Starting Points

Apr 7, 2010

CQ - Behind the Lines for Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Image by Pieter Musterd (bezoek onze tentoonstelling) via Flickr

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Heydays: Michigan Christian militia could have been plotting to commemorate Oklahoma City blast -- or uprisings at Lexington and Concord . . . Not close enough for government work: DHS has inspected just a dozen of 6,000 chemical facilities it says require special security . . . Ditto: Of 15 hypothetical terrorist attack scenarios identified by DHS, incident planning was completed only for one. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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“Whether the Apocalyptic Hutarees’ alleged plan to attack police was meant to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing may never be known, [but] the possibility is inescapable,” The Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbiel leads. The date of the anniversary, April 19, is shared with the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord, The New York Observer’s Joe Conason reminds, while All Hands relays word that DHS’s Janet Napolitano will attend this year’s commemoration in O.C.

Homies: Almost a decade after 9/11, DHS has inspected just a dozen of the 6,000 chemical facilities it says require special security measures, The Houston Chronicle’s Monica Hatcher spotlights — Homeland Security Newswire reports that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is planning hearings. The department has also identified 15 hypothetical terrorist attack scenarios, but it has completed incident planning work on only one, which envisions explosions similar to Moscow’s metro bombing, Government Security News’ Jacob Goodwin relates. One year after the Conficker botnet was front-page news around the world, DHS is preparing a report examining efforts to keep the destructive zombie-maker in check, Computerworld’s Robert McMillan mentions.

Feds: The Obama administration has authorized operations to capture or kill a U.S.-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen, Reuters’ Adam Entous reports. About to transfer to DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the ODNI’s chief strategist Patrick C. Neary contributes an essay to Studies in Intelligence diagnosing the ills of the post-9/11 intelligence community, The Washington Post reports — and see Security Management’s Matthew Harwood on the same. Efforts to overhaul U.S. intel ops are “very much a work in progress” and “true information sharing” has barely started, CongressDaily’s Chris Strohm hears top spy Dennis Blair saying yesterday. The Post’s Jeff Stein, meantime, chronicles the long-running legal travails of “Peter B.,” a one-time deep-cover CIA counterterrorist who alleges he was unfairly fired in 2002.

State and Local: The statewide head of the Ohio Defense Force militia assures The Dayton Daily News that “his group is in business to help the police in times of crisis, not to kill them” — as the founder of the Indiana Militia informs The Merrillville Post-Tribune that “most militias form with the intent to uphold the U.S. Constitution,” and a Daily Illini op-ed argues that “one bad militia group doesn’t speak for them all.” Arizona’s A.G. tells The Associated Press that the slaying of a southern Arizona rancher was the work of a drug cartel scout, but the Cochise County Sheriff sees no evidence supporting that theory. Mississippi’s Emergency Management chief says all entities that may have been overpaid FEMA grant money related to Hurricane Katrina have been contacted, but that resolving the issue could take a year or more, The Jackson Clarion-Ledger updates.

Follow the Money: A federal court ruling on warrantless wiretapping may dismantle a five-year probe into a defunct charity’s financial support for terror outfits, Right Side News frets. New Delhi last week froze 18 allegedly terror-linked bank accounts under India’s stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Press Trust of India informs — as Asia Times sees subcontinental terrorist outfits reviving older methods of garnering funds, most notably extortion. “They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. Nowhere is that truer than in Iran. We must have transparency from firms doing business in Iran,” the president of United Against Nuclear Iran inveighs in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Treasury last week imposed new sanctions on an al Qaeda associate who helped smuggle foreign fighters into Iraq and a German jailed for plotting to bomb American targets there, AP reports.

Bugs ‘n Bombs: Authorities have traced to Brooklyn the mailing location of the March 25 anthrax letter hoax that caused Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Queens office to temporarily shut down, The New York Post relays. “Our adversaries — no, our enemies — have but one goal: to kill us,” Lancaster Farming has an FBI official addressing the annual Virginia Agroterrorism Conference. Even as the FDA increases inspections and growers focus on food safety, the walnut industry is focusing on traceability, Food Safety News notes. Using operating manuals for the Russian 107mm Katyusha rocket, an al Qaeda Web site tutors British fanatics on building cruise missiles with solid fuel engines, ANI notes.

Know Nukes: Thermo Fisher Scientific has been awarded two U.S. patents for radiation instruments that can help protect the public against nuclear terrorism, Nuclear Street says. The hard-negotiated U.S.-Russian nuke arms pact being inked Thursday “took so long to conclude it has jeopardized Obama’s chances of achieving another nuclear goal: Senate ratification of a nuclear test ban treaty,” AP analyzes. “The most serious threat America faces is nuclear terrorism from Iran, either a nuclear EMP attack launched by missile or a warhead smuggled into a city,” Family Security Matters leads.

Close Air Support: Security officers at Tulsa International chased down and arrested a man who threatened at a checkpoint April 4 to detonate a bomb in a gym bag, The Tulsa World tells — as The Cleveland Plain Dealer learns that the gun found in Cleveland Browns lineman Shaun Rogers’ carry-on at another airport security checkpoint was cocked and loaded. North Carolina’s Charlotte-Douglas International will close a checkpoint throughout April for expansion and renovations, WBTV 3 News notes. The full-body scanners that DHS is deploying since the Dec. 25 bomb threat are not the best devices available, Maine Public Broadcasting Network quotes Sen. Susan Collins — while The Bangor Daily News says Collins is right to say that new screening procedures for international arrivals “won’t help much if U.S. agencies don’t share information.”

