In Burma, Carefully Sowing Resistance: Fragile Opposition Wary of Confrontation

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 9, 2009

RANGOON, Burma -- Dreams of revolution die hard in the silences of this city's monsoon-soaked streets.

Under cover of night, on a wet, deserted strip of jetty, a young opposition activist gazed toward the ragged lights on the opposite bank of the Rangoon River and talked into the wind that blew through a pair of coconut trees.

"I am not afraid, but I do not want to be arrested, not at this time," said the activist, 27, who had fled Rangoon days earlier, trailed by an intelligence agent.

A flickering neon bar sign caught the contours of his disguise -- a baggy anorak, a pair of glasses, a hairnet to mask his thick, dark mane. "If I'm arrested, I cannot take part in demonstrations or campaigns."

On the run or under watch, Burma's semi-clandestine opposition activists have struggled to rouse action while their leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, languishes in Rangoon's Insein Prison. She is being tried on charges that she broke the terms of her house arrest when a U.S. citizen swam across a lake in May to visit her in the compound where she has been confined for 14 of the past 20 years.

For an issue as emotive as the fate of the leader whom Burmese refer to in whispers simply as the Lady, the general inaction has in many ways revealed the fragility of long-cherished visions of toppling the junta from the streets, born of memories from the mass pro-democracy protests of 1988. Some, such as the young activist, have ventured from remote village hideouts back into the cities to launch protests.

In the past two months, dozens have defied barriers and a heavy police presence to hold a vigil outside Insein Prison, where Suu Kyi is being held. Others have distributed pamphlets or photos of her, and some have tried to trigger spontaneous marches with what they call "flash strikes" -- unfurling banners in crowded markets in the hope that people will follow.

But the disparate networks of the opposition have tried in vain to forge a united strategy, and their attempts to prompt a mass movement have fizzled in a society frozen by decades of oppression and poverty.

From the Shadows

Although Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won elections in a landslide in 1990, the ruling military junta invalidated the results, imprisoned opposition leaders and solidified its grip on power.

Two decades later, faith in the NLD's ability to bring the country closer to democracy has waned under its octogenarian caretakers. A few smaller groups have emerged from among groups of Buddhist monks, students or the aging leaders of the 1988 protests, with a shared goal of bringing change through nonviolent resistance to the one of the world's most repressive governments. But with many of their leaders arrested after the failed, monk-steered uprising in September 2007, the remaining activists operate illegally and from the shadows.

"All the organizations, they should be united. Some want to make strikes, some do not," said the deputy of a leading opposition network, a former political detainee who faces retaliation from authorities if his name is published. "We need more people; 100 to 200 people is not enough to make the whole country strike."

Wearing a starched shirt and longyi, the cloth wrap that substitutes for trousers, the leader sat in a downtown coffee shop, digging into a plate of fries. "I have so many different identity cards," he said with a grin. "Sometimes I am a teacher. Sometimes I am a student. Today, I am a teacher."

In the past year, 338 dissidents have been handed multi-decade sentences and have been scattered across Burma's network of prisons and detention camps, according to the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors the Burmese detention system. Many were celebrated figures in the 2007 protests.

Still, some remain undeterred. With his torn jeans, red-streaked hair and silver jewelry, Moe Thway, 28, blends easily into the crowd of young people sipping iced lattes at a Rangoon cafe. Thway is a founder of Generation Wave, one of the most shadowy of the country's underground opposition networks.

The trial of Suu Kyi prompted him to risk his first trip back to Burma from Thailand since security forces raided his house in March 2008. He stayed only a few days to meet with his members. Even his mother did not know he was in town, because he was afraid he would endanger her.

"We cannot push the people. We cannot pull. We must lead if we want success," he said.

His trip back to Rangoon in June, at the height of Suu Kyi's trial, proved disillusioning.

"I see the depression. The eyes -- they are hopeless," he said.

Since fleeing, Moe Thway has largely run the group's operations out of Mae Sot, a Thai border town. Two of his co-founders are behind bars. Another is in exile. Members still in Burma are subject to arrest at any moment. Authorities raided Thway's house in March 2008, arresting his younger brother and sentencing him to six months for charges that included illegal possession of "Rambo IV," a film that depicts Sylvester Stallone mowing down Burmese soldiers.

But working from Mae Sot allows Thway to coordinate operations in ways impossible inside Burma, also called Myanmar, where potential informers swarm, news is heavily curtailed and Internet cafes are ridden with spy software. Even with the widespread use of proxy servers to bypass censors, electricity regularly cuts out or the government shuts down the country's main Internet server as a tool of control. Land-line telephones are often tapped, and cellphones are used to track activists' movements.

Many opposition leaders say they see themselves as urban intellectuals with a duty to educate the wider population about civic engagement, particularly ahead of 2010 elections. The elections are nominally intended to implement a new constitution, but many critics have dismissed them as a sham. The opposition leader who poses as both teacher and student talked of his members melting into villages and factories, dressed as laborers and workers. "We talk to them about democracy. We talk to them about globalization, about human rights," he said.

Members of Generation Wave have encouraged friends and neighbors to head to workshops held on the Thai border that address issues such as human rights. The workshops, sponsored by foreign human rights groups or Burmese exiles, have yielded 1,000 graduates in the past five years, Moe Thway said. The challenge, he said, is getting graduates to overcome their fear and act back home on the lessons learned.

Patience Growing Thin

One night two weeks before he fled the city, the young activist on the jetty met with another activist in their usual spot -- a cubicle-size, lockable back room at a nightclub plastered with fluorescent planets.

The elder activist, 48, said he had spent the better part of 20 years posing as a fish farmer or rice-paddy laborer. All the while, he has been recruiting opposition activists, spreading ideas about political rights and, in recent months, encouraging a signature campaign against the junta.

"I go to where the people are oppressed," he said. "It is impossible for them to express themselves."

Wispy-thin, he sat stiffly in a large red anorak and railed about the need to educate the rural population.

He was back among the fish farmers when news of Suu Kyi's trial prompted him to travel 50 miles south to Rangoon. The young activist knew him from his teenage years as one of several regulars at a tea shop who would lend him books that eventually converted him into a professional activist.

The older man's patience is now growing thin. In next year's elections, he said, "we need to use an armed struggle. . . . They use violence, and they don't care about international pressure."

On another day, the young activist and three others from separate youth networks talked about sources of inspiration -- Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, the anti-Slobodan Milosevic student movement in Serbia, South Africa's Nelson Mandela and India's Mahatma Gandhi. The conversation, which took place at a restaurant, quieted whenever a waiter hovered.

"To face a very powerful enemy, we need to be clever, we need to be peaceful and we need international support," said one, who introduced himself with a pseudonym.

Two weeks later, the activist returned to Rangoon smuggled in the cargo hold of a truck. He hoped to help coordinate the launch of a "yellow campaign," which aims to encourage Burmese to wear a color favored by Suu Kyi.

This time, he said, he was resolved.

"I won't leave," he said. "I will stay here and fight."

Military Analysts Expect Long-Term, Costly U.S. Effort in Afghanistan

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 9, 2009

As the Obama administration expands U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, military experts are warning that the United States is taking on security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that will probably eclipse that of the Iraq war.

Since the invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago, the United States has spent $223 billion on war-related funding for that country, according to the Congressional Research Service. Aid expenditures, excluding the cost of combat operations, have grown exponentially, from $982 million in 2003 to $9.3 billion last year.

The costs are almost certain to keep growing. The Obama administration is in the process of overhauling the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, putting its focus on long-term security, economic sustainability and development. That approach is also likely to require deployment of more American military personnel, at the very least to train additional Afghan security forces.

Later this month, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is expected to present his analysis of the situation in the country. The analysis could prompt an increase in U.S. troop levels to help implement President Obama's new strategy.

Military experts insist that the additional resources are necessary. But many, including some advising McChrystal, say they fear the public has not been made aware of the significant commitments that come with Washington's new policies.

"We will need a large combat presence for many years to come, and we will probably need a large financial commitment longer than that," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the "strategic assessment" team advising McChrystal. The expansion of the Afghan security force that the general will recommend to secure the country "will inevitably cost much more than any imaginable Afghan government is going to be able to afford on its own," Biddle added.

