Starting Points

Mar 17, 2010

Short Hops, Low Fares, Around Asia

Malaysia-based Air Asia flies to major tourist destinations like Bali and Siem Reap.

Frank Pinckers for NYT, Ahmad Yusni, via European Pressphoto Agency, Stuart Isett for NYT Malaysia-based Air Asia flies to major tourist destinations like Bali and Siem Reap.

A long, long time ago — way back in the mid-1990s — when I was living in Southeast Asia, getting around the region was a frustrating process. If I wanted to visit Cambodia, I’d take a bus from wherever I happened to be — usually Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — and though it never cost more than $6, the daylong ordeal was always so painful I swore I’d never do it again. Then, a few months later, I’d do it again.

Sure, there were flights, but a round-trip to Phnom Penh, the capital, or to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, could cost $200, more than I made in a week back then. Once, I even flew to Taiwan, a nearly $500 expense. How I covered it I don’t remember.

Today, however, flights within Asia can cost as little as a long-haul bus, thanks to the well-established network of low-cost carriers — or L.C.C.’s — that stretches from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Like their European counterparts, these are generally no-frills experiences, so don’t expect a pillow, a free beverage or a guaranteed window seat in the exit row. But since you’re spending about $50 to get from, say, Mumbai to Kozhikode (it’s in India’s Kerala state) on JetLite, you can’t really complain.

Okay, maybe you can complain a little — about the booking process. In general, it’s fairly simple and very familiar: Go to an individual airline’s Web site, punch in your dates and destination, keep an eye out for hidden fees including luggage and taxes, which can cost as much as the base fare, and pay with a credit card. So far, so good.

The problem is that with dozens of airlines now serving Asia — and often competing with so-called legacy airlines on many routes — booking an L.C.C. flight can be a dizzying, laborious process. Some airlines fly domestic only, like Nok Air (Thailand), Jeju Air (Korea) and Air Do (Japan). Others fly only internationally, like Viva Macau (which connects Macao to Japan, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere). And others, like Malaysia-based Air Asia, do both, connecting hubs like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Hong Kong with little-known locales like Bintulu, Sandakan and Tawau in Malaysia.

Many have silly names like IndiGo, but as I learned while flying low-cost carriers around Europe in 2007, sometimes the silliest have the best service. And a handful, like Jeju Air and Air Do, don’t provide full English versions of their Web sites. I presume they’re passing the translation savings on to the consumer.

There is, unfortunately, no all-in-one, perfect meta-search engine that will calculate and let you book a low-cost route around Asia. But, fortunately, there is a two-step process that can help ensure that you find the best route at the best price.

The first thing to do is get the lay of the L.C.C. land. Where can you actually fly to? And which airlines will take you there?

A trio of Web sites — WhichBudget.com, FlyBudget.com and FlyLowCostAirlines.org — aims to answer exactly these questions. They all do almost exactly the same thing: Enter one location (anywhere in the world, not just Asia), and they’ll tell you which low-cost carriers fly directly from there, and the various destinations. That’s it! It seems like a simple thing, but with low-cost carriers adding and deleting routes throughout the world, it’s not.

So, from Kuala Lumpur, according to WhichBudget: Air Asia flies to Dhaka, Bangladesh; Shenzhen, China; Vientiane, Laos; and dozens of other places; Cebu Pacific flies to 15 destinations in the Philippines; Tiger Airways goes to Vietnam and Perth, Australia; Lion Air flies to Jakarta. For those with a low budget but high sense of adventure, the beauty here is seeing all the places that you can possibly get to cheaply.

Which should you use? I like WhichBudget’s interface best, while FlyBudget seems to miss out on some of the more obvious routes. Ultimately, they’re all very similar, and you’ll wind up using whichever you’re most comfortable with.

The one thing you won’t use them for is searching timetables and airfares and booking flights. They don’t do that at all.

But don’t go running to Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak or Vayama. The standbys don’t usually search the Asian low-cost-carrier routes. Even ITASoftware.com, which is supposed to be plugged into airline booking systems better than any other site, doesn’t see Air Asia.

Instead, visit SkyScanner.net, Momondo.com or WeGo.com, all of which let you comparison-shop by route and price, and among airlines both low-cost and traditional. Even though the companies are scattered all over the world (SkyScanner in Scotland and Poland; Momondo in Denmark; WeGo in Singapore), they’re all fairly similar with regard to design and functionality. Indeed, they probably look a lot like the travel booking site you already use.

But these sites are far more aware of the low-cost-carrier world, and routinely find fares that traditional booking sites don’t. For a round-trip flight to Taipei from Bangkok, for example, all three sites recently turned up a result from Air Asia for around $190 (Momondo had it for $185), which is a lot better than what I spent in 1997 — and a lot better than the $289 KLM flight turned up by Kayak and Expedia. Even the Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh route was a better deal — about $100 now — although it’s served by the same carrier as ever, Vietnam Airlines.

At the same time, none of these search engines is perfect, especially when it comes to finding indirect or unorthodox bookings. If, say, you wanted to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul, Momondo and WeGo suggest a nonstop flight on Malaysia Airlines for $360, and SkyScanner wants you to spend $464 to fly Air China to Pusan, a three-and-a-half-hour train ride south of Seoul.