Coming and Going: Although some subway stations in the United States have been outfitted with a bio-chemical threat detection system, its installation isn’t presently supported by DHS funding or transit authority budgets, Global Security Newswire notes — as The Infrastructurist concludes that “there’s still an elephant in the room when it comes to adapting sophisticated technologies on a large scale: cost.” The Arizona rancher killing, meantime, has drawn fresh scrutiny to the patchwork of fencing along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, FOX News spotlights.

Cyberia: The European Union is funding research aimed at detecting suspicious behavior on board aircraft using “a combination of cameras, microphones, explosives detectors and a sophisticated computer system,” The Daily Telegraph relates. “For Israel’s chief of military intelligence, ‘cyberspace has become the fifth dimension of warfare, following land, sea, air and space,’” Aviation Week leads. “Over the next three years, the DHS is slated to hire 1,000 cybersecurity professionals and has extended offers to roughly 200 individuals so far,” eWeek updates — while U.S. News runs a point-counterpoint debate on the question: “Should the U.S. be prepared for offensive cyberwarfare?” See a sidebar, as well, on six vulnerable potential terrorist targets.

Terror Tech: “The most extensive and sophisticated video surveillance system in the United States . . . is transforming what it means to be in public in Chicago,” AP spotlights. The EPA is working with a Pentagon agency on anthrax sporicides, the deputy director of its National Homeland Security Research Center writes in Armed With Science in regards to interagency collaboration on bioterror R&D. Homeland Security Watch ponders “What Zombies Can Teach About Homeland Security,” drawing on the (actually serious) Canadian academic paper, “Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection.” In Afghanistan, meanwhile, “evidence shows that while drone strikes wear down the will of insurgents, they also give policymakers the illusion of quick, seemingly costless success,” Asia Times assesses.

Over There: Monday’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Peshawar marked “the first most-coordinated and well-planned direct strike on a U.S. interest in Pakistan,” Foreign Policy essays. Obama administration plans to train a covert Indonesian army counterterror unit could violate the Leahy Amendment, the Los Angeles Times hears human rights advocates fretting. According to Canada’s Tourism Commission, visits from Americans dropped by 9 percent in 2009 and increased U.S. ID hassles at the border would seem to be the cause, The Bangor Daily News notes. The Canadian lawyer who forced the U.S. government to admit that Abu Zubaydah is not an al Qaeda terrorist says the revelation could seriously jeopardize Ottawa’s case against Mohamed Harkat, the Citizen says.

Courts and Rights: The Supremes have declined to take the case of a Saudi defendant in Colorado whose lawyer was barred from questioning a prospective juror about a likely bias against Muslims, The Christian Science Monitor mentions. A Philadelphia man who threatened Rep. Eric Cantor and his family via YouTube has been found incompetent to stand trial, the Inquirer informs — as The Seattle Times sees a Washington State man charged with threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray over her support for the health care overhaul. A migrant aid agency says two Uighur brothers resettled in Switzerland from Guantanamo Bay are studying French and settling in, AP reports — while Agence France-Presse learns that some Gitmo detainees are setting aside food as a donation to Haiti’s earthquake victims. Justice included non-terrorists on a list backing up administration claims that hundreds of terrorists have been convicted in criminal courts, Cybercast News Service contends.

Patriot Ponies: “A Christian militia, made up entirely of horses, was arrested today for planning a stampede through the middle of Main Street, USA, on July 4th,” The Spoof (a bit inexplicably) spoofs. “The leader of the herd, known only as Star, has confessed his organization was intent on creating anarchy by going to a series of 4th of July parades around the U.S. and causing a few flighty horses to break. Then, the group of militant mustangs would follow through with a general equine panic culminating in chaos throughout the country causing widespread property damage. The alleged co-conspirators and their ages are Duke 5, Bandit 7, Doc 9, Ollie 12, and Red 8. All those arrested could face punishments ranging from 15 years to life in a maximum security pen surrounded by electrical fencing.”

Source: CQ Homeland Security

Thai Protesters Storm Parliament - NYTimes.com

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By SETH MYDANS and THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thailand declared a state of emergency in the Bangkok area on Wednesday after antigovernment demonstrators broke into the Parliament building, forcing government ministers to flee by helicopter.

The televised announcement came after nearly a month of street demonstrations by the red-shirted protesters, who have paralyzed the city’s commercial district and paraded through the city in defiance of government restrictions. They are demanding that Mr. Abhisit dissolve Parliament and call new elections.

The declaration of a state of emergency gives the military the power to suspend certain civil liberties and ban public gatherings of more than five people. It creates a Crisis Solution Center under joint civilian and military control.

“We need to plan and implement everything to the last detail and with thorough care,” Mr. Abhisit said. “The last thing we want is for the situation to spiral out of control.”

He added, “We do this not with the intention of cracking down on innocent people but to sanctify the law.”

The brief invasion of Parliament earlier Wednesday, the failure of security forces to stop it and the hasty retreat by government officials had added to a growing sense in Bangkok that the government is not in control of the situation.

At a rally shortly the invasion a protest leader, Jatuporn Prompan, was defiant. “If you want to kill us, come on in,” he said. “But if you consider us your brothers and sisters, put your weapons down.”