"Afghan forces will need $4 billion a year for another decade, with a like sum for development," said Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine who has chronicled the Iraq and Afghan wars. Bing said the danger is that Congress is "so generous in support of our own forces today, it may not support the aid needed for progress in Afghanistan tomorrow."

Some members of Congress are worried. The House Appropriations Committee said in its report on the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill that its members are "concerned about the prospects for an open-ended U.S. commitment to bring stability to a country that has a decades-long history of successfully rebuffing foreign military intervention and attempts to influence internal politics."

The Afghan government has made some political and military progress since 2001, but the Taliban insurgency has been reinvigorated.

Anthony H. Cordesman, another member of McChrystal's advisory group and a national security expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told reporters recently that even with military gains in the next 12 to 18 months, it would take years to reduce sharply the threat from the Taliban and other insurgent forces.

The task that the United States has taken on in Afghanistan is in many ways more difficult than the one it has encountered in Iraq, where the U.S. government has spent $684 billion in war-related funding.

In a 2008 study that ranked the weakest states in the developing world, the Brookings Institution rated Afghanistan second only to Somalia. Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2008 was $23 billion, with about $3 billion coming from opium production, according to the CIA's World Factbook. Oil-producing Iraq had a GDP of $113 billion.

Afghanistan's central government takes in roughly $890 million in annual revenue, according to the World Factbook. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has pointed out that Afghanistan's national budget cannot support the $2 billion needed today for the country's army and police force.

Dutch Army Brig. Gen. Tom Middendorp, commander of the coalition task force in Afghanistan's southern Uruzgan province, described the region as virtually prehistoric.

"It's the poorest province of one of the poorest countries in the world. And if you walk through that province, it's like walking through the Old Testament," Middendorp told reporters recently. "There is enormous illiteracy in the province. More than 90 percent cannot write or read. So it's very basic, what you do there. And they have had 30 years of conflict."

Unlike in Iraq, where Obama has established a timeline for U.S. involvement, the president has not said when he would like to see troops withdrawn from Afghanistan.

White House officials emphasize that the burden is not that of the United States alone. The NATO-led force in the country has 61,000 troops from 42 countries; about 29,000 of those troops are American.

Still, military experts say the United States will not be able to shed its commitment easily.

The government has issued billions of dollars in contracts in recent years, underscoring the vast extent of work that U.S. officials are commissioning.

Among other purposes, contractors have been sought this summer to build a $25 million provincial Afghan National Police headquarters; maintain anti-personnel mine systems; design and build multimillion-dollar sections of roads; deliver by sea and air billions of dollars worth of military bulk cargo; and supervise a drug-eradication program.

One solicitation, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, is aimed at finding a contractor to bring together Afghan economic, social, legal and political groups to help build the country's infrastructure. The contractor would work with Afghan government officials as well as representatives from private and nongovernmental organizations to establish a way to allocate resources for new projects.

"We are looking at two decades of supplying a few billion a year to Afghanistan," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and military expert at the Brookings Institution, adding: "It's a reasonable guess that for 20 years, we essentially will have to fund half the Afghan budget." He described the price as reasonable, given that it may cost the United States $100 billion this year to continue fighting.

"We are creating a [long-term military aid] situation similar to the ones we have with Israel, Egypt and Jordan," he said.

Power Struggle Ensues After Taliban Chief's Apparent Death

By Joshua Partlow and Haq Nawaz Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 9, 2009

KABUL, Aug. 8 -- In the power vacuum created by the apparent death of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, a gun battle broke out Saturday between Taliban leaders vying to seize his mantle in the tribal borderlands, Pakistani officials said, the first indications of a struggle that could prompt fighters to move across the border into Afghanistan.

The effect of the apparent death of Mehsud, who deployed his fighters mainly against Pakistani targets, "could be to free up militants to come into Afghanistan," said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in that country.

"Baitullah Mehsud was putting such pressure on the government of Pakistan that I don't know if his successor or successors will do the same," McChrystal said in an interview Saturday, emphasizing that it is difficult at this point to predict how Mehsud's fighters will react.

The prospect of more fighters flowing into Afghanistan comes at a particularly challenging time for U.S. and NATO forces, as Marines battle the Taliban there in the southern province of Helmand and insurgents threaten to unleash further violence ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential election. The U.S. military has picked up reports that in addition to suicide bombings and other high-profile attacks, the Taliban plans to intimidate voters into staying away from the polls, McChrystal said.

There have been reports that "people who show up with ink on their finger will have their finger cut off," he said. "They probably have the intent to try to disrupt the election. But they also are scared of the election, because they wouldn't try to do it if the election was nothing to them. Last time, they didn't pay it much mind. This time, I think they're clearly concerned" about Afghans' growing acceptance of governance.

For at least the second consecutive day since the U.S. missile strike Wednesday that Pakistani and American officials say they believe killed Mehsud, Taliban fighters gathered in the South Waziristan tribal district Saturday to choose new leadership. During the meeting in the Sara Rogha area, an argument and shooting broke out between two potential successors to Mehsud, Wali-ur-Rehman Mehsud and Hakimullah Mehsud, according to two Pakistani officials.

"The exchange of fire, reports suggest, took place between two important contenders for the Taliban chief's slot," Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in an interview. "According to information, one of them has been killed, but as of now we can't say who it was."

A government official in South Waziristan said intelligence reports indicate that the man killed Saturday was Hakimullah Mehsud, a close aide to Baitullah Mehsud who has been linked to attacks on NATO convoys. However, the Associated Press reported receiving a call from Hakimullah Mehsud on Saturday morning.

In another potential sign of disarray within the Pakistani Taliban ranks, some fighters called reporters Saturday insisting that Baitullah Mehsud was alive. A Taliban fighter called a Washington Post reporter to say he was 100 percent sure of it, although he could not provide evidence.

A former National Assembly member from South Waziristan, Maulana Mirajuddin, also said he received a call from a "very trusted associate" claiming that Mehsud was alive.

However, another leader of the Mehsud tribe from the area said such assertions were merely attempts to sow confusion, adding that "the Taliban are trying to hush up the matter to keep the loosely connected Pakistani Taliban intact."

Mehsud's suspected death could have far-reaching implications for the Pakistani army's fight against the Taliban, with some observers suggesting that the army might suspend plans for a ground invasion of South Waziristan to pursue a less confrontational policy.

"A new Taliban leadership with a softer image will be introduced to get public support in the country," said another Mehsud tribal leader from South Waziristan who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The army might try to "bring in some moderate leadership," he said.

A Pakistani intelligence official said the fate of the South Waziristan operation hinges on how Baitullah Mehsud's fighters react.

"If there is again a surge in suicide bombings and subversive acts," he said, "then the offensive could be launched soon."

Khan reported from Islamabad. Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.

Typhoon Batters South-east China

Typhoon Morakot has struck China's south-east coast, destroying hundreds of houses and flooding farmland.

Almost one million people were evacuated ahead of the storm, which crashed ashore in Fujian province with winds of up to 119km/h (74mph).

Flights were cancelled and fishing boats recalled to shore. A small boy died when a building collapsed.

Morakot has already hit Taiwan, killing at least three people and causing some of the worst flooding for 50 years.

In one incident, an entire hotel - empty at the time - was swept away by the waters.

'Treetops visible'

Chinese state media said that the sky turned completely dark in Beibi, Fujian, when Typhoon Morakot made landfall at 1620 local time (0820 GMT).

Trees were uprooted as high winds and heavy rain lashed the coast.

Some 473,000 residents of Zhejiang province were evacuated before the typhoon struck, as well as 480,000 from Fujian, Xinhua news agency said.

In Zhejiang's Wenzhou City a four year-old child was killed when a house collapsed. Dozens of roads were said to be flooded and the city's airport was closed.

Rescuers used dinghies to reach worst-hit areas; in one area only the tops of trees were said to be showing above the floodwater.

The storm is expected to move north and weaken, but strong winds are expected to persist for three days, forecasters say.

Taiwan devastation

Morakot dumped 250cm of rain on Taiwan as it crossed the island on Saturday, washing away bridges and roads.