But according to WhichBudget, Asian low-cost carriers connect Malaysia and South Korea through four locations: Bangkok and Cebu, Kalibo and Manila in the Philippines. By booking multiple legs with, say, Cebu Pacific, you’d spend roughly $250. And though it might mean a lengthy layover, you’d save more than $100, a sum that can go a long way in many parts of Asia.

So, the short version: Check WhichBudget.com to get a sense of who goes where. Then search SkyScanner and Momondo for the flight itself. If they fail to turn up a route that you know exists, go right to the airline’s own Web site.

Of course, travelers should remember that low-cost airlines are more likely to tack on fees for things that traditional airlines include automatically, like checking baggage and offering snacks. Although the number of traditional airlines that still offer these freebies is speedily dwindling to zero.

CQ - Behind the Lines, Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Three dead in Juarez: "The most imminent and certainly dangerous war threatening Americans today finally made its way home" . . . Department of reasonable questions: Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden? Just ask the Pentagon . . . OK, everyone strip: O'Hare TSA chief predicts all boarding airline passengers will eventually be required to undergo a full-body scan. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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“The most imminent and certainly dangerous war threatening Americans today finally made its way home,” Conchita Sarnoff writes in The Huffington Post, characterizing the gunning down of U.S. consulate officials in Juarez last weekend. The escalating drug cartel conflict sparks fear amongst Americans living in the Rio Grande Valley who have relatives just across the border or worry about spillover violence, The Brownsville Herald’s Ildefonso Ortiz surveys — while The Texas Tribune’s Brandi Grissom has Gov. Rick Perry activating a secret spillover contingency plan and seeking federal reinforcements, which request was brushed off by DHS’s Janet Napolitano, The Dallas Morning News’ Todd J. Gillman adds.

Homies: Napolitano also announced yesterday that DHS will halt new work on the so-called virtual border fence, diverting $50 million in planned economic stimulus funds for the project to other purposes, The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu reports. President Obama’s vow to double U.S. exports over the next five years would create more work for ICE, the enforcer on intellectual property theft and sensitive technology controls, top cop John Morton, reminds Homeland Security Today’s Mickey McCarter. “The quality of Obama’s nominees to head the TSA has been so poor that even a normally compliant Senate is refusing to roll over and accept his picks,” James Corum chides in The Daily Telegraph.

Feds: A House homeland hearing slated for today relies upon “witnesses sympathetic to Islamist extremist organizations here in America,” IPT News complains. Following a federal air marshal case, Congress is moving to give whistle-blowers better safeguards against retaliation, USA Today’s Peter Eisler reports. Obama probably will veto legislation authorizing the next intel budget if it mandates a new probe of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Bloomberg’s Jeff Bliss relates — while the Post’s David Ignatius sees the outsourcing of counterterror ops highlighting “some big problems that have developed in the murky area between military and intelligence activities.” New internal e-mail messages suggest his superiors had reason to suspend the Fort Hood shooter’s training, and perhaps re-evaluate his suitability as a military physician, but failed to do so, The Washington Times’ Rowan Scarborough recounts.

State and local: “The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency misspent nearly $18 million in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction grants, federal auditors say, and they want the money back with interest,” The Jackson Clarion-Ledger leads. Local South Carolina officials dislike an amendment to a state bill allowing public access to EMS records that would withhold first responders’ names, The Columbia State recounts. The Pentagon “established the U.S. Cyber Command in 2009 based on the theory that the next war will be waged on the information superhighway [and] the bulk of that defense will be based in western Anne Arundel County,” The Annapolis (Md.) Capital crows. The Edwardsville Fire Department’s chief will step down next month to become Illinois’ first“Fire Service Intelligence Officer” on the State Terrorism Task Force, St. Louis’ KMOX Radio notes.

Follow the money: A Danish court has convicted a left-wing group’s spokesman of violating terror laws by raising funds for Marxist rebels in Colombia and Palestinian militants, The Copenhagen Post reports. Saudi Arabia has warned citizens to be wary of Web and cell phone scams involving bogus charities possibly aimed at funding terrorism, Agence France-Presse relates. In Afghanistan, “Islamic terrorists have partnered with tribe-based drug gangs to produce most of the world’s heroin. This sort of thing is nothing new,” The Strategy Page surveys. “Terrorism and militancy are being deliberately fanned to destabilize the Indian economy,” which is at the threshold of a double digit growth, Indian Express hears the home minister maintaining. An Islamist-linked Somali bizman who may have pocketed ransom bucks intended for kidnapped French aid workers was a contractor for U.N. agencies, Reuters reports.

Bugs ‘n bombs: A Florida theater student was arrested earlier this month after discovery in his car of fake dynamite, a prop project for school, prompted the evacuation of a multiplex theater, The Ocala Star-Banner reports. Taliban commanders have claimed that homemade bombs in Afghanistan are now being salted with anthrax, though there is as yet no evidence of this, Britain’s Sunday Express says. “Before we start building reactors we need to address another urgent matter. We need to make current reactors secure,” Charles S. Faddis advises in a CNN op-ed. “The slow, dull work of keeping nuclear warheads and weapons-grade uranium and plutonium protected from terrorists goes on almost unnoticed,” The Washington Post leads.

