Role of Women In Iran Protest Kindles Hope

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 28, 2009

CAIRO, June 27 -- Over the past two weeks, Marcelle George has watched with amazement as legions of Iranian women, most wearing black, full-length Islamic garments, defiantly protested Iran's leadership.

Even in her native Egypt, where some opposition to the government is permitted, most women would never dare cross that line.

"To actually see Iranian women fight for their rights is inspiring," said George, a college student in jeans and a long-sleeve blouse. "I never imagined that it could happen there."

As Iran's theocracy appears on the verge of silencing the biggest challenge to its authority since it was established in 1979, female activists in the region say they are inspired by the prominent role women are playing in the country's opposition movement. Many hope it will have a crossover effect on the struggle for women's rights in their own countries and help shatter Western perceptions of Middle Eastern women as subjugated in a male-dominated culture.

In a region that reveres men who die in battle, some of the major icons to emerge from the Iranian demonstrations have been women. Neda Agha Soltan, the music student whose bloody death on June 20 was videotaped and broadcast around the world, became an instant symbol of the opposition movement and sparked widespread outrage. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi 's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, has also taken on a prominent role as she accompanied her husband on the campaign trail and more recently spoke out against an election result that the opposition says was fraudulent.

"This is our time, women's time," said Khoulod Al Fahed, a Saudi businesswoman and blogger. "It is the time for women to speak up and demand the rights that have been stolen from us in the name of religion and culture."

Middle Eastern women have long played active roles in the struggle for democracy and human rights. In recent months, women have won small yet unprecedented victories. In Kuwait, four female lawmakers were elected to parliament last month, the first time women have won seats in the nation's legislature. In Egypt, election law was recently changed to give women a quota of 64 parliamentary seats. Palestinian women have launched protests to free prisoners held by Israel, while Egyptian women have organized labor and pro-democracy strikes in recent years.

But few events in recent memory have drawn as much attention as the sight of thousands of Iranian women taking to the streets, defiantly challenging their leaders and the election results. Grainy cellphone video and photos of the female protesters have flooded the Internet and the blogosphere, especially the haunting images of Agha Soltan as she died.

"Everyone is so shocked to see that beautiful young girl dying and looking so modern and secular," said Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

"What's happening in Iran is much more on a larger scale, with huge repercussions and risks," said Baho Abdula, 31, an Egyptian activist. "It does break the stereotype of the Middle East women. And it shows the contradictions inside Iran.

"People trusted themselves, believed in something. And that feeling will live on long, especially with women. It was a huge empowerment to lead the protests," she added. "They didn't fear the state. Images like that live on."

In Iran, such a prominent role is less surprising. Although women face discrimination in legal realms such as inheritance, custody and court testimony, they have a more visible, and more vocal, role in society and politics than in many countries in the region.

In fact, some women found themselves with more opportunities after the 1979 Islamic revolution, as more traditional families began educating their daughters when the schools became segregated and Islamicized. The result has been the best-educated generation of women in Iranian history.

More than 60 percent of university students are women, and female lawyers, doctors, athletes and politicians are not uncommon. There are female taxi drivers and even women in the Basij, a pro-government militia. A woman, Shirin Ebadi, won Iran's first Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

Many Iranians remember the participation of women in the revolution -- and afterward, when the ruling clerics sought to limit their rights.

"When Imam Khomeini first imposed edicts for veiling, women came in with such force that he had to take it back" and introduce it more slowly, Nafisi said.

At the time, the middle and working classes joined forces to oppose limitations on their rights, she said. "It created a unity between different strata of women because they realized these laws applied to all of them."

This time, many prominent women joined the opposition movement because of Rahnavard, who campaigned alongside her husband. Rahnavard, a former chancellor of Tehran's Alzahra University for women, held hands with Mousavi as the couple entered auditoriums.

"The world there looked at women here as if they are all under the Taliban rule. For the first time, they are seeing that the Muslim woman is also a leader and a partner," said Sawsan Zakzak, head of the League of Syrian Women, in Damascus.

In Iraq, which fought an eight-year war with neighboring Iran, many women say they have long admired the strong roles Iranian women played during the revolution. Once among the Arab world's most liberated, Iraqi women today are frequently targets of extremists or harsh tribal codes, with few rights or freedoms.

"We want Iraqi women to imitate Iranian women in boldly and courageously expressing their views, especially since Iraqi women do not lack courage or daring," said Samira Musawi, a lawyer and member of parliament with Iraq's ruling Shiite alliance.

Aliya Nusayef, another Iraqi member of parliament, said many female lawmakers were voting on issues, including women's rights, based on "what their political parties are telling them, not what they believe in."

"Let us hope that Iranian women would spur our women to become involved and active in securing their rights," she said.

But in ultraconservative parts of the Arab world, the Iranian uprising has underscored the immense obstacles women face in the region.

In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote. Nor are they allowed to drive. Although the government has enacted some changes, such as appointing the kingdom's first female deputy minister, clerics control the courts and apply an austere version of Sunni Islamic law.

Fahed, the Saudi blogger, said many similarities exist between Iran and Saudi Arabia in their treatment of women.

"But women's battle in Iran is with the government. In Saudi Arabia, it is with the religious authority," Fahed said. "I really believe that the Saudi government is in favor of change. But the religious authorities here are so powerful. Religious men are resisting any change in favor of women's rights."

Diana Moukalled, a Lebanese columnist who has produced a series of documentaries about Iran, said Iran's Shiite doctrine is less strict about the concept of female participation in society than the Sunni doctrine of most of the Arab world.

Others say a mostly Sunni Arab society would not be influenced by Shiite Persian culture.

"What's going on will sure set an example, but I don't expect it to be reflected in any similar action," Moukalled said. "It is much more difficult to stir change here."

Abdula, the Egyptian activist, said younger women will probably be the most influenced by the situation in Iran. Many have followed the events through blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

In interviews outside the gates of Cairo University and in cafes last week, a dozen young Egyptian women expressed solidarity with Iran's female protesters. They had all heard about Agha Soltan's death and expressed outrage and sympathy.

Yet most doubted whether they as women could bring any meaningful reform to an authoritarian government such as Egypt's.

Some said they were willing to try.

"It encourages me, but I don't know how to translate that into action," George said. "We have to find ourselves a role to play here."

Staff writer Tara Bahrampour in Washington, correspondents Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran and Howard Schneider in Jerusalem and special correspondents Alia Ibrahim in Beirut, K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad, Samuel Sokol in Jerusalem and Sherine al-Bayoumi in Cairo contributed to this report.

Homeland Security, Pentagon Clash on Military's Role at Mexico Border

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 28, 2009

A proposal to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to counter drug trafficking has triggered a bureaucratic standoff between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security over the military's role in domestic affairs, according to officials in both departments.

The debate has engaged a pair of powerful personalities, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in what their subordinates describe as a turf fight over which agency should direct the use of troops to assist in the fight against Mexican cartels and which one should pay for them.

At issue is a proposal to send 1,500 additional troops to the border to analyze intelligence and to provide air support and technical assistance to border agencies. The governors of Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico began making the requests in January, drawing support from Napolitano but prompting objections from the Pentagon, where officials argue that it could lead to a permanent, expanded mission for the military.

President Obama has signaled that he is open to the idea, asking Congress for $250 million to deploy the National Guard while also saying he was "not interested in militarizing the border." In the war supplemental funding bill that Obama signed last week, lawmakers appropriated the money for other Justice and DHS border security but said the president could ask again when he reached a decision. The issue has been stalled before a National Security Council policy committee, after which it would go to Obama for a decision.

Neither Napolitano nor Gates has made the disagreement personal, although some of their aides have privately expressed exasperation at what one called an interagency "food fight."

"It should not be that we always rely on the Department of Defense to fulfill some need," said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., head of U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for defending the continental United States.

Border law enforcement agencies should have adequate funds to do their job, he said. If the Guard is tapped, it should be for capabilities "that do not exist elsewhere in government," Renuart said. "When we send the National Guard, they go with specific missions, with specific purposes. And we put some duration on that so there is an end state."

Homeland security officials and governors counter that there is a legitimate need for troops to back up border agencies against the most serious threat to the Southwest and that a deployment would not represent a new military mission. Under a 1989 law, the National Guard assigns 577 troops to help states with anti-drug programs, which "can easily expand," the four governors wrote Congress in April.

Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona prompted President George W. Bush to send 6,000 guardsmen to the border in 2006, has supported the governors.

Brian de Vallance, senior counselor to Napolitano, said she "feels we have an obligation to do whatever we can do to disrupt those forces that are destroying lives in over 200 American cities. . . . It comes down to whether folks want to be as aggressive as we can be against the cartels and take every advantage of this historic opportunity" of cooperation between Mexico and the United States.

The debate goes to the heart of the military's role, which has expanded since the 2001 terrorist attacks, with an increasing commitment of troops and resources to homeland defense, particularly to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe. Deploying new troops to the border would represent a mission the military has not traditionally embraced.

"What we're seeing here is a move toward reframing where defense begins and ends," said Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership. "Traditionally the military looks outward, but looking outward has begun a lot closer to home, and it may involve looking just across the border."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) requested 1,000 guardsmen in January who he later said could form 24 border reconnaissance platoons, support Texas Ranger and parks and wildlife tracking teams, and back up air and marine operations. Perry, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) subsequently asked Congress to add personnel to the National Guard's Counter-Drug Program in their states. Troops provide translators, reconnaissance and administrative support, relaying aircraft surveillance images, for example.

Border states bear "unique and/or disproportionate" costs of dealing with illegal immigration, drugs and violence, Brewer wrote.

"It is abundantly clear that additional resources are needed -- and needed now," the governors wrote in a separate letter.

The fight is largely over money. For two years, Pentagon budget officials have tried to slash funding for state drug-fighting operations, citing the financial strain of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And military officials say governors could pay for their own Guard units.

But governors contend that securing the border is a federal responsibility.

Paul McHale, Gates's assistant secretary for homeland defense until early this year, said the broader worry is strategic. "The real concern is . . . at some point a temporary mission becomes permanent," he said. "Do it four or five times over a decade, and the political and military repercussions are likely negative."

A senior White House national security official said the president is comfortable with the disagreement. "It's the president's view that . . . frankly, that kind of debate among two Cabinet officers like Secretary Gates and Secretary Napolitano, both of whom he holds in high regard, will inevitably lead to a better policy," the official added.

The official noted that the administration has already taken steps, sending 450 DHS and Justice Department agents to the border in March to fight cash and weapons smuggling. And, he pointed out, crime in U.S. border communities and border arrests have fallen.

For now, administration officials are working through differences. Paul N. Stockton, McHale's successor, said the two departments are working closely to resolve their differences. In response to the Pentagon concerns that the troops could become permanent, DHS officials are searching for benchmarks that would end a deployment, such as a drop in cartel violence or improved Mexican enforcement.

When the Bush administration sent Guard units to the border, they went as a stopgap measure, backing up the U.S. Border Patrol for two years while it added 6,000 agents. The troops rotated through non-law enforcement duties.

A Second Revolution?

Dangdut music continues to be a vital part of Indonesian popular culture

Sandra Bader

The Soneta Group performing at the launching of Sonet 2 Band Sandra Bader

The slogan ‘Dangdut Never Dies’, written in big letters, immediately leaped out at visitors entering the South Jakarta studio of TPI (Indonesian Education Television) on a Monday night in January this year. As they strolled through the building waiting for the event, they saw a number of famous dangdut legends hanging around, relaxing and chatting to each other. It appeared as if a big reunion of veteran dangdut stars of the 70s and 80s was taking place.

In fact, these celebrities were uniting to support and promote a new star in the dangdut community. They had gathered to celebrate the launching of Ridho Rhoma and his Sonet 2 Band. With this launch, Ridho is following in the footsteps of his famed father, Rhoma Irama, known as the ‘king of dangdut’. Through the Sonet 2 Band, Rhoma and Ridho are aspiring to breathe new life into the dangdut scene which has, according to them, run aground.

The king of dangdut

‘I am the founder of dangdut.’ This was the first thing Rhoma said to me when I interviewed him, before he set off on a narrative adventure that began just after the dreadful anti-communist massacres of 1965-66. It was around that same time that Rhoma Irama, a young musician, made his creative debut. Inspired by western rock music and the Malay sounds of the Orkes Melayu, Rhoma experimented by fusing Malay music with elements from rock, Indian and Arabic music. His new, energetic style invigorated the Malay music with fluid and dynamic rhythms and with this innovation he invented the distinctive genre now known as dangdut.

‘I am the founder of Dangdut.’ This was the first thing Rhoma said to me

With his Soneta Group and co-performer Elvy Sukaesih, Rhoma became the most widely recognised contemporary Indonesian musician and was crowned king of dangdut. ‘I created a musical revolution by transforming the Orkes Melayu into dangdut.’ Rhoma explained.

This new rhythm, with its lyrics dealing with the burdens of everyday life and love but touching also on social criticism and class discrimination, became immensely popular throughout Indonesia. Dangdut’s egalitarian character was an especially crucial factor in its popularity, for the music cut across class lines, appealing to the sensibilities of Indonesians of all sorts and most importantly, demonstrating sympathy with the life-worlds of the lower classes.

However, this sympathy with ordinary Indonesians devalued the music in the eyes of the upper classes, for whom it represented the culture of the village (kampungan). Moreover, dangdut’s development towards sensual and sometimes erotic dance movements has prompted some Indonesians to connect it not only with ignorance and a lack of sophistication but also with tasteless sexual displays.

A second revolution

Rhoma and Ridho duetting Sandra Bader

In conversation about the development of dangdut music, Rhoma clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with the music’s evolution over the last few decades. Bewailing its current association with sensual and erotic dance movements, he insisted that there is only one way to dance (goyang or joget) to dangdut. Showing considerable pique, he jumped to his feet to demonstrate what ‘proper’ joget should look like. According to Rhoma, the new erotic dance style is one of the reasons for the ostensible decline in dangdut’s popularity. He remarked, ‘Since dangdut became eroticised the Indonesian people have begun to feel annoyed. Anybody who sees dangdut on TV will turn it off right away.’

Consequently, his burning ambition is to ‘safeguard’ dangdut from obliteration. He envisages a second revolution of dangdut music, to be achieved by encouraging and endorsing his son’s Sonet 2 Band. His objective is to take a stand against dangdut performers such as Inul Daratista and her characteristic ‘drill dance’ (goyang ngebor) which became extremely popular in 2003.

Dangdut’s development towards sensual and sometimes erotic dance movements has prompted some Indonesians to connect it not only with ignorance and a lack of sophistication but also with tasteless sexual displays

Inul’s dance style led to a massive controversy about the nation’s ‘moral health’. Indonesia’s senior Islamic clerics, the MUI (Council of Ulama), described her dancing as pornographic. The MUI regarded her appearance as a threat to morality and perceived the social stability of Indonesian society to be at risk. As a result, the MUI issued a legal opinion (fatwa) against her and she was banned from performing in several regions of Indonesia. Inul’s body became politicised, in the process bringing a number of important issues about Indonesia’s politics, culture and moral values to the surface.

Is dangdut disappearing?

A number of newspapers and magazines have recently published articles arguing that by and large, dangdut is disappearing, an interpretation which seems to affirm Rhoma’s impression that the music is currently in decline in Indonesia. This concern might appear to have substance if one observes the programs currently screening on Indonesian TV stations. For a long period, almost every station broadcasted dangdut programs as they jumped on the bandwagon created by Inulmania. ‘Indonesians love sensations.’ explained TPI’s production manager and Inul was certainly a sensation, becoming a star overnight with her trademark dance.

But then other ‘Inuls’ sprang up, like Dewi Persik with her ‘saw dance’ (goyang gergaji) and Annisa Bahar with her ‘broken dance’ (goyang patah-patah). After a while, the product became mundane and several TV stations, especially those with middle and upper class target audiences, turned away to search for new crowd-pleasers. As a result, only a few TV stations are currently airing dangdut shows.

Nonetheless, dangdut is still the genre in Indonesia’s popular music scene. It has the highest turnover of music recordings, albeit mostly pirated. More than two thirds of all dangdut recordings are reproduced illegally, causing financial difficulties for recording companies who have consequently refrained from producing new recordings. Very few new albums have been released lately, partly as a result of this persistent pirating of CDs, VCDs and DVDs. Dangdut also has to compete fiercely with the current surge of Indonesian pop music.