At least three people were known to have died - a woman whose car went into a ditch and two men who drowned.

Thirty-one others were reported missing, Taiwan's Disaster Relief Centre said. Among them were a group reportedly washed away from a make-shift shelter in Kaohsiung in the south.

At least 10,000 people were trapped in three coastal towns, a local official in the southern county of Pingtung said.

In Chihpen, one of Taiwan's most famous hot spring resorts, a hotel collapsed after flood waters undermined its foundations.

Morakot - which means emerald in Thai - has also contributed to heavy rains in the Philippines. At least 10 people were killed in flooding and landslides in the north.

Typhoons are frequent in the region between July and September.

‘When Love Glorifies God’

Islamic film is emerging as a new genre in the Indonesian film world

Ekky Imanjaya

A mega film with mega promotion

The current star of the Indonesian film is Ketika Cinta Bertasbih (When Love Glorifies God, directed by senior filmmaker Chairul Umam), the latest in a series of Islamic-themed films that are changing the face of Indonesian cinema. The film is based on the bestselling novel by Habiburrahman Syirazi, the author who also wrote Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Holy Verses of Love), another novel which was a huge commercial success when adapted for the big screen. Ketika Cinta Bertasbih (or KCB) began screening Indonesia-wide on 11 June 2009, but even in its pre-production phase in 2008, it was already an Indonesian cinema phenomenon.

Auditions for the film lasted for three and a half months, and took place in nine different Indonesian cities. A TV show was created to enable viewers to follow the audition process, and the grand final was screened nationally on 14 September 2008. The wannabe actors all had to show they could recite the Holy Quran fluently and show that they applied Islamic values in their daily lives. The judging panel consisted of prominent Islamic figures in the arts and entertainment industry, such as the actress Neno Warisman and Habiburrahman Syirazi himself.

The pre-release promotional hype declared KCB would be a ‘Mega Film’, and ‘the first Indonesian film produced in the land of Egypt’. Giant billboards on main streets were part of the promotion. ‘Ready to shake eight countries’ screamed one. Following the movie’s release, the promotion continued: ‘One million viewers after a month’s screening!’ became ‘Two million viewers after two months’ screening!’ Another billboard announced a promotional competition: ‘Win a tour to the places where KCB was shot’.

‘One million viewers after a month’s screening!’ became ‘Two million viewers after two months’ screening!’

With a budget of 40 billion rupiah (around US$ 4 million), KCB is the most expensive film ever to be produced in Indonesia. In the first week of its release, it screened in 148 cinemas across the country, breaking the previous record set by Riri Riza’s Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Militia, 2008) which appeared at 115 cinemas in its opening week. The sequel, KCB 2 is due for release nationally on September 17, a few days before Idul Fitri.

An Islamic love story

The basic storyline of KCB deals with the problem of how to find a soul-mate in an Islamic way. In the movie, dating or even handshaking between men and women is not allowed if the characters are not married. The story focuses on Khairul Azzam, an Indonesian student at al-Azhar University in Cairo. Azzam comes from a modest family and he has to work, making and selling tempeh and tofu, to support his mother and sisters back in Yogyakarta. He is also a moderate Islamic activist who has a deep knowledge of Islam and applies Islamic values in his daily life. Eliana, the daughter of the Indonesian ambassador, and an actress in the making, falls for him because of his hard work and piety, but Azzam gently rejects her.

One day, Azzam hears about Anna Althafunnisa, a highly educated girl from a respected religious family; he wishes that one day she will become his wife, just on the basis of what he hears about her. But one of his close friends from a rich family, Furqon, has already proposed to her. One day, Azzam helps Anna during a robbery, but still they don’t know each other’s names. Anna also becomes close to Azzam’s family in Yogyakarta. Meanwhile, Furqon is the target of blackmail and becomes HIV positive; but his marriage proposal has already been accepted.

The film is full of Islamic advice and preaching about how to deal with problems of daily life

The film is full of Islamic advice and preaching about how to deal with problems of daily life. It deals, for example, with the debate on polygamy. When Furqon proposes to Anna, she sets two conditions: she will remain in her family’s pesantren (Islamic boarding school), and Furqon is not allowed to take a second wife. ‘I just want to be just like Khadijah (the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife) and Fatimah (the Prophet’s daughter) who were the one and only wives of their husbands for the rest of their lives,’ Anna says. When other character respond and accuse Anna of rejecting the concept of polygamy that is allowed by the Holy Quran, she argues back and shows them a page from a classical book of hadith (sayings and deeds of the Prophet) that strengthens her argument.

Islam on the big screen

As a cinema phenomenon, the film has raised questions about the relationship between Islamic values and the film industry. Like other popular Islamic films that have preceded it, such as Ayat-Ayat Cinta, Kun Fayakun (Be, and It Is), Mengaku Rasul(Claiming to be a Prophet) and Syahadat Cinta (Testimonial of Love), Ketika Cinta Bertasbih is the result of a process of negotiation between idealism and commercialism. In the eyes of some film critics, the battle between these two objectives tends to result in a film genre that is mediocre at best. Other critics, like the film historian Salim Said, regard it as simply the latest illustration of an age-old and probably eternal struggle to reconcile the need for profits with the desire to produce quality films that benefit society.

There are Islamic groups and individuals who reject the whole undertaking. Lukman Hakim, a well-known Islamic blogger who belongs to the very conservative Salafi school, has written that buying a ticket to watch a movie like Ayat-Ayat Cinta is just like buying a ticket to hell. For him, watching movies is a useless and pointless activity that takes place in an environment of ikhtilat, meaning the mingling of boys and girls who are not blood relations in a non-segregated space. He sees cinema as a form of figurative painting, which should be forbidden according to Islamic law.

There are, however, various groups that try to combine cinema and Islamic law, such as MAV-NET (Morality Audio Visual Network) which has branches stretching from Padang to Bogor. MAV-NET has produced a manifesto which states that Muslim filmmakers should make movies that represent Muslim morality and do not violate Islamic law. Such groups try to find ways around problems that arise when attempting to reconcile every last detail of Islamic law and film culture. For example, a scene showing a husband and wife hugging can be a problem if the actors portraying the characters are not in fact married, because in reality these two individuals should not be in such close physical contact. Ustadz Abu Ridho from the PKS (Prosperous Justice Party) argues that in such cases if the focus is simply on Islamic virtues, then everything will be clear.

Other, more liberal, Muslim directors see things differently. Deddy Mizwar, for example, says that it is a filmmaker’s duty to expand the language of film in new and creative ways. Like a number of prominent Iranian directors, he believes that syariah (Islamic law) and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) open up creative spaces in the search for alternative idioms and new forms of storytelling. For him, showing an unmarried couple hugging to express their feelings for each other is just an old-fashioned cinematic cliché. He goes for a more poetic alternative by having the male character in his popular TV series Para Pencari Tuhan (The God Seekers) address his female counterpart with the words, ‘If syariah allows it, I will purify myself in the water of your tears’.

Film critics and internet bloggers alike seem to agree that KCB is too wordy and too ideologically driven to be a successful work of art

What these conceptions of ‘Islamic film’ leave out of consideration is the question of how to place films with Islamic themes by prominent directors who are not proponents of the genre like Garin Nugroho or Riri Riza. Films like Rindu Kami padaMu (Our Longing for You) and Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Militia) are not considered to be examples of ‘Islamic film’ but they are still full of Islamic values and representations of Muslim society. Film critics would argue that these films are more successful as art, and more representative of Islam in Indonesian society than the works of self-declared makers of ‘Islamic film’.

An artistic achievement?

In contrast, film critics and internet bloggers alike seem to agree that KCB is too wordy and too ideologically driven to be a successful work of art. Unlike films from other parts of the Islamic world, especially Iran, KCB largely ignores the language of film, preferring to present all its religious content through verbal explanations alone. For some viewers, it is just another sinetron, an open-ended soap opera like so many others on Indonesian television.

