Starting Points

Sep 7, 2009

In Wake of Election Protests, Iranian Officials Canceling Major Ramadan Events - washingtonpost.com

Image by Nariman-Gh via Flickr

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 7, 2009

TEHRAN, Sept. 6 -- Iranian officials have canceled or downgraded major Shiite religious events during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, suggesting fear that the opposition might use them to stage protests.

A typically massive evening celebration scheduled for next weekend at the South Tehran mausoleum of the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was canceled "due to problems," the site's public relations department said in a statement.

A traditional speech by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, marking the end of Ramadan, meanwhile, was changed from a large venue to one that is much smaller, the Ettemaad newspaper, which is critical of the government, reported Sunday.

And in Qom, the nation's center for religious education, several famous clerics who silently support the opposition were told they had been barred from speaking at an event Wednesday in the city's most important shrine, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported.

Although there have been no mass demonstrations since July, the cancellations and venue changes show that Iranian leaders are still worried about protests by followers of the defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

The two men and their supporters say President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in the June 12 election was rigged, an allegation the government denies. Protests in June and July badly shook the government, but a massive crackdown has kept streets relatively quiet for more than a month.

In a statement released Saturday, Mousavi urged his followers to take on the "cheaters," while Karroubi has called for Iranians to protest on Sept. 18, when official demonstrations against Israel are planned.

"On Quds Day you will once again see the power of the people and realize which side the people support," he said last week, invoking the official name of the yearly demonstration, according to the Sarmayeh newspaper.

Former president Mohammad Khatami, a supporter of Mousavi, was scheduled to speak during religious ceremonies starting Wednesday at Khomeini's tomb, but has been barred from doing so. According to Ettemaad, millions of people were planning to attend. The event is organized annually by Khomeini's grandson Hassan, a 37-year-old cleric who supports Mousavi. He is the official custodian of the shrine.

Ahmadinejad's supporters among Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, prayer leaders and hard-line lawmakers have repeatedly called for the arrest of Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami, who they say are the leaders in a foreign-backed plot to bring down the government.

On Wednesday, in the most direct attack on Khatami to date, the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Ali Jafari, accused the former president of being one of the organizers of the protests and said they were targeted at Khamenei, the supreme leader. Jafari quoted what he said was the transcript of a phone conversation involving Khatami. "If we win," Jafari quoted Khatami as saying, "we reach a regime with a weakened, or without, a supreme leader." Jafari also said his forces had had information about a plot six months before the election.

On Sunday, Khatami struck back. "We are against those who, in the name of opposing Western liberalism, are trying to force people down their own preferred path with fascist methods and totalitarian ideas," Khatami said, according to Parlemannews, which is affiliated with the parliament faction controlled by his supporters. "I warn all the system's supporters to rebuild public trust before all chances are completely lost."

Japan's Health-Care System Has Many Advantages, but May Not Be Sustainable - washingtonpost.com

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 7, 2009

TOKYO -- Half a world away from the U.S. health-care debate, Japan has a system that costs half as much and often achieves better medical outcomes than its American counterpart. It does so by banning insurance company profits, limiting doctor fees and accepting shortcomings in care that many well-insured Americans would find intolerable.

The Japanese visit a doctor nearly 14 times a year, more than four times as often as Americans. They can choose any primary care physician or specialist they want, and surveys show they are almost always seen on the day they want. All that medical care helps keep the Japanese alive longer than any other people on Earth while fostering one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates.

Health care in Japan -- a hybrid system funded by job-based insurance premiums and taxes -- is universal and mandatory, and consumes about 8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, half as much as in the United States. Unlike in the U.S. system, no one is denied coverage because of a preexisting condition or goes bankrupt because a family member gets sick.

But many health-care economists say Japan's low-cost system is probably not sustainable without significant change. Japan already has the world's oldest population; by 2050, 40 percent will be 65 or older. The disease mix is becoming more expensive to treat, as rates of cancer, stroke and Alzheimer's disease steadily increase. Demand for medical care will triple in the next 25 years, according to a recent analysis by McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm.

Japan has a stagnant economy, with a shortage of young people that hobbles prospects for growth and strangles the capacity of the debt-strapped government to increase health-care spending. Without reform, costs are projected to double, reaching current U.S. levels in a decade, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

For generations, Japan has achieved its successes by maintaining a vise-like grip on costs. After hard bargaining with medical providers every two years, the government sets a price for treatment and drugs -- and tolerates no fudging.

As a result, most Japanese doctors make far less money than their U.S. counterparts. Administrative costs are four times lower than they are in the United States, in part because insurance companies do not set rates for treatment or deny claims. By law, they cannot make profits or advertise to attract low-risk, high-profit clients.

To keep costs down, Japan has made tradeoffs in other areas -- sometimes to the detriment of patients. Some are merely irritating, such as routine hour-long waits before doctor appointments. But others involve worrisome questions about quality control and gaps in treatment for urgent care.

Japanese hospitals experience a "crowding out" effect, with space for emergency care and serious medical conditions sometimes overwhelmed by a flood of patients seeking routine treatment, said Naohiro Yashiro, a professor of economics and health-care expert at International Christian University in Tokyo.

"Patients are treated too equally," he said. "Beds are occupied by less-urgent cases, and there are no penalties for those who over-use the system."

The government has largely been unable to reduce the length of hospital stays, which are four times as long in Japan as in the United States. Hospital doctors are often overworked and cannot hone specialized life-saving skills, according to recent reports by McKinsey. Statistics show that the Japanese are much less likely to have heart attacks than people in the United States, but that when they do, their chance of dying is twice as high.