Sonet 2 – a second revolution?

Sonet 2 Band performing at the Trans7 studio Sandra Bader

Rhoma and Ridho and the five members of Sonet 2 Band are determined to counteract these recent developments, which appear to have left dangdut withering on the vine. For one thing, they are eager to improve what they regard as dangdut’s ‘seedy’ reputation. Apart from that, they aspire to achieve popularity on par with famous Indonesian pop and rock bands such as Slank, Dewa, Peterpan and others. They have been working hard towards this goal. They perform often and at diverse events, have released their first album and produced their first videoclip. Their album, called Menunggu, features 10 songs selected from Rhoma’s ample repertoire. The Sonet 2 Band has modified these songs by adding a dominant pop-drum beat in place of the beat of the tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) and the new guitar parts have given some of the songs a subtle rock strain. They have already attracted quite a following and if all goes well they will not be just another sensation but could succeed in opening a new chapter for dangdut. ii

Sandra Bader is a PhD student in Anthropology at Monash University researching dangdut music in Indonesia.

Inside Indonesia 96: Apr-Jun 2009

Where Housing Will Be in 2012

By Peter Coy, Mara Der Hovanesian, Christopher Palmeri, Amy S. Choi and Tara Kalwarski

Americans have not seen a boring housing market since the last millennium. You know—the average, ordinary kind of market where supply just about matches demand, prices are steady, and real estate ceases to be a topic of daily conversation. Instead, we've had six years of upside craziness followed by three years of downside terror. Now we're in a tug-of-war between those who think we've finally found a bottom and those who are convinced that the overhang of unsold homes is going to push prices considerably lower.

By 2012 we may finally get back to blissful boredom. With any luck, three years should be long enough for the U.S. economy to recover and for the nation's housing inventory to shrink to more normal levels. At that point, housing will return to its old ways, with prices governed not by national mood swings and global credit crises but by local issues ranging from zoning to immigration to job growth.

Prices? While they're likely to keep falling a while longer under the weight of foreclosures, the market is definitely closer to the bottom than the top. "We expect prices to drop for another year and then stabilize before starting to rise with incomes," says Standard & Poor's (MHP) Chief Economist David Wyss. Moody's Economy.com (MCO) predicts the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, maintained by data specialist Fiserv, will fall about 16% this year before regaining ground. Based on the National Association of Realtors national median home price of $180,000 for the fourth quarter of 2008, that would mean a median of $152,000 at the end of 2009 and then a rebound to $179,000 by the end of 2012.

ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL

Of course, the national median price is an artificial construct, since there is no such place as National Median, U.S.A. That's why the following pages provide up-close looks at seven markets: Omaha; Seattle; Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; Salt Lake City; Nashville; Austin, Tex.; and Merced, Calif. Each illustrates a different trend that will have a big impact on sales and prices across the U.S.

Local job growth is one of the most important factors to study when assessing a market's prospects. Omaha, for example, which has attracted employers such as Yahoo! (YHOO) and Google (GOOG), missed out on the boom but is likewise dodging the bust. With the city adding jobs, the prospects for home prices look good. Detroit, where home prices fell by a third from 2003 through 2008, is likely to suffer even more in coming years as the auto sector continues to shrink. Demographic change, another trend examined here, is equally influential. For instance, Salt Lake City's youthful population is primed for house buying. While the bust left prices in once-bubbly Western markets such as Phoenix and Vegas lower in 2008 than in 2003, Salt Lake prices rose 51% over that period.

Other important factors are even more local than those, such as how far a house is from the nearest supermarket. You'll know we're back to an ordinary, boring real estate market when buyers focus less on the intricacies of foreclosures, short sales, and the like and go back to the things that used to matter most: What are the schools like? How quiet is the neighborhood? When am I going to have to replace that roof or cut down that diseased oak?

Sellers Mark and Maura Rampolla, who put their house in Oradell, N.J., on the market early this year, are coping with ultra-local issues such as their house being on a fairly busy road. They're also up against the national housing crisis angst. The Rampollas bought their house for $556,000 in 2004. Now they need to sell it because they're moving to the Los Angeles area to set up a West Coast distribution hub for their coconut-water sports-drink company, Zico. They listed the house for $599,000, which would represent a loss after factoring in closing costs and renovations. House hunters didn't even nibble on the property that the Rampollas and their two young daughters have grown to love. In mid-June the couple dropped the price to $559,000. "People say it's a beautiful house, but they're just very nervous right now," says Maura.

The Rampollas will probably end up being the first owners to lose money on the Oradell home since it was built in 1925—a phenomenon that's happening across the U.S. The classic American foursquare, with four bedrooms and original chestnut molding, was sold by the Bonavita family to the Riccio family for $47,000 in 1972, the first recorded transaction price. The Riccios made out by selling to the DeSouza family for $285,000 in 1997. The DeSouzas sold just seven years later to the Rampollas for $556,000. "We actually bought the house in a day," laughs Maura. "Mark ran through the house in 10 minutes, I kid you not, because he had to get to a meeting in Queens. ... We had nothing to sell, and we just said: 'Great!' "

The good news is that the Rampollas' loss could wind up being some first-time home buyer's gain. From now through 2012, lots of families that couldn't afford to buy when prices went through the roof will be able to get in on the ground floor. Based on today's household incomes and mortgage rates, the National Association of Realtors' Housing Affordability Index is bobbing around the highest level since recordkeeping began in 1970. "To generalize, yeah, it is a good time to buy a house. I don't think there's any urgency because I think it'll still be a great time to buy a house a year from now," says economist Richard DeKaser of Woodley Park Research in Washington.

Homebuilders are helping by absorbing their share of the pain. In general, the U.S. needs about 1.5 million new homes a year to accommodate the growing population and the demolition of decayed properties. Builders exceeded that rate during the boom, but now they're building fewer than 500,000 homes per year. Their cutback should reduce the glut of homes and bring the market into better balance by 2012, if not sooner.

A STILL-MURKY PICTURE

Most important, the economy should be growing briskly again by 2012, according to Moody's Economy.com. In May the firm predicted gross domestic product would shrink 3% this year before growing 1.4% in 2010, 4.7% in 2011, and a robust 5.8% in 2012. It's also looking for home buying and building to return to their pre-bubble paces—no higher and no lower—by 2012.

Even if the economy performs as projected, there's still plenty that could go wrong in the housing market. Because conditions have been so unusual, "it's very hard for the model to extrapolate, based on past experiences, what's going to happen this time," says Moody's Economy.com Senior Economist Celia Chen. In a study of global real estate markets, economists Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland found that home prices fall for an average of six years after a major financial crisis. That would put the U.S. bottom in 2012, or later.

Another risk is that potential buyers will stay out of the housing market, no longer trusting in home appreciation to do their saving for them. Writes David Rosenberg, the former Merrill Lynch (BAC) economist who is now chief economist at Toronto-based asset management firm Gluskin Sheff & Associates: "Baby boomers are still in the discovery process on oversized real estate being more of a ball and chain than a viable retirement investment asset." Rosenberg also is concerned that an aging population won't need the kind of big houses erected during the boom. "The high end of the market will be in a bear phase," Rosenberg says in an interview.

So much has gone wrong with housing lately that it's easy to imagine worst-case scenarios. But in the more likely case, the market will fall some more, bounce off its lows, then gradually start growing. By 2012, families like the Rampollas may even get a warm, fuzzy feeling about homeownership again.

Business Exchange: Read, save, and add content on BW's new Web 2.0 topic network

The Global Picture

Like the U.S., the global real estate market will continue to struggle amid a weak economy and rising unemployment, according to a recent report by research firm Knight Frank. The worst-performing markets over the past year: Dubai and Singapore, where home prices dropped 32% and 23%, respectively. Israel (up 10.9% over the same period) and the Czech Republic (up 9.9%) saw the biggest spikes.

To read highlights from the report, go to http://bx.businessweek.com/housing-market/reference/

The Vacation Recession

On a typical weekend afternoon, Beijing's Silk Street Market buzzes with the sound of tens of thousands of tourists haggling over antiques, jewelry and knockoff Gucci handbags. Rickshaw drivers normally scoop up these marketgoers, pedal them to their hotels and return with pockets full of foreign currency--a lucrative cycle that drivers can repeat dozens of times a day. In recent months, though, the Silk Street Market's once reliable bustle has thinned dramatically. "I haven't seen a single tour bus pulling into the market this morning," says Lao Qian, a 49-year-old rickshaw driver taking a long lunch break. "And I've had a total of three customers since yesterday."

