Trade Group Asks Oil Companies to Recruit Employees for ‘Citizen' Rallies

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 16, 2009

A petroleum industry trade group is asking oil companies to recruit employees and retirees to attend rallies attacking climate-change legislation, an approach to grass-roots politics that resembles strategies used recently by some opponents of health-care reform.

In a memo this month, American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard detailed plans for "Energy Citizen" rallies to be held in 20 states during the final two weeks of Congress's August recess. Gerard wrote that the intent was to put a "human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," including a climate-change bill passed by the House in June.

"Please indicate to your company leadership your strong support for employee participation in the rallies," Gerard wrote in the memo, saying that contractors and suppliers should also be recruited.

Environmental groups on Saturday criticized the rallies, which they described as manufactured events intended to pass as organic assemblies of concerned citizens. Greenpeace activists said they saw parallels to the health-care debate, where opponents of reform -- including some organizations that receive heavy funding from industry groups and individuals -- have organized efforts to shout down lawmakers at "town hall" meetings.

"It's the most powerful among us, masquerading as grass-roots outrage to stifle debate on global warming," Michael Crocker, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said of the oil group's plans. "These are manufactured concerns, and the people who get involved in this are paid to put on this theater."

The memo, obtained by Greenpeace, was first reported on by the Financial Times Saturday.

Kert Davies, another official with Greenpeace, said the group opposes the climate bill, too, deeming it too lenient on polluters.

In a telephone interview, Gerard defended the meetings as events of education and discussion. He said they are designed to be standalone rallies, not efforts to pack lawmakers' scheduled meetings.

"There's a lot of folks out there that would like to suggest that anybody that doesn't agree with their views somehow doesn't play by the rules. We disagree strongly with that," Gerard said. His group says the bill passed by the House would cost millions of jobs and burden the U.S. economy with higher energy costs.

This skirmishing over the memo shows how hot the debate on climate-change legislation has become, even with health care dominating the Hill. Last week, the Center for Public Integrity found that 1,150 firms and advocacy groups were lobbying over climate- change legislation.

The House bill calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, measured against 2005 levels, by 2020. It would also require polluters to buy "allowances" for each ton of emissions and allow them to exceed their allotted share of pollution only by buying more allowances.

Democratic leaders in the Senate have said they will use the House bill as a model for their version of the legislation.

The oil industry seems divided on the issue. Shell Oil and BP America, both members of the American Petroleum Institute, are also members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which has supported a "cap and trade" approach. Spokesmen for both companies said yesterday they would not participate in the "Energy Citizen" rallies.

And former vice president Al Gore's group, the Alliance for Climate Protection, is part of an effort to hold rallies attended by people who have -- or would like to have -- jobs in the renewable-energy sector. Their economic prospects might improve if a climate bill passes.

Alice McKeon, a spokeswoman for the group, said she did not think attendees were being recruited through their employers, in the way the oil group aims to do.

"They're reaching out to the businesses directly and getting their people involved in it, as employees, and that's not something that we've used as a tactic," she said.

Blogger's Case May Test Limits of Political Speech

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 16, 2009

CHICAGO -- Internet radio host Hal Turner disliked how three federal judges rejected the National Rifle Association's attempt to overturn a pair of handgun bans.

"Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed," Turner wrote on his blog on June 2, according to the FBI. "Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions."

The next day, Turner posted photographs of the appellate judges and a map showing the Chicago courthouse where they work, noting the placement of "anti-truck bomb barriers." When an FBI agent appeared at the door of his New Jersey home, Turner said he meant no harm.

He is now behind bars awaiting trial, accused of threatening the judges and deemed by a U.S. magistrate as too dangerous to be free.

Turner's case is likely to test the limits of political speech at a time when incendiary talk is proliferating on broadcast outlets and the Internet, from the microphones of well-known commentators to the keyboards of anonymous netizens. President Obama has been depicted as a Nazi and slain Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller as "Tiller the killer." On guns and abortion, war and torture, taxes and now health care, the commentary feeds off pools of anger that ebb and flow with the zeitgeist.

Mark Potok, an editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center who tracks extremists and hate speech, says he thinks "political speech has gotten rougher in the last six months."

While federal authorities moved swiftly to stop Turner, scholars note that the line between free speech and criminality is a fine one.