Coming and going: The Association of American Railroads has named TSA’s acting general manager of mass transit as its assistant VP for security, Progressive Railroading reports. “A visit to the driver’s license office has always been a little slice of hell. Now it’s gotten even worse,” The South Florida Sun Sentinel summarizes in re: new Real ID-friendly licensing rules. With the population of foreign citizens in Texas prisons at an all-time high and a state budget crisis looming, the idea of deporting some of them is getting another look, The Austin American-Statesman spotlights. The number and scope of pirate attacks is increasing worldwide and could trigger more joint military operations to keep shipping lanes safe, Reuters quotes a top NATO official.

Close air support: The debut of full-body scanners at O’Hare International on Monday was marked by two American Muslim groups asserting that they violate Islamic law, The Christian Science Monitor spotlights — while The Chicago Tribune has that airport’s TSA chief predicting that all boarding airline passengers will eventually be required to get virtually naked. “General aviation poses no more of a threat than any other vehicle such as a car or truck and indeed, perhaps is less of a threat,” an op-ed in The Officer soothes. The future of airport customs security could be a German company’s e-passport equipped with an AMOLED display, CNET News notes — while the Tribune, again, reports United Airlines shifting to paperless boarding passes.

Terror tech: “Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden? That’s one suggestion the Pentagon has received,” Stars and Stripes notes in a feature on tactical advice volunteered by concerned citizens. “The Internet grew 20 percent uglier last year, with terrorists and racists increasingly turning to social media sites . . . and targeting children,” FOX News relays from the “2010 Digital Hate Report.” In recent Senate testimony, an anthropologist urged the feds “to engage social scientists more directly in open, peer-reviewed studies of terrorism, rather than relying on clandestine intelligence and anti-terrorism technology,” Science Insider informs. Spotting a terrorist by reading his mind sounds like science fiction, but a University of Dayton researcher tells the Daily News technology exists for detecting brain wave patterns indicating an intent to do harm.

Gadgetronica: An Israeli start-up has developed a “potentially game-changing” surveillance camera that can both monitor a panoramic field and zoom in on details, Israel 21c spotlights. Spearheaded by DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate, an app called Cell-All aims to equip your cell phone with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals at minimal cost, National Terror Alert spotlights — while The Somerville (N.J.) Courier-News profiles an iPhone app that would allow users to alert the authorities when they see potentially terroristic suspicious activity. Crowd-image analysis advances by the University of Reading’s Computational Vision Group, highlighting unusual behavior in crowds, would be ideal for securing events like the 2012 Olympic Games, Info4Security informs.

Courts and rights: A key figure in the ongoing U.S. investigation connected with the November 2008 Mumbai terror assault plans to plead guilty in Chicago this week, The Southtown Star says. An organized theft case allegedly linked to terrorism in the Middle East devolved into a racketeering case with the word “terrorism”seldom heard during sentencing, St. Louis’ KMOX Radio, again, reports. In what would be bad news for the struggling towns surrounding Illinois’ Thomson prison, possible host of a mainland terror detention center, studies suggest “prisons have done little to change the economic realities of rural communities,” The Christian Science Monitor mentions. Two of seven suspects arrested in connection with an alleged Swedish cartoonist plot have been charged in Ireland, BBC News notes.

Over there: The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan successfully lobbied for a ban on ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a common ingredient for homemade explosives, though it could be smuggled in easily enough, Danger Room discusses. Last summer, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar issued a new ethics code for Taliban fighters, but those moral guidelines are being ignored by some fighters, another CSM item recounts. A South Africa-Israel standoff continues over Johannesburg’s concern that El Al’s security operations were run by Shin Bet spooks, The Cape Argus updates. Pakistan’s annual National Games, scheduled in Peshawar this month, have been postponed because of security concerns, The Dawn hears the country’s National Olympic Committee ruling.

Spring forward and die: Citing a ‘mistake of Biblical proportions,’ the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is reporting that the famous Doomsday Clock, which measures how close humanity is to annihilation, was accidentally moved one hour forward this past weekend during the Daylight Savings Time change,” CAP News notes. “As a result, it is now 12:54am and it looks like we’re goners. ‘It appears the janitor at our doomsday offices changed the time on the microwave and the clock hanging in the lobby like he was supposed to, but he should have known not to touch the clock above the mantel, I mean, there’s a sign right below it that says Doomsday Clock — Don’t Touch’ said BAS spokesperson Dr. Philip Schnell. ‘I know it’s not good, but you’ll be happy to know that we did discipline him,’ added Schnell. ‘We docked his pay an hour and sent him home early.’ ” See also, at Glossy News: “Doomsday Clock Sold on eBay to Anonymous Bidder.”

