Tren Elektibilitas Capres-Cawapres Menjelang Pilpres 2009

Pemilihan Presiden 2009 memasuki fase genting dan menentukan bagi ketiga pasang capres dan cawapres. Waktu yang tersisa menjelang tanggal 8 Juli 2009 menjadi ajang menaikkan elektabilitas kandidat. Hampir semua cara telah dicoba, mulai dengan memaksimalkan “perang udara” dan “perang darat”. Strategi pencitraan dengan memoles kandidat juga telah dilakukan masing-masing tim sukses dan konsultan. Isu-isu panas dan menyengat juga sudah ditebar, saling rebutan klaim keberhasilan, hingga deretan isu-isu kampanye negatif dan black campaign telah mewarnai peta politik sebulan terakhir.

Dalam survei LSI 15-20 Juni 2009, SBY-Boediono dipilih oleh 67%, Mega-Pro 16%, dan JK-Win 9%. Keunggulan jauh yang sedikit menurun ini konsisten dengan sejumlah indikator makro, terutama kepuasan pada JK yang sedikit naik, dan pada SBY yang sedikit turun. SBY-Boediono mengalami penurunan sekitar 3% (dari70%) dalam 20 hari. Bila penurunan ini dibaca secara konservatif, SBY-Boediono sekarang berada pada posisi 64%. Berarti mengalami penurunan sebanyak 4%bila survei sebelumnya juga dibaca secara konservatif (68%, bukan 70%).

Bila penurunan ini linear dan dibaca secara konservatif SBY-Boediono kemungkinan akan turun lagi sebanyak 4% pada hari H, sehingga perolehan suara pada hari H kemungkinan 60%. Penurunan linear ini mungkin terjadi karena tekanan dari lawannya kurang kuat. Mega-Pro cenderung stabil atau bahkan menurun, sedangkan kemajuan JK-Win kurang kuat, hanya sekitar 5% dalam 20 hari bila dibaca secara optimis untuk JK-Win.

Kalau tidak ada peristiwa luar biasa, dan tak terkendali, kemungkinan JK akan naik, secara optimis, menjadi 20%.

Download RILIS SURVEI LSI : RELEASE SURVEI LSI 24 JUNI 2009.pdf

Hospitalized Iranians Seized

(CNN) -- Iranians wounded during protests are being seized at hospitals by members of an Islamic militia, an Amnesty International official told CNN.

"The Basijis are waiting for them," said Banafsheh Akhlaghi, western regional director of the human rights group, referring to the government's paramilitary arm that has cracked down on protesters during the violent aftermath of the June 12 presidential election.

Amnesty International has collected accounts from people who have left Iran and expatriates with relatives there who say the Basij has prohibited medical professionals from getting identification information from wounded demonstrators who check in, Akhlaghi said on Saturday. They are also not allowed to ask how the injuries happened, and relatives are hard pressed to find the wounded.

Once the patients are treated, the militia removes them from the hospital to an undisclosed location, she said.

Iran has restricted international news agencies, including CNN, from reporting inside the Islamic republic. However, CNN has received similar accounts, including that of a woman who arrived in the United States from Iran with a broken ankle and thumb. Watch reports of the crackdown on protesters at their homes »

The woman, who didn't want to be identified for fear of her safety, said she was injured in a rally, but was too scared to go to a hospital. Instead, a doctor came to her home to treat her.

"The point is, when they are being taken to the hospital they don't actually get there," her friend who accompanied her told CNN last week. "Just like the reporters are being told not to report what they really see. Hospitals, administrative levels, are being told to stay out of the public because they're saying you're accusing the regime of being hostile."

Amnesty International is also reporting the detention of at least 70 scholars and eight politicians -- most from former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's administration -- in addition to several opposition activists and international journalists.

More than two weeks into turmoil, Iran's leaders turned up the heat Friday as a high-ranking cleric warned protesters that they would be punished "firmly" and shown no mercy.

"Rioters and those who mastermind the unrest must know the Iranian nation will not give in to pressure and accept the nullification of the election results," said Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami during Friday prayers in Tehran, according to Iran's state-run Press TV.

"I ask the Judiciary to firmly deal with these people and set an example for everyone," Khatami said.

Khatami also blamed demonstrators for the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who emerged as a powerful symbol of opposition after her death a week ago was captured on a cell phone video. Khatami said the foreign media had used Neda for propaganda purposes.

Human Rights Watch, citing interviews with people in Iran, said Friday the Basij is carrying out brutal nighttime raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians in an attempt to stop nightly rooftop chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great).

The nighttime chanting is emblematic of the protests 30 years ago during the Iranian revolution, which toppled the monarchy of the shah.

"While most of the world's attention is focused on the beatings in the streets of Iran during the day, the Basiji are carrying out brutal raids on people's apartments during the night," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch.

Residents from northern Tehran neighborhoods told Human Rights Watch that the Basij fired live rounds into the air, in the direction of buildings from which they believed the chants were sounding.

Basij members kicked down doors and "when they entered the homes, they beat" people, a resident said.

The rights group said it had collected similar accounts of violence from several other neighborhoods. Such accounts also are consistent with numerous accounts CNN has received of nighttime roundups of opposition activists and international journalists from their homes. Amateur videos sent to CNN also show members of the Basij, wearing plain shirts and pants and wielding clubs and hoses, dispersing protesters and beating a handful of Iranians at a time.

Unrest in Iran erupted after the presidential elections in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Ahmadinejad's chief rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi, called the results fraudulent and has asked for a cancellation of the vote. Watch how Mideast cartoonists are capturing the unrest »

Members of Iran's National Security Council have told Moussavi that his repeated demands for the annulment are "illogical and unethical," the council's deputy head told the government-run Iranian Labor News Agency.

On Saturday Ahmadinejad slammed U.S. President Barack Obama, a day after Obama labeled as "outrageous" violence against demonstrators disputing election results.

"Didn't he say that he was after change?" Ahmadinejad asked Iranian judiciary officials in a speech. "Why did he interfere? Why did he utter remarks irrespective of norms and decorum?"

The National Security Council, which includes dozens of political leaders, assists Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's unelected supreme leader. Together, they set the parameters of regional and foreign policies, including relations with Western powers, and the country's nuclear programs.

The Guardian Council, which approves all candidates running for office and verifies election results, has declared that there will be no annulment of the votes. However, it has reminded opposition candidates they have until Sunday to lodge any further complaints about the vote.

The Way We Live Now - The Overextended Family -

By PEGGY ORENSTEIN

I would never have pegged my parents as early adopters. At 79 and 82, they are, like most people their age, blissfully uninterested in technology. To them, a BlackBerry is a late-summer fruit; tweeting is something a bird does. So I was unprepared when they called to tell me about their thrilling new discovery: Skype, an online service we could use to video chat. It’s free, my mom explained, eagerly. All we’d have to do is get something put on our computers (translation: download a program) and they would be able to talk to their 5-year-old granddaughter face to face! We could leave the gizmo on all the time, my dad suggested, and they could watch her go through her day. “Maybe you could bring it to her school,” he added, only half-joking. “We could see her classroom!”

Now, I like my parents. A lot. I really do. That’s why I make the 1,500-mile trip to visit them three or four times a year. I did not, however, spend the bulk of my adult life perfecting the fine art of establishing boundaries only to have them toppled by the click of a mouse. If I wanted them to have unfettered access to my life, I wouldn’t have put the “keep out” sign on my room at age 10. I would have lived at home through college. I would have bought the house next door to them in Minneapolis and made them an extra set of keys.

Even they might have found that a little extreme.

But the mere existence of video chat forces me to lay down a whole new set of rules and to rethink, yet again, the line between inclusive and intrusive, the balance between their yearning to shrink the distance between us and my need for limits — something I thought we resolved decades ago to our mutual satisfaction.

So I did what any sensible adult child would do. I stalled.

“Gee,” I said, “setting that up seems awfully complicated. I’m not sure I’d know how to do it.”

o Skype or not to Skype, that is the question. But answering it invokes a larger conundrum: how to perform triage on the communication technologies that seem to multiply like Tribbles — instant messaging, texting, cellphones, softphones, iChat, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter; how to distinguish among those that will truly enhance intimacy, those that result in T.M.I. and those that, though pitching greater connectedness, in fact further disconnect us from the people we love.