There are shortages of obstetricians, anesthesiologists and emergency room specialists because of relatively low pay, long hours and high stress at many hospitals, doctors and health-care analysts said. Emergency room service is often spotty, as ER beds in many hospitals are limited and diagnostic expertise is sometimes lacking. In a highly publicized but not unprecedented incident, a pregnant woman complaining of a severe headache was refused admission last year to seven Tokyo hospitals. She died of an undiagnosed brain hemorrhage after giving birth.

"We are in a hospital desert at night," said Yashiro, citing insufficient pay incentives for the robust 24-hour staffing common at large U.S. hospitals.

Skilled doctors tend to leave Japanese hospitals for the higher pay and predictable hours of private clinics. There, they become primary-care doctors, making up for low treatment fees with astonishingly high volume, seeing patients in an assembly-line process that leaves little time for questions.

Toshihiko Oba had spent most of his medical career in hospitals. As an ear, nose and throat specialist, he worked 80-hour weeks for 13 years, with an annual salary of $100,000. The average salary for a hospital-based doctor in Japan is about $150,000, according to the Ministry of Health.

"The money was not so good and you have lots of responsibility and pressure," said Oba, 47.

Five years ago, he made a career change common for Japanese doctors at the pinnacle of their careers. He left the hospital and opened a private clinic, and now treats mainly colds and allergies.

In his office in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district, Oba works from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days a week. He said he works fast, typically treating 150 patients a day, usually for about three minutes each.

Volume has allowed him to increase his income severalfold, Oba said, although he declined to be specific. Most doctors in Japan who jump from hospitals to private clinics double their income, according to the Ministry of Health. Medical malpractice insurance in Japan is not a major expense for many doctors, in part because there are relatively few lawyers. Oba pays only about $1,000 a year.

One of the great strengths of Japan's health-care system -- the ability to see the doctor of one's choice and be seen quickly -- has become one of the greatest curses for controlling health-care quality and costs, experts here agree.

There is no gatekeeper for medical care or for hospital stays.

"The government has been trying for more than 20 years to put up gates," said Naoki Ikegami, professor of health policy and management at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo. "But we don't train general practitioners to be gatekeepers."

Japan also has about three times as many hospitals per capita as the United States does. The government has tried to limit hospital beds, but with little success because of institutional inertia and a cultural preference for in-patient treatment. New mothers in Japan often stay in a hospital five days after a routine delivery; in the United States, they rarely stay for more than one or two.

Japan's health-care system mixes socialism with individual responsibility and market forces. The government pays one-quarter of the total health-care bill, and employers and workers pay the rest through mandatory insurance.

"More than one-third of the workers' premiums are used to transfer wealth from the young, healthy and rich to the old, unhealthy and poor," Ikegami said.

Workers at major corporations pay about 4 percent of their salary to a company-based insurance provider. These premiums are limited to $6,000 a year, but the average salary worker pays $1,931, the government says. Job-based insurance in the United States costs the typical employee $3,354 a year, according to the U.S.-based National Coalition on Health Care.

In Japan, employers pay premiums that match each employee's contribution. In the United States, where health insurance is far more expensive, employers pay private insurers three or four times the amount contributed by each employee.

The self-employed and the unemployed in Japan must pay about $1,600 a year for insurance coverage. In addition, working-age patients are required to make a 30-percent co-payment for treatment and drugs -- the highest such fee in the world. But those payments tend to be relatively low because of the tight lid on costs. If the co-payment exceeds $863 in any month, it drops to 1 percent of additional medical bills.

Hana Mukai, a fashion merchandiser in Tokyo, said she cannot think of anything wrong with health care in Japan.

She takes her son Yugo, 4, to an ear, nose and throat specialist nearly every week during the cold and flu season. They go about 12 times a year, often when her son has a runny nose. She does not need to make an appointment, but has to wait about 75 minutes to see the doctor.

The doctor checks his ears, irrigates his nose and prescribes medicine. The visit usually lasts a few minutes, and it is free. There is supposed to be a co-payment, but Mukai's local ward government covers all medical costs for children, which is common in much of Japan. Mukai says she never buys over-the-counter drugs for Yugo, because prescribed drugs for children are also free.

As for her own health-care costs, she says they are either invisible or negligible. She has never checked to see how much she pays through payroll deductions for health-care premiums. The co-payment for doctor visits is insignificant, she says, since the total bill for most visits comes to less than $30, including drugs.

"I know my medical fee is going to be cheap, so I have never, ever thought about how much it will cost me to go to the doctor," said Mukai, 39.

The health of Mukai, her husband and her son -- and of nearly everyone in Japan -- also benefits from free annual checkups. Japan requires companies to pay for annual physicals for employees.

Local and national governments also push preventative care. Since Mukai is nearly 40, her local ward government has notified her that she can sign up for a comprehensive, and free, battery of tests. Doctors will examine her eyes and teeth, and they will test for colon, stomach and cervical cancer. She will also receive a free gynecological workup.

For her son, an internal medicine specialist and a dentist visit his public day-care center twice a year to conduct free examinations. Once a year at day care, he is examined at no cost by two other doctors for potential eye, nose and ear problems.

The health-care system, though, does not deserve all the credit for the relatively robust health of the Japanese. Diet and lifestyle are generally healthier than they are in the United States. There is less violent crime, fewer car accidents and much less obesity. Only about 3 percent of Japanese are obese, compared with more than 30 percent of Americans, according to the OECD.

Still, Western food has encroached on the diet and there are increasing numbers of sedentary, overweight Japanese. As part of the preventative focus of health care, the government is pushing back against obesity-related health problems -- known here as "metabolic syndrome" -- in ways that probably would astonish Americans.

There is compulsory obesity screening for 70 percent of the population. If people are found to be too fat around the waist, they are required to receive counseling on exercise and diet.