Yet the film’s promoters continue to insist on its ‘quality’ aspects. Advertisements have included statements by prominent Islamic figures such as Hidayat Nur Wahid, a founder of the PKS and chairperson of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), who stated that the commercial success of KCB proves that Indonesian cinema audiences have the ability to identify quality and value in film. The same advertisement that includes Hidayat’s endorsement urges potential viewers to show their support for quality Indonesian film by seeing the film: ‘By watching KCB you are contributing to the birth of a national cinema of quality, dignity and respect for women’ viewers are told. Some observers see this kind of promotion as a sign that the filmmakers are afraid their film will be seen as nothing more than a box office hit, and not the ‘authentically Islamic’ film they want it to be remembered as. ii

Ekky Imanjaya (eimanjaya@yahoo.com) is co-founder and editor of Rumahfilm.org , an Indonesian online film journal.

If you live in Melbourne Australia you may wish to book in to the Indonesian Film Festival 2009 (11-20 August) at www.indonesianfilmfestival.com.au/ . It includes Riri Riza's Laskar Pelangi.

Inside Indonesia 97: Jul-Sep 2009

Burma Isn’t Broke

By SEAN TURNELL

The drawn-out show trial of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has once again focused attention on Burma and sparked discussion on how to engage the regime. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently suggested development aid as a carrot to coax the generals to talk. But contrary to popular belief, the junta isn’t as poor as it claims to be.

Burma has emerged as a major regional supplier of natural gas in Asia-Pacific. At present, most of this gas is sold to Thailand, but new fields will shortly provide for vast sales to China. Rising gas prices and increasing demand have caused the value of Burma’s gas exports to soar, driving a projected balance-of-payments surplus for this fiscal year of around $2.5 billion. Burma’s international reserves will rise to over $5 billion-worth by the end of the year.

These revenues make next to no impact on the country’s official fiscal accounts, however. The reason is simple: Burma’s U.S. dollar gas earnings are recorded in the government’s published accounts at the local currency’s “official” exchange rate of around six kyat to a dollar. This rate overvalues the currency by nearly 200 times its market value and undervalues the local-currency value of Burma’s gas earnings by an equivalent amount. Recorded at the official rate, Burma’s gas earnings translate into less than 1% of budget receipts. By contrast, if the same gas earnings are recorded at the market exchange rate, their contribution would more than double total state receipts, and largely eliminate Burma’s fiscal deficit.

The motivation for this sleight of hand is probably to “quarantine” Burma’s foreign exchange earnings from the country’s public accounts, thereby making them available to the regime and its cronies. This accounting is facilitated by Burma’s state-owned Foreign Trade Bank and some willing offshore banks.

Flush with these funds, Burma’s military rulers have embarked upon a spending binge of epic proportions, including indulging themselves in the creation of a new administrative capital named Naypyidaw, or “abode of kings.” They are also buying nuclear technologies of uncertain use from Russia and possibly from North Korea.

This kind of behavior is par for the course in Burma. The military junta took power in a 1962 coup and has consistently expropriated the country’s output while dismantling its basic market institutions. There are no effective property rights in Burma, and the rule of law is weak. Macroeconomic policy making is capricious, unpredictable and ill-informed. The regime spends greatly in excess of its revenue and resorts to the printing presses to finance its spending, creating inflation. Most of Burma’s prominent corporations are owned by the military, and the country is judged by Transparency International as the second most corrupt in the world.

Burma’s fall from grace has been incredible to watch. The country was once one of the richest in Southeast Asia and the world’s largest rice exporter. Today, Burma can barely feed itself. In 1950, the per capita of GDP of Burma and its neighbor, Thailand, were virtually identical. Today, Thailand’s GDP is seven times that of its former peer, despite very similar religious, cultural and physical endowments.

The people of Burma are poor, but the regime that oppresses them is not. Changing this equation is the true key to economic development in Burma, and the outcome to which the efforts of the rest of the world should be directed.

—Mr. Turnell is the editor of Burma Economic Watch and an associate professor in economics at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Arroyo’s Mindanao Gamble

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Suspected Terrorists Killed in Indonesia

By TOM WRIGHT

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Antiterrorism police killed two alleged terrorists and arrested three others suspected of involvement in last month's deadly hotel bombs in Jakarta, a police spokesman said. The nighttime raid on a house near Jakarta uncovered more than 1,000 pounds of explosives, and a car fitted out for another terrorist attack, said Nanan Sukarna, the police spokesman.

Reuters

Police in Indonesia's Central Java province stand guard while bystanders look on Friday, as authorities raid a house in search of suspected militants.

Meanwhile, a standoff with terrorists at a house near Temanggung, a town in central Java, a province on Indonesia's main island, which began at 5 p.m. local time on Friday continued on Saturday morning. Police say they believe inside the house was Noordin Mohamed Top, a Malaysian citizen who they say orchestrated the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotel bombings, which killed nine people, including the suicide bombers.

Mr. Sukarna said four people were inside the Central Java house, which is owned by a religious teacher in a local school. Two other people were arrested earlier Friday in the area, Mr. Sukarna said.

Mr. Noordin is wanted in connection with a number of terrorist attacks against Western targets in Indonesia in 2003 to 2005. Mr. Sukarna said the dwelling raided overnight near Jakarta was used by Mr. Noordin as a safe house two days after the hotel attacks.

Friday's possible breakthrough comes as Indonesians were showing their frustration over the failure of police to make a major arrest three weeks after the bombings.

Indonesia, a secular Muslim-majority nation, has done much to rein in terrorism in recent years, including arresting hundreds of militants. Few of the nation's 240 million people support militant Islam. The government needs to do more to monitor hard-line Islamic schools, which have given shelter to Mr. Noordin and members of his small network in recent years, experts say.

Although Mr. Noordin's terrorist group includes only about 30 or so individuals, the group can rely on a network of Islamists to help hide members, says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict-resolution body.

—Yayu Yuniar contributed to this article.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com

Iraq's Maliki Seeks Tighter Media Grip

By CHARLES LEVINSON

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has proposed a series of laws that lawmakers, Western officials and nongovernmental organizations say could curb democratic freedoms in Iraq.

If successful, the push would tighten government control over political parties, NGOs and the media, aiding Mr. Maliki's efforts to centralize authority over the country as the U.S. role in Iraq dwindles.

"Maliki is using all his political power to push through constitutional changes that will centralize power in his hands under the umbrella of security," said Julia Pataki, an adviser to Iraq's parliament working for the U.S. State Department-funded Institute for International Law and Human Rights. "These laws show Maliki appears to have a well-defined strategy and vision for Iraq, but they send mixed messages about just how democratic that vision is."

The prime minister's office says many of the new laws are necessary to confront security challenges and to minimize the influence of Iraq's neighbors.

Reuters

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, right, with President Jalal Talabani, visited Kurdish leaders on Aug. 2 to address renewed territorial conflicts.

In a reminder of just how daunting those security challenges remain, a series of bombs targeting Shiite worshippers killed at least 36 people in Mosul and Baghdad on Friday.

The bombings, which hit a Shiite mosque in Mosul and several minibuses ferrying Shiite pilgrims back to the capital Baghdad, appeared to be the latest attempt by insurgents to rekindle the sectarian warfare that shook the country in 2006 and 2007.

"We are fully committed to making Iraq a free and democratic country," an aide to Mr. Maliki said. "But we also face some of the most extraordinary security threats of any country in the world and have to be prepared to confront these threats on every level."

Mr. Maliki and his allies in government have submitted the proposed laws to parliament. Many of the bills are unlikely to be passed by the stalemated legislature before national elections in January. Mr. Maliki has a lot of political jockeying to do if he hopes to muster adequate support for them within parliament.

The bills include a proposal to give official legal status and expanded powers to a controversial body called the State Ministry for National Security, creating a "political crimes directorate" to monitor political parties and nongovernmental organizations, among other things, according to a draft of the law reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Maliki established the ministry in 2005 -- in what U.S. officials complained was an effort to circumvent the authority of the U.S.-backed Iraqi intelligence chief. But parliament stripped the ministry of its funding this year, saying Iraq's constitution doesn't allow such a body.

The aide to Mr. Maliki said the ministry has had a number of significant security achievements, including preventing assassination attempts against senior officials.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to comment on Mr. Maliki's proposals.