The ministers, in their dark, tailored suits, could be seen on television clambering over a back wall of the Parliament building and then boarding a Black Hawk helicopter under armed guard.

At the front of the building, red-shirted protesters and their black-uniformed enforcers shoved and wrestled with Parliamentary guards, pushing back security officers with riot shields.

“The Red Shirts were very crazy and yelling,” said Sgt. Paisan Chumanee of the police. “We didn’t know whether they would use violence. To avoid provoking more anger, we used the helicopter.”

The move on the Parliament building came shortly after the conclusion of a cabinet meeting at which ministers extended the Internal Security Act, said Panitan Wattanayagorn, the government spokesman, who was one of those evacuated from the Parliament building.

Mr. Panitan defended the ministers’ hasty retreat, saying they would not have been able to leave on their own “without confrontation.”

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thangsuban, who is in charge of security for the government, was one of those evacuated to a military headquarters after the protesters wrestled with his security guard, seized the guard’s weapon and emptied out the ammunition.

“This is the Parliament! Why are you carrying a gun?” an opposition lawmaker shouted at the guard.

Mr. Abhisit, a target of the protesters, had departed a few minutes earlier to the military headquarters, where he has been based during the protests. He later announced that he had canceled a planned trip to the United States for a nuclear security summit meeting next week because of the continuing unrest.

The protesters, known as the Red Shirts, are the latest front in a social and political struggle between the rural and urban poor and the ruling elite that saw its pre-eminence challenged by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006.

Mr. Thaksin is abroad now, fleeing a corruption conviction, but he is believed to be financing and coordinating much of the protests.

The protesters are demanding the dissolution of the government, which came to power in December 2008 through a parliamentary vote, and new elections. Mr. Thaksin’s supporters form an electoral majority, and it is widely believed that they would win a nationwide vote.

Mr. Abhisit’s term in office runs until the end of 2011. In recent unsuccessful negotiations, protesters demanded that he step down within 15 days, and he offered the possibility of a new election within nine months. The talks broke down in an impasse but could be revived.

In defiance of government orders, thousands kept up a blockade of the main commercial district, where they have forced shopping malls, hotels and banks to stay closed since Saturday. In a show of impunity on Tuesday, convoys of red-shirted protesters roamed the city freely, pushing through military and police blockades with little resistance.

One commentator, Tulsathit Taptim of the daily newspaper Nation, called it “arguably the best day so far for the red shirts and definitely the worst for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.”

He added: “Bangkokians’ frustration was palpable — and so was the red shirts’ renewed confidence. Also, for the first time, the prime minister must have started questioning the loyalty of some in the military.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Panitan, the government spokesman, denied reports in the Thai news media that military commanders were refusing orders to use force against the protesters.

“We gave the military clear guidelines,” he said. “They cannot use force or weapons against the people.”

He added: “We are required to solve the situation positively. That’s the job of the prime minister.”

Emergency in Kyrgyzstan as Police Fire on Protesters - NYTimes.com

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By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan declared a national state of emergency on Wednesday after large-scale antigovernment protests broke out around the country and riot police officers fired on crowds in the capital, killing at least 17 people.

The country’s president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was said to have fled the capital, Bishkek, on the presidential plane, and it increasingly seemed that the opposition was gaining the upper hand.

The police used bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against a crowd of thousands massing in front of the presidential office in Bishkek, according to witness accounts. At least 17 people were killed and others were wounded, officials.

Opposition leaders said the toll was as high as 100 people, but that figure could not be confirmed.

The upheaval threatened an American ally, since Kyrgyzstan is home to an important American air base that operates in support of the NATO mission in nearby Afghanistan. American officials said that as of Wednesday evening the base was functioning normally.

The Obama administration has sought to cultivate ties with Mr. Bakiyev after he vowed to close the American base on the outskirts of Bishkek last year, then reversed his decision after the American side agreed to concessions, including higher rent.

Tensions have been growing in Kyrgyzstan over what human rights groups contend are the increasingly repressive policies of President Bakiyev.

Mr. Bakiyev made no public comment on Wednesday, and an official at the airport in Bishkek said in a telephone interview that Mr. Bakiyev took off from the airport on the presidential plane in the early evening. The airport official said Mr. Bakiyev was flying to Osh, a major city in the southern part of the country, but that could not be confirmed.

On Wednesday afternoon, fighting continued in the streets of Bishkek and other provincial centers. Video shot by protesters and uploaded to the Internet showed scenes of people clashing with and in some cases pushing back heavily armed riot police.

Reports from Bishkek said crowds of opposition members tried to enter the presidential offices as well as those of the national television channels.

Dmitri Kabak, director of a local human rights group in Bishkek, said in a telephone interview that he was monitoring the protest on the central square when riot police officers started shooting. He said he had the sense that the officers had panicked and were not being supervised.

“When people started marching toward the presidential office, snipers on the roof of the office started to open fire, with live bullets,” Mr. Kabak said. “I saw several people who were killed right there on the square.”

The United States Embassy in Bishkek issued a statement saying that it was “deeply concerned about reports of civil disturbances.”

By late evening in Bishkek, it appeared that the opposition had succeeded in taking over the national television channels. In a speech to the nation, an opposition leader, Omurbek Tekebaev, a former speaker of Parliament, demanded the Mr. Bakiyev and the rest of his government resign.