The law was passed three years ago, so it is too soon to know whether screening and counseling are effective. But health-care experts agree that the government has succeeded in making nearly everyone worry about fat, while thinking more about what they eat and how often they exercise.

It puzzles Mukai that the United States does not imitate the best parts of her country's health-care system, particularly preventive care, universal coverage and free treatment for children.

"If the Japanese can do it, why can't the Americans?" she said.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

Pace of Change Under Obama Frustrates Unions - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and STEVEN GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON — For eight years under George W. Bush, union officials barely set foot inside the White House. But 10 days after President Obama took office, the nation’s most powerful labor leaders mingled in the Blue Room, moments after the new president, a man they helped put there, signed a string of executive orders undoing Mr. Bush’s policies.

The mood was euphoric. “He walked in with the biggest smile,” James P. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said of Mr. Obama, “saying, ‘Welcome back to your White House.’ ”

Today that euphoria is giving way to a mixture of frustration and unease, as union leaders are growing concerned that the Obama White House has not delivered as much as they had expected. Some criticize him for not pushing hard enough or moving fast enough on their issues, while others blame the deep recession and Republican opposition for his failure to do more.

Mr. Obama has delayed a push for the unions’ No. 1 legislative priority, a measure to make it easier for workers to organize. He faces potential conflict with unions on trade, and on how fast to push for immigration reform. And on health care, friction between labor and the White House is suddenly spilling out into the open.

In response, Mr. Obama is renewing his courtship of the labor movement, whose members worked as foot soldiers in his campaign and spent August doggedly defending his health plan at town-hall-style meetings across the country. On Monday, the president will mark Labor Day by speaking at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. picnic in Cincinnati. During his visit, he is expected to name Ron Bloom, who heads the president’s automotive task force, to a second role in the administration as manufacturing czar. The next week, Mr. Obama will address the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Pittsburgh.

“He gets an A for effort, and an incomplete for results,” the incoming president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Richard L. Trumka.

While labor leaders, including the current A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, John J. Sweeney, say they remain extremely supportive of the president — especially his handling of the economic crisis — Mr. Trumka set off an uproar last week when he warned that unions would not support a health care bill that lacks a government-backed insurance plan. It was a shot across the bow to the White House, which is weighing whether to compromise on the so-called public option.

Another top union leader, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, cautioned that if Mr. Obama abandons the public option, “it will be harder to gin our people up on other issues.” Mr. McEntee said he had noticed a shift in sentiment even since July, when 14 union leaders spent 45 minutes in the White House Roosevelt Room with the president and top aides like David Axelrod.

“He said, ‘You’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with me’ — and I’m paraphrasing here — ‘I want you there, and I’m going to fight for you,’ ” Mr. McEntee said. “When we left, I think we were all on maybe not cloud nine, but cloud four. I shook hands with all the staff, Axelrod was there. This was the person we elected; this was our president with a voice. It felt good.” And now? Mr. McEntee paused. “Well,” he said, “not as good.”

Blue-collar workers have long been a little bit suspicious of Mr. Obama, who has never quite been able to demonstrate that he is one of them. Still, they stood strongly behind him once he became the Democratic presidential nominee, contributing money, running phone banks and knocking on doors in critical swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The two main labor federations, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win, said unions and their political action committees had spent nearly $450 million in the presidential race. The addition of Joseph R. Biden Jr. to the ticket as Mr. Obama’s running mate helped with his union bona fides. So did the endorsement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Today, Mr. Biden continues to play an important role as a link between the unions and the president. But Mr. Kennedy’s death is a significant loss, one that may force Mr. Obama to work that much harder to win union support for any health care compromise he might make, said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist.

“Ted Kennedy was an incredibly important Good Housekeeping seal of approval, and if he lent his prestige to whatever compromise Obama felt he had to make, that would mean an awful lot to people in the labor movement,” Mr. Garin said. Mr. Obama, he added, must “persuade labor unions and others that his commitment is to getting it right in the interest of the average working person.”

He may have an easier time with some than others. Mr. Hoffa, for instance, said the public option was not a make-or-break provision for him; he is open to legislation containing a “a trigger” to create a public plan if private efforts to expand coverage fail. Mr. McEntee, by contrast, dismissed the trigger idea as “not a real public option.”

Dennis Rivera, the point man on health care for the Service Employees International Union, said simply that unions would have to be flexible. “Politics is the art of the possible,” he said, adding that Mr. Obama’s “heart is in the right place.”

Still, there are tensions between unions and the White House on matters beyond health care. Trade is an especially contentious issue; unions are irked that Mr. Obama has backed away from his campaign pledge to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement. And the United Steelworkers, which represents tire workers, is pressing Mr. Obama to punish China now that the United States International Trade Commission has ruled that China is hurting American manufacturers by inundating the market with cheap tires.

Union leaders have also been patient with Mr. Obama, both on immigration (they want legislation offering a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants) and the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill to make organizing easier. In the July White House meeting, Mr. Obama made a strong pitch that health care should come first.

Labor leaders were willing to accept that strategy, said David E. Bonior, a former Michigan congressman who is the chairman of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, an umbrella group. But with Mr. Obama planning a major speech before Congress this week to lay out his priorities in a health bill, Mr. Bonior said, union members want reassurance that he will stick his neck out for their priorities.

“They don’t want him to leave it up to seven or eight committee chairmen,” Mr. Bonior said. “They want him to be the leader and to fight for this stuff.”

Europeans Seek to Shift Security Role to Afghan Government - NYTimes.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By JUDY DEMPSEY

BERLIN — The leaders of France, Germany and Britain called Sunday night for an international conference to work out a plan to shift responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghan government.