Turner's attorney said the prosecutors overreacted.

"He gave an opinion. He did not say go out and kill," defense attorney Michael Orozco said last week after unsuccessfully seeking bail. "This is political hyperbole, nothing more. He's a shock jock."

That is not how U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and his prosecutors see the case. They charged Turner, a blogger admired by white supremacists, with threatening the lives of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit: Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner and William Bauer.

Threats against federal judges are taken particularly seriously here: The husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow were slain in February 2005 by a disgruntled plaintiff. He hid in a closet in Lefkow's home, waiting for the judge to return home, but her husband found him first.

Turner, 47, was first charged in June by Connecticut's Capitol Police with inciting injury after he urged residents to "take up arms" against two state legislators and an ethics official when the lawmakers introduced a bill to give lay members of Roman Catholic churches more control over their parishes' finances.

Later that month, federal authorities filed charges in the Chicago case.

Writing on his blog, which has since been taken down, Turner disputed a June 2 ruling by the three judges, who said a federal district judge had properly dismissed the NRA's lawsuit to overturn handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. It was a Supreme Court matter, the judges said.

Turner called the judges -- including Posner and Easterbrook, two of the nation's most prominent conservative jurists -- "unpatriotic, deceitful scum." He said the only thing standing in the way of the judges and "the government" achieving ultimate power "is the fact that We The People have guns. Now, that is very much in jeopardy."

Quoting Thomas Jefferson, Turner said, "The tree of liberty must be replenished from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots." He added his own words: "It is time to replenish the tree!"

Timothy McVeigh, who detonated the Oklahoma City bomb that killed 168 people in 1995, was wearing a T-shirt with Jefferson's words when he was arrested. Last week, a pistol-carrying protester outside an Obama town hall meeting in New Hampshire carried a sign that said, "It is time to water the tree of liberty."

On his blog, Turner cited another 7th Circuit ruling against white supremacist Matthew Hale, who once called for Lefkow's assassination. Turner also mentioned the Lefkow murders, although they were unrelated to the Hale case.

"Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn't get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed," Turner wrote. "These judges deserve to be made such an example of as to send a message to the entire judiciary: Obey the Constitution or die."

Turner, who authorities said had three semiautomatic handguns, a shotgun and 350 rounds of ammunition in his North Bergen, N.J., home when the FBI arrested him, worked at times as an FBI informant. Although Fitzgerald's office says he provided occasional information on right-wing extremists, Orozco said he was recruited as an "agent provocateur" to get leftists to act in public against him and reveal themselves to the FBI.

First Amendment scholar Martin H. Redish said much of what Turner wrote is protected by the Constitution, including his declarations that the judges should be eliminated. But he said Turner probably crossed a line when he printed information about the judges, their office locations and the courthouse.

"I would give very strong odds on a thousand bucks that once he said that stuff, it takes it out of any kind of hyperbole range," said Redish, a professor at Northwestern University Law School. "I just don't see him being protected."

Michael Harrison, a former talk radio host and publisher of Talkers magazine, says examples of incitement to violence are rare. He termed them "random." As he surveys the landscape, he said, "It's easy to take a look at this and say, 'Is this some kind of trend?' No, it isn't.

"I remember plenty of people comparing George W. Bush to a Nazi, to a fascist. Of course there are suggestible people and there are mentally ill people who can react to anything. But what are you going to do -- stop political discussion, stop criticism, stop free speech?"

James W. von Brunn, who killed a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in June, had a history of hateful writings about religious and ethnic minorities and a felony conviction for attacking the Federal Reserve headquarters. But he was not the subject of a criminal investigation before the shooting.

"Law enforcement's challenge every day is to balance the civil liberties of the United States citizen against the need to investigate activities that might lead to criminal conduct," Joseph Persichini Jr., chief of the FBI's Washington field office, told reporters. "No matter how offensive to some, we are keenly aware expressing views is not a crime and the protection afforded under the Constitution cannot be compromised."

Yet all speech is not alike, Potok said. Just as the disruptions directed at Democratic town hall meetings on health care are spawning a debate about the contours of civil discourse, the sometimes bitter skirmishes on the airwaves and the Web raise questions about where such talk can lead.