Mr. Tekebaev was arrested earlier in the day along with some other opposition leaders, but later released.

Kyrgyzstan, with five million people in the mountains of Central Asia, is one of the poorest countries of the former Soviet Union, and has long been troubled by political conflict and corruption.

The opposition has complained about what is asserts are Mr. Bakiyev’s autocratic policies, but it appears that the immediate catalyst for the violence was anger over a sharp increase in prices for utilities.

On Wednesday, the Kyrgyz government accused the opposition of provoking violence. “Their goal is to create instability and confrontation in society,” the Kyrgyz Parliament said in a statement.

The government said it would deal severely with the protesters, but they did not appear to be deterred. The first unrest occurred on Tuesday in the provincial center of Talas, when opposition members stormed government offices.

Russia, which also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and a close relationship with the government, appealed for calm.

“We believe that it is important that under the circumstances, all current issues should be resolved in a lawful manner,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Mr. Bakiyev easily won another term as president as president last year over Mr. Atambaev in an election that independent monitors said was tainted by massive fraud.

Mr. Bakiyev first took office in 2005 after the Tulip Revolution, the third in what was seen at the time as a series of so-called color revolutions that offered hope of more democratic governments in former Soviet republics.

But since then, he has consolidated power, cracking down on the opposition and independent news outlets.

Apr 6, 2010

Indian Tribes Go in Search of Their Lost Languages - NYTimes.com

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By PATRICIA COHEN

As far as the records show, no one has spoken Shinnecock or Unkechaug, languages of Long Island’s Indian tribes, for nearly 200 years. Now Stony Brook University and two of the Indian nations are initiating a joint project to revive these extinct tongues, using old documents like a vocabulary list that Thomas Jefferson wrote during a visit in 1791.

The goal is language resuscitation and enlisting tribal members from this generation and the next to speak them, said representatives from the tribes and Stony Brook’s Southampton campus.

Chief Harry Wallace, the elected leader of the Unkechaug Nation, said that for tribal members, knowing the language is an integral part of understanding their own culture, past and present.

“When our children study their own language and culture, they perform better academically,” he said. “They have a core foundation to rely on.”

The Long Island effort is part of a wave of language reclamation projects undertaken by American Indians in recent years. For many tribes language is a cultural glue that holds a community together, linking generations and preserving a heritage and values. Bruce Cole, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which sponsors language preservation programs, has called language “the DNA of a culture.”

The odds against success can be overwhelming, given the relatively small number of potential speakers and the difficulty in persuading a new generation to participate. There has been progress, though, said Leanne Hinton, professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, who created the Breath of Life program in California in 1992 to revive dormant languages in the state.

Representatives from at least 25 languages with no native speakers have participated in the group’s workshops so far, she said. Last month Ms. Hinton and a colleague at Yale received a federal grant to create a similar program based in Washington, D.C.

Of the more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States, only 175 remain, according to the Indigenous Language Institute. This nonprofit group estimates that without restoration efforts, no more than 20 will still be spoken in 2050.

Some reclamation efforts have shown success. Daryl Baldwin started working to revive the dormant language of the Miami Nation in the Midwest (part of the Algonquian language family), and taught his own children to speak it fluently. He now directs the Myaamia Project at Miami University in Ohio, a joint effort between academics and the Miami tribe.

Farther east is Stephanie Fielding, a member of the Connecticut Mohegans and an adviser on the Stony Brook project. She has devoted her life to bringing her tribe’s language back to life and is compiling a dictionary and grammar book. In her eyes language provides a mental telescope into the world of her ancestors. She notes, for example, that in an English conversation, a statement is typically built with the first person — “I” — coming first. In the same statement in Mohegan, however, “you” always comes first, even when the speaker is the subject.

“This suggests a more communally minded culture,” she said.

Now in her 60s, Ms. Fielding knows firsthand just how tough it is to sustain a language effort over time, however. She said she was still not fluent.

“In order for a language to survive and resurrect,” she said, “it needs people talking it, and for people to talk it, there has to be a society that works on it.”

Chief Wallace of the Unkechaug in Long Island already has a willing student from a younger generation. Howard Treadwell, 24, graduated from Stony Brook in 2009 with a linguistics degree. He will participate in the Long Island effort while doing graduate work at the University of Arizona, where there is a specialized program researching American Indian languages.

Mr. Treadwell is one of 400 registered members of the tribe, which maintains a 52-acre reservation in Mastic, on the South Shore. The Shinnecocks have about 1,300 enrolled members and have a reservation adjacent to Southampton.

Robert D. Hoberman, the chairman of the linguistics department at Stony Book, is overseeing the academic side of the project. He is an expert in the creation of modern Hebrew, the great success story of language revival. Essentially unspoken for 2,000 years, Hebrew survived only in religious uses until early Zionists tried to update it — an undertaking adopted on a grand scale when the State of Israel was established.

For the American Indians on Long Island the task is particularly difficult because there are few records. But Shinnecock and Unkechaug are part of a family of eastern Algonquian languages. Some have both dictionaries and native speakers, Mr. Hoberman said, which the team can mine for missing words and phrases, and for grammatical structure.

The reclamation is a two-step process, the professor explained. “First we have to figure out what the language looked like,” using remembered prayers, greetings, sayings and word lists, like the one Jefferson created, he said. “Then we’ll look at languages that are much better documented, look at short word lists to see what the differences are and see what the equivalencies are, and we’ll use that to reconstruct what the Long Island languages probably were like.” The Massachusett language, for example, is well documented with dictionaries and Bible translations.

