May Asaki Ishimoto dies; created costumes for ballet stars

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By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 17, 2010; C07

When May Asaki graduated from high school, her parents tried to find her a husband. They turned to traditional Japanese marriage brokers in their home town of Hanford, Calif., but their daughter -- independent and resourceful from an early age -- turned down the first three men she met.

"When suitor number four appeared," she wrote in an unpublished memoir she completed last year, "I felt sorry for my parents so I closed my eyes and said I would marry him."

Much to her relief, however, she found herself rejected by the prospective groom. His family had concluded that the slight and cultured May Asaki would not make a suitable wife for a chicken farmer.

Her mother quietly arranged for her to move to Los Angeles to attend a fashion and dressmaking school. May Asaki had been sewing for most of her life and designed her first dress, for a younger sister, when she was 12. In high school, she made clothes for her teachers.

Decades later, her skills as a seamstress would launch her on a globetrotting career with some of the greatest ballet stars in the world, but at 22 she was still living at home with her parents.

On Dec. 7, 1941, she went to a matinee at the only movie theater in Hanford. When she came out, there was an odd commotion in the street, and May learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

"I didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was," she wrote in her memoir, "but I was angry that Japan had attacked us."

Her Japanese-born parents had been in the United States for more than 25 years, but they were fearful and distraught. Her father dug a hole in the back yard and burned everything from Japan: books, letters, even clothing.

"When the fire was set," May recalled in her memoir, "we watched our possessions burn and I wept."

On May 8, 1942 -- May Asaki's 23rd birthday -- she and her family were loaded into the back of an Army truck and sent to a detention center. They were allotted one suitcase each.

May, who was the second oldest of 11 children, spoke only rudimentary Japanese and had known no home but California. Her older brother volunteered for the Army the day after Pearl Harbor, but his patriotism didn't help her family. U.S. authorities considered Americans of Japanese descent to be potential enemies during World War II, and the Asaki family eventually ended up at an internment camp in a snake-infested swamp in Arkansas. Within six months, May's mother was dead at 48.

"My older brother was serving in the U.S. Army while our family was incarcerated as criminals," May wrote in her memoir, "the stress of which was too great for our mother to bear."

The only good thing to be said for May's two years of captivity was that she met Paul Ishimoto, whom she married in April 1944. Three months later, when their internment camp was closed, they moved to Washington. The federal government gave them $25 apiece to start a new life.

Mrs. Ishimoto made shirts for her husband, who had gone from a prisoner of the United States to a member of its wartime spy agency, the Office of Strategic Services. She sewed slipcovers on the side and made outfits for her daughter's ballet class. When the dance teacher joined the National Ballet, Mrs. Ishimoto was hired to make costumes for the newly formed company.

By trial and error, she taught herself to make tutus and other dance outfits. They had to be lightweight and flexible, but they also required an almost architectural structure to withstand the rigors of ballet. She created hundreds of costumes during her eight years with the National Ballet and devised a novel way to adjust them to fit dancers of different sizes. When she left in 1970, it took three people to replace her.

She planned to return to her life as the mother of four children, but her work with Dame Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and other world-famous dancers was already renowned in the ballet world.

In 1971, Mrs. Ishimoto received a call asking whether she could take a temporary assignment from the New York City Ballet, led by the acclaimed choreographer George Balanchine. Two years later, she moved to the American Ballet Theatre, often considered the country's finest classical dance troupe. As wardrobe mistress, she organized hundreds of costumes and instituted a set of inviolable rules, the most of important of which were that no one could smoke, eat, drink or sit while in costume.

"Dancers take it out on the costumes, like the baby kicking the dog," she told Newsday in 1989.

She was backstage at every performance. On her days off, she searched for the fabrics, buttons and brocades that she would stitch into exquisite costumes. One of her tutus, which she made for dancer Marianna Tcherkassky, is in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History.

Mrs. Ishimoto had to manage more than just costumes -- she had to deal with fragile egos, as well. In time, she learned to ignore temperamental dancers who blamed a poor performance on a costume or who threatened not to take the stage unless an alteration was made at once.

In her own way, May Ishimoto became almost as much a legend at ABT as Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Gregory, Mikhail Baryshnikov and the other ballet stars she worked with.

When she died of a heart ailment on Nov. 20 at age 90, Baryshnikov sent a note to her daughter Mary Ishimoto Morris, a former Washington Post Book World editorial assistant: "Her quiet spirit and dedication to the theater were reminders to every ABT dancer that beauty is found in the smallest details . . . a bit of torn lace, a loose hook and eye, a soiled jacket -- these were her opportunities to pour energy into an art form she loved, and we were the richer for it."

Mrs. Ishimoto, who lived in Chevy Chase, commuted to New York for the 17 years she was with ABT. Her husband worked as a translator for the State Department and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He died in 1997.

In addition to her daughter Mary, of Laurel, survivors include three other children, Norman Ishimoto of San Francisco, Janet Ishimoto of Silver Spring and Roger Ishimoto of Bethesda; four sisters, Fumi Inada of Gilroy, Calif., Aiko Imagawa of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Koko Wittenburg of Bethesda and Yo Seltzer of Silver Spring; four brothers, Sam Asaki of Huntington Beach, Calif., Jack Asaki of Lake Forest Keys, Calif., Steve Asaki of Stanton, Calif., and Goro Asaki of Pasadena, Md.; nine grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Ishimoto retired from the ABT in 1990 and took up line dancing, swimming, bowling and golf. She played in a hand-bell choir, attended Palisades Community Church in the District and traveled the world.