Another proposed law would give the government extraordinary control over Iraqi NGOs, such as requiring government approval of every donation and project, and every new office opened.

The law was drawn up by the Minister for Civil Society Thamer al-Zubaidi, a close Maliki ally and member of the prime minister's Islamic Dawa Party. A spokesman for Mr. Zubaidi says the legislation is intended to fight rampant corruption among Iraq's 6,000 registered NGOs.

Hundreds of Iraqi NGOs are fictitious or surreptitiously funded by terrorist organizations, foreign governments or corrupt politicians, the spokesman said.

NGO leaders say they fear the government will also use the law to quash the activities of groups critical of the government, or pursuing agendas, such as women's rights, that some powerful Islamist parties oppose.

Critics say the draft ignores recommendations from a two-year project by the United Nations, Iraqi lawmakers and civil society leaders to frame new legislation on the issue.

"So many articles in this law go against what it means to have a free civil society, against the fundamental principles of liberty, and even against our own constitution," says Kurdish lawmaker Alaa Talibani, who heads the NGO committee in parliament and was part of the project.

Another draft law before parliament would put hefty restrictions on the media, requiring all journalists to be licensed by a quasigovernmental body that would also have final say over all hiring of journalists by domestic media organizations.

The proposed law also would restrict the use of anonymous sources and forbid the publication of articles that "compromise the security and stability of the country."

Mr. Maliki's office said in a statement that the government is committed to protecting press freedoms in Iraq and said the law is aimed at protecting journalists from violence.

Mr. Maliki also asked the Ministry of Communications to start blocking pornographic Web sites in Iraq, the first such restriction on the Internet here, raising alarms among free-speech advocates.

"We are afraid that once the government starts blocking Web sites to protect the morality of society, or taking other small steps to restrict democratic liberties, it is sure to soon include others," said Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq's National Archives and Library.

Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com

Karzai Wins Afghan Warlords’ Support as Others Fear the Cost

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

KABUL, Afghanistan — When Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim was interim vice president and defense minister after the United States invasion in 2001, his tanks overlooked Kabul and he was widely seen as more powerful than the American-backed president, Hamid Karzai.

When Afghans finally got a chance to elect their president for the first time, in 2004, Mr. Karzai cast off Mr. Fahim, a Tajik warlord, winning the election as well as praise from Western governments that were worried Mr. Fahim might order his tanks into the streets and seize power.

Now, in the campaign for the Aug. 20 presidential election, Mr. Karzai has taken a different tack: Over the pleading of Western officials, he picked Mr. Fahim as first vice president on his ticket.

The reversal, critics say, is emblematic of the campaign by Mr. Karzai, who in angling to keep a hold on power has lined up half a dozen warlords who have guaranteed their political support in exchange for back-room deals.

While the precise nature of such deals is not known, Western officials, Afghan politicians and nongovernmental organizations contend that they include promises of protection from prosecution, the awarding of cabinet ministries and governorships, the creation of provinces to benefit one ethnic group, and the freeing of major drug traffickers.

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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Against Western wishes, Mr. Fahim, center, is running for first vice president on Mr. Karzai’s ticket in the Aug. 20 elections.

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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Mr. Karzai’s backers include Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, whose militia killed Hazara civilians in western Kabul in 1993.

This is not the first time that Afghans or their American patrons have cut deals with the warlords — whose widespread looting and killing of civilians in the 1990s helped spur the rise of the Taliban. After the Taliban were driven from power, the American government funneled millions of dollars and military support to the warlords.

But now many Afghans and foreign observers say the ties to warlords may win Mr. Karzai the election, but cost him and his country dearly, leaving him badly compromised and the central government greatly weakened.

“It was necessary from the U.S. point of view to have armed people on the ground” when the focus was toppling the Taliban, said Thomas Ruttig, a veteran United Nations diplomat and now a director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a nonprofit research group. “But if you are now bringing in warlords and other people who have an interest in leaving things unstable, you are undermining yourself.”

Today Mr. Karzai’s warlord backers include Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek commander whose men are accused of killing hundreds of Taliban prisoners of war in 2001 and who is now vying to regain wider control of northern Afghanistan; Hajji Muhammad Moheqiq and Karim Khalili, warlords from the Hazara Shiite minority ethnic group; and Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, whose militia killed hundreds of Hazara civilians in western Kabul in 1993.

Another warlord supporter, Gul Agha Sherzai, who has been implicated in drug-related corruption and is now governor of Nangarhar Province, could “possibly” become governor of Kandahar, “or maybe a minister,” said Mr. Karzai’s campaign manager, Hajji Din Muhammad.

“I’m sure that whoever the mujahedeen support will win the election,” Mr. Muhammad said, referring to the warlords.

Western officials are watching closely. “I expect an understanding of the fact that we need fewer warlords and more competent ministers,” said Kai Eide, leader of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. He said that Western governments were encouraged by reform-minded appointees to several ministries, including interior and finance, and that it had been made clear to Mr. Karzai that the trend must continue. But he declined to say if the president had addressed the warlords’ role after the election.

“If what we expect is not understood and not respected, then I think it will have consequences in terms of the enthusiasm of the international community,” Mr. Eide said. “We have to put the warlord period behind us.”

To many Afghans, serious damage has already been done. They say that the renewed association with warlords — including support by some warlords for one of Mr. Karzai’s challengers, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister — means that the powerful will not be held to account, particularly those accused of gross human rights abuses.

“It’s very easy to say, ‘I’ll bring reform and justice,’ ” said Dr. Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and a cabinet minister in Mr. Karzai’s first interim government. “But where is the accountability? If you have these people around you, it shows you are not serious about justice.”

More recently, Mr. Karzai has defended his warlord political supporters as national heroes who fought the Russians and the Taliban. And Mr. Muhammad, his campaign manger, said: “Anyone who wants to implement a program in Afghanistan cannot implement it without the support of the mujahedeen. They still have lots of influence in their areas.”

When Mr. Karzai’s warlord strategy emerged this spring, it seemed he had all but secured his re-election. But many analysts now believe he may not gain the 50 percent of the vote he needs to win the election outright and could face a runoff.

The election may demonstrate whether the warlords’ influence has begun to wane. In 2004, when Mr. Karzai won with 55.4 percent of the vote, Mr. Moheqiq and General Dostum won a combined 21.6 percent.

Mr. Moheqiq and Mr. Khalili, who led militias during the civil war and the fight against the Taliban, are believed to have won a promise to carve new provinces from Hazara-dominated districts in Ghazni and Wardak Provinces, Western officials said.

That would bolster the national power of the Hazara leaders and could set off regional conflicts with Hazara rivals. Mr. Moheqiq also said Mr. Karzai promised him control of five ministries.

Mr. Muhammad said he knew nothing about such deals.

But for Western officials, it is the dealings with General Dostum, known for his brutality, that are the most worrisome.

The general, who denies any “intentional massacre” of Taliban prisoners in 2001, had been appointed a senior military adviser by Mr. Karzai. He left the country last year after assaulting a rival, but was declared free to return after announcing support for Mr. Karzai. American officials have sought to delay that return.

General Dostum’s deal with Mr. Karzai could lead to a power struggle in the north. But Mr. Abdullah has claimed recently that he has support from General Dostum, though officials from the general’s party deny that.

American officials were also angered by Mr. Karzai’s pardon in April of five men from Nangarhar Province convicted of smuggling 260 pounds of heroin in 2007. The men had been prosecuted by a special task force, with lawyers tutored by American and NATO counterparts.

The task force is a model for the justice system that Western officials want for Afghanistan, but the pardon sent a signal that even major drug traffickers with the right connections could escape. One pardoned convict is a nephew of Mr. Muhammad, who is also a former Kabul governor.

According to the decree signed by Mr. Karzai and obtained by The New York Times, the men were pardoned “out of respect” for their family members, who dominate politics in a broad section of eastern Afghanistan.

In an interview, Mr. Muhammad said he had never lobbied Mr. Karzai for the pardon.

Abdul Waheed Wafa, Sangar Rahimi and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting.

Conservatives Warn Ahmadinejad Not to Defy Ayatollah on Cabinet Picks

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a sign of persistent divisions in Iran’s hard-line political camp, a coalition of major conservative parties issued an unusually blunt open letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday, warning him not to disregard the supreme leader and other senior figures as he chooses his new cabinet.