Jefferson’s Unkechaug word list was collected on June 13, 1791, when he visited Brookhaven, Long Island, with James Madison, later his successor in the White House. He wrote that even then, only three old women remained who could still speak the language fluently.

Chief Wallace said he had many more records, including religious documents, deeds and legal transactions, and possibly a tape of some tribal members speaking in the 1940s.

“When we have an idea of what the language should sound like, the vocabulary and the structure, we’ll then introduce it to people in the community,” Mr. Hoberman said.

While it may seem impossible to recreate the sound of a lost tongue, Mr. Hoberman said the process was not all that mysterious because the dictionaries were transliterated into English.

“Would someone from 200 years ago think we had a funny accent?” Mr. Hoberman asked. “Yes. Would they understand it? I hope so.”

Surprisingly, Family Time Has Grown - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

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By TARA PARKER-POPE

Working parents perpetually agonize that they don’t see enough of their children. But a surprising new study finds that mothers and fathers alike are doing a better job than they think, spending far more time with their families than did parents of earlier generations.

The study, by two economists at the University of California, San Diego, analyzes a dozen surveys of how Americans say they use their time, taken at different periods from 1965 to 2007. It reports that the amount of child care time spent by parents at all income levels — and especially those with a college education — has risen “dramatically” since the mid-1990s. (The findings by the husband-and-wife economist team of Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey appear in a discussion paper presented in March at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington.)

Before 1995, mothers spent an average of about 12 hours a week attending to the needs of their children. By 2007, that number had risen to 21.2 hours a week for college-educated women and 15.9 hours for those with less education.

Although mothers still do most of the parenting, fathers also registered striking gains: to 9.6 hours a week for college-educated men, more than double the pre-1995 rate of 4.5 hours; and to 6.8 hours for other men, up from 3.7, according to an additional analysis by Betsey Stevenson and Dan Sacks, economists at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Family researchers say the news should offer relief to guilt-stricken working parents.

“Parents are feeling like they don’t have enough time with their children,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York, which conducts research on the work force. “It’s a function of people working so hard, and they are worried they’re shortchanging their children. I’ve never found a group of parents who believe they are spending enough time with their kids.”

Although previous studies have shown increases in parenting time starting in the 1990s, the study by the Rameys is important because it links so many time-use surveys and also breaks the data down by age of the child and education level.

The rise in child-centered time is just one of the ways the American family is changing. Couples are typically waiting longer to get married and begin having children. Divorce rates are dropping with each generation.

And notably, children are no longer so widely viewed as essential to a happy marriage. In 1990, 65 percent of Americans said that children were “very important” to a successful marriage, but by 2007, the number of adults who agreed with that statement had dropped to 41 percent, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

In fact, the surge in parenting time may say more about modern marriage than about modern child care practices, Dr. Stevenson said. She notes that among college-educated parents, two- to two-and-a-half hours of the increased time takes place when both parents are together. “Everybody gets in the car,” she said, “and mom and dad both cheer on the kid.”

That may reflect a rise in what Dr. Stevenson calls the “hedonic marriage,” in which couples share home and work responsibilities so they can spend more time together.

By contrast, couples from earlier generations typically had “specialized” roles that tended to keep them apart — the husband working at a job to support the family, the wife staying home to raise the children.

“We’re seeing a rise in marriages where we’re picking people we like to do activities with,” Dr. Stevenson said. “So it’s not surprising we’re going to see that some of the activities we want do together involve our children.”

So where is the extra time coming from? Women, in particular, are spending less time cooking and cleaning their homes, while men are putting in fewer hours at the office. A 2007 report in The Quarterly Journal of Economics showed that leisure time among men and women surged four to eight hours a week from 1965 to 2003.

Notably, the data in the Ramey study do not count the hours mothers and fathers spend “around” their children — at the dinner table, for example, or in solitary play. Instead, the survey tracks specific activities in which the parent is directly involved in the child’s care.

“It’s taking them to school, helping with homework, bathing them, playing catch with them in the back yard,” said a co-author of the leisure-time paper, Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Those are the activities that have increased over the last 15 to 20 years.”

Dr. Galinsky notes that although working parents typically feel guilty for not spending more time at home, children often have a different reaction. In a landmark study published as “Ask the Children” (Harper, 2000), she asked more than 1,000 children about their “one wish” for their parents. Although parents expected their children would wish for more family time, the children wanted something different.

“Kids were more likely to wish that their parents were less tired and less stressed,” Dr. Galinsky said.

Israeli Rights Groups View Themselves as Under Siege - NYTimes.com

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By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Leaders of some of Israel’s most prominent human rights organizations say they are working in an increasingly hostile environment and coming under attack for actions that their critics say endanger the country.

The pressure on these groups has tightened as the country’s leaders have battled to defend Israel against accusations of war crimes, the rights advocates say, raising questions about the limits of free speech and dissent in Israel’s much vaunted democracy.

“Over the years, in a variety of international arenas,” said Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, “it was key for Israeli officials to say, ‘Yes, there are many problems, perhaps even abuses; however, we have a strong, vibrant civil society with a plethora of voices and we are very proud of that.’

“It is inconsistent to make those statements and at the same time create a situation that colors us as traitors in the public eye.”