There was one thing she didn't do in retirement, though. She put down her needle for good and never sewed another stitch.

Death in Detention: Russia's Prison Scandal

by Amy Knight

Nataliya Magnitskaya, the mother of Sergei Magnitsky, holding a portrait of him and letters he sent to her from jail, Moscow, November 30, 2009 (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Images)

The horrors of Soviet prisons and labor camps were described vividly in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Yevgenia Ginzburg’s Into the Whirlwind, and later, by the Soviet dissident and former political prisoner Anatoly Marchenko, in his 1969 memoir, My Testimony. To judge from a disturbing new report about the tragic death of 37-year-old lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in late November, Russia’s current penal system is almost as bad as it used to be.

As was the case under Stalin and his successors, the treatment of prisoners reflects the deeper problems of a politicized law enforcement system that routinely disregards human rights. Now, the Magnitsky case seems to have persuaded Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to begin to address these problems—though his powerful Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Abdurrahman Wahid, Former Indonesian President, Dies at 69

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JAKARTA -- Former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, a key religious moderate and spiritual leader of one of the world's largest Muslim organizations, died on Wednesday aged 69.

Mr. Wahid, an almost-blind and wheelchair-bound cleric whose health had deteriorated sharply in recent years, died in a central Jakarta hospital, an aide said. The cause of death was not immediately known but Mr. Wahid has suffered regular health problems in the past decade since suffering a near-fatal stroke.

As head of the Nahdlatul Ulama, an Islamic organization with 40 million members founded in 1926 by his paternal grandfather, Mr. Wahid came to be seen as a key ally of the West in its ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism.

He fought to keep the NU out of politics in the 1980s and 1990s at a time when Muslim organizations across the Middle East and Asia were agitating to implement Islamic Shariah laws.

"He was against political Islam as a concept," said Robin Bush, the Indonesia country representative for the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based think tank. "He was one of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of Islam in Indonesia. It's a huge loss."In recent years, Indonesia has experienced a rise in more conservative forms of Islam. A number of local governments passed Shariah laws earlier this decade and homegrown terrorists have launched attacks on Western hotels and embassies, as well as the resort island of Bali.

But a large majority of Indonesia's 240 million people remain moderates who lean more toward Mr. Wahid's vision, and his death is unlikely to open the door to Islamists, analysts say. The current leaders of NU lack Mr. Wahid's charisma and remain wedded to his moderate and secular views, as do most politicians from other Muslim-based parties, Ms. Bush said.

Mr. Wahid, who was widely known by his nickname Gus Dur, embodied the nation's syncretic religious traditions, which meld more austere Middle Eastern strands of Islam with older Hindu and animistic traditions. Mr. Wahid himself was a descendent of an old Hindu royal family, and enjoyed being irreverent about Islamic traditions. He said he disliked his time in the 1960s studying at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's premier seat of learning, because of the dull rote-learning of verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book.

But Mr. Wahid ended up -- against his better instincts -- entering politics, a decision that clouded his legacy.

His term as president between 1999 and 2001 after the fall of authoritarian president Suharto in 1998 disappointed many of his followers. Although Mr. Wahid worked to roll back the role of the military in political life and to decentralize power to Indonesia's far-flung provinces, his administration was frequently chaotic, characterized by unpredictable cabinet reshuffles and allegations of nepotism in the appointment of government positions.

Mr. Wahid's presidency was also wracked by concerns about his health after he suffered a stroke shortly before assuming office.

His spell in office ended with his impeachment for alleged corruption in the alleged misappropriation of state funds. Mr. Wahid was forced to step down, but denied any wrongdoing and said the impeachment was politically motivated by Suharto-era figures vying to return to power.

Mr. Wahid said he was a reluctant politician pushed in to the arena by other leaders in NU. He defended his move by saying the National Awakening Party, which he founded in 1999 before running for president, was a secular-minded organization that admitted non-Muslims.

In recent years, Mr. Wahid lost control of the National Awakening Party amid bitter infighting among members. More recently, he founded the Wahid Institute, which promotes moderate Islam and his headed by his daughter.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com

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Attack Puts Afghan Leader and NATO at Odds

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — The killing of at least nine men in a remote valley of eastern Afghanistan by a joint operation of Afghan and American forces put President Hamid Karzai and senior NATO officials at odds on Monday over whether those killed had been civilians or Taliban insurgents.

In a statement e-mailed to the news media, Mr. Karzai condemned the weekend attack and said the dead had been civilians, eight of them schoolboys. He called for an investigation.

Local officials, including the governor and members of Parliament from Kunar Province, where the deaths occurred, confirmed the reports. But the Kunar police chief, Khalilullah Ziayee, cautioned that his office was still investigating the killings and that outstanding questions remained, including why the eight young men had been in the same house at the time.

“There are still questions to be answered, like why these students were together and what they were doing on that night,” Mr. Ziayee said.

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A senior NATO official with knowledge of the operation said that the raid had been carried out by a joint Afghan-American force and that its target was a group of men who were known Taliban members and smugglers of homemade bombs, which the American and NATO forces call improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s.

According to the NATO official, nine men were killed. “These were people who had a well-established network, they were I.E.D. smugglers and also were responsible for direct attacks on Afghan security and coalition forces in those area,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.

“When the raid took place they were armed and had material for making I.E.D.’s,” the official added.

Senior American military officials cautioned that such episodes tended to be complex and that because of the anger about civilian casualties, Mr. Karzai was under enormous pressure to speak out quickly, sometimes before investigations were complete. NATO will investigate the killings in conjunction with Mr. Karzai’s staff, the official said.