I may curse e-mail for destroying my workday, for turning me into a lab rat on a drug unable to stop clicking on “send-receive.” Yet it has been a godsend in my relationship with my mom: her hearing is severely impaired, much beyond help from aids or amplification, making phone conversations frustrating. E-mail has allowed us to “talk” again more fully, to share complex thoughts and feelings. We sometimes correspond five or six times a day.

Likewise, digital cameras are a boon: the near-instant photos I send to my folks — my daughter’s school play or maiden bicycle voyage — are truly the next-best thing to being there. Each technology strengthens our bond, but each also preserves my privacy. I’m in touch more often than ever before but entirely on my schedule. I manage the flow of information. I set the terms of my self-presentation. Everyone wins.

Apple hints at something similar in one of its “there’s an app for that” iPhone ads, demonstrating how, with the flick of a finger, you can turn an incriminating snapshot into “at least one photo you can show your parents.” The message is that this achieves the elusive balance between access and control in personal communication. But I wonder. Cellphones may be smart, but they’re also tricky. On one hand, you don’t have to answer them if you are, say, in a crowded cafe (and oh so very often, I wish people wouldn’t) but the assumption has become that you will. Depending on your viewpoint, perpetual availability to everyone you know can be a comfort or a shackle, can intensify closeness or subvert it. One of my brothers grabs his cellphone before heading out for his morning run in case his wife or kids want to reach him. My other brother considers that excessive. Let’s just say that it is best to draw the curtain on that dinner-table debate.

The very technology with which we choose to communicate in a relationship has become a barometer of our willingness to reveal ourselves within it. Racy photos, amorous texts and nonstop Skyping may be just the thing for lovers who are separated during the giddy days of new romance. At the same time, all that virtual togetherness may overaccelerate a courtship. There is something to be said for the slow burn, for anticipation over immediacy. I’m relieved not to be single in a time when you can flirt, fall in love, sext and break up with a guy without ever so much as meeting for coffee. And, really, what is more erotic, more personal, more potentially vulnerable than handwriting on a page? My husband won my heart by sending a witty postcard from a film shoot in Hawaii. No return address, no way for me to respond at all, let alone instantly in three platforms. These days, it seems, the only time we put pen to paper is when someone has died.

Every evolution in telecommunication has been greeted with ambivalence. Critics of the early telephone warned that eliminating the physical presence from conversation would increase isolation and undermine the family. Picture phones embody the future in dystopian and utopian sci-fi alike: Heywood Floyd uses one in “2001: A Space Odyssey”; ditto George of “The Jetsons.” When AT&T unveiled a test model at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, visitors lined up for a chance to talk to a stranger at Disneyland. Even Lady Bird Johnson gave it a whirl in Washington. In 1970, the picture phone was introduced for commercial use; the product tanked. Part of it was the expense — a three-minute call between New York and Chicago on the original version cost $27. But there was another reason: Who would want callers to know you were leafing through magazines or never made your bed or were trimming your toenails in the all-together? No one, that’s who.

Video chat, while obviously cheaper, would seem to have the same skewed ratio: too much access, too little control. But that’s speaking from the standpoint of a daughter. My perspective shifts significantly — as it does on so many subjects — when I mull this one over as a mother. It’s one thing to consider how much about me my parents have a right to know; it’s another to contemplate how much about my daughter I have a right to know — or even want to know.

I have friends who scroll through their teenagers’ text messages every night. They say it’s for their children’s protection, but to me it just seems the high-tech equivalent of picking the lock on a diary (something I know my mother never did, because if she had, I’d still be grounded). Their children don’t seem to mind the breach of trust. Maybe that’s because privacy is as foreign to them as analog television. Or because they’ve grown up far more tethered than any previous generation to their parents’ watchful gaze. It’s curious that today’s parents, who in their youth were so adamant about their own independence, are so lousy at fostering it in their progeny, even after the children leave home.

When I took off for college, I called my parents once a week, which was standard. They never saw my dorm room, didn’t meet my friends, had no concept of my schedule. It was My Space — the old-fashioned kind. Has cheaper and more plentiful technology made the difference, or is it something else? According to Quantcast, a service that analyzes Web site traffic, Skype users typically fall into one or more of four groups: white, male, between 18 and 34, and the “less affluent” — which in this case, probably indicates still in school. It could be such lads Skype only one another, but I doubt it. If they’re indeed checking in with Mom, I hope they at least cover up the beer-pong poster first.

Maybe by the time my daughter leaves for college, I, too, will wish for a 24-hour-a-day video feed (or, by then, perhaps, a continuous holograph). Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll be relieved not to see into her room, not to have to tell her for the 832nd time to clean it up. Maybe I’ll remind myself that magic mirrors are best left back in “Romper Room,” that, at some point, she has to figure out how to be her without me. She will need to cut the invisible cord — the phone cord, that is — and I will have to let her.

Doubtless, if circumstance takes her far away from home, my sense of the distance between us will be different from hers. That measure will change yet again — for both of us — should she have children, as it has, since her birth, for my parents and me. The truth is, I consider their tie to my daughter to be as precious as they do; the technology I use, I realize, may no longer reflect that.

So, I agreed to give video chat a try. We downloaded Skype and set a time to connect. They rang. I answered. My daughter waved. And then . . . we stared at each other. Short silences that seem natural on the phone become terribly awkward on video. Suddenly I understood why slumber-party confessions always came after lights were out, why children tend to admit the juicy stuff to the back of your head while you’re driving, why psychoanalysts stay out of a patient’s sightline. There is something exquisitely intimate about the disembodied voice. In my concern over letting my parents too far in, creating a claustrophobic closeness, I hadn’t considered that video chat might do just the opposite.

“Um,” I finally admitted, “I don’t have anything to say.”

That was a few weeks ago; we haven’t tried again since. It looks as if we’ll be among the two-thirds of Skype members who, according to Quantcast estimates, are passers-by who use the service no more than once a month.

“I think I’d rather e-mail,” my mom wrote me.

“Me, too,” I shot back, attaching a few photos of kindergarten graduation before hitting “send.”

Her response, which came instantly, made me smile: “Oh, Pegs,” she wrote. “Thanks so much for the pictures. It was exactly as if we were there with you!”

Peggy Orenstein, a contributing writer, is the author of “Waiting for Daisy,” a memoir.

Practical Traveler - The Soaring Cost of Car Rentals

By MICHELLE HIGGINS

WHILE the global recession has sent prices plummeting on airfares, hotels and cruises, it is having the opposite effect on rental cars.

In May, the average rate for a weekly airport rental of a compact car booked seven days in advance was $345.99, up a whopping 73 percent compared with $199.65 for the same month last year, according to the Abrams Consulting Group, based in Purchase, N.Y., which tracks rental rates.

In mid-June, weekly airport rental rates for a compact car averaged $347.44, compared with $210.38 a year ago — a 65 percent jump. “There’s a lot of sticker shock,” said Neil Abrams, president of the consulting group. “People don’t understand. The economy is caving around them,” he said, adding, “so how is it possible that rates are as high as they are for car rentals?”

The reason is basic supply and demand. Although demand for car rentals is down — by roughly 15 percent, according to Mr. Abrams — rental agencies have cut their fleets by even more, essentially creating their own shortage and jacking up prices.

To trim fleets, companies have been selling cars to the used car market and holding off on buying new ones. That doesn’t necessarily mean renters are getting clunkers, but it’s not unusual anymore to see a car with 30,000 miles on it. The average age of a rental car is now about 11 months, compared with about nine-and-a-half months a year ago, Mr. Abrams said.

All of this has changed the booking game for consumers. With many hotel rooms and airline seats empty, travelers have become accustomed to booking trips at the last minute. But with car rentals, that strategy won’t work. A procrastinator risks paying an exorbitant rate for the last car on the lot, assuming there is a car left. Many rental agencies in Manhattan, for example, have been sold out for the busy Fourth of July weekend for weeks.

Besides starting your search early, there are several ways to find a cheaper car. Off-airport locations are typically cheaper than airport locations, which tend to tack on fees that can raise the final price by 30 percent or more. According to an Expedia search in mid-June, an economy car from Enterprise Rent-a-Car from Seattle-Tacoma airport was $110.31 a day, compared with $42.90 for a similar car from the same company in downtown Seattle.

