse” his jurisdiction of criminals. One particularly notorious thug turned up dead in short order.
In the Michoacan case, the federal government tried, and failed, to prosecute several officials for their ties to La Familia. And Fernandez, a member of Calderon’s political faction, was eventually reined in, or at least quieted, by party elders.
In Veracruz, doubts and questions run deep.
“We are left with a lot of disappointment and suspicion,” said Miguel Angel Matiano, a union leader for judicial employees in Veracruz who is lobbying for protection for his members. “What interests, what ties … do the politicians have? You can’t take justice into your own hands, but if you don’t trust the authorities, you will turn to the other group.”
“You don’t know who’s who these days,” added a local television broadcaster who did not want to be named for fear of his safety.
Whoever the Zeta killers are, Veracruz city seethes with terror and panic. The streets in this port town, normally bustling with night life, begin to empty around dusk. Marines based in Veracruz patrol the neighborhoods, conducting house-to-house searches, moving in convoys, dressed in battle camouflage and black balaclavas. Parents rush to pull their kids from school at the faintest rumored hint of an attack. About 30 families from the business elite have fled the city, one knowledgeable resident said.
“There has always been violence, but it was hidden better,” said Father Luis Felipe Gallardo Martin del Campo, the bishop of Veracruz. “Now the lid has been blown off.”
Even Calderon, in a startling admission, said last week that the state of Veracruz had been “left in the hands of the Zetas.”
The deterioration of Veracruz illustrates the way drug gangs have extended their stranglehold from border states to Mexico’s center. Calderon this month has also felt obliged to send troops into Guerrero state, on the nation’s opposite coast, where traffickers have forced schools to close for weeks and the body count has skyrocketed, all but destroying tourism to that state’s coastal jewel, Acapulco.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the expanding drug war since December 2006, when it began, according to government intelligence figures.
The government of Veracruz has sought to minimize the horror the state is living, or cast it as part of a broader national phenomenon for which local officials are not responsible.
“Law must prevail, and it is the state that must apply it,” state government spokeswoman Gina Dominguez said in an interview.
Yet state officials have only exacerbated the uncertainty and suspicion by hiding information on new fatalities and claiming with excessive haste that most of the first batch of 35 dead were criminals. In fact, neither Gov. Javier Duarte nor state Atty. Gen. Reynaldo Escobar, who made those claims, had that information. The city’s top newspaper, Notiver, later reported that the majority did not have criminal records. Escobar has since been forced to resign.
Among the dead were girls ages 15 and 16. Another victim was a well-known local transvestite, and two others were 15-year-old buddies from a rough neighborhood called Playa Linda, or “pretty beach,” though it’s anything but.
Rocio Velazquez told reporters she had last seen her son, Alan, when he was picked up by police a short time before his body was dumped. She said that she saw police detain Alan and a friend on an errand to buy feed for Alan’s chickens, and that she tried to approach but the cops threatened to shoot her if she got closer.
“Where is the government? What is happening here? What is it all about?” Velazquez said to reporters. “There is more chaos, killing everywhere.... Who is behind all the slaughter?”
Velazquez told her story to three Mexican reporters from Mexico City, including one from MVS Radio, who found her at the Veracruz morgue. Often it takes Mexico City’s national reporters, or foreign reporters, to do the journalistic investigation that local reporters are afraid to do. Four Veracruz journalists have been killed since March, including a prominent columnist shot to death along with his wife and son.
The three Mexico City reporters returned to the morgue the next day to continue their search for information. Veracruz police beat them up, they said, and seized or erased their tapes and photographs.
Full coverage: The drug war in Mexico
wilkinson@latimes.com
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0fc9e8f8ea4ac1b7a87cf7dae39b5e69 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-19-la-na-shoulder-touch-20111019-story.html | Mitt Romney’s hands-on approach to Rick Perry raises questions | Mitt Romney’s hands-on approach to Rick Perry raises questions
If the Shoulder Touch on the Strip had occurred in a Las Vegas bar, it might have had a different, perhaps bloodier, outcome.
But while Mitt Romney’s reach-and-grab of Rick Perry sparked no fisticuffs, it served as a visual metaphor for an unusually feisty Republican presidential debate.
It also had observers split Wednesday over what former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, whose wingspan is impressive, was really trying to communicate — both to his Texas rival and to the 5.5 million viewers who watched the CNN debate.
About 42 minutes into Tuesday’s debate at the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in the midst of a heated exchange, Romney placed his hand on Texas Gov. Perry’s shoulder, seemingly trying to calm him down. Or at least stop him from interrupting.
It was an incursion into a political rival’s personal space — a move lasting a long couple of seconds that some observers thought dripped with condescension and intimidation, and others saw as benign.
The boundary violation is not unprecedented. Last month, in a gesture of consolation, Perry patted Romney on the back after debate moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Romney to tell Perry he deserved credit for the high job creation rate in Texas.
But Romney’s gesture was different. For some, it recalled the decisive moment in September 2000 when Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rick Lazio tried to intimidate rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in a debate by shoving a campaign pledge at her and demanding she sign it, or the moment the following month when then-Vice President Al Gore walked over to Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s podium and Bush cut him down with a curt nod.
Matt Towery, an Atlanta-based nonpartisan pollster and onetime debate champion, thought Romney’s gesture amounted to physical intimidation, intended to put an overly aggressive rival in his place.
“Perry came across as being too rough,” said Towery, who has seen opponents shove each other, rip paper out of each other’s hands and stick fingers in faces. But he still thought Romney erred.
“If any of my students had done that, I would have taken them to the woodshed,” he said.
Others, like Stanley Renshon, a prolific author of books on politics and psychology, thought Romney’s gesture was avuncular. “It’s Romney, the elder statesman, putting his hand on a hothead’s shoulder and saying, ‘Son, calm down,’ ” Renshon said.
It’s hard to know whether the gesture was rehearsed or spontaneous. It’s possible that the cast members of the country’s most consequential reality show — the Real Candidates of the GOP — are simply getting tired. With the first contest, in Iowa, only 76 days away, they could also be feeling a bit desperate.
Most seem to be looking for a game-changer.
Unexpected front-runner Herman Cain, a former business executive, touts his “9-9-9" tax plan. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has begun chiding his rivals for failing to talk about family values. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has heightened his criticism of politicians as “stupid.” Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is suddenly appealing to “moms all across America.” And former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. boycotted the debate, holding a town hall meeting in New Hampshire instead. His tweeting daughters chided Perry and Romney: “This is what happens when the adult is no longer in the room.”
The Touch took place after Perry, hammered repeatedly by Romney for giving college tuition support to illegal immigrants, dropped a leaf-blower bomb on Romney.
“You lose all standing from my perspective because you hired illegals in your home,” Perry said.
(Several years ago, the Romneys used a gardening service at their Massachusetts home that employed illegal immigrants. They were told the service had fired the workers, but a year later, the firm still employed illegal immigrants. At that point, Romney fired the service. The story was discussed extensively in the 2008 campaign, but this was the first time a Romney rival had mentioned it this year.)
After a tense back-and-forth, with Perry interrupting his foe, Romney laid his left hand on Perry’s right shoulder.
“This has been a tough couple of debates for Rick, and I understand that, and so you’re going to get … testy,” Romney said.
Translation: Pity the poor guy. He jumped into the race with 40% support in most polls, then plummeted like a rock after some shaky debate performances.
“Patronizing,” said Perry Iowa strategist Robert Haus. “That’s what came through in Romney’s tone.”
But Romney senior advisor Stuart Stevens defended his boss. Perry “was coming unglued,” Stevens said. “It was like, ‘Just settle down. We can talk. This isn’t yell leader practice.’ ” (Perry was a yell leader at Texas A&M University.)
Perry’s communications director, Ray Sullivan, didn’t think Perry was too bothered. “Politics is a full-contact sport in Texas,” he said, adding, “Mr. Romney clearly looked flustered and uncomfortable. I think there is a haughtiness and a discomfort with being held accountable for his own record.”
robin.abcarian@latimes.com
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5abe45fcfdfb50b165d5f4bc3b4012d3 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-22-la-fg-kadafi-body-20111022-story.html | In Libya, a spectacle greets Moammar Kadafi’s corpse | In Libya, a spectacle greets Moammar Kadafi’s corpse
His body lay pale in the half-light of a meat locker, head tilted to one side, blood streaking his chest. Men laughed and ridiculed him as the scent of onions rose from the souk.
In life, his specter was towering, but in death Moammar Kadafi was diminutive, put on display along a row of butcher shops and vegetable stands. Boys and their fathers lined up for hundreds of yards outside the market’s gates as if going to a carnival to glimpse the man they once believed invincible.
“I want him to keep the face of a tyrant in his mind,” said Abdul Rahmen Swasi, pointing to his 11-year-old son, Mohammed. “We saw Kadafi talking for so many years on TV. Blah, blah, blah. But now we see him dead.”
PHOTOS: Moammar Kadafi | 1942-2011
Swasi and his son inched forward, stepping over blowing trash, past men in fatigues brandishing guns. They pushed through the doorway into the room’s chill, hurrying past the bullet-marked corpse and out into the air of a country much changed since Thursday, when revolutionary fighters killed the man who had ruled Libya for decades in still unexplained circumstances in his hometown, Surt.
The viewing was emotional and surreal, but Kadafi’s reign was often beyond imagination. It seemed fitting that Misurata, a city by the sea that was pummeled into a hallmark of Kadafi’s brutality during a siege this spring, gave the leader — stripped to the waist, his once famous locks forlorn — his final humiliation.
“Yes, he’s gone,” said Nagwi Omar, “but I’m an old man. He took my youth.”
The United Nations on Friday called for an investigation into Kadafi’s mysterious death. Cellphone videos show the former leader bleeding but alive when captured hiding in a drain pipe by fighters of the Transitional National Council. Later pictures show Kadafi dead in the back of an ambulance. The council said he was killed in a crossfire, but some of the footage suggests he may have been executed.
“There seem to be four or five different versions of how he died,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. “There are at least two cellphone videos, one showing him alive and one showing him dead. Taken together, these videos are very disturbing.”
Kadafi’s burial — reportedly to be in a secret place so his grave doesn’t become a shrine for loyalists — has been postponed until an investigation is completed. This has angered some Muslims who contend that he should have been given a funeral quickly in keeping with Islamic law.
The eight-month civil war that led to Kadafi’s demise was one of the more disturbing dramas of the so-called Arab Spring, which has slipped from inspiring uprisings against tyranny into a succession of unfinished revolutions. For Libyans, the death of their mercurial dictator has silenced the personality that defined their collective hatred. They must now confront tribalism, a wrecked economy and other problems that could lead to suspicions and new divisions.
For now, those concerns have been tempered by the euphoria over Kadafi’s death. Celebratory gunfire rattles the sky, fighters toss candy into windows of passing cars at checkpoints, and streets and alleys are streaked in the colors of the new Libyan flag. But joblessness is high, phone cards are scarce, and heavy-caliber guns perch in the backs of countless pickups.
“There’s a joke going around,” said Reda Azzrroug, a university architecture student turned rebel who now limps from a gunshot wound. “An engineer from the U.S. came to fix Libya. He said, ‘Take me to the highest point in the country.’ They took him to a tower in Tripoli. He looked out over the country and said, ‘Cover the whole thing in dirt and start over.’”
Azzrroug smiled: “Yes, we have our differences, but it will never come to a gunfight or a civil war again.”
Across town, past a burned tank and streets of mortar-pocked buildings, Anwar Swan, a businessman who became an anti-Kadafi fighter, directed his men in an industrial courtyard of cement mixers, a pile of gravel, a forklift and three refrigerated shipping containers, all with shiny new padlocks. The middle container held the body of Mutassim Kadafi, killed in Surt the same day as his father.
Swan and his men were anxious, sweeping debris from outside the container and watering the ground to tamp blowing dust. In a few hours, he said, Moammar Kadafi’s body would be brought from the souk and placed alongside his son’s. Swan said the slayings of the two men would spare the country years of turmoil and recrimination.
“If we took him to trial, we wouldn’t now be seeing his body and his story would drag on,” said Swan, sweat running through his beard, his tunic stained with dirt. “We want the story of Kadafi finished. Today, the sun rose and Libya became new.”
He walked and sat in the shade near a whitewashed mosque and a crooked radio tower bombed by Kadafi’s forces. His men, all of them fighters, sat with him, listening. Bullet casings shone like dull pennies in the dirt.
“I want to block out the memory of war,” said Swan. “We want to end our lives as free people. We will never allow anyone to control us again. Kadafi believed in devils, not God.”
Swan waited for the truck that would bring Kadafi.
It would not be coming soon.
Miles away, a line of men and boys, and a few girls, stretched outside the souk. They moved slowly along a fence until a man with a rifle opened a gate, letting in about a dozen at a time. Each whispered, God is great. They hurried past onions drying in a stall and guards making tea. They turned the final corner and spotted the crowd at the meat locker’s door.
The guards laughed and took pictures. They wanted the world to see that no man can outrun his sins. As Abdul Rahmen Swasi and his son drew closer to the door, they quieted. Other men and boys quieted too. So did Mahmoud Jibril, Libya’s interim prime minister, who arrived with an entourage and moved to the front of the line.
Swasi’s brother, Mustafa, a merchant, stood almost at the door. “I never saw Kadafi face to face,” he said. “But victory is now mine. I never thought I’d see this. A divine power has helped us.”
He stepped into the half-light. Bullet wounds to belly and head. Blood on the mattress. Blood on the arms. Beige pants and thinning hair, so often disguised by hats. Mustafa Swasi left the souk before dusk, walking through the gate and into a city broken, but on the mend.
FULL COVERAGE: Moammar Kadafi | 1942-2011
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.
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326fd203e414ff61fa8a5140ff9426b8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-24-la-na-obama-fundraising-20111025-story.html | Obama tells supporters it’s going to be a tough fight | Obama tells supporters it’s going to be a tough fight
President Obama opened an aggressive Western fundraising swing Monday, closing out the day in Los Angeles with an appeal to supporters to prepare for a grueling reelection effort.
At an intimate fundraising dinner in Hancock Park, Obama spoke softly to a few dozen supporters who had paid $35,800 each to greet him.
“I’ve said this before — this election will not be as sexy as the first one,” the president said. “Back then it was still fresh and new. I didn’t have any gray hair. Everybody loved the ‘Hope’ posters and all that. This time it’s — we’ve got to grind it out a little bit. We’ve got to grind it out. But the cause is the same. And my passion is the same. And my commitment is the same.”
PHOTOS: Obama’s trip
The gathering, at the home of movie producer James Lassiter and his wife, Mai, was one of six events Obama had planned in three days of stops in Nevada, California and Colorado, as he kept up a torrid fundraising pace that is far surpassing that of the GOP presidential field.
Two Los Angeles gatherings Monday were celebrity-flecked, with the first including actor Will Smith and former Laker Magic Johnson. The second and larger event was at the home of actors Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, with per-seat tickets starting at $5,000.
In Hancock Park, Obama repeated details of his new mortgage refinance program, unveiled earlier Monday in Las Vegas. The plan would assist homeowners whose homes are worth less than their mortgages, in hopes of easing their financial strain.
The program would allow those who refinance to have more money to “shop, go to Will’s movies” and patronize Johnson’s many businesses, Obama joked. But his pitch for a second term was serious.
“We’ve made great progress but we’ve got so much more work to do,” he said. “Obviously in Washington, the politics that I think people are hoping for is not what they’re getting. It’s still dysfunctional. It’s still perversely partisan.”
Earlier, Obama’s day was one of contrasts, as he pitched the mortgage plan in Nevada, with its soberingly high unemployment rate, then traveled to California, where his first unannounced stop drew adoring looks and requisite cellphone picture-taking at a Roscoe’s chicken and waffles restaurant in West Los Angeles.
After Obama shook hands and chatted with a young boy, the child turned and declared, “I’m never going to wash my hand again.” He held his hand up as he watched Obama walk around the room.
A girl later jumped up to request Obama’s autograph, prompting a man near her to say, as he took their picture, “If you work hard, you can be just like him.”
Earlier, at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Obama focused on his $447-billion jobs package, now stalled in Congress, as an example of a plan that should receive broad bipartisan approval.
“The question is why, despite all the support, despite all the experts who say the jobs bill couldn’t come at a more important time, when so many are hurting, why Republicans in Washington have said no,” Obama said. “They keep voting against it.
“Now, maybe it’s just because I am the one sponsoring it.”
He cited a provision in the jobs bill designed to keep public employees on the job, and noted that every Senate Republican voted against it.
“Their leader, Mitch McConnell, said that — and I’m going to make sure I quote this properly — saving jobs of teachers and firefighters was just, and I quote, a bailout.
“A bailout!” Obama repeated.
The president criticized Republicans for resting their vision on two dubious principles — tax cuts for the wealthy and minimal regulation — that have been tried with disastrous results, he said.
“Does anybody remember?” Obama asked.
Republicans derided Obama’s visit to Nevada, noting the state’s double-digit unemployment rate and persistent housing crisis.
“I’ve seen things just continue to get worse since President Obama took office,” said one voter in a Web video released by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
California, which gave Obama a landslide victory in 2008 and where he remains politically strong despite his national slump, has been a key cog in the president’s fundraising operation. His efforts raised $70 million in the third quarter for his campaign and the Democratic Party, easily eclipsing the efforts of the Republicans who wish to replace him.
Some Obama supporters have said that raising money for the president is tougher this time around than it was in 2008. But Ken Solomon, co-chairman of the Obama campaign’s finance committee for Southern California, said the president’s fundraising capacity remained strong.
“Without question, the continuum here has been all-out support in California,” Solomon said.
PHOTOS: Obama’s trip
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
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df139d19ec0eb07a15922a4b2468ba7b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-25-la-na-defense-supercommittee-20111026-story.html | Congress works to avert defense budget cuts | Congress works to avert defense budget cuts
Weeks after agreeing to impose mandatory spending cuts on the federal government in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, members of Congress are hard at work to overturn a key element of the deal — the threat of automatic, steep cuts in the defense budget.
The possibility of defense cuts — what budget insiders call a trigger mechanism — was intended to spur Republicans and Democrats to agree on a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Instead, Congress increasingly seems likely to scuttle the cuts even without a deficit deal.
“It feeds into the notion that everyone is having, but not saying, which is that the trigger is a complete phony thing,” said Jim Kessler, a vice president at Third Way, the moderate Democratic think tank. “Congress has built up a reputation for avoiding any real decision.”
To be sure, the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, otherwise known as the “super committee,” has been working behind closed doors for two months trying to find common ground.
And the effort to undo the automatic cuts is at odds with the public stance of congressional leaders, including House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). The speaker orchestrated the summer debt accord with President Obama, and has pressed the committee to reach as big a deficit deal as possible.
The 12-member super committee — six Republicans and six Democrats — will hold a public hearing Wednesday as it works toward its Nov. 23 deadline to produce a bipartisan package. Indications are the committee has tentatively identified cuts but is short of the $1.5-trillion goal.
If the committee comes up with less than $1.2 trillion in proposed cuts over 10 years, the shortfall is supposed to be made up by automatic cuts that would start in 2013, split evenly between defense and non-defense spending.
But public statements and private comments from key defense champions and their allies, backed by the intense lobbying of the defense industry, have thrown into doubt whether those reductions will come to pass.
The defense hawks have been unbridled in their mission. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said he would walk away from his position on the super committee if defense cuts were part of its recommendation.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is not on the committee, said he would try to roll back the mandatory defense cuts before they could kick in.
Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, suggested that steep mandatory cuts could require the military to institute the draft. If forced to choose, McKeon said, he would prefer new taxes — something he has never voted for.
A Virginia Republican is circulating a resolution of opposition with dozens of co-sponsors.
Even though some tea party lawmakers say all federal agencies must be trimmed, the defense hawks are getting a boost from top Pentagon brass, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who warned that making the required reductions would be “shooting ourselves in the head.”
“It would be the dumbest thing,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) as Panetta appeared at a Senate hearing last month. “I am disappointed in my Republican Party for allowing that to be part of the puzzle.”
The White House acknowledges the trigger mechanism is “not ideal policy,” according to Meg Reilly, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget. But the administration says its purpose was to be an unpopular possibility that would motivate lawmakers to reach an agreement.
“It’s meant to provide a powerful incentive for Congress to do its job and pass balanced, responsible deficit reduction,” she said. “Congress has a responsibility to make cuts to defense prudently to ensure that our national security efforts are not compromised.”
Super committee Democrats have concerns that the panel’s work could be undermined by suggestions that defense is off the table, according to an aide familiar with the deliberations. With Republicans already refusing new taxes, that would force disproportionate cuts on health, education and federal programs for the poor.
Because the mandatory reductions do not go into effect until 2013, Congress has a full year to wrestle with the issue. The presidential election will likely influence that debate, and Congress will still have a few months to act afterward — allowing members to put off a formal decision on the triggers until after the elections. Many doubt the triggers will ever be pulled — or that a move to protect only defense will succeed.
“The bullets don’t even hit until a year later — you’ve got a year to correct it,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who doubts the political climate would allow defense to be spared at the expense of domestic accounts. “If you want to start over again, that’s fair. But I don’t think you’d be able to get votes to just undo part of it.”
Leaders of both parties are concerned that if the super committee fails, financial markets will be thrown into turmoil over Congress’ inability to tackle big problems. The nation’s once-stellar credit rating — which one credit agency downgraded this summer — could be further eroded. That could lead to higher interest rates for ordinary Americans on virtually every aspect of consumer lending, further imperiling the sluggish economy.
McCain, a party leader on defense issues, downplayed his influence on the super committee. But if the panel fails, the Arizona senator is optimistic his backup plan to protect the defense budget would find broad bipartisan support.
“We think we could succeed,” McCain said.
lisa.mascaro@latimes.com
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dfbca5e5404753d81789dd0d74280b75 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-25-la-na-obama-student-loans-20111026-story.html | Obama to reduce student loan debt payments | Obama to reduce student loan debt payments
President Obama will make student loans easier to repay for millions of borrowers without adding to the national deficit, his administration said Tuesday.
Bypassing an uncooperative Congress, Obama will, by executive order, reduce to 10% the maximum percentage of income that 1.6 million current students will have to pay toward their student loans. They will also be eligible for loan forgiveness in 20 years instead of 25.
He will also allow at least 6 million people with different types of federal student loans a chance to consolidate them into one while reducing their interest rate by a half percent starting in January.
Congress passed similar measures last year, but they are not set to go into effect until July 2014.
“We know, during a time of struggle, families are borrowing more,” said Melody Barnes, director of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council. “We’re trying to lift the burden off them so they can continue to meet their obligations.”
Barnes said that burden was being lifted at no cost to taxpayers because of student loan restructuring that lowered the cost of government loan subsidies this year.
Obama will publicly introduce the policies Wednesday in an appearance at the University of Colorado campus in downtown Denver.
Along with the new policies, Barnes said she hoped the campaign also reached people who weren’t taking advantage of the current income-based repayment plan, which requires borrowers to pay a maximum of 15% of their incomes. Out of 36 million Americans with student loan debt, only 450,000 have taken advantage of it.
In an example of what the savings will be per month, a nurse who is earning $45,000 a year while paying back $60,000 in federal student loans would pay $690 a month under the standard repayment plan, according to the White House statement. If the nurse took advantage of the current 15% income-based payment limitation, the nurse’s monthly payment would drop to $358. Under the Obama plan, someone who graduates next year and is earning the same amount would pay $239 a month.
Unemployed students can pay interest only or defer payments, but the loan still accrues interest during the deferral period.
Barnes said Obama was using executive authority to push the proposals forward because “we cannot wait for congressional Republicans to act.”
alexa.vaughn@latimes.com
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13893979adb9c3babb2da4b6dd57995b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-26-la-na-super-committee-20111027-story.html | Democrats on ‘super committee’ propose a ‘grand bargain’ | Democrats on ‘super committee’ propose a ‘grand bargain’
“Super committee” Democrats proposed a “grand bargain” of spending cuts and new taxes to reduce deficits, picking up Wednesday where President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner broke off this summer, as the panel has four weeks left to strike a deal.
The package, worth up to $3 trillion, was a first peek at what have been mostly closed-door deliberations. But it drew swift resistance from Republicans, who objected to the inclusion of new taxes.
“I don’t think it was seen as a serious offer,” said a GOP aide familiar with the discussion, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Republicans also disputed the characterization that the Democrats’ proposal resembled what Boehner and Obama tried to accomplish.
The proposal was not aired publicly, but sources indicated that it would combine spending cuts to the Medicare and Medicaid programs with higher taxes on the wealthy. Those familiar with the presentation differed on its ratio of spending cuts to new taxes, with some saying it relied more heavily on tax revenue.
The $500 billion it would cut from Medicare and Medicaid picked up where the summer’s negotiations left off. It proposes $400 billion in Medicare cuts equally divided between beneficiaries and providers, and up to $80 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
Revenue would be raised mostly by bumping up the high-end tax bracket and limiting deductions for upper-income earners, those familiar with the talks said.
The Democrats’ plan also included using interest savings to pay for elements of Obama’s $447-billion jobs proposal, an idea Republicans have shot down.
The “super committee” has until Nov. 23 to reach agreement on a proposal to reduce the nation’s deficits by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Failure to cut at least $1.2 trillion would trigger mandatory cuts in 2013 that many are skeptical would ever take place.
Leading credit agencies have indicated that they want to see a serious effort to rein in the nation’s debt load or the country risks having its once-stellar credit rating further downgraded, which would probably increase interest rates for ordinary Americans.
The influential Business Roundtable, which includes the chief executive officers of some of the nation’s leading companies, urged the committee Wednesday to find common ground.
“A successful outcome to this process is critical for future economic growth, job creation and American global competitiveness,” wrote John Engler, the organization’s president.
Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified Wednesday that failure to cut deficits “would have a negative effect” on consumer and business confidence and spending, which experts say is the biggest drag on the economy.
Bristling at criticism that the committee had been bogged down and unable to forge consensus, several members of the panel — made up of six Democrats and six Republicans — contended Wednesday that they were working at it.
“We’re not there yet, but I’m confident we are making progress,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the co-chair, during an open hearing that showed the strains of what have been described as heated talks.
The Democratic proposal was intended as a gesture of compromise. Democrats have been willing to put on the table cuts to Medicare and other entitlement programs that are dear to their constituents, but only if Republicans will agree to some new taxes.
Republicans have pushed instead for an overhaul of the corporate tax code that would lower tax rates in a way they believe would spur economic growth and generate higher revenue.
Also on Wednesday, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), a committee member, unveiled a draft corporate tax proposal that would lower rates to 25% from 35% and allow American companies to repatriate overseas profits at a lower rate.
The deficit-cutting proposals arrived against the backdrop of a new Congressional Budget Office report showing the widening gap of income disparity over the last 30 years, with the incomes of the top 1% of Americans growing 275%. The incomes of the 60% of Americans in the middle brackets grew less than 40% over the same period.
Advocates for senior citizens immediately pounced on the proposals to cut Medicare benefits by what they presume would be a change to cost-of-living adjustments that was floated this summer.
“I don’t think it’s going to float very well,” said Eric Kingson, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition.
lisa.mascaro@latimes.com
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3710df4cd81c1b4f4a71d0956b0f64fc | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-27-la-fi-rich-poor-20111027-story.html | The rich are getting richer, U.S. study says | The rich are getting richer, U.S. study says
The rich got richer over the last three decades — and the very rich got very much richer — according to a new government study.
The top 1% of households saw their after-tax incomes grow by 275% from 1979 to 2007, said the study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That was more than quadruple the growth of the rest of the top 20% of the population during that period.
Meanwhile, income for the 60% of households that make up the middle of the income scale increased by slightly less than 40%, the study found. The poor — the 20% of the population with the lowest incomes — saw just an 18% increase.
“As a result of that uneven income growth, the distribution of after-tax household income in the United States was substantially more unequal in 2007 than in 1979,” said the report, released Wednesday.
Indeed, the share of all U.S. after-tax income that went to the top 1% doubled during that period to more than 17% from about 8%.
The findings came as protesters have occupied parks near Wall Street, Los Angeles City Hall and elsewhere around the country, decrying the growing wealth and influence of what they call “the 1%.” The protesters have declared themselves “the 99%.”
Overall, inflation-adjusted, after-tax income for the entire population rose 62% from 1979 to 2007.
The report said the exact cause of the rapid income growth for the richest Americans is unclear, but researchers have some theories: soaring salaries of superstar actors, athletes and musicians; more liberal executive compensation; and the growth of the financial sector.
At the same time, “the equalizing effect of federal taxes was smaller,” the report said. The overall average federal tax rate fell slightly during the period because of income tax cuts, and the tax system did less to balance out incomes because of rate cuts for high earners.
Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) said Wednesday that the report was “just the latest evidence of the alarming rise in income inequality in this country.”
“This report confirms what the American people already know: The rules have been changed by the unfair tax policies of the last decade, and our tax code is doing less to level the playing field than it was in the past,” he said.
President Obama has proposed that the tax code be changed so people earning more than $1 million a year pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class earners. He called the principle the “Buffett Rule,” after billionaire Warren Buffett, who has complained that he pays a lower tax rate than anyone in his office at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), have decried the measure, saying it could incite “class warfare.”
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
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8f30ae92071b3a40ba7a74bfc87931cf | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-29-la-fg-afghanistan-attacks-20111030-story.html | Suicide bombing in Kabul kills as many as 13 Americans | Suicide bombing in Kabul kills as many as 13 Americans
As many as 13 Americans were killed Saturday when a suicide bomber struck their armored military bus in Kabul, in what may be the single deadliest attack on U.S. citizens in the Afghan capital since the war began a decade ago.
A U.S. official said the death toll was believed to be 13 U.S. citizens: five service members and eight civilian contractors. But, the official said, a Canadian and at least one British national could also be among the dead. The full extent of the casualties was unclear, he said, because the massive explosion had made identifying the dead difficult.
The Afghan Interior Ministry said at least three Afghan civilians and one policeman were also killed in the blast.
The bombing represents a propaganda coup for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility in text messages to news organizations, saying it had packed a four-wheel-drive vehicle with at least 700 pounds of explosives.
Deadly attacks are relatively rare in Kabul, which has better security than the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. In recent months, however, with the U.S.-led coalition announcing plans to turn security over to Afghan forces by 2014, the Taliban has stepped up assaults in a bid to bolster its political grip after the pullout.
Saturday’s carnage came a month and a half after insurgents launched a brazen 20-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing more than a dozen people. That attack was widely viewed as an attempt by the Taliban to send a message that no place in the country was secure or out of its reach.
According to the United Nations, violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the war started in 2001, despite the presence of 130,000 foreign troops.
The NATO coalition says the number of insurgent attacks is declining, but its data don’t include lethal attacks against civilians or those mounted against Afghan security forces operating without international help.
The Kabul car bombing took place Saturday near the American University on Darulaman Road, among the capital’s busiest toroughfares, which runs past the parliament building and the decaying Darulaman Palace, or “abode of peace.”
A North Atlantic Treaty Organization spokesman said the troops and contractors were traveling in a type of military bus known as a Rhino, named for its heavy armor. The identities of those killed in the attack were not disclosed pending notification of kin.
It was the largest single-day U.S. loss in Afghanistan since August, when a helicopter was shot down in Wardak province, killing 30 U.S. troops, including 17 Navy SEALs, along with eight Afghan troops.
In preparation for the transfer of responsibility to Afghans, coalition training of Afghan police and army personnel has expanded. Darulaman Road is part of a route often taken by trainers traveling in buses and other vehicles between Kabul’s military training center and heavily fortified NATO bases in downtown Kabul.
Buses, even when heavily armored, are relatively soft targets and generally travel in convoys. But Kabul’s crowded streets and chaotic traffic make it difficult to keep a perimeter around convoys, and suicide car bombers often try to insert themselves between convoy vehicles for maximum damage.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry condemned the suicide attack and extended its condolences to victims’ families.