But the conflicting accounts and Mr. Karzai’s public statements underlined the tensions over civilian casualties that have become among the most contentious between the Afghan president and his international backers, as well as one of the most politically fraught for Afghans.

Several members of Parliament from Kunar, as well as neighboring Nangahar and Laghman Provinces, walked out of a parliamentary session on Monday to show their anger over the deaths. They said that 10 people had been killed and that all were civilians.

“When this story first broke, the local officials were adamant that they were all Taliban” until several members of Parliament from the area called President Karzai, the NATO official said.

The deaths occurred in the village of Ghazi Khan, in the rugged Narang Valley, a rural area difficult to reach. The Taliban are active in much of the province, along with numerous wood and arms smugglers and gem traders.

While some conventional American forces are deployed in Kunar, in the more remote areas most operations are carried out by Special Forces.

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The governor of Kunar, Fazullah Wahidi, said that “the coalition claimed they were enemy fighters,” but that elders in the district and a delegation sent to the remote area had found that “10 people were killed and all of them were civilians.”

A NATO spokesman had no comment on the killings and said that no NATO forces were operating in the area.

Attacks using homemade bombs killed one American service member on Friday and another on Saturday in southern Afghanistan.

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Iran protesters killed, including Mousavi's nephew

Four protesters have been killed amid violence between anti-government crowds and police in Iran's capital, Tehran.

Opposition sources said the nephew of former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was among those killed when police opened fire.

A senior police official said three people had died in accidents, the fourth was hit by a bullet, but police were not carrying weapons.

Opposition websites also reported four deaths in Tabriz, north-western Iran.

There is no confirmation.

It is almost certainly the worst loss of life in protests since the disputed result of June's presidential election sparked days of clashes.

On Sunday, opposition parties had urged people to take to the streets as the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura reached a climax.

People were chanting "Khamenei will be toppled", opposition sources said, a reference to Iran's Supreme Leader.

In pictures: Tehran clashes

Thousands of demonstrators are reported to have taken part in the protests, in defiance of official warnings.

Initial reports from Tehran said the security forces fired in the air to disperse the protests.

Police sources, quoted by the Iranian Fars news agency, denied this, saying foreign media were exaggerating reports of unrest.

But state television later acknowledged there had been several fatalities, and Iranian police said they had arrested 300 people in Tehran.

Iran's deputy police chief Ahmad Reza Radan, speaking on state television, said the death of the person hit by a bullet was being investigated.

Of the other three fatalities in Tehran, according to Mr Radan, one had fallen off a bridge and the other two had died in car accidents.

Although there were deaths in the immediate aftermath of the disputed elections and protests in June, fatalities since then have been rare.

Mr Mousavi was at the hospital where his nephew Seyed Mousavi was taken after being fatally shot in the heart at Enghelab Square.

ANALYSIS Jon Leyne, BBC News Tehran correspondent The opposition hoped for a massive day of demonstrations, and they have managed that beyond their expectations. Despite attempts by the security forces to disperse them, the protesters eventually took over a large section of central Tehran, leaving the police watching from the sidelines. And there are similar reports from across the country. For much of the morning there was a series of violent confrontations. Witnesses described how opposition supporters attacked the police with their bare hands, and the police eventually opened fire directly on the crowd. The size of the demonstrations, and the death of a number of protesters, could dramatically change the nature and the intensity of the confrontation. But neither side has a clear strategy of what to do next. The opposition is leaderless. The government is still pretending there are just a handful of troublemakers. From day to day, it is not clear how the crisis will develop.

The security forces clearly have to tread a fine line between not appearing weak but also not provoking opposition protesters, says Siavash Ardalan of BBC Persian TV.

Police helicopters were seen flying over central Tehran as clouds of black smoke billowed into the sky, reports said.

On the ground, the security forces clashed with protesters trying to reach central Enghelab Square, witnesses said.

Protesters were chanting, "This is the month of blood", and calling for the downfall of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to opposition websites.

At the same time, crowds of pro-government demonstrators marched on Enghelab Street to voice support for Ayatollah Khamenei, witnesses said.

Protests were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and nearby Najafabad.

The French foreign ministry said it condemned the "arbitrary arrests and the violent actions committed against simple protesters who came to defend their right to freedom of expression and their desire for democracy."

The French government has continued to lobby the Iranian authorities to release a French university lecturer who was charged with spying during the election. Clotilde Reiss remains in Tehran, and last appeared in court on 23 December.

Disputed election

Tensions have risen in Iran since influential dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri died a week ago aged 87.

Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have sought to use Shia religious festivals this weekend to show continued defiance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

There were chaotic scenes as forces and protesters clashed

Denied the right to protest, the opposition chose the highly significant festival of Ashura when millions of Iranians traditionally go onto the streets for ceremonies and parades, BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne says.

The festival mourns the 7th Century death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Iranian television had live coverage of the Ashura ceremonies, including those in Tehran attended by President Ahmadinejad.

Mr Mousavi came second in the June election, and anger at the result saw mass protests in Tehran and other cities that led to thousands of arrests and some deaths.

Mr Mousavi has said the poll, that returned Mr Ahmadinejad to power, was fraudulent.

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NST Online - Abused Indonesian maid dies

Image by Dude Crush via Flickr

2009/10/26

KUALA LUMPUR, Mon: An Indonesian maid who was allegedly severely beaten by her Malaysian employers, and then bound and locked up in a toilet for two days, has died in hospital, police said today.