Travelers willing to go farther can save even more. For a 38-day road trip from Portland to Michigan, Ed Immel is saving about $800 by not renting from the airport or even downtown Portland. Instead, he is going to an Enterprise branch in the bedroom community of Beaverton, Ore., about 25 miles outside of Portland. “My advice,” said Mr. Immel, a retired rail planner from Portland, “is to take the airport train downtown and pick up the rental car there or go further.”

Deals can also be found by upgrading. With demand for fuel-efficient cars particularly high, travelers can sometimes find a better deal by booking larger, roomier vehicles. A recent Expedia search, for example, found a full-size van for $90.42 a day at the Budget Rent a Car in Long Beach, Calif., compared with $97.86 for a standard car. While the added fuel costs (not to mention larger carbon footprint) might erase the savings, the extra space and comfort might prevent World War III between siblings in the back seat.

Also, look beyond national chains like Avis or Hertz, to the hundreds of independent car rental agencies. Because of lower operating costs and smaller overhead, mom-and-pop agencies, which can be found at sites like CarRentals.com and CarRentalExpress.com, typically offer rates between 15 and 30 percents less than national agencies.

Willing to gamble? Consider Web sites like Priceline.com and Hotwire.com, which offer deep discounts to travelers willing to be locked into a preset price before finding out the rental car company.

Another option: virtual coupons. Sites like FatWallet.com and CouponWinner.com list discount codes for car rentals, or type in the name of a car rental company and “coupon code” into Google to see what turns up. Good deals also show up on airline Web sites under mileage partner offers. For example, Delta is offering up to 20 percent off with the discount code CDP 165385, and double miles on Hertz rentals in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and Canada. The code brought the weekly rental of a Toyota Prius from Newark Airport in mid-July down to $503.90 from $685.05 — a 26 percent saving.

If you don’t have the time to seek out such discounts, Steve Ellis can do it for you. After his wife pointed out his uncanny knack for finding rental deals, Mr. Ellis, who is a business adviser and frequent traveler, created RentalCarMagic.com to allow customers to pay for his deal-sniffing services. The site, which charges $14.95 to $49.95, sends back a quote in a day or two.

Chris McGinnis, editor of The Ticket, a subscription newsletter for frequent travelers, recently tried RentalCarMagic.com for a trip to Hawaii. After paying a $30 fee, he said, the service saved him $54 on a convertible from Alamo Rent a Car. Though he found the process slightly cumbersome — he still had to go to the rental company’s Web site to book the deal using the discount code provided by Rental Car Magic — he noted in his newsletter that in the end, “it saved us more than we were able to save ourselves.”

African Roots Still Run Deep For Blacks on Mexican Coast

By Alexis Okeowo
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 28, 2009

You have to really want to go to Chacahua. The island is nestled along Mexico's Costa Chica, a 200-mile-long strip that straddles the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero on the Pacific Ocean; the nearest hub is Puerto Escondido, a developed beach in Oaxaca.

After your flight from Mexico City or Cancun, the easy part of the trip is over. From Puerto Escondido, you need to reach El Zapotalito, a tiny spot on the coast. The land journey can be done by private taxi or, for the braver, by public transportation. From El Zapotalito you can take a boat to Chacahua.

Luckily, I did want to go. I was on the hunt not only for an idyllic beach getaway, but also for a hidden group of people who call themselves Mexicanos negros (black Mexicans). The end of slavery after Mexico's independence from Spain left black Mexicans throughout the country, but today black towns remain only in remote areas. The African part of Mexican history was neglected by the new Mexican leadership, leaving slave descendants to wonder about their origins.

Yet with the rise of tourism to Costa Chica in recent years, modernity has slowly come to the fishing villages that rest on a sultry, stunning stretch of the Pacific coast. In Chacahua, virgin beaches, glittering lagoons and fresh-seafood-only menus have created an alluring destination that is still little known -- much like its inhabitants.

In Puerto Escondido I squeezed into a colectivo (public van) headed for Rio Grande, not far from El Zapotalito. As the hour-long ride went by, the crowded beaches gave way to lush, neon-green grass; the sun seemed to get brighter and hotter, the waters bluer, the people browner with kinkier hair.

In Rio Grande, I made my way to a taxi stand to cram into another shared car that would take me to the boats. As I walked with the driver to his cab, he smiled down at me. "Hermanas. You two could be sisters," he said, pointing back at the taxi stand. There, a black Mexican woman who was staffing the stall watched me with curiosity.

Chacahua is divided in half by a series of lagoons filled with exotic birds. The surroundings make for a gorgeous ride whether you hire a private boat or take a public ferry to the island. The boat can take you straight to town or you can disembark, as I did the first time, on the island's edge.

I then hopped onto a pickup truck, along with other Chacahuans, for a half-hour's ride on rocky sand past scraggly bushes and cactuses into the village. Once we maneuvered around rams and cows that had decided to congregate in the middle of the road, I had finally reached my destination -- three exhilarating hours after leaving Puerto Escondido. My escapade had begun.

"They say a boat full of slaves, with dark skin like me, was headed for South America," Omar Corcuera told me over lunch the next day at Restaurant Punto de Quiebra. The young surfer, with deep-brown skin and a shock of naturally blond-brown hair, was recounting the far-fetched tale of a wrecked ship whose survivors populated the shore; I would hear it more than once.

What historians know is that the black Mexicans on the Pacific coast hail from the African slaves who were brought by the Spanish to work on cattle ranches during the 16th and 17th centuries. (On the Gulf coast, slaves were mainly deployed on sugar plantations.) Overall, the Spanish brought more than 200,000 Africans to Mexico for slave labor. The residents of Chacahua say they do not know much about their history, and different tales have gotten jumbled together over time.

The community of black, white and mestizo Mexicans (those of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage) on this island numbers about 700 and has been around for some two centuries.

Nevertheless, Omar said, "I feel that I am African and Mexican."

Nearby, Paulina Marcial, scooping up her curly-haired daughter from an impromptu card game, added: "I just think of myself as Mexican. I don't know anyone anywhere else." Patting her Afro, the petite cook then walked off with a wave.

At least 10 sand-floor, door-less restaurants are on the beach, each with multicolored hammocks swinging in the breeze. At Restaurant Punto de Quiebra, fresh seafood meals fetched $5.50 or less, and breakfasts were all under $3, notably a plate of huge enchiladas with shredded cheese, green tomatoes, chili and cilantro for $2.30. A couple of yards down is Restaurant Siete Mares, where the bungalows are the beach's best, with airy, colorful cabanas.

At least seven of the restaurants have bungalows for rent. On my first night at Punto de Quiebra, the feisty housekeeper, Modesta, led me to my room, demanding to know where I was from and marveling over our shared skin color. I tell her that my parents are from West Africa, but that I was born and raised in the United States. Each day after, I would wave to her as I caught her on a hammock, lazily smoking a cigarette.

At Siete Mares I had a tall tumbler of freshly squeezed orange juice with the owner, Luis Carlos Gutierrez, and Rey Ramirez Gopar, the owner of Cabanas Los Almendros, which is near the lagoons. Various people stopped by our table as the day wore on, first American and European tourists, and then a talkative black Mexican teacher named Angel Saguilan, who offered to buy me a beer.

"They call this Little Africa," Angel said, gesturing to the pale sand, illuminated by a pink setting sun. Children in a dazzling rainbow of colors shrieked as they played volleyball nearby.

"I feel Afro-American more than I feel Mexican," Angel went on to say.

He explained that because his dark skin makes him stand out in Mexico, other Mexicans often joke that he is really from Brazil or Cuba. Angel tells me that he knows he is different from non-black Mexicans, but he is just not sure exactly how.

I later walked down the path into the village, passing by Rey's Cabanas Los Almendros. The gruffly amusing Rey could usually be found drinking a beer at one thatch-roofed structure or the other on the beach, but he and his wife, Eva, built Los Almendros out of love for Chacahua, and the devotion is clear in the massive dark-wood, blue-painted bungalows with glassless windows facing the lagoons. Serene artwork decorates the walls of the rooms.

As I continued into town, I came across two men named Juan.

"Prima!" called out Juan Ortiz. I was having a conversation with another Chacahuan named Juan, but as soon as Ortiz saw me across a construction yard, he dropped his wheelbarrow, yelled the Spanish word for "cousin" and rushed over.