Some conservative commentators "really are provocateurs," Potok maintained. "They have specialized for years now in pushing the First Amendment to its limits, and they've gotten very good at it."

Conservative Mainstays and Fledgling Advocacy Groups Drive Health-Reform Opposition

By Dan Eggen and Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 16, 2009

The rowdy protests that threaten President Obama's health-care reform efforts have been spurred on by a loose network of activists -- from veteran advocacy groups with millions of dollars in funding to casual alliances of like-minded conservatives unhappy over issues from taxes to deficits to environmental laws.

Most of the groups helping to organize protests view the proposed health-care overhaul as just one part of a broader assault by government on free markets and individual liberty, their leaders say. Conservatives portray the movement as largely organic, fueled by average citizens alarmed at the direction the country has taken since Obama moved into the White House.

"I think what we've been able to do is reach out to an audience that no one has spoken with before, people who have never been involved," said Eric Odom, 29, a Chicago Web developer who heads a fledgling protest group called the American Liberty Alliance. "They've been pushed to the edge and feel they can no longer stay at home."

Several of the biggest efforts are led by established veterans in the conservative movement, whose organizations receive heavy funding from industry groups and sympathetic billionaires.

One of the most prominent organizers is FreedomWorks, a Washington-based advocacy group headed by former House majority leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.) that is also pushing to defeat Democratic climate-change legislation. FreedomWorks's major financial backers have included MetLife, Philip Morris and foundations controlled by the archconservative Scaife family, according to tax filings and other records.

Armey said in an interview that the widespread protests over health-care reform could not happen unless people were "truly scared."

"This is a real grass-roots uprising that is to some extent helped by FreedomWorks, but it would be there without FreedomWorks," he said. "It's what they call in the cyber world 'viral.' "

Odom's fight began last summer with protests in favor of offshore oil drilling. Then came the "tea parties" earlier this year, featuring boisterous rallies against Obama's stimulus package and automaker bailouts.

Now, drawing on more than 40,000 members via e-mail, Odom tracks hundreds of planned health-care protests by Zip code and uses Facebook and Twitter to link up activists. Earlier this month, he hosted a conference call with more than 200 participants.

The outlines of the anti-reform movement are still jagged, with few formal connections among the activist groups or with mainstream political organizations, such as the Republican National Committee. But interviews with group leaders and numerous town hall participants also make clear that increasing coordination has boosted turnout at many of the meetings, and it has focused the messages of many protesters.

"There's certainly synergy between these groups, and there's overlap," said Brian Burgess of CRC Public Relations, which coordinated the "Swift Boat" attacks on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 and now represents Conservatives for Patients' Rights, an anti-reform group. "But I don't think it's intentional. It's easy to see where the gaps are and how to fill a role."

One of the most visible groups is Americans for Prosperity, an anti-tax and anti-regulation group known for opposing smoking restrictions and for trying to cast doubt on global warming. The group launched a project called "Patients First" in June and has been conducting bus tours around the country to drum up opposition to the health-care legislation.

Public records show that the group is heavily funded by the Koch Family Foundations, a major contributor to conservative causes headed by two brothers who control Koch Industries, a Kansas-based oil-and-gas conglomerate. David H. Koch serves as board chairman of the Americans for Prosperity foundation.

Armey has come under fire from Democrats for leading FreedomWorks while working at DLA Piper, a firm lobbying on behalf of New Jersey pharmaceutical company Medicines Co. Armey announced Friday that he was quitting DLA Piper to protect it from "spurious attacks" over his role as a lobbyist.

Leaders of conservative groups and at the RNC have sought to distance themselves from some of the most provocative protest tactics, including shouting down lawmakers or carrying signs equating Obama to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. But these leaders also are unabashed in defending an aggressive posture; FreedomWorks features a quote from Armey on its Web site: "If you are going to go ugly, go ugly early."

As a result of such rhetoric, the Democratic National Committee and other party leaders have portrayed the protesters as products of a fake grass-roots -- or "Astroturf" -- operation led by FreedomWorks and like-minded groups. Meanwhile, conservatives note that Organizing for America, an Obama-backed group, and major unions such as the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, have pushed to turn out thousands of their supporters at the events.