A night market vendor and his wife have been arrested over the abuse of 36-year-old Mautik Hani from Surabaya, in the latest in a series of cases that have prompted Indonesia to temporarily ban sending domestic workers here.

Malaysia and Indonesia are negotiating a deal on salaries and conditions aimed at preventing mistreatment of maids, who currently have no legal safeguards on their working conditions.

“I can confirm that Mautik Hani has died in hospital,” district police chief Mohamad Mat Yusop said.


“We have to wait for the hospital’s report on her cause of death before deciding on the next course of action regarding her employers. They are still being detained,” he added.

Hani was rescued from her employers’ home a week ago. She was found by another Indonesian cleaner hired to replace her who noticed a foul smell coming from a locked bathroom.

Police said that when she was found she was tied up around her arms and legs, and was bruised all over her body.

Among her injuries were a serious wound to the right leg that exposed the bone.

It was that reported Hani had been abused by her employers almost daily during the two months she worked at their home.

Ben Ali, 82, Whose Chili Bowl Became a D.C. Landmark, Dies - washingtonpost.com

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Chili Bowl Founder Satisfied Craving for Food, Friendship

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 9, 2009

If the rest of the world sees Washington as a place of large monuments and gleaming public buildings, many of the people who actually live in the city build their lives around smaller, more humble institutions. For them, one of the most important addresses in town is Ben's Chili Bowl, a simple diner famous for its down-home menu of chili, half-smokes and fries.

Ben Ali, who founded the restaurant in 1958 and created its unmatched chili recipe, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at his home in the District. He was 82.

His family-run diner on U Street NW has been one of the most enduring institutions of Washington, a place where families meet after church and where night owls come to talk, flirt and, not least, eat.

The landmark eatery opened when U Street was the city's glittering "Black Broadway," a strip of nightclubs and theaters that catered to Washington's black middle class and helped define the city's pulse and taste. It became a steadfast symbol of Washington's perseverance through good times and bad, feeding the dignitaries who came to Washington as well as the ordinary folks who call the District home.

In a statement, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty called Ben's Chili Bowl "one of the greatest treasures in the District of Columbia."

On Jan. 10, the restaurant received perhaps its greatest publicity boost when Fenty and president-elect Obama dropped by for a half-smoke -- a smoked sausage that is often called the signature food of Washington. Mindful of a sign that warned, "Who eats free at Ben's: Bill Cosby. No one else," Obama paid for his $12 tab with a $20 bill, leaving the change as a tip. The president's name has been added to Cosby's as the only patrons allowed to dine without paying.

Mr. Ali, a Trinidadian immigrant who had studied dentistry at Howard University, tried several careers before opening the diner with his Virginia-born fiancee, Virginia Rollins, on Aug. 22, 1958. They were married seven weeks later.

He thought Washington might be hungry for the kind of spicy dishes he had known while growing up in the Caribbean and cooked up the first batches of chili on his own. His recipe remains a closely guarded family secret.

At first, the chili was served only atop hot dogs, hamburgers and half-smokes. Mr. Ali's chili topping proved so popular that he began to serve it in bowls. This March, Bon Appétit magazine ranked Ben's chili as the best in America.

"No reasonable discussion of great chili joints can take place without mention of this U Street institution, open since 1958," Andrew Knowlton wrote in the magazine.

Michael Stern, who with his wife, Jane, might be the country's foremost expert on down-home food, has called Ben's half-smoke "sensational" and the chili "positively addictive."

But it wasn't merely the food that made Ben's Chili Bowl a local institution. In its early days, residents of the surrounding Shaw neighborhood sat alongside entertainers Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Redd Foxx, and Ben's became a favorite late-night gathering place. Bill Cosby became a loyal customer in 1959, when he was in the Navy, and later courted his wife, former University of Maryland student Camille Hanks, at Ben's.

In 1968, when riots and fires devastated swaths of downtown Washington, the offices of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were across the street from the Chili Bowl. Mr. Ali was able to keep his restaurant open during the height of the unrest, serving protesters, police officers and firefighters alike. According to his family, Mr. Ali used a bar of soap to write "Soul Brother" on the window. The restaurant was untouched through the riots.

As the neighborhood deteriorated and other businesses shut down throughout the 1970s and '80s, Ben's Chili Bowl stayed open, but with shorter hours. As drug dealing proliferated nearby, Virginia Ali told The Washington Post in 2003, the restaurant stopped selling cakes and pies because addicts were drawn in by the sweets. The D.C. police conducted surveillance on drug dealers from an upstairs window in the restaurant.

After construction began on Metro's Green Line in the 1980s, Ben's Chili Bowl sat above a 60-foot crater and was one of the few active businesses on the street. The restaurant was reduced to only two employees, besides Mr. Ali's family, yet it continued to attract a loyal and international clientele.

After the Green Line opened in 1991, U Street became chic again, and Ben's Chili Bowl was at the center of the neighborhood's rebirth. Celebrities ranging from Shaquille O'Neal to Hillary Rodham Clinton began to show up, and Cosby sang the restaurant's praises on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

When Ted Koppel retired in 2005 as host of the ABC News show "Nightline," his farewell party was held at Ben's. The restaurant was featured in the films "The Pelican Brief" and "State of Play." By the late 1990s, no D.C. politician would dream of running for office without dropping into Ben's for a ritual half-smoke and milkshake. Former mayor Anthony A. Williams mentioned the restaurant in an inaugural address and called Ben's the "restaurant where my constituents would most likely run into me."

Former mayor and current D.C. Council member Marion S. Barry first visited the Chili Bowl in 1966.