Before I could react, the stout fisherman with burnished brown skin had scooped my face in his hands, kissed me on the cheek and was leading me to his boat for a ride on the lagoons. "Everyone is family in Chacahua," he said.

Chacahua Lagoons National Park is one of Mexico's hidden gems. The lagoons allow for not only a breathtaking ride, but also prime bird-watching. The calm, soothing waters are a welcome contrast to the beach's buoyant waves, which attract surfers from Mexico and abroad. At the helm of his speedboat, Ortiz paused at a dock to take a family to the other side of the lagoons, and then told me what he knew about his community's identity.

"We are Mexicans, but black Mexicans," Ortiz said. "We still have traditions of the Africans, in costumes, in dances." He added that relations between black Mexicans and white and mestizo Mexicans are pleasant. Black Mexicans, he said, often advocate intermarriage in the hope their children will better integrate into society. But as for Mexico's politicians, "The government has forgotten about us." The Afro-Mexican communities are some of the poorest and most rural in the country.

As we docked and the family paid him, Juan pulled the father in for a warm handshake. "Now you know my name is Juan Ortiz, not just 'El Moreno' [the Brown-Skinned Man]," he told them with a laugh.

I decided to head back to my favorite hammock with my book, already planning what kind of empanadas I would order from the pink-frocked Morena who wanders on the beach.

Alexis Okeowo is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.

In Tehran, a Mood of Melancholy Descends

By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN — An eerie stillness has settled over this normally frenetic city.

In less anxious times, the streets are clogged with honking cars and cranky commuters. But on Saturday, drives that normally last 45 minutes took just a third of the time, and shops were mainly empty. Even Tehran’s beauty salons, normally hives of activity, had few customers; at one, bored workers fussed over one another’s hair.

People who did venture out said they were dispirited by the upheaval that has shaken this country over the two weeks since the contested presidential election, and worried they would get caught up in the brutal government crackdown of dissent that has followed.

Even in areas of the city not known for liberal politics, the sense of frustration, and despair, was palpable. Those who accuse the government of stealing the election said they had lost the hope for change they had during the protests that drew tens of thousands of people into Tehran’s streets. But others also confessed to feeling depressed.

One staunch supporter of the incumbent president, who the government says won in a landslide, said he was distressed by the street protests and the crackdown that, by official counts, claimed more than 20 lives.

“People have been hurt on both sides, and this is disappointing,” said the man, who sells light bulbs in Imam Khomeini Square. “We need to build our country, not engage in these kinds of clashes.”

By late last week, the country’s leaders had succeeded in quelling the massive demonstrations that challenged their legitimacy. But the widespread feeling of discontent — even among those who had no part in the protests — was likely to pose a lingering challenge to leaders’ attempts to move quickly past the vote and return life to normal.

There were further signs on Saturday that the opposition was running out of options in its attempts to nullify the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which has been confirmed by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Expediency Council, headed by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, issued a statement that called the supreme leader’s decision the final word on the election, although it did say the government should investigate voting complaints “properly and thoroughly.”

Mr. Rafsanjani has been one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s strongest critics and one of the most ardent supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s chief rival in the election. But after the vote, the former president had been quiet, and many Iranians had hoped he would broker some compromise behind the scenes.

And although an opposition Web site carried a new message from Mr. Moussavi, the first in several days, he did not present any new plans for resistance. He instead reiterated demands for a new election, which the government has rejected.

At the same time, those in the opposition were increasingly fearful for the hundreds of government critics who have been jailed.

Amid rumors that the government was beginning to force confessions — a tactic leaders have used in the past to tarnish dissidents’ reputations — the IRNA news agency reported that a jailed journalist had said reformist politicians were to blame for the recent protests.

The journalist, Amir-Hossein Mahdavi, was the editor of a reformist newspaper close to Mr. Moussavi that was shut down before the election.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, responded Saturday to statements by President Obama, who made his most critical remarks of the Iranian leadership on Friday, when he called the government’s crackdown “outrageous” and said the prospects for a dialogue with Iran had been dampened.

Mr. Ahmadinejad suggested that Washington’s stance could imperil Mr. Obama’s aim of improving relations, according to the ISNA news agency.

“Didn’t he say that he was after change?” Mr. Ahmadinejad asked. “Why did he interfere?”

On Saturday, security forces were still on the streets, but uniformed guards had replaced the most feared forces, the Basij paramilitary members, who were involved in many of the beatings and shootings of demonstrators, and the hard-line Revolutionary Guards in their camouflage outfits.

The shops on Baharestan Square, which was the scene of the latest clashes on Wednesday, and on Haft-e Tir Square, where the paramilitary forces attacked people a day earlier, were open Saturday. But shopkeepers said business was limping.

“We used to sell nearly $2,000 a day,” said a woman at an Islamic coat shop on Haft-e Tir Square. “But since the election, our sales have dropped to $900 a day.” She gave only her first name, Mahtab, citing fear of retribution.

Like many others who spoke, Mahtab said she was depressed by what she had seen since the election. She said that she was not a political person and had not even voted June 12, but that the repression on the streets was “beyond belief.”

“I am disgusted, and wish I could leave this country,” she said.

She said she had seen a paramilitary officer outside the shop hit a middle-aged woman in the head so hard that blood streamed down the woman’s forehead.

When Mahtab and her colleagues tried to leave the shop to go home, she said, the forces began clubbing them while shouting the names of Shiite saints. “They do this under the name of religion,” she said. “Which religion allows this?”

Daily life has also been affected.

Although people are still going to work, some parents have been reluctant to take their children to day care, fearing that unrest on the streets would prevent them from picking up their children. University exams have been postponed and many families have traded parties for small get-togethers, where the election is a constant topic of conversation.

“People are depressed, and they feel they have been lied to, robbed of their rights and now are being insulted,” said Nassim, a 56-year-old hairdresser. “It is not just a lie; it’s a huge one. And it doesn’t end.”

Unlikely Ally for Residents of West Bank

By ETHAN BRONNER

SAFA, West Bank — Ezra Nawi was in his element. Behind the wheel of his well-worn jeep one recent Saturday morning, working two cellphones in Arabic as he bounded through the terraced hills and hardscrabble villages near Hebron, he was greeted warmly by Palestinians near and far.

Watching him call for an ambulance for a resident and check on the progress of a Palestinian school being built without an Israeli permit, you might have thought him a clan chief. Then noticing the two Israeli Army jeeps trailing him, you might have pegged him as an Israeli occupation official handling Palestinian matters.

But Mr. Nawi is neither. It is perhaps best to think of him as the Robin Hood of the South Hebron hills, an Israeli Jew helping poor locals who love him, and thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with contempt. Those army jeeps were not watching over him. They were stalking him.

Since the Israeli left lost so much popular appeal after the violent Palestinian uprising of 2000 and the Hamas electoral victory three years ago, its activists tend to be a rarefied bunch — professors of Latin or Sanskrit, and translators of medieval poetry. Mr. Nawi, however, is a plumber. And unlike the intellectuals of European origin with whom he spends most Saturdays, he is from an Iraqi Jewish family.

“My mother gave birth to me in Jerusalem when she was 14,” said Mr. Nawi, who is 57 and one of five siblings. “So my grandmother raised me. And she spoke to me in Arabic.”

His family has trouble understanding his priorities. His mother says she thinks he is wasting his time. And many Israelis, when told of his work, wonder why he is not helping his own. Mr. Nawi has an answer.

“I don’t consider my work political,” he said between phone calls as he drove. “I don’t have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is going on here is wrong. This is not about ideology. It is about decency.”

For his activist colleagues, Mr. Nawi’s instinctual connection to the Palestinians is valuable.

“Ezra knows Palestinians better than any of us,” said Amiel Vardi, a professor who works closely with him. “This is not only because of the language, but because he gains their confidence the minute he starts talking with them. He has all sorts of intuitions as to what should be done, what are the internal relations — things we hardly ever notice.”

The difficulties of Palestinian life in the West Bank have been well documented: Israeli military checkpoints, a rising separation barrier and Israeli settlers. But in this area, the problems are more acute. The Palestinians, many of them Bedouin, are exceptionally poor, and the land they bought decades ago is under threat by a group of unusually aggressive local settlers. The settlers have been filmed beating up Palestinians. Settlers have been killed by Palestinians. But Mr. Nawi said that the law inevitably sided with the Israelis, and that occupation meant there could be no equity.