Governments and the watchdog organizations that monitor them have rarely seen eye to eye. But rights advocates say that to many conservatives and leaders of Israel’s right-leaning government, the allegations of war crimes against the Israeli military that followed the Gaza war in the winter of 2008-9 have turned human rights criticism into an existential threat that is chipping away at the country’s legitimacy. And officials have been blunt in their counterattacks.

The chief catalyst was the United Nations report last fall on the war in Gaza, by a fact-finding mission led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone. The report accused Israel and Hamas of possible war crimes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since identified what he calls the “Goldstone effect,” meaning the delegitimization of Israel abroad, as a major strategic threat.

Last summer, he attacked a leftist organization, Breaking the Silence, that published allegations by unnamed Israeli soldiers about human rights violations during the war, as selectively anti-Israel.

Some international rights groups that have been critical of Israel, like Human Rights Watch, have said Israel’s government was “waging a propaganda war” to discredit them. A senior Netanyahu aide affirmed in an interview last year that Israel was “going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups.”

Israeli rights advocates say that such comments by officials have fostered an atmosphere of harassment. While they do not accuse the government of orchestrating a campaign against them, they point to a number of seemingly unconnected dots that they say add up to a growing climate of repression.

In Sheikh Jarrah, the East Jerusalem neighborhood where several Palestinian families have been evicted from their homes and replaced by Jewish settlers, the police have arrested dozens of Israelis attending peaceful protests in recent months. Mr. El-Ad was detained for 36 hours in January, along with 16 other activists, after he explained to the police that their decision to break up a rally had no legal grounds. One organizer of the protests was arrested at his parents’ Jerusalem home on a night in late March, and released three days later.

Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, an advocacy group that focuses on freedom of movement for Palestinians, said her organization was harassed last year by the Israeli tax authorities. She said they questioned why Gisha should be tax exempt when that status was meant for organizations that promoted the public good. Eventually, she said, the authorities backed down.

Then an ultra-Zionist nongovernmental organization called Im Tirtzu (Hebrew for ‘If you will it’ — the first part of Theodor Herzl’s famous maxim) attacked a major organization, the New Israel Fund, which channeled about $29 million to Israeli groups in 2009, including some Arab-run, non-Zionist groups. The fund describes itself as pro-Israel and says it does not agree with all the positions of the groups it helps, but it supports their right to be heard.

Im Tirtzu published a report in January asserting that 92 percent of the quotes from unofficial Israeli bodies supporting claims against Israel in the Goldstone report were provided by 16 nongovernmental organizations financed by the New Israel Fund.

The New Israel Fund dismissed Im Tirtzu’s findings as a fabrication, saying most of the references it cited had nothing to do with Gaza during the Israeli offensive.

Still, for three weeks, Im Tirtzu plastered billboards across the country with posters featuring a crude caricature of the New Israel Fund president, Naomi Chazan. The posters depicted her with a horn attached to her forehead (in Hebrew, the word for fund also means horn) and bore the legend “Naomi Goldstone Hazan.”

Perhaps the most alarming sign to rights advocates was a preliminary vote in Parliament supporting a bill that called for groups that received support from foreign governments to register with Israel’s political parties’ registrar, which could change their tax status and hamper their ability to raise money abroad. It swept a preliminary vote in the 120-seat Parliament in February with 58 in favor and 11 against.

Proponents say the bill is needed to improve transparency. “Up until now they have enjoyed a halo effect as highly regarded human rights watchdogs,” said Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli political scientist and president of NGO Monitor, a conservative watchdog group financed by American Jewish philanthropists. “They were not seen as political organizations with biases and prone to false claims. Now, they are coming under some kind of scrutiny.”

But rights organizations say that they are already required to list publicly the sources of their funding, and that the bill is actually intended to stifle dissent.

Right-wing organizations like those encouraging Jewish settlement in Arab areas of East Jerusalem receive the overwhelming share of their financing from individuals and philanthropies whose identities are often not disclosed.

For now, the bill has effectively been blocked until its proponents reach agreement with the Labor ministers in the governing coalition, who are trying to water it down.

But Ms. Chazan said the bill could not be finessed.

“This law has to disappear,” she said. “It is the single most dangerous threat to Israeli civil society since its inception.”

For Ms. Chazan, a vibrant and diverse civil society is the bedrock of Israeli democracy, and what being Israeli is all about. “We love this country and we want it to be decent,” she said. “We believe the more decent Israel is, the better chance it has of surviving.”

But Mr. Steinberg says that organizations like the New Israel Fund, with their deep pockets and multiple petitions to Israel’s Supreme Court, have “distorted the marketplace of ideas.”

“Part of what is going on now,” he said, “is a sense that this is getting out of control.”

Israeli Gag Order Begins to Slip in Security Leak Case - NYTimes.com

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By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A young Israeli journalist is scheduled to go on trial in Israel in mid-April on accusations of serious security offenses, possibly including espionage, according to Israelis familiar with the case.

A court-imposed gag order has prevented any reporting of the case in Israel, but on Tuesday, a retired Israeli Supreme Court judge sharply criticized the forced news blackout, saying in a radio interview that it must be fought, and stirring a public furor.

The journalist, Anat Kamm, 23, is accused of having copied Israeli military documents concerning the premeditated killing of Palestinian militants in the West Bank and of leaking them to a reporter. She apparently had access to the documents during her compulsory military service.