From China to the Caribbean, Thailand to Tanzania, workers in the travel industry are feeling the icy chill of the worldwide recession. From 2004 to '07, global tourism boomed, with an average growth of 3.6% a year. But as consumers tightened purse strings and canceled vacations in the second half of 2008, tourism's contribution to the world economy grew just 1%, the industry's worst performance since the bursting of the tech bubble, the outbreak of SARS in Asia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks hit international travel earlier this decade. "The last months have been increasingly challenging," says Jean-Claude Baumgarten, president of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), an organization of travel executives, "and we clearly haven't seen the end of it yet."

That's an understatement. During the first quarter of this year, China, which in 2004 overtook Italy to become the world's fourth most visited country, saw the number of international visitors drop more than 7% and its foreign-tourism revenues shrink more than 15%. In Spain, year-on-year arrivals dropped 16% in February--the country's sharpest decline in years. And in the tropical islands of the Caribbean and South Pacific, it's a case of surf, sand and empty beach chairs. In February, French Polynesia reported a 30% drop in year-on-year arrivals. Tourist numbers there are now at levels last seen in 1996. The WTTC estimates the travel industry will contract 3.5% this year and shed 10 million jobs by the end of 2010.

You might think the last thing we should be worrying about is taking a vacation. Aren't we all meant to be saving and paying off mortgages? But that's underestimating the size of the global tourism industry and its potential to energize the world economy. By most accounts, tourism is one of the world's biggest industries, employing 7.6% of the world's workers (220 million) and generating a staggering 9.4% of global income ($5.5 trillion). "If you look at its linkages with other sectors, you see how deeply it cuts into the economy," says Geoffrey Lipman, assistant secretary general of the U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). "Construction jobs, manufacturing jobs, restaurant jobs--they can all flow out of tourism."

Industry officials now want governments to start looking at the sector as a way to get economies back on track. "What are governments trying to do in a recession? They're trying to create jobs," Lipman says. "They say, 'Let's bail out the car manufacturers. Let's do something about the banks.' And they forget about the major opportunity they have with the travel sector."

A few governments are already moving. In March, Madrid pledged $1.3 billion to modernize Spain's tourism infrastructure to fight off competition from sunshine destinations like Turkey and Egypt, which have become more competitive as the euro has appreciated. In Spain's Canary Islands, where tourism represents upwards of 60% of the local economy, the municipal tourism board recently began a series of seminars to help tourism workers cast off their perceived grumpiness. Course materials advise cabbies to "ensure your taxis smell nice, and don't drive too fast" and remind hotel staff that "a smile costs nothing."

Italy has taken a more traditional route by boosting advertising. In April, the national tourism board launched a $13 million initiative called "Italia Much More" to lure tourists from the U.S., Canada and the rest of Europe. "The crisis is tangible for everyone, and Italy will suffer," says Matteo Marzotto, head of the National Tourism Board. "We're in the middle of a war." That may sound dramatic, but consider this: in 2008, Italy's tourism revenues fell 5%, the first drop in seven years. The slump has already translated into a loss of $5.2 billion and at least 150,000 jobs.

The battle for the shrinking pool of tourists, naturally, is good news for anyone touring. Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have cut visa fees and worked with airlines, hotels and tourist sites to slash prices. Caribbean operators say deep price cuts have been essential to keeping the region in people's minds during the turmoil. Some Caribbean resorts have cut prices in half. "We're hoping that these deals will never have to see the light of day again," says Hugh Riley, secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, the body representing the travel interests of 32 nations in the region.

Once prohibitively expensive, places such as South Korea and Iceland have been transformed into bargain getaways. The weakening of South Korea's won helped the country attract 7% more tourists last year--a faster rise than that of any other Asian destination--and so far this year, 50% more Japanese tourists have visited. In Iceland, where the krona has fallen sharply, the nation is betting on increased arrivals: this summer Icelandair will open up new routes to nine cities in Europe and North America. And VisitBritain, the official U.K. tourism body, is running a $2.6 million ad campaign urging foreigners to "see more of Britain for less." "The pound isn't going to be this weak forever," says spokeswoman Hayley Senior.

Boosting tourism, however, isn't merely about attracting foreigners: governments are also courting their own citizens. In China, local authorities have distributed domestic-travel coupons nationwide. In Wuhan, a city along the Yangtze River in central China, $146,000 worth of coupons was snatched up within 10 minutes at a promotional event, and the city has pledged more vouchers, totaling $73 million. In Britain, it's estimated that 5 million more citizens will choose a staycation this year rather than venture to the pricey euro zone.

The sense of urgency is most pronounced in the developing world, where a job in tourism can be the difference between poverty and prosperity. In Kenya, a single employee at a hotel or restaurant supports four other people, according to Gerson Misumi, managing director of Tamarind Management, a hospitality firm in Kenya and South Africa: "There's a chain of services that depend on our industry." Adds Lipman of the UNWTO: "Tourism is a good development agent because poor countries don't have to manufacture it." Developing nations already have their product--nature, culture, tradition--and all that's required to profit is a bit of investment in infrastructure and marketing. "The market comes to these countries then wanders around depositing foreign-exchange income wherever it's directed, including poor rural areas," Lipman adds. That's a handsome return on investment for any country, developing or otherwise.

Fast Food: Would You Like 1,000 Calories with That?

How sloppy is that triple Whopper with cheese? It has 1,250 calories, or 62.5% of the recommended 2,000-calories-per-day diet. The Fried Macaroni and Cheese from the Cheesecake Factory? Try 1,570 calories — according to health experts, you're better off eating a stick of butter.

If public-health advocates, and now the Senate, get their way, when you look at a menu from a chain restaurant, those calorie counts will be staring you down. "Order me if you dare," the mighty Quesadilla Burger from Applebee's (1,440 calories) may entreat. Spurred by the passage of a slew of state and local menu-labeling laws, on June 10 the Senate reached a bipartisan agreement to include a federal menu-labeling law as part of comprehensive health-care reform. Of course, who knows when that hornet's nest will come up for a vote. But in the meantime, health proponents are likening the Senate provision to legal requirements for a clothing label — i.e., what it's made of. "Isn't information that can help you avoid obesity and diabetes as important as knowing how to wash your blouse?" says Margot Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the nonpartisan Center for Science in the Public Interest. (See how many calories are in the Dunkin' Donuts Sausage, Supreme Omelet & Cheese Bagel.)

Until recently, the restaurant industry had been pushing a federal bill that would require chains with 20 or more restaurants nationwide to post calorie information somewhere near the point of purchase but not on the menu itself. The industry claimed menu postings would be a costly logistical burden and would clutter valuable real estate on the menus. Not surprisingly, chains won't voice the most obvious argument against high-profile calorie counts. "They're concerned that consumers will be turned off by what they see," says Tom Forte, restaurant analyst at the Telsey Advisory Group, a consulting firm.

In the end, the industry backed the Senate's on-the-menu provision in an effort to pre-empt a patchwork of state and local statutes (13 have passed, and 30 or so more have been introduced). Such legislation would prevent a municipality from requiring both calories and, say, saturated fat to be tallied on menus. (The fried macaroni and cheese at the Cheesecake Factory has a staggering 69 grams of saturated fat — more than you should eat in 3½ days.) (See how many calories are in the McDonald's Chocolate Triple Thick Shake.)

As the menu-labeling momentum keeps surging, will such policy really improve eating habits? Well, it can do no worse than what's out there. In a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers observed 4,311 patrons of McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks and Au Bon Pain to see if they accessed in-store nutrition data. The info was not on the menu board but in a pamphlet, on a wall poster or an on-site computer. Only six, or 0.1%, of the patrons looked at the numbers. Sure, a few more may have already studied the information. But six out of 4,311? If restaurants are sincere about health, they need to put calorie counts on the menu, straight in the customers' sight lines. (See how many calories are in the Starbucks Hazelnut Signature Hot Chocolate.)