“The settlers keep the Palestinian farmers from their land by harassing them, and then after several years they say the land has not been farmed so by law it is no longer theirs,” Mr. Nawi said. “We are only here to stop that from happening.”

That is not the view of the settlers.

“He is a troublemaker,” asserted Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for Israeli settler communities in the area. “It’s true that from time to time there is a problem of some settlers coming out of their settlements to cause problems. But people like Nawi don’t want a solution. Their whole aim is to cause trouble.”

True or not, Mr. Nawi is now in trouble. Having spent several short stints in jail for his activism over the years, he now faces the prospect of a long one. He is due to be sentenced Wednesday for assaulting an Israeli policeman two years ago during a confrontation over an attempt to demolish Palestinians’ shacks on disputed land on the West Bank. The policeman said Mr. Nawi struck him during that encounter. Mr. Nawi denied it, but in March a judge convicted him.

What is left of the Israeli left is rallying around him, arguing that Mr. Nawi is a known pacifist who would not have raised his hand against anyone.

“Since I’ve known the man for decades and seen him in action in many extreme situations, I’m certain that the charge is untrue,” David Shulman, a Hebrew University professor and peace activist, wrote in the newspaper Haaretz. Of Mr. Nawi, he added, “He is a man committed, in every fiber of his being, to nonviolent protest against the inequities of the occupation.”

Mr. Nawi attributes his activism to two things: as a teenager, his family lived next door to the leader of Israel’s Communist Party, Reuven Kaminer, who influenced him. And he is gay.

“Being gay has made me understand what it is like to be a despised minority,” Mr. Nawi said.

Several years ago, he had a relationship with a Palestinian from the West Bank and ended up being convicted on charges of allowing his companion to live illegally in Israel. His companion was jailed for months.

Mr. Nawi said harassment against him had come in many forms. Settlers shout vicious antigay epithets. His plumbing business has been audited, and he was handed a huge tax bill that he said he did not deserve. He is certain that his phone calls are monitored. And those army jeeps are never far behind.

He is not optimistic about his coming sentencing, although he is planning an appeal. And he says the Israeli news media have lost interest in the work he and his fellow activists do. But he does not stop.

“I’m here to change reality,” he said. “The only Israelis these people know are settlers and soldiers. Through me they know a different Israeli. And I’ll keep coming until I know that the farmers here can work their fields.”

Political Memo - Political Shifts on Gay Rights Lag Behind Culture

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON — For 15 minutes in the Oval Office the other day, one of President Obama’s top campaign lieutenants, Steve Hildebrand, told the president about the “hurt, anxiety and anger” that he and other gay supporters felt over the slow pace of the White House’s engagement with gay issues.

But on Monday, 250 gay leaders are to join Mr. Obama in the East Room to commemorate publicly the 40th anniversary of the birth of the modern gay rights movement: a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York. By contrast, the first time gay leaders were invited to the White House, in March 1977, they met a midlevel aide on a Saturday when the press and President Jimmy Carter were nowhere in sight.

The conflicting signals from the White House about its commitment to gay issues reflect a broader paradox: even as cultural acceptance of homosexuality increases across the country, the politics of gay rights remains full of crosscurrents.

It is reflected in the surge of gay men and lesbians on television and in public office, and in polls measuring a steady rise in support for gay rights measures. Despite approval in California of a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, it has been authorized in six states.

Yet if the culture is moving on, national politics is not, or at least not as rapidly. Mr. Obama has yet to fulfill a campaign promise to repeal the policy barring openly gay people from serving in the military. The prospects that Congress will ever send him a bill overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, appear dim. An effort to extend hate-crime legislation to include gay victims has produced a bitter backlash in some quarters: Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, sent a letter to clerics in his state arguing that it would be destructive to “faith, families and freedom.”

“America is changing more quickly than the government,” said Linda Ketner, a gay Democrat from South Carolina who came within four percentage points of winning a Congressional seat in November. “They are lagging behind the crowd. But if I remember my poli sci from college, isn’t that the way it always works?”

Some elected Democrats in Washington remain wary because they remember how conservatives used same-sex marriage and gay service in the military against them as political issues. The Obama White House in particular is reluctant to embrace gay rights issues now, officials there say, because they do not want to provide social conservatives a rallying cry while the president is trying to assemble legislative coalitions on health care and other initiatives.

Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a group that opposes gay rights initiatives, said Mr. Obama’s reluctance to push more assertively for gay rights reflected public opinion.

“He’s given them a few minor concessions; they’re asking for more, such as ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ being repealed,” Mr. Perkins said. “The administration is not willing to go there, and I think there’s a reason for that, and that is because I think the American public isn’t there.”

Conservative Democrats have at best been unenthusiastic about efforts to push gay rights measures in Congress; 30 Democrats voted against a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation that passed the House in 2007. (It died in the Senate.) And a half-dozen Democrats declined requests to discuss this issue, reflecting what aides called the complicated politics surrounding it.

Still, there are signs that the issue is not as pressing or toxic as it once was. “I don’t think it’s the political deal-breaker it once was,” said Dave Saunders, a southern Virginia Democratic consultant who has advised Democrats running for office in conservative rural areas. “Most people out here really don’t care because everybody has gay friends.”

Interviews with gay leaders suggest a consensus that there has been nothing short of a cultural transformation in the space of just a few years, even if it is reflected more in the evolving culture of the country than in the body of its laws.

“The diminution of the homophobia has been as important a phenomena as anything we’ve seen in the last 15 years,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is gay.

Democrats now control the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994, increasing the chances of legislative action. Mr. Frank said that over the next two years, he expected Congress to overturn the ban on gay service in the military, pass legislation prohibiting discrimination against hiring gay workers, and extend the hate-crime bill to crimes involving gay couples.

There is also an emerging generational divide on gay issues — younger Americans tend to have more liberal positions — that has fueled what pollsters said was a measurable liberalization in views on gay rights over the past decade.

A New York Times/CBS News poll last spring found that 57 percent of people under 40 said they supported same-sex marriage, compared with 31 percent of respondents over 40. Andy Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center, said the generational shift was reflected in his polling, in which the number of Americans opposing gay people serving openly in the military had dropped to 32 percent now from 45 percent in 1994.

David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said, “You look at polling and attitudes among younger people on these issues are startlingly different than older people.”

“As generational change happens,” Mr. Axelrod added, “that’s going to be more and more true.”

In the view of many gay leaders, the shifts in public attitude are a validation of the central political goal set by the dozens of gay liberation groups that sprouted up in cities and on college campuses in the months after the Stonewall uprising: to have gay men and lesbians who had been living in secret go public as a way of dealing with societal fear and prejudice.

But there is considerable evidence that this is still an issue that stirs political concerns. Gay leaders have increasingly complained about what they call Mr. Obama’s slow pace in fulfilling promises he made during his campaign. Some boycotted a Democratic Party fund-raiser recently to show their distress.

“I have been really surprised how paralyzed they seem around this,” said Richard Socarides, who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay issues.

Mr. Hildebrand did not respond to calls and e-mail messages asking about his encounter with Mr. Obama, which he described in a private e-mail forum for gay political leaders. (The meeting was confirmed by senior White House officials.)

Still, David Mixner, a longtime gay leader, said he was struck by how things had changed.

“Listen,” Mr. Mixner said, “in 1992, what we were begging Bill Clinton about — literally — about whether he was going to say the word ‘gay’ in his convention speech. Even say it. We had to threaten a walkout to get it in.”

Taliban Losses Are No Sure Gain for Pakistanis

By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

MARDAN, Pakistan — For the past month and a half, the Pakistani military has claimed success in retaking the Swat Valley from the Taliban, clawing back its own territory from insurgents who only a short time ago were extending their reach toward the heartland of the country.

Yet from a helicopter flying low over the valley last week, the low-rise buildings of Mingora, the largest city in Swat, now deserted and under a 24-hour curfew, appeared unscathed. In the surrounding countryside, farmers had harvested wheat and red onions on their unscarred land.

All that is testament to the fact that the Taliban mostly melted away without a major fight, possibly to return when the military withdraws or to fight elsewhere, military analysts say. About two million people have been displaced in Swat and the surrounding area as the military has carried out its campaign.