The letter, coming two days after Mr. Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term, makes clear that he faces a serious challenge in uniting his own supporters, even as a broad opposition movement continues to maintain that his landslide re-election on June 12 was rigged. The group that issued the letter, which includes 14 conservative parties and leaders influential in Iran’s traditional businesses, endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad in the election.

The letter is the latest repercussion from a fracas last month in which Mr. Ahmadinejad shocked conservatives by ignoring a command from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to rescind the controversial appointment of a top presidential deputy. The deputy, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, finally withdrew from that position, and Mr. Ahmadinejad promptly reappointed him as his chief of staff.

The letter issued Friday told Mr. Ahmadinejad that the public, the clergy and the political elite found “shocking” his decisions regarding Mr. Mashaei, whose daughter is married to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s son, and warned him to change his approach.

“If, God forbid, you fail to consult with supporters of the revolution and pursue a path that is not in line with the leadership, if you become too confident with the people’s vote, you may lose people’s confidence and we fear that you might inflict unprecedented damage on the establishment and jeopardize cooperation with Parliament and the judiciary,” the letter said, according to copies provided to Web sites and Iranian news agencies.

The letter urged the president to “avoid this turmoil” by being more sensitive than before in making cabinet choices and consulting with senior figures.

In his inauguration speech on Wednesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad hinted that he saw the record voter turnout in the election as a popular mandate to pursue his policy goals more aggressively.

Other conservative groups have criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad harshly over his promotion of Mr. Mashaei, who said last year that Iranians were friendly toward “people in every country, even Israelis.” One group suggested that Mr. Ahmadinejad could be removed from office.

Analysts say Mr. Ahmadinejad was trying to project political strength in his promotion of Mr. Mashaei, who is part of a group of advisers and loyalists he has relied on since his early days in politics. But many Iranians were baffled by the president’s willingness to defy Ayatollah Khamenei, who wields final authority on matters of state and who has provided Mr. Ahmadinejad with crucial political support.

The Iranian police issued a statement to reporters on Friday saying that the people responsible for mistreating prisoners at the controversial Kahrizak detention center, where some protesters were tortured and killed, would be dismissed and punished, Iranian news agencies said. The police statement appeared to undercut a parliamentary investigation of abuses at the detention center, which was closed last month by order of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Also on Friday, Amnesty International said it had recorded an “alarming spike” in state executions in Iran since the election. Iran is second only to China in executions annually.

Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

Professor Main Target of Assault on Twitter

By JENNA WORTHAM and ANDREW E. KRAMER

The cyberattacks Thursday and Friday on Twitter and other popular Web services disrupted the lives of hundreds of millions of Internet users, but the principal target appeared to be one man: a 34-year-old economics professor from the republic of Georgia.

During the assault — the latest eruption in a yearlong skirmish between nationalistic hackers in Russia and Georgia — unidentified attackers sent millions of spam e-mail messages and bombarded Twitter, Facebook and other services with junk messages. The blitz was an attempt to block the professor’s Web pages, where he was revisiting the events leading up to the brief territorial war between Russia and Georgia that began a year ago.

The attacks were “the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don’t like one of the newscasters,” Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer of the Internet security firm F-Secure, said in a blog post. “The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of this attack.”

The blogger, a refugee from the Abkhazia region, a territory on the Black Sea disputed between Russia and Georgia, writes under the name Cyxymu, but identified himself only by the name Giorgi in a telephone interview. Giorgi, who said he taught at Sukhumi State University, first noticed Thursday afternoon that LiveJournal, a popular blogging platform, was not working for him. “I decided to go to Facebook,” he said. “And Facebook didn’t work. Then I went to Twitter, and Twitter didn’t work. ‘How strange,’ I thought, ‘What a coincidence they all don’t work at once.’ ”

Security experts say that it is nearly impossible to determine who exactly is behind the attack, which disrupted access to Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and some Google sites on Thursday and continued to affect many Twitter users into Friday evening.

But Beth Jones, an analyst with the Internet security firm Sophos, said the assault occurred in two stages.

Early Thursday, the attackers sent out a wave of spam under the name Cyxymu, which is a Latin transliteration of the Cyrillic name of the capital of Abkhazia, Sukhumi. This technique, a “joe job,” is intended to discredit a Web user by making him appear to be the source of a large amount of junk e-mail. “These hackers wanted to make him look responsible for millions of spam e-mails,” said Ms. Jones.

The messages contained links to Giorgi’s accounts on several social networks and Web sites, including Twitter.

The next leg of the attack, Ms. Jones said, was a distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attack aimed at knocking Giorgi off the Web. The hackers used a botnet, a network of thousands of malware-infected personal computers, to direct huge amounts of junk traffic to Cyxymu’s pages on Twitter, LiveJournal, YouTube and Facebook in an attempt to disable them, Ms. Jones said.

The junk messages overwhelmed the services, slowing them, and in the case of Twitter and LiveJournal, shutting them down entirely for a time.

Giorgi said his pages were providing a place for refugees from Abkhazia to exchange memories of their home. The Twitter page had a sepia photograph of a palm-lined city street. “It was nostalgia,” he said.

This week, he began posting day-by-day accounts of the run-up to the conflict that drew partly on posts from his readers inside of Abkhazia, who he said had been describing how the Russian army staged its forces in the region in early August 2008.

“I feel a bit ashamed for the people who lost service because my blog was blocked,” said Giorgi.

The hundreds of millions of Internet users affected were simply “collateral damage,” said Ms. Jones.

The attacks and their aftermath show just how vital Web tools and services are becoming to political discourse — and how vulnerable they are to disruption.

“They aren’t set up to play the role of a global communications network, but very quickly they’ve come to represent that,” said John Palfrey, a law professor and co-director of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The attacks that felled Twitter shed light on the fragility of the popular microblogging service, especially compared to its competitor Facebook, which quickly recovered from the pummeling, said Stefan Tanase, a researcher at Kaspersky Lab, an Internet security firm. Twitter, a small San Francisco company, has been struggling to improve its security even as it tries to manage hypergrowth in the number of users and messages it handles.

But, Mr. Tanase said, “Twitter is definitely a company that is learning fast and reacting fast.”

The outage frustrated many Twitter users. Some migrated over to better-functioning social networks like Facebook and FriendFeed to send messages and follow conversations, said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research and a prolific tweeter.

“If Twitter goes down or shuts down permanently, the conversation just shifts somewhere else,” he said.

For others, solving the problem wasn’t quite as simple.

Soren Macbeth, founder and chief executive of StockTwits, a service that lets investors trade news and information about companies, said his service, which is built on Twitter’s infrastructure, was offline Thursday and still hadn’t fully recovered Friday.

“Having the service be intermittent is almost worse than having it be totally down,” he said. “It makes it seem more like our issue, a problem with our service.”

Mr. Macbeth said the service, which receives as many as 10,000 postings a day, had been at Twitter’s mercy since its inception. “It’s very challenging to run a business on top of Twitter,” he said. The difficulties of working with Twitter had already prompted StockTwits to begin developing a stand-alone platform, which the company plans to introduce on Sept. 1.

But for most businesses, Twitter is merely a supplemental marketing tool.

Ben Van Leeuwen, who runs trucks that serve scoops of ice cream to customers around New York City, said he didn’t even notice the service was down. “Sales were the same yesterday as they were the day before,” he said.

Aaron Magness, who heads up new business development and marketing at Zappos.com, an online shoe retailer with a sizable following on Twitter, said in an e-mail message that the outage didn’t affect the company.

“Twitter is one of many communication tools we utilize,” he said. “Luckily, we love talking to our customers and Twitter going down doesn’t impact our phones."

Attacks on Homeless Bring Push on Hate Crime Laws

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — With economic troubles pushing more people onto the streets in the last few years, law enforcement officials and researchers are seeing a surge in unprovoked attacks against the homeless, and a number of states are considering legislation to treat such assaults as hate crimes.

This October, Maryland will become the first state to expand its hate-crime law to add stiffer penalties for attacks on the homeless.