In another deadly incident, an attacker wearing an Afghan military uniform opened fire on foreign troops in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan and killed three of them before others returned fire and killed him.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said three Australian soldiers and an interpreter were killed, and seven soldiers were wounded.
Analysts said attacks on foreign troops by those wearing Afghan uniforms offer several advantages from the insurgents’ perspective, whether carried out by soldiers “turned” by the Taliban, or by insurgents who make, buy or steal uniforms and ID cards for their attacks.
These allow attackers to get inside a base or otherwise much closer to foreign forces than otherwise possible. They increase distrust between Afghan and foreign forces, causing Western troops to be suspicious and even dismissive of Afghan soldiers at a time when the number of combined counterinsurgency operations are growing as 2014 approaches.
In a third incident in eastern Afghanistan, guards fired on a female suicide bomber wearing a burka as she tried to enter a government building, prompting her to detonate her explosives.
She was the only fatality in the incident, which occurred near a branch of the National Directorate of Security, the country’s spy agency, according to Abdul Sabor Allayar, Kunar province’s deputy police chief. Two agency employees and two civilians were wounded.
On other fronts, the coalition said Saturday that its troops and Afghan security forces had captured two leaders of the militant Haqqani network in a joint operation Friday in Paktika province along the Pakistani-Afghan border.
One leader had provided insurgents with funding, weapons, supplies and havens, the coalition said, and the other coordinated attacks against Afghan forces.
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Magnier reported from New Delhi and special correspondent Baktash from Kabul. Times staff writer Melanie Mason in Washington contributed to this report.
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7896a16d68436aac65fb1eb7fe5be5fe | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-30-la-fg-philippines-witches-20111031-story.html | Witches in Philippines’ Siquijor province are old hat | Witches in Philippines’ Siquijor province are old hat
At the end of a dirt road deep in the mountains, Consolacion Acay hobbled onto her porch and picked up her tools of the trade: a glass cup, a bamboo straw, a stone the size of an apricot pit and a bottle of potion. Then she began casting spells to heal her client.
“I found this stone while I was swimming near waterfalls in the middle of the island,” the unassuming 86-year-old said later. “That night I had a dream that taught me how to use the stone to heal people, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Acay dabbed the potion on certain points of her client’s body, then half-filled the cup with water, dropped the stone in and began blowing air into the water with the straw. The water became murky — a sign, she said, that she was removing the malaise. She repeated the process until the water was clear.
Acay’s magic doesn’t put her on the fringe of society here; sorcery, both for good and evil, is a fact of life in the island province of Siquijor.
Throughout the Philippines, mention of this place instantly conjures images of healers, witches and demons. One gruesome tale features a vampire that splits in two, its upper torso flying from rooftop to rooftop, devouring fetuses out of pregnant women.
Magic in Siquijor consists mainly of traditional beliefs that have existed in the Philippines for centuries. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century and introduced Catholicism, locals began to blend ancient practices with their newfound religion.
Many witches in Siquijor use Catholic imagery in their sorcery, and almost all regularly attend church. All their potions for the year are brewed in the week leading up to Easter.
Father Larry Catubig, the senior Catholic priest on the island, said he realized the complicated nature of proselytizing to religiously devout witches.
“It’s good that the witches are going to church, and we try to steer them away from magic,” he said. “But when they go back into the mountains, we have no control over what they do.”
During Holy Week, vigilance is required at the religious processions because the witches steal parts of the relics on display for use in their potions, Catubig said.
It’s not unusual for gravestones in Siquijor to have pieces missing — stone angels without heads or perhaps a stump where a cross once stood. Often it’s the work of “black witches” looking to enhance their brew.
Although Acay works strictly in healing the sick, other witches here aren’t so benevolent.
Cayetano Umbalsa, 76, has been practicing witchcraft since his father began teaching him almost 60 years ago. Although he is well-versed in the healing spells, people come to him mainly for his proficiency in the dark arts. Jealous spouses and scorned lovers make up the bulk of such clients.
The spells range from one to make your ex-lover constantly remember your face to those to cause sickness and even death.
The black witches command steep fees: $345 to almost $700 in a region where the average annual income is about $2,500. The witches who limit their work to healing often ask for a small donation of a few dollars.
Richard Quezon, the mayor of Siquijor town, the capital of the province, remembers being terrified by stories of evil witches in the mountains that rise from the middle of the island.
“Before, everyone went to healers for things like liver problems or cancer,” he said. “But now, with modern medicine, only those who can’t afford to go to the hospital seek out healers.”
To some, that’s a positive development. Evelyn C. Retana, a retired surgeon at the Siquijor town hospital, has seen sick people spend months hoping to be healed by witches only to eventually seek treatment at the hospital.
But Quezon defends witchcraft. Last month he went to a witch because of a skin condition that wouldn’t go away.
“The medicine from the pharmacy didn’t work, but the herbs and spells from the healer worked right away,” he said. “Some things science can’t explain.”
Haas is an intern in The Times’ Beijing bureau.
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e86a28a045bb4f9a3bfd34ec9d4e7a9f | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-oct-30-la-na-gop-foreign-policy-20111029-story.html | GOP presidential candidates share foreign policy strategy | GOP presidential candidates share foreign policy strategy
In a campaign dominated by talk of jobs and the economy, the Republican presidential field has settled on a unified approach to foreign policy: Ignore it for the most part, unless forced to discuss. Then criticize President Obama.
Part of that is reflex. As the opposition party, Republicans are inclined to oppose anything the president says or does, even if they applaud the outcome, like, for instance, the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi.
But their silence also reflects the political reality. After a string of successes — the dispatch of Kadafi, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the decapitation of Al Qaeda’s leadership — it will be tough, as things stand, to paint Obama as a Democrat who is feckless on defense and foreign affairs, a staple of past Republican presidential campaigns.
So, generally, the GOP candidates have taken their shots when events required a response, issuing a sound bite or news release, then quickly moving on.
“Republicans are focused on the issues they think they can win: job creation, tax reform and the like,” said David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on national security. “Foreign policy is not that central to this election.”
That is not to say Obama is invulnerable on the issue. With U.S. troops exiting Iraq by year’s end — over the protest of most of the GOP field — any turn for the worse will doubtless be blamed on the president, raising questions about his judgment just as voters begin focusing on their 2012 choice. (The timetable was established by President George W. Bush before he left office.)
Critics also fault the way Obama has dealt with the United States’ key Middle East friend, Israel, and America’s avowed enemies, including North Korea, Venezuela and, in particular, Iran. A crisis involving any one of those countries could hurt the president at home, especially if the result was an increase in gas prices or another recession that turned troubles overseas into something voters felt in their wallets.
More broadly, it has become a Republican article of faith that Obama is insufficiently committed to America as a great power and leader for other nations to follow. “Exceptionalism” is the word most often used by the candidates, who accuse Obama of repeatedly apologizing for America abroad — even though he hasn’t — and deferring too much to U.S. allies, a strategy disdained as “leading from behind.”
It seems no coincidence that Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, titled his campaign book “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.”
But much of the criticism from the Republican field has been scattershot and has amounted to little more than quibbles on the margin, hailing the elimination of Kadafi, for example, while suggesting that it could have been done better. (Or, in the case of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, having it both ways: calling for U.S. intervention when the Libyan rebellion broke out, then faulting Obama when he did intervene.)
Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney has taken the most substantive approach, delivering a lengthy speech on defense and foreign policy this month and circulating a carefully drafted white paper laying out his world view. However, while he took some issue with Obama — promising more defense spending, for example — Romney’s overall foreign policy does not radically differ from that of the incumbent; bucking the isolationist wing of the GOP, Romney makes the case for active and robust U.S. engagement abroad.
Within the Republican field there are significant differences, on issues such as Afghanistan (Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. favor a U.S. withdrawal), China (former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum seems to favor a trade war) and Mexico (Texas Gov. Rick Perry has broached the possibility of involving U.S. troops in anti-drug efforts). But even those have been muted, cropping up only briefly during exchanges in a handful of debates.
A more thorough airing of the candidate’s views may come next month, at a Nov. 15 debate intended to focus mainly on defense and foreign affairs.
Experts said they would welcome that more substantive discussion, and hoped it spilled over into the general election next year between Obama and whichever Republican he faces, even if voters have demonstrated little interest in foreign policy. (The best evidence of that may be Obama’s mediocre approval ratings, which are stuck in the low- to mid-40% range despite his successes abroad.)
“Campaigns are a great opportunity to educate the American public. To engage them in a discussion about the challenges the country faces and the possible responses,” said James Lindsay, senior vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan group. “If you don’t have those discussions, you don’t prepare the public for the tough choices ahead.”
Of course, campaigns are all about promises, which may or may not prove meaningful.
In 1999, then-candidate George W. Bush laid out his foreign policy views in a speech at South Carolina’s Citadel, the military academy where Romney recently spoke. Bush criticized the Clinton administration for ill-defined military missions and promised to find political solutions to avoid endless deployments that sapped public support and depleted troop morale.
“We will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties,” Bush pledged.
More than 10 years later, as U.S. troops prepare to leave Iraq following a highly unpopular war started under Bush, it is clear the winner in 2012 will be driven not so much by campaign promises as the events he or she confronts after taking the oath of office.
mark.barabak@latimes.com
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61ff6ec317c2ad00ffc1bae1b92b5bb6 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-05-la-fg-libya-mood-20110906-story.html | In Libya, euphoria mixes with uncertainty | In Libya, euphoria mixes with uncertainty
Trash piles up on the streets, grocery shelves are nearly bare, water is in short supply and major battles loom before the war is won.
But a prevalent mood of optimism and a sense of new possibilities seem to prevail in Libya’s battered capital almost two weeks after its liberation from Moammar Kadafi’s longtime rule.
“Now we have a chance to do something right,” said Shaban Fituri, 54, an engineer who was buying fresh fish near the port on Monday. “For too long, we were all slaves on Kadafi’s farm.”
Despite the ongoing hardships, there remains a kind of euphoria in the air, a feeling that it can’t be true. The liberation of Tripoli removed a weight that was both physical and psychological.
People seem improbably confident that the long gas lines will go away, the running water will come back, the trash will get picked up — and the war will end. Life is very far from normal here, but the expectation of a brighter future is infectious, especially as security has increased in the capital.
“This is the best feeling for me,” said Ahmed Amri, 21, a West London native born of Libyan parents who came to fight and was standing in awe in Green Square, now renamed Martyrs’ Square, as volley after volley of celebratory gunfire streaked across the evening skies. “I don’t know what’s happening back home in football [soccer]. I haven’t seen Facebook in months. I don’t know how my friends are back in London. But I don’t care.”
Asked in recent days what kind of nation they want, Libyans seem to answer in terms of the mercurial vision that shaped Kadafi’s governance. Many definitely want no more of it: The lack of free speech, the ubiquitous secret police, the “revolutionary” foreign policy and the politicized education that was heavy on Kadafi’s Green Book nostrums, light on English-language and other useful skills. An atmosphere of enforced thinking sent many intellectuals into exile.
“Our educational system was destroyed,” said Fituri, the engineer buying fish, who studied at Oregon State University. “Look at Tripoli: Everything became second rate,” he added, citing the shabby state of the capital of this oil-rich nation. “Even the best beaches were reserved for people from the regime.”
Indeed, the unmasking of the lavish villas and privileges of Kadafi, his family and high officials has been quite a revelation here. Kadafi liked to portray his life as that of a simple Bedouin, living humbly in a tent, a man of the people who overthrew the king in the name of all Libyans. Many now laugh at the fiction they were force-fed for decades.
“Kadafi used to say we [rebels] were American agents because we wanted freedom, we wanted elections,” said Emhammed Sherwi , a former army officer turned colonel in the rebel forces that swept down from the Nafusa Mountains and helped take the capital. “Yes, we want liberty. All Libyans do.”
As he spoke Monday at a neighborhood base here, other commanders — all Berbers from the highlands — nodded in agreement. They spoke of bright futures for the mountains, long an impoverished region where their native culture and language were repressed.
For many there is a rush to embrace the opposite of the peculiar philosophy that Kadafi espoused during his more than four decades in power. While Kadafi looked to Africa, many Libyans now seem openly eager for better relations with the West — and thankful for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombings that were decisive in ousting the longtime leader, despite the damage and civilian casualties. But it will take a while, everyone acknowledges, to reach Western levels of well-being and liberty.
“This country has no institutions,” lamented Yusuf Mrayed, a 65-year-old office manager. “But I am sure Libya will be the first democratic country in the Arab world.”
Merchants spoke of the regime’s seeming distrust of business — except when in the hands of Kadafi’s sons or cronies, who controlled much of the nation’s wealth. Many stores here remain shuttered, but shop owners expressed confidence that a new, pro-entrepreneur era is on the horizon. Kadafi, many believe, preferred a kind of welfare state where most everyone depended on his largesse.
“Just to sell my product was always a problem,” said Ahmed Halabiya, a fishmonger near the port, who recounted harassment from minor officials, some of whom demanded payoffs in fresh fish to allow him to do business in a nation where private trade was suspect. “I hope I can do my work in peace now.”
Amid the euphoria there is also a feeling of uncertainty. Libya has no functioning government. Rumors abound of divisions among its interim rulers and the various rebel factions. Kadafi is still out there, and several of his strongholds — including his birthplace, Surt — remain loyal to him. Some worry about Islamist tendencies in the new Libya. But, for now, such concerns still remain the minor chord.
“It’s late for us, but our children can enjoy freedom,” said Leila Omar, a teacher and mother of three who was among those celebrating Monday in Martyrs’ Square.
The high spirits are especially evident in returning exiles, some of whom left as young people and have come back as graybeards, albeit joyful ones.
“The sense of exhilaration: It is something hard to describe,” said Ashur Shamis, 63, a well-known opposition activist and journalist who returned this week after more than 40 years in exile.
At one point, Shamis said, he was targeted by Kadafi assassination squads who were under orders to kill dissidents abroad. British police advised him to lie low, he said.
On Monday, Shamis embraced old friends, many of them former exiles themselves, in a Tripoli hotel where opposition leaders are gathered. The mood was akin to a family reunion. They spoke of possibilities, and of the responsibility to do it right.
“We have this chance now to do something good for our country, a chance we have dreamed of for so long,” said Shamis, who has plans to set up a website and possibly even a newspaper in his native land. “It’s a very special moment.”
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
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3c19fe7535fb2900fbe0d87cf89ad76a | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-06-la-na-reagan-revisionism-20110907-story.html | The real Ronald Reagan may not meet today’s GOP standards | The real Ronald Reagan may not meet today’s GOP standards
When the Republican presidential hopefuls gather to debate Wednesday night in Simi Valley, one thing seems certain: Lavish tribute will be paid to Ronald Reagan.
That is fitting: The event is being held at Reagan’s presidential library and burial ground, high on a bluff overlooking the Santa Susana Mountains.
It’s also smart politics. Reagan has become a sainted figure within the GOP who, not incidentally, is the most successful and popular of the party’s modern presidents.
But the Reagan reverie will doubtless overlook much of the Reagan reality.
As president, the conservative icon approved several tax increases to deal with a soaring budget deficit, repeatedly boosted the nation’s debt limit, signed into law a bill granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and, despite his anti-Washington rhetoric, oversaw an increase in the size and spending of the federal government. Before that, as California governor, he enacted what at the time was the largest state tax increase in American history. He also signed into law one of the nation’s most permissive abortion bills; any Republican who tried that today would be cast out of the party.
The fact that Reagan often took the actions grudgingly speaks to what, by modern Republican standards, may be one of the greatest heresies of all: At bottom, Reagan was a pragmatist, willing, when necessary, to cut a deal and compromise.
“He had a strong set of core values and operated off of those,” said Stuart Spencer, a GOP strategist who stood by Reagan’s side for virtually his entire political career, starting with his first run for governor. “But when push came to shove, he did various things he didn’t like doing, because he knew it was in the best interests of the state or country at the time.”
Spencer, with characteristic bluntness, dismissed the current vogue of Reagan revisionism: “A lot of those people running out there don’t really understand what he did. It’s just a matter of attaching themselves to a winner.”
Reagan’s transformation from man to myth is, to some degree, calculated. The passage of time almost invariably casts a warm (or at least warmer) glow on recent past presidents. Thanks to their good works, Democrats Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have risen in the public’s esteem. Even Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace, has ticked up in opinion surveys.
In Reagan’s case, there has been an orchestrated campaign over the last several years by acolytes eager to glorify his image and affix his name to as many public markers — airports, mountains, roads, bridges, buildings — as possible.
But Reagan is also celebrated because he achieved big things, both domestically, where he revived the nation’s flagging self-confidence, and abroad, where he helped drive the Soviet Union to extinction.
After a deep and stubborn recession early on, the economy thrived for much of Reagan’s two terms and, though partisans may debate the causes and the ultimate costs of that boomlet, those frothy times compare quite favorably with today’s anxiety-ridden environment.
“It wasn’t like pushing a button and the machine just took off,” said Lou Cannon, a retired Washington Post reporter who wrote several books chronicling Reagan’s career, starting with his two terms in Sacramento. “It took some calibration” — the top income tax rate was cut drastically while various tax breaks and loopholes ended — “but Reagan was practical and willing to calibrate.”
Many also extol Reagan for his command of the presidency — both its power and trappings — in further contrast, they say, with the current occupant of the White House.
“He came into office with a strong set of principles and, with some digressions and a few failures, fought for them, represented them and stood by them,” said Ken Khachigian, a former Reagan speechwriter and political strategist. (Reagan was also a fabulously gifted politician, even if that description made him blanch. “He had a way of seeming steadfast,” Khachigian said, “even when he was bending.”)
The Republican Party has obviously changed greatly since Reagan first ran for president in 1968, and even since he left office with a solid 63% approval rating in January 1989. It is hard to imagine a governor with Reagan’s record on taxes and abortion faring very well in today’s GOP nominating fight, even if he did repudiate those positions.
Reagan’s willingness to compromise has also fallen badly out of favor in a Republican Party fired up by its give-no-quarter “tea party” ranks.
“People that pragmatic now are what they call RINOs,” said Spencer, using the epithet, “Republican in Name Only,” that is flung by keepers of the faith at those deemed less than pure.
If, however, the Reagan of real life seems less welcome on Wednesday night’s debate stage than the Reagan the candidates are likely to conjure, not every admirer seems as ready to restyle the 40th president to suit today’s political fashion.
“You can make someone so iconic and so near divine that you lose the essence of the man,” said Craig Shirley, a longtime conservative strategist and Reagan biographer. “If you are faithful and you want to do the man justice, then you have to accept the whole body of knowledge,” compromises and all.
“I don’t think,” Shirley said, “you should cherry-pick history.”
mark.barabak@latimes.com
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7fec3bf697659baeaa3c9fcc1355b1a5 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-08-la-fg-pakistan-blasts-20110908-story.html | Pakistan bombing kills 23, may be tied to Al Qaeda arrests | Pakistan bombing kills 23, may be tied to Al Qaeda arrests
Police are investigating whether a twin suicide bombing at the home of a top paramilitary official that killed at least 23 people in Quetta on Wednesday is linked to the recent arrest of three top Al Qaeda operatives in the Pakistani city.
Brig. Farrukh Shahzad, deputy head of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force for Baluchistan province, survived the morning attack but his wife was killed, police officials in the southern city said. More than 50 people were injured in the blasts.
The attack began when a suicide bomber in a sport utility vehicle packed with explosives rammed his car into a convoy of Frontier Corps officers outside Shahzad’s house, triggering a massive explosion, police said. Moments later, a second attacker rushed into Shahzad’s house, hurling grenades before detonating his suicide bomb vest.
Shahzad was seriously injured in the attack, police said. Several senior Frontier Corps officers were killed or injured.
Police identified the suicide bomber on foot as Ahmad Gul, a 21-year-old Afghan refugee living in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar. His identification card was found amid severed body parts at the blast site.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was retaliation for the arrests of the three Al Qaeda operatives, according to Agence France-Presse.
On Monday, Pakistani military authorities announced the arrests of a senior Al Qaeda commander, Younis Mauritani, and two other senior operatives in Quetta. Officers with Baluchistan’s Frontier Corps took part in the arrests, which were led by agents with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s primary intelligence agency. Leads provided by the CIA helped Pakistani agents and officers track down the men, Pakistani officials said.
Mauritani headed Al Qaeda’s international operations and had been planning attacks on a variety of U.S. economic interests, including gas and oil pipelines and hydroelectric dams, Pakistani officials said. He also had been planning to target American ships and oil tankers with speedboats filled with explosives.
Mauritani had been asked by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to focus on targets of economic importance to the United States, Europe and Australia, Pakistani military officials said.
In May, U.S. commandos killed Bin Laden in a raid on his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, just north of Islamabad, the capital.
Quetta, home to about 896,000 people and the capital of Baluchistan province, has long been used as sanctuary by Islamic militant groups, including top Afghan Taliban leaders waging a 10-year insurgency against U.S., NATO and Afghan security forces in neighboring Afghanistan. It also has been the scene of sectarian violence against minority Shiite Pakistanis, as well as attacks carried out by Baluchistan separatists.
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Nasir Khan is a special correspondent.
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ca8ada38d52fad5b4ae053a6de0c15d7 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-10-la-fg-britain-school-uniforms-20110911-story.html | In Britain, some schools banning skirts | In Britain, some schools banning skirts
Thanks to the movies, Americans who have never set foot in this country have a fair idea of what British schoolchildren look like.
From Harry Potter and his pals at Hogwarts to the glowing-eyed demon spawn of the ‘60s horror classic “Village of the Damned,” the image is one of boys and girls neatly turned out in their matching school sweaters, trousers, skirts and ties.
But for some of today’s non-magical, non-mutant students, a key piece of that picture is missing. Visit Nailsea School here in southwestern England, and about the only skirts you’ll see are those on teachers; most of the girls on campus are required to dress like the boys, in standard-issue trousers, after the school amended its uniform policy this year to become a skirt-free zone.
It’s a new approach to an old problem: the fight against rising hemlines, a perennial battle that probably brings back embarrassing memories for the mothers of many of today’s schoolgirls.
Nailsea belongs to a small but growing number of schools in Britain that have given up chastising students for hemline creep and instead resorted to what one commentator calls “the nuclear option”: blacklisting skirts altogether.
Sharna Griffin isn’t happy about it.
Sure, some of her peers have cast modesty a bit too far to one side. “It is a bit of a problem, because we don’t want to see their knickers. Walking up the stairs, you don’t want to see whatever the girl’s wearing under the skirt,” the 15-year-old said.
But she thinks the ban smacks of collective punishment to students who obey the rules and don’t let their regulation black skirts migrate much above the knee or disappear under their V-neck sweaters.
“I’ve never really been one to follow the crowd,” Sharna said. “I don’t think it’s fair that the girls whose skirts are the correct length will not be able to wear them.”
On the first two days of school, she showed up in a skirt in protest, only to be sent home early.
The decision at Nailsea and other schools to forbid skirts springs from the exasperation of administrators and teachers, who were tired of spending precious time forcing students to correct wardrobe malfunctions instead of getting them to ponder the Norman Conquest.
Girls who might’ve kissed their parents goodbye in the morning looking like paragons of virtue were arriving on campus with their skirts bunched up at the waist and drastically shortened. One headmaster in western England complained that his female students wore skirts that were “almost like belts,” while a headmaster in a Scottish border town warned that the girls’ increasingly revealing attire risked encouraging “inappropriate thoughts” among the boys.
Better to establish an environment that focuses attention on learning, not legs, than to maintain the status quo for the sake of tradition, educators say.
In general, there is little debate in this country over obliging children to wear uniforms to school, unlike in the United States, where the matter often becomes the subject of a fierce argument over civil liberties and freedom of expression.
Much of the relaxed attitude here may simply be a function of how long school uniforms have been a fixture on the British cultural and academic landscape.
By some accounts, the world’s first school uniform debuted in England about 450 years ago at Christ’s Hospital, a school for needy boys. Pupils at the now-private (and expensive) institution still deck themselves out much as they did in Tudor times, in dark blue overcoats, breeches for boys, pleated skirts for girls, white neckerchiefs, yellow socks and leather belts.
Although they resemble young seminarians, students voted overwhelmingly last year to keep their distinctive outfits rather than adopt any “modern” innovations.
Disputes over uniforms in Britain therefore have more to do with their specifications, not their existence. For campuses that have nixed skirts, grumbling has mainly come from parents and girls who want to have a choice between trousers and skirts, not scrap regulations altogether.
Educators say combating the rise of hemlines isn’t about prudery but preventing the sexualization of children at ever-younger ages.
At publicly funded Nailsea School, where girls previously could choose between skirts and trousers, headmaster David New created a stir two years ago by banning trousers put out by a label called Miss Sexy.
“They were very low, hipster-style, very tight trousers. Staff were becoming embarrassed by seeing too much of the girls instead of the uniform,” said New, who supervises 1,200 students in this commuter town outside the city of Bristol.
During the last school year, campus officials warned that skirts faced the chop as well for all 11- to 16-year-old girls if they couldn’t manage to keep them at the specified length of just above the knee or lower. (Older girls in the school’s “sixth form,” the college-prep division, are exempt from wearing uniforms.)
When things didn’t improve, school officials decided in May to make good on their threat. The new policy came into effect at the beginning of the new school year this month.
“I suspect that, teenagers being teenagers, there will be a new uniform violation that becomes the habit,” New said resignedly. “That was true when I was at school, and I’m sure it was true when my father was at school.”
Still, an outright ban on skirts seemed the best option.
“We didn’t want to waste any more time on it,” New said. “It just means that teachers can concentrate on what’s important in education.”
Even if the lesson turns out to be about history repeating itself.
henry.chu@latimes.com
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9551288af0dc8c775e3948dc9eca0cc0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-19-la-fg-india-earthquake-20110920-story.html | Death toll rises past 50 in India-Nepal-Tibet earthquake | Death toll rises past 50 in India-Nepal-Tibet earthquake
Rain, landslides and severed communications continued to hamper rescue efforts early Tuesday and the death toll climbed past 50 following a large earthquake that struck northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet.
The epicenter of Sunday’s magnitude 6.8 earthquake was in India’s northeastern Sikkim state near the Nepal border. With most of Sikkim connected to the rest of India by a single, badly damaged national highway, a higher death toll is expected once emergency workers reach isolated communities.
The damage would have been much worse, experts said, were Sikkim not India’s least populated state, with only 500,000 residents. Hundreds of people were injured.
By late Monday, food and doctors were being airlifted into the area, although these operations were also hampered by poor weather, said R.K. Singh, India’s home secretary. In one case, officials reported 16 landslides in a single six-mile stretch of road.
The earthquake was caused by pressure and related instability as the Indian tectonic plate moves northward into the Eurasian plate, geologists said, the same forces that have created some of the world’s highest mountains in the Himalayas.
Television footage of the area showed roads buckled, buildings upended and rocks the size of tractor-trailer trucks blocking mountain highways as hundreds of people walked to rescue centers. Some 2,000 people were in emergency camps set up by the armed forces, Indian authorities reported Monday.
Helicopters and more than 5,000 army troops were called in to help after the earthquake, which struck shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday. The mountainous area has become increasingly attractive to trekkers and other visitors, and border police reported rescuing over 20 tourists.
P.M. Rai, a lawmaker from Sikkim, said early tallies suggested at least 150 people were in area hospitals, including a significant number suffering from trauma.
Authorities said this was the worst quake to hit Sikkim in six decades. There were no immediate reports of damage to hydroelectric dams.
Preliminary reports suggested at least 42 people were killed in India and a total of 12 dead in Nepal and Tibet. The Sikkim government said it would provide $11,000 to the families of the deceased and $550 to those who suffered minor injuries.
While power was restored Monday morning to Gangtok, Sikkim’s state capital, it remained off in smaller communities, and cellphone coverage was spotty. Many local residents reportedly were traumatized by more than a dozen aftershocks in the initial 24 hours after the quake.
Angeli Qwantra, a disaster management expert, told local network CNN/IBN that the aftermath underscored how unprepared Sikkim and the entire nation were in a region prone to earthquakes. The amount of damage also suggested building codes were not enforced, she said, and Indian authorities should have done a much better job of more quickly reaching those affected.
“The first hour is the golden hour to save lives,” she said. “Those under debris are not being rescued. This means there will be more infection, amputation of limbs, kidney failure. The death toll will rise.”
mark.magnier@latimes.com
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01330ccae81fcd9bb14855fd6ed2d124 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-21-la-fg-palestinians-qa-20110922-story.html | Answers to key questions on Palestinians’ statehood bid at U.N. | Answers to key questions on Palestinians’ statehood bid at U.N.
The Palestinians on Friday plan to ask the United Nations to admit them as a member nation. Here are answers to some of the questions arising from their bid.
Why are the Palestinians turning to the United Nations and what do they hope to achieve?
After nearly 20 years of failed peace talks, the Palestinians say they hope their application for U.N. membership will put the Mideast conflict back atop the international agenda, break the deadlock in U.S.-brokered negotiations by increasing pressure on Israel and give their drive for statehood a boost. They are frustrated by what they perceive as a U.S. bias toward Israel and hope that the international community will set down new parameters for negotiations, such as endorsing the concept of using 1967 borders as a baseline for a new Palestinian state and declaring East Jerusalem its capital. They say direct talks with the current Israeli government are futile because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to pick up where the last round of talks ended.
Would success at the U.N. formally create a new state of Palestine?
No. Palestinians declared their statehood in 1988 and several nations have formally recognized it. But the U.N. does not recognize states. Only other states do that. Still, if the U.N. accepted Palestine as a member state or if it upgrades the Palestinians’ current observer status from nonmember “entity” to nonmember “state,” it would serve as a de facto recognition of their statehood.
Why is Israel opposed?
Though the Israeli government has endorsed the two-state solution, it sees this move as an end run around direct peace talks. Israel says Palestinians want to avoid difficult negotiations and win concessions from the international community without having to give much in return. Israel says such a unilateral move would poison the already tense atmosphere and make future compromises harder.
Even a nonbinding U.N. resolution in the General Assembly that endorsed, for example, the 1967 borders or East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital would carry considerable weight in talks. Palestinian leaders would find it difficult to accept anything less.
What’s the U.S. position?
The Obama administration agrees that peace talks are the only way to resolve the conflict and has vowed to defeat the Palestinian application for full membership at the Security Council, which must approve new members and where the U.S. enjoys veto power. The U.S. is hoping to persuade Palestinians to hold off on seeking a vote. At the same time, the U.S. has long supported the Palestinian drive for statehood, believing resolution of the Mideast conflict will ease anti-Western tensions in the Arab world. The U.S. also opposes Israel’s construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegitimate and supports using 1967 borders as a starting point, with mutually agreed land swaps.
What happens after the Palestinian application is submitted to the Security Council?
A vote is not expected immediately, and the application could be under review for days, weeks or even months. The U.S. and the international community are hoping to use that time to restart peace talks.
What are the chances that negotiations will resume?
Slim, but U.S. officials remain hopeful. Distrust between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu is strong, and neither side has budged regarding talks for the last year. Before returning to talks, Abbas wants Israel to halt settlement construction and resume negotiations based on the 1967 lines with land swaps.
Netanyahu has rejected both demands, though he agreed last year to a temporary settlement moratorium. That led to short-lived talks that the Palestinians walked away from once Israel resumed construction. Both men face considerable pressure from their constituencies to stick to their positions. Yet international diplomats say the U.N. bid may soften their positions.
What if the Palestinians decide to turn to the U.N. General Assembly?
That could increase the stakes. Any such resolution is likely to pass the assembly because Palestinians enjoy strong support there and the U.S. does not wield a veto in that body. The Palestinians have said they might seek to upgrade their status to something similar to that of the Vatican, which could give them access to U.N.-chartered entities such as the International Criminal Court. Israel has warned that any attempt to bring a war crimes case against it in the court would spell the end of talks. Europeans are working to craft a resolution that would upgrade Palestinians’ status, but deny them access to the ICC.