The reassertion of control over Swat has at least temporarily denied the militants a haven they coveted inside Pakistan proper. The offensive has also won strong support from the United States, which has urged Pakistan to engage the militants.

But the Taliban’s decision to scatter leaves the future of Swat, and Pakistan’s overall stability, under continued threat, military analysts and some politicians say.

The tentative results in Swat also do not bode well for the military’s new push in the far more treacherous terrain of South Waziristan, another insurgent stronghold, where officials have vowed to take on the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, who remains Pakistan’s most wanted man.

Signs abound that the military’s campaign in Swat is less than decisive. The military extended its deadline for ending the campaign. Even in the areas where progress has been made, the military controls little more than urban centers and roads, say those who have fled the areas. The military has also failed to kill or capture even one top Taliban commander.

It was “very disappointing,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a senior politician from the region, that none of the commanders had been eliminated. It turned out, he said, that early reports of the capture of Ibn Amin, a particularly brutal commander from Matta, were incorrect.

Many Taliban fighters have infiltrated the camps set up for those displaced by the fighting and are likely to return with them to Swat, said Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan, the city where many of the refugees are staying. “Most of the Taliban shaved their beards, and they are living here with their families,” he said.

As of two weeks ago, the police had arrested 150 people in the camps suspected of being members of the Taliban, Mr. Mayar said. This figure did not include suspects arrested by the Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan’s domestic intelligence outfit, and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s main spy agency, he said.

Meanwhile, the government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, has yet to announce a full plan for how it will provide services like courts, policing and health care that will allow the refugees to return home and the government to fully assert control.

Those plans appear to be mired in conflict and mutual suspicion between the military and the civilian government, raising serious questions about whether the authorities can secure Swat and other areas and keep them from being taken back by the Taliban, military experts said.

“I’ve told the president and the prime minister and the chief of the army this is the time to act. Just take basic things and implement them,” said Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, the commander of the Special Support Group, an arm of the Pakistani military that is providing temporary buildings and some food for the displaced. “This is not talking rocket science.”

On a notepad, General Ahmad had drawn a chart of the four elements of what he called “lasting peace.” They were good government; improved delivery of services, including rebuilt schools; speedy justice (something the Taliban had provided); and social equity.

He appeared to be skeptical that those aspects could be delivered within what he called an essential one-year time frame. He said he had warned the leaders: “If you don’t deliver, it will be trouble. You will come back and do the operation again.”

Having witnessed past episodes of deal-making with the Taliban, the people of Swat say they want tangible proof that the military is serious this time and that they will be safe if they return home.

From the start, a rallying cry has been a demand that the army kill or capture Taliban leaders, a ruthless group of highly trained fighters, some with links to Al Qaeda. But the army has not been able to show any evidence that it killed any of the Taliban leaders.

The daily newspaper The News said in a recent editorial that unless Maulana Fazlullah, the Taliban’s main commander in Swat, and Mr. Mehsud, the country’s top enemy, were captured, “the Taliban are going to live to fight another day.”

Indeed, most of the damage from the recent fighting appears confined to small agricultural hamlets outside Mingora, according to interviews with displaced people. Some said they had heard from recent arrivals to the camps that areas 500 yards off the roads remained in control of the militants.

The “outlook was bleak” in Swat because the civilian government did not have the money or the skills to rebuild, said Shuja Nawaz, the author of a history of the Pakistani military and now the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

Most of the two million displaced people are still living in tent camps and cramped quarters with relatives and even strangers, in cities as far flung as the southern port of Karachi.

Many displaced people were fed up with the cruelties inflicted under Taliban rule and have backed the military campaign. But as the fighting drags on in places, the mood among them grows increasingly despondent.

Some displaced people said that they were angry at the army for indiscriminate shelling in civilian areas. Others said they were confused about why the military operation was even necessary.

“We had no problem with the Taliban,” Umar Ali, a poultry trader from Qambar in Swat, said as he sat on the veranda of a home in Swabi, a town filled with displaced people. “We’re here because of the military shelling. I’m a trader, and the thing that affects my life is the curfew.”

Earlier Pakistani campaigns against the Taliban do not offer an encouraging precedent. In Bajaur, a part of the tribal areas, two main economic centers, the market towns of Loe Sam and Inayat Kalay, remain in ruins nearly eight months after the army smashed them in pursuit of the Taliban and claimed victory.

Communities Seek Routes to Save Post Offices From Being Stamped Out

By Caitlin McDevitt
The Big Money
Sunday, June 28, 2009

A rallying cry can be heard across the country, from the swanky streets of SoHo to the tiny town of Randolph, Kan. -- "Save Our Post Office!" As the United States Postal Service, weighed down by a crippling multibillion-dollar deficit, shrinks its operations, post offices across the country are on the chopping block. Each year, hundreds of postal operations shutter, but this fall could be the single biggest consolidation in USPS history. Over the next three months, more than 3,200 post offices and retail outlets -- out of 34,000 -- will be reviewed for possible closure or consolidation.

Downsizing is a business imperative, says Linda Welch, acting vice president of delivery and post office operations at USPS. "Revenues have declined, and mail volume continues to decline," she says. Not only have e-mail and electronic bill-paying made for a thinner mail stream, the recession has added a sharp pullback in advertising mail, which has hurt the Postal Service even more. In March, Postmaster General John E. Potter asked Congress for permission to reduce the mail week from six days to five, projecting $3.5 billion in savings. Shutting down post offices will have similar cost-saving effects. And most Americans say they're fine with the cutbacks, as long as they're not paying more to send mail. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll revealed that more Americans would rather the Postal Service curtail operations than seek a bailout or raise stamp prices.

At least, that's what everyone says -- until it's their own beloved post office at stake. Consider the case of the Hawleyville, Conn., post office. After years of negotiations, this January, the Postal Service notified the community that its 166-year-old post office would officially close on Feb. 14. An article in the local newspaper poignantly noted, "The long love affair between the Hawleyville post office and its loyal customers will come to an end on -- of all days -- Valentine's Day." The post office was rickety, but the small community embraced it as a gathering place. One resident told the Newtown Bee, "The Hawleyville post office is like Cheers in Hawleyville." Fearing the loss of their precious haunt, the Hawleyville citizens mobilized. A Web site was created. A petition was circulated. They got Congress involved. And lo and behold, the community won approval for a new post office, to be opened this summer.

Every time a post office is slated for closure or consolidation, the Postal Service is legally obligated to inform its customers well in advance. "There's a very long process that they have to go through," says Mario Principe, the post office continuance consultant at the National League of Postmasters. That gives the communities plenty of time -- usually at least two months -- to stage a rescue.

The Postal Service will typically send out a survey or host a town-hall meeting before an endangered office closes. Perhaps a closing would cut too many jobs in an already hurting community. The office might house the bulletin board with important local announcements. Or perhaps the next-closest post office may be far away. If customers alert officials to such concerns, there's a better chance their office will be spared. Appealing the decision to the Postal Regulatory Commission often works, too -- but it's a step many communities don't know to take.

It's also important to check out why a post office is on the chopping block. Those under review this summer are mostly metropolitan. But in the case of small post offices, federal law states that the reason can't be solely that the office isn't bringing in enough revenue. Often, post offices face closure because their leases expire. That's the case in Deer Harbor, Wash. After failed attempts to find a new location for the post office, the community bought the property "in desperation" just to keep it running. If they can raise the $250,000 purchase price by the end of this month, the Postal Service has agreed to continue operations.

The Postal Service seems willing to negotiate, and it's not really bothered by the protests.

"It actually makes us very proud to know that we are a valuable member of the community," says Welch. She says that the USPS appreciates the great lengths that some communities will go to just to ensure that their services can continue. What would the Postal Service appreciate even more? If people would just send more mail. Oddly enough, that seems to be the unthinkable last resort.

Female Farmers Sprouting: More Md., Va. Women Lead Farms

By Lori Aratani
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 28, 2009

Julie Stinar once worked with some of the top names in fashion: Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Tracy Reese.

Now she works with some completely different brand names: Cornish and Poulet Rouge chickens and Red Devon cattle.

Stinar is the owner of Evensong Farm in Sharpsburg, Md., and an example of the changing face of American farming.

Women always played important roles on the family farm. They kept the books, milked the cows and fed the children, often juggling another part-time job while the men worked the fields. Sometimes, they ran the farm after their husbands or fathers died.