So far, mandatory on-the-menu calorie counts have been implemented in only three localities: Washington's King County (which includes Seattle), New York City and Westchester County, a suburb of New York. And since none of these provisions have been in place for more than a year, nutritionists have yet to gather empirical proof that they work. But some science suggests that prominently displayed calorie counts steer purchases. In 2007, researchers in New York City examined consumer eating habits at Subway, which voluntarily posted calorie info in its stores. This study, also published in the American Journal of Public Health, reported that Subway patrons who pondered the calorie information purchased 52 fewer calories than those who didn't. Further, according to a survey conducted in February by Technomic, a food-industry consultancy, 82% of New York City residents said the new highly visible nutrition information has affected their ordering. Of those people, 71% said they sought out lower-calorie options, and 51% said they no longer ordered certain items. (See how many calories are in the Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries.)

While such statistics are promising, menu counts are no silver bullet. Martin Lindstrom, the noted consumer psychologist and author of Buyology: Truths and Lies About Why We Buy, fears that consumers will tune out the numbers long term. "Eventually, calorie counts will just be wallpaper," he says.

But forced disclosure could lead more restaurants to change their offerings. A report by New York City health officials noted that since menu-labeling went into effect last summer, some chains have lowered the calorie counts on certain items. For example, in March 2007, a Chicken Club sandwich at Wendy's was listed as being 650 calories. In June 2008, as the New York law kicked in, the item was 540 calories — a 17% drop. (Wendy's used a lower-calorie mayo to reduce the count, but a spokesman insists menu-labeling played no part in the move. Call it a happy coincidence.) (See how many calories are in the Taco Bell Chicken Ranch Fully Loaded Taco Salad.)

Meanwhile, Yum! Brands, parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has promised to post calorie information on its menus by January 2011. If the creator of KFC's Famous Bowls — fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy and shredded cheese packed together for your gut-busting pleasure — volunteers to share these numbers, what excuse can other chains claim for not following suit, particularly if Washington lags in forcing them to do so? The writing is on the wall. And perhaps, as a result, fewer calories will be in your stomach.

Recruiting: Enough to Make a Monster Tremble

By Matthew Boyle

Corporate recruiter Elisa Bannon of US Cellular in Chicago used to spend up to $4 million a year to post jobs and screen résumés through the three heavyweights of online job search—Monster (MWW), CareerBuilder, and Yahoo! (YHOO) HotJobs.

But with her 2009 budget slashed to $1 million and 2,500 openings to fill, the wireless carrier's director of talent acquisition ditched the big job boards and instead inked a deal with social networking site LinkedIn. For an annual fee of $60,000, Bannon's team now has access to the network's 42 million members, many of whom are employed—the so-called passive candidates that recruiters covet, since conventional wisdom is the best people already have jobs. Using LinkedIn, Bannon made a hire in 30 days for a position that typically takes six months to fill. "It's a great product at an attractive price," she says.

SHRINKING SHARE

For Monster, a publicly traded online job site with $1 billion in sales and 80 million résumés on file, the growing appeal of LinkedIn to recruiters is just one more headache to contend with. Other social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are also becoming popular destinations for employers. And niche sites such as TheLadders and BlueSteps, both of which target high earners, are gaining followers among recruiters and job seekers alike. While traffic to Monster is up because of the growing ranks of the newly unemployed, its share of job listings among the big three has declined from nearly 40% in December 2007 to 34% in May of this year, according to job market research and analysis firm Wanted Technologies. And the site saw a 31% drop in revenue last quarter. (Monster gets 90% of its revenues from fees it charges recruiters to post jobs and search its résumé database; the rest comes from advertising.) "The big job boards have peaked," says Gerry Crispin of consultancy CareerXroads.

Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi, a Wall Street veteran who in 2007 came to the top job, is trying to fight back. "I've spent a significant part of my career fixing things," he says. He has slashed $400 million in costs over the past year, even eliminating paper cups in the break rooms. Iannuzzi also lowered prices for some key customers and hired 130 salespeople—a 31% increase—to win back business. In January, Monster unveiled a cleaner site that, among other things, reduced the number of steps required to upload a résumé from 20 to 4. A career-mapping feature shows job hunters how they can transfer from one field to another.

PLAYING CATCH-UP?

Iannuzzi is also trying to improve customer service, moving call centers back from India to South Carolina. Those efforts pleased customers such as Michael O'Connell, a recruiter in Los Angeles whose firm works for Disney (DIS) and Toyota (TM). He was close to scrapping Monster last month but stayed on thanks to better service, a monthly payment plan, and a price cut. O'Connell is also a fan of LinkedIn—"I use it all day," he says—but argues that it's not yet big enough to supplant Monster. And he stopped using TheLadders two years ago when the company began charging recruiters. (Originally, TheLadders charged only job seekers.)

Iannuzzi's next step is to address the one-size-fits-all nature of Monster's site, which gets about 12 million unique visitors a month. It's rolling out "contextual search" technology that distinguishes between, say, someone who went to Harvard and someone who lives on Harvard Avenue. Iannuzzi calls the technology "game-changing," but rivals beg to differ. "It's an attempt to catch up," says Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, which saw its North American revenue drop 27% in the first quarter. Meanwhile, on June 25, HotJobs launched a "pay-per-performance" product whereby recruiters pay only for qualified candidates.

Unlike listing jobs on the big boards—a process that one recruiter describes as "post and pray"—companies can now choose sites with more distinct services. Along with specialized sites such as TheLadders and Dice, which focuses on technology and health care, there are job search engines such as SimplyHired and Indeed, which trawl the job boards and corporate employment sites to grab every available posting. The employment sections of corporate Web sites have also become more sophisticated. And craigslist has cornered the market for lower-paying jobs with free postings in most areas. By one estimate, there are now 50,000 job sites in the U.S. alone and an equal amount abroad.

SOUPED-UP SEARCH

Perhaps the biggest threat comes from LinkedIn, a six-year-old social networking site with a distinctly professional bent. In January the privately held Mountain View (Calif.) company consolidated the various tools it had been selling to corporate hiring departments into a suite of services called Talent Advantage, which now boasts more than 1,000 customers, double the number it had last year. For $7,000 per user at a client company, hiring managers get a customized Web site, or "dashboard," and souped-up search capability so they can reach out to qualified candidates, individually or in groups. (Recruiters can also buy job postings.) The network even "pushes" candidates to employers who meet preset criteria. While some LinkedIn members may not want to hear from a recruiter, they'll often send the message along to someone else in their network. "Finding passive candidates—that's our sweet spot," says David Hahn, LinkedIn's director of product management. Recruiters agree. "We could not believe the candidates we got" from LinkedIn, says Scott Morrison, director of global recruiting programs at software giant salesforce.com (CRM). "This is a gold mine for us."

Twitter is also gaining traction in the realm of job search. Kara Nickels got an e-mail one morning from an insurance industry client that needed 40 lawyers immediately for a big document review. The legal recruiter quickly sent a message—or "tweet"—to her 150 followers, which was re-twittered by legal blogs that follow her. By the time she arrived at her Chicago office, Nickels had 10 replies and filled every post by lunch. "With job boards it takes a couple days before people look," she says. "But Twitter is immediate. I'll still use the job boards, but if you don't use social media now, you're behind the curve."

With that kind of competition, analysts are skeptical that Monster can retain its top spot. "I'm not convinced [Monster's] new projects are going to revolutionize its portfolio to the point where users and recruiters think about Monster in a new light," says William Morrison, an analyst at investment bank ThinkEquity Partners. "If the job boards don't innovate more often and more quickly, they are going to have a very difficult time growing their businesses over the next several years."

Iannuzzi knows this. "We are not done," he says, hinting that acquisitions could be forthcoming. But even Monster's architects see the writing on the wall. Bill Warren, the founder of an early job board that morphed into Monster, is now executive director of the DirectEmployers Assn., a consortium of corporate employers. He's partnering with the owner of the ".jobs" domain and will launch job sites under that domain later this year. Says Warren: "The days of the big, expensive job boards are over."

Business Exchange: Read, save, and add content on BW's new Web 2.0 topic network

Your Digital Profile

Paper résumés are passé. According to a June 17 NPR segment, recruiters increasingly are looking for evidence that prospective hires are comfortable living in a digital world. LinkedIn profiles are a must, blogs a plus. But beware of what your e-mail address says about you. No cutesy, joint husband-and-wife e-mail addresses, please. Also, at least one executive looks down on AOL (TWX) addresses: "AOL was so 1998," he says.