Source: CQ Homeland Security

Mar 16, 2010

Followers of Sadr Emerge Stronger After Iraq Elections

Image via Wikipedia

By ANTHONY SHADID

BAGHDAD — The followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who led the Shia insurgency against the American occupation, have emerged as Iraq’s equivalent of Lazarus in elections last week, defying ritual predictions of their demise and now threatening to realign the nation’s constellation of power.

Their apparent success in the March 7 vote for parliament — perhaps second only to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as the largest Shiite bloc — underscores a striking trend in Iraqi politics: a collapse in support for many former exiles who collaborated with the United States after the 2003 invasion. Although rivals disparaged the Sadrists’ electoral campaign, documents and interviews show an unprecedented discipline that has thrust the group to the brink of perhaps its greatest political influence in Iraq.

The performance completes a striking arc of a populist movement that inherited the mantle of a slain ayatollah, then forged a martial culture in its fight with the American military in 2004.

After years of defeats, fragmentation and doubt even by its own clerics, with Mr. Sadr himself an expatriate in Iran, the movement has embraced the political process, while remaining steadfast in opposition to any ties with the United States. It was never going to be easy to form a new post-election government — and the Sadrists’ unpredictability, along with a new confidence, may now make it that much harder.

“As our representation in Parliament increases, so will our power,” said Asma al-Musawi, a Sadrist lawmaker. “We will soon the play the role that we have been given.”

A worshiper at Friday prayers put it more bluntly.

“Today is our day!” he shouted to hundreds gathered outside the movement’s office in a ramshackle neighborhood that bears its name where electricity wires are tangled like cobwebs and discontent surges forth from a furnace of poverty, anger and frustration.

The results of the election are not yet conclusive, and under a complicated formula to allot seats, the percentage of the vote will not necessarily reflect actual numbers in the 325-member Parliament.

But opponents and allies alike believe the Sadrists may win more than 40 seats. In all likelihood, that would make them the clear majority in the Iraqi National Alliance, a predominantly Shiite coalition and leading rival of Mr. Maliki. If the numbers bear out, the Sadrists could wield a bloc roughly the same size as the Kurds, who have served as kingmakers in governing coalitions since 2005.

In Baghdad alone, whose vote is decisive in the election, Sadrist candidates, many of them political unknowns, were 6 of the top 12 vote-getters.

“They cannot be dismissed,” a Western official said on condition of anonymity under usual diplomatic protocol.

Disregarding the Sadrists has proven a motif of post-invasion Iraq. In the chaotic months of 2003, American officials habitually ridiculed Mr. Sadr as an upstart and outlaw, oblivious as they were to the mandate he had assumed from his father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, whose portrait still graces the offices, home and workshops of followers.

That enmity erupted in fighting twice in Baghdad and Najaf in 2004. Four years later, the movement, blamed for some of the war’s worst sectarian carnage, was vanquished by the Iraqi military, with decisive American help, only to rise again in provincial elections last year. Many politicians now see it as part of the political mainstream, albeit with a canny sense of the street and a knack for fashioning itself in the opposition.

Through those years, Mr. Sadr himself has undergone an evolution. In the earliest days of the occupation, he possessed no particular aplomb. His black turban rode a little high on his forehead, somewhat uncomfortably, and he hunched his shoulders over a frame that was squat and pudgy.

In a news conference this month from Iran, where followers say he is studying to become an ayatollah, he struck a much more forceful tone. Confident, now 36, with gray sprinkled in his beard, he spoke deliberately in graceful if simple Arabic, with a casual disregard of journalists’ questions that the imperious can possess.

The movement is renowned for cryptic statements about its intentions, yet it participated in governments in the past while rejecting the political process. This time, in his clearest words yet, insisted that his followers vote.

“This will be a door to the liberation of Iraq, to driving out the occupier and to something else which is important, serving the Iraqi people,” he said.

The success of the Sadrists has added confusion to an already anxious landscape, roiled with speculation over what coalition will form the next government. Mr. Maliki may be the big loser. Though they once backed him, the Sadrists now exude a visceral dislike for Mr. Maliki, whom they blame for the campaign against them in 2008.

“Alarming,” Sami al-Askari, a lawmaker and ally of Mr. Maliki, called them.

“Ignoring them is a problem,” he said. “Taking them with you in the government is another problem. They’re unpredictable, and no one can guess their next move.”They seem certain, too, to eclipse veteran Shiite leaders who returned from exile in 2003 and with whom the Sadrists are nominally allied. In January, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by another storied clerical family, outpolled the Sadrists. This time, they are believed to have performed so poorly that they may find themselves forced to split the alliance and join Mr. Maliki to preserve their relevance. At the very least, the Sadrists have made clear they believe the alliance’s leadership should be theirs.

“The results are going to require some parties to reconsider the size they deserve,” Asad al-Nasseri, a Sadrist leader, told worshipers Friday, in their stronghold of Kufa.

Since 2003, the Sadrists have refused any contact with the American military or diplomats.

“It would be helpful if they would change their policy,” one American official lamented on Tuesday.

But America’s loss will not necessarily be Iran’s gain. In a vivid illustration of Iranian power here, it cajoled the Sadrists to join the Supreme Council in their electoral coalition, even though the two fought in the streets a few years before. The two still air their feuds in public. But many politicians believe the Sadrists, long seen as more nationalist than other religious Shiite parties, will prove less pliable for Iran.