But increasingly, women such as Stinar are turning to farming on their own. According to the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture released this year, more than one in every 10 U.S. farms is run by a woman. In Maryland, the number of farms in which a woman is the principal operator jumped 16 percent between 2002 and 2007. In Virginia, female-run farms also grew by 16 percent.

"Just as we've seen the numbers of women increasing in the workplace, we are seeing more women" in farming, said Stefphanie Gambrell, a domestic policy economist with the American Farm Bureau.

Some say that the statistics simply reflect better outreach efforts by census takers, but others point to the growing number of female-focused farming organizations as proof that the number of female farmers is on the rise.

Women's agricultural associations have popped up in Vermont, Connecticut and Maine. In Pennsylvania, membership in the Women's Agricultural Network, which is affiliated with Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, grew from 100 members in 2005 to 1,000 in 2008, said Linda Stewart Moist, a senior extension associate at the college.

While men tend to run larger farms focused on such commodity crops as soybeans and wheat, women tend to run smaller, more specialized enterprises selling heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef to well-heeled, eco-conscious consumers.

These smaller enterprises have gotten a boost from the popularity of farmers markets and programs in which people pay in advance to receive weekly produce baskets, as well as renewed consumer interest in buying locally.

The lavender Deborah Williamson and her mother, Edith, grow on their farm, Seven Oaks Lavender Farm in Fauquier County, is sold locally at Whole Foods Markets. Stinar built her heirloom vegetable business by selling to her husband's office colleagues. The Internet has also made it easier for farmers to sell directly to consumers without heavy start-up costs, experts say.

Women say they are drawn to farming for a number of reasons. Many like the independence and flexibility that comes with running a farm. Many younger women choose farming to do something positive for the environment by employing sustainable farming techniques, said Amy Trauger, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Georgia who has studied women in agriculture.

Eight years ago, Jeanne Dietz-Band made a deal with her husband: She'd quit her job at a local biotechnology firm if they would buy a home in the country. Now Dietz-Band, who has a PhD in molecular biology and genetics, heads her own start-up, Many Rocks Farm in Keedysville, Md., where she raises about 200 Kiko goats. She sells meat, sausage, goat milk soap and lotions at farmers markets across the area.

Dietz-Band, who grew up in Kansas, had no farming background. And her husband, born and raised in Boston, had no idea what he was getting into when the family moved to the 40-acre spread in Washington County, she said. Like many farming spouses, he kept his outside job as an electrical engineer to guarantee income and health coverage. He leaves the farm work to Dietz-Band -- with some exceptions.

"If it involves the tractor, he's there," she said.

Dietz-Band chose goats because they were small and she figured she could handle them. Her background in genetics has come in handy.

"Even though I walked out of one career into a totally different one, everything came together," she said.

Others follow a more traditional route: inheriting their farm. Martha Clark's farming roots go back to 1797, when her family first settled in Howard County. Her father, former Maryland state senator James Clark Jr., thought Clark's brother would inherit the family farm. Instead, her father started his dairy farm and Martha took over more than 420 acres along a stretch of Route 108 in Ellicott City, where she raises livestock, corn, tomatoes and other crops. Her daughter Nora Crist, 21, recently graduated from the University of Delaware's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and might be the next generation to run the family farm.

For her part, Stinar always loved the country. After the birth of her son, she and her husband bought the 132-acre spread in rural Washington County that would eventually become Evensong Farm. She started with a vegetable garden and some mail-order chickens. Then came the cow, who had the calf they dubbed "Dinner." Those were followed by the homeless three-legged pig, who was recently joined by five piglets.

Once a week, she drives to the Saturday farmers market in Silver Spring, where she sells an assortment of vegetables, herbs and eggs. Stinar chats easily with customers, and her passion for her work is evident as she bags fresh kale and offers samples of the spicy greens. ("Isn't that great?" she says to one woman. "I love them on sandwiches.")

She breaks into a smile when one of her regulars pulls a bulbous green vegetable out of his weekly vegetable basket and looks at it, puzzled.

"It's kohlrabi," she says. She points at the bulb portion. "You peel it and eat it. You can even combine it with apples. The flavor is mild."

The man takes it all in and with a nod says he's game for something new.

By 11 a.m., the fresh eggs are sold out, as is the last bunch of bok choy. Customers are already asking about the Poulet Rouge chickens, which Stinar says will be ready in July.

"It's a great feeling to be able to grow food and to be able to share it with people," she said. "Being outside, growing food -- it's just a great way to live."

Russia's Maneuvers in Caucasus Highlight Volatility of Region

By Sarah Marcus
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 28, 2009

TBILISI, Georgia -- Military helicopters circled once again over Georgia's mountainous terrain. Amid the crackle of gunfire, soldiers ran across battlefields carrying comrades on stretchers. But this was no repeat of last summer's brief war with Russia. It was a training exercise -- and this time, NATO sent help.

The month-long exercises, which concluded June 3 and involved more than 1,000 soldiers from 14 countries, took place near Georgia's border with the breakaway territory of South Ossetia and were condemned by the Russian government as a "provocation."

Now the Kremlin is preparing to stage its own military maneuvers in the Caucasus region. Russia's top commander, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, has said the "large-scale exercises" will involve "all the brigades of the North Caucasus Military District, the Black Sea Fleet and Caspian Flotilla marine brigades."

Makarov will personally oversee the operation, dubbed Kavkaz-2009, according to Russian state media. The exercises are set to begin Monday and end July 6, just as President Obama is scheduled to arrive in Moscow on his first state visit.

The two sets of war games are a reminder of the volatility of the region more than 10 months after Russian troops routed the Georgian army in a five-day war. The Russian exercises will go forward as two international monitoring missions are withdrawing from the area and as Russian forces continue to occupy territory that a year ago was uncontested Georgian soil.

A team of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is scheduled to leave Georgia at the end of the month at Russia's insistence, and Moscow used its veto in the U.N. Security Council last week to terminate the U.N. mission in the other breakaway Georgian territory, Abkhazia.

A third group of monitors from the European Union remains in Georgia but has been denied access to the two territories, which Russia recognized as independent countries after last year's war.

Pavel Felgengauer, a Moscow-based military analyst who writes for the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, warned that Russia may be preparing for another war, in part to establish a corridor through Georgia to an important Russian base in Armenia.

He noted that similar Russian exercises in the North Caucasus preceded last year's war. "Such exercises are traditionally used as a cover under which to prepare troops for war," he said. "They could easily lead to deployment of troops."

The Georgian government's response to the Russian exercises has been muted. But Defense Minister Vasil Sikharulidze traveled to Washington this month to urge the Obama administration to strengthen military cooperation with Georgia. Speaking to the Associated Press, he warned that Russian troops were "better prepared for war than they were last year."

In a recent interview, Sikharulidze added that Georgia was working with the United States to upgrade its armed forces. "If you compare Russian and Georgian military organization, there is a huge disbalance," he said. "But the Georgian army is trained, and being trained, to deter and delay Russian aggression."

Sikharulidze said the army began a new training cycle, focused on defense, in January. But he said the United States has not supplied antitank and antiaircraft weapons that Georgia has sought.

Russian officials, meanwhile, insist that Georgia is already better armed than it was before the war. They have accused E.U. monitors of ignoring the buildup and Georgia of preparing to seize the territories by force.

About 8,500 troops will participate in the upcoming exercises, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, though statements by Makarov and others suggest much larger maneuvers. Officials have said the exercises will incorporate lessons from the Georgian war but focus on counterterrorism operations.

NATO officials said the alliance's peacekeeping and crisis-response exercises in Georgia were scheduled long before last year's war and were not targeted at Russia. But the decision to proceed despite Russian objections was seen as an achievement by the Georgian government.

"It was very important to have a message that the principle of sovereignty is an important thing for NATO and [that] no country can just veto a decision from outside," said Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria.

NATO support appears more important than ever to this former Soviet republic, yet Georgia's prospects for joining the alliance have faded amid U.S. efforts to improve relations with Russia and lingering concerns about the judgment of President Mikheil Saakashvili, whom some blame for provoking last year's war.

NATO has pledged to bring Georgia into the alliance, but it rejected Georgia's request for a clear timetable for membership and instead set up an annual process for reviewing the country's progress toward alliance requirements.