Are Palestinians preparing for another intifada?
It doesn’t appear so, according to Israeli and Palestinian security officials. Abbas has called for peaceful protests and has vowed to crack down on any violence. But it’s difficult to predict what might happen if Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli soldiers or Jewish settlers, who have recently stepped up their attacks against Palestinians.
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
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4c8a7d25291dc14dfb6cc759815a038b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-23-la-fg-libya-misurata-20110924-story.html | Misurata, proud of its role in Libya revolt, looks to the future | Misurata, proud of its role in Libya revolt, looks to the future
Its principal commercial drag, Tripoli Street, could be the Hollywood set for an urban warfare action thriller: Charred tanks and pulverized shipping containers sit in front of blackened buildings pockmarked with rounds from bullets, rockets and sundry other lethal ordnance.
But the hellish scene in the western port city of Misurata has nothing to do with fiction. More than a thousand people were killed here and many more injured in a months-long series of street battles that ousted the forces of Moammar Kadafi from the city and eventually, its environs. No one has cataloged the vast scope of damage to homes and factories, businesses and infrastructure.
Yet, despite the devastating tableau, Misurata — which became an international emblem of the uprising against Libya’s longtime autocratic leader — has already made strides in reclaiming a sense of normality amid the disarray. Even as Kadafi remains on the lam and his loyalists continue to hold out, or wreak havoc, in several towns, a certain commercial bustle is now evident amid the ruins of Misurata, dubbed “Libya’s Stalingrad” during the protracted siege.
Backpack-bearing elementary school students have returned to their classes, sidestepping mounds of rubble en route. And though a colossal reconstruction effort looms — and many of the city’s young men have joined the forces still seeking to liberate Kadafi’s lingering strongholds — residents seem determined to get back to a semblance of everyday life.
“Things are getting better,” said Mustafa Abu Shaala, who nonchalantly sells milk, yogurt and other dairy products from his small shop, one of the few commercial establishments on Tripoli Street to escape destruction.
Libya’s third most populous city seems to be moving ahead confidently, even buoyantly, into a hopeful future, despite the many uncertainties surrounding the country’s post-revolutionary prospects. A city of 350,000 people — many of whom fled during the fighting — long known for its industriousness, Misurata is now widely acclaimed for its heroism and heart.
There is, of course, a profound sense of mourning for the dead, and deep concern for the fate of thousands of others injured or still unaccounted for. More than 200 residents lost limbs. No Libyan city has suffered more than Misurata during the more than six months of fighting that has roiled this North African nation.
“We are with the missing,” declares one poster, while another warns about unexploded ordnance strewn seemingly everywhere.
But pride and optimism infuse the city 125 miles east of Tripoli, the national capital. No one seems to be second-guessing the fateful decision to rise up and engage in armed struggle when the odds seemed stacked against the coastal community isolated between Tripoli, Kadafi’s longtime stronghold, and Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital.
“Now we have our dignity back,” said Suliman M. Fortia, a Misurata architect and businessman who also sits on the nation’s transitional governing council. “Yes, we have a lot of rebuilding to do. It will take time. But Misurata is a rich city.”
The rebellion here began, as it did elsewhere in Libya, with street protests in February that quickly evolved into armed clashes between government forces and residents. Kadafi’s troops were driven from Misurata but mounted a new assault in March, shelling the city and also attacking with tanks and snipers positioned in buildings along Tripoli Street.
By May, rebel fighters, aided by North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes, had ejected Kadafi’s forces, leaving Misurata as the sole insurgent beachhead along Libya’s western Mediterranean coast.
The improbable accomplishment of ousting Kadafi’s forces with an all-volunteer army of individuals who had mostly never fired a weapon before seems to have unleashed a sense that anything is possible.
“We are civilians who learned to fight,” Fortia said. “We can also learn to rebuild.”
Officials here have already signaled their intention to push for their share of Libya’s wealth to rebuild water and power facilities, schools, government buildings and other war-battered sites.
There is little evidence of self-pity, or griping, about the cataclysmic damage and the obstacles ahead.
Everyone seems to have a story of loss, or near-miraculous survival.
The son of Shaala, the shopkeeper, survived four days in the rubble of a building blasted by a government tank round.
“We all thought he was gone,” the shopkeeper said of Emad, 17, who sat next to him in the shop the other day, smiling somewhat sheepishly as his father recalled his ordeal.
The city’s media chief, Mohammed Darrat, lost his brother, a doctor, Ali Ibrahim, who had returned from Germany to help the wounded. One day he took a wrong turn and ended up in the custody of government troops. He was executed at a prison in Tripoli as rebels were poised to take the capital, Darrat said.
Darrat’s son, Hassan, meantime, lost his left leg facing up to a tank with a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher in a confrontation that has assumed legendary status.
Residents exude a soaring sense of accomplishment about their city’s signature role in the revolution.
“Misurata now has a place in history,” said Muspah Ahmed, 24, who left his studies in England to enlist in the revolution in his hometown, was wounded twice and says he lost many friends in battle.
Ahmed, a part-time English teacher, stood the other day at the foot of Tripoli Street, across from the infamous Tamim Life Insurance tower, the final redoubt of government snipers who long occupied the city’s tallest buildings.
After weeks of tough fighting, insurgents who ruled the side streets drove the deadly marksmen away with the help of a novel strategy: blocking Tripoli Street with dirt-filled shipping containers scavenged from the port, thus cutting the snipers off from their supply lines while providing cover. The riflemen were forced to fall back. The Misurata rebels then pushed forward, eventually playing a pivotal role in the liberation of Tripoli.
The containers remain fixtures on many streets, some now blasted apart, some still used at checkpoints, vestiges of the warfare that has left both physical and psychological scars.
“Sometimes I feel a bit lost,” acknowledged Ahmed, recounting how one of his best friends was killed after Misurata was liberated, in the battle for Tripoli. “Everything we went through can make you a bit crazy sometimes. But I feel our future is bright.”
The city’s revolutionary pedigree has generated a palpable sense of entitlement. Some might label it arrogance. Misurata’s leaders have left no doubt that they believe their town will be a major player as a new Libya emerges.
Last month, residents mounted a vociferous protest when Libya’s transitional leaders signaled their intention to name an ex-Kadafi commander — implicated in the brutal siege of Misurata — as the new security chief in Tripoli. Protesters even suggested that Misurata’s fighters might refuse to obey orders. The appointment was shelved.
Misurata’s valiant narrative has even prompted some awe-inspired Libyans from elsewhere to make a pilgrimage here.
“Misurata made Libya’s revolution famous all over the world,” said a thankful Khereia Awayed, one of a group of women from a Tripoli-area charity snapping photos in front of a shelled shopping complex, its windows blown out, holes gaping in its facade. “We all owe a lot to Misurata.”
The trip to Misurata, a 2 1/2 -hour drive from the capital, seems to highlight the city’s singular status. Visitors unaccompanied by locals need special permission — a kind of visa — and are obliged to pass through a phalanx of checkpoints, where questions are asked and names are noted. Papers must be in order.
Once inside the town, the atmosphere is businesslike.
A hotel manager seemed to think it odd that a client was surprised that services, including Internet connections, appeared to be functioning well.
“We are going forward,” the manager, Omar Madi, explained at the counter of a hotel where the photos of Kadafi have been replaced with portraits of the royal family of Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that helped finance the revolution.
Misurata seems somewhat devoid of young men, and there is a reason for that: Thousands are gathered about 110 miles to the east, poised for a new assault on Kadafi’s hometown, the city of Surt, one of Libya’s last loyalist strongholds.
Despite the prospect of new bloodshed, people here seem to think it only appropriate that their men will be at the vanguard of the battle. Few doubt the outcome.
“Once our people start,” said Darrat, the city media director, " they won’t stop.”
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
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9a948a272f4305b4b4e31b0dd6b4d53d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-23-la-na-advanced-technology-20110923-story.html | Republicans target technology program for disaster funds | Republicans target technology program for disaster funds
When the House Republican leadership drafted its disaster aid bill — now embroiled in a congressional debate threatening another government shutdown — they targeted one place to partially offset the spending: the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program.
In the last two years, according to the Energy Department, the loan program has created at least 38,000 permanent jobs and 4,000 construction jobs and has been a boon to a U.S. automotive industry on the upswing both in profits and electric vehicle sales.
Ford even moved a hybrid car factory from Mexico to Michigan to qualify for the loan, which only supports expansion and retooling of U.S. manufacturing plants. Politicians close to the program say the next wave of loan recipients are projected to create another 50,000 jobs.
But whether this is the best sector to produce job and manufacturing growth is at the center of the debate on whether to pass the House Republicans’ disaster aid bill. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said that in a time of need, Republicans have focused on eliminating a green jobs program instead of offering aid. They propose cutting $1.5 billion from it, less than half the cost of the disaster bill.
“They are using disaster aid to eliminate a program that initiates job growth, and that’s just not right,” Pelosi said. “When the next disaster strikes, we don’t know where they’ll go next to pay for it.”
Republicans have maintained the cut is simply about dollars and common sense.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said he doubted a spending cut would affect the program’s 18 pending loan applications: The program has spent less than half of the $7.5 billion it received in September 2008, and would have $2.5 billion even if the cut passed.
On Thursday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) led a hearing called “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs.” Speakers criticized the idea of a green economy creating enough job growth to help the country get out of a recession and questioned the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ vague definition of a green job.
“With unemployment at a staggering 9.2%, President Obama’s green energy subsidy experiment has done little to create jobs or speed recovery,” Issa said. “In fact, by many measures, it has destroyed jobs.”
Issa’s most prominent example is the recent collapse of Solyndra, a California solar energy company that declared bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers after receiving $535 million in loan guarantees from the Energy Department.
Democrats fought back, noting that in more than one instance Issa had pushed for approval of clean energy and technology loans, saying in one letter that a loan to electric vehicle maker Aptera would “promote domestic job creation throughout California as well as in other states.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said the auto technology loan program had proved its worth and had never been involved in any corruption.
“There aren’t a lot of programs where you can say, ‘We’re bringing jobs back to the U.S.’ This is one of them,” Stabenow said. “Why in the world would we zero in on a program making jobs in America? Our companies are competing with other countries — and in many of those countries they’ll build the whole plant for you.”
The loan program has its problems though. The Government Accountability Office found that the program was so understaffed and slow on delivering its loans that projects of smaller companies depending on the money have fallen through. For 2 1/2 years, Fiat-owned Chrysler Group LLC has waited on a pending loan application for $3 billion, and in January, General Motors Co. abandoned an effort to obtain a $14.4-billion loan.
Depending on the $4 billion left in the program are 18 pending loan applications from companies developing advanced engines, batteries and fuels for electric vehicles, a source at the Energy Department confirmed.
Stabenow said the program was on the cusp of announcing 11 loans in the next few weeks that together could create “upwards of 50,000 jobs.”
The Energy Department would not release specifics about the pending loans. According to the Center for American Progress, the projected job creation count from the applications is at least 43,500, and states getting those loans would include California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio.
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) said Wednesday on the floor of the House that as many as 10,000 of those jobs could be created by the end of the year.
Energy Department spokesman Bill Gibbons said if cuts were made, the program would have to stop loan processing and reanalyze which programs would be best to invest in, delaying the date by which applicants could hire more workers indefinitely.
alexa.vaughn@latimes.com
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9dc764d0f27d56ef23b97b697d1b60aa | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-28-la-na-fuel-economy-standards-20110928-story.html | Federal fuel efficiency rules delayed | Federal fuel efficiency rules delayed
The federal government plans to delay until mid-November new rules to implement a set of fuel efficiency standards for cars and light-duty trucks, administration officials said Tuesday.
In late July, President Obama announced a deal that called for cars and light trucks to achieve a fleet-wide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, nearly double the 2011 model year average of 27.8 mpg. The new standard would be phased in beginning in 2017.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department were to issue the rules this week. But the administration and other participants in negotiations over the rules said their issuance would be delayed six weeks because of the volume of comments received and the technical work that remained.
In a statement, the EPA and the Transportation Department said: “We have worked closely with all key stakeholders including the car companies, the state of California and others as we move toward releasing the proposed rule. Given the historic nature of this joint rule between EPA and DOT, as well as the necessary coordination with California, it was recently determined that additional time was needed and we expect to issue” proposed rules by mid-November.
Obama’s recent decision to shelve controversial rules to reduce smog prompted concerns that the administration might quietly mothball other regulatory efforts before the 2012 election to help defuse Republican arguments that environmental limits kill jobs.
Although aspects of the car standards were hammered out in tough negotiations, the fuel efficiency rules have widespread buy-in from the auto industry, environmentalists and the California Air Resources Board. As a result, participants sought to nip any emerging concerns that the delay might mean an indefinite postponement.
“We’ve been assured there’s nothing to worry about,” said Roland Hwang, transportation program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There’s a lot of technical analysis to be done.”
Stanley Young, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, said his agency had known for weeks that the proposed rules would be delayed.
“Given the complexity of the work that goes into harmonizing the standards between the federal agencies, it is important it’s done right,” he said.
The proposed rules will be subject to public comment and could be revised, but are expected to become final at the end of January.
neela.banerjee@latimes.com
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8ce391b4f943fb4b5c78933bc65c563b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-sep-30-la-na-hurricane-drone-20111001-story.html | Tiny aircraft could improve hurricane forecasts | Tiny aircraft could improve hurricane forecasts
It’s 3 feet long, weighs 8 pounds and looks a bit like a plastic airplane model. But by next year it will be flying into the eye of a hurricane, bucking incredibly violent winds and maneuvering within 100 feet of the ocean’s surface.
Its primary mission: to help the National Hurricane Center improve intensity predictions, an area where forecasters have lagged for decades. It also will help improve the accuracy of real-time storm predictions.
Called GALE, the unmanned aircraft will be launched from the belly of a hurricane hunter turboprop, initially shot out of a tube as a cylinder. Then it will sprout wings and fly into the core of a hurricane, where it will feed wind speeds and other atmospheric data into computer models that project a storm’s track and strength.
“It gives us a better understanding of how the ocean is interacting with the atmosphere,” said Joe Cione, project leader with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Right now, the models are guessing at what’s going on down there.”
The $30,000 drone, the latest weapon in NOAA’s hurricane-forecast arsenal, is made of hard composites and powered by an electronic motor. It cruises about 55 mph and can stay aloft for about 1.5 hours before falling into the ocean, never to be used again.
The first one will be flight-tested in coming weeks; then two will be flown into separate hurricanes next year. Pilots based on the ground will control them via satellite link, Cione said.
NOAA is undertaking the project in partnership with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.
Considering the plane is so light and hurricane winds are so strong, how is it able to fly without getting tossed asunder?
Initially, it will be dropped into the eye of a hurricane, where the winds are usually calm, said Massood Towhidnejad, a professor of software engineering at Embry-Riddle. It will remain there collecting data until it is almost out of power. Then it will be directed into the hurricane’s eye wall, where the winds are tumultuous.
At that point, the tiny plane will become uncontrollable, Towhidnejad said.
“We’re basically hoping this thing will last as long as it can,” he said. “The wind forces will take over and cause it to rotate. But that’s exactly what we want.”
That violent rotation, he said, will become another means to determine a storm’s strength and structure.
It won’t be the first time a drone has investigated tropical systems. A similarly small plane, called an aerosonde, was first flown in September 2005 into Hurricane Ophelia as it was threatening North Carolina.
More recently, a Global Hawk turbine-powered aircraft, designed to stay aloft more than 30 hours at high altitude, was deployed into some of last year’s storms.
The major benefit of using unmanned aircraft: They can fly into places too dangerous for hurricane hunters and other research planes.
kkaye@tribune.com
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9c47b68e0cccef583a2018623139190b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-04-la-na-doma-court-20120405-story.html | Federal appeals court takes up Defense of Marriage Act | Federal appeals court takes up Defense of Marriage Act
WASHINGTON — A closely watched constitutional challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act went before a U.S. appeals court for the first time Wednesday, setting the stage for a possible Supreme Court decision next year on whether legally married same-sex couples are entitled to equal benefits under federal law.
At issue is not whether gays and lesbians have a right to marry, but whether the federal government can deny tax, health and pension benefits to same-sex couples in states where they can marry.
Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in Boston, argued that states have always set the laws on marriage and family. By refusing to recognize same-sex marriages in states such as Massachusetts, the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act created “an across-the-board exclusion” to equal rights and benefits, she said.
Her clients include Nancy Gill, a U.S. postal worker, and her spouse, Marcelle Letourneau, who are raising two teenagers. The federal law forbids Gill to add her spouse to her healthcare plan.
Bonauto urged the judges to strike down that rule as a violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.
The oral argument took place before the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Chief Judge Sandra Lynch, an appointee of President Clinton; and Judges Juan Torruella, appointed by President Reagan; and Michael Boudin, an appointee ofPresident George H.W. Bush; will decide the case.
Gay rights advocates said they were cheered by the tone of the argument. The three judges asked relatively few questions during the hourlong argument, but the most skeptical questions were directed to attorney Paul Clement, President George W. Bush’s solicitor general, who is defending the federal law on behalf of House Republicans.
Usually, the Justice Department defends federal laws in court, but last year President Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced they would not defend the disputed part of the marriage act.
Clement said Congress had the right to maintain the traditional definition of marriage. “There are perfectly rational” reasons to uphold the law, he said, and he urged the judges not to second-guess Congress. “Do you want to constitutionalize this issue, or leave it to the democratic process?” he asked in closing.
This made for something of a role reversal for Clement as well for the Obama administration lawyers.
Last week, Clement urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by Congress in 2010. He said it violated the “sovereign” rights of 26 Republican-led states because it would force them to expand the Medicaid program and its healthcare for low-income residents.
But in his brief in the marriage act case, he emphasized the more traditional conservative view that judges should defer to elected lawmakers. There is “a strong presumption accorded to Acts of Congress,” he wrote. “This is not a mere polite gesture. It is a deference due the deliberate judgment of constitutional majorities of the two houses of Congress.”
Last week, it was the Obama administration lawyers who were urging the court to defer “to the democratically accountable branches of government” and uphold the healthcare law. In the marriage act case, however, they urged the judges to strike down the key part of the 1996 law because it denies equal treatment to same-sex couples. A lawyer for Massachusetts also urged the judges to strike down the law on grounds that it interfered with the state’s right to define marriage for its own residents.
Two years ago, a federal judge in Massachusetts declared unconstitutional the part of the law that denied equal benefits to legally married gay couples. That decision led to Wednesday’s appeal.
Regardless of how the 1st Circuit rules, the losing side is expected to appeal the issue to the Supreme Court this year.
david.savage@latimes.com
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61583d53266097465667f499b4200e37 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-06-la-na-climate-change-20120407-story.html | Evolution, climate teaching bill awaits Tennessee governor’s signature | Evolution, climate teaching bill awaits Tennessee governor’s signature
WASHINGTON — Tennessee is poised to adopt a law that would allow public schoolteachers to challenge climate change and evolution in their classrooms without fear of sanction, according to educators and civil libertarians in the state.
Passed by the state Legislature and awaiting Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature, the measure is likely to stoke growing concerns among science teachers around the country that teaching climate science is becoming the same kind of classroom and community flash point as evolution. If it becomes law, Tennessee will become the second state, after Louisiana, to allow the teaching of alternatives to accepted science on climate change.
The Tennessee measure does not require the teaching of alternatives to scientific theories of evolution, climate change, human cloning and “the chemical origins of life.” Instead, the legislation would prevent school administrators from reining in teachers who expound on alternative hypotheses to those topics.
The measure’s primary sponsor, Republican state Sen. Bo Watson, said it was meant to give teachers the clarity and security to discuss alternative ideas to evolution and climate change that students may have picked up at home and want to explore in class.
“There appear to be questions from teachers like, ‘What can we discuss and not discuss that won’t get us in trouble as far as nonconventional, nonscientific ideas, things that student may see videos about on YouTube?’” Watson said. “It doesn’t allow for religious or nonreligious ideology to be introduced.”
The bill’s critics, which include the Tennessee Science Teachers Assn. and the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, counter that teachers currently have no problem addressing unconventional ideas and challenges students bring up. They argue, instead, that the measure gives legal cover to teachers to introduce pseudoscientific ideas to students, and they have asked the governor to veto it.
“Our fear is that there are communities across this state where schools are very small and one teacher is the science department, and they also happen to teach a Sunday school class, and this gives them permission to bring that into the classroom,” said Becky Ashe, president of the state science teachers group. “It’s a floodgate.”
Haslam has until next week to decide whether to sign or veto the measure. If he does not decide within 10 days of the bill arriving on his desk, it automatically becomes law. The governor’s office did not immediately return calls for comment.
Tennessee was the site of the 1925 “Scopes monkey trial,” during which a high school science teacher was tried for violating a state law banning the teaching of evolution. Critics of the new law have called it a “monkey bill,” asserting that it is a throwback to that earlier era of science denial.
Critics’ concerns have been heightened because the education bill originated with the Family Action Council of Tennessee, or FACT, a conservative Christian group based in Franklin. The council’s president, David Fowler, did not respond to requests for comment on the bill. Fowler “did discuss this bill with me and brought the original bill,” Watson said. “The amendment to the bill, which replaces the original bill, was my work, however.”
The council’s original bill and Watson’s amended version differ only slightly.
On its website, the council says the bill is needed because “in many classrooms, Darwinian evolution is currently taught in a completely one-sided manner, with most students never learning anything about growing scientific controversies about the theory.”
Biologists say there is no scientific controversy over evolution, only a political one. FACT’s focus is on evolution, not climate change. The bill’s passage was hailed by the Discovery Institute, a group that seeks to have alternative theories to evolution taught in public schools. The Tennessee bill is based in part on the institute’s model legislation.
neela.banerjee@latimes.com
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ecc185ba6803f84fa2ceff56b4a79b40 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-08-la-fg-libya-smuggling-20120408-story.html | Libya is a lure for migrants, where exploitation waits | Libya is a lure for migrants, where exploitation waits
TRIPOLI, Libya — Ahmed Mostafa and his friends paid thousands of dollars among them to get to Libya recently, traveling with gangs of smugglers through Western Africa. It was to be their escape from the sprawling slums of Ghana’s capital city, Accra.
Mostafa had heard rumors of arbitrary arrests and Libyan lynch mobs during the war last year in which longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi was ousted and killed. But he was counting on luck: “It was not something I really thought about,” he said. “I thought I would come and secure some work. Then send some money to my family.”
Instead, he and his 10 friends wound up in a government-run prison, Twoshi Detention Center, sleeping on small foam mattresses, dozens to a room. A militia had spied them two weeks earlier walking along a dusty road in the country’s north and detained them. They remain in the prison, uncharged and without legal representation.
In Libya, illegal migration is once again picking up, conducted through two primary trafficking corridors in the east and west of the country. A stream of Africans — Somalis, Eritreans, Nigerians, Sudanese, Malians — dreaming of a new life have made the perilous trip to Libya. But as turmoil continues to reign through much of the country, many of these migrants are being rounded up and detained, in some cases, to be exploited as forced laborers.
“The going rate for a migrant is anywhere from 260 to 800 Libyan dinars,” or about $210 to $645, said Jeremy Haslam, chief of the Libya mission for the International Organization for Migration. “One of the problems is that many detention facilities are not currently under state control, instead administered by local councils and even private parties. The latter may involve organized crime, running human trafficking operations — modern-day slavery.”
At some detention facilities, staff members lease out black African detainees to employers, who make a contribution to the jails to help cover costs. Other migrants are said to be sold outright to employers.
“In some circumstances, it can appear like a legitimate transaction but is essentially exploitative,” Haslam said. “And it’s widespread.”
Migrants often “work off” the debt of their sale, Haslam said, and have no chance to negotiate hours or rates or the kind of work they do.
“With no status in the country, the cycle can continue indefinitely, with the migrant re-traded once the employer no longer needs their services,” he said.
Libya’s borders have long been haunted by smuggling rings that ferry drugs, weapons and migrants through an intricate web of clandestine trading routes. The country’s relative wealth, gleaned mainly from its oil industry — providing an annual per capita income of $12,000, the highest in Africa — has ensured its place as a destination for illegal immigrants.
Cleaner. Builder. Farmhand. Prostitute. Domestic servant. Libya’s migrant workers, at least 1.5 million strong at the outbreak of last year’s warfare, were all of these things, and the country depended heavily on them. Yet they were always viewed as outsiders, necessary for filling jobs that Libyans would not do.
Some, meanwhile, were reviled as drug dealers and participants in a dark underworld of gang violence.
In the end, they stood as exemplars of how Kadafi’s focus on sub-Saharan Africa — after numerous scuttled attempts to fit into the Middle East and North Africa — came at the expense of his own people. And resentment grew.
Libya has no legislative framework to protect migrants from abuse and exploitation. In its 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report, theU.S. State Departmentranked Libya in the bottom tier, reserved for countries that “do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts” to eliminate human trafficking.
Racially motivated and xenophobic attacks, which occurred frequently before the insurgency, increased vastly over the last year as the country descended into chaos. Rumors swirled throughout Libya — wildly embellished, according to Amnesty International — that Kadafi was flying in mercenaries en masse, with terrifying consequences for the country’s black migrant workers.
Recently released undated video shows black Africans held in a cage, surrounded by a mob. They sit, feet tied and hands bound behind their backs. All have the green former Libyan flag stuffed into their mouths. Men shout “dogs” and “God is great” and force them to gnaw on the flags.
The slide of a pistol is pulled back and a gunshot rings out. The men stand up and hop, like an act from a demented circus, in front of their tormentors. Another shot rings out. The video cuts.
“I want to tell the guards that I am not a mercenary,” said Mostafa, standing in a courtyard outside his cell. “But I cannot speak Arabic. I cannot express myself to them.”
Nearby, other migrants set to weeding a patch of grass, under the eyes of prison guards.
No one really knows how many detention centers — increasingly notorious for human rights abuses, including torture and rape of inmates — are operating in Libya or how many people are being held.
The United Nations estimates that at least 7,000 people are locked up — including migrants, Kadafi loyalists and criminals — and has advocated for the issuance of temporary documentation to illegal migrants to offer some protection.
According to Haslam, about 90% of illegal migrants have no valid identification, which complicates the process of repatriation, prolongs their detention and leaves them vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and exploitation.
“They should give them all visas,” said Mohammed Khoja, who supervises a team of four Nigerian street cleaners who are illegal immigrants. “We need them.”
His workers sift through the accumulated junk in their patch of the city long into the night. It chokes the edges of streets and comes in waves down alleyways. Three years now they have toiled, his four workers, amid Tripoli’s waste.
Wraith-like and filthy, they flit between stalls and parked cars, clutching brooms. Emaciated forms stooped in the night. A deathly odor — rotten fruit, chicken feces and slaughtered animals — clogs the air.
Some people see the four of them as no better than the trash they collect or the pavement they clean, says one of the men, Abdallah.
They bought cheap portable CD players to block out the abuse. Bob Marley and Rihanna accompany them long into the night, when family and friends back inNigeria’s slums drift into their thoughts.
They were smuggled into Libya. They say the trip through Western Africa was simple brutality as they were juggled between ruthless gangs of traffickers and corrupt, profiteering officials, mostly from Chad and Libya.
“Everything you can imagine happened. Rape. Theft. Beatings,” Abdallah said.
Clashes in the remote southern town of Kufra, a staging post for traffickers, have escalated over the last few months. Rumors quickly spread that Chadian mercenaries were seeking to destabilize Libya. In fact, rival gangs of traffickers, many of them Libyan nationals, were battling for control over migration routes.
The rumors fed into a cycle of discrimination in which anyone with black skin was subject to arrest and imprisonment.
Like Mostafa.
He is unsure what will happen to him. But he knows his dream of a world outside Ghana’s slums is over.
“I want to tell my family to come and rescue me,” he says. “I want to go home.”
Johnson is a special correspondent.
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e4c029b02a4880b854c3e0d0529fc82d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-11-la-fg-china-bo-20120411-story.html | Fall of China official roils Chongqing, with some public dissent | Fall of China official roils Chongqing, with some public dissent
CHONGQING, China — Change has come quickly to this sprawling city of 30 million people since the charismatic local party chief, Bo Xilai, was fired last month by the national Communist Party leadership in China’s most high-profile political shake-up in 20 years.
Signs in public squares now ban gatherings to sing “red songs,” a prominent element of Bo’s effort to revitalize Mao-era values. Advertising has replaced propaganda messages on television. Bo’s supporters say some old problems — be it the nuisance of unwanted leaflets or a bigger issue like prostitution — are creeping back.
But the former Chongqing party chief’s most ardent followers aren’t ready to simply accept his fate. Instead, they are challenging an unwritten rule that such high-level political decisions in China are beyond reproach by common people.
Although the reason for Bo’s firing is unclear, it came at the start of a sensitive year for the Chinese leadership. More than half the country’s 25 most-powerful figures are due to retire in a once-in-a-decade transition. The party, dominated by gray apparatchiks, values stability. Bo is a populist wild card.
The crackdown continued Tuesday. State television reported that Bo had been suspended from his remaining posts on the party Central Committee and Politburo. The official news agency reported that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was a suspect in the mysterious death of a British businessman in November. China hasn’t seen such relatively open political turmoil since 1989.
Many academics, lawyers and other intellectuals were happy to see Bo leave. But the party’s campaign against him is unlikely to convince Bo supporters such as the group of retirees swaying recently to Chinese pop music in Chongqing’s People’s Square, a tree-lined swath of red and gray tile sandwiched between an imposing government building and a leafy hillside.
“Ninety-five percent of us common people support Bo. He was a good leader,” said a woman in a red tracksuit. “Now Chongqing people want to take him back.”
“We’re retired now, so we’re not afraid to talk about these things,” said a 59-year-old man who identified himself as Mr. Shi. When two security guards began approaching from the far end of the square, the crowd dispersed.
Bo’s mark will be difficult to erase. Many live in public housing he built and on pension plans he created.
“Chongqing’s ambition was the ambition of Bo Xilai,” said Bo Zhiyue, an expert on Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore. Many Chongqing people believe that “their city has been changed for the better because of this particular leader,” he said. “So I think they have a reason to be confused.”
In the last month, billboards across Chongqing advertising Bo’s campaigns have been torn down. The city’s main television station, which replaced its commercials with socialist propaganda under Bo, has resumed its regular programming.
An urban planning museum by the river in central Chongqing has closed an entire wing that housed an exhibition about Bo’s campaigns. A sign by the wing’s entrance says that the space is being “sterilized” and that visitors should keep away for their own safety.
But some of Bo’s most distinctive marks on the city have not yet been rubbed out. Tall, slender policewomen in heavy makeup and starched white uniforms stand in the middle of roundabouts to direct traffic, a Bo trademark. Ginkgo trees, which Bo purchased at great expense for his “Forest Chongqing” initiative, still line the sidewalks.
Chongqing’s hot pot restaurants, mah-jongg parlors and university campuses are abuzz with speculation about what will happen to the city now that he’s gone. Some say that crime bosses are celebrating his demise, that the police have become lazy, and that pensioners who benefited from Bo’s policies are planning a revolt.
“Bo did a great job of keeping the city clean,” said Jessica Li, 25, a researcher at a pharmaceuticals company. “Whether it was unregistered fliers or prostitution, that was all gone. Now it’s back in force.”
Bo’s downfall came after his then-right-hand man, Wang Lijun, fled to the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu in February, seeking political asylum. Allegations have since surfaced that Bo may have overstepped the law in his “Smash the Black” anti-mafia campaign, detaining and torturing his adversaries.
Both official and unofficial news media have reported major shake-ups in Chongqing since Bo was fired. The Chongqing Daily said March 27 that Chen Cungen, a standing member of the municipal committee under Bo, had been removed from his post. A former aide to Wang has been placed under investigation, according to Caixin, an independent Chinese newspaper.