At least five other states are pondering similar steps, the District of Columbia approved such a measure this week, and a like bill was introduced last week in Congress.

A report due out this weekend from the National Coalition for the Homeless documents a rise in violence over the last decade, with at least 880 unprovoked attacks against the homeless at the hands of nonhomeless people, including 244 fatalities. An advance copy was provided to The New York Times.

Sometimes, researchers say, one homeless person attacks another in turf battles or other disputes. But more often, they say, the assailants are outsiders: men or in most cases teenage boys who punch, kick, shoot or set afire people living on the streets, frequently killing them, simply for the sport of it, their victims all but invisible to society.

“A lot of what we see are thrill offenders,” said Brian Levin, a criminologist who runs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Only Thursday, two homeless men in Hollywood were stabbed to death and a third was wounded in a three-hour spree of separate daylight attacks. The police arrested a 54-year-old local man who they said appeared to have made homeless people his random targets.

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

Matt O’Brien, who advocates on behalf of the homeless, touring the flood channels. Flash floods may endanger those who stay there, he says, but at least they are safe from violence.

Researchers say a combustible mix of factors has added fuel to the problem. Rising unemployment and foreclosures continue to push people into the streets, with some estimates now putting the nationwide number of homeless above one million.

And in cities like Las Vegas, public crackdowns on encampments for the homeless and cutbacks in social services have frequently made street people more visible as targets for would-be assailants.

Further, in the last several years the Internet has seen a proliferation of “bum fight” videos, shot by young men and boys who are seen beating the homeless or who pay transients a few dollars to fight each other.

Indeed, the National Coalition for the Homeless, which works to change government policies and bring people off the streets, says in its new report that 58 percent of assailants implicated in attacks against the homeless in the last 10 years were teenagers.

Michael Stoops, the group’s executive director, said social prejudices were “dehumanizing” the homeless and condoning hostile treatment. He pointed to a blurb titled “Hunt the Homeless” in the current issue of Maxim, a popular men’s magazine. It spotlights a coming “hobo convention” in Iowa and says: “Kill one for fun. We’re 87 percent sure it’s legal.”

With victims wary of going to the police, statistics on the attacks are often incomplete. But surveys show much higher rates of assault, rape and other crimes of violence against the homeless than almost any other group, said Professor Levin, of California State, who worked on the new report.

Recognition of the problem is spurring legislative action.

“More and more, we’re hearing about homeless people being attacked for no other reason than that they’re homeless, and we’ve got to do something about it,” Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrat of Texas, said in an interview.

Ms. Johnson introduced a measure in the House last week to make attacks on the homeless a federal hate crime and require the F.B.I. to collect data on it. (The Senate voted last month to expand federal hate crimes to include attacks on gay and transgender victims, another frequent target.)

And in addition to the measures already approved in Maryland and the District of Columbia, proposals to add penalties for attacks on the homeless are under consideration in California, Florida, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.

The push has lacked any organized support by major civil rights groups. In Florida, which leads the country in assaults on homeless people, groups like the Anti-Defamation League have opposed recognizing those attacks as a hate crime. Opponents argue that homelessness, unlike race or ethnicity, is not a permanent condition and that such a broadening of the law would have the effect of diluting it.

“I hear the same rhetoric all the time,” Ms. Johnson said. “They ask, ‘Why is their life more important than anyone else’s?’ ”

The coalition’s study, which relied on police and news reports but excluded crimes driven by factors like robbery, found 106 documented attacks against the homeless last year.

That was a doubling of levels seen six or seven years ago but a sharp drop from 2007, an apparent improvement that researchers are still trying to explain. The study found 27 fatalities last year, flat relative to the year before. Eight other victims were shot, nine raped and 54 beaten.

In Portland, Ore., twin brothers were charged with five unprovoked attacks against homeless people in a park. One of the victims was a man beaten with his own bike, another a woman pushed down a steep staircase.

In Cleveland, a man leaving a homeless shelter to visit his mother was “savagely beaten by a group of thugs,” the police said.

In Los Angeles, a homeless man who was a neighborhood fixture was doused in gasoline and set on fire.

In Boston, a homeless Army veteran was beaten to death as witnesses near Faneuil Hall reportedly looked on.

And in Jacksonville, N.C., a group of young men fatally stabbed a homeless man behind a shopping strip, cutting open his abdomen with a beer bottle.

In Las Vegas, home to a large population of the homeless, there were no reported killings of any of them last year, but many say hostilities have risen as the city moves to get them out of the parks and off the streets.

Some of the Las Vegas homeless resort to living in a maze of underground flood channels beneath the Strip. There they face flash floods, disease, black widows and dank, pitch-dark conditions, but some tunnel dwellers say life there is better than being harassed and threatened by assailants and the police.

“Out there, anything goes,” said Manny Lang, who has lived in the tunnels for months, recalling the stones and profanities with which a group of teenagers pelted him last winter when he slept above ground. “But in here, nothing’s going to happen to us.”

Their plight is a revealing commentary on the violence facing street people, said Matt O’Brien, a Las Vegas writer who runs an outreach group for the homeless.

“It’s hard to believe that tunnels that can fill a foot per minute with floodwater could be safer than aboveground Vegas,” Mr. O’Brien said, “but many homeless people think they are. No outsider is going to attack you down there in the dark.”

Google's Offer on Digitized Books Could Be Better

Saturday, August 8, 2009

WHAT IS GOOGLE Book Search? A library? A bookstore? Or something else altogether?

Some call it Alexandria 2.0, and the comparison with the great library of antiquity is apt. Google has digitized millions of books, and if its proposed class-action settlement with their authors and publishers passes muster, these books -- formerly the province of college libraries and research institutions -- will be available to everyone. Google began digitizing books without the permission of copyright holders, claiming fair use. This provoked a class-action lawsuit on the part of authors and publishers, resulting in a settlement that offers many boons for the public. Books already in the public domain will be freely available, and those still under copyright will be available in a standard 20 percent preview. Google will also provide free public access to the entire online repository of content at terminals in nearly 20,000 public and university libraries across the country, only charging fees to print.

But wait, there's more! Google gives book rights holders tremendous control. They can decide what price to charge for their works, control the amount available in the free preview, and add and remove works from the online collection. And the settlement establishes a nonprofit organization, the Book Rights Registry, to locate content owners and serve as a clearinghouse through which they can receive payment from Google and negotiate with new entrants to the digital market.

What about books still under copyright whose owners have not been located -- so-called "orphan" books? Google's claim makes sense: Many rights holders will emerge once they see that their work has value, but it is also in the registry's charter to seek out these rights holders. As Google Book Search generates revenue for content creators, the owners of all but the least-accessed, least-valuable books will probably come forward.

So it's curious that Google felt the need to include a clause in the settlement to prevent the registry, negotiating on behalf of "orphan" books, from offering a better deal to any of the company's competitors within its first 10 years. Google's argument is that it performed a public service by setting up the registry, investing millions of dollars in what will be a non-affiliated, nonprofit organization. This hefty initial investment would not be required of future entrants to the market, leaving Google at a disadvantage. Protection would ensure a level playing field. But if the set of protected books encompasses only those so valueless that no one will come forward to claim them, it is baffling why protection from competition in this area would be valuable. If, on the other hand, locating book rights holders requires time and effort, and the market for digitized versions of these books is easy enough to enter that a competitor could offer a better deal, this clause would create a real barrier to competition.

Google's innovative efforts will enhance the world's access to knowledge, but that doesn't mean it deserves to have it both ways. Its settlement is in many ways better for consumers than the possible outcome of litigation. But the fact that what Google is doing is wonderful should not preclude the potential to do better.

Clinton Hails New S. African Government's Policies on HIV/AIDS

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

PRETORIA, South Africa, Aug. 7 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday welcomed the new South African government's approach to fighting HIV/AIDS after years in which officials questioned the link between the two and suggested such "cures" as eating beets and garlic.

"We have the challenge everyone is aware of. We have to make up for some lost time, but we are looking forward," Clinton said at a U.S.-funded clinic where patients receive antiretroviral drugs.