The call by the three governments, the largest contributors of troops to the war in Afghanistan after the United States, came as mounting military casualties and doubts about the mission there have fueled growing public opposition to the war in Europe.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman, Megan Mattson, said the department had no immediate comment on the proposed conference.

However, the proposal could increase tension in the Obama administration’s relationship with its most important European allies in Afghanistan. The strains were palpable over the weekend as a NATO investigating team continued its inquiry into how many civilians were killed in airstrikes last week aimed at two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban near the northern city of Kunduz.

A senior American military official said Sunday that the German commander in the north who ordered the airstrikes had relied largely on the assessment of a lone Afghan informant, who said that everyone at the scene was an insurgent. The informant’s role was reported Sunday by The Washington Post.

The tankers were hit after they became stuck trying to cross the Kunduz River before dawn on Friday. Local officials have said that 70 people or more died, but it was unclear how many were militants and how many were villagers who had dashed to siphon fuel from the trucks. Many bodies were burned beyond recognition, and villagers buried some in a mass grave before Western military investigators could examine the scene or the corpses.

The German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, defended the call for an airstrike on Sunday. “We had clear information that the Taliban had seized the fuel trucks about six kilometers away from our base in order to launch an attack against our soldiers in Kunduz,” he told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, tightened rules on airstrikes in June in the face of Afghan anger over high civilian casualties in NATO military operations. Questions have been raised about whether the call for the strike complied with those rules.

The proposed international conference, with its suggestion that key allies were looking for ways to reduce the number of their troops, could also complicate relations among allies. The United States, which has 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, is currently weighing whether to send more.

The proposal was announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain at a brief news conference here. A German government spokesman said that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had also signed on to the idea.

Mrs. Merkel said the conference would try to find a way for “much more responsibility to be taken by the Afghan government” for its own security. The conference should involve the United Nations and NATO, she said, and should take place “sometime this year” and after the new Afghan government is in place.

Afghans voted for a new government last month, but the election was marred by accusations of widespread fraud. Officials said it could be months before a winner was determined.

Opinion polls show that well over two-thirds of Germans oppose the Afghan mission, while Mr. Brown is coming under increasing pressure in Britain to justify the presence of its 9,000 troops there. Britain has suffered 212 deaths in the war.

Mrs. Merkel’s government has been criticized by other NATO countries for not doing enough to help defeat the insurgency because Germany’s 4,200 troops are restricted by the German Parliament in what they can do and where they can be deployed.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

South Africa’s Poor Demand Basic Services - NYTimes.com

By BARRY BEARAK

SIYATHEMBA, South Africa — This country’s rituals of protest most often call for the burning of tires, the barricading of streets and the throwing of rocks. So when the municipal mayor here went to address the crowd after three days of such agitation, the police thought it best to take him into the stadium in a blast-resistant armored vehicle.

Chastened by the continuing turmoil, the mayor, Mabalane Tsotetsi, known as Lefty, penitently explained that all of the protesters’ complaints would be given his full attention. But by then official promises were a deflated currency, and rocks and bottles were again flying as he retreated.

The reasons for this community’s wrath — unleashed first in late July and again briefly a month later — were ruefully familiar to many South Africans. “Water, electricity, unemployment: nothing has gotten better,” said Lifu Nhlapo, 26, a leader of the protests here in Siyathemba, a township 50 miles east of Johannesburg. “We feel an anger, and when we are ignored, what else is there to do but take to the streets?”

Civil unrest among this nation’s poor has recently gotten worldwide attention, and is often portrayed as unhappiness with South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma. Actually, these so-called service delivery protests have gone on with regularity for a long time. They vary in intensity — mild, medium and hot — and their frequency seems to rise and fall without a predictable pattern.

Oddly enough, the protests can be seen as a measure of progress as well as frustration. Since the arrival of democracy 15 years ago, the percentages of households with access to piped water, a flush toilet or a connection to the power grid have notably increased. Those people left waiting are often angry, and so far their ire has not usually been directed at the president — who has been able to use the protests to his political advantage — but at municipal officials they consider uncaring, incompetent and corrupt.

“No one wants to be worse off than their neighbor,” said Kevin Allan, managing director of Municipal IQ, a company that monitors the performance of local government. “People get impatient.”

The places most ripe for unrest are neither the poorest communities nor those with the longest backlog in setting up services, he said. Most commonly, the protests are rooted in informal settlements that have sprung up near urban areas, where the poor who do not receive government services rub up against the poor who do.

Whatever the causes for the protests, the governing African National Congress appears to take them quite seriously. Party leaders have been dispatched to hot spots, where they usually end up investigating their fellow party members. Local government, like national government, is largely dominated by the A.N.C.

In Siyathemba, the emissary from on high was Mr. Zuma himself. On the afternoon of Aug. 4, his helicopter set down on a rocky soccer field, with bodyguards and a BMW waiting. He eventually proceeded to the town of Balfour, the seat of municipal government. Mayor Tsotetsi, at home at the time, rushed back to the office to meet his unannounced visitor. Commentators had a good laugh about that, presuming the mayor a goldbrick who likes to knock off early.

“There is no place that will be hidden from me,” Mr. Zuma announced, leaving the impression he was now a sort of caped superhero who would pop up wherever malingerers were not earning their government paychecks.

Though the president also denounced lawbreaking by protesters, his visit seemed an endorsement to those here who had vented their anger. “Zuma agrees with us, that all these mayors and councilors who are not performing have to go,” said Zakhele Maya, 26, another leader of the demonstrations.

Siyathemba has a population of about 6,000 and an unemployment rate of 82 percent, more than triple the nation’s rate, according to official statistics. Most here live in shacks of corrugated metal, the roofs kept in place with strategically placed rocks. Many of the dwellings sag in the middle as if they were melting in the hot sun.