Mr. Sadr “is not the easiest of customers for Iran to deal with,” the diplomat said.

Perhaps most striking was the prowess the movement demonstrated in mobilizing its followers, the lumpen Shiites, whose poor neighborhoods still go days without running water. In Friday prayers and through leaflets, organizers warned followers against casting ballots for secular candidates. It insisted they not disperse their votes among several lists.

“Don’t forget to vote for one candidate only!” one leaflet declared.

One detailed diagram, drawn up by the Sadrist strategists, broke down a vast slum by precinct. For one candidate, Hakim al-Zamili, a former deputy minister of health widely accused of running death squads during the civil war, voters were organized in 22 locales. So far, he is the sixth biggest vote-getter in Baghdad and seems sure to receive a seat.

“Congratulations!” worshipers said as they greeted him at Friday prayers in Sadr City. “Good luck!” others shouted, surging forward to kiss Mr. Zamili on the cheek.

To each and everyone, he reciprocated with a smile, kiss or handshake.

“We are the masses,” he said afterward. “The rest of the parties rely on individual leaders. We’re the strength and the numbers, and we’ve risen through the election.”

Emory University Saves Rushdie’s Digital Data

Cover of The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel

By PATRICIA COHEN

Among the archival material from Salman Rushdie currently on display at Emory University in Atlanta are inked book covers, handwritten journals and four Apple computers (one ruined by a spilled Coke). The 18 gigabytes of data they contain seemed to promise future biographers and literary scholars a digital wonderland: comprehensive, organized and searchable files, quickly accessible with a few clicks.

But like most Rushdian paradises, this digital idyll has its own set of problems. As research libraries and archives are discovering, “born-digital” materials — those initially created in electronic form — are much more complicated and costly to preserve than anticipated.

Electronically produced drafts, correspondence and editorial comments, sweated over by contemporary poets, novelists and nonfiction authors, are ultimately just a series of digits — 0’s and 1’s — written on floppy disks, CDs and hard drives, all of which degrade much faster than old-fashioned acid-free paper. Even if those storage media do survive, the relentless march of technology can mean that the older equipment and software that can make sense of all those 0’s and 1’s simply don’t exist anymore.

Imagine having a record but no record player.

All of which means that archivists are finding themselves trying to fend off digital extinction at the same time that they are puzzling through questions about what to save, how to save it and how to make that material accessible.

“It’s certainly one of those issues that keeps a lot of people awake at night,” said Anne Van Camp, the director of the Smithsonian Institution Archives and a member of a task force on the economics of digital preservation formed by the National Science Foundation, among others.

Though computers have been commonly used for more than two decades, archives from writers who used them are just beginning to make their way into collections. Last week, for instance, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, announced that it had bought the archive of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008. Emory opened an exhibition of its Rushdie collection in February, and last year, not long before his death, John Updike sent 50 5 ¼-inch floppy disks to the Houghton Library at Harvard.

Leslie Morris, a curator at the Houghton Library, said, “We don’t really have any methodology as of yet” to process born-digital material. “We just store the disks in our climate-controlled stacks, and we’re hoping for some kind of universal Harvard guidelines,” she added.

Among the challenges facing libraries: hiring computer-savvy archivists to catalog material; acquiring the equipment and expertise to decipher, transfer and gain access to data stored on obsolete technologies like floppy disks; guarding against accidental alterations or deletions of digital files; and figuring out how to organize access in a way that’s useful.

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At Emory, Mr. Rushdie’s outdated computers presented archivists with a choice: simply save the contents of files or try to also salvage the look and organization of those early files. Because of Emory’s particular interest in the impact of technology on the creative process, Naomi Nelson, the university’s interim director of Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, said that the archivists decided to try to recreate Mr. Rushdie’s writing experience and the original computer environment.

Mr. Rushdie started using a computer only when the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa drove him underground. “My writing has got tighter and more concise because I no longer have to perform the mechanical act of re-typing endlessly,” he explained during an interview while in hiding. “And all the time that was taken up by that mechanical act is freed to think.”

He added: “I had this kind of fetish about presenting clean copy. I don’t like presenting my publisher with pages with lots of crossings-out and scribbling. So I would be manic at the end of typing a page where actually I didn’t want to change anything, not at all.”

Some of the early files chronicle Mr. Rushdie’s self-conscious analysis of how computers affected his work. In an imaginary dialogue with himself that he composed in 1992 when he was writing “The Moor’s Last Sigh,” he wrote about choosing formatting, fonts and spacing: “I am doing this so that I can see how a whole page looks when it’s typed at this size and spacing.

“Oh, my God, suppose it looks terrible?”

“Oh, my God, yeah. And doesn’t this look wrong?”

“Where’s the paragraph indent thing?”

“I don’t know. I will look.”

“How about this? Is this good for you?”

“A lot better. How about fixing the part above?”