The decision, and the departure of the Bush administration, have heightened anxiety in Georgia about whether Washington will continue to back it against its powerful neighbor.

The U.S. assistant secretary of state for the region, Philip H. Gordon, traveled to Tbilisi this month and reaffirmed a partnership agreement signed by the Bush administration. And in April, Obama stood firm on Georgia in a London meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, referring to the war as "the Russian invasion of Georgia" in a news conference.

Saakashvili, a favorite of the Bush administration, said Obama's use of the phrase amounted to an endorsement of Georgia's view of the war.

Russia maintains that it invaded Georgia only after Georgian forces attacked South Ossetia, killing Russian peacekeepers and civilians. Saakashvili says he ordered the assault in response to shelling by South Ossetian rebels and an imminent Russian invasion.

Richard Giragosian, director of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies, said U.S. policy toward Georgia has shifted, official statements of support notwithstanding.

While the Pentagon is continuing to work with the Georgian army, he said, the emphasis now is on "assistance and training limited to a defense nature only."

Lincoln Mitchell, a scholar at Columbia University who studies Georgia, said the Obama administration may be reluctant to provide arms to Georgia because of Saakashvili's domestic policies. A fractured opposition has portrayed him as an autocrat and staged weeks of protests demanding he resign.

But Bokeria, the deputy foreign minister, defended Georgia's democratic credentials, calling them "an important factor" in U.S. support for the country. "This factor is not hampering the assistance," he said.

Iraq Set to Invite Bids From Foreign Oil Companies

By Ernesto Londoño and K.I. Ibrahim
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 28, 2009

BAGHDAD, June 27 -- Iraq is poised to open its coveted oil fields to foreign companies this week for the first time in nearly four decades, a politically risky move in a country eager to shake off the stigma of occupation.

Iraqi politicians and some veteran oil officials have said the deals are unduly beneficial to oil giants, which are viewed warily by many in this deeply nationalistic but cash-strapped country.

Oil executives have been following the matter with apprehension, industry analysts said, but they are eager to get a foothold in Iraq, which has the world's second-largest proven crude reserves and is seen as the only major penetrable market.

"It's something the industry really wants," said Ben Lando, editor of Iraq Oil Report, an Iraq energy news Web site. "The number of reserves around the world that they have access to is declining. And Iraq has so much oil."

Iraq's Oil Ministry is expected to auction eight contracts for six active oil fields and two largely undeveloped gas fields Monday and Tuesday. Thirty-five companies have been selected to submit bids for the 20-year service contracts.

The winners will be required to give the Iraqi government a total of $3 billion in loans. They will be compensated for costs and will earn a per-barrel fee for boosting production at the fields, ravaged by years of war and sanctions.

Although the terms for investors are less than ideal, analysts said, those who get picked in the first round are likely to receive more lucrative contracts in the future. The companies are also preparing bids for a second round of contracts for work at undeveloped fields, which Iraqi officials expect to award in coming months.

Companies that secure the contracts will be wading into a country with a latent insurgency, endemic corruption and deeply divided political leaders who have been unable to enact a hydrocarbons law.

The man leading the effort to bring in foreign investors, Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani, has come under attack in recent days by some lawmakers and oil officials, who argue that Iraq should rebuild its crippled oil sector without substantial help from foreign companies.

Iraq's parliament does not have a formal role in awarding the contracts, whose legality has been questioned by some lawmakers and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.

Critics say that Saddam Hussein-era laws that stressed nationalization of Iraq's oil industry remain in effect until a new law is passed.

"There is a majority opinion inside parliament that opposes these bids," legislator Alia Nusaif said in an interview, adding that the Oil Ministry should have given lawmakers more time to examine the terms. "We must think ahead and ensure that our future generations are not left empty-handed because of the ill motives of some."

Shahristani, who was questioned by lawmakers last week during a sometimes contentious two-day hearing, argued that Iraq cannot afford to rebuild its oil sector without help. The recent drop in oil prices, which has stymied government initiatives and triggered a freeze on the hiring of security forces, has underscored the urgent need for foreign cash and expertise, he said.

"All experts inside and outside the government agree on the need to repair the oil infrastructure and expand exploration development and production," Shahristani said. "The country depends almost exclusively on its oil reserves."

Iraq expelled foreign oil companies in 1972 amid a regional movement toward nationalization. Its national oil company performed well until the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which was preceded by sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

Violence and the exodus of scores of technocrats after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 have taken a toll on the industry. Pipelines in northern and southern Iraq are in dire need of repair, and much of the equipment at functioning oil fields is outdated or underperforming.

Iraq pumps an estimated 2.4 million barrels of oil a day. With foreign capital and expertise, oil experts said, the figure could grow to 10 million in a few years.

Iraq has an estimated 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia. Other attractive markets, such as Venezuela and Russia, have in recent years asserted more state control over the industry.

The government, keenly aware of the potential for controversy and political fallout, has sought to portray the process as transparent. Bidders will submit sealed proposals that will be evaluated using a set formula during televised sessions.

The bidding process and its outcome could have political consequences for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is expected to seek reelection in January. Many Iraqis still view Maliki as somewhat beholden to the U.S. government, and his rivals could use the oil issue to portray him as a sellout.

"The nationalization of Iraq's oil sector was extremely popular, but national capacity was hurt by wars during Saddam Hussein's time and his misuse of the oil sector," Lando said. "They had great talent, great coordination. So Iraqis see that and say: Why can't we re-create that rather than rely on foreign companies?"

Former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloom said the government would have been wise to delay the process until after the election.

"What will happen if a new government comes and a new prime minister and a new parliament don't go ahead with these contracts?" he asked.

Most Americans Want Sotomayor on Supreme Court, Poll Indicates

By Jon Cohen and Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 28, 2009

A sizable majority of Americans want the Senate to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and most call her "about right" ideologically, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Senate hearings on Sotomayor, President Obama's pick to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter, begin in two weeks, and 62 percent of those polled support her elevation to the court. Sotomayor, 55, is currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would become only the third female justice and the second on the current nine-member court. But there is no gender gap in support for her, with men and women about equally likely to be on her side.

Partisan differences, however, abound. Nearly eight in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of independents said they want the Senate to confirm Sotomayor, but that drops to 36 percent of Republicans. Overall, most Republicans deem the judge a "more liberal" nominee than they would have liked.

But Obama's nominee also divides Republicans: While conservative Republicans are broadly opposed, most Republicans who describe themselves as moderate or liberal support her. More than seven in 10 conservative Republicans said she is too liberal, which is more than double the proportion of centrist or left-leaning Republicans who say so.

Some opposition to her, however, comes from the other side, as about one in five of those who want the Senate to reject her see her as insufficiently liberal.

Overall, 55 percent of Americans said Sotomayor is about right on a liberal-to-conservative scale. About a quarter said she is a more liberal nominee than they would have liked, about the same proportion who called Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. too conservative when President George W. Bush nominated them.

This year, abortion politics again represent a deep dividing line in public attitudes, with about three-quarters of those who are pro-choice in all or most cases behind Sotomayor, compared with less than half of those who favor greater restrictions.

The majority of Americans who want the court to retain the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade has remained remarkably steady over the years, and currently six in 10 Americans would want the new justice to vote to uphold it.

This issue also exposes fissures in the GOP: Most Republican men would want Sotomayor to vote to overturn Roe, while Republican women split about evenly on the question.

Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice, and her speeches about how her life experiences and her close-knit Puerto Rican family in the Bronx have shaped her view of the judiciary have become somewhat controversial. Critics have seized on a passage in a 2001 speech she gave on separating personal views from an objective reading of the law: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

But most Americans do not think her life experiences influence the way she decides cases: Fifty-nine percent said the fact that she is a women does not factor in, and 52 percent said the same about her racial and ethnic background.

Among the 33 percent who said her gender plays a role, more than twice as many say that is a good thing than a bad thing. The groups most apt to call her gender a factor are those with a postgraduate education and liberal Democrats, and they overwhelmingly approve. Here, too, is no gender gap in attitudes.

On race and ethnicity, however, some groups tip the other way: Half of Republican men and 59 percent of conservative Republicans said these play a role in her decision making, with most of those who do saying that that is a bad thing.

The telephone poll was conducted June 18 to 21, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.