The clinic visit underscored a new juncture in U.S.-South African relations after years of tensions over AIDS, the Iraq war and other issues. Clinton wants to improve ties with a country regarded as Africa's economic powerhouse, and she and the South African foreign minister agreed to work together more closely on such issues as climate change and nuclear nonproliferation.

Clinton was accompanied to several of her meetings by Eric Goosby, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator. That "shows how eager we are to broaden and deepen our relationship" with the new government led by President Jacob Zuma, she said.

South Africa has the highest number of HIV-positive people in the world, with about one in five adults, or nearly 6 million people, infected. But under Zuma's predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, authorities questioned whether HIV caused AIDS and were skeptical about treating it with antiretroviral drugs. One of Mbeki's health ministers urged HIV-positive people to cure themselves by eating lemons, beets and garlic.

The policies caused the premature deaths of an estimated 365,000 people, according to a recent study by Harvard University researchers.

Goosby said in an interview that he was "thrilled" about the AIDS policies of Zuma, who has pledged to halve the incidence of HIV in the country.

The U.S. government's global AIDS program has a major presence in South Africa, spending $550 million a year on treatment and testing. Clinton said the U.S. program "stands ready to work with the South African government in whatever way the government believes is effective."

Clinton's delegation toured a clinic in the poor mining town of Cullinan, outside Pretoria, that is funded by the U.S. and South African governments. She was greeted in the courtyard of the low-slung building by about two dozen children in pink and red T-shirts, some of them patients at the clinic, others orphans whose parents had died of AIDS-related illnesses.

Before the facility opened in 2006, the nearest clinic that treated people with HIV/AIDS was 40 miles away, and transportation there was too expensive for many residents, officials said.

"It has changed life around this place as people used to know it," South Africa's new health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, told Clinton after she toured the clinic.

A young woman who has been treated at the clinic, Simangele Ncube, told Clinton that when she tested positive for HIV, "I felt like the world was collapsing in on me."

But "here I am -- and I look good," she said.

More than 900 people die of AIDS-related causes each day in South Africa. U.S. Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), the head of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds foreign aid programs, said at the ceremony that she hopes to see more assistance going toward prevention, rather than just treatment.

South Africa is the second stop on Clinton's seven-nation swing through Africa, a trip aimed at improving ties with the continent and addressing security, economic and development concerns.

One of Clinton's priorities is building closer ties with what she called "major and emerging global powers," including South Africa and countries such as China, India and Brazil.

The Obama administration is especially hopeful that South Africa will push the authoritarian president of neighboring Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, to cease harassment of opposition leaders and the media.

South Africa's foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said her government was trying to persuade Mugabe to make more progress on a power-sharing agreement signed in February with the opposition. But South Africa gave no indication Friday that it would go as far as the United States wanted.

U.S. Plan Raises Ire in Latin America

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 8, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 7 -- A U.S. plan to deploy troops and station aircraft at several Colombian military bases has generated controversy across Latin America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warning that it could lead to war and the president of Brazil saying that he did not like the idea of an expanded U.S. presence in the region.

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said by phone from Washington on Friday that the plan would give the United States access to Colombian bases from which to carry out vital counter-drug surveillance flights over the Pacific, a conduit for cocaine smuggled to Mexico and on to the United States. "Our ability to have broad coverage in that area was important," he said.

But since Colombian authorities revealed details of the proposed agreement last month, Chávez has said the United States might use the bases as a platform for an invasion of his oil-rich country. "We're talking about the Yankees, the most aggressive nation in the history of humanity," Chávez said Wednesday in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

A woman in Rio wears a mask that reads in Spanish: "Get Uribe Out." Concerns about the U.S. anti-drug plan prompted Colombia's Uribe to visit other leaders. (By Ricardo Moraes -- Associated Press)

The reaction from Caracas was no surprise to Washington officials, whom Chávez frequently accuses of plotting against his government. But moderate, European-style leftist governments in South America, most of which have good relations with the United States, have also raised concerns that the proposed U.S. presence is greater than Washington needs for its anti-drug efforts.

Hurdle for Obama

That indignation poses a new challenge for the Obama administration, which has been trying to improve relations with governments that had openly opposed the Bush administration. But political analysts, as well as officials in Colombia, said the secretive nature of the talks between Washington and Bogota had proved counterproductive.

"There just didn't seem to be any serious consultation beforehand," said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, adding that the controversy "was completely avoidable."

On Friday, President Obama tried to soothe nerves in Latin America, telling reporters in Washington that the United States was simply upgrading its security agreement with Colombia. "There have been those in the region who have been trying to play this up as part of a traditional anti-Yankee rhetoric," Obama said, adding, "We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia."

The concerns expressed in the region prompted Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to embark on a three-day South American trip this week to reassure fellow leaders, including populists such as Bolivia's Evo Morales and moderates such as Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Morales and Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner did not offer support for a Colombian-U.S. deal, but Bachelet and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva toned down their initial criticisms to say that the proposal is a sovereign matter.

Still, after Uribe met with Lula in Brasilia on Thursday, Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, told reporters that his country had asked Colombia to be more transparent about the proposed accord. "We will have to see if that Colombian transparency satisfies, or does not satisfy, our doubts," Amorim said. The plan was expected to be the main topic of discussion when Latin American officials meet in Ecuador on Monday for a regional defense summit.

Colombian authorities said last month that under the accord, which may be signed this month and would last 10 years, U.S. aircraft could be stationed at up to five Colombian air bases and U.S. naval vessels could dock at two Colombian ports, one on the Caribbean and the other on the Pacific. Up to 800 U.S. military personnel and 600 private contractors could use the bases, meeting a cap of 1,400 that was set in 2000 when Congress approved $1.3 billion in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia. As of June 19, there were 268 U.S. military personnel in Colombia and 308 civilian contractors.

The Uribe administration has stressed that the bases would remain under Colombian command, with U.S. missions requiring Colombian approval and base security handled by Colombian troops. U.S. planes would be unable fly over a third country unless the United States had a separate agreement with that country. "These are not American bases, but Colombian," Gen. Freddy Padilla, chief of the armed forces, said Tuesday at a summit with U.S. military officers in the coastal city of Cartagena. "But we will provide the possibility for them to use our installations."

U.S. military officers and specialists working for U.S. companies that carry out anti-drug operations already use several Colombian bases.

Colombian officials said the base that would have the biggest U.S. presence under the accord is Palanquero, in Puerto Salgar, a steamy river town a four-hour drive from Bogota. Hundreds of service members can be housed there, and its hangars can accommodate more than 100 aircraft.

End of Ecuadoran Deal

The idea of using Colombian bases comes as a decade-long U.S. presence ends at the coastal air base in Manta, Ecuador, which U.S. forces used to patrol the Pacific. Then-candidate Rafael Correa railed against the U.S. presence during his 2006 presidential campaign and, once in office, did not renew an operating agreement with Washington.

Correa's government also accused U.S. forces operating out of Manta of having helped the Colombians carry out the bombing of a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last year that killed two dozen guerrillas.

The senior State Department official said talks with the Uribe administration over use of Colombian bases began "long before" Ecuador decided to end the U.S. presence at Manta. "We thought it made sense," he said.

Colombia's vice minister for defense, Sergio Jaramillo, said in an interview Friday that officials have become increasingly concerned about the smuggling of cocaine into Mexico via speedboats and semi-submersible vessels operating out of clandestine Pacific ports. "One must not underrate the significance or danger of losing the capability that the U.S. had in Ecuador," he said.

Jaramillo said the planes that had been in Manta "were the ones that were giving us the intelligence to do the interdiction operations we were doing in the Pacific."

In Venezuela, though, Chávez scoffs at those arguments, his rhetoric ratcheting up in recent days since Colombia accused Venezuela of providing Colombian guerrillas with antitank rocket launchers.

Chávez denied the allegation and recalled his ambassador from Colombia. In the wake of the base controversy, he has announced an economic counteroffensive that includes suspending the participation of Colombia's state oil company in operations in Venezuela's richest oil belt. He also said plans to import 10,000 cars from Colombia had been called off and threatened to cut other Colombian imports.

"The only way this situation returns, let's say, to calm is for Colombia to refuse to give its territory to the United States," Chávez told reporters Thursday.