At the Emory exhibition, visitors can log onto a computer and see the screen that Mr. Rushdie saw, search his file folders as he did, and find out what applications he used. (Mac Stickies were a favorite.) They can call up an early draft of Mr. Rushdie’s 1999 novel, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” and edit a sentence or post an editorial comment.

“I know of no other place in the world that is providing access through emulation to a born-digital archive,” said Erika Farr, the director of born-digital initiatives at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory. (The original draft is preserved.)

To the Emory team, simulating the author’s electronic universe is equivalent to making a reproduction of the desk, chair, fountain pen and paper that, say, Charles Dickens used, and then allowing visitors to sit and scribble notes on a copy of an early version of “Bleak House.”

“If you’re interested in primary materials, you’re interested in the context as well as the content, the authentic artifact,” Ms. Farr said. “Fifty years from now, people may be researching how the impact of word processing affected literary output,” she added, which would require seeing the original computer images.

It may even be possible in the future to examine literary influences by matching which Web sites a writer visited on a particular day with the manuscript he or she was working on at the time.

Michael Olson, the digital collections project manager at Stanford University, said that the only people who really had experience with excavating digital information were in law enforcement. “There aren’t a lot of archives out there capturing born-digital material,” he said, referring to the process of extracting all data accurately from a device.

Located in Silicon Valley, Stanford has received a lot of born-digital collections, which has pushed it to become a pioneer in the field. This past summer the library opened a digital forensics laboratory — the first in the nation.

The heart of the lab is the Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device, nicknamed FRED, which enables archivists to dig out data, bit by bit, from current and antiquated floppies, CDs, DVDs, hard drives, computer tapes and flash memories, while protecting the files from corruption. (Emory is giving the Woodruff library $500,000 to create a computer forensics lab like the one at Stanford, Ms. Farr said.)

With the new archive from David Foster Wallace, the Ransom Center now has 40 collections with born-digital material, including Norman Mailer’s. Gabriela Redwine, an archivist at Ransom, is impressed by Emory’s digital emulation, but said the center was not pursuing that kind of reproduction at the moment.

“Our focus is preservation and storage now,” she said. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve been learning about computer forensics.”

The center is trying to raise endowment money to hire a digital collections coordinator while Ms. Redwine works on preservation and processing. In the meantime, most of the digital material is off limits to researchers.

GAO blocks contract to firm formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police

Image by Chayak via Flickr

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 16, 2010; A05

Federal auditors on Monday put a stop to Army plans to award a $1 billion training program for Afghan police officers to the company formerly known as Blackwater, concluding that other companies were unfairly excluded from bidding on the job.

The decision by the Government Accountability Office leaves unclear who will oversee training of the struggling Afghan National Police, a poorly equipped, 90,000-strong paramilitary force that will inherit the task of preserving order in the country after NATO troops depart.

GAO officials upheld a protest by DynCorp International Inc., which currently conducts training for Afghan police under a State Department contract. DynCorp lawyers argued that the company should have been allowed to submit bids when management of the training program passed from State to the Army. Instead, Pentagon officials allowed the training program to be attached to an existing Defense contract that supports counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.

Xe Services, the new name of Blackwater, was poised to win one portion of a much larger group of contracts, shared among five corporations, that could earn the companies more than $15 billion over five years.

GAO officials said the decision will allow a new round of bidding by DynCorp and other firms, including Xe Services.

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"We recognize the Army's position that it needs to swiftly award a contract for these services," said Ralph O. White, an attorney with the GAO's procurement oversight division. But he said the Army must conduct a "full and open competition," or explain in writing why DynCorp had been excluded.

The Pentagon's decision to allow Xe to run the training program drew a strong protest last week from Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Levin cited a history of allegedly abusive behavior by the contractor's employees, including misappropriation of government weapons and hiring of workers with criminal records that included assault and drug offenses. He also accused managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan.

Levin, responding to Monday's GAO decision, said government contracting practices had too often been unfairly exclusive, though he acknowledged that Xe may ultimately end up as the winner in competitive bidding.

"If this contract is re-bid and Blackwater is among the bidders, I hope that the Defense Department will take a close look at the company to determine if it is a suitable contracting partner for the U.S. government," he said.

A spokesman for Xe declined to comment.

DynCorp President Bill Ballhaus welcomed the decision.

"We are performing this crucial training mission now, and will continue to meet all objectives of the commanders on the ground while a full and transparent bidding process can ensure the best outcome for the taxpayer, our mission and the Afghan people," he said.

Afghan women fear loss of hard-won progress

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By Karin Brulliard
Tuesday, March 16, 2010; A01

LAGHMAN, AFGHANISTAN -- The head-to-toe burqas that made women a faceless symbol of the Taliban's violently repressive rule are no longer required here. But many Afghan women say they still feel voiceless eight years into a war-torn democracy, and they point to government plans to forge peace with the Taliban as a prime example.

Gender activists say they have been pressing the administration of President Hamid Karzai for a part in any deal-making with Taliban fighters and leaders, which is scheduled to be finalized at a summit in April. Instead, they said, they have been met with a silence that they see as a dispiriting reminder of the limits of progress Afghan women have made since 2001.