“Things are a lot more relaxed now” that Bo is gone, said a 31-year-old Chongqing government official who, because of the sensitivity of the issue, requested anonymity. Low-level officials have been required to attend frequent meetings about how to keep in lock step with Beijing. Many were surprised to receive a series of documents from the central government detailing Bo’s alleged misdeeds.
That was before the bombshells dropped Tuesday. Chinese television said that Bo was being removed from his national party positions for “violations of party discipline” and that an inspection committee would investigate him.
The charges against his wife were even more sensational. The New China News Agency said Gu and the family’s housekeeper, Zhang Xiaojun, had been transferred to judicial authorities in connection with the death of Neil Heywood, a 41-year-old British businessman who had been friendly with the Bo family.
The report said authorities suspected them of “intentional homicide,” but provided no other detail. Heywood died in a Chongqing hotel of what was ruled “excessive alcohol consumption,” and his body was cremated. But in late March, the British government asked China to investigate the death.
For much of his tenure, Bo’s Chongqing had been widely lauded as an economic success. The city’s gross domestic product rose 16.6% in 2011, faster than that of any other major Chinese city. Multinational companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Ford, established outposts in Chongqing, creating tens of thousands of jobs.
Chongqing’s growth is evident in its ubiquitous concrete villages sitting half-demolished among the residential high-rises flanking its freshly paved thoroughfares. The Yangtze River, which cuts through the city, is now traversed by so many bridges that many residents don’t know their names.
Bo’s departure already appears to be taking an economic toll on Chongqing. Two global private equity firms have reconsidered plans to establish funds in the city because of political uncertainty after the shake-up, according to the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper.
His supporters continue to exhibit a level of fanaticism online, said Alan Zhang, a blogger in Chongqing.
“Some people said that they wanted to have demonstrations to save Bo,” Zhang said. “Then the site was blocked. But then it opened again. People were upset; some said that they were crying. And then, a couple of days ago, the site was blocked again.”
Kaiman is a special correspondent.
Times staff writer Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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c0d63d1f43f595b3b4da706cf4ca057f | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-12-la-na-nn-titanic-archives-20120412-story.html | Titanic: Who was/wasn’t on board? Finally, it’s easy to find out | Titanic: Who was/wasn’t on board? Finally, it’s easy to find out
This post has been corrected See the note at the bottom for details.
LAS VEGAS -- Just in time for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the world’s most storied ocean liner, thousands of records on the passengers and crew of the ill-fated Titanic have been made public online by Ancestry.com.
With the click of a computer mouse, historians and arm-chair genealogists can search for the names of those who sailed aboard the ship, or who helped rescue survivors, by name or shipboard class.
More than 2,200 people were aboard the Titanic when it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic the night of April 14, 1912. The 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking is Sunday.
The treasure trove of data, available in one location for the first time and temporarily accessible free of charge, is the brainchild of Dan Jones, vice president of content acquisition for the Provo, Utah-based ancestry website.
“Rather than focusing on the ship itself, the documents in this collection tell the story of those who sailed on or crewed the ship, as well as those who sought to save the victims from the icy waters of the North Atlantic,” Jones told the Los Angeles Times.
Jones, who once worked at Great Britain’s national archives, coordinated a staff to collect records from existing academic and government document collections in the U.S., England and Canada.
The online archive includes passenger lists, crew records, and registers of both victims and survivors. There are also coroner inquest files for bodies recovered at sea and headstone images for 121 victims who were buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The collection is available for viewing this week with a simple registration instead of a subscription. The records can be found at www.ancestry.com/titanic.
“It’s all aggregated in one location, a sort of one-stop shopping for those looking to put to rest or complete their research of a relative who might have traveled on the Titanic,” Sean Pate, a spokesman for Ancestry.com, told The Times.
The researchers also sent a photographer to Nova Scotia to document the gravestones of some 300 Titanic victims buried there. Some tombstones come with inscriptions; others are nameless graves.
“Some of the stories of those aboard the Titanic will always remain mysteries, but some fascinating glimpses of history have been uncovered,” Jones said.
The data, he said, gave details of one passenger whose body was recovered with thousands of dollars sewn into the lining of his coat. “There are so many questions,” Jones said. “Why was he going to America? What was he heading toward? What did that iceberg get in the way of?”
The collection has already proved useful to one Ancestry.com employee, Pate said. The woman mentioned to researchers that her great-grandfather might have sailed on the Titanic. Before she archive was released, she searched its files and found her great-grandfather’s name among the passenger lists.
“For her, there were always rumors,” Pate said. “Now she has facts.”
[For the record, 3:03 p.m. April 12: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Sean Pate as a spokesman for Archives.com. He’s a spokesman for Ancestry.com.]
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john.glionna@latimes.com
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32f2f40eec4e9deff466469c23b7b80c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-14-la-fg-obama-summit-20120415-story.html | At Americas summit, Obama says no to legalizing drugs | At Americas summit, Obama says no to legalizing drugs
CARTAGENA, Colombia — President Obama sought Saturday to emphasize the robust economic relationship between the United States and Latin America, and he flatly ruled out legalizing drugs as a way to combat the illegal trafficking that has ravaged the region.
Facing calls at a regional summit to consider decriminalization, Obama said he is open to a debate about drug policy, but he believes that legalization could lead to greater problems in countries hardest hit by drug-fueled violence.
“Legalization is not the answer,” Obama told other hemispheric leaders at the two-day Summit of the Americas.
“The capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting, than the status quo,” he said.
Obama told Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, host of the summit, that he is willing to discuss whether American drug laws are “doing more harm than good in certain places.”
Santos wants the 33 countries participating in the summit to consider alternatives to what many leaders consider the failed war on drugs, possibly including regulating marijuana and even cocaine the way that alcohol and tobacco are.
Other leaders also have urged such a dialogue despite the political discomfort it may cause Obama in an election year.
“In spite of all the efforts, the illicit drug business is still buoyant, drug addiction in all countries is a serious public health issue, and drug trafficking is still the main provider of funding for violence and terrorism,” Santos said. “An in-depth discussion around this topic is needed, without any biases or dogmas, taking into consideration the different scenarios and possible alternatives to more effectively face this challenge.”
The focus on drug trafficking — as well as a scandal involving alleged misconduct by Secret Service agents and military personnel — threatened to overshadow Obama’s main mission in Colombia: touting the benefits of a strong economic relationship across the hemisphere.
“I think that oftentimes in the press the attention in summits like this ends up focusing on, ‘Where are the controversies?’” Obama said during a morning session.
Some of those issues seem “caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yanquis and the Cold War, and this and that and the other,” he said. “That’s not the world we live in today.”
He praised a recently negotiated trade agreement with Colombia as a “win-win.”
He did not say whether Colombia has met the terms of a labor rights plan that Congress set last year as a condition of passage of the agreement. The trade accord was strongly opposed by union leaders, who complained of the dangerous conditions facing members of organized labor in Colombia.
Obama avoided confrontations with the region’s most anti-American leaders. Cuba’spresident, Raul Castro, was not invited to the summit. And Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, who is highly critical of U.S. policy, abruptly canceled plans to attend.
Chavez, who suffers from cancer, will travel to Cuba instead for radiation therapy, Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said on state TV.
christi.parsons@latimes.com
matea.gold@latimes.com
Parsons reported from Cartagena and Gold from Washington.
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bd27633e0a30dc66787300812d203cd8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-16-la-fg-obama-summit-20120416-story.html | Obama clears way for Colombia free trade pact | Obama clears way for Colombia free trade pact
CARTAGENA, Colombia — Despite strong opposition from his allies in the U.S. labor movement, President Obama said Sunday that he trusted Colombian authorities to improve protections for workers and union leaders as he cleared the final obstacle for implementation of a free trade agreement next month.
The decision marks a victory for the U.S. business community, which has pushed the White House to increase commercial opportunities in Colombia’s growing economy. The pact eliminates duties on most exports, eases travel restrictions and strengthens intellectual property rights.
“We all know more work needs to be done, but we’ve made significant progress,” Obama said at a news conference. “It’s a win for our workers and the environment because of the protections it has for both — commitments we are going to fulfill.”
The announcement came as the weekend Summit of the Americas ended in some disarray. Talks among the leaders were upstaged by the unfolding scandal of 11 Secret Service agents who were ordered home for misconduct, including allegedly bringing prostitutes to their rooms.
The summit also concluded without the customary joint declaration because of deep divisions over communist-ruled Cuba, and Argentina’s claims to the British-held Falkland Islands. The U.S. and Canada refused to adopt a final statement specifying that Cuba be invited to future hemispheric summits.
“There is no declaration because there is no consensus,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos told reporters. The next summit is scheduled to be held in Panama in 2015.
Obama’s decision to go ahead with the free trade deal led to applause from U.S. business leaders, some of whom accompanied the president to Colombia, and sharp criticism from labor leaders who normally support the administration.
Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the deal would open the way to job creation, welcome words for a president battling high unemployment in an election year.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk called the deal “a significant milestone” that advances U.S. economic and strategic interests.
Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said she met with Colombian labor leaders to address their concerns. She said efforts to protect workers’ rights are “a work in progress,” adding, “I remain confident.”
Labor leaders sounded far less buoyant. The AFL-CIO has endorsed Obama’s reelection, but his support for the Colombian deal could damp enthusiasm by union members to get out the vote on his behalf.
U.S. labor leaders oppose the deal because of widespread harassment and violence in Colombia as trade unions have tried to organize workers. Dozens of union organizers and activists have been killed in the last three years.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the announcement “deeply disappointing and troubling.”
“We regret that the administration has placed commercial interests above the interests of workers and their trade unions,” he said in a statement.
The AFL-CIO joined Colombian labor organizations CUT and CTC in condemning the deal, saying the government had not done enough to stop violence against workers groups. “We fear that prematurely declaring the plan a success will not only halt progress, but lead to backtracking,” the unions said in a joint statement.
When the pact takes effect May 15, most industrial and manufactured products exported from the U.S. and Colombia will immediately become duty free, making it cheaper for American businesses to sell their goods in Colombia. More than half of U.S. agricultural exports to Colombia will also become duty free.
christi.parsons@latimes.com
matea.gold@latimes.com
Parsons reported from Cartagena and Gold from Washington.
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dc0bc69c966fcd016eab13c5202ae8ad | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-17-la-fg-japan-nukes-20120418-story.html | Japan still divided over nuclear power after Fukushima | Japan still divided over nuclear power after Fukushima
The prospect of power shortages in Japan this summer, of stifling city apartments and manufacturing slowdowns, has divided a country still reeling from the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl over whether to restart some of its idled reactors.
The government contends that the country can’t afford not to resume nuclear energy production.
The last operating nuclear reactor in Japan, on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, will be taken off line May 5 for stress tests and safety improvements. Japan’s 53 other reactors were shut down after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, which killed thousands of people. The inundation damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi power complex, causing three reactor meltdowns, mass evacuations, food and farmland contamination, and profound distrust of the nuclear power industry.
Japan generated 30% of its electricity from nuclear plants before the disaster 13 months ago, and energy companies are now warning consumers and industries that they could face a doubling of their power bills if the country continues to import fossil fuels to replace the lost nuclear output.
Pocketbook concerns may do little to boost public confidence in resuming nuclear generation, though, if sentiments expressed in a recent poll published by the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper persist through the summer, when urban Japanese are accustomed to turning on the air conditioning.
Nearly 80% of 3,000 Japanese surveyed by the Japan Assn. for Public Opinion Research said they wanted to get rid of nuclear plants for good, although most said a gradual phasing out would be acceptable to avoid power shortages. Those supportive of restarting some reactors in the short term outnumbered those opposed by more than 2 to 1.
Sensing an opportunity to rid the island nation of nuclear power, Greenpeace Japan has stepped up its lobbying against government plans to restart two reactors at Ohi in Fukui prefecture. The environmental watchdog group has reminded wary Japanese of the price they paid in lives, health and security in the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdowns, the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union.
“Japan is practically nuclear free, and the impact on daily life is invisible,” Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan’s executive director said recently, disputing assertions that there is a need to restart reactors.
Economy and Industry Minister Yukio Edano signaled the start of a hearts-and-minds campaign this week when he said the two Ohi reactors have “more or less” met the demanding safety standards recommended by Japanese and international nuclear experts after Fukushima.
An inspection team of the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Ohi power complex in January and concluded last month that the upgrades made at the reactors were “generally consistent with IAEA safety standards,” said team leader James Lyons, director of the Vienna-based agency’s facility safety division.
Edano has called on the governor of Fukui, Issei Nishikawa, to endorse the restart. Fukui is relatively small but strategic in the power network as it is home to 13 reactors, and Ohi’s output is vital to providing reliable electricity supplies to Osaka and Kyoto.
Nishikawa has yet to take a side on the restart issue, but Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto lashed out at the government for declaring the Ohi plant safe without first getting a go-ahead from its own nuclear regulators, who have purportedly been given more responsibility for reactor safety by legislation spurred by last year’s disaster. Hashimoto told Japan’s NHK network Monday that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda would provoke a government crisis if he forged ahead with the Ohi restart in spite of the strong fear still driving popular resistance to returning to nuclear power reliance.
The government doesn’t technically need local officials’ support to restart the reactors, which would take about 10 days to resume supplying power, according to the Kansai Electric utility, which operates the Ohi complex. But public skepticism about nuclear safety remains high, as does mistrust of a government and nuclear regulatory industry that downplayed the severity of the Fukushima catastrophe in its early days.
“People are dissatisfied with the nuclear industry. They’ve lost trust in it,” said Najmedin Meshkati, a systems engineering professor at USC who has closely followed Japan’s legislative and technical responses to the Fukushima crisis.
But the nuclear industry is deeply integrated in the local economies where it operates, providing employment and energy as well as funding for schools, medical facilities and recreation, Meshkati said.
“At the end of the day Japan doesn’t have any choice but to resume production,” he said.
Those arguments about need may do little to quell fear among Japanese that the industry poses too many risks for such a densely populated country.
The daily Mainichi Shimbun in a weekend editorial urged more thorough safety checks.
“It is hard to understand,” the editorial said, “why the government is in such haste to restart the reactors.”
carol.williams@latimes.com
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29e374098fa1b2970462e25e1985f8e1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-20-la-fg-germany-nuclear-20120421-story.html | Germany’s nuclear power phaseout turns off environmentalists | Germany’s nuclear power phaseout turns off environmentalists
KLEINENSIEL, Germany — When the German government shut down half the country’s nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, followed two months later by a pledge to abandon nuclear power within a decade, environmentalists cheered.
A year later, however, criticism of the nuclear shutdown is emerging from a surprising source: some of the very activists who pushed for the phaseout.
They say poor planning of the shutdown and political opportunism by the government have actually worsened the toll on the environment in Germany, and Europe, at least in the short term.
To make up for the lost nuclear power, which supplied 22% of Germany’s electricity before the phaseout began, the country has increased its reliance on brown coal, a particularly high emitter of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and a major contributor to global warming. Brown coal now supplies 25% of Germany’s electricity, up from 23% a year ago.
Previously a net exporter of electricity, Germany now imports as much electricity as it sells abroad. Removing so much German electricity from the market has benefited power companies in neighboring countries that rely heavily on coal and nuclear power, thereby undermining Germany’s environmental goals and its nuclear safety concerns.
Although abandoning nuclear power is expected to eventually clear the way for the development of renewable energy, in which Germany is already a world leader, the environmental effect so far has been problematic.
Last year’s shuttering of eight of the country’s 17 reactors has led to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions of 25 million tons annually in Europe, said Laszlo Varro of the International Energy Agency, a European intergovernmental organization.
Klaus Toepfer, the former German environment minister who headed the commission to advise the government on the phaseout, worries that “the great opportunities of this energy transition” are being squandered.
Although he supported Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to shutter Germany’s nuclear plants, Toepfer said the execution of the policy has been fumbling and haphazard.
“A big project needs a professional project manager; it needs monitoring, where people tell us every year where we stand and what adjustments we need to make — standard things for a big project,” Toepfer said. “We’re not seeing that from the administration right now, at least not sufficiently.”
Merkel’s administration never formulated a coherent strategy for switching to new forms of energy or for upgrading the country’s electricity grid, critics say. Without such improvements, the grid cannot always transmit power south to Germany’s main population and industrial centers as fast as the offshore wind farms in the North Sea can produce it.
“We have a government where half of the administration does not agree with the starting point that the phasing-out program was the right thing to do,” said Cem Oezdemir, co-chairman of Germany’s Green Party. “So what you can see is that the second part after you decided to phase out, that you change your electricity structure and that you have a master plan for energy policy, that never was really agreed upon.”
“The government did it not because they were convinced,” Oezdemir said of the decision to abandon nuclear power. “They did it because they were losing elections.”
Only six months before the Fukushima disaster, Merkel had decided to extend, not curtail, the life span of Germany’s nuclear power plants, a move that aroused vigorous public opposition. After the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, she made a dramatic reversal, announcing that half of Germany’s nuclear plants would be shut down immediately and the remainder within a decade.
To some residents in the northwestern German village of Kleinensiel, Merkel’s sudden change of heart was born of political motives.
“There was a lot of frustration,” said Boris Schierhold, mayor of the municipality of Stadland, which includes Kleinensiel. “People lost a little trust in political decision-making.”
Kleinensiel is home to the Unterweser plant, the largest nuclear facility in the world when it started generating electricity in 1979. The village lives and breathes nuclear power; residents can tell you exactly how long it takes to decommission a plant and when Unterweser was constructed and brought on line.
In the good years, Unterweser had as many workers, 700, as the town did residents. Kleinensiel’s guesthouses filled up and businesses boomed whenever inspectors came to town on their regular visits.
But since Unterweser was shut down a year ago, that’s all changed. On a recent afternoon, Kleinensiel’s sole restaurant was closed, as was its snack kiosk. No one answered the door at two guesthouses.
“It’s a major blow to the region,” said Wilfried Muechler, one of the approximately 350 Unterweser employees who have been retained to run testing, maintenance and security. “The restaurants are definitely feeling it. And it’s a catastrophe for the small businesses that work with the plant. They’re the first to get axed: the painters, the electricians, the carpenters. It affects everyone.”
Although other jobs will be created as Germany expands its renewable-energy sector, most of them will not be in the same areas as the nuclear plants, leaving nuclear-dependent regions in precarious positions. Towns such as Kleinensiel are already feeling the pain just as Germany suffers a broader economic slowdown.
Schierhold harbors no illusions about Kleinensiel’s future. The town won’t be able to attract major new industries, and its geography isn’t suitable for the construction of the offshore wind farms that are transforming the economies of areas to the north, he says.
He simply hopes that Unterweser’s operator, the power company E.on, chooses to dismantle the plant rather than encase it in concrete and let it sit idle. The full dismantling would take 10 to 15 years, during which a portion of the workers at Unterweser would remain employed.
It’s a bleak prospect, pinning the town’s economic hopes on the slow destruction of what was once its engine. But it’s better than the alternative, which would see all the plant’s remaining employees out of a job in just a few years.
In the meantime, the giant white dome of the Unterweser plant serves as a constant reminder of a policy that many here consider misguided.
“Our facilities were serviced every year; they’re in perfect shape,” said Maik Otholt, a Kleinensiel resident. “Nothing ever went wrong. And so now what are we doing? We’re buying nuclear energy from France. Their plant is just over the border. And now we’re buying that expensive electricity. It’s crazy.”
Wiener is a special correspondent.
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549721bc54cf5a8b5a111a3b9b57ff34 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-21-la-na-adv-fracking-doctors-20120422-story.html | Pennsylvania law on fracking chemicals worries doctors | Pennsylvania law on fracking chemicals worries doctors
AVELLA, Pa.— About two years ago, Dr. Amy Pare began treating members of the Moten family and their neighbors from a working-class neighborhood less than half a mile from a natural gas well here.
A plastic surgeon whose specialty includes skin cancer, Pare removed and biopsied quarter-size skin lesions from Jeannie Moten, 53, and her niece, only to find that the sores recurred. “The good news is that it wasn’t cancer, and the bad news is that we have no idea what it is,” Pare said.
Determined to understand the illnesses, Pare went last May to the Motens’ neighborhood to collect urine samples from a dozen people. To her dismay, she found chemicals not normally present in the human body: hippuric acid, phenol, mandelic acid.
The Motens and their neighbors suspect their ailments could be tied to the natural gas well. Pare says she is not sure what is causing their problems. But she worries that she may have a hard time determining the exact cause because of a provision in a new Pennsylvania law regulating natural gas production.
The law compels natural gas companies to give inquiring healthcare professionals information about the chemicals used in their drilling and production processes — but only after the doctors or nurses sign a confidentiality agreement.
Some physicians complain that the law is vague and lacks specific guidelines about how they can use and share the information with patients, colleagues and public health officials, putting them at risk of violating the measure. But refusing to sign the confidentiality agreement denies them access to information that could help treat patients.
“I just want to make my patients healthy,” Pare said, adding that she might sign an agreement. “And I can’t do that if I don’t know what it is that’s making them sick.”
The possibility that increased natural gas development could threaten public heath lies at the core of resistance to a controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The technique involves high-pressure injection of water and sand laced with chemicals deep underground to break shale formations and unlock oil and gas deposits.
Some people living near well sites have complained that their well water has been contaminated by fracking. The industry asserts that tiny amounts of chemicals are used in fracking and that the water problems are unrelated to the procedure.
Supporters of the Pennsylvania law —- including the gas industry, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and many legislators — said it was designed to help healthcare providers. Environmental groups and opposing lawmakers said the provision was not in the natural gas law’s original version and was slipped in behind closed doors at the last minute by industry-friendly legislators.
Patrick Henderson, the governor’s energy executive, said the new law would increase disclosure. Companies would have to share the chemical composition of fluids they use in natural gas production, including proprietary mixes. The confidentiality agreement would not prevent doctors from sharing information with colleagues or patients, only with the company’s competitors, he said.
Dr. Marilyn Heine, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, said her group had been assured by the state that as regulations are developed to implement the law, state officials “will clarify the provisions so that physicians will know what they can do.”
Some doctors, however, want the details in writing before they sign any confidentiality agreements.
“Right now, any physician reading the law would not go anywhere near the issue, because the language of the law has a very chilling effect,” said Dr. Bernard Goldstein, former dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and an expert on possible health effects of natural gas development. “I very much hope that the regulations permit” information sharing, he added.
So far, there are no comprehensive, independent studies of the possible health effects of natural gas development.
Dr. Sean Porbin, a family practitioner in Avella, thinks natural gas development could revive many struggling towns in Pennsylvania. “We need to ask questions,” he said. “It’s not about shutting down industry, but fixing it. And if the data show what they’re doing is safe, then we need to defend them.”
Pennsylvania’s new law is not unprecedented, according to the state’s Republican leadership, the natural gas industry and at least two prominent environmental groups. The measure is based on a new rule in Colorado and on two decades-old federal laws from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
The comparisons between Pennsylvania’s provision and the federal laws, however, are inexact, experts said. According to a statement from OSHA, what doctors can disclose and to whom would come down to “the terms of the agreement between the employer and the healthcare provider.”
In any case, there is little precedent for how nondisclosure agreements between doctors and companies would work when the patients are residents near a fracking site, not company employees, experts said.
If the state guidelines are stringent, doctors probably will forgo the agreement — and the information they are seeking from a company, Goldstein and other physicians said. That, too, could imperil doctors.
“It exposes us to lawsuits from our own patients, who might say, ‘Why didn’t you sign the confidentiality agreement?’ or if you did, ‘Why didn’t you share the information with so-and-so?’” said Dr. Mehernosh Khan, who has filed suit against the state over the provision. “The law sets up a precedent for doctors not being able to practice medicine properly.”
neela.banerjee@latimes.com
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1c431771352714cf6d5ae497aa49f05c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-22-la-fg-france-hollande-20120422-story.html | French presidential candidate Francois Hollande bets on boring | French presidential candidate Francois Hollande bets on boring
PARIS — Under the big top of Paris’ Cirque d’Hiver, where in winter trapeze artists perform “death-defying” feats, big cats terrify and clowns trip and tumble, a middle-aged man who looks like a bank manager is waiting in the wings.
On stage is the warm-up act, an earnest 94-year-old writer, whose sincerity has damped the excitement that the preceding break dancers and rappers had whipped up. Outside, circus usherettes in red-and-gold majorette jackets lounge around looking bored.
But as the man in the gray suit and spectacles finally strides into the ring, the crowd goes wild. Ringside VIPs and youngsters in the cheap seats leap to their feet: “Francois president ... Francois president ... Francois president!” comes the mesmerizing chant.
Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you Francois Hollande, the man who, if the polls are correct, will be the next president of France.
The Socialist Party candidate, who once told a magazine that he preferred being nice, “because in the films, the bad guys always lose,” is running neck and neck in Sunday’s presidential election with incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy (whose name isn’t particularly synonymous with the word “nice”).
But in the expected second round two weeks later, polls give Hollande a lead of between 10 and 14 percentage points, making him poised to become only the second Socialist leader in France’s history.
Just as Sarkozy has earned the nickname “President Bling-Bling,” the 57-year-old Hollande is called “Monsieur Normal” and criticized for being worthy but bland, earnest but not very exciting, more manager than visionary.
On a continent shaken by economic turmoil, however, Europeans have been reaching for security blankets. Witness the ouster of flamboyant Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his technocrat replacement, Mario Monti.
In this grim economic climate, it seems like a good bet to hone the image of an ordinary man representing the ordinary citizen. Hollande’s leitmotif is the call for social equality, for “fairness,” for controlling financial speculation, regulating banks and taxing the rich and big, profitable companies.
If he wins in the second round May 6, Hollande is set to put the cat among the European pigeons. He has pledged to renegotiate the deal Sarkozy struck with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to rein in budget deficits in European Union countries. He supports encouraging growth instead of austerity programs. He has proposed a 75% tax rate on personal earnings over $1.3 million a year.
“We’re being upfront, saying, ‘If you’re a rich individual or a rich company, yes, you’re going to pay more,’ ” Socialist spokesman Benoit Hamon said.
Hollande is a career politician, but has never held a ministerial post and is virtually unknown outside France. He may never even have gotten a shot at becoming president ifDominique Strauss-Kahn, the Socialist Party’s first choice, hadn’t been arrested in New York nearly a year ago after being accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
Most people, even many of his critics, seem to agree that Hollande is a personable chap, a nice guy, Mr. Ordinary. The attacks leveled against him have been pretty feeble: He doesn’t look like a president, he isn’t a showman, he has no charisma, he’s … well, he’s a man in a gray suit who’s “normal.”
Hollande’s one bit of spiciness, if it can be called that, is his personal life. In 2007, he swallowed his own ambition and stepped aside for Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children, to run as the Socialist presidential candidate, but was accused of being less than enthusiastic in his public support of her. After she lost to Sarkozy, it was revealed that their relationship was already foundering. His partner today is Valerie Trierweiler, a glamorous former journalist with the glossy news magazine Paris Match.
Sarkozy would have been at home in the Cirque d’Hiver. Hollande simply looked out of place. But he laughs off the critics, saying charisma comes with becoming president. “When you’re elected, you embody France. That changes everything.”
Before Strauss-Kahn’s spectacular fall, Hollande, who had given up the party leadership, was in a political wilderness. Then he lost weight, smartened up his suits and won the party primaries.
Opponents who used to deride him as Monsieur Flanby (after a wobbly French pudding), as much for his portliness as the perceived flabbiness of his political opinions, dropped the nickname as Hollande fleshed out his program, assumed more gravitas and showed he had a serious chance of becoming president. The criticism that he is a political lightweight, however, has stuck.
A commentator in the right-of-center Le Figaro newspaper compared Hollande’s egalitarian crusade to that of Saint-Just, the military and political leader during the French Revolution whose zeal and energy led him to be dubbed the “Angel of Death.”
Sarkozy spokeswoman Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said Hollande would be a “catastrophe” for France. She said his policies were “a one-way ticket toward Greece,” the country regarded as the sick patient of the European Union.
“His method is simple but fatal: Wait for the return of growth to reduce the deficit, with the sole aim of not displeasing the voters in the short term,” she said, adding that the electorate would pay in the long term.
Manuel Valls, Hollande’s spokesman, defended the candidate’s commitment to equality and said French society had become fractured under Sarkozy.
“Sarkozy has divided French society, made it riven with inequalities,” Valls said. “Hollande’s response is to propose greater justice and equality.”
Jean-Yves Le Drian, a longtime friend of Hollande’s who is expected to be defense minister if Hollande wins, said: “The French want someone who shows them empathy and respect. They want someone who dares to say what he will do and will do what he says. That is Francois Hollande. He’s been like that as long as I’ve known him, and that’s a long time.”
That may not make him much of a circus act, but it just might win him the election.
Willsher is a special correspondent.
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af655823a28da436d27871c9afb922f8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-22-la-fg-india-trash-mountain-20120422-story.html | For many in India, landfill is a livelihood and a home | For many in India, landfill is a livelihood and a home
NEW DELHI — The children didn’t notice the ravens and occasional vulture circling overhead, or the stream of black ooze that flowed nearby, or the inescapable stench of decay. They were squealing over a 4-cent ride on a small, hand-powered Ferris wheel.
The kids are growing up in New Delhi’s 70-acre Ghazipur landfill, a post-apocalyptic world where hundreds of pickers climb a 100-foot-high trash pile daily, dodging and occasionally dying beneath belching bulldozers that reshape the putrid landscape.
On “trash mountain,” families earn $1 to $2 a day slogging through waist-deep muck. But the residents also marry, have children on their dirt floors, pray and celebrate life’s other milestones.
“I am very proud to be a rag picker; we keep you healthy,” said Jai Prakash Choudhary, who has spent years scouring Delhi’s dumps in search of cast-off bottles, metal, even human hair.
An outgrowth of India’s rapidly expanding middle class with its embrace of Western-style consumerism is ever more waste: New Delhi produces about 9,200 tons of trash daily, up 50% from 2007. The garbage is expected to double by 2024, leaving Ghazipur and two other landfills overflowing.
That’s afforded the country’s 1.7 million rag pickers — with 350,000 in New Delhi alone — more pickings, allowing some to dream of one day joining those middle-class ranks.
Rising expectations and hunger for a better life are seen in small ways at Ghazipur, charity workers said. Children balk at donations of unfashionable clothing. Twentysomethings sport stylish haircuts. Many listen to the latest pop tunes on cheap cellphones.
Choudhary is a symbol of that slow rise to the middle class, the desire for more. The rag picker, who’s in his 30s, ran for councilman in this month’s municipal elections here. Although he lost, his candidacy is an inspiration to other rag pickers, and he’s promised to try again in a continuing effort to fight for their rights.
“Dirt comes from the top,” Choudhary said. “Politics is a noble profession, but Indian politicians are not. I won’t disappoint people.”
The first rung for many, including Choudhary, is trash mountain. Most of those living in the shanties ringing the garbage dump are Muslims from impoverished central Bihar state or illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who learn quickly which wholesalers will pay the most for their trash, how to scratch out a few feet of living space, where to scrounge for water and power.
In the trickle-down world of trash, they’re at the bottom. Because New Delhi has no real door-to-door waste-collection system, the most “desirable” refuse is snapped up by domestic workers or neighborhood pickers, who then take the leftovers to select waste sites around the city. From there, trash trucks dump the rest at Ghazipur, where residents pick over the leavings.
“No one wants to be here if they can help it,” said Ram Karan, 35, as several sheep munched on trash nearby. “It’s a necessary evil.”
Residents jealously guard their small, makeshift homes, including Sheikh Habibullah, who was busy rebuilding his after a fire razed the neighborhood, crafting a door from a Bollywood poster board.