Clusters of shacks here look about the same, but some are settlements that have been “formalized,” which means that the hovels, however dilapidated, have electricity inside and a water tap and flush toilet nearby. Those people living in communities without this imprimatur must light their homes with kerosene or paraffin and wait in lines, pail in hand, at a single communal spigot.

“This is no way to live,” said Mercy Mbiza, 38. “We have to dig a pit for a toilet, and when it’s full, we dig another. They tell us we are on a waiting list to get services. Whether I will die first, I don’t know.”

Rumors — true or not — are dangerous combustibles in places like this. People are suspicious that money meant for them is being stolen or wasted by the big shots in Balfour. Some goings-on simply make no sense.

For instance, Arlene Moloi’s house has four pillars and a roof and only emptiness in between. The municipality paid someone to construct it in 1996, but the builder suddenly disappeared after starting the job.

“The officials tell me they are waiting for the same man to come back and finish,” said Ms. Moloi, a 54-year-old widow. “But it already has been 13 years.”

The Siyathemba protests began with a meeting of disgruntled young people, some of them members of political youth groups, others players on sports teams. They compiled a list of their many grievances. They wanted more water and electricity, yes. But they also wanted better roads, a local hospital and a police station. Beyond that, they wanted jobs.

This list of demands was left at the municipal hall in Balfour. “Some of these things — hospitals, police stations — these are matters to take up at the provincial level,” said the municipality’s spokesman, Mohlalefi Lebotha. “Where is the money for these things, not just to construct them but to sustain them?”

At first, Mr. Tsotetsi did not meet with the disgruntled. Nor did he call a special session of the municipal council as the protesters had demanded.

This slow, even indifferent response seemed to mock the petitioners’ seriousness. After a mass meeting on a Sunday, many protesters took to the streets. The police confronted them, relying on a rather indiscriminate spray of rubber bullets.

The crowd fought back, shouting “azikhwelwa,” meaning that everything must shut down: no one goes to work, no one attends school.

“People knew how to act from the days of the liberation struggle,” said Mr. Maya, the protest leader. “We sang the songs, telling those who are scared to step aside so the brave can move ahead and advance the struggle.

“In South Africa, the struggle is not yet over.”

Sudan Court to Define Indecent Dress for Women - NYTimes.com

Image by Rita Willaert via Flickr

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — This is not about pants, Lubna Hussein insists. It is about principles.

A woman should be able to wear what she wants and not be publicly whipped for it, says Mrs. Hussein, a defiant Sudanese journalist, and on Monday her belief will be put to the test.

Mrs. Hussein has been charged in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, with indecent dress, a crime that carries a $100 fine and 40 lashings. She was arrested in July, along with 12 other women, who were caught at a cafe wearing trousers.

Sudan is partially ruled by Islamic law, which emphasizes modest dress for women. Mrs. Hussein, 34, has pleaded not guilty and is daring the Sudanese authorities to punish her.

“I am Muslim; I understand Muslim law,” Mrs. Hussein said in an interview. “But I ask: what passage in the Koran says women can’t wear pants? This is not nice.”

Mrs. Hussein even printed up invitation cards for her initial court date in July and sent out e-mail messages asking people to witness her whipping, if it came to that. She said she wanted the world to see how Sudan treated women.

Hundreds of Sudanese women — many wearing pants — swarmed in front of the court where the trial was supposed to take place, protesting that the law was unfair. Twice now, the trial has been postponed. Some of the other women arrested with Mrs. Hussein have pleaded guilty and were lashed as a result. Past floggings have been carried out with plastic whips that leave permanent scars.

“The flogging, yes, it causes pain,” Mrs. Hussein said. “But more important, it is an insult. This is why I want to change the law.”

The law in contention here is Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code. Concisely stated, the law says that up to 40 lashes and a fine should be assessed anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing.”

The question is: what exactly is indecent clothing?

In Sudan, some women wear veils and loose fitting dresses; others do not. Northern Sudanese, who are mostly Muslim, are supposed to obey Islamic law, while southern Sudanese, who are mostly Christian, are not. Mrs. Hussein argues that Article 152 is intentionally vague, in part to punish women.

Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman, said the law was meant for the opposite reason, to “protect the people.”

“We have an act controlling the behavior of women and men so the behavior doesn’t harm others, whether it’s speech or dress or et cetera,” he said.

But, he insisted, Mrs. Hussein must have done something else to run afoul of the authorities, besides wearing pants.

“You come to Khartoum and you will see for yourself,” he said. “Many women, in offices and wedding ceremonies, wear trousers.”

“Thousands of girls wear the trousers,” he added.

Asked what other offenses Mrs. Hussein may have committed, Mr. Atti said that the case file was secret and that he did not know.

Mrs. Hussein countered that she did not do anything else that might have violated the law, and that countless people from inside and outside Sudan are supporting her.

“It’s well known that Sudanese women are pioneers in the history of women’s rights in this region, and that we won our rights a long time ago because of our awareness, open mind, good culture and struggle,” she said.

The last time Sudan’s courts handled a case that attracted such international attention, they found a compromise solution. A British schoolteacher faced up to 40 lashes and six months in prison for allowing her students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad, which was perceived as an insult to Islam. But after being sentenced to 15 days in jail, she was soon pardoned by the Sudanese president.

A widow with no children, Mrs. Hussein is a career journalist who recently worked as a public information assistant for the United Nations in Sudan. She quit, she said, because she did not want to get the United Nations embroiled in her case. But Sudan, given its renewed interest in normalizing relations with the United States, might be reluctant to draw much international ire by harshly punishing her.