"We have not been approached by the government -- they never do," said Samira Hamidi, country director of the Afghan Women's Network, an umbrella group. "The belief is that women are not important,'' she said, describing a mind-set that she said "has not been changed in the past eight years."

The Taliban's repressive treatment of women helped galvanize international opposition in the 1990s, and by some measures democracy has revolutionized Afghan women's lives. Their worry now is not about a Taliban takeover, Hamidi said, but that male leaders, behind closed doors and desperate for peace, might not force Taliban leaders to accept, however grudgingly, that women's roles have changed.

Those concerns share roots with the misgivings voiced by many observers, including some U.S. officials, about Afghan efforts to forge a settlement with the Taliban, whose leaders promote an Islamist ideology that seems wholly at odds with rights the Afghan constitution guarantees.

The unease about such a settlement stretches from Kabul to the mountain-ringed valleys of Laghman, a scrappy town in a province still stalked at night by Taliban fighters. As a young girl here, Malalay Jan studied in a private home, hidden from the Taliban regime that forbade her education. Four years ago, her girls' school was torched in a rash of suspected Taliban attacks. Now, she said, she is sure of one thing: Afghan women should have a spot at the negotiating table.

"We don't want them to stop us from getting an education or working in an office," said Jan, 18, wearing a rhinestone-studded head scarf at her rebuilt school. Women, she said, should be "the first priority."

Karzai, the Afghan president, has endorsed the idea of talking with all levels of the Taliban, and his aides insist that women need not worry about the equal rights the Afghan constitution guarantees them. But they also say they are performing a difficult balancing act, and suggest that making bold statements about the sanctity of such topics as women's rights might kill talks before they start.

"We will act from a position of principle. And that principle is that half the public wants these rights to be protected," said Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, who is drafting Karzai's reconciliation plan. "It is not the authority of a group of people in government or a group of people in the insurgency to decide the fate of a whole nation."

In today's Afghanistan, females make up one-quarter of parliament, fill one-third of the nation's classrooms and even compete on "Afghan Idol."

But violence against women remains "endemic," according to the State Department. The percentage of female civil servants is steadily dropping. Just one of 25 cabinet members is a woman, and female lawmakers say their opinions are often ignored.

That point was underscored in January, many observers said, when the women's affairs minister was not invited to an international conference in London on reconciliation and reintegration.

Bringing the Taliban into the government could make things worse, Hamidi said.

"They think women should stay at home," she said. "And all of them have the same perception and same beliefs, from the lowest to the top level."

The Taliban itself, led by Mohammad Omar, has tried to dispute that. As part of what analysts call a public relations campaign to soften the movement's image, Omar, though still in hiding, released a statement last fall that said the Taliban did not oppose women's rights and favored education for all.

Arsala Rahmani, a lawmaker and former Taliban government official, said he thought women's activists were being close-minded, defying what he called "a mother's duty to always try to unite their sons." He said that the Taliban restricted women to protect them from conflict -- not out of ideological misogyny -- and that Omar and his fighters would accept any ideas the Afghan public favors.

To human rights activists, those Taliban messages are ploys to dim support for U.S.-led military efforts in Afghanistan. They point to Taliban-dominated Kandahar province, where militants have closed two-thirds of schools, and Helmand, where tribal leaders say female teachers are threatened with death.

It is a worrisome prospect to women such as Khujesta Elham, an aspiring politician who on a recent day was chatting with friends between classes at Kabul University. She said she thought Taliban fighters should be shunned, though she did not expect that to happen.

"Whatever decision Karzai makes will be his alone," said Elham, 22. "The government does not care about women's rights."

The depth of the Taliban's control varies across Afghanistan, as was the case during its rule, and so do views on the movement. In the 1990s, the Taliban viewed Kabul as a den of depravity, and it was there that its notorious Vice and Virtue police most brutally wielded batons against women who exposed their faces or wore high heels.

In Laghman, a rural Pashtun province in the shadow of snow-capped mountains, patriarchal traditions meant many of those rules were already in force. The area's Taliban officials mostly ignored unauthorized girls' schools, said Qamer Khujazada, who ran one until the Taliban was ousted in 2001. Khujazada became principal of Haider Khani high school, but militants burned down its administrative offices four years ago.

Hanifa Safia, the women's affairs representative for the province, said she thinks a settlement is the only way to peace. The Taliban fighters who throw acid on schoolgirls' faces or threaten professional women do so just to antagonize the government, she said. "I have talked to so many Taliban. They are not against women," Safia said. "Once they have been given positions in government, they will definitely change."

Khujazada, the principal, tentatively agrees. She walks confidently through the halls of her fraying school, overseeing a staff that she boasts is exactly half female.

But many of the girls slip into blue burqas before they leave the concrete-walled schoolyard, and Khujazada acknowledged that most will be married off before they ever set foot in a university. What is important, she said, is that they have the right to continue their schooling.

"Education has a lot of friends," Khujazada said cautiously. "But it has some enemies, too."

US-Israel Showdown?