"I'll tell you how much of an institution Ben's Chili Bowl is," Barry told The Post in 1998. While visiting Accra, the capital of Ghana, Barry met the city's mayor, who was an alumnus of Howard University. "The first thing he said: 'Glad to have you in Accra. Is Ben's Chili Bowl still there?' "

Mahaboob Ben Ali was born June 13, 1927, and grew up in San Juan, Trinidad. His grandparents were from northern India.

In 1945, Mr. Ali came to the United States as a student.

"I came here to become a doctor," he said in a February interview with the News India-Times. "I knew Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wordsworth. I had studied in the British system. I could quote any of the poets."

While studying at the University of Nebraska, he said, he fell down an elevator shaft and broke his back. After months of convalescence, he attended four other colleges before graduating from Howard. He dropped out of Howard's dental school, then waited tables, ran an import business, sold real estate and drove a taxi. Even after opening Ben's Chili Bowl, he held other jobs, most notably as a motivational speaker, teaching sales skills to military officers and others.

In case any of his three sons took over Ben's Chili Bowl, Mr. Ali gave them all the middle name of Ben. His two younger sons, Kamal and Nizam, now operate the restaurant, a location at Nationals Park and a recently opened annex, Ben's Next Door.

In addition to his wife and sons, survivors include a son, Haidar Ali, a Los Angeles musician who performs under the name Sage Infinity; a brother; two sisters; and three grandchildren.

When Mr. Ali and Virginia Rollins were married October 10, 1958, she converted to his Muslim faith. Although Mr. Ali was reluctant to admit it in public, he firmly obeyed the Islamic prohibition on pork. Throughout his life, he never tasted the hot dogs and half-smokes that made his restaurant famous.

Carnegie Mellon researchers develop tool to rank death rates

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Have you ever wondered what the chances are that you may die in the next year? Would it be from illness or an accident? Is it something you can control? Or is it completely out of your hands?

A new Web site, www.DeathRiskRankings.com, developed by researchers and students at Carnegie Mellon University, allows users to query publicly available data from the United States and Europe, and compare mortality risks by gender, age, cause of death and geographic region. The Web site not only gives the risk of dying within the next year, but it also ranks the probable causes and allows for quick side-by-side comparison between groups.

Suppose you wanted to know who is more likely to die next year from breast cancer, a 54-year-old Pennsylvania woman or her counterpart in the United Kingdom.

“This is the only place to look,” said Paul Fischbeck, site developer and professor of social and decision sciences and engineering and public policy (EPP) at Carnegie Mellon. “It turns out that the British woman has a 33 percent higher risk of breast cancer death. But for lung/throat cancer, the results are almost reversed, and the Pennsylvania woman has a 29 percent higher risk.”

“Most Americans don’t have a particularly good understanding of their own mortality risks, let alone ranking of their relevant risks,” said David Gerard, a former EPP professor at Carnegie Mellon who is now an associate professor of economics at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.

The researchers found that beyond infancy, the risk of dying increases annually at an exponential rate. A 20-year-old U.S. woman has a 1 in 2,000 (or 0.05 percent) chance of dying in the next year. By age 40, the risk is three times greater; by age 60, it is 16 times greater; and by age 80, it is 100 times greater (around 1 in 20 or 5 percent). “The risks are higher, but still not that bad,” Gerard said. “At 80, the average U.S. woman still has a 95 percent chance of making it to her 81st birthday.”

Source: Carnegie Mellon University (via EurekAlert)

Hat tip: PW

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Inside Indonesia - W.S.Rendra (1935-2009)

The peacock is no more

Barbara Hatley

Rendra (wearing white T-shirt) and other members of Bengkel Theatre in 1976 rehearsing outside Rendra’s home in the kampung of Ketanggungan, Yogyakarta, where Bengkel had its base Barbara Hatley

On Thursday 6 August W.S. Rendra, the renowned dramatist and poet, famed for his flamboyant, strutting ways as well as his huge literary talent and bold, anti-authoritarian political positions, passed away in Jakarta.

Rendra was a controversial figure, and opinions differed about some of his political and personal choices. But no-one who ever saw him perform in a play or read his poetry could doubt his amazing acting talent and magnetic personal charisma. No-one who knew the arts scene in Yogyakarta in the 1970s when his Bengkel theatre was active there could deny the centrality of his presence to the cultural life of the city. The impact of his model of theatre, politically-critical and closely tied to its social and cultural context, has been enormous, shaping the course of modern Indonesian theatre until today. His poetry too, from the early free-flowing ballads to the extended political reflections of later years, presented a distinctive and powerful voice that was influential for many.

Born in 1935 in Solo, from 1955 to the early 1960s Rendra attended Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. In 1964 he was awarded a scholarship from the American Academy of Dramatic Art and spent three years studying in the USA. When he first returned to Indonesia in 1967 he performed to startled audiences abstract, non-linear, virtually wordless dramas, termed mini kata, Indonesian responses to the Western avant garde theatre of the time. Then he settled into the pattern of play writing and theatre production which was to become his trademark, an eclectic mix of regional cultural traditions with influences from foreign sources.