To listen to the segment, go to http://bx.businessweek.com/recession-job-search/reference/

Boyle is deputy Corporations editor for BusinessWeek.

White House Considers Executive Order on Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects

By Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn
ProPublica and Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 27, 2009

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the military facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the prison by the president's January deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House is already trying to build support for an order.

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.

The Justice Department has declined to comment on the prospects for a long-term detention system while internal reviews of Guantanamo detainees' cases are underway. One task force, which is assessing detainee policy, is expected to complete its work by July 21.

In a May speech, President Obama broached the need for a system of long-term detention and suggested that it would include congressional and judicial oversight. "We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone," he said.

Some of Obama's top legal advisers, along with a handful of influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers, have pushed for the creation of a "national security court" to supervise the incarceration of detainees deemed too dangerous to release but who cannot be charged or tried.

But the three senior government officials said the White House has turned away from that option, at least for now, because legislation establishing a special court would be difficult to pass and likely to fracture Obama's party. These officials, as well as others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

On the day Obama took office, 242 men were imprisoned at Guantanamo. In his May speech, the president outlined five strategies the administration would use to deal with them: criminal trials, revamped military tribunals, transfers to other countries, releases and continued detention.

Since the inauguration, 11 detainees have been released or transferred, one prisoner committed suicide, and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release. Two officials involved in a Justice Department review of possible prosecutions said the administration is strongly considering criminal charges in federal court for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and three other detainees accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The other half of the cases, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted in federal court or military commissions. In many cases the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services or has been tainted by the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. agreed with an assessment offered during congressional testimony this month that fewer than 25 percent of the detainees would be charged in criminal courts and that 50 others have been approved for transfer or release. One official said the administration is hoping that as many as 70 Yemeni citizens will be moved, in stages, into a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia.

Three months into the Justice Department's reviews, several officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees cannot be charged or released.

The White House has spent months meeting with key congressional leaders in the hope of reaching agreement on long-term detention, although public support for such a plan has wavered as lawmakers have sought to prevent detainees from being transferred to their constituencies.

Lawyers for the administration are now in negotiations with Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) over separate legislation that would revamp military commissions. A senior Republican staff member said that senators have yet to see "a comprehensive, detailed policy" on long-term detention from the administration.

"They can do it without congressional backing, but I think there would be very strong concerns," the staff member said, adding that "Congress could cut off funding" for any detention system established in the United States.

Concerns are growing among Obama's advisers that Congress may try to assert too much control over the process. This week Obama signed an appropriations bill that forces the administration to report to Congress before moving any detainee out of Guantanamo and prevents the White House from using available funds to move detainees onto U.S. soil.

"Legislation could kill Obama's plans," said one government official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best option for the president at this juncture.

Under one White House draft that was being discussed this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system.

Such detainees -- those at Guantanamo and those who may be captured in the future -- would also have the right to legal representation during confinement and access to some of the information that is being used to keep them behind bars. Anyone detained under this order would have a right to challenge his detention before a judge.

Officials say the plan would give detainees more rights and allow them a better chance than they have now at Guantanamo to one day end their indefinite incarceration.

But some senior Democrats see long-term detention as tantamount to reestablishing the Guantanamo system on U.S. soil. "I think this could be a very big mistake, because of how such a system could be perceived throughout the world," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) told Holder.

One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities or returned to their home countries.

"Going forward, unless it's an extraordinary case, you will not see new transfers to the U.S. for indefinite detention," the official said.

Instituting long-term detention through an executive order would leave Obama vulnerable to charges that he is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did. Bush's detention policies suffered defeats in the courts in part because they lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.

"There is no statute prohibiting the president from doing this through executive order, and so far courts have not ruled in ways that would bar him from doing so," said Matthew Waxman, who worked on detainee issues at the Defense Department during Bush's first term. But Waxman, who waged a battle inside the Bush administration for more congressional cooperation, said that the "courts are more likely to defer to the president and legislative branch when they speak with one voice on these issues."

Tawfiq bin Attash, who is accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and who was held at a secret CIA prison, could be among those subject to long-term detention, according to one senior official.

Little information on bin Attash's case has been made public, but officials who have reviewed his file said the Justice Department has concluded that none of the three witnesses against him can be brought to testify in court. One witness, who was jailed in Yemen, escaped several years ago. A second witness remains incarcerated, but the government of Yemen will not allow him to testify.

Administration officials believe that testimony from the only witness in U.S. custody, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, may be inadmissible because he was subjected to harsh interrogation while in CIA custody.

"These issues haven't morphed simply because the administration changed," said Juan Zarate, who served as Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The challenge for the new administration is how to solve these legal questions of preventive detention in a way that is consistent with the Constitution, legitimate in the eyes of the world and doesn't create security loopholes that cause Congress to worry," Zarate said.

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Washington Post staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Iranian Cleric Calls for 'Ruthless' Punishment of Protest Leaders

By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 27, 2009

TEHRAN, June 26 -- An influential Iranian cleric on Friday urged "ruthless" punishment, possibly including execution, for leaders of protests against a disputed presidential election, while President Obama intensified his criticism of a crackdown on the Iranian opposition and rejected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's demand for an apology.

Two weeks after Iranians turned out to vote in massive numbers, authorities moved on two fronts to halt continuing unrest over the results, warning that protest leaders could be subject to the death penalty under Islamic law but also creating a "special committee" to review the election process with participation from the two leading opposition candidates.

In a sermon at Tehran University before traditional Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a close associate of Iran's supreme leader, escalated the hard-line rhetoric that the state has adopted this week toward demonstrators, foreign news media and various "enemies," including the United States and Britain.

Saying that "unauthorized demonstrations" are against both national law and Islamic law because Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, "has advised against them," Khatami argued that a protester who engages in "destructive acts" could be considered a mohareb, or someone who wages war against God. "And Islam has said that a mohareb should receive the severest of punishments," he said.

"Accordingly, I call on the officials of the judicial branch to deal severely and ruthlessly with the leaders of the agitations, whose fodder comes from America and Israel, so that everyone learns a lesson from it," Khatami said, according to a translation by state radio. Under Islamic law, the punishment for waging war against God is death.

Iran's judiciary said Tuesday that a special court would be set up to make an example of "rioters" arrested during the demonstrations. According to Iranian state media, more than 450 have been arrested. International human rights groups say the number is higher and includes demonstrators, journalists and well-known dissidents who have long called for more political freedom in Iran.

In Washington, Obama condemned recent violence against protesters as "outrageous" and dismissed Ahmadinejad's demand Thursday that he apologize for similar previous comments. Obama suggested that it was Ahmadinejad who should be apologizing to Iranian victims and their families for the violent actions of security forces.

Speaking at the White House after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said Iranian demonstrators have shown "bravery in the face of brutality," and he described the violence against them as "outrageous" and "unacceptable." If the Iranian government wants the respect of the international community, he said, "then it must respect the rights and heed the will of its people."

In response to questions, Obama said opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who asserts that he was denied victory in the June 12 election through fraud, appears to have "captured the imagination or the spirit of forces within Iran that were interested in opening up." He indicated that direct U.S. engagement with Iran over its nuclear program would have to wait until the situation there becomes clearer.

On Ahmadinejad's demand Thursday for an apology, Obama said, "I don't take Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran." Instead, he said, "I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people," notably "the families of those who've been beaten or shot or detained."

Merkel said Iran "cannot count on the world community turning a blind eye" to the violence.

Iran's Guardian Council, a supervisory body led by Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists that certifies election results, reiterated Friday that it has found no significant fraud in the election, which the Interior Ministry has said Ahmadinejad won with nearly 63 percent of the vote.

"After 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities," a council spokesman, Abbas Ali Kadkhodai, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The council is scheduled to complete an inquiry into the election by Monday.

But the council later announced the formation of a "special committee" to review the election process and invited participation by representatives of Mousavi and another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi. The council gave the two candidates 24 hours to name their representatives. It said 10 percent of the ballot boxes would be recounted in the presence of the committee, which would then issue a report about the election. No deadline for the report was specified.

The council said the special committee would also include "political and social figures," notably Ali Akbar Velayati, who served as foreign minister when Mousavi was prime minister in the 1980s and who is now an adviser to Khamenei on international affairs.