Protesters are expected to come out on her behalf again when Mrs. Hussein returns to court Monday morning. She says her family is also behind her.

“My mother supports me,” she said, “but she is worried for me and prays for me.”

Fake Afghan Poll Sites Favored Karzai, Officials Assert - NYTimes.com

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By DEXTER FILKINS and CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.

The fake sites, as many as 800, existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the vote. Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of votes for Mr. Karzai in the election last month came from each of those places. That pattern was confirmed by another Western official based in Afghanistan.

“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”

Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said.

The widening accounts of fraud pose a stark problem for the Obama administration, which has 68,000 American troops deployed here to help reverse gains by Taliban insurgents. American officials hoped that the election would help turn Afghans away from the Taliban by giving them a greater voice in government. Instead, the Obama administration now faces the prospect of having to defend an Afghan administration for the next five years that is widely seen as illegitimate.

“This was fraud en masse,” the Western diplomat said.

Most of the fraud perpetrated on behalf of Mr. Karzai, officials said, took place in the Pashtun-dominated areas of the east and south where officials said that turnout on Aug. 20 was exceptionally low. That included Mr. Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where preliminary results indicate that more than 350,000 ballots have been turned in to be counted. But Western officials estimated that only about 25,000 people actually voted there.

Waheed Omar, the main spokesman for Mr. Karzai’s campaign, acknowledged Sunday that there had been cases of fraud committed by different candidates. But he accused the president’s opponents of trying to score political points by making splashy accusations in the news media. “There have been cases — we have reported numerous cases — and our view is the only place where discussion can be held is in the Election Complaints Commission,” he said.

American officials have mostly kept a public silence about the fraud allegations. A senior American official said Sunday that they were looking into the allegations behind the scenes. “An absence of public statements does not mean an absence of concern and engagement on these issues,” the official said.

But a different Western official in Kabul said that there were divisions among the international community and Afghan political circles over how to proceed. This official said he believed the next four or five days would decide whether the entire electoral process would stand or fall. “This is crunch time,” he said.

Adding to the drumbeat, on Sunday the deputy director of the Afghan Independent Election Commission said that the group was disqualifying all the ballots cast in 447 polling sites because of fraud. The deputy director, Daoud Ali Najafi, said it was not clear how many votes had been affected, or what percentage they represented of the total. He gave no details of what fraud had been discovered.

With about three-quarters of the ballots counted in the Aug. 20 election, Mr. Karzai leads with nearly 49 percent of the vote, compared with 32 percent for his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent, the election goes to a runoff.

Officials in Kabul say it will probably take months before the Election Complaints Commission, which is dominated by Westerners appointed by the United Nations, will be able to declare a winner. Such an interregnum with no clear leader in office could prove destabilizing for a country that is already beset by ethnic division and an increasingly violent insurgency.

One opposition candidate for president, Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister, said that the scale of the fraud on Election Day had deeply damaged the political process that was being slowly built in Afghanistan.

“For five years Mr. Karzai was my president,” he said in an interview at his home in Kabul. “Now how many Afghans will consider him their president?”

Since ballots were cast last month, anecdotal evidence has emerged of widespread fraud across the Pashtun-dominated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where Mr. Karzai has many allies. Many of the allegations come from Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the chairman of the provincial council and widely regarded as the most powerful man in the region. Last week, the governor of Shorabak District, which lies in Kandahar Province, claimed that Hamid Karzai’s allies shut down all the polling centers in the area and falsified 23,900 ballots for Mr. Karzai.

Two provincial council candidates in Kandahar, both close to the government, confirmed that widespread pro-Karzai fraud had occurred, in particular in places where poor security prevented observers and candidates’ representatives from watching.

“Now people will not trust the provincial council and the government system,” said Muhammad Ehsan, the deputy head of the provincial council, who was running for re-election. “Now people understand who has come to power and how.”

Hajji Abdul Majid, 75, the chief of the tribal elders council in Argestan District, in Kandahar Province, said that despite the fact that security forces opened the town’s polling place, no one voted, so any result from his district would be false.

“The people know that the government just took control of the district center for that day of the elections,” he said. “People are very frustrated. They don’t believe in the government.”

He added: “If Karzai is re-elected, people will leave the country or join the Taliban.”

More evidence of fraud has emerged in the past few days. In Zangabad, about 20 miles west of Kandahar, local residents say no voting took place on Aug. 20. The village’s single polling site, the Sulaiman Mako School, is used by Taliban guerrillas as their headquarters, the residents said. The area around Zangabad is one of the most contested in Afghanistan. Despite the nonexistent turnout, Afghan election records show that nearly 2,000 ballots were collected from the Sulaiman Mako School and sent to Kabul to be counted by election officials.

The allegations in Zangabad are being echoed throughout the Panjwai District. Official Afghan election records show that 16 polling centers were supposed to be open on Election Day. But according to at least one local leader, only a fraction of that number actually existed.

Haji Agha Lalai is a senior member of the provincial council in Kandahar, where Panjwai is located. As a candidate for re-election, he sent election observers across the area, including to Panjwai. In an interview, Mr. Lalai said that only “five or six” polling centers were open in Panjwai District that day — far fewer than the 16 claimed by the Afghan government.

So far, the Independent Election Commission has released results from seven of Panjwai District’s polling centers. The tally so far: 5,213 votes for Mr. Karzai, 328 for Mr. Abdullah.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul and Istanbul, and Carlotta Gall from Kandahar and Kabul.

IMF: stop funding Honduras - guardian.co.uk

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by Mark Weisbrot

The IMF is undergoing an unprecedented expansion of its access to resources, possibly reaching a trillion dollars. This week the EU committed $175bn, $67bn more than even the $108bn that Washington agreed to fork over after a tense stand-off between the US Congress and the Obama administration earlier this summer.