First there were Javanese-style adaptations of Western classics, then original plays in which settings and dramatic styles become more and more explicitly Javanese/Indonesian, and the references to corrupt powerholders and social injustice clearly locally-based. After 1974 a government ban put a stop to Bengkel’s performances in Yogyakarta, although their outdoor rehearsals for shows in other cities drew keen audiences. On two occasions when the prohibition was lifted, first in 1977 for a performance of Sekda (The Regional Secretary) and then again in 1978 for Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga (The Struggle of the Naga Tribe), huge crowds of students and other youthful supporters roared with approval at each perceived jibe at state authority. Similar reactions from enthusiastic youthful crowds greeted Rendra’s readings of the poetry he was producing at this time, the savage portraits of greedy decadent leaders, confused, corrupted youth and suffering poor he called ’pamphlet poems’ sajak-sajak pamphlet. Rendra was giving voice to the shared sense of anger of young people who had vigorously supported the rise to power of the New Order but now felt betrayed by its corruption, repression and perceived lack of concern with social justice.

Huge crowds of students and other youthful supporters roared with approval at each perceived jibe at state authority

In mid-1978, after a bomb exploded during one his poetry readings at the Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre in Jakarta., Rendra was arrested and imprisoned for several months on the grounds that his activities threatened public order. After his release he was banned from public performance for seven years. When he re-established his Bengkel theatre as Bengkel Teater Rendra, in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta in 1985, it operated on different lines and in a very different social environment to the original Bengkel theatre in Yogya.

During the 1980s and 1990s Bengkel staged several large-scale performances and Rendra continued to hold dramatic, sell-out poetry readings. Over the last decade or so however, Bengkel Theatre has been more important for its support for other artists, providing a venue where young artists or smaller groups from the regions have been given the opportunity to perform their work. Rendra himself moved more into the role of grand old man of the literary world than the young iconoclast of earlier years. Yet it is the younger Rendra who will be remembered, the daring artist taking on Suharto and the military in his poems and plays, speaking out for a generation who felt silenced by their social and political circumstances.

His passing, along with that of Pramudya Ananta Toer three years ago, a completely different kind of artist but similarly larger than life, feels like the end of an era in both modern Indonesian culture and wider Indonesian history. During the long years of the New Order regime, Rendra kept up a spirit of cultural and political resistance that inspired a generation. For that alone he is assured of the honour and gratitude of those who come after him. ii

Barbara Hatley (Barbara.Hatley@utas.edu.au) is Professor Emeritus in the School of Asian Languages and Studies at the University of Tasmania, and author of Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage (NUS Press 2008).

See also an interview article Rendra speaks [Inside Indonesia 86: Apr-Jun 2006] by Susan Piper from when he toured Australia in 2005.

Inside Indonesia 97: Jul-Sep 2009

Baitullah Mehsud Dead, Aide Confirms

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, has been killed in a US missile strike, a Taliban commander and aide to Mehsud said Friday.

‘I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan,’ Kafayatullah told The Associated Press by telephone. He would not give any further details.

Earlier on Friday, three Pakistani intelligence officials said the militant commander had been killed in the missile strike and his body had been buried.

But one of the three said no intelligence agent had actually seen Baitullah Mehsud's body.

Intelligence sources have confirmed Baitullah’s death, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad, adding that authorities would travel to the site of the strike to verify his death.

‘To be 100 per cent sure, we are going for ground verification,’ Qureshi said. ‘And once the ground verification re-confirms, which I think is almost confirmed, then we'll be 100 per cent sure.’

A senior US intelligence official had earlier said there were strong indications that Mehsud was among those killed in Wednesday's missile attack, but he did not elaborate.

If confirmed, Mehsud's demise would be a major boost to Pakistani and US efforts to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Mehsud has al-Qaeda connections and has been suspected in the killing of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan viewed him as its top internal threat and has been preparing an offensive against him. For years, though, the US considered Mehsud a lesser threat to its interests than some of the other Pakistani Taliban, their Afghan counterparts and al-Qaeda, because most of his attacks were focused inside Pakistan, not against US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. That view appeared to change in recent months as Mehsud's power grew and concerns mounted that increasing violence in Pakistan could destabilise the country and threaten the entire region. But while Mehsud's death would be a big blow to the Taliban in Pakistan, he has deputies who could take his place. Whether a new leader could wreak as much havoc as Mehsud depends largely on how much pressure the Pakistani military continues to put on the network, especially in the tribal area of South Waziristan. The Pakistani intelligence officials said Mehsud was killed in Wednesday's missile strike on his father-in-law's home and that his body was buried in the village of Nardusai in South Waziristan, near the site of the strike. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. One official said he had seen a classified intelligence report stating Mehsud was dead and buried, but that agents had not seen the body since the area is under Taliban control. Interior Minister Rehman Malik had earlier told reporters outside Parliament he could confirm the death of Mehsud's wife but not of the Taliban leader himself, although information pointed in that direction. ‘Yes, (a) lot of information is pouring in from that area that he's dead, but I'm unable to confirm unless I have solid evidence,’ Malik had said. A security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said ‘about 70 per cent’ of the information pointed to Mehsud's being dead. Another senior Pakistani intelligence official said phone and other communications intercepts — he would not be more specific — had led authorities to suspect Mehsud was dead, but he also stressed there was no definitive evidence yet. An American counterterrorism official said the US government was also looking into the reports. The official indicated the United States did not yet have physical evidence — remains — that would prove who died. But he said there are other ways of determining who was killed in the strike. He declined to describe them. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on the matter publicly. A local tribesman, who also spoke on condition his name not be used, said Mehsud had been at his father-in-law's house being treated for kidney pain, and had been put on a drip by a doctor, when the missile struck. The tribesman claimed he attended the Taliban chief's funeral. Last year, a doctor for Mehsud announced the militant leader had died of kidney failure, but the reports turned out to be false. In Afghanistan, Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said Mehsud's fighters would cross the border into eastern Afghanistan occasionally to help out one of most ruthless Afghan insurgent leaders Siraj Haqqani. ‘He was an international terrorist that affected India, Pakistan and Afghanistan,’ Azimi said without confirming Mehsud was dead. In March, the State Department authorised a reward of up to $5 million for the militant chief. Increasingly, American missiles fired by unmanned drones have focused on Mehsud-related targets. Pakistan publicly opposes the strikes, saying they anger local tribes and make it harder for the army to operate. Still, many analysts suspect the two countries have a secret deal allowing them. Malik, the interior minister, said Pakistan's military was determined to finish off Pakistan's Taliban. ‘It is a targeted law enforcement action against Baitullah Mehsud's group and it will continue till Baitullah Mehsud's group is eliminated forever,’ he said. Pakistan's record on putting pressure on the Taliban network is spotty. It has used both military action and truces to try to contain Mehsud over the years, but neither tactic seemed to work, despite billions in US aid aimed at helping the Pakistanis tame the tribal areas. Mehsud was not that prominent a militant when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, according to Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for the tribal regions. In fact, Mehsud has struggled against such rivals as Abdullah Mehsud, an Afghan war veteran who had spent time in Guantanamo Bay. But a February 2005 peace deal with Mehsud appeared to give him room to consolidate and boost his troop strength. Within months of that accord, dozens of pro-government tribal elders in the region were gunned down on his command. In December 2007, Mehsud became the head of a new coalition called the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistan's Taliban movement. Under his guidance, the group killed hundreds of Pakistanis in suicide and other attacks. Analysts say the reason for Mehsud's rise in the militant ranks is his alliances with al-Qaeda and other violent groups. US intelligence has said al-Qaeda has set up its operational headquarters in Mehsud's South Waziristan stronghold and neighbouring North Waziristan. Mehsud has no record of attacking targets in the west, although he has threatened to attack Washington. However, he is suspected of being behind a 10-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January 2008 for plotting suicide attacks in Spain. Pakistan's former government and the CIA have named him as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of Benazir Bhutto. He has denied a role.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-intelligence-sources-have-confirmed-baitullah-death-fm-qureshi-qs-06