There was no immediate response from Mousavi or Karroubi, who have criticized the Guardian Council. They have called on the council to annul the election and hold a new one.

In his Friday sermon, Khatami ruled that out. He denied that the election was rigged and said those who insist on nullifying it "should know that this idea will be fruitless."

Addressing thousands of chanting supporters, he harshly denounced various foreign governments, the United Nations and Western news media, which he accused of false reporting and "assisting the enemy." He told the gathering, "I do not know how they are free to roam around in the country."

Appealing for unity, Khatami said, "Let us not institutionalize grudges. . . . Let us have a united position against the foreigners who have prepared their sharp satanic teeth to loot the legacy of your martyrs."

The cleric, a member of the Assembly of Experts and a supporter of Ahmadinejad, claimed that protesters were responsible for the slaying of a young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, who has become an opposition icon since cellphone cameras captured her dying moments after she was shot last Saturday on a Tehran street.

"Take a look at the story of the lady who was killed for whom Mr. Obama sheds crocodile tears and the West has made a big story," he said. "Any logical individual who watches the film realizes that the work has been done by rioters themselves."

Khatami also asserted that the woman was killed in "a quiet alley" where security forces "would only arrest people" rather than shoot them. "The state does not kill people in such places," he said. "All signs and evidence show that they [protesters] were behind this murder. Now they make a hue and cry against the state. I am warning those liar media."

Arash Hejazi, an Iranian doctor who says he tried to help Agha Soltan, has told British news media that she was shot by a member of the pro-government Basij militia who was riding a motorcycle.

At Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, dozens of friends, relatives and other well-wishers paid their respects at Agha Soltan's grave Friday, stopping briefly to utter prayers or place flowers before moving on, news agencies reported. The government has prohibited public mourning ceremonies for the young philosophy student.

"What sin did she commit?" asked a young woman tearfully as she prayed in front of the grave, Agence France-Presse reported. "Pray for our future," an elderly man said.

Branigin reported from Washington.

U.S. Has Sent 40 Tons of Munitions to Aid Somali Government

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 27, 2009

The U.S. government has provided about 40 tons of weapons and ammunition to shore up the besieged government of Somalia in the past six weeks and has sent funding to train Somali soldiers, a senior State Department official said yesterday, in the most complete accounting to date of the new American efforts in the strife-torn country.

The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the military aid was worth less than $10 million and had been approved by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the National Security Council.

"We do not want to see Somalia become a safe haven for foreign terrorists," the official said.

Hard-line Islamist rebels allegedly linked to al-Qaeda have launched an offensive to topple Somalia's relatively moderate government, which has appealed to the United States and other African countries for help. The fighting has killed 250 civilians and forced more than 160,000 people out of their homes in the past month, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

In an indication of the rebels' growing power, they held a ceremony Thursday in the capital, Mogadishu, in which they chopped off a hand and foot from each of four men convicted of stealing cellphones and other items, according to news reports from the region. The punishment was in line with the rebels' harsh version of Islam. The United States considers the rebel group, al-Shabab, a terrorist organization.

Somalia has been racked by violence since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. U.S. officials say the bloodshed and lawlessness in the country have caused a massive outflow of refugees and contributed to an upsurge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden. The country has also become a haven for al-Qaeda operatives alleged to have carried out attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, U.S. officials say.

The African Union has sent troops from Uganda and Burundi to help Somalia's fragile government keep order.

The U.S. aid does not involve the deployment of any troops to Somalia, where 18 American soldiers were killed in the 1993 raid depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

In order to strengthen Somalia's military, the U.S. government is providing cash to its government to buy weapons, and has asked Ugandan military forces there to give Somali soldiers small arms and ammunition, the official said. The U.S. government is then resupplying the Ugandans, he said.

The U.S. government will also help pay for the Kenyan, Burundi and Ugandan militaries to train Somali soldiers, and is providing logistical support for the African Union troops, the official said.

Clinton called Somalia's president, Sharif Ahmed, in recent weeks to consult on the crisis, according to another U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.

He said the U.S. aid would likely encourage other African countries to do more to help Somalia's government.

U.S. officials accuse Eritrea of supporting the Somali rebels as part of a proxy war with its rival, Ethiopia. But efforts by State Department officials to meet with the Eritrean government have been fruitless so far, the official said.

China, Cuba, Other Authoritarian Regimes Censor News From Iran

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 27, 2009

BEIJING -- Out of fear that history might repeat itself, the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.

Between 1988 and 1990, amid a lesser global economic slump, pro-democracy protests that appeared to inspire and energize one another broke out in Eastern Europe, Burma, China and elsewhere. Not all evolved into full-fledged revolutions, but communist regimes fell in a broad swath of countries, and the global balance of power shifted.

A similar infectiousness has shown up in subtle acts of defiance by democracy advocates around the world this week.

In China, political commentators tinted their blogs and Twitters green to show their support for Iranians disputing President Ahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection. The deaths of at least 20 people in violent clashes in Tehran have drawn comparisons online to "June 4," the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing in 1989. And a pointed joke about how Iranians are luckier than Chinese because sham elections are better than no elections made the rounds on the country's vast network of Internet bulletin boards.

"The Iranian people face the same problems as us: news censorship and no freedom to have their own voices," 28-year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang said in a telephone interview from the inland province of Hunan. Zhou said he and several friends were among those who had colored their online pictures green, the signature color of the Iranian opposition.

In Cuba, President Raúl Castro's government has imposed a complete blackout of news surrounding the Iranian elections. But word of developments is trickling through, anyway.

Havana-based blogger Yoani Sánchez, 33, who e-mails friends outside Cuba to get her entries posted online, said the Iranian protests -- in particular, the reportedly widespread use of Twitter, Facebook and cellphones -- have served as "a lesson for Cuban bloggers."

"Seeing those young Iranians use all the technology to denounce the injustice, I notice everything that we lack to support those who maintain blogs from the island," Sánchez wrote. "The acid test of our incipient virtual community has not yet arrived, but maybe it will surprise us tomorrow."

"Today it's you," she told the Iranian protesters in one posting. "Tomorrow it could well be us."

In Burma, the junta's mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, has drowned out news from Tehran with articles on bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some of the nearly 200 journals published privately in Rangoon and Mandalay have seized on the topic as a way to pass subversive messages to readers.

"What we, the private media, are trying to do was to put in as much stories and pixs of what's going on in Teheran in our papers. So far we were successful," the editor of a Rangoon-based weekly publication said in an e-mail. "The upcoming paper of mine . . . will carry, albeit if it's not censored, news stories of the events in Teheran and a feature on 'Elections and Democracy,' trying to draw some parallels between the one in Iran and the upcoming one here," a reference to elections, scheduled for 2010, that many critics dismiss as a sham.

Unlike in Iran, however, the experience of past failed protests has yielded a measure of pragmatism in Burma. Overtly political opposition groups, such as Generation Wave, and numerous apolitical networks have in recent months focused on a more evolutionary strategy of change, reaching out in particular to Burma's rural masses.

"We cannot go directly to our goal," said a graphic designer who co-founded a group that teaches social management and governance in Rangoon and remote towns under the cover of English classes.

Moe Thway, founder of Generation Wave, said Iran's citizens do not appear to be as depressed or despairing as Burma's. Even the most hard-bitten Burmese activists see little hope in taking to the streets for now.

"About Iran, I can't say whether their current movement will change the political trend or not," he said. "Iran and our Burma are still different."

In Venezuela, a South American country that is increasingly polarized, protests against President Hugo Chávez's administration are common. Juan Mejía, 22, said he found the protests in Iran stirring, partly because he felt that opponents of the government in Tehran want the same thing as protesters in Caracas.

"The fact that people have gone out onto the street, that they demand their rights be respected, means to us that they felt there was no liberty and that they want a different country," said Mejía, a student leader who opposes Chávez. "We believe that if the people of the world raise their voices loudly enough -- in Iran, as we do it here in Venezuela, and hopefully one day in Cuba -- then surely we will have a better world."

Venezuela, as opposed to countries such as Cuba and China, holds frequent elections, and dissent remains a part of the political discourse. But in a decade in power, Chávez has taken control of the Congress, the courts and the state oil company, and his opponents charge that he is a dictator in the making.