The complex forces at play in the unrest were visible at town halls last week hosted by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.). At a meeting in the city of State College, Pa., hundreds of protesters gathered outside a convention hall, chanting and holding colorful picket signs bearing the logos of various conservative groups. Americans for Prosperity brought a "Patients First" bus emblazoned with a giant red hand and the slogan: "Hands Off Our Health Care!"

But the scene inside was calm. Many attendees were local residents who said they were motivated to turn out not by conservative groups but by personal opposition to Democratic health-care policies. Thirty people began the wait at 5 a.m. so they could score the coveted cards allowing them to ask Specter a question.

"By and large, I don't think the conservatives are nearly as organized as they've been portrayed," said Tom Ellicott, 54, a farm-equipment salesman who had traveled from Gettysburg, about 130 miles to the southeast. "The people that got there early like us -- and we talked to most of them as they were coming in -- none of those people were bused in. They were locals. We were by far the furthest to travel."

At a Specter forum at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., Tamie White, 46, expressed her opposition to the Obama administration, which she said is taking "us down a path to total socialism."

"What are you going to do about upholding our freedoms?" she asked Specter. "We are the land of the free and the home of the brave!"

White, a part-time bookkeeper and longtime Republican from nearby Millersburg, said in an interview that she learned about the town hall from e-mails she received from conservative groups. In March, White founded a neighborhood activist group that has about 20 members. She said the group's mission is to keep the federal government from "taking over everything."

"Government is playing God, and I'm here to say government is not God," White said.

Rucker reported from Pennsylvania.

Inside Indonesia - W.S.Rendra (1935-2009)

The peacock is no more

Barbara Hatley

Rendra (wearing white T-shirt) and other members of Bengkel Theatre in 1976 rehearsing outside Rendra’s home in the kampung of Ketanggungan, Yogyakarta, where Bengkel had its base Barbara Hatley

On Thursday 6 August W.S. Rendra, the renowned dramatist and poet, famed for his flamboyant, strutting ways as well as his huge literary talent and bold, anti-authoritarian political positions, passed away in Jakarta.

Rendra was a controversial figure, and opinions differed about some of his political and personal choices. But no-one who ever saw him perform in a play or read his poetry could doubt his amazing acting talent and magnetic personal charisma. No-one who knew the arts scene in Yogyakarta in the 1970s when his Bengkel theatre was active there could deny the centrality of his presence to the cultural life of the city. The impact of his model of theatre, politically-critical and closely tied to its social and cultural context, has been enormous, shaping the course of modern Indonesian theatre until today. His poetry too, from the early free-flowing ballads to the extended political reflections of later years, presented a distinctive and powerful voice that was influential for many.

Born in 1935 in Solo, from 1955 to the early 1960s Rendra attended Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. In 1964 he was awarded a scholarship from the American Academy of Dramatic Art and spent three years studying in the USA. When he first returned to Indonesia in 1967 he performed to startled audiences abstract, non-linear, virtually wordless dramas, termed mini kata, Indonesian responses to the Western avant garde theatre of the time. Then he settled into the pattern of play writing and theatre production which was to become his trademark, an eclectic mix of regional cultural traditions with influences from foreign sources.

First there were Javanese-style adaptations of Western classics, then original plays in which settings and dramatic styles become more and more explicitly Javanese/Indonesian, and the references to corrupt powerholders and social injustice clearly locally-based. After 1974 a government ban put a stop to Bengkel’s performances in Yogyakarta, although their outdoor rehearsals for shows in other cities drew keen audiences. On two occasions when the prohibition was lifted, first in 1977 for a performance of Sekda (The Regional Secretary) and then again in 1978 for Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga (The Struggle of the Naga Tribe), huge crowds of students and other youthful supporters roared with approval at each perceived jibe at state authority. Similar reactions from enthusiastic youthful crowds greeted Rendra’s readings of the poetry he was producing at this time, the savage portraits of greedy decadent leaders, confused, corrupted youth and suffering poor he called ’pamphlet poems’ sajak-sajak pamphlet. Rendra was giving voice to the shared sense of anger of young people who had vigorously supported the rise to power of the New Order but now felt betrayed by its corruption, repression and perceived lack of concern with social justice.