Corazon Aquino Dies; Ex-President of Philippines Led 'People Power' Revolution

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 1, 2009

Corazon Aquino, the unassuming widow whose "people power" revolution toppled a dictator, restored Philippine democracy and inspired millions of people around the world, died Saturday after a battle with colon cancer, her family announced. She was 76. Widely known as "Cory," the slight, bespectacled daughter of a wealthy land-owning family served as president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992, the first woman to hold that position.

She was widowed in 1983 when her husband, political opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., was assassinated upon his return from exile to lead a pro-democracy movement against authoritarian president Ferdinand E. Marcos. It was a popular revolt against Marcos after a disputed election that later enabled Corazon Aquino to assume power.

In her six tumultuous years in office in the fractious, strife-torn, disaster-prone archipelago, Aquino resisted seven coup attempts or military revolts, battled a persistent communist insurgency and grappled with the effects of typhoons, floods, droughts, a major earthquake and a devastating volcanic eruption. Her tribulations earned her the nickname "Calamity Cory."

As she dealt with those challenges, she took pride in restoring democratic institutions that had been gutted under Marcos's 20-year rule. And she presided over a series of relatively free elections, the dismantling of monopolies and an initial spurt of economic growth.

Her administration failed to make much headway in alleviating poverty, stamping out corruption or delivering basic services. It bequeathed her successor an economic slump marked by protracted, costly power failures that reflected inattention to the country's energy needs.

Despite the turmoil that dogged her presidency, Aquino oversaw the first peaceful transfer of power in the Philippines in 26 years. She returned to private life with relief, although she remained politically active.

She played a role in popular protests that led to the ouster of President Joseph Estrada in January 2001. She initially supported his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but increasingly turned against her in recent years, siding with opponents who accused Arroyo of vote-rigging and corruption.

Aquino's transition from housewife to president to respected elder stateswoman and democracy advocate represented a phenomenal metamorphosis for a self-effacing mother of five who, before being drafted to take on Marcos in 1986, had never before run for public office.

Born Jan. 25, 1933, in Tarlac Province, Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco grew up as the sixth of eight children in a family of wealthy landowners in the province about 70 miles north of the capital. After attending exclusive grade schools, she went to the United States in 1946 to continue her secondary education at Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia, Notre Dame convent school in New York and the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York.

There, in 1953, she earned a degree in French and mathematics. She returned to Manila to study law and met Benigno S. Aquino Jr., an aspiring politician whom she married in 1954. Survivors include their five children, Sen. Benigno S. Aquino III, Maria Elena A. Cruz, Aurora Corazon A. Abellada, Victoria Eliza A. Dee and Kristina Bernadette A. Yap; two brothers; three sisters; and a number of grandchildren.

For years she stayed in the background as the quiet, reserved, devoutly Catholic wife of the gregarious and ambitious Benigno Aquino, who was a governor and senator and seemed destined to become the Philippines' president until he was arrested in 1972 just hours after Marcos declared martial law.

He remained in prison until 1980, when Marcos allowed him to seek heart treatment in the United States. Corazon Aquino often described the next three years, when her husband was a fellow at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her family lived together in a Boston suburb, as the happiest in her life.

After Benigno Aquino returned to Manila in August 1983 and was assassinated by military men while being taken into custody at the airport -- a killing that Corazon Aquino maintained was ordered by Marcos -- the 50-year-old widow reluctantly became a public figure as she sought to keep her husband's ideals and memory alive. She gradually emerged as a unifying force for the splintered opposition, even as she repeatedly ruled herself out as a presidential candidate.