In China, the Communist Party's propaganda machine has worked furiously to portray the protests in Iran -- already being dubbed the Green Revolution, after the Rose and Orange revolutions earlier this decade in Georgia and Ukraine -- as orchestrated by the United States and other Western powers, not a grass-roots movement. Unlike Western leaders, who have avoided acknowledging Ahmadinejad's claims of victory, President Hu Jintao joined Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev in meeting with and congratulating the Iranian president.

On online discussion boards this week, tens of thousands of comments about Iran were shown as deleted; most of those allowed to remain took the official party line on the elections.

China's main message has been that this vulnerable period, with the world hit by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, is no time for a "color revolution."

"Attempts to push the so-called color revolution toward chaos will prove very dangerous," the state-run China Daily said in a recent editorial.

The Chinese government has been especially aggressive this year in cracking down on talk of democracy because 2009 is full of politically sensitive anniversaries. In the most recent move, officials announced Tuesday the formal arrest of Liu Xiaobo, an influential dissident who had helped draft and sign a pro-democracy petition known as Charter 08.

Albert Ho, chairman of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group in Hong Kong, said he sees many parallels between the situation in Iran and the atmosphere in China, citing many "hot spots" on the mainland that could explode into violent protests at any time.

"This time, the dark dictatorship has won, but I don't feel hopeless," Ho said of Iran. "On the contrary, I see more clearly that there is hope. I used to think, in such a totalitarian country, people had no hope for democracy. But I can see not only students but people from all different classes, even very low-class men and women, all have such a strong will for democracy, and they fight together for taking down the cheated election."

In contrast, Li Datong, a Beijing-based pro-democracy writer who was fired from his job in China's state media after publishing a piece on censorship on the Internet, said democratic change will come more gradually and peacefully in China.

"Young people might be excited about what happened in Iran now, but not me -- a 57-year-old one who has witnessed dramatic change in China. I think the cultivation of democratic elements within a society is more important and practical," Li said, mentioning the increased acceptance of public accountability and the growth of civil society groups in recent years.

Some democracy advocates in China said that even if the Iranian protesters fail in their calls for legitimate elections this time, their fight will inspire others, as similar uprisings -- in Burma in 1988 and at Tiananmen Square the next year, for example -- have done in the past.

The iconic image of the Iranian protests may be the chilling video, filmed on a cellphone camera, of Neda Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old woman who died on the streets of Tehran minutes after being struck by a bullet.

"Democracy won't come by the charity of the governing class," someone from the city of Suzhou, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, wrote about Agha Soltan on an online message board. "Fighting is the only way to gain democracy. . . . People are doomed to be slaves unless they are willing to sacrifice their blood."

Correspondent Juan Forero in Caracas, special correspondent Karla Adam in London, a staff writer in Washington and researchers Zhang Jie, Wang Juan and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.

Two New Real-Time Search Engines: Collecta and CrowdEye

From a Search Engine Land Blog post by Greg Sterling:

This morning there are two new entrants in the “real-time” search derby, run by two search veterans. They are CrowdEye and Collecta. CrowdEye is from Ken Moss, who ran search engineering at Microsoft and built the new engine himself. At the helm of Collecta is Gerry Campbell, who was a search executive at AOL and Reuters, as well as an adviser to Summize (now Twitter Search). He recently stepped into the CEO role at the company.

The blog post goes on to offer an in-depth overview of both services.

Direct to Collecta

Direct to Crowd Eye

Source: Search Engine Land

AOL’s Truveo Relaunches As Improved Video Search Destination

Jun 25, 2009 at 10:10am ET by Greg Sterling - click on above title for full posting and links

According to comScore the average watcher of online video in the US took in 385 minutes-worth in April. And according to Nielsen, in May, “year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 percent growth in time per viewer.” The leading video site is Google/YouTube by a large margin with almost double the unique users of Fox Interactive Media, the next ranking US online video provider. After that it becomes much more competitive.

Against that backdrop of intense competition and increasing consumer demand for online video, AOL’s video search engine Truveo has relaunched on a global basis (17 countries).

Truveo began as a video search technology platform and was acquired by AOL in January, 2006. In August of 2007 it became a consumer destination site. The previous version of the site had a number of virtues (depth, global scope, organization) but also serious problems with usability. I wrote at the time:

The single biggest drawback to the site (esp. vs. YouTube) is the fact that many (though not all) of Truveo’s content partners contractually require that videos be served on their sites rather than on Truveo. Consequently a pop-up appears and you watch the desired video (and pre-rolls ads) on the partner sites (about 50% of the time in my quick testing). That creates a variable experience, which YouTube avoids by having everything play in a single, uniform player on its site.

Those problems have largely remedied with the new user experience though there’s still some unevenness. Yet one can watch many more videos on the Truveo site itself today; and where the engine is compelled to link to third party sites (i.e., no video embed code) Truveo frames the experience. There are two viewing modes.

Among the improvements, there are also new user controls and filters to search or browse video by source or sort by popularity, ranking and recency.

There are also myriad full-length shows on the site. Overall this is a dramatically improved user experience and Truveo should see its traffic increase accordingly.

Truveo itself says that its global reach and the comprehensiveness of its video index — all the video is being crawled, there are no feeds or deals here — are what differentiate the site from competitors. AOL video remains a separate site with a different look and feel, though they share technology.

As part of the announcement this morning Truveo announced a deal to power video search on Univision Interactive Media’s online portal.

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

Timor-Leste - Cognates, Calques, and False Friends

Cognates, Calques and False Friends | liafuan
Source: blip.tv
Finding Common Ground between Four Languages in Timor Leste

To see the full video by Ken Westmoreland, hit the _title line_ of this posting.

Canada Asia News Service, June 26, 2009

East Asia

CHINA: Gov't May Reject Deal by Local Firm to Buy Hummer from GM

CHINA: Google Dragged into Escalating Row between Beijing and Washington on Internet Controls

HONG KONG SAR: Pro-Democracy Lawmakers Protest Beijing's Arrest of Charter 08 Reformist

JAPAN: Shipping Executive Details Hostage Negotiations with Somali Pirates

NORTH KOREA: Mass Rally in Pyongyang Marks Day of Struggle Against US

SOUTH KOREA: Seoul and Washington Extend US$30B Currency Swap Line

TAIWAN: Central Bank to Keep Interest Rates Unchanged, Says CBC Governor Perng

Southeast Asia

MALAYSIA: Indonesian High School Students Win Global Enterprise Challenge

PHILIPPINES: Pres. Arroyo Asks Congress to Pass Bill to Aid Filipino Poor

SINGAPORE: May Factory Output Falls 1.6%, Says Economic Development Board

THAILAND: Bangkok Signs US$1.1B Export Deal with Beijing

South Asia

INDIA: New Dehli Calls for Opposition to Protectionism in Trade, Services and People Flows

INDIA: Railway Minister Banerjee to Meet PM on Rail Budget Proposals

PAKISTAN: PM Zardari Urges Washington to Help Resolve Kashmir Issue, Cancel Debts

SRI LANKA: Pres. Rajapaksa Orders Gov't to Take Over Garbage Dumps to Combat Dengue

Central Asia

AFGHANISTAN: NATO, Backed by New US Troops, to Start Offensive Soon in Helmand and Kandahar

KAZAKHSTAN: Parliament Approves New Law to Tighten Internet Controls

South Pacific

AUSTRALIA: Gov't Pulls Plug on its Grocery Price Check Website

Editorials

THE ECONOMIST, London: Taiwan's President and China

HRW Report - "What Did I Do Wrong"

"What Did I Do Wrong?"

Papuans in Merauke Face Abuses by Indonesian Special Forces

June 24, 2009

This 16-page report documents how Kopassus soldiers operating in the town of Merauke, in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua, arrest Papuans without legal authority, and beat and mistreat those they take back to their barracks.

Kopassus’ record of human rights violations and its failure to hold the abusers accountable spans its operations across Indonesia, particularly since the 1970s in East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and Java. Human Rights Watch urged the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia to withhold training from Kopassus until serious efforts are made to investigate and hold abusive soldiers accountable.

Read the Press Release

Read the Report

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Table of Contents

• “What Did I Do Wrong?”
• I. Summary
• II. Kopassus: A History of Abuse
• III. Kopassus Beatings and Abuses in Merauke
• IV. Recommendations
• V. Acknowledgments