Observers have speculated that the recipient was Uri Blau from the liberal Haaretz newspaper, and that he used the documents as the basis for a 2008 exposé.

Ms. Kamm has been held secretly under house arrest for more than three months. After leaving the military, she had been working for Walla!, a Hebrew Web site partly owned by Haaretz.

Constrained by the gag order, the Israeli news media has so far made only cryptic references to the case. On March 9, for example, The Seventh Eye, an electronic journal of media affairs published by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research body in Jerusalem, ran an item saying simply that Ms. Kamm was about to go on unpaid leave from Walla!, without explaining why.

The popular Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot suggested in its April 1 edition that readers search the Internet with keywords “Israeli journalist gag” in order to learn about an affair of interest to Israelis that could only be reported on abroad. And on Tuesday the same newspaper ran a translation of an article by the American journalist Judith Miller on the case, with all the details that would have violated the gag order literally blacked out.

If Ms. Kamm is found guilty, informed observers said she could face up to 15 years in jail.

The case has already received extensive coverage abroad. Details began to emerge in mid March on a blog called Tikun Olam, or Repairing the World, by an American writer, Richard Silverstein. The New York-based Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the British newspapers Guardian and Independent newspapers and The Associated Press have also written about the affair.

According to The Independent, Mr. Blau, the Haaretz reporter suspected of having used the confidential military documents, is currently “hiding in Britain”.

The article by Mr. Blau at the center of the storm was published in November 2008. It focused on an episode in June 2007 in which two Palestinian militants belonging to the extremist Islamic Jihad group were killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. The military said at the time that the two were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces.

However Mr. Blau noted that months before, one of the two militants, Ziad Subhi Muhammad Malaisha, had been marked as a target for assassination by the Israeli army’s Central Command, which is responsible for the West Bank.

Mr. Blau’s article suggested that Mr. Malaisha’s killing contravened an Israeli Supreme Court ruling from December 2006 that strictly limited the circumstances in which the military is permitted to carry out preemptive strikes. Haaretz printed copies of Central Command documents stating that Mr. Malaisha and two other Islamic Jihad leaders were eligible targets alongside the report.

Israeli news media were not even allowed to mention that there was a gag order in place, according to Uzi Benziman, the chief editor of The Seventh Eye. But in a Tuesday morning interview with Army Radio, Dalia Dorner, the retired Supreme Court judge who is now the president of the Israeli Press Council said the gag order handed down by a magistrate’s court was “regrettable,” and should be fought all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Ms. Dorner’s comments opened the floodgates to Israeli debate about the imposition of such gag orders, though the court ruling still prevented any discussion of the actual case.

Mordechai Kremnitzer, a law professor at Hebrew University and a senior fellow of the Israel Democracy Institute, said that Israel’s treatment of suspected criminal offenses in the security realm was “draconian.” By isolating the suspect and preventing any public debate, he said, the authorities could more easily pressure the suspect to accept some measure of guilt, arrive at a plea bargain and settle the case “with no noise.”

Mr. Kremnitzer also criticized the ease with which courts in Israel hand out gag orders.

“Only the poor Hebrew readers do not know what is going on,” he said of Israelis unable to read foreign reports about the case in English. “It is an absurd situation,” he said.

The Haaretz newspaper and Israel’s Channel 10 are fighting to lift the gag order. Mibi Moser, the lawyer representing Haaretz, said there would be a court hearing on the matter on April 12, if the gag order was not lifted before.

Mr. Moser is also representing Mr. Blau of Haaretz, though he refused to give any details of that aspect of the case.

Rebel Ambush Kills at Least 73 Indian Officers - NYTimes.com

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By JIM YARDLEY

NEW DELHI — India’s campaign against the country’s Maoist insurgency suffered a major setback on Tuesday when rebel fighters ambushed a paramilitary unit on patrol in an isolated forest region, killing at least 73 officers.

The authorities described a carefully executed surprise attack in which the Maoists opened fire as the patrol entered an area seeded with booby-trap bombs. When officers fell to the ground to take cover from gunfire, they detonated the explosives.

“Something has gone very wrong,” said Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, according to the news agency Press Trust of India. “I am deeply shocked.”

He said the attack by the Maoist fighters showed the “brutality and the savagery they are capable of.”

The attack comes as the government is mobilizing security forces against the Maoists in a multistate campaign known as Operation Green Hunt. The Maoists, also known as Naxalites, have existed in India for four decades and claim to represent the interests of the rural dispossessed who have not shared in India’s economic progress. Once lightly regarded by the government, the Maoists have expanded across a large rural corridor and now exercise outright control over some isolated, mountain regions. Maoist propaganda calls for overthrowing the Indian state.

The goal of the government operation is to push the Maoists out of more populated rural areas and isolate them in certain remote mountain regions. Maoist sympathizers have accused the government of brutalizing and killing innocent villagers as security forces sweep through rural areas to root out rebel fighters.

Officials say the Maoists are the ones who brutalize, having disrupted schools and hospitals and destroyed roads in many areas; the security campaign calls for clearing areas of rebels so that government services can be restored.

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By some unofficial estimates, roughly 200 security officers have been killed by Maoists during the past 12 months. The operation involves multiple federal and state security agencies, and some analysts have questioned whether poor coordination and training is exposing officers to danger. On Sunday, Maoists detonated a land mine in the state of Orissa, killing 10 officers and wounding 16 others. Last month, the Maoists blew up a railroad track, forcing the minor derailment of a passenger train. And in February, about 100 Maoists on motorcycles stormed a police outpost in the state of West Bengal, killing 24 security officers.