The Fund and its advocates argue that the IMF has changed. The IMF is "back in a new guise", says the Economist. This time, we are told, it's really going to act as a multilateral organisation that looks out for the countries and people of the world, and not just for Washington, Wall Street or European banks.

But it's looking more and more like the same old IMF on steroids. Last week the IMF disbursed $150m to the de facto government of Honduras, and it plans to disburse another $13.8m on 9 September. The de facto government has no legitimacy in the world. It took power on 28 June in a military coup, in which the elected President Manuel Zelaya was taken from his home at gunpoint and flown out of the country.

The Organisation of American States suspended Honduras until democracy is restored, and the UN also called for the "immediate and unconditional return" of the elected president.

No country in the world recognises the coup government of Honduras. From the western hemisphere and the EU, only the US retains an ambassador there. The World Bank paused lending to Honduras two days after the coup, and the Inter-American Development Bank did the same the next day. More recently the Central American Bank of Economic Integration suspended credit to Honduras. The EU has suspended over $90m in aid as well, and is considering further sanctions.

But the IMF has gone ahead and dumped a large amount of money on Honduras – the equivalent would be more than $160bn in the US – as though everything is OK there.

This is in keeping with US policy, which is not surprising since the US has been – since the IMF's creation in 1944 – the Fund's principal overseer. Washington made a symbolic gesture earlier this year by cutting off about $18.5m to Honduras, and the state department announced on Thursday that it is terminating other assistance.

But more than two months after the Honduran military overthrew the elected president of Honduras, the US government has yet to determine that a military coup has actually occurred. This is because such a determination would require, under the US Foreign Appropriations Act, a complete cutoff of aid.

One of the largest sources of US aid is the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a government entity whose board is chaired by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state.

Interestingly, there were two military coups in the last year in countries that were receiving MCC money: Madagascar and Mauritania. In both of those cases MCC aid was suspended within three days of the coup.

The IMF's decision to give money to the Honduran government is reminiscent of its reaction to the 2002 coup that temporarily overthrew President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Just a few hours after that coup, the IMF's spokesperson announced: "We stand ready to assist the new administration in whatever manner they find suitable."

This immediate pledge of support by the IMF to a military-installed government was at the time unprecedented. Given the resources and power of the IMF, it was an important source of international legitimacy for the coup government. Members of the US Congress later wrote to the IMF to inquire how this happened. How did the IMF decide so quickly to support this illegitimate government?

The Fund responded that no decision was made, that this was just an off-the-cuff remark by its spokesperson. But this seems very unlikely, and in the video on the IMF's website, the spokesperson appears to be reading from a prepared statement when talking about money for the coup government.

In the Honduran case, the IMF would likely say that the current funds are part of a $250bn package in which all member countries are receiving a share proportional to their IMF quota, regardless of governance. This is true, but it doesn't resolve the question as to whom the funds should be disbursed to, in the case of a non-recognised, illegitimate government that has seized power by force. The Fund could very easily postpone disbursing this money until some kind of determination could be made, rather than simply acting as though there were no question about the legitimacy of the coup government.

Interestingly, the IMF had no problem cutting off funds under its standby arrangement with the democratically elected government of President Zelaya in November of last year, when the Fund did not agree with his economic policies.

We're still a long way from a reformed IMF.

Sep 6, 2009

Temple plan shelved after Muslim opposition |- My Sinchew

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KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 6 (AFP) - Plans by a local Malaysian government to relocate a 150-year-old Hindu temple to a majority Muslim area have been shelved after continued protests, a lawmaker said Sunday.

The decision came after a consultation between Selangor state officials and local people descended into chaos on Saturday, with protesters threatening violence, local media reported.

Charles Santiago, an MP with the opposition Democratic Action Party, told AFP, "Selangor state is looking for a new site due to the protest by the Muslims."

Demonstrators claimed the Hindu temple would create traffic jams and noise in their Muslim-majority neighbourhood, he said.

The consultation session was held after a group of Muslim protesters last week paraded the severed head of a cow at the site of the proposed temple, in Shah Alam west of Kuala Lumpur.

Selangor Chief Minister Abdul Khalid Ibrahim told reporters the state government would search for another site.

"We have already asked Selangor state development corporation... to identify another location," he was quoted as saying by the Sunday Star newspaper.

Around 60 percent of Malaysia's 27 million people are Muslim Malays, but the country is also home to large Chinese and Indian minorities, variously practising Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism, among others.

Issues related to religion, language and race are sensitive matters in multi-racial Malaysia, which witnessed deadly riots in 1969. (AFP)

Generation B - The Damage of Vietnam, Four Decades Later - NYTimes.com

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By MICHAEL WINERIP

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.

ON Aug. 26, 1966, Philip Van Cott’s Marine unit was ambushed in the jungles of Vietnam, a trip wire went off, a bomb exploded and shrapnel pierced a hole in his right hand. Mr. Van Cott, whose squad was in constant firefights during his five months in the jungle, was helicoptered to safety. He spent seven months in Japanese and American hospitals as the wound healed, completed his two-year tour in the States, then was honorably discharged.

In the years since, he has been married to the same woman, Karen, for nearly four decades, had two sons and a grandson, held several jobs, bought a home, owned a restaurant, spent 20 years with the post office and in 2006 at age 60, retired.

Nowadays, he paints in his studio several times a week, swims and lifts weights, attends 7:30 Mass on Sunday mornings, and travels with his wife. Every other Thursday, for the last 10 years, he has driven to the Veterans Administration Vet Center here where he gets therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder in connection with his Vietnam combat service.