His two-room hut, with dirt floors, rice-bag walls and a palm-leaf roof, houses six family members. Half their $60 monthly earnings go to a local boss for “rent” and permission to siphon off city electricity powering a single light bulb.
“In the slums, you always get ripped off,” said Bharati Chaturvedi, director of Chintan, a charity focused on waste-pickers.
Once collected, trash is sorted, often by children, into piles up to 12 feet high: plastic bottles, cups, bottle caps, bent cutlery. Buyers pay 5 cents a pound for plastic bags and $18 per pound for human hair, used in wigs.
Some finer points of picker etiquette: Don’t talk to bulldozer drivers — everyone has a job to do — and scrounge only what’s in front of you.
“Getting tricky leads to turf fights,” said Habibullah, 30, in brown pants, black flip flops and an imitation gold chain. “Otherwise, there’s no real skill. It’s not exactly silver mining.”
Child labor is rife, as is gastrointestinal illness. Cancer, birth defects and asthma rates are high. Milk from dairies ringing the landfill — alongside several slaughterhouses and a crematorium — is tinged with lead and dioxin. Most can’t afford a change of clothes, let alone a doctor.
“We bathe under the pump,” said Jamshed Khan, 45. “The water tastes metallic, but we drink it.”
Even as passing drivers hold their noses en route to call-center jobs in the nearby Delhi satellite of Noida, believing they’ve escaped Dante’s third ring of hell, Ghazipur residents speak of opportunity, the city’s allure, liberation from village pettiness.
“It’s much freer here,” said Sheikh Abdul Kashid, 60, framed by the orange hues of a chemical-induced sunset. “And I’ve given four children some education. I could never do that back home.”
Few issues in India are far from politics, and garbage is no exception. Given an energy shortage, overflowing landfills and a bid for carbon credits under the global Kyoto Protocol climate pact, several trash-to-energy plants are planned, including one at 30-year-old Ghazipur.
Supporters say these will modernize an inefficient system. Critics say they’re a plot by hard-line Hindu politicians to keep down Muslims, would release even more dioxin and would destroy rag-picker livelihoods.
Pickers complain that even now they can’t keep pace with rising food costs.
“I manage to make enough to feed us,” said Habibullah, as a small boy walked by naked except for flip-flops. “But I can never get ahead.”
The more ambitious are no longer content to wait for belching garbage trucks, so they head into neighborhoods to get higher-quality waste from residents, earning more money.
“There’s a high probability they could be middle class in a generation or two,” Chintan’s Chaturvedi said. “We can’t bring miracles. But as Delhi develops, there’s great need for even moderately educated people.”
Out on the campaign trail a few days before the election, flanked by hundreds of supporters, candidate Choudhary shook hands, held babies and touched the feet of elderly voters, a sign of humility.
“I will continue to work and spread awareness about rag-picker rights,” he said. “I hope I’m an inspiration to others. Can you imagine no one picking up the waste from your house, even for a day?”
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Tanvi Sharma of The Times’ New Delhi bureau contributed to this report.
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95598306642e5d642b23043f78ceeeb7 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-24-la-na-romney-rubio-immigration-20120424-story.html | Rubio appeals to Latinos on Romney’s behalf | Rubio appeals to Latinos on Romney’s behalf
CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Marco Rubio took the stage with Mitt Romney and delivered what the presidential candidate wanted — a jolt of energy aimed at an uninspired Republican base and a message of inclusion to Latino voters, who have drifted away from the party in droves.
Monday’s appearance by Rubio, a Florida senator and possible vice presidential pick who has become one of his party’s most prominent Latino leaders, drew cheers and applause from the crowd. But it was also a reminder of competing imperatives facing Romney after a combative primary season in which he moved far to the right on illegal immigration, a key concern for many Latino voters.
For months, Romney repeatedly sought to outflank his opponents on the issue: chiding Texas Gov. Rick Perry for favoring in-state tuition breaks for the children of illegal immigrants, vowing to veto the Dream Act that would have allowed citizenship for certain students who joined the military or attended college, and suggesting that Arizona’s controversial approach to rooting out illegal immigrants could be “a model” for the nation.
Rubio, a conservative darling, has carved a more moderate path — most recently working on an alternative to the Dream Act.
The senator’s proposal, which is still being devised, would legalize the status of certain young people if they pursued higher education or went into the military, but would probably not provide them a guaranteed route to citizenship. Although the Rubio proposal would offer them a visa, they would have to wait their turn behind legal immigrants for citizenship.
Underscoring the political perils of the issue, Romney was cautious when asked his position on the proposal during a Monday news conference at a trucking company in Chester Township. He said he and Rubio had discussed the Florida senator’s “thinking” on the measure but made it clear he was not yet ready to sign on.
One of Romney’s objections to the original Dream Act was that it would have created “a new category of citizenship for certain individuals.” By contrast, Rubio’s concept, he said, “does not create that new category but instead provides visas for those that come into the country as young people with their families.”
“I’m taking a look at his proposal,” he said. “It has many features to commend it, but it’s something that we’re studying.”
Romney has said in the past that he would be open to the possibility of legislation that creates a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who serve in the military, but on Monday he would not say whether any other group deserved special status.
He said that before the November election he would lay out “a whole series of policies” on immigration, adding that “how we adjust our visa program to make it fit the needs of our country is something I’ll be speaking about down the road. But I don’t have anything for you on that at this stage.”
Romney faces complicated terrain as he tries to consolidate his party’s conservative base, which has been cool to him throughout the primaries, while also broadening his appeal to Latinos, a constituency that will be key to determining the next occupant of the White House.
Embracing Rubio’s legislation could alienate some conservatives — who must turn out and work for Romney if he hopes to beat President Obama. Rejecting the proposal could further complicate his efforts to make inroads with Latinos.
Republicans have been steadily losing ground to Democrats among Latinos. After George W. Bush won 40% of the Latino vote in 2004, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who once championed comprehensive immigration reform, won just 31% of Latinos in 2008.
This year, the Republican primary debate has clearly taken its toll. A Fox News Latino poll released in early March showed the erosion of Latino support for the GOP: 70% of Latino voters backed Obama, compared with 14% supporting Romney. Four in five Latino voters who backed Obama in 2008 said they would support him in 2012, but those who had supported McCain split their support between the two parties.
Romney is clearly cognizant of the problem; during a private fundraiser last week he was overheard telling donors that Republicans needed to do more to attract Latino voters, and that the current level of support spelled “doom for us,” according to an NBC News account of the speech.
Recently, Romney has softened his tone on immigration issues. On several occasions he has noted that his father was born in Mexico (to American parents), and he has said his father’s trajectory from apprentice carpenter to auto chief executive exemplified the American dream. He has held several campaign events with Latino business owners to discuss his plans for prodding the economy — the issue, his advisors say, that is the most crucial for Latino voters.
Romney’s allies say that as the general election campaign progresses, they will also point to Obama’s failure to press immigration reform.
“The fastest-growing demographic in the country is the Hispanic vote; as a party we’re going in reverse at a pretty fast speed,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, adding that the Obama administration, “generally speaking, has been a failure dealing with immigration, and as a result we’re back in the ball game. But we just can’t point to his failures.”
Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba to the U.S., has mixed appeal among Latinos, yet some Republicans think his presence on the Republican ticket this fall could boost Romney. Neither man was ready to talk about the future Monday.
Asked about Rubio’s lack of experience — he has spent just two years in the Senate — and whether he differed in that respect from Obama, whom Romney has criticized as “over his head,” the former Massachusetts governor said he didn’t “have any comments on qualifications for individuals to serve in various positions in government at this stage.”
“That is something that we’re going to be considering down the road as we consider various potential vice presidential nominees,” he said.
Rubio said simply that he wasn’t “talking about that process anymore.”
maeve.reston@latimes.com
Lisa Mascaro in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
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ce5d3092432c7f16209c87d795f87023 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-27-la-na-romney-general-election-20120428-story.html | Romney pounces on Obama’s economic policies | Romney pounces on Obama’s economic policies
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Europe has long been a pejorative in Mitt Romney’s lexicon, a laugh line popular with conservative crowds as he has campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination.
So it came as no surprise when he told an Ohio audience Friday that massive government borrowing and spending under President Obama was putting America “on track to becoming Greece.”
Describing Obama’s “government-dominated society” as a breach of America’s tradition of letting free enterprise thrive, Romney said, “In my view, that takes us down a path to becoming more and more like Europe. And Europe doesn’t work in Europe.”
Romney skirted any mention of Britain and other European nations recently sliding back into recession after they pursued the sort of austerity agenda that he proposes for the United States.
The remarks were only one demonstration of Romney’s sometimes selective rhetoric clashing with facts as he adjusts his pitch for the general election.
Speaking at Otterbein University here in this suburb of Columbus, the former Massachusetts governor criticized the $787-billion stimulus package that Obama signed into law three years ago. Romney said it did too much to protect government jobs, “which is probably the sector that should have been shrinking.”
But for more than two years, the number of private-sector jobs in the U.S. has been steadily rising, while public-sector employment has been dropping, because of state and local government layoffs.
The rise in private-sector jobs earlier led to an awkward moment for Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who highlighted the recent upswing in employment by telling a group of Otterbein students that there were 80,000 job openings listed on a state website.
“Tell your friends,” Kasich told the seven students who joined him and Romney at a round-table meeting.
After waxing further about Ohio’s positive jobs picture, Kasich added, “That’s why I’m for Mitt Romney for president, because while we’re doing much better in Ohio now, the problem is we still have obstacles in our way, and this is a man who has a proven record of creating jobs.”
Romney’s history as a corporate takeover executive proved to be a mixed blessing in the primaries as opponents highlighted the thousands of layoffs spurred by deals that yielded millions of dollars for him and his investment partners. Democrats are poised to repeat the criticisms in the fall.
On Friday, Romney highlighted the jobs gained by the deals he made as chief executive of Bain Capital, describing himself as a “turn-around” specialist. He took credit for an investment in Staples that he said ultimately produced 90,000 jobs at the office-supply chain. His plan for a sharply scaled-back government, he said, would improve the climate for “job creators.”
Responding to the Obama campaign’s accusations that he would fund tax cuts for millionaires by denying education and healthcare to the middle class, Romney said he would unite Americans rather than divide them.
“I’ll not point at one or another of [the] American people and say, ‘Well, these Wall Street people are bad,’” he said. “All the roads in America are connected. You can’t attack parts of America and assume America will rise and become strong. I won’t attack this executive, or that successful person.”
Romney’s immediate goal Friday was to counter Obama’s assault on him and other Republicans this week over the cost of student loans. The event at Otterbein followed Obama’s visits this week to colleges in three other battleground states — Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina.
Romney sidestepped the student-loan issue that Obama had used as the centerpiece of his campus events: the scheduled July 1 doubling of the 3.4% interest rate on federal Stafford loans to undergraduates. In a move to rebuild support among young voters, a pillar of his 2008 campaign, Obama has called on Republicans to join him in canceling the rate hike.
Romney recently agreed to support a measure to stop the increase, which caused him new grief with conservatives. A Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday called Romney’s move a “pander to the youth vote.”
“This must be the ‘Etch-a-Sketch’ version of Mitt that his campaign promised,” the editorial said, alluding to Romney’s expected pivot to the center after months of appeals to conservatives.
In his speech at Otterbein, Romney said it was time “to get serious about not passing on massive debts to you guys — to your generation.”
“This is not something that you spend a lot of time thinking about,” Romney said, with nearly four dozen students on stage as his backdrop. “You look at your student loans. But you should also have, in addition to your student loans, an understanding of the federal loans you’ve got, that you’re going to inherit.”
Romney hammered Obama and Democrats in Congress for spending that he said would saddle young Americans with too much debt.
“My generation will never pay it back,” Romney said. “We’ll be dead and gone. That interest and that principal gets paid by you guys. And for year after year after year, your income taxes are going to include a very substantial amount to pay the interest on the debt we’re accumulating now.”
michael.finnegan@latimes.com
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e3318756989336536758ec7cb64239fc | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-apr-28-la-na-ohio-battleground-2012-20120429-story.html | In rural Ohio, the presidential campaign feels far away | In rural Ohio, the presidential campaign feels far away
MINGO JUNCTION, Ohio — Hope has been absent for so long from Appalachian Ohio that many people have forgotten what it’s like.
Idle steel mills run the length of several city blocks, empty and rusting on the thickly wooded banks of the Ohio River, like hulking tombstones for a past that died and the promise that died along with it.
What optimism exists has little, if any, connection to the presidential campaign, which for all its import feels distant and somehow beside the point.
James Rogers worked happily in the mills for 23 years, until he was laid off in 2009. He is studying to be a nurse; a job, true, but one he doesn’t really want. Still, at 44 he has a mortgage, a home deep underwater and two kids to put through college. He figures healthcare offers his best shot at a reliable paycheck.
With the coal mines giving out and the steel business decimated — about 1,500 people work in the few surviving mills, compared with 30,000 at the peak — the medical industry is by far the largest employer in Jefferson County. Young people here tend to escape if they can, leaving the frail and aging behind.
To Rogers, it doesn’t matter who wins the White House in November. He’s a Democrat and supports President Obama but doubts much would change in a second term.
“We elect this guy and all they do is bicker,” said Rogers, still big and burly from his days manning a blast furnace. “Nobody will do this, nobody will do that, it’s all partisan [bull] and what did we do? We lost four years.”
That utter lack of enthusiasm, shot through with anger and cynicism, is shared by many in rural Ohio, a target state for both sides in November. Timothy Bower, 30, runs Mama G’s pizza place, a few miles up the river in Toronto. Rolling and slicing a mound of dough, he described Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, as a “typical empty suit. I don’t believe a word he says.”
Still, Romney has this going for him: He’s not Obama. The president frightens Bower with his expansive healthcare overhaul, his rhetorical shots at the rich and the red ink that has gushed over the last three years. More frightening still, Bowers said, is the prospect of Obama spared future elections and thus free to push even more radical policies.
So “unless a story comes up, something crazy [Romney’s] done in the past,” the libertarian-leaning Republican said resignedly, “I’m going to have to vote” for Romney.
White, working-class voters like Bower and Rogers are vital to the hopes of the two presidential candidates, not just in Ohio but across other battleground state like Iowa, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Yet for different reasons, both Romney and the president have struggled to win their support.
Four years ago, blue-collar voters strongly favored Hillary Rodham Clinton over Obama in the Democratic primaries, and a majority of the white working class backed Republican John McCain in the general election.
This year, Romney has emerged as the presumptive GOP nominee despite resistance from voters low on the income ladder. He eked out a victory in Ohio’s March 6 primary, but lost badly to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — the grandson of a coal miner, as he reminded audiences time and again — in the Appalachian part of the state. The margin was nearly 40 points in Jefferson County.
Conversations with dozens of voters suggest why both Romney and Obama have failed to connect, and why, for many, the choice of candidates is like picking between bad and worse.
Romney’s considerable wealth came up repeatedly, even among Republicans like George Wilson, 76, a retired Marine sergeant, who plans to vote for the former Massachusetts governor simply to be rid of Obama. (Wilson said he would vote for Mickey Mouse over the Democratic incumbent.)
“Mitt Romney seems to have a problem relating to people when he talks about his wife driving two Cadillacs,” said Wilson, pausing outside the courthouse in downtown Steubenville. “You don’t say things like that to somebody that probably doesn’t have a second car and is trying to keep the first one running.”
Margaret Morrison, a nurse in her 60s, is still getting to know Romney but doubts he has ever “been down to the level of the majority of people” in the Ohio River Valley.
“I may be wrong, but I don’t think he’s had to deal with the fact that he’s lost his job, or had to scramble to get healthcare for his family because he’s been laid off and comes to the end of his benefits,” said Morrison, a Republican. She probably won’t vote for Obama, but isn’t sold on Romney either.
Some of the opposition to the president seems racially inspired. He barely won Democratic-leaning Jefferson County in 2008, underperforming the party’s last two nominees — John F. Kerry and Al Gore — even though he carried Ohio and they both lost the state.
The population is more than 90% white and, although no one said flat-out that they disliked Obama because he is black, there were cutting references to his Kenyan heritage and suggestions that he cared more for brown-skinned people than whites.
Most of the discontent, however, stemmed from unhappiness over the touch-and-go economy and a feeling that Obama failed to deliver on the promises that got him elected. Unemployment was 10.6% in Jefferson County in February, the most recent month surveyed, compared with 8.3% nationally and 7.6% statewide.
Joseph Lastivka, a Democrat turned independent, voted for Obama the first time he ran, “hoping for change.” The 55-year-old maintenance man has done better than many around here. He has worked for the Catholic diocese in Steubenville for 26 years and kept his job throughout the Great Recession.
But there’s no missing the signs of economic hardship all around — the shrinking population, the vacant storefronts, the plunging home values — and Lastivka doesn’t sense that things are getting better. The jobs that paid well and lifted generations of rural Ohioans into the middle class have gone overseas. Gas prices have risen, and so have the deductibles and co-payments that Lastivka has to pay for his medical coverage. “This healthcare reform was supposed to lower the prices, but it’s been just the opposite,” Lastivka said.
Despite what they say in their campaigns, he said, he is skeptical Romney and Obama “can relate to somebody like Joe Schmoe down the street, that has to work two or three jobs for a living.” He’s not sure which candidate, if either, he’ll support.
In 2008, Obama lost white, working-class voters — those without a college education, making $30,000 to $75,000 a year — by 18 percentage points nationally. His showing was a notable improvement over 2004, when Kerry lost by 23 points.
In 2010, however, white working-class voters backed Republican House candidates by a 30-point margin; the same showing in November would almost certainly doom the president, which explains why Obama is fighting to hold down Romney’s margin. (Lyndon B. Johnson was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of white working-class voters.)
Here in Ohio, Obama and his surrogates have touted the rescue of the auto industry — a big boon to the state, though not a direct benefit to Appalachia — strong gains in manufacturing and support for community colleges and other sources of worker retraining. Former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat and native of the region, also plans to talk a lot about Romney’s wealth and the disconnect he sees with the lives of average voters.
“There’s not a lot of people in Steubenville building elevators for their cars,” Strickland said dryly, referring to plans for Romney’s expansive La Jolla mansion.
The white working class has been a steadily declining share of the national electorate, down 15 points since 1988, and the trend is likely to continue this year. So in the political calculus, Romney probably needs to surpass McCain’s performance among those voters, unless he significantly cuts Obama’s margin among college-educated whites, blacks and Latinos.
Privately, Romney strategists acknowledge his difficulty connecting, so they intend to sell his private-sector credentials, tap a deep well of anti-Washington antagonism and focus on the uncertain economy.
New technology — the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — has opened up huge pockets of natural gas in the Appalachian region, offering the prospect of economic revival and potentially tens of thousands of jobs.
Romney has assailed Obama as an impediment to that development, an attack echoed by Republican Bill Johnson, the area’s freshman congressman. “What we know for sure is what’s happening in Ohio is happening in spite of President Obama and his policies, not because of them,” said Johnson, who defeated a two-term Democrat in 2010 by tying him to the administration.
All the back-and-forth, however, seems fairly pointless to 58-year-old Republican Richard Nixon. (Yes, really; it says so on his driver’s license.)
Nixon worked 29 years in the steel industry, until 2006. As a metallurgical analyst, he was prosperous enough to drive a new Buick Riviera off the lot the day it arrived in September 1996. Today, the teal-green midsize labors with 177,000 miles on the odometer and the scars of an unhappy meeting with a deer.
Nixon works part time selling men’s clothing in Pittsburgh, about 45 miles away, and works as a substitute teacher for $75 a day — less, he said, than the janitor makes. In all, he earns a bit over half of what he did in the 1980s. “I used to consider myself lower middle class,” Nixon said. “Now I don’t even consider that.”
Obama hasn’t helped, Nixon said, and the mere mention of Romney drew an audible snort. “I don’t really see a difference,” Nixon said. So he’s not putting a lot of stock in the candidates. He’ll vote — probably for Romney, otherwise, what right does he have to complain? — but his main focus is completing a master’s degree in education this summer.
By November, he hopes to have a full-time teaching job and, perhaps, a bit of his old life back.
mark.barabak@latimes.com
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be4433aff5966eb7c910979b47c46e42 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-02-la-fg-syria-annan-20120803-story.html | Kofi Annan’s exit makes it clear: Force trumps talk in Syria | Kofi Annan’s exit makes it clear: Force trumps talk in Syria
BEIRUT — The resignation of Kofi Annan, the point man for international efforts to bring peace to Syria, emphatically confirmed what events there had already been making clear: The country’s fate is far more likely to be decided by force than by negotiations.
The former U.N. secretary-general’s announcement Thursday that he was ending his attempt to negotiate an end to the conflict came amid a sharp increase in fighting that began last month after a bomb killed four top security aides to President Bashar Assad.
Government forces subsequently pushed insurgent bands out of Damascus, the capital, but they are now locked in what could be a decisive battle for the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub and most populous urban center.
“Most people have concluded that this is not going to be settled by talk at the U.N., but by developments on the ground,” said Robert Malley, a former Clinton administration official now with the International Crisis Group think tank.
In comments to reporters Thursday, Annan voiced an opinion he had never before uttered publicly, that, as part of the solution he had been seeking for Syria, Assad would have to go.
“The transition meant President Assad would have to leave sooner or later,” Annan said in Geneva.
He cited the Syrian government’s “intransigence” and the opposition’s “escalating military campaign” as major impediments to his peace efforts, along with a lack of unity in the international community on how to deal with the crisis.
The conflict in Syria, analysts say, has already moved into a new phase that in some ways resembles 1980s Afghanistan, a kind of proxy war for foreign interests in which Western-backed guerrillas are fighting to topple an ally of Moscow.
Although the Kremlin does not have troops in Syria, as it did in Afghanistan, Assad received diplomatic cover from Russia, a longtime ally. And Assad also maintains the backing of Iran, a Shiite Muslim neighbor, and Tehran’s Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite group.
The Obama administration reportedly has signed off on clandestine action by the Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of the Syrian rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. The White House has also agreed to bolster “non lethal” aid to the opposition and make it easier for outside groups to assist the rebels.
The United States and its allies are providing increasing amounts of aid to a highly decentralized rebel force that has a substantial Islamist element, including some admitted Al Qaeda sympathizers.
Washington has said it is not supplying arms to the rebels. That task appears to have been outsourced to allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those Persian Gulf monarchies, dominated by Sunni Muslims, are intent on helping Syria’s Sunni majority overthrow Assad’s government, which is dominated by the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
The departure of Annan, who served since late February as the United Nations and Arab League peace envoy to Syria, would seem to signal the unraveling of his six-point peace plan. In Syria, both sides in the conflict have long ignored Annan’s blueprint, which, among other things, called for the withdrawal of troops and armor from populated areas.
Instead, the small contingent of U.N. observers still in Syria said this week that the government had begun using jet fighters, a significant escalation of tactics.
Meanwhile, insurgents were deploying tanks and other heavy weaponry they had seized from the military. They reportedly were firing tank rounds Thursday at a government air base north of Aleppo.
The brutality of the conflict is increasingly evident, with almost daily reports of “massacres” by both sides. A widely circulated video posted on YouTube this week documented the execution of alleged pro-government militiamen by rebels.
Annan, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, voiced deep frustration with his effort to overcome profound divisions among global powers on how to stop a conflict that the U.N. says has already cost more than 10,000 lives.
“I can’t want peace more than the protagonists, more than the Security Council, or the international community for that matter,” Annan said. “Syria can still be saved from the worst calamity if the international community can show the courage and leadership necessary.”
The spillover effect has already been enormous. Fighting has sent more than 200,000 refugees streaming into neighboring nations, including Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. Cross-border battles have erupted along the Lebanese frontier, and Turkey moved up troops and antiaircraft batteries to its border after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane over the Mediterranean.
Neighboring Israel is concerned that Syria’s substantial chemical and biological weapons could fall out of government control.
It remains unclear what exactly the U.N. can do. Major powers like the United States and its allies are hesitant to intervene militarily in Syria, with its complex ethno-religious makeup and its still-formidable military arsenal.
Russia, with veto powers in the Security Council, was determined to avoid any kind of Libya-style Western intervention. On three occasions, Russia and China blocked Security Council resolutions that could have led to sanctions against the government of Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, praised Annan for taking on a “thankless and difficult task.” She blamed the Syrian government and, without naming them, the Russians and the Chinese for its failure.
Russian officials appeared to be surprised by Annan’s resignation, and one official put the blame on the West.
“Annan must have quit because he realized he will not get the backing he needed from the West,” said Leonid Kalashnikov, deputy chief of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Russian State Duma, the lower house of the parliament.
Annan assigned blame to all Security Council members, complaining that at a time “when the Syrian people desperately need action, there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council.”
The International Crisis Group think tank said in a report this week that Annan’s mission had offered foreign governments an opportunity to create an appearance that they were doing something to end the fighting in Syria.
Both Syrians and non-Syrians were using the Annan mission “for opposite reasons and in entirely self-serving ways,” the report says. “Because the mission’s success was predicated on finding middle ground when most parties yearned for a knockout punch, few truly wished it well — even as no one wanted to be caught burying it.”
The Syrian opposition was suspicious of Annan’s plan from the beginning, viewing it as a means for Assad to hold on to power and string along the international community. The Syrian government said it was committed to the plan, but Assad refused to accept one of the major mandates: the withdrawal of forces and armor from populated areas.
A team of about 150 U.N. observers remains in Syria, but its current mandate expires Aug. 20. The observer team’s mission could be extended if it is found that violence has been reduced and both sides have ceased using heavy weapons. But there is no indication of that.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moonsaid he was working with the Arab League to appoint a successor “who can carry on this crucial peacemaking effort.”
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Richter reported from Washington. Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow contributed to this report.
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1de1be479a630294706306f9862df744 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-05-la-fg-south-africa-tribal-courts-20120805-story.html | South Africa’s tribal system strips rural women of rights | South Africa’s tribal system strips rural women of rights
KWAMPUNGOSE, South Africa — As a child, Nike Dlamini grew up under a rule: If anything happened in the family or the village, you went straight to the head man. Quarrels, problems, births, deaths: All had to be reported. In some cases — a child born out of wedlock — there was a fine to be paid.
When Dlamini was 11, her older brother made sexual advances, forcing her to undress and stroking her. Dlamini and her sisters went to the head man, the village representative of the traditional king, or chief, for help.
He brushed it off as a family affair, she said. Male relatives took her brother’s side, and Dlamini fled to avoid what she feared would inevitably be rape.
After two decades away, Dlamini, 32, came home last year to this village in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. She approached the head man asking for land to build a house with her savings where she could raise her two children.
“He said he’s not allowed to allocate land to a woman,” she said. “It must be a male relative.”
South Africa’s system of traditional rulers and tribal courts endures, and the ruling African National Congress moved recently to widen the reach of that system. The Tribal Courts Bill would subject 20 million rural South Africans to courts ruled by traditional chiefs, in a move critics say creates one law for urban people and another for those in tribal areas.
The bill would deny South Africans in tribal areas their present right to opt out of traditional courts in favor of government courts. Although serious criminal offenses would still be heard in conventional courts, some assaults, including cases of domestic violence, could be heard in tribal courts.
“The tribal courts remain patriarchal institutions. Women complain that when they try to bring their cases to councils comprised of men — and old men at that — they don’t get a very sympathetic hearing, particularly when it comes to family matters,” said Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, senior researcher at the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit at the University of Cape Town.
The tribal traditions and institutions sit uneasily alongside a liberal constitution outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion or sexual preference.
Nursing grievances against arbitrary chiefs and traditional courts that treat them as second-class citizens, women have emerged with horror stories: chiefs who refuse grieving widows the right to appear in conventional courts when their land and houses are stolen; who collect arbitrary taxes or impose harsh fines; who punish them by refusing to let them bury their dead.
***
Talking about her experiences 21 years later, Dlamini stood in the doorway of her unfinished house, which she hasn’t the money to complete. Tears threatened, but she brushed them away, engulfed by memories.
Suddenly she crashed, face first, to the concrete floor of the round thatched hut in a faint. After a minute, she regained consciousness. She said she had been suppressing so much grief and anger that she feared she would explode.
Her older child returned from school, folded his uniform reverently and took a bowl of samp (coarse cornmeal) and beans from a pot on the stove. Dlamini has managed to put a roof over their heads, but she’s afraid they’ll be turned out one day, because the land isn’t hers.
Although the South African Constitution guarantees equal rights to all, the head man forced her to put the land in her cousin’s name, even though she paid the $190 fee to the chief for the land. But she frets that the cousin will change his mind, or that his family will take the land if he dies.
“I’m very worried about it,” she said. “I’m thinking about my children in particular, because they might come and grab the land and my children will be homeless.”
When Dlamini returned to her village, unmarried but with two children, the head man also demanded a $50 fine to be paid to the chief for the children born out of wedlock.
“Where am I going to get this money when I don’t even have money for food?” she said.
The fines for out-of-wedlock births are traditionally intended to “cleanse” the chiefs, but the men also often impose levies to pay for their sons’ educations, a new car or other expenses, said activist Sizani Ngubane of the Rural Women’s Movement. She said that with most rural people unemployed, families were sometimes forced to use welfare payments, the $31 monthly child support grant paid by the government, for the fines and levies, which are illegal.
Chiefs keep a register of the unpaid levies. Those who can’t pay get punished, sooner or later. A chief can paralyze an unruly subject simply by denying the “proof of address” letter that rural villagers need to get an ID or passport, open a bank account, receive welfare payments and access government services. But retribution can be more sinister.
Nokwazi Mkhize’s family, also from KwaMpungose, failed to “cleanse” the chief by paying a fine when a son was born to her sister out of wedlock in 1992. In 1999, the boy died, and the chief refused the family permission to bury him. It took a week to borrow the money, said Mkhize, 38, her anger still burning 13 years later.
“In my whole life, nothing upset me as much as that individual [the chief] telling me I can’t bury the body of the little one, just because he wants his money,” she said.
In Ntandakuwela, the next village, 57-year-old Jabulisile Sikhakhane sat on a thin mat on the concrete floor of her home, her back ramrod straight. When her husband, a member of the chief’s family, died three years ago, her husband’s brother took all her land, her house and her cattle.
“He took everything. When I tried to speak about it, I wasn’t allowed to speak directly to men because I was in mourning dress.” (Women in mourning are regarded as unclean in traditional culture.)
Traditional courts demand that male relatives — often the very people who have seized the land — speak for women in mourning. Sikhakhane felt powerless, with no one to stand up for her.
“I’ve been stripped of everything. I don’t have a thing now. My land, all of it is gone. It makes me feel very bad because I would have used those cattle to raise my kids.”
***
Critics see the ANC’s role in pushing the courts bill as a bid to shore up rural support. Feminist researcher and writer Nomboniso Gasa said politicians were exploiting conservative prejudices, while traditional leaders wanted to extend their powers.
“This is not really in the name of culture because it has got very little to do with that. It has got to do with power-broking, and not for the benefit of anyone but themselves,” she said.
At a March panel discussion at the University of Cape Town, Phathekile Holomisa, an ANC lawmaker and head of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, said that unlike other forms of justice, traditional courts weren’t “alienating” to rural people.
“Traditional leadership in those places is the last of the institutions that are actually African, that have not yet been corrupted by foreign elements, value systems and so on. So it’s up to you, therefore, you as well as everybody who’s in South Africa, to decide whether you want to obliterate even the last of the vestiges of anything that is African in the name of the new order,” he told the audience.
To tribal leaders, the bill’s critics might seem unruly, even disrespectful. But rural women are suddenly expressing opinions that not so long ago would have been unthinkable.
“Why must I be represented [in a tribal court] by a male relative?” said a deeply indignant Sikhakhane. “I want to speak to the chief face to face and look at him like I am looking at you now and empty my heart like I am speaking to you now.
“I don’t want to be represented by someone who can’t get into my shoes, who doesn’t know how I feel. I want to represent myself.”