But when Marcos called a "snap election" for Feb. 7, 1986, in hopes of capitalizing on his foes' divisions and winning a new mandate, Aquino reluctantly agreed to run against him, acceding to the wishes of supporters who had gathered a million signatures on a petition for her candidacy.

In formally registering to run, she listed her occupation as "housewife." Indeed, her preparation for the post was probably best summarized by her comment to reporters several months earlier: "What do I know about being president?"

Clad in her trademark yellow -- evoking the yellow ribbons that had proliferated around Manila to mark her husband's return from exile -- Aquino proved to be a formidable, and fearless, campaigner. She vowed to "dismantle the dictatorial edifice" built by Marcos in his two decades in power, "eliminate the social cancer of graft and corruption" under his rule and hold him accountable for the murder of her husband.

In one hard-hitting speech shortly before the election, she warned Marcos, "Don't you dare frustrate the will of the Filipino people, because you will have an angry people on your hands."

Days before the vote, she told The Washington Post in an interview that many Filipinos were risking their fortunes and their lives to back her. "It's really a do-or-die situation now," she said. "So many have realized that this is our moment of truth, and they just have to give their all now or that chance may never come again."

Aquino fully expected Marcos to resort to election fraud if the vote did not go his way, but she relied on the axiom that, as one Marcos campaign official put it in a moment of candor, "mathematically, you can only cheat so much." And she vowed to lead massive demonstrations if the election was stolen from her.

Indeed, a rubber-stamp legislature officially proclaimed the reelection of Marcos to a new six-year term on Feb. 16, 1986, after a protracted vote-counting process marked by widespread fraud and violence. Aquino then launched a civil disobedience campaign to protest the result.

Six days later, a military mutiny led by followers of Marcos's defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, broke out in Manila. It was quickly joined by Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, a distant cousin of Marcos then serving as acting armed forces chief of staff. The mutineers declared support for Aquino, and the country's Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Jaime Sin, called the faithful into the streets to block any attack on them by Marcos's forces. Millions of Filipinos responded, giving birth to "people power."

Three days after the revolt began, Marcos was forced to flee the Malacañang presidential palace, where he had lived since taking office in December 1965. He eventually landed in Hawaii, where he died in 1989. Aquino took over as president, declaring that "the long agony is over."

One of her first acts was to have Malacañang fumigated. But even then Aquino refused to live or work there, preferring to hold office in a nearby guest house and opting to live in a modest home a block away. Initially, she even insisted that her motorcades stop at red lights -- until her security guards put an end to that egalitarian gesture.

The ouster of a dictatorship through nonviolent popular demonstrations became the model for democracy movements all over the world, and Aquino was named Time magazine's "Woman of the Year" for 1986. She was also the toast of Washington when she visited in September of that year.

When she addressed a joint session of Congress, her path into the chamber was strewn with yellow roses, and lawmakers were smitten by her commitment to democracy as she delivered an emotional appeal for aid.

"You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it," Aquino told the standing-room-only audience. "And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it." Within hours, the House responded by unexpectedly bypassing normal procedures and voting to approve a $200 million emergency aid package for the Philippines.

When then-Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) told her after the speech, "You hit a home run," Aquino replied without hesitation, "I hope the bases were loaded."

But the honeymoon soon began to sour, and Aquino was beset at home by increasing unrest, including a series of military coup attempts. After one of them, in August 1987, she displayed her combative streak by filing an unprecedented libel suit against a Manila newspaper columnist who wrote that she "hid under her bed" during the abortive revolt. She even took a reporter into her bedroom to show that it would have been impossible to hide under the bed, which sat on a platform.

"I don't want the soldiers of the republic to ever doubt for an instant that their commander-in-chef is a woman of courage that they look upon and respect," she said in explaining the lawsuit.

When her presidential term came to an end on June 30, 1992, it was with unmistakable relief that she turned over the reins to her elected successor, Ramos, her former defense secretary. In a last bit of symbolism to show she was returning to private life as an ordinary citizen, she drove away from Ramos's inauguration in a white Toyota she had purchased, shunning the government Mercedes available to her.

In a speech at the U.S. State Department in October 1996 to accept the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, Aquino explained her role and motives with characteristic modesty.

"I am not a hero like [Nelson] Mandela," she said, referring to the South African leader who spent 27 years as a political prisoner before becoming president. "The best description for me might, after all, be that of my critics who said: 'She is just a plain housewife.' Indeed, as a housewife, I stood by my husband and never questioned his decision to stand alone in defense of a dead democracy against an arrogant dictatorship enjoying the support of the United States."

She said she ruled out sharing power with the Philippine military because she wanted to "rebuild democracy" and "there was just no room for a junta" in her country.

"Perhaps the military were also envious that in the first year of my term, I ruled by decree," Aquino said in her speech. "This was necessary to abolish the rubber-stamp parliament, sequester stolen wealth, annul the Marcos Constitution, pare down the powers of the president and sweep the judiciary clean. Each law I promulgated diminished my powers until, with the last decree, I stripped myself of the power to legislate. Could I have trusted the military to share so much power with me?"

Her departure from office as "one of the proudest moments of my life," Aquino recalled. "I was stepping down and handing the presidency to my duly elected successor. This was what my husband had died for; he had returned precisely to forestall an illegal political succession. This moment is democracy's glory: the peaceful transfer of power without bloodshed, in strict accordance with law."