He first went for help after threatening a supervisor at the post office, and nearly losing his job. “I had rages, and I was getting worse,” he said. “I was constantly embarrassing my family, screaming and hollering at people.”

He got into fistfights at Little League and high school football games. At night, asleep, he’d have nightmares, break into cold sweats, scream and flail at his wife. “It’s been going on so long, now she hears me wind up and wakes me before I do it,” he said.

When a V.A. psychiatrist diagnosed the disorder, Mr. Van Cott did not believe it — Vietnam was so long ago. They had him join a therapy group for Vietnam veterans. “I figured these guys were doing it to collect a disability check,” he said. “It took two to three years before I started realizing what I was doing was crazy.”

He now takes medications for anxiety and depression. And in therapy, he works on anger control. His wife thinks it’s helped, but he’s not sure. “I don’t know if you can escape what you are,” he said. In mid-August, he stormed out of a session at the Vet Center because he was sure his therapist was snubbing him. “He was late for our appointment, then walked by three times without saying anything,” Mr. Van Cott said.

While studies estimate as many as 20 percent of those now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from P.T.S.D., it is veterans like Mr. Van Cott, from a war nearly a half-century ago, who still dominate the administration’s P.T.S.D. caseload. In 2008, of the 442,695 people seen at veterans hospitals for P.T.S.D., 59.2 percent were Vietnam-era veterans, while 21.5 percent served in the Iraq, Afghanistan or Gulf wars.

The most authoritative study conducted on the disorder and Vietnam veterans, in 1988, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, estimated that at the time, 500,000 of the 3.14 million Americans who served in Vietnam had P.T.S.D., and a total of 1 million had experienced it at some point.

Even as Vietnam veterans now enter their 60s and begin to die off, the number seeking P.T.S.D. treatment is growing — up 11.6 percent from 2003 to 2005, the latest figures available. “We have new Viet vets coming in every week,” said David Bressem, who runs the Vet Center clinic here and is Mr. Van Cott’s therapist.

On so many fronts, the country still pays for the Vietnam War. A veteran diagnosed with P.T.S.D. may receive over $3,000 a month if judged 100 percent disabled. That stipend comes out of the veterans compensation and pension system, which this year is expected to pay $44.7 billion for a variety of benefits, with the biggest share going to veterans of Vietnam and the current conflicts.

In Mr. Van Cott’s case, his therapist believes his problem predated the war (Mr. Van Cott was a tough kid who grew up on the streets of Brooklyn and liked to fight) and then was severely exacerbated by war.

Mr. Bressem said a large number of the Vietnam veterans he sees were slow to get help. P.T.S.D. wasn’t accepted as a formal diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association until 1980 — years after many of the soldiers returned — and it took many more years for the V.A. to build the extensive mental health outreach system that exists today.

Karen Van Cott said that for first 20 years of their marriage, her husband never spoke of Vietnam. Only in the late 1990s, when he began going to reunions of Mike Company 3rd Battalion 7th Marines and she overheard the conversations, did she begin to understand his rages.

Said Mr. Van Cott, “I thought you go to Vietnam and kill a few people and forget about it. I thought guys who complained were full of it.”

Mr. Bressem said the aging Vietnam veterans who walk into his clinic are often in crisis — a third divorce, a lost job, an arrest — and have built up a lifetime of bad habits.

“That’s me,” said Mr. Van Cott. “I’ve been like this so long, I don’t know any other way.”

Mr. Bressem said they’re trying to reach the Afghan and Iraq veterans right away to prevent bad habits from developing. Asked how a veteran could still experience P.T.S.D. 40 years later, the therapist — himself an Army helicopter pilot shot down and severely wounded in Vietnam — turned to Mr. Van Cott and said, “How many firefights were you in?”

“Three or four a week.”

“And how long before you were wounded?”

“Five months.”

“Do the math,” Mr. Bressem said. “That’s 70 times in five months someone was trying to kill Phil here. Pretty intense experience.”

Mr. Van Cott said that during his tour, he knew about a dozen men who were killed. His Marine unit was the subject of one of the great Vietnam documentaries, “A Face of War,” by Eugene Jones, who followed the soldiers for three months of combat. Of the 18 Marines the film focused on, 12 were wounded (Mr. Van Cott is seen being hit and going down in the film); one was killed; and only five got out of Vietnam without a physical wound. There are also scenes of Vietnamese villages being burned to the ground by Mr. Van Cott’s unit for cooperating with the enemy and Vietnamese peasants dying.

When people ask how World War II veterans adjusted to civilian life in an era without a P.T.S.D. diagnosis, Ms. Van Cott mentions her father. He fought in North Africa, was honorably discharged, worked two to three jobs at a time to support his family and in his late 40s had what was then called a nervous breakdown — probably severe depression. He spent several weeks at a V.A. psychiatric hospital. “They sent you away back then,” she said. “They called it shell shock.”

At his most recent therapy appointment with Mr. Bressem, Mr. Van Cott started by discussing why he’d stomped out of their previous session angry. “Three times you walked right past me and ignored me,” Mr. Van Cott said.

“I passed you on my right side,” said Mr. Bressem. “Notice anything about my right eye?” Mr. Bressem is blind in the right eye, from his war wounds.

“I was talking to you,” Mr. Van Cott said.

“These don’t always work,” Mr. Bressem said, fingering his two hearing aids — also vestiges of the war.

“Geez,” Mr. Van Cott said. “You sound like my wife — you’re saying it’s not all about me. I spend my life apologizing to people.”

The session lasted an hour. Sometimes Mr. Van Cott talks about Vietnam; this time he didn’t. As he drove home on Interstate 91, some young punk tailgated him, then raced past. Mr. Van Cott started to raise his voice, his eyes flared, but then he let it go.

E-mail: Generationb@nytimes.com