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posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 03/15/2010 @ 11:56am

The Israel lobby is mobilizing for what might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel since, well, the Suez War of 1956, when President Eisenhower told Israel -- and its covert allies, the UK and France -- to halt the unprovoked assault on Egypt. Since then, US-Israel conflicts have been relatively small and tied to side issues, such as the fight over President Reagan's sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s or President Bush's showdown with Israel in the early 1990s, when the United States threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Israel after a right-wing Israeli government stone-walled the peace process.

This time, if President Obama plays his cards right, he could bring down the extremist government of Bibi Netanyahu. But that depends on whether Obama displays the guts and gumption necessary for a full-frontal challenge to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies.

In a piece written for Mother Jones last year, I outlined the vulnerability of AIPAC et al. to a direct challenge from Obama, especially with the emergence of J Street, the "pro-Israeli, pro-peace" Jewish lobby.

A year ago, it seemed possible that Obama was headed in that direction. He'd nominated the even-handed George Mitchell as his Israel-Palestine special representative, to the discomfort of AIPAC. He'd installed a number of aides at the White House, including General Jones, Mara Rudman, and others who had sympathies with the Palestinians and with the Israeli pro-peace camp. Obama launched a major effort to rebuild US ties with the Muslim world, including his June speech in Cairo, that all but required a stronger US effort to force concessions from Israel. And he'd ordered a showdown with Israel over its illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian lands, demanding outright that Israel stop building them.

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Nearly all of that collapsed. Mitchell got nowhere. Netanyahu bluntly rejected the settlements demand, kept building them, and faced no consequences. And, worst of all, Obama utterly failed to put forward an American peace plan to restart the talks. What was needed then, and now, is for Obama to outline what a final settlement of the conflict will look like: a return to the 1967 borders (with some land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, the removal of Israeli encampments from the West Bank, a sovereign Palestinian state, a deal over the Palestinians' right to return to their land (including a Saudi- and Gulf-financed compensation package), and probably some sort of US security guarantees for Israel.

Obama didn't deliver. He never stated the end goal. Now, he has another chance. His new opportunity was handed to him last week when Netanyahu's government slapped visiting Vice President Biden in face by announcing, during a high-stakes, delicate trip, a plan to build 1,600 new Jewish homes in occupied East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that event, the entire Obama administration has been mobilized against Israel. The key question is not whether Obama and Co. will slam Israel rhetorically, as they've done, buy whether there will be concrete consequences for Israel and whether the Obama team will finally relaunch the all-but-dead peace process by declaring the president's own vision of the terms that Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states must agree to.

As the New York Times editorialized last week, following the Biden visit fiasco:

"We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.
"Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right."

Biden, of course, used the word "condemn" in reacting to Israel's defiant action, saying: "I condemn the decision." Then rhetorically at least, the US got even nastier. Hillary Clinton -- who, like Biden, prides herself as being militantly pro-Israel -- used the word "insult" in slamming Israel: "The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting," said Clinton.With Obama's approval, she delivered a 45-minute tongue lashing to Netanhayu over the phone. And yesterday David Axelrod, the White House political adviser chimed in, saying: "What happened there was an affront. It was an insult."

Netanyahu, while faking an apology, insists -- as does his entire right-wing regime -- that it won't change policy or back down.

The lobby is mobilizing. AIPAC, in a defensive statement, called the whole thing a "distraction," and it added:

"AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State. ... The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel."

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, a knee-jerk defender of everything Israel does, accused the US of a "gross overreaction" to the Israeli insult, adding:

"We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States. One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table."

And a panoply of Israel's best friends in Congress are trying to preempt an Obama response to the Israeli insult that goes beyond rhetoric, too. Representive Shelley Berkley (D.-Nevada) called the Clinton-Axelrod statements part of an "irresponsible overreaction," and the ever-reliable John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, told Commentary that "the tone and substance we are seeing emerge as a pattern for this Administration are both disappointing and of great concern."

Various neocons are weighing in, too. Writing in the Washington Post, Elliott Abrams accused the Obama administration of "mishandling" relations with Israel, adding: "The Obama administration continues to drift away from traditional U.S. support for Israel." In the same vein, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, expressed alarm about a "tectonic drift" pushing the US and Israel apart, concluding:

"Israel and the United States have been drifting apart for some time, though that pace has accelerated during the Obama administration. The currents that have set Washington and Jerusalem on different courses are complex and cannot be boiled down to one failed mission (that of Vice President Biden) nor an indifferent president (Barack Obama). There is a generational shift underway, driving apart post-Zionist Israel and 21st-century America."

And Robert Satloff of the militantly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy warned the administration not to tilt away from Israel after the insult to Biden:

"It would be shortsighted for the administration to use this episode as an opportunity to reward the Palestinians. ... And it would be an analytical blunder for the administration to believe that this incident is an opportunity that could precipitate Netanyahu's political demise."

Underlying all this is not just the reaction to an insulting announcement during the visit of Vice President Biden. Instead, at a more fundamental level, the Obama administration is beginning to realize that Israeli intransigence -- and the Netanyahu government, in particular -- is a major obstacle to US policy in the region, from Iraq to Iran to the struggle against Al Qaeda. It still remains to be seen if the White House the courage to do anything about it. In 2009, it didn't. But this is 2010.