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
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b67214b6c8fff0c8f35563d7dddbf665 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-06-la-na-ohio-early-voting-20120806-story.html | Obama camp slams Romney’s claim about Ohio early-voting lawsuit | Obama camp slams Romney’s claim about Ohio early-voting lawsuit
CHICAGO — A top advisor to President Obama’s campaign lashed out at Mitt Romney on Sunday, arguing that the presumptive GOP nominee is misrepresenting a lawsuit Democrats filed in Ohio to equalize voting rights for all Ohioans.
The suit, which Romney has seized upon to argue that Obama is trying to undermine service members’ voting rights, calls for all Ohioans to be able to cast early votes up until the Monday before election day.
“What that lawsuit calls for is not to deprive the military of the right to vote in the final weekend of the campaign. Of course they should have that right. What that suit is about is whether the rest of Ohio should have the same right, and I think it’s shameful that Gov. Romney would hide behind our servicemen and women,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Until 2011, all Ohioans could cast early ballots as late as the Monday before election day. Last year, the Legislature instituted a Friday cutoff for all voters except members of the military and their families.
In mid-July, the Obama campaign and state and national Democratic groups filed suit, arguing that a two-tier voting system was unconstitutional and calling for all voters to be allowed to cast ballots until the day before election day. The suit does not call for reducing early voting access for service members.
On Saturday, Romney accused Obama of trying to undermine service members’ voting rights, and he argued that Ohio was within its rights to give service members special privileges.
“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage,” Romney said in a statement Saturday. " …. If I’m entrusted to be the commander in chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”
The disagreement between the two camps hinges on the Constitution: Obama argues that all citizens must be afforded equal voting access, while Romney maintains that it is legal for active members of the military and their families to receive extra privileges.
“Making it easier for service men and women and their families to vote early is not only constitutional but commendable,” said Katie Biber, general counsel for the Romney campaign. “It is not a violation of the equal protection clause to give military voters special flexibility in early voting.”
A spokesman for the Obama campaign said Romney was trying to restrict access to the polls and was fabricating the notion that Democrats sought to restrict voting rights.
“The real story of what is happening in the Buckeye State is that Mitt Romney supports the Republican effort to stop people from voting by restricting their access to the polls,” Rob Diamond, the head of Obama’s veterans and military families coalition, said in a statement. “In 2008, more than 93,000 Ohioans utilized early voting in the three days before the election.”
The lawsuit and the reaction reflect the importance of Ohio and its 18 electoral votes in the upcoming election. It is a battleground state that voted for Obama in 2008 and that the Romney campaign is fiercely contesting. Early voters tend to be older citizens, women and the poor, of which the last two categories tend to favor Democrats.
seema.mehta@latimes.com
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b59382545b396cc2499ba1335b8acfd3 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-08-la-na-obama-narrowcasting-20120808-story.html | President Obama tailors outreach for select groups | President Obama tailors outreach for select groups
WASHINGTON — President Obama will reach out to suburban women in the Denver area Wednesday with a message about access to contraceptives — delivered at his rally by Sandra Fluke, a women’s rights activist known for her run-in with Rush Limbaugh over the issue this year.
Last week, mothers of young children heard Obama’s case for reelection when he did a live chat with blogging moms, telling his story of being raised by a single mother and saying: “You, women, should have control over the decisions that affect your health, your lives, your careers.”
All summer, young and suburban women in swing states have been getting messages from the Obama campaign that aim to highlight Republican positions on reproductive issues.
“Take a look at this new map to see how Mitt Romney and his friends are attacking women’s rights from Arizona to New Hampshire — then share it with anyone you know who’s still sorting out which candidate has our back,” said a recent email from Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign manager.
Many people tune out politics during the long days of late summer, but the Obama campaign hopes to overcome the August malaise by engaging key demographic groups with carefully targeted outreach. Young and suburban women are one target. Others include Latino, gay and African American voters.
The campaign is trying to draw these potentially pivotal voters into a conversation to convert a tenuous connection into a deeper commitment this fall. “Some of that narrowcasting is huge,” said an advisor, who asked not to be identified to discuss the campaign’s internal strategy.
Tailoring a message for specific subsets of voters is hardly new to this campaign. What’s unique to 2012 is the opportunities that technology affords to reach such groups more effectively.
In April, when an unaffiliated Democratic consultant said on a cable program that Ann Romney was ill-equipped to discuss the economy because she had “never worked a day in her life,” Romney’s campaign created a “Moms for Mitt” Facebook page that collected about 53,000 “likes” in a day.
“Suddenly you’ve built a 50,000-person coalition in 24 hours that has tangible long-term benefits that we’ll use through the rest of the election that no one would have thought about four years ago,” said Zac Moffatt, the Romney campaign’s digital director.
On the Obama side, the campaign is trying to exploit its existing advantage among women — particularly single women and suburban moms — as well as minority voters. “Moms for Mitt” now has more than 87,000 followers, but the “Women for Obama” Facebook page has more than 773,000.
Whether aimed at subsets of women or some other demographic, narrow targeting works best when it’s not glaringly obvious outside the intended audience. When Obama speaks in Denver, his remarks won’t veer far from his usual speech, but, spokeswoman Jen Psaki says, “He is looking forward to talking about his commitment to protecting women’s access to affordable healthcare.”
The target audience will be primed to notice Obama’s message because a raft of emails and advertising have been directed its way in recent days and weeks. In one television spot, a woman declares that “it’s a scary time to be a woman” because Romney is “just so out of touch.”
Underscoring that message will be the guest scheduled to introduce Obama. Fluke rose to feminist stardom this year after Limbaugh ridiculed her for her public campaign in favor of Obama’s rule to require all employers to provide contraceptive coverage for female employees. Fluke, who graduated from Georgetown Law School this spring, said she volunteered to help the Obama campaign in its outreach.
In Florida, another key battleground state, the Obama campaign is targeting the growing Puerto Rican population. In Orlando for a rally last week, he fit in a meet-and-greet with prominent Puerto Rican leaders, as well as a quick lunch at a Puerto Rican restaurant.
All over the country, the president and his surrogates are doing radio interviews with black and Latino hosts. Obama recently presented scholarships to students at the Latino version of the Kids’ Choice Awards, and appears on the cover of the latest issue of Black Enterprise.
For Team Obama, some of the more tailored efforts are a source of enthusiasm and cash.
Among the current bestsellers in the campaign’s online store are a $10 “I Bark for Barack” magnet, featuring Bo, the first dog, and a $30 “Obama Dog Tee.” Because the merchandise is produced by the campaign, every purchase is listed as a donation.
The president’s campaign website features 18 different groups for Obama, including women and Latinos as well as environmentalists and rural Americans. Romney’s website offers half as many, with offerings like lawyers, Catholics and Polish Americans for Romney.
The heavy focus on narrowcasting in the run-up to the nominating convention also has a more conventional feel. On the same day Obama spoke via video feed to mothers at the BlogHer convention, he phoned in for the jock vote on an Ohio all-sports talk radio show, asking the hosts about Buckeyes football.
“A couple years without a bowl is not going to crush their team,” he offered. “You’ll still be able to get great recruits.”
christi.parsons@latimes.com
michael.memoli@latimes.com
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da1d26360b85bcdaa42ca7d88ec4960e | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-10-la-fg-us-syria-20120811-story.html | Democratic foreign policy figures press for intervention in Syria | Democratic foreign policy figures press for intervention in Syria
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s vow to limit U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war is being criticized from a usually sympathetic quarter: the Democratic foreign policy establishment.
Senior Democratic foreign policy figures, along with diplomats who have worked for Democratic administrations, are saying the administration needs to do more to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and preserve U.S. influence in a key Mideast state.
The views of these figures, including former Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Perry and former Obama administration officials Ann-Marie Slaughter and Dennis Ross, add to pressure on the White House from regional allies and Republican rivals as the Syrian conflict has intensified.
Photos: Syria conflict [Graphic content]
“You’ve seen more calls for action, starting on the right and now on the left,” said Jamie Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a conservative group that advocates a strongerU.S. militaryrole in Syria. He said the evolving nature of the war — including the regime’s use of more deadly aircraft, the rising death toll and fear of a growing terrorist presence — has led to more voices calling for action.
The Obama administration has imposed sanctions and diplomatic pressure on the regime of President Bashar Assad. It also is providing nonlethal aid, such as communications gear, to the Syrian rebels.
But the White House fears that military involvement could intensify a sectarian proxy war, and it worries about divisions among world powers and war-weariness at home. Also, Syria has formidable Russian-built air defenses that are supported by Russian personnel.
Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told MSNBC on Thursday that “the reality is that a no-fly zone is not a simple proposition” and would involve putting in troops as well as destroying air defenses “that are among the most sophisticated in the world.”
The Democratic critics, while stopping short of proposing a ground invasion, maintain that more must be done.
Perry, secretary of Defense during the Bosnian civil war, said in an email that he favors a “no-fly, no-drive zone” in northern Syria that would provide safety for insurgents and civilians. Ross, a top administration national security aide until November, has also been advocating creation of a safe zone in northern Syria, like the one the United States created in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Slaughter, former head of the State Department’s policy planning office, has urged that rebel commanders be supplied with sophisticated antitank and antiaircraft weapons if they commit to protecting civilians and vow to not engage in sectarian killings.
Madeleine Albright, secretary of State under President Clinton, said in an interview that she finds no fault with the Obama administration’s efforts to date and would not support a “flat-out military intervention.”
But she said the U.S. and other world powers should now be “sorting out whether various humanitarian corridors can be established for the refugees” and whether more can be done to provide humanitarian and logistics aid.
“I’m very concerned about what’s happening to the people,” she said.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has suggested that the administration and other governments take another look at the idea of creating safe zones in Syria.
Administration officials said this week that they were still considering all the ideas, including no-fly zones. On Friday, they announced new economic sanctions on Syria and a new terrorist blacklisting of Hezbollah, a Syrian-allied Shiite Muslim militia in Lebanon, because it has been providing training and operational aid to the regime.
Meanwhile, the British government announced that it was giving the Syrian opposition $7.8 million in medical supplies and electronic and communications gear.
Fighting and military shelling continued Friday in the Syrian city of Aleppo as rebels said they had regained control of the strategic Salahuddin neighborhood. More than 80 people were killed, including 45 whose unidentified bodies were found in a park in Salahuddin, activists said.
The U.S. role in Syria has divided Republicans as well as Democrats.
The dominant Republican point of view is that of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who have called for the U.S. to provide arms, intelligence and training to the opposition and to use air power to help protect the de facto safe zones that are taking shape in northern Syria. But some Republican heavyweights, including former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker, have urged caution.
Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP presidential candidate, has called for more assertive U.S. action on Syria but not offered specifics, suggesting that he is wary of appearing too eager for military action.
Polls indicate that there is not widespread support for a majorU.S. militaryrole in Syria despite the mounting death toll.
About two-thirds of Americans say the United States is not required to intervene militarily in Syria because they believe that it is “important but not vital” to U.S. security, said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.
paul.richter@latimes.com
A Times staff writer in Beirut and Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.
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790ef5e64b5d9d25f956810dd9b70bb9 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-13-la-fg-syria-aleppo-20120814-story.html | Syria: Some in opposition fear rebels miscalculated in Aleppo | Syria: Some in opposition fear rebels miscalculated in Aleppo
ALEPPO, Syria — In million-dollar apartments in a neighborhood of the city as yet unscathed, the battle for Aleppo plays out daily on flat-screen TVs. Amid imported sofas and abstract art, the revolution doesn’t seem so close.
But as the call for night prayers rang out from the minaret of the nearby mosque on a recent day, two loud explosions boomed.
“Do you hear that?” a father of seven asked, briefly looking away from the TV. “It’s like this every night.”
From the balcony, which on this night let in a little cool summer breeze, his family can occasionally see smoke rising above other Aleppo neighborhoods that are under attack by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
The father is solidly opposed to Assad, but he fears the prospect of rebels who have filtered in from the suburbs seizing his neighborhood as they try to take Syria’s largest city and commercial hub.
“What [the rebels] did was wrong, coming in and forcing all these civilians to flee and live in schools. You came to protect civilians, but now you’re hurting them?” said the father, one of the city’s merchants. “It’s wrong what they did.”
As the fighting intensifies in a city once regarded as immune to the violence racking much of Syria, some opposition activists are concerned that those who have taken up arms against Assad have made a serious miscalculation here. They fear that the offensive is creating a humanitarian crisis they are ill-equipped to handle and turning many of those affected against the rebels.
“The military campaign for Aleppo came too, too early,” said Marcell Shehwaro, a dentistry graduate and a prominent activist. “Because people here didn’t see the government violence that would make them believe the Free Syrian Army was needed.”
Even now, weeks into the battle for Aleppo, the traffic of everyday routines still snarls roundabouts in safer parts of the city. Syria’s national flag still flies freely here, and the walls are devoid of antigovernment graffiti that festoon rebel-held areas.
Pricey restaurants in nice neighborhoods open — expectantly — every night.
Abdulaziz “Abu Jumuah” Salameh, who heads a coalition of dozens of militias called the Al Tawheed Brigade, acknowledged that the city may not have wanted the rebel offensive to begin so soon. But that didn’t matter: The revolution has its own timing.
“Other provinces finished their revolution, and Aleppo hadn’t started yet,” he said, speaking from his headquarters in Tal Rifaat, a town north of the city. “You could wait 100 years, and Aleppo still won’t be ready.”
Even as rebels continue to stream into Aleppo, there is bitter disagreement over whether they can win over its residents.
*
The park was full, but few customers made their way to the man selling balloons and small bags of cotton candy from his cart.
Throughout Aleppo’s Ashrafieh park, families had spread out their belongings on blankets or hung them from the trees that provided a bit of relief from the summer sun. They had been here for days, refugees in their own city, poor people forced to flee fighting in other parts of Aleppo.
Just a couple of months ago, most opposition protests in Aleppo didn’t last for more than half an hour. Now some streets are lined with crumbling buildings. Most public transportation has disappeared, and few taxis or microbuses are still operating. Gasoline is scarce.
“For so long, Aleppo residents said, ‘Nothing is happening, nothing is happening.’ They can’t say that anymore,” Ali, a rebel and former carpenter from the embattled Salahuddin neighborhood, said as he walked past homes missing chunks of concrete and surrounded by piles of reeking garbage.
Activist Shehwaro, a member of the Christian minority, which has tended to view Assad as a protector, said that many of the internally displaced refugees she talks to blame the rebels for their situation. Others agree with that assessment.
“Seventy percent of the refugees here are pro-regime, or at least pro-stability,” said the director of a school being used to house the displaced. “We are helping people who are still supporting the regime.”
Just like at dozens of other schools across the city, old wooden desks filled the courtyard at the Hoda al Eishrawi school to make room for thin foam mattresses in each classroom. Children splashed one another with water to keep cool in the heat until a school director yelled at them. Water shortages have been a big problem.
Nearby, a cook stirred a huge black caldron full of chopped squash, eggplant and ground beef.
“This is our backup” in case anticipated food donations from the community don’t arrive, said the director, who didn’t want his name used for fear of government backlash.
Dormitories at Aleppo University, stormed not long ago by security officers who killed several students, also were crammed with families. In the courtyard where students and faculty were assaulted by shabiha militiamen, children played games.
Tony al Taieb, a law school student and media activist, said he and many others in the opposition resented not being given at least a warning of the rebels’ impending offensive. They might have at least had a chance to better prepare for the humanitarian crisis, he said.
It’s too late to worry about that. He now works alongside the newly formed Aleppo Military Council, which is coordinating the rebel offensive.
“Once the Free Syrian Army came in, I left the computer, and my work became on the ground,” he said. “There’s no point to going out and protesting anymore; who’s going to come out and protest under this shelling?”
But he said he fears a repeat of what happened in Damascus, where rebels withdrew from neighborhoods after announcing a push to liberate the capital.
“It’s done, we’ve come in, so we can’t destroy the city and leave, it will ruin our reputation,” he said. “We have to stay or else it’s suicide.
“If we leave Aleppo, the revolution will fall apart.”
*
When a rebel named Zakaria heard that two government rockets had hit his neighborhood in northeast Aleppo, his first reaction was “Thank God.”
He paused, then laughed as he considered how ridiculous that seemed.
“The people of Aleppo need to wake up,” said Zakaria, who works with the Aleppo Military Council.
He believes that only by witnessing wanton destruction by forces loyal to Assad in their own backyard — rather than just watching propaganda on state television — will Aleppo’s residents fully support the rebels.
But it doesn’t help that the majority of the rebels now making the streets their battlefield and squatting in schools and empty homes aren’t sons of the city but rather come from the suburbs.
“Where are the people of Aleppo?” asked Abu Rayan, an engineering student-turned-fighter from Idlib province, while standing on the front lines in Salahuddin. “If you gathered all the fighters here, only two of them would be from Aleppo.”
Salameh, the Al Tawheed Brigade commander, is dismissive of the reluctant Aleppo residents, underscoring the feeling that this battle is in part about the countryside trying to force its will on the city. People from the towns and villages, who have borne the brunt of the violence, appear to think it is time for Aleppo to share their pain.
“They may want stability, but we don’t want this kind of stability,” said Salameh, speaking of the city dwellers from his headquarters 20 miles away. “We can’t allow for people to be slaughtered in other neighborhoods as they are still sitting.”
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424e2406204149347cf97e4e2490a41a | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-22-la-fg-syria-violence-20120823-story.html | Heavy shelling reported in Syria’s capital | Heavy shelling reported in Syria’s capital
BEIRUT — Syrian opposition activists reported heavy shelling Wednesday in Damascus, the capital, as authorities in neighboring Lebanon said a cease-fire had taken hold in a city in that country that has become a center for spillover violence.
The Syrian military has mounted a campaign this week to root out rebel fighters and sympathizers in several areas of Damascus and its suburbs, including the Kfar Souseh and Nahr Aisha districts, according to antigovernment activists.
The shelling of the two districts Wednesday could have been aimed at opposition mortar teams that have recently targeted a military airport, the Associated Press reported.
Several residents of Damascus reached by telephone said shelling could be heard across the city.
The reports of a renewed government push in the capital follow the departure of United Nations monitors, dispatched to Syria four months ago in an ill-fated bid to help end the escalating violence. The monitors’ exit highlights the failure of diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict.
At least 17,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since antigovernment protests broke out almost 18 months ago, the U.N. says. The protests evolved into an armed rebellion that the government of President Bashar Assad has battled with troops, tanks, artillery and air power.
More than 200,000 Syrians have fled the country because of the violence and more than 1 million have been displaced within its borders, according to various estimates.
One opposition group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported at least 120 people killed in Syria in shelling and clashes Wednesday, including more than 50 in the capital. Reports of daily death tolls topping 100 have become routine, though there is no way to verify the figures.
Government news reports offered no details on security operations in Damascus.
Last month, rebels based in a number of neighborhoods fought government forces in a battle that was ultimately put down by troops. The focus of the rebellion then shifted to the northern city of Aleppo, where rebels seized several neighborhoods a month ago but have failed to consolidate control against government forces.
On Wednesday, the official Syrian news agency reported that the military was routing “mercenary terrorists” — armed rebels — in Aleppo. Opposition spokesmen have repeatedly denied government assertions that the army is regaining control of the city, parts of which have suffered extensive damage in the weeks of urban combat.
Aleppo and Damascus, Syria’s major cities, were largely insulated from the violence raging elsewhere until street battles erupted in both last month.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, officials said a cease-fire went into effect Wednesday in the northern city of Tripoli, a hotbed of sectarian violence related to the fighting in Syria.
At least 10 people were reported killed in Tripoli and scores injured in gun battles between residents of rival neighborhoods.
The two districts have seen periodic episodes of violence since the rebellion began in Syria. One of them, Jabal Mohsen, is overwhelmingly pro-Assad and home mostly to Alawites, the minority Muslim sect that includes Assad. The other, Bab Tabbaneh, is largely Sunni Muslim, the majority group in Syria and the base of support for the rebellion.
The cease-fire followed the dispatch of army units and emergency meetings of lawmakers and religious leaders, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported. Troops were dispatched along Syria Street, which divides the two warring neighborhoods. Reports late Wednesday indicated that the gunfire had diminished, though some shots still rang out.
The fighting in Tripoli has renewed fears about the spread of violence from Syria. Lebanon has seen a spate of kidnappings, cross-border shellings and alleged destabilization plots related to the conflict in Syria. Officials in other nearby nations, including Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, also fear spillover violence.
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
Special correspondent Rima Marrouch in Antakya, Turkey, contributed to this report.
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ac2a194147f5b834285aab569b08a767 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-22-la-fg-us-syria-20120823-story.html | U.S. has plans in place to secure Syria chemical arms | U.S. has plans in place to secure Syria chemical arms
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has made contingency plans to send small teams of special operations troops into Syria if the White House decides it needs to secure chemical weapons depots now controlled by security forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, senior U.S. officials said.
President Obama warned this week that any effort by Assad to move or use his arsenal of chemical munitions in the country’s conflict would cross a “red line,” implying it could prompt swift U.S. intervention.
But Pentagon planners are more focused on protecting or destroying any Syrian stockpiles that are left unguarded and at risk falling into the hands of rebel fighters or militias aligned with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other militant groups.
Securing the sites would probably involve stealthy raids by special operations teams trained to handle such weapons, and precision airstrikes to incinerate the chemicals without dispersing them in the air, the officials said. U.S. satellites and drone aircraft already maintain partial surveillance of the sites.
U.S. intelligence agencies believe Syria has over the years produced or acquired hundreds of tons of sarin nerve agent and mustard gas, a blister agent, and has sought to develop VX, another powerful nerve gas. The toxicity of some chemical agents degrades significantly over time, so it is unclear how lethal the stockpiles are.
Experts say the chemical agents are stored in bunkers and other sites around the country. Four production facilities are near the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs, all tinderboxes in the 17-month uprising, as well as the coastal city of Latakia, an area considered a stronghold for Assad’s Alawite religious sect.
An unclassified report by the director of national intelligence this year said Syria’s chemical agents “can be delivered by aerial bombs, ballistic missiles and artillery rockets.” But Syrian rockets, including Scud missiles procured from North Korea, are notoriously inaccurate, making them ineffective for delivering a heavy concentration of toxic chemicals to a specific target.
They can be very effective, however, at creating chaos.
“The actual killing may be less important than the panic they would induce,” said Leonard Spector, who heads the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Although he did not make an explicit threat, Obama’s comments at the White House on Monday were widely seen as a direct warning to Assad that the U.S. would take military action if necessary to stop the use of chemical weapons. But officials said later that no large-scale U.S. intervention is likely unless it is part of an international coalition.
“You shouldn’t interpret what Obama said to mean that there would be automatic military action, but rather that we would respond as part of an international effort,” said one senior official.
Officials said Obama could make a unilateral decision, however, to order special forces teams to stop weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands.
Pentagon officials and senior military officers said the Syrian stockpiles seem well guarded for now, and they stressed that the White House has not ordered detailed planning of operations aimed at securing the facilities.
“We have done contingency planning but we’re not doing detailed planning — identifying numbers [of troops], units and platforms — until the White House tells us we need a specific plan for this,” a senior officer said.
Although U.S. officials said they are closely monitoring the unconventional weapons sites, they also acknowledge the stockpiles are large enough that some materials, such as small artillery shells filled with chemical agents, could be relocated without their knowledge.
U.S. officials told reporters last month that they had evidence Syrian forces were moving some chemical arms, apparently to keep them away from areas of fighting.
Assad’s government has said it will not use chemical munitions against the Syrian people, though it has implied they could be used if foreign troops sought to intervene in the war.
“Any chemical or bacterial weapon will never be used — and I repeat will never be used — during the crisis in Syria, regardless of the developments,” Jihad Makdissi, a Syrian government spokesman, told reporters last month. “These weapons are stored and secured by Syrian military forces and under its direct supervision and will never be used unless Syria faces external aggression.”
Analysts say it’s unclear how much of the chemical arsenal could be deployed, and they note that the agents, particularly VX and sarin, may have weakened if the regime isn’t regularly refilling its stocks. U.S. intelligence officials have said that Syria, which is under international sanctions, relies heavily on foreign sources for chemicals and other key parts of its weapons program.
The VX stockpiles maintained by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s government had a shelf life of about six months, and the sarin less than two years, the EU Non-Proliferation Consortium, a network of European think tanks, said in a report last month.
“To keep those sorts of quantities replenished, you have to have a very robust program,” said Charles P. Blair, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based group.
In response to a reporter’s question Monday, Obama mentioned Syria’s biological weapons program. But that appears a minor concern at this point.
In 2008, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before Congress that Syria had “a program to develop select biological agents as weapons” and that the program was “in the research and development stage.”
U.S. officials no longer appear to believe that Syria is actively pursuing a biological weapons program. The unclassified U.S. intelligence report this year said only that Syria had the infrastructure to support the development of biological weapons.
david.cloud@latimes.com
sbengali@latimes.com
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3b5b2cbe6762b23d2099c782bfb6a273 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-23-la-fg-iran-nuclear-20120824-story.html | Iran said to have expanded uranium enrichment capability | Iran said to have expanded uranium enrichment capability
WASHINGTON — The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency is expected to report next week that Iran has significantly expanded its uranium enrichment capability at its Fordow facility, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the finding. The move could shorten the time Tehran would need to build a nuclear weapon.
“My understanding is that work at the Fordow facility has been dramatically intensified,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“There are now 1,500 centrifuges completed, up from 700,” he added, although the new centrifuges are not believed to be working yet.
The Fordow facility, tucked into the mountains near the holy city of Qom, was secretly built deep underground to withstand an air attack. Iran acknowledged its existence in 2009 after it was discovered by U.S. intelligence.
Disclosure of increased enrichment capacity at Fordow is likely to heighten concern in Israel, whose leaders have publicly worried that Iran is approaching a “zone of immunity” in which its nuclear program could not be significantly derailed by an Israeli military attack. The U.S. has bunker-busting bombs that may be able to destroy equipment far underground at Fordow, but Israel lacks that capability, Takeyh said.
Iran denies that its nuclear program is anything but peaceful, saying it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon. But the country has defied international demands to stop enriching uranium, and as a result it is the subject of increasingly punishing economic sanctions.
Iran is also steadily enriching uranium at a separate facility, Natanz. That facility appears to have recovered from disruptions caused by Stuxnet, a computer worm believed to have been introduced by the U.S. and Israel that damaged uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz and elsewhere.
Although the U.S. intelligence community does not believe Iran has made a decision to build a bomb, Iran continues to enrich uranium to 20% purity, a level that would allow it to quickly produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel of 80% purity.
At its current pace, by next year Iran may be able produce enough fuel for a bomb within two months, said David Albright, who follows Iran’s nuclear program closely for the Institute for Science and International Security. Fairly soon after that, as Iran continues to add to its centrifuge capacity, the time will be reduced to one month, he said in an interview.
“You will see much shorter breakout times coming into play early next year or late this year,” he said, referring to the time Iran would need should it choose to rush to build a nuclear weapon. “You have this growing enrichment capability that starts to get the breakout down to an order of a month.”
To make weapons-grade fuel, however, Iran would have to kick out inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a move that would risk a military strike by either Israel or the United States.
Also unclear is to what extent Iran has mastered the other technical challenges involved in building a weapon, such as nuclear triggers.
That is why U.S. intelligence assessment remains that Iran is one to two years away from being able to build a bomb, said a former senior U.S. official whose work focused on Iran. He declined to be named while speaking about sensitive intelligence matters.
Nonetheless, the intelligence agencies’ assessment is that Iran is making progress on research that will shorten the time required to produce a bomb if the country’s top leaders make that decision, said a U.S. official regularly briefed on the matter.
“It’s clear that the Iranians are racing against the clock,” the official said. “They clearly have picked up their pace in certain areas.”
He said Iran is “pursuing the research and science on all three components of the program” — nuclear enrichment, weaponization and a delivery system.
This month, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said a new U.S. intelligence report was circulating in Washington that “brings the American assessment much closer to ours.”
“I’d say that, compared to previous American appraisals, it makes the Iranian issue a bit more urgent,” he added.
U.S. officials acknowledged that there was a new intelligence report, but they declined to describe its contents and said it had not altered their basic position that Iran had not decided to build a nuclear weapon.
“Iran continues to violate its obligations and has not demonstrated the peaceful intent of its nuclear program,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said. “Yet we believe that there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path, backed by growing international pressure on the Iranian government. We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon.”
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
Times staff writer David S. Cloud contributed to this report.
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ffa570391c38d3bcf53640f626838bfa | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-25-la-fg-syria-foreign-fighters-20120826-story.html | In Syria, Islamic militants may complicate uprising | In Syria, Islamic militants may complicate uprising
ALEPPO, Syria — Justice was swift and brutal when fighters of the Al Nusra Front militia caught a man accused of raping and killing a young girl in front of her father. They beheaded the man and left his body in the street.
The presence of women and children didn’t deter them. Neither did the appeals of other rebels at the checkpoint in the embattled neighborhood of Salahuddin.
Members of the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel force, said that the man was a member of a pro-government militia and that they had no doubt he was guilty. They also had no objection to killing him, but they did object to a public beheading.
“They don’t even shoot them, they slaughter them with a knife,” said Hassan, a rebel fighter nicknamed the “Barber of the Revolution” because of his previous occupation. “These aren’t Islamic manners.”
The appearance of Al Nusra Front, which is made up mostly of Syrians and some say has ties to Al Qaeda, and the presence of a small contingent of foreign fighters threatens to complicate the uprising against President Bashar Assad, a conflict that already has taken on sectarian overtones.
For months as Assad’s forces increasingly unleashed tanks, helicopters and fighter jets on towns and cities, the international community kept the rebels at arm’s length, encouraging diplomacy and a small amount of military and other aid. But that appeared to make it more likely that Al Qaeda or a similar group would move into the vacuum.
A NATO air campaign helped Libyans topple Moammar Kadafi last year, but as the prospect for similar intervention in Syria dimmed, some openly said they would welcome a group like Al Qaeda to help them get rid of Assad. Fighters who witnessed and later described the beheading made it clear that they welcome help from any quarter but that they were uneasy with some of Al Nusra Front’s methods.
International concern about such groups rose after twin car bombings in May killed 55 near a military intelligence complex in Damascus, the capital. The Free Syrian Army disavowed the attack. There were conflicting reports about whether Al Nusra Front had claimed responsibility.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he believed that Al Qaeda must have been behind it. “This has created again very serious problems,” he said.
“The Syrian conflict serves as a magnet for these groups,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is in Antakya, Turkey, near the Syrian border, meeting with opposition figures. “But, and this is important, they’re still an extremely small part of the groups that are fighting the Syrian regime.”
As the conflict drags on, though, their number is likely to grow, he said.
Tabler described Al Nusra Front as “an Al Qaeda-affiliated group” that is recognized by other such groups and mentioned in their online forums.
Whether or not they are connected to larger groups, the conflict between mostly Sunni fighters and Assad’s regime, which is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has lured some foreign Islamic militants who see it as an obligation to help oppressed Sunni Muslims.
“They are concerned with lifting the oppression,” said Majid, one of the fighters near the front line in Salahuddin. “They saw what was happening here and they came to fight with us. They don’t have any plans beyond that.”
But rebel fighters agree that most of Al Nusra Front’s members are Syrians. One of the group’s leaders, Abu Khalid, from another Aleppo neighborhood, only recently began carrying a rifle and spends most of his time preaching to the rebels at the front lines.
Abdulaziz Salameh, who heads Al Tawheed Brigade, which includes most of the militias fighting in Aleppo and its suburbs, estimated that there were fewer than two dozen foreigners among them, mostly from Libya, Tunisia and Chechnya.
Observers have pointed to the increasing prevalence of the black flag with the Muslim declaration of faith written in white, which is used by Al Qaeda, as a sign that the group has infiltrated the Syrian conflict.