The attack on Tuesday occurred in the Dantewada region in the state of Chhattisgarh, in an area known as Chintalnar, considered a major Maoist stronghold. The officers were members of the Central Reserve Police Force, a paramilitary unit, who entered the forest on Sunday night for a two-day mission related to the government operation.

T. J. Longkumar, the Chhattisgarh police inspector general for the larger region, said the officers were returning to camp after an early morning patrol when the Maoists struck around 6:30 a.m. Officer Longkumar said he did not know how many fighters had attacked, but Indian news outlets reported that as many as 1,000 Maoists were involved.

“They were blasted,” Officer Longkumar said. “Most of the casualties were from the explosives.”

He said the attack was probably a response to security forces pressing deeper into isolated areas once completely controlled by the Maoists. “They have regrouped,” he said. “They feel we are entering their core area.”

Saimah Khwaja contributed research.

Human rights report threatens aid to Pakistan - washingtonpost.com

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By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 6, 2010; A06

ISLAMABAD -- The Pakistani army has allegedly committed hundreds of retaliatory killings and other ongoing human rights abuses in the Swat Valley since the end of its successful anti-Taliban offensive there in September, threatening billions of dollars in U.S. military and economic aid to a crucial ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had documented the extrajudicial execution of as many as 300 alleged Taliban supporters and sympathizers in the area around Mingora, the Swat capital, in interviews with more than 100 Swat families in February and March. A report on the alleged abuses, including torture, home demolitions, illegal detentions and disappearances, is scheduled for release this month.

Based on a continuing pattern, "we can only assume it is part of the counterterrorism effort by the security forces to shoot people in the back of the head," said Ali Dayan Hasan, the organization's senior South Asia analyst.

The Obama administration has been aware of reports of abuse since last summer, U.S. officials in Washington said, even as it has strengthened its relationship with Pakistan. Last month, the administration held a "strategic dialogue" with top Pakistani military and government officials.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Monday that "we take allegations of human rights abuses seriously" and that the U.S. military was "working with the Pakistanis" to address the situation and that progress was being made.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has provided Congress with regular updates on the allegations since last summer as well as on steps taken to address them. "We are mindful of the legislative requirements," the official said.

Most U.S. aid to Pakistan falls under congressional restrictions requiring the administration to certify the country's adherence to human rights laws and norms. Since 2002, the United States has provided $11.6 billion in military aid and $6 billion in development assistance, according to Congressional Research Service figures. The administration has requested an additional $3 billion in combined aid for 2011.

Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied allegations of abuse, saying that the military had invited human rights groups to investigate earlier charges during the June-to-September offensive in the former Taliban stronghold. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, he said, issued written directives ordering troops operating in Swat and other regions to respect the rule of law.

"If we are seen as becoming terrorists against the terrorists," Abbas said, "all we have gained will go up in the air." He suggested that reported killings or other abuses were the result of "scores being settled between the people and the Taliban," many of whom remain in the mountains surrounding settled areas in Swat.

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The army is holding about 2,500 detainees from counterinsurgency operations in Swat and elsewhere in the north and west, about 1,000 of them in Swat. The military has no judicial arm to prosecute them and has complained that Pakistan's slow-moving civilian judiciary was unable to handle them.

Hasan, of Human Rights Watch, said the military has not released the names of those being held or allowed outside access to them.

Despite the abuse allegations, the army presence appears to have the support of many Swat residents. In Mingora, members of the military could be seen rebuilding roads, schools and libraries, buying computers for women's vocational institutes and providing solar-powered streetlights to villages, in the absence of government reconstruction efforts.

The Swat offensive marked the start of several major Pakistani military operations against strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban, which the Obama administration says is tied to al-Qaeda and to Taliban forces fighting in Afghanistan. About 150,000 Pakistani army troops have been involved in operations in Swat and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghanistan border, including Bajur and South Waziristan.

The administration has urged Pakistan to extend full offensive operations into North Waziristan, Orakzai and Khyber regions of the FATA, which it has described as havens for al-Qaeda leaders and the Taliban-allied insurgent network of Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani.

U.S. officials have also worked to develop close ties with the Pakistani military, which has ruled the country for nearly half of Pakistan's 63-year existence and has an uneasy relationship with the civilian government. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visits Pakistan regularly, as does Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

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Under a $7.5 billion, five-year economic and development aid package signed by President Obama in October, the secretary of state must certify that the military is "not materially and substantially subverting the political or judicial processes of Pakistan" -- a provision that drew sharp protests from the Pakistani military, which charged that it interferes in the country's internal affairs.

Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and national security adviser James L. Jones have met with the army chief, Kiyani, as well as civilian leaders, during recent visits to Pakistan, as has Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the new developmental aid package. An aide said Kerry had raised the human rights allegations "with senior Pakistani officials" during a trip in February.

Hasan said Human Rights Watch had investigated about a third of the abuse reports the group had received from the Mingora area and found most of them substantiated. "Certainly, some of these people are Taliban supporters and sympathizers," he said of Swat, but many are "caught in the middle."

The group has been unable to verify the military units involved in alleged abuses, as required by U.S. law before a cutoff of aid.