Rebels said this flag, used by the prophet Muhammad during wars in the 7th century, doesn’t belong to any one group.
“They raised a flag that is black that says, ‘There is no God but Allah,’ and they said they are Al Qaeda. We raised the same flag and we are not Al Qaeda,” Salameh said. “I sat with them and many smoke like me, they are not extreme. I found their behavior to be acceptable and moderate.”
During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, many members of Al Nusra Front, like most of the other fighters on the front lines, took an exemption from the religious obligation to fast during the day.
Although his group didn’t condone the executions in the streets, which are said to be rare, Salameh said it was not easy to control the behavior of people whose family members have been killed and are seeking revenge.
“We tell them we have prisons and people to interrogate them,” he said.
There are smaller indications of their doctrine.
One night at a school in Salahuddin that served as both a field hospital and prison, shelling thundered outside.
A teenager walked in and complained that members of Al Nusra Front had demanded that he stop wearing his shirt, which had a cartoon of a person on the front. Drawings of living things are generally disavowed in Islam.
“It’s none of their business,” he said.
Others have reported that members of the group have demanded that women wear the hijab.
“It’s a bit hard to say what their long-term aspirations are,” Tabler said. “But in other countries, especially where you don’t have a centralized state power, they could just set up shop. I think that’s the real worry.”
But few in Syria seem concerned about the long-term ramifications of foreign or fundamentalist elements among the rebels.
Some believe that it should become the government’s role to enforce morality. Others, including some members of minorities that elsewhere have been persecuted by Al Qaeda-related groups, contend that Syria’s moderate and pluralistic society would never accept a religious government.
“I don’t worry about an Islamic state because the Syrian bourgeoisie won’t allow it,” said Marcell Shehwaro, a well-known Christian activist in Aleppo. “The Muslims in Syria have a different understanding, which doesn’t include forcing the hijab.”
Despite the divergent paths of their uprisings, Shehwaro said, she envisioned Syria’s future to be like that of Libya, which recently elected a liberal Muslim president.
“In the end the Syrians are going to choose who feeds them and gives them dignity, not who says God is great,” she said.
Hassan said the Islamist fighters won’t have a role in a post-Assad Syria.
“After the revolution we won’t let them stay,” he said. “When we’re done they will go to another country to fight. Wherever they can find jihad they go.”
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6b987afe461acbe7fdb45b765797cf71 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-27-la-fg-mogadishu-rising-20120828-story.html | Somali diaspora see hope and opportunity in Mogadishu | Somali diaspora see hope and opportunity in Mogadishu
MOGADISHU, Somalia — In the years to come, Ahmed Jama will be seen either as a visionary or a lunatic who squandered his money on a crazy dream.
That crazy dream? To bring tourists to his hotel on the shores of one of the world’s prettiest beaches — which just happens to be on the edge of a city known for more than 20 years as the world’s most dangerous place.
Mogadishu.
In his dream, there won’t be half a dozen guards with guns on the back of an SUV for most foreign visitors, like now.
And the haunting memories of ruthless warlords, crippling famine and terrifying armed children will have faded.
Instead, there’ll be surfing and swimming, seafood pulled fresh from the sea and little shops selling exotic shells and tourist souvenirs. On that, he’s staked $200,000 to build a hotel and restaurant complex at the magnificent Jazeera Beach.
It has all the elements of a tourist brochure: white sand, azure sea, boats bobbing like sea gulls, a mysterious rocky island just offshore, a village on a point with little pink and white houses, all set out as the breakfast view below his quaint open-air restaurant.
Jama wanders through the place gesturing proudly at the tiled floors, fresh paint and colorfully decorated ceilings. It’s not five-star luxury, but at $100 a night, its market isn’t foreign tourists — yet — but the Somali diaspora nostalgic for their homeland the way it used to be.
But even his wife, Amina, isn’t convinced. She visited, with their children, and swiftly made plans to fly back to London, where Jama lived as an emigre during his country’s long nightmare.
Craziest of all, he says he’s doing it not for the money, but to foster hope, after countless failed efforts to rebuild the nation.
“The message is there is a good side to Somalia,” says Jama, 46. “There will be change here. It’s a beautiful country. We need change. That’s my message.”
This capital city teeters on the razor edge dividing war from peace, as if it could yet slip back into the chaos that found as its international symbol the searing image of American soldiers’ bodies being dragged through the streets after their Black Hawk helicopter was shot down nearly two decades ago.
The vacant windows of bullet-pocked ruins give the city a haunted, mournful air, and a new government is yet to form. But the streets are crowded, the roads are choked with cars, and the shops are daubed with gaudy, freshly painted murals.
Women in bougainvillea colors float through the little street markets, shopping for food. Old men prod their walking sticks into ankle-deep puddles left by recent rains. Outside a shop, an artist applies his brush carefully to a wall, poised to add yet another splash of garish color.
After more than 20 years of violence, people almost dare not hope that — this time — peace will actually stick. But the revival of the city is so infectious, they can’t help it.
A year ago, the Shabab, a radical Al Qaeda-linked militia that had ushered in a new reign of terror, abandoned Mogadishu, and has since lost more territory. But the sporadic suicide bombings, daily sputtering of gunfire and sinister targeted assassinations are enough to raise fears that the Shabab can still strike fatally at the city, or that the Somali warlords and businessmen who profited so much from decades of war have not had their fill.
In coming days or weeks, the parliament that was just selected will elect a president. He will appoint a prime minister, who in turn will choose a Cabinet, in a process designed to balance the power of Somalia’s clans. If it goes wrong, no one here is in any doubt that the country will slump once more into violence and warlordism.
But the relative peace has seen a revival of business unlike anything since 1991, when the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre led to 21 lost years. In the fish market, buyers and sellers throng around neatly arrayed rows of the glistening catch. New buildings are going up and Mogadishans frequently boast that instead of AK-47s, the city rings with the sound of hammers.
Emigres are flooding back with money, ideas and confidence, brushing off concern about whether the peace will fracture. Turkish Airlines now runs a direct flight from Istanbul to Mogadishu, and it’s hard to get a seat on the inbound flight.
A year ago, it would have been unthinkable to open what is claimed to be the country’s first commercial bank. Or build a hotel on a white sand beach.
A skinny figure in a baggy T-shirt and too-big trousers, Jama shambles down the beach below his almost-finished hotel to greet some visitors. He drops the final consonants of words as if scattering coins to beggars, in the twang he picked up living in Britain’s east Birmingham and West London for nearly 25 years.
As a student, training as a chef in the British Midlands, he was hurt by the way people talked about his country — as if there was a fatal, inevitable Somali “character,” condemned to violent self-annihilation.
“ ‘Is that your people?’ That always used to cut you. When people ask you in the middle of college, ‘Is that your people?’ That makes you feel bad.”
As a boy in Somalia, the son of a poor sheep and cattle trader, Jama had a dream that was simple but rather vague: He wanted to be a big success. Now he has a restaurant in London, a restaurant in Mogadishu proper and the beachside resort near a lagoon full of flamingos.
When he decided to go to Mogadishu to start a business, just a month after the Shabab militants left the city, friends in the Somali diaspora were stunned.
“Everyone was saying: ‘Please, do not go there. Stay over here.’ Some of them believe that in a couple of days, I’ll come back.”
Many doubts remain, but the return of the diaspora, the swift investment of money and booming property development, and even plans to launch a stock exchange, make this period of peace different from past efforts at stability. There is now a new group with a big economic stake in peace — and an emotional one too.
In a quiet corner of Mogadishu, a small cemetery, empty but for a few ambling goats, is a starting place for Safia Yasin’s quest for the grave of her father.
Yasin, 34, wearing a long, flowing black garment and pink polka-dot scarf, treads slowly up a sandy incline, ignoring the garbage at her feet
“It’s well taken care of. That’s something,” she murmurs to herself. When she was only 2, she remembers sitting barefoot and crying on the front steps of the hospital where he lay dying.
In the graveyard, she meets a mullah with one finger blown off, who tells her that all the graves are listed and while it might take time, her father’s will certainly be found.
Yasin resigned from her job managing a healthcare company in Minnesota and returned to her birthplace last month to placate the ghost memories of her childhood and find her father’s resting place.
“Identity is very important. I lived in the States for 20 years, but still there was a gap,” she says.
There’s another reason she came: to be of use.
Yasin, who has a master’s degree in government policy, works at a nongovernmental organization, the Center for Research and Dialogue, helping Mogadishu youths scarred by war, and girls still traumatized from when teenagers were forcibly married to young Shabab fighters.
“Those of us in the diaspora have to come back and change this country to the way it was before,” she says. “All my memories, all my history, is here. These crumbling buildings, this is who we are. That’s why I feel I’m home.”
Among returnees, there’s an almost euphoric desire to convert others, a sense that if only enough money and hope flood back, everything will be OK.
In the conference rooms of Mogadishu’s first commercial bank, participants in a recent event enthused that the city was ready for investors. (The conference was held in May under the auspices of TED, the New-York based nonprofit that fosters inspirational talks by people with “ideas worth spreading.”)
The bank’s owner and co-organizer of the event, Liban Egal, a Somali American from Baltimore, acknowledges that the war-torn country doesn’t yet have the laws and courts to allow his bank to expand and lend money. In fact, it’s losing $20,000 a month, losses he says he can sustain for perhaps six months.
The bank’s biggest overhead cost is security, in a city where anyone important never goes anywhere without a couple of dozen security guards. At the moment, Egal, 43, is pitching to small and medium-size businesses, hoping to handle their payrolls and other accounting matters.
And for businesspeople, there is an upside here: There are no taxes or state interference.
As Egal talks, gunfire explodes a couple of streets away and rattles on for 10 minutes. He ignores it, as though it was a neighbor’s annoying barking dog.
Egal set up his first business, a fried-chicken joint, in a part of Baltimore he says was so bad that he had no competition. He realized that he actually enjoyed risk.
He’s gone from small risks, like losing $5,000 or $6,000 a month in his Baltimore small financing company, to huge ones, like opening the bank in Mogadishu. He also started an Internet server and a research company.
“When I came in August [2011], when Shabab had just left and the city was empty, I decided to do this project, the Internet and the bank. People thought I was crazy, because at the time Shabab was very powerful. But I could see at the time that the tide was turning.
“I’m a risk-taker. I’ve noticed some people have no tolerance for even losing $10. They cry like someone died. I didn’t have a problem. That’s why I took the risk of coming here so early.”
Egal has little confidence that the political path will be smooth, but says as long as the African Union peacekeeping forces in Mogadishu maintain security and the new government brings in a legal framework, businesses will flourish and governance will slowly improve.
Jama, his fellow entrepreneur, is still working to convince his wife the place is safe. But he’s sure that he’ll eventually win her over.
“I feel like it’s going to be better and I feel like it’s going to be soon,” he said. “Miami Beach wasn’t built in a day.
“You can come back next year, without guards.”
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
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e8ea67f0e0a9370399e36b100ea4e789 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-28-la-na-ron-paul-20120829-story.html | Ron Paul’s followers fight until the very end | Ron Paul’s followers fight until the very end
TAMPA, Fla. — Ron Paul’s fiercely loyal supporters fought until the bitter end on Tuesday, challenging rule changes that weakened their delegate count at the Republican National Convention and made it harder for future candidates to re-create what the Texas congressman did in his third presidential bid.
That bid ended Tuesday, when Mitt Romney was nominated by the GOP to take on President Obama. Coming into the convention, Paul didn’t have anywhere near the number of delegates necessary to challenge Romney’s nomination. But he was the sole GOP primary candidate not to bow out of the race, endorse Romney and release his delegates.
And when he did two swings through the Tampa Bay Times Forum on the opening day of the convention, shaking hands and greeting supporters, Paul seemed as though he were still running for office. Several state delegations tried to put his name into consideration, but were stymied by delegate-seating decisions by the RNC.
Paul’s supporters reacted angrily. Several members of the Maine delegation walked out of the arena after the convention affirmed the GOP’s decision to replace 10 of the state’s 24 delegates.
“It’s a disgusting, disgusting display of a hostile takeover from the top down,” said Ashley Ryan, 21, a Maine delegate. “It’s an embarrassment.”
Paul did not win a single state; however, his ardent followers worked arcane local and state party rules to take over several state delegations, including garnering 20 of Maine’s 24 spots. The RNC decided to replace 10 of them, effectively stopping the state from being able to submit Paul’s name for nomination. (In response, the state’s Republican governor, a Romney supporter, decided to boycott the convention.)
That seating decision along with others prompted Wiselet Rouzard, a delegate from Nevada and a Paul supporter, to compare the situation to Adolf Hitler taking power in Germany.
“There’s nothing American about what just happened,” he said. “This is the death of the Republican Party.”
Once Romney was nominated, during the roll call of states, several listed votes for both Romney and Paul. When repeating back the count, officials at the podium cited only the Romney votes. In the end, Romney received more than 2,000 votes, easily securing the nomination, while Paul received just under 200.
For Paul, this is effectively the end of his political career. After serving in Congress for more than two decades, the 77-year-old is retiring when his term ends in January. Over the weekend, his supporters held a sparsely attended three-day Paul Festival, and Paul headlined a raucous rally that attracted several thousand supporters.
While he may be finished, he pledged that his movement — focused on strict interpretation of the Constitution, downsizing the government and an isolationist foreign policy — was not.
“Don’t they only wish!” Paul said of the GOP establishment. He told thousands on Sunday that the pursuit of basic liberty was stronger than ever.
“It’s coming about, not only because I believe we’re right on the issues, but what is coming out right now is proof positive that their philosophy of government — foreign policy, monetary policy or economic policy — is failing and they need to do something different,” Paul said.
The crowd responded by chanting, “President Paul! President Paul! President Paul!”
Paul is not speaking at the convention, telling the New York Times that he would have been allowed to do so only if he endorsed Romney and allowed his campaign to vet his script, which he refused to do. But he will stick around for Wednesday night, when the RNC pays tribute to him with a video and for a speech by his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who some believe is the heir to Paul’s movement.
Times staff writer Mitchell Landsberg contributed to this report.
seema.mehta@latimes.com
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c577d404afa653e6068d0976fc6c0cba | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-30-la-fg-afghanistan-bamiyan-20120830-story.html | A once-tranquil corner of Afghanistan turns deadly | A once-tranquil corner of Afghanistan turns deadly
KABUL, Afghanistan — Not long ago, Bamiyan province was considered one of the most peaceful corners of Afghanistan, a remote and scenic enclave that was largely free of the daily violence that roils so much of the country. Now it may become a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of winding down the war here.
In the summer of 2011, Bamiyan’s tranquil image was such that it was picked as the country’s first province for the transfer of fighting duties from Western forces to Afghan troops, a process that is to be replicated across Afghanistan in a prelude to the end of NATO’s combat role in 2014.
In recent months, however, a province best known as the site of the giant Buddhas that were dynamited more than a decade ago by the Taliban has been making news of the most ominous kind, including the deaths of five soldiers from New Zealand this month. To put that loss in perspective, the fatalities represented half of that nation’s battle deaths for the entire war, including its first woman killed in conflict since 1966.
Even before the recent spasm of violence, there had been other danger signs for Bamiyan: the deaths of nine Afghan policemen in two bombing attacks in July, and the abduction and decapitation last year of Bamiyan’s popular provincial council leader as he traveled to the capital, Kabul.
At the war’s outset, Bamiyan seemed better positioned than almost any part of Afghanistan to fend off an insurgent presence. Tucked away in the central highlands, its population is mainly made up of ethnic Hazaras, whose fierce anti-Taliban sentiments were stoked by the systematic massacre of thousands during the fundamentalist movement’s reign over Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Isolated by punishing winters and a poor road network, Bamiyan was never an insurgent thoroughfare, unlike conflict zones in the country’s south and east that are crisscrossed by fighters with the Taliban, Pakistan’s Haqqani network and other militant groups. And the haunting emptiness of the Buddha niches is a daily reminder of the fruits of Taliban intolerance.
Although the province is formally at the forefront of the nationwide “transition” effort, critics complain that the handoff of responsibility to Afghan forces has been fraught with problems.
“At the time of the hand-over ceremony, the transitional authority promised to increase the number of police, and give them better training and equipment, but these promises did not materialize,” said Mohammad Akbari, a lawmaker from Bamiyan. “There are no Afghan soldiers, and the number of police is not more than 1,000 for the entire province.... If there are no remedial measures, there are fears that security will get even worse.”
Perhaps because of deteriorating safety, Bamiyan’s “transition” has not yet been declared complete, a step that NATO officials had signaled this year was imminent. No date has been set.
Local people are also anxiously wondering how Bamiyan will be affected by New Zealand’s move to hasten the departure of its 150-member troop contingent. After the recent deaths, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he expected the country’s forces to leave early next year, about six months ahead of schedule. Key said the decision was not linked to the latest fatalities, but in a close-knit country, news of the deaths hit like a thunderbolt.
Portraits of the three soldiers killed Aug. 19 in a massive blast from a roadside bomb in northeastern Bamiyan gazed out from the front pages of virtually every New Zealand newspaper, including the rosy-cheeked face of 26-year-old Lance Cpl. Jacinda Baker, who had trained as a medic. The country was already reeling from the news that two other New Zealand troops had been slain in a gunfight two weeks earlier in the same part of the province.
Despite such setbacks, NATO insists that the process of handing over responsibilities to Afghan forces is on track.
“With 28 months left in the [NATO force’s] mission, we are forging ahead with the process of transition,” Gen. John Allen, the American who commands Western forces in Afghanistan, told Pentagon reporters via satellite link last week. “And as the Afghans assume full responsibility for the security of their country, our support will continue.”
But some critics contend that with the clock ticking, Afghan forces are being hastily thrust into the lead in hazard-prone parts of the country.
“Unfortunately, things are getting more dangerous day by day,” said Qari Mir Hatim Tarakhil, the head of the provincial council in Laghman, in eastern Afghanistan. “Since the transition happened about a year ago, insecurity has really increased.”
Some officials quietly acknowledge that touting the peacefulness of an area such as Bamiyan, and holding it up as a transition success story, might have heightened its attractiveness as a target in the eyes of the insurgents. Nonetheless, many hope there is still time to contain the Taliban threat among its pristine peaks and valleys.
The provincial police chief, Gen. Juma Gildi Yardom, said he believed the Taliban did not have any significant havens in Bamiyan, but were slipping in and out from more restive neighboring provinces. And as elsewhere in Afghanistan, there is the acknowledgment that at some point, the country’s security forces will simply have to hold their own.
In Lowgar province, not far from Kabul, where the transition began in June in several districts, the police chief, Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Lewanai, survived a Taliban ambush this month, but declared himself undaunted.
“As an Afghan, I defend my country, I defend the honor of my people and I defend our national interest,” Lewanai said. “When the NATO forces have gone, I am ready to protect our homeland for as long as I am alive.”
laura.king@latimes.com
Special correspondents Hashmat Baktash and Aimal Yaqubi contributed to this report.
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eda4bc5216df97c44f5845a1d6cd8f48 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-aug-31-la-na-0831-condi-rice-20120831-story.html | Condoleezza Rice’s convention speech sparks political speculation | Condoleezza Rice’s convention speech sparks political speculation
TAMPA, Fla. — The distinguished Republican panel included House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former George W. Bush domestic policy advisor Margaret Spellings. But the audience clapped for only one person at the beginning of a discussion on education policy Thursday: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“By the way,” Jeb Bush said, prompting a second round of applause, “it was a spectacular speech.”
Every so often at a political convention, a rising star disappoints (say, Bill Clinton, who droned on too long in 1988) or an unknown becomes a star (Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, at the Democratic National Convention in 2004).
But on Wednesday, Rice pulled off something more unusual. She reinvented herself in the imaginations of Republicans as a potential political powerhouse.
Many were moved to tears by the end of her speech when she told her rapt audience a compressed version of her story: “A little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham, the segregated city of the South where her parents can’t take her to a movie theater or to a restaurant, but they have her absolutely convinced that even if she can’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, she could be president of the United States if she wanted to be. And she becomes the secretary of State.”
She had barely left the convention stage when an email from former California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring landed in inboxes: “Condi for California Governor? Ten Reasons to Seriously Consider It.”
Others, moved by her implausible life story, speculated that she could be a viable 2016 presidential candidate. “The next time Republicans are searching for a presidential candidate, rest assured,” wrote a Washington Post politics blogger, “Condoleezza Rice will be a part of that conversation.”
But just as quickly, political strategists from both parties dumped cold water on what they said was a bad case of California dreamin’.
“Republicans are so flat on their back in this state they are looking for any savior. You have to beware that kind of desperate effort to rebuild the party on the back of a political personality,” said Republican strategist Don Sipple, citing the decidedly mixed tenure of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Rice’s resume would present rich targets for adversaries from the right and the left.
She has a moderate stance on abortion, apostasy in today’s more conservative GOP. Democrats think of her as the Bush administration architect of two unpopular wars. (“That’s yesterday’s news,” snapped Jeb Bush in a brief interview after their panel discussion.)
But there is an even more powerful reason she probably won’t run: her oft-stated lack of desire.
“Could she be a candidate? Absolutely,” said Republican media consultant Bill Whalen of Stanford’s Hoover Institution. “There’s only one problem with every Condoleezza Rice scenario, and that’s that she has said a thousand different times that she is not interested in being a candidate.”
Democratic strategist Bill Carrick thought the power of her speech came partly from the fact that she is “outside the Republican orthodoxy,” which could make her an attractive general-election candidate in Democrat-dominated California.
But before she ever got that far, he said, “she’ll be primaried” — a political term of art for partisans demanding fealty from their own party’s candidates.
As Carrick noted, even though California had in Schwarzenegger a Republican governor who supported abortion rights, “Arnold never ran in a Republican primary. He would have never got through that field of land mines.” Schwarzenegger was elected in the 2003 recall that ousted Gov. Gray Davis.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday, Rice said again she had no interest in running for office.
“I don’t have the DNA to run for office,” she said. “I love policy. I don’t really like politics. When you have had a chance to be the nation’s chief diplomat, that’s enough. I’m happy as a professor at Stanford.”
robin.abcarian@latimes.com
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9b668cb521037a4731225a02de5b1966 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-03-la-fg-syria-violence-20121204-story.html | U.S. warns Syria regime against using chemical weapons | U.S. warns Syria regime against using chemical weapons
BEIRUT — The United States bluntly warned Syrian President Bashar Assad against using chemical weapons as his forces lose ground to rebel fighters, and the United Nations said it was pulling nonessential foreign staff from Syria because of deteriorating security.
Warnings from President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials Monday reflected U.S. concerns over new intelligence indicating that Syria might be preparing to unleash some of its chemical agent stockpiles.
“The world is watching,” Obama said, addressing Assad in remarks at the National War College in Washington. “The use of chemical weapons is, and would be, totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences, and you will be held accountable.”
The comments came amid indications that after more than 20 months, the tide of battle could be turning against Assad. In recent weeks, rebels have seized large swaths of territory, especially in the east and northwest. They also have overrun a number of military bases and key strategic installations, including oil wells and a hydroelectric dam.
Battles have been raging for days in rebellious suburbs of Damascus, and last week rebels managed to shut down the road to the international airport southeast of the capital, forcing flight cancellations. The government brought in reinforcements to secure the airport road, but reports Monday indicated that battles continued just outside the capital.
Rebels say the capture of a facility near Aleppo known as Base 46 last month after a lengthy siege yielded a stash of shoulder-fired missile launchers. The development could help neutralize the government’s overwhelming advantage in air power. Assad’s forces have increasingly turned to aerial attacks as its ground troops have been stretched thin and depleted through desertion and casualties. Rebels say one of the missiles has already been used to down a government attack helicopter.
Reports surfaced from multiple sources Monday that top Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, the public face of the Syrian government, had defected. Makdissi is an English-speaking Christian who publicly defended the regime with passion for months, although he appeared to have been sidelined in recent weeks.
If his defection is confirmed, he would join high-ranking generals, a former prime minister and an air force colonel who fled with his MiG fighter jet to neighboring Jordan.
In another development, Nabil Elaraby, chief of the Arab League, told the French news service Agence France-Presse that Assad’s regime risked collapse “any time,” citing recent opposition military and political gains.
The United Nations said it was withdrawing nonessential international staff from Syria because of security concerns and suspending movement within the country until further notice. The U.N. has about 1,000 foreign and local staff members in Syria.
The country is in desperate need of aid. The war has displaced about 1.5 million Syrians internally, according to official estimates, and prompted more than 500,000 others to flee the country, mostly to neighboring nations.
There is still considerable debate among analysts about whether recent rebel gains mark a tipping point in the conflict. But there is wide agreement that Assad is facing an increasingly difficult battle for survival.
“Certainly something has changed in the last couple of weeks,” said Marina Ottaway, a Middle East analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “There is no doubt that the rebels are showing much greater capacity to fight and are much better armed.”
Analysts cautioned, however, that Assad has shown resiliency.
His government has survived major blows, including the assassination of four top security aides in a July bombing in Damascus. It retains the loyalty of a professional army and air force.
Although a battle for Aleppo, the commercial hub, has dragged on for more than four months, other major cities, including Damascus, remain largely under government control. Assad continues to enjoy the backing of Moscow and Tehran.
In addition, Assad has the unyielding support of his minority Alawite sect, many of whose members view the conflict as a fight to the death against Islamic extremists from the nation’s Sunni Muslim majority. Other Assad supporters fear that his fall could usher in an Iraq-like scenario of anarchy and sectarian bloodletting.
“It seems to me the regime still has some fighting power,” said Ottaway, speaking by telephone from Washington.
Nonetheless, rebel fighters on the ground have taken to repeating a kind of motto: “We are coming for you, Bashar.”
Western officials say they fear that a desperate Assad could turn to the nation’s large stockpile of chemical weapons.
A senior U.S. official said Monday that the United States had received intelligence in recent days indicating that Syria’s military was making preparations for the possible use of such weapons against the rebels.
“They are making certain preparations that have the look and feel of potential use,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing intelligence information. The official would not provide details about the steps or the chemical agents involved.
“This is the Syrian military apparatus,” the official said. “This is not some splinter group.”
Intelligence agencies have seen evidence that Syria is moving supplies of chemical weapons materials to various sites in the country, according to a second U.S. official.
Syria is known to have supplies of mustard gas, a blister agent, and sarin, a nerve gas. U.S. officials have said they are using satellites and other surveillance systems to keep tabs on the weapons.
The Syrian government has never publicly acknowledged possessing chemical weapons. On Monday, it repeated earlier assertions that it would not use such weapons, “if they exist,” against its own people.
Syria said it had made this point “repeatedly” to Washington, Moscow and the United Nations, and pointed to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Although Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was suspected of having weapons of mass destruction, none were found.
“These fabrications are aimed basically at misleading the U.S. and world public opinion and diverting attention away from the U.S. involvement in the Syrian issue in terms of the financial, logistic and political support it provides the terrorist groups,” the Syrian statement said.
Syria calls the rebels fighting to overthrow its government Al Qaeda-linked “terrorists” aided by the United States and its allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Syria’s statement did not repeat an assertion made in July that Damascus would deploy chemical weapons only “in the event of external aggression” against the country.
A senior Middle East diplomat said it was clear that Syria’s leadership understands that the use of chemical weapons would be a “game changer” that would draw a sharp reaction from world powers that have generally been reluctant to get too deeply involved in the conflict.
U.S. officials refused to say how they would respond if Syria did use chemical weapons. They have said that the Pentagon has contingency plans to send small teams of special operations troops into Syria if the White House decided it needed to secure chemical weapons depots now controlled by Assad’s forces.
The situation would change significantly if Syria used the weapons against its own people, a move that would prompt widespread international condemnation and greatly increase pressure for intervention by the U.S. and other countries.
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
McDonnell reported from Beirut and Richter from Washington. Times staff writers David S. Cloud and Shashank Bengali in Washington and special correspondent Rima Marrouch in Beirut contributed to this report.
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f39e03bccce3f2a4d00ab1c0e0747ff4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-06-la-na-cyber-intel-20121207-story.html | U.S. spy agencies to detail cyber-attacks from abroad | U.S. spy agencies to detail cyber-attacks from abroad
WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community is nearing completion of its first detailed review of cyber-spying against American targets from abroad, including an attempt to calculate U.S. financial losses from hacker attacks based in China, officials said.
The National Intelligence Estimate, the first involving cyber-espionage, also will seek to determine how large a role the Chinese government plays in directing or coordinating digital attacks aimed at stealing U.S. intellectual property, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified undertaking.
The Pentagon requested the estimate more than a year ago, and it sparked a broad review of evidence and analysis from the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. The document has been submitted to the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates such efforts, but it was unclear whether the council had reached or approved final conclusions. The study is expected to be given to policymakers early next year.
U.S. intelligence agencies monitor daily digital assaults from hackers based in China who seek to steal intellectual property from American and other Western companies, current and former intelligence officials said. Intelligence analysts disagree over the extent to which the intrusions are organized by Chinese authorities, but the CIA and National Security Agency have traced cyber-attacks and thefts to Chinese military and intelligence agencies.
“We know much more about who is doing this than we did even two years ago,” one official involved in the effort said. “We have traced attacks back to a desk in a [People’s Liberation Army] office building.”
Some analysts believe the Chinese government has a broad policy of encouraging theft of intellectual property through cyber-attacks, but that it leaves the details to intelligence services, state-owned companies and freelancers. As a result, at least some of the attacks appear poorly orchestrated.
U.S. officials have raised concerns about cyber-espionage with Chinese officials. Beijing has denied any involvement.
Obama administration officials have publicly warned in recent months about threats to national security from cyber-attacks, but they have tiptoed around the issue of who is to blame. “It’s no secret that Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in a speech on Oct. 11 in New York.
Russia engages in cyber-espionage against government targets, as does China, the United States, Israel, France and other nations. But Russia does not systematically steal corporate secrets from U.S. companies to aid its own national companies, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Last week, the congressionally sponsored U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission alleged that China has “an elaborate strategy for obtaining America’s advanced technology by subterfuge, either stealing it outright or by requiring U.S. companies to turn over technology to Chinese business partners as a condition for investment and market access in China.”
Part of that strategy relies on computer attacks, the commission said.
“In 2012, Chinese state-sponsored actors continued to exploit U.S. government, military, industrial and nongovernmental computer systems,” the report said. “The volume of exploitation attempts yielded enough successful breaches to make China the most threatening actor in cyberspace.”
Losses from the theft of U.S. intellectual property through cyber-attacks and theft are difficult to quantify but are believed to be in the billions of dollars a year.
In one recent case, Brian Milburn, who runs Solid Oak Software Inc. in Santa Barbara, sued the Chinese government and nine companies for $2.2 billion in January 2010 in federal court in Santa Ana, alleging that his Cybersitter child-monitoring software had been pirated and illegally sold to 57 million users in China. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount in April, though the Chinese government did not participate in the settlement.
As the lawsuit unfolded, Milburn was targeted for harassment by Chinese hackers thought to have been tracked by U.S. intelligence, according to his Los Angeles lawyer, Gregory Fayer. He said the hackers blocked orders on the Cybersitter website, costing Milburn tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales.
“The guys they put on us were the virtual Chinese A-Team of hackers,” Milburn said in a phone interview Thursday. “They were the most patient people I’ve ever seen. They basically used the same techniques against me that they would use for cyber-espionage.”
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
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8f08219608c32cd420bb6bb78a4d4a2a | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-07-la-fg-iran-nuclear-20121207-story.html | IAEA reports no progress on access to Iran nuclear facilities | IAEA reports no progress on access to Iran nuclear facilities
WASHINGTON — The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency acknowledged Thursday that inspectors had made no progress in a yearlong effort to determine whether Iran had conducted research needed to build an atomic bomb.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are expected to meet Iranian officials in Tehran next week to seek a resumption of their inquiry on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.
“We have intensified our dialogue with Iran this year, but no concrete results have been made yet,” Yukiya Amano, head of the IAEA, told the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.
The IAEA first reported in November 2011 that intelligence suggested Iran had conducted research that could help it develop a nuclear weapon. Iran maintains that its nuclear effort is for peaceful purposes, but it has refused to cooperate fully with IAEA inspectors.
The inspectors also are seeking access to a suspected explosives testing facility at Parchin, south of Tehran. Satellite imagery indicates that Iran has tried to scrub evidence at the military base by demolishing buildings and removing soil that might hold traces of illicit nuclear work.
“What we are asking in the negotiations is to have access to sites, information and people,” Amano said.
The developments have sharpened a dispute between the White House and members of Congress who want to tighten economic sanctions against Tehran.
The Senate last week approved measures to blacklist companies or individuals doing business with energy, shipping and other industries that allegedly support Iran’s nuclear program.
The Obama administration opposes new sanctions, saying they could undermine the international coalition that enforces sanctions already in place.
The U.S. representative to the IAEA, Robert Wood, last week issued Tehran a March deadline to begin cooperating with U.N. inspectors. Otherwise, the U.S. would consider referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council, Wood said.
U.S. officials believe Iranian authorities may be ready to resume talks with the six world powers involved in negotiations — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — now that President Obama, who has called for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, has won a second term.
The IAEA reported last month that Iran had added to its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium and had installed new centrifuges at two nuclear facilities. Once operational, those could double the rate of uranium enrichment, but there’s no evidence that Iran has developed the capability to build a workable weapon.
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
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7f82d840c62615541b1d5b0b5bd761f8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-14-la-me-veterans-fertility-treatment-20121215-story.html | Badly wounded veterans lobby for fertility treatment | Badly wounded veterans lobby for fertility treatment
Army Staff Sgt. Matt Kiel was shot while on patrol in Iraq just six weeks after his wedding. Doctors said he would be on a ventilator for the rest of his life and would never again move his arms or legs — dashing his hopes of raising a family.
But within months of his injuries five years ago, Kiel was breathing on his own and had regained enough function in his left arm to operate a motorized wheelchair. Doctors said he and his wife, Tracy, could start a family through in vitro fertilization.
The couple were overjoyed, until they discovered that the Department of Veterans Affairs does not cover the costly procedure.
“The war takes away so many things from us,” Matt Kiel said. “I don’t think it should take away our ability to have a family.”
Kiel, 31, of Parker, Colo., is among a growing population of veterans whose war wounds make it difficult for them to have children. Advances in battlefield medicine mean troops are surviving catastrophic wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan that might have killed their predecessors in earlier wars. The use of homemade bombs to target foot patrols has left them particularly vulnerable to injuries that can damage their reproductive systems.
More than 1,900 service members have suffered such injuries since 2003, according to Pentagon data provided to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray ( D-Wash.). Most are men, but they include a growing number of women. Many could benefit from in vitro fertilization, which is why Murray is pushing for the VA to cover the procedure.
“Providing this service is a cost of war,” Murray said. “There is absolutely no reason we should make these veterans, who have sacrificed so much, wait any longer to be able to realize their dreams of starting or growing their families.”
The VA does cover fertility counseling, diagnostic tests and some procedures for veterans with service-connected injuries. For men, that can include the retrieval of sperm, and for women, intrauterine insemination, in which semen is inserted into the uterine cavity through a catheter. Those treatments do help some veterans conceive, although the VA generally won’t cover the care provided to veterans’ spouses or surrogates.
But for the most severely wounded, more advanced treatments are needed, said Dr. Lori Marshall, medical director at Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Fertility and IVF Specialists. The sperm retrieved from injured men may be of too poor quality for successful intrauterine insemination.
In IVF, egg and sperm are combined in a laboratory, and the resulting embryo is transferred into a woman’s uterus. The procedure bypasses the fallopian tubes and is the treatment of choice for many women with badly damaged or missing tubes, Marshall said. If the uterus is incapable of sustaining a pregnancy, the woman may need a surrogate.
“Most of the men and women who suffer these injuries are young and should have very high success rates,” Marshall said. But the cost can be prohibitive. A complete cycle of IVF typically costs between $12,000 and $20,000, and it can take several attempts to achieve a successful pregnancy.
Murray, chairwoman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, introduced legislation that passed the Senate by unanimous consent Thursday directing the VA to make advanced fertility techniques like IVF available to disabled veterans, their spouses or surrogates. But prospects for similar legislation are uncertain in the House, where spending cuts to avoid the fiscal cliff are dominating discussion.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of providing the services at $568 million over five years. Murray proposes paying for it with savings from the drawdown of troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The VA has not taken a position on the bill. Department spokesman Mark Ballesteros said officials are “carefully considering” the needs of a new generation of patients with new traumas. “VA’s goal is to restore veterans’ physical and mental capabilities to the greatest extent possible,” he said.
Monique, a Southern California veteran who did not want her full name published, is among the veterans hoping for a swift resolution. She is wondering whether she should shelve plans for a beach wedding in Marina del Rey in favor of an inexpensive ceremony at a government office — because the price tag for her dream wedding is $11,000, nearly what it would cost for a cycle of IVF.
Doctors say her fallopian tubes are too damaged from the injuries she sustained in a 2005 ambush in Iraq to conceive naturally. Surgery won’t help. Her best chance is IVF.
Monique never thought she would get married. “Now that I am.... I want the big fluffy dress,” she said.
But she said she won’t feel whole again if she can’t have a baby. “I’m a woman,” she said. “I should be able to do this.”
The Department of Defense does cover IVF for injured active duty service members. The policy, announced in 2010, allows for three full cycles of treatment for service members and their spouses, said Cynthia Smith, a department spokeswoman.
But by the time some service members have sufficiently recovered from their wounds to start planning a family, they are no longer on active duty and no longer qualify for the coverage. Many insurance plans don’t cover IVF. Their best hope may be the VA.
Dr. Ajay Nangia, clinical director for andrology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, would also like the government to pay for male troops to freeze their sperm before they deploy. He acknowledged that this might not be a subject commanders want to raise as troops ready for combat, but he said the consequences of an emasculating injury can be psychologically devastating.
“The most normal thing for people to do, ultimately, is to have a baby,” he said. “When you can’t … it just gnaws into your soul.”
When Kiel first learned the extent of his disabilities from his neck wound, he looked at his wife and asked if she still loved him.
“I just said, ‘Baby, you’re stuck with me,’” Tracy Kiel said.
She formed a group of military spouses dubbed the “In Vitro Girls” to lobby Congress and was in the audience for Thursday’s Senate vote, even though the couple had already had children. With the help of a nonprofit and contributions from strangers who sent checks through the mail, the couple scraped together more than $30,000 to pay for IVF.
Tracy got pregnant on the first attempt. Children Matthew and Faith are now 2 and have just learned to ride on the back of their dad’s wheelchair.
“She jumps up there and says, ‘Go daddy, go,’ ” Tracy Kiel said.
“We got our dream,” she continued. “We get to be like everyone else.”
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
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65444a6fa9d57f7e6fea8308fb26b49e | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-15-la-three-lessons-from-the-nearfinal-popular-vote-20121214-story.html | Three lessons from the near-final popular vote | Three lessons from the near-final popular vote
More than five weeks after election day, almost all the presidential votes have been counted. Here’s what the near-final tally reveals:
The election really wasn’t close.
On election night, President Obama’s victory margin seemed fairly narrow – just slightly more than 2 percentage points. White House aides anxiously waited to see if Obama would surpass the 2.46-percentage-point margin by which President George W. Bush defeated Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004.
They needn’t have worried. In the weeks since the election, as states have completed their counts, Obama’s margin has grown steadily. From just over 2 percentage points, it now stands at nearly 4. Rather than worry about the Bush-Kerry precedent, White House aides now brag that Obama seems all but certain to achieve a mark hit by only five others in U.S. history – winning the presidency twice with 51% or more of the popular vote.
As of Friday, Obama had 50.97% of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 47.3% with 47 states having certified their final count, according to the statistics compiled assiduously by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.
Most of the nation’s remaining uncounted ballots, perhaps as many as 413,000, Wasserman estimated, are in heavily Democratic New York, where officials have until next week to finish their tabulations. The other two states yet to certify a final count are West Virginia, which Romney carried, and Hawaii, which went heavily for its native son, the president. Once all those get tossed into the mix, Obama’s margin almost surely will rise slightly, allowing him to claim the 51% mark without rounding up.
There’s more involved here than just a historical trivia contest (to which Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower would be the other answers). The growth of Obama’s victory margin probably strengthens his hand politically.
Even some of Obama’s political aides were surprised by the size of the overall margin. The campaign intensively polled battleground states, but did not survey the national vote. Since most public polls projected an Obama win of 2 percentage points or less, that’s what many of Obama’s aides expected.
Very few polls correctly projected the size of Obama’s victory.
One notable exception was the poll for Democracy Corps by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which has also conducted polling for the The Times. The firm’s final poll pegged Obama’s lead at 3.8 points.
Stanley B. Greenberg, who was the chief pollster for President Clinton’s 1992 campaign and Al Gore’s in 2000, attributed the result to a major effort to get enough cellphone calls into the firm’s sample and to ensure a proper representation of young voters and minorities.
Counting the vote still takes a long time and sooner or later, that will cause trouble.
This time around, the length of time needed for a final certification didn’t matter. But as the shift in Obama’s victory margin shows, in a truly close election, counting all those final ballots could make a huge difference. It’s not hard to see that allowing the process to take weeks will, eventually, lead to trouble.
Two groups of ballots account for much of the delay in tabulating votes – absentee ballots that arrive on election day and provisional ballots cast by voters whose names, for one reason or another, don’t appear on their precincts’ voting lists. Both types of ballots require a lot of hand processing. For absentee ballots, clerks need to check signatures. For provisional ballots, they need to determine whether the voter really was eligible.
Those problems could be reduced. States could, for example, encourage voters to cast ballots early in person at voting locations rather than send absentee ballots by mail. They could make the voter registration process more transparent and less prone to error and thereby reduce the number of provisional ballots. And if states paid for more people to process ballots, they could get through the count faster.
Tinkering with the voting machinery, however, inevitably hurts the political interest of one party or the other. For that reason, reform of the election system remains a distant goal.
david.lauter@latimes.com
Twitter:@DavidLauter
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4e7c363bb634b1e1d77677a3ec428d14 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-17-la-na-shooter-profile-20121218-story.html | Adam Lanza’s family had kept a watchful eye on him | Adam Lanza’s family had kept a watchful eye on him
STAMFORD, Conn. — When the parents of Adam Lanza divorced, the settlement left Nancy Lanza with $24,150 a month in alimony payments and able to live a comfortable life and care for her troubled son.
Nancy Lanza, 52, was her son’s first victim Friday, shot to death in the spacious home they shared, authorities said. Adam, 20, then took his mother’s car to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he shot his way into the building and opened fire, killing 20 children and six adults before turning a gun on himself.
New details emerged Monday about how Adam Lanza’s family and the staff at his high school kept a watchful eye over the reserved boy, who seemed to spend much of his time in solitude after finishing high school.
PHOTOS: Sandy Hook shootings
Friends of the family said he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. As early as age 10, Adam Lanza was taking medication, according to his former baby sitter, Ryan Kraft, now an aerospace engineer in Hermosa Beach.
“I know there was something administered. I’m not sure what,” he said. There were never any signs that Lanza was dangerous, he said. “There were no red flags that would say something like this would happen.”
Nancy Lanza cautioned Kraft to never let him out of his sight, even briefly. “The instructions were to always supervise him visually,” he said.
FULL COVERAGE: Sandy Hook shootings
That echoed recollections from others who said Nancy Lanza was a constant presence in her son’s life. “She truly cared for both of her sons deeply,” said Amanda d’Ambrose, 23, whose brother befriended Adam Lanza in high school. “I just want the world to know what a beautiful soul that she is.”
John Wlasuk, who played Babe Ruth baseball with Lanza as a youth, said the boy’s mother was “always at the games, always really involved with her kids.”
Wlasuk said he sometimes went to the Lanza house with his father, a plumber, who told him of the room in the basement where Lanza spent a lot of time playing video games. As Wlasuk’s father described it, the room had posters of military weaponry, and Lanza would be playing violent video games such as “Call of Duty.”
“I wouldn’t say it was a shrine to the military or anything, a couple of posters with a bed and a desk and a computer,” he said.
Richard Novia, who formerly advised the Newtown High School tech club that was one of Lanza’s few social outlets, said Lanza had been placed in a special program for students who were considered at risk of being bullied — though he had no recollection of Lanza being harassed.
Novia said he was told that Lanza had a medical condition that hindered his ability to feel pain, so that if he cut himself or stubbed his toe, he might not even know he was hurt and could continue to harm himself.
When Lanza was in elementary school, his mother fretted about his schooling.
“She was concerned mainly that Adam wasn’t fitting in well in his classroom,” said Wendy Wipprecht, whose son had also been diagnosed with a form of autism. She said Nancy Lanza considered moving her son to a private Catholic school, or home schooling him, but did not join sessions of any of the local autism parents’ support groups that Wipprecht attended.
“She may have decided that there wasn’t a support group that would fit,” Wipprecht said. “Who knows. She may have been overwhelmed.”
There is no mention of Adam Lanza’s emotional troubles or any domestic strife in his parents’ divorce papers. Last week, Ryan Lanza told investigators that the divorce could have had an effect on his younger brother.
Peter and Nancy Lanza married in 1981 in New Hampshire. She sued her husband for divorce in 2008, citing irreconcilable differences.
In their 2009 settlement, Nancy and Peter Lanza agreed to joint custody of Adam, then 17, who would live with his mother but have regular visits from his father. In addition to the alimony, Peter Lanza would cover the children’s medical insurance.
Court records show that Nancy Lanza was due to receive $289,800 in alimony in 2012, or $24,150 each month. Peter Lanza, an executive at General Electric who was earning an annual salary of about $445,000 in 2009, also would pay for both their sons’ college and graduate school educations and for a car for Adam.
The street where Nancy Lanza and her son lived was reopened by police Monday. The borders of the grassy, tree-lined hill it sits on are still cordoned off with yellow police tape.
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
molly-hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
kim.murphy@latimes.com
Bengali and Hennessy-Fiske reported from Newtown, Conn., and Murphy from Seattle.
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c11657bb3db2858cae4ef4c6f1d0e888 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-18-la-me-fracking-20121219-story.html | California issues proposed rules for ‘fracking’ | California issues proposed rules for ‘fracking’
SACRAMENTO — Under pressure from state lawmakers and environmentalists, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration released draft regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the controversial drilling process driving the nation’s oil and gas boom.
The proposed rules, released Tuesday, would require energy companies to disclose for the first time the chemicals they inject deep into the ground to break apart rock and release oil. They also would have to reveal the location of the wells where they use the procedure.
Though fracking has unlocked vast amounts of previously unreachable fossil fuels elsewhere, environmentalists and public health advocates in California have raised safety questions about the hundreds of chemicals used — many of them known carcinogens — and the potential for drinking water contamination.
Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the state Department of Conservation, said the proposed rules were important to assure the public that “when this practice is engaged in, it is engaged in safely.”
The disclosure requirements would put California in line with at least nine other states that have such guidelines. The proposed regulations come as energy companies tout the technology’s potential to tap the state’s Monterey shale, the largest oil shale formation in the continental United States.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the formation, which runs from Northern California to Los Angeles, contains 15 billion barrels of oil — or 64% of the country’s deep-rock deposits.
Environmental and industry groups said the draft regulations were a good first step in what is expected to be a lengthy rule-making process. But environmentalists signaled a coming fight over the level of disclosure, noting a provision that would allow oil companies to withhold disclosure of chemicals they claim to be proprietary.
“The road we’re headed down will heap a cloak of secrecy around trade secrets,” said Bill Allayaud, a lobbyist for Environmental Working Group.
A recent analysis by Bloomberg News found that companies nationwide withheld from their disclosure reports one out of every five chemicals they used in fracking.
The issue was a sticking point in talks over disclosure legislation that died in the last legislative session. Energy firms and oil field service companies have said the trade-secrets clause is necessary to protect their proprietary “recipes.”
Regulators said they would retain the right to challenge those claims and compel disclosure to state authorities and emergency responders in the event of a spill or accident. They also emphasized new requirements for oil companies to test the integrity of their wells before fracking to guard against leaks and to report the results of those tests to regulators before they begin operations. The mandate would be the strongest of its kind in the nation, they said.
“We don’t want slipshod work done,” Marshall said.
Environmentalists also took issue with the timing and venue for disclosure, FracFocus, a national fracking registry the industry helped create online last year to allow for voluntary disclosure. Under the proposed rules, companies would have to disclose chemicals 60 days after completing fracking.
Lawmakers, who have said rules are long overdue for the third-largest oil-producing state in the nation, promised to convene legislative hearings next year to evaluate the draft regulations.
“It seems they’re heading in the right direction,” said state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), who has introduced legislation to require oil companies to issue advance notice when fracking. “But I want to see more transparency and disclosure to the public.”
As work continues on the regulations, oil companies are moving ahead with their plans.
Last week, energy firms sent representatives to a federal auction at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Sacramento. There, in a cramped conference room behind the employee cafeteria, bidders competed for the right to sink exploratory wells in the Monterey shale.
Nearly 18,000 acres were leased in 10 minutes.
michael.mishak@latimes.com
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60b53a4fdda2cf4780a9e198aeebe1cd | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-19-la-fg-south-korea-park-20121220-story.html | South Korea elects first female president | South Korea elects first female president
SEOUL — Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the strongman who ruled South Korea for much of the 1960s and 1970s, was elected Wednesday as the country’s first female president after a divisive, hotly contested election.
Park, a member of the conservative New Frontier ruling party, has been a legislator since 1998. But her claim to fame before now came from her father, Park Chung-hee, who seized power in 1961 in a military coup and led the country until his assassination in 1979. Park, whose mother was killed in 1974, served as de facto first lady at state functions for the last five years of her father’s presidency.
The president-elect, speaking after liberal candidate Moon Jae-in had conceded defeat, reportedly pledged to strive for national unity.
“This election is the people’s victory,” Park, 60, told a crowd in Seoul. “I believe this was brought about by the people’s desperate desire to overcome hardship and revive the economy.”
Park, who is expected to take office in February, is likely to continue the conservative policies of outgoing President Lee Myung-bak, although she has said she will try to repair the relationship with North Korea that deteriorated under his government during the last five years. Park visited Pyongyang in 2002 and met with then-leader Kim Jong Il, whose son Kim Jong Un became North Korea’s leader after his father’s death a year ago.
Despite the robust democracy in this country of 50 million people, the irony was not lost that both Koreas will now be governed by the offspring of autocratic leaders.
Park is an outlier in South Korea’s tradition-bound society in that she never married, devoting her life to her family’s legacy and to politics. She interrupted her studies in France to help her father. She served four terms in the legislature and sought the presidential nomination in 2007, losing to the outgoing president, Lee.
To a large extent, this year’s election — which generated the highest voter turnout in years and gave Park a decisive victory — followed the conservative tide observed three days earlier in Japan, where the establishment party was returned to power after a three-year hiatus, reinstalling former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The election of a woman throws a new dimension into the political arena in South Korea, which, despite its advanced economy, ranked only 108 of 135 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2012 report on gender equality. But some women tended to be dismissive of Park as just another in a long line of Asian daughters and widows who have risen in political office on the coattails of a powerful man — Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi of India, Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Corazon Aquino and Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines.
“She has done absolutely nothing for women. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and she doesn’t sympathize or understand the common people,” said Lee Kyeong-ah, who is in her early 40s and was watching television results with other dejected Moon supporters at a cafe.
Moon is a labor and human rights lawyer who came of age politically in the democratization struggles of the 1970s and 1980s and was briefly imprisoned as a student by the elder Park’s security services. He served as chief of staff for Roh Moo-hyun, the left-leaning president who killed himself in 2009 after leaving office.
Many South Koreans credit Park Chung-hee for transforming an impoverished, war-torn country into an industrial powerhouse, but are still wary of the way he usurped power and repressed the democracy movement.
During the campaign, Park apologized for her father’s repression of students and democracy activists, while still lauding his achievements in 18 years in power — a message she’s conveyed throughout her political career.
“Different times need different types of leadership,” Park said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2002. “My father was criticized as a dictator, but that should not overshadow his accomplishments in restructuring the country. He brought Korea out of 5,000 years of poverty. What he left unaccomplished was democratization of the system.”
Although voters were divided during the campaign, the candidates did not differ greatly on most issues. Both agreed on the need to lessen the gap between rich and poor, improve social services and reform the large conglomerates, chaebol, that dominate the economy.
North Korea surprisingly was not a major issue in the campaign, despite its successful rocket launch last week. Both candidates promised to repair relations, although Park emphasized that any South Korean assistance would require better behavior in return for aid.
“I think Park is a trustworthy woman,” said Chang Ki-chang, an 82-year-old retired school principal. “For decades, she’s proved to the people that she keeps her promises and that she has a good sense of leadership.”
In person, Park is gracious. While campaigning, she often appeared cold, with the stiff-upper lip of her father, who famously continued a speech after his wife was shot standing next to him at a theater. Park was attacked by a man with a box cutter in 2006 and, despite requiring 60 stitches, she resumed campaigning soon afterward.
“A few years ago, you could have dismissed her as a president’s daughter, but she has become a strong politician in her own right, less Benazir Bhutto than Angela Merkel,” said Hahm Sung-deuk, a political expert at Korea University, referring to the former Pakistani prime minister and the German chancellor, respectively. “She is not so strong on details, but she is good at unifying people and that will be important for Korea’s next leader.”
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Times staff writer Demick reported from Beijing and special correspondent Choi from Seoul.
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211e8b2407e01014d616d2e63770b3b4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-20-la-fg-congo-rwanda-20121221-story.html | U.S. under pressure over Rwanda involvement in Congo fighting | U.S. under pressure over Rwanda involvement in Congo fighting
GOMA, Congo — It was not the bullet lodged in the officer’s gut, or the botched operation he’d had in a field hospital, that made the case so difficult for doctors in a Goma hospital.
It was trying to save the life of a Rwandan officer injured in the recent Congolese battle for the eastern city when Rwanda’s government insisted it wasn’t involved in the Goma fighting.
Doctors were convinced the officer would die if he wasn’t sent home to Rwanda, where he could get better medical care.
“His family in the military in Rwanda came and took him from here,” Dr. Jo Lusi, founder of the Heal Africa Hospital, said in an interview last month. He said the hospital treats wounded people from all military groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The move apparently infuriated the Rwandan military. “They said, ‘Why did you allow this [officer] to go to Rwanda? If you take back wounded to Rwanda, it’s like proof,’ ” Lusi said. The Rwandan government has long denied it is supporting rebels in eastern Congo, its neighbor.
That assertion conflicts with the reports of outside observers. A November report by United Nations experts on the conflict in eastern Congo said Rwandan authorities had frequently facilitated the evacuation of casualties to Rwanda. It accused the regime of Rwandan President Paul Kagame of arming and commanding a group known as M23, associated with war crimes suspect Bosco Ntaganda. The British government said it had “compelling” evidence of such a link.
“The government of Rwanda continues to violate the [U.N.] arms embargo by providing direct military support to the M23 rebels, facilitating recruitment, encouraging and facilitating desertions from the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and providing arms, ammunition, intelligence and political advice,” the report says. “The de facto chain of command of M23 includes Gen. Bosco Ntaganda and culminates with the minister of defense of Rwanda, Gen. James Kabarebe.”
Analysts say that without Rwandan forces, M23 would not have made its recent territorial gains. In a report leaked this month, the U.N. experts alleged that Rwandan forces took part in M23’s October attack and capture of Goma.
“If it was difficult before, now it is almost impossible to justify this belligerence from Kagame’s government,” Congo analyst Jason Stearns said in a recent article in Foreign Policy magazine.
Critics and human rights groups have criticized the Obama administration’s support for Rwanda despite evidence of chronic interference in Congo, where conflicts have killed more than 5 million people. However, there are signs of change in Washington’s position. President Obama called Kagame this week and asked him to end support for any rebel groups in Congo, according to a White House statement.
Rebels tied to M23 have perpetrated atrocities and human rights abuses, including recruitment of child soldiers, among them girls, the burning of houses and the killing of hundreds of people in ethnically motivated attacks, according to Human Rights Watch and the U.N. report. Dozens of forced recruits and prisoners of war were executed by M23, the report alleges.
Human Rights Watch also reported in September that M23 rebels were involved in killings, rape and forced recruitment of child soldiers, and summary executions of men and boys who tried to escape forced recruitment. The group has called for sanctions against Rwandan officials it says are responsible for backing the movement.
Human rights advocates have strongly criticized Susan E. Rice, American ambassador to the U.N., saying she was among those most responsible for America’s support for a government that continues to fuel the Congolese conflict.
Rice, who is close to Kagame, met with British and French diplomats in New York in October to discuss the crisis in eastern Congo, according to another article in Foreign Policy magazine last month. She also strongly opposed a push by France’s U.N. ambassador, Gerard Araud, for the U.N. to implicate Rwanda as a supporter of the rebels and hold up the threat of sanctions, according to the article.
“Gerard, it’s eastern Congo,” Rice said, according to the article. “If it were not the M23 killing people, it would be some other armed groups.”
America has long held that it’s better to work with Kagame than to alienate him with sanctions, but critics see the chronic fighting in eastern Congo as proof that protecting the Rwandan president from international censure hasn’t worked. Obama made his call a week after 15 prominent think tanks and rights organizations wrote him saying that the policy of quiet diplomacy had failed to stop Rwanda from incursions into eastern Congo and support for rebel groups.
The U.N. Security Council has condemned M23 and issued sanctions against its Congolese leaders, including Ntaganda. Last month the council said further sanctions against M23 and its supporters would be considered — without naming Rwanda. Analysts accuse Rice of delaying the release of the U.N. report on the conflict and intervening to prevent a council resolution on the Congo crisis from naming Rwanda.
An October report by the International Crisis Group, a think tank, called on the international community to suspend assistance to Rwanda, which relies on foreign aid to support its budget, and to consider a weapons embargo against it.
The British government last month cut aid to Rwanda, citing evidence that the regime in Kigali, the capital, backed the M23 rebellion. The U.S. has also cut some military aid, but it continues to provide substantial assistance.
In June, Human Rights Watch reported that 200 to 300 Rwandans were recruited in their homeland in April and May and taken across the border to fight alongside M23 forces. “Rwandan military officials have continued to recruit by force or under false pretenses young men and boys, including under the age of 15, in Rwanda to augment the M23’s ranks. Recruitment of children under age 15 is a war crime and contravenes Rwandan law,” it said in a later report, in September.
Rice’s intervention to protect Rwanda left Kagame’s government confident that international criticism would be minimal, according to a Rwandan official quoted in Stearns’ article.
“The question is not whether Rwanda is the Beelzebub or the savior of Central Africa; it is neither,” Stearns wrote. “But given the gravity of the crisis, and the significant support the United States was providing to the Rwandan government, simply giving Kigali a pass for repeated mass abuses was unacceptable and sent the wrong signal.”
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
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951f36c648469e0e3f8c86bab3fb68d8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-21-la-fg-wn-maya-doomsday-archaeologist-20121221-story.html | Maya ‘doomsday’ may actually be Sunday, archaeologist says | Maya ‘doomsday’ may actually be Sunday, archaeologist says
TULUM, Mexico – Hold on to your doomsday fever, folks, the Maya calendar date celebrated Friday as the “end of the world” might actually be off by two days – or a full year.
The end of the 13th baktun cycle of the so-called Long Count of the ancient Maya’s intricate, interlocking calendar system might correspond to Sunday, not Friday, said Carmen Rojas, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
As “end of the world” hype swept the globe Friday, scholars pointed out that the Maya calendar hasn’t been decoded enough to make exact correlations with the Gregorian calendar that we use.
Rojas stressed that the Maya not only calculated baktun cycles of 144,000 days, but also had systems that measured the marches of Venus and the moon. Other scholars note some Maya glyphs mark dates thousands of years further into the future.
In addition, calendar dates that Maya leaders recorded on pillars that survive to this day might have been modified over time to suit certain cultural or political interests of the day, Rojas said during a walk-through Thursday of the ruins of Tulum, a pre-Hispanic port city situated on a spectacular bluff overlooking coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea.
One such inconsistency leads some Maya scholars to believe the 13th baktun cycle ends on Sunday, while others say it might be off by a full year or more.
Dec. 21 “is not a relevant date for us. It is an accident that someone would take and pull it out,” said Rojas, a specialist in the archaeology of cenotes, a type of sinkhole. “If you look at a book of Maya epigraphy, there are so many dates that could be commemorated. The glyphs are also not so easily interpreted. It depends on the correlation that you use.”
Nonetheless, in recent days, tourists from around the world have flocked to the so-called Maya Riviera on the Caribbean coast of Mexico’s Quintana Roo state, leading to higher-than-normal occupancy at hotels and on flights arriving at Cancun’s international airport, local reports said. Many visitors say they are using the supposed end of the 13th baktun as an opportunity for spiritual reflection and cleansing.
In Guatemala, people are gathering at the Maya site of Tikal for ceremonies marking the end of the baktun cycle and the winter solstice, which does correspond to sunset on Friday. Separately, highland Maya tied to the indigenous rebel army known as EZLN in Mexico’s state of Chiapas have mobilized and occupied at least five towns, reports said.
As tourists arriving on packed buses swarmed the Tulum site on Thursday, one visitor said she came to the region to get married at a nearby resort -- just in case.
“The end of a cycle is the end of a cycle, there are obviously translation issues,” said Rhonda Church, a visitor to Tulum from San Marcos, Texas. “I find it interesting.”
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cddbcce41072f3389082de680f3fdfdd | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-dec-22-la-fg-syria-violence-20121223-story.html | 6 die in Syria car bombing; gunman slays state journalist | 6 die in Syria car bombing; gunman slays state journalist
BEIRUT — A car bomb exploded in eastern Damascus on Saturday, an insurgent spokeswoman said, and the Syrian government reported that a gunman killed a state television journalist in the capital.
The car bomb exploded in the capital’s Kaboun area and left six people dead and 10 wounded, an opposition spokeswoman in Damascus identified as Lena Shami said by Skype.
There was no way to independently confirm the death toll.
The official Syria Arab News Agency also reported the bombing, blaming terrorists, the government’s usual description of rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad. Shami blamed the bombing on the government, which she said was targeting the area’s Sunni residents. Sunnis make up a majority of the nation’s population and also of the rebellion.
Meanwhile, a Syrian state television cameraman was slain outside his home in Damascus, SANA reported.
Haidar Smoudi was the ninth state-employed journalist killed by “armed terrorist groups,” the news agency said. There was no claim of responsibility in the shooting, but anti-government groups have been suspected of carrying out attacks on state-employed journalists.
The 21-month-old rebellion has claimed as many as 40,000 lives, according to the opposition. A United Nations panel recently described the conflict as increasingly sectarian and gave details of abuses by both government forces and rebels.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, an activist with the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition group, denounced the killing of Smoudi.
“We condemn completely the targeting of unarmed journalists who are considered pro-regime, just as we condemn the killing of any unarmed civilian, no matter their affiliation,” he said.
On the diplomatic front, Russia, seen as one of Syria’s chief supporters, indicated yet again that it was distancing itself from Assad. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters late Friday that Moscow would not be opposed to any country offering Assad asylum, the Associated Press reported.
“If there is anyone willing to provide him guarantees, they are welcome,” Lavrov told reporters on a plane returning from a Russia-European Union meeting in Brussels. “We would be the first to cross ourselves and say: ‘Thank God, the carnage is over!’ If it indeed ends the carnage, which is far from certain.”
The remarks followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments Thursday making it clear that Russia saw Syria’s stability, not “the fate of the Assad regime,” as its priority.
ned.parker@latimes.com
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