Huge crowds of students and other youthful supporters roared with approval at each perceived jibe at state authority

In mid-1978, after a bomb exploded during one his poetry readings at the Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre in Jakarta., Rendra was arrested and imprisoned for several months on the grounds that his activities threatened public order. After his release he was banned from public performance for seven years. When he re-established his Bengkel theatre as Bengkel Teater Rendra, in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta in 1985, it operated on different lines and in a very different social environment to the original Bengkel theatre in Yogya.

During the 1980s and 1990s Bengkel staged several large-scale performances and Rendra continued to hold dramatic, sell-out poetry readings. Over the last decade or so however, Bengkel Theatre has been more important for its support for other artists, providing a venue where young artists or smaller groups from the regions have been given the opportunity to perform their work. Rendra himself moved more into the role of grand old man of the literary world than the young iconoclast of earlier years. Yet it is the younger Rendra who will be remembered, the daring artist taking on Suharto and the military in his poems and plays, speaking out for a generation who felt silenced by their social and political circumstances.

His passing, along with that of Pramudya Ananta Toer three years ago, a completely different kind of artist but similarly larger than life, feels like the end of an era in both modern Indonesian culture and wider Indonesian history. During the long years of the New Order regime, Rendra kept up a spirit of cultural and political resistance that inspired a generation. For that alone he is assured of the honour and gratitude of those who come after him. ii

Barbara Hatley (Barbara.Hatley@utas.edu.au) is Professor Emeritus in the School of Asian Languages and Studies at the University of Tasmania, and author of Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage (NUS Press 2008).

See also an interview article Rendra speaks [Inside Indonesia 86: Apr-Jun 2006] by Susan Piper from when he toured Australia in 2005.

Inside Indonesia 97: Jul-Sep 2009

Nigeria Police Raid Muslim Sect

Nigerian police have raided an isolated Muslim community in the western state of Niger, taking more than 600 people into custody.

A team of 1,000 officers took part in the Saturday morning raid on the Darul Islam community, local media say.

Police say no weapons were found and there was no resistance to the arrests.

The raid comes in the aftermath of the violent uprising of the Boko Haram Islamist group last month in which hundreds of people died.

A BBC correspondent says the authorities may be taking this opportunity to disperse the Darul Islam (or House of Islam) community.

The settlement was established in the early 1990s to live according to strict Islamic principles, away from what they see as western decadence.

After the recent bloodshed involving Boko Haram in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, Darul Islam came under official scrutiny.

One of the men taken away by the police told the BBC Hausa service they were being questioned at a secondary school in Makwa, the nearest town.

He said: "We have not eaten anything since we were brought here and we have women and children among us."

"It was a team of security officers including policemen and immigration officers, operating under the instruction of the federal police command, who came to our village."

The inclusion of immigration officers is important, according to Mannir Dan-Ali, editor-in-chief of the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust.

"The authorities are trying to establish the identity and nationality of the members of the Darul Islam community," he says.

Mr Dan-Ali says those found not be from Niger state may be asked to return to their home states within Nigeria.

"Although the group have not been found to be engaged in anything against the law, the authorities appear to be keen to take this opportunity to disperse the community," he told the BBC.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8203832.stm

Published: 2009/08/16

Manage Rising Religiosity

Aug 16, 2009

PM'S NATIONAL DAY RALLY SPEECH Manage rising religiosity

By Judith Tan

RISING religiosity, which is spreading globally and in Singapore, can have side effects which must be managed carefully, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Sunday night. Speaking at the National Day Rally on Sunday, PM Lee noted that all over the world, religious groups have become 'more organised and active'. Their followers, too, have become stronger in their faiths. He spoke of the wave of revival and rise of mega-churches in the United States, powered by tele-evangelism, which has led to fierce struggle between the conservatives and liberals over moral and cultural issues. In the Muslim world, there has also been an intense reivival, added PM Lee, pointing to the trend in Malaysia and Indonesia. Singapore is also being carried along by this global tide. For examples, he noted that mosques here are over-flowing on Fridays, as do the churches on Sunday. Buddhists too are reaching out to a younger, Engish speaking generation, while Hindus are celebrating more religious festivals and events. Mr Lee said in itself, there is nothing wrong with people becoming more religious, but stronger fervour could have side effects, particularly in a multi-religious society. PM Lee cited three risks. One is aggressive proselytisation, pushing one's religion on others to the point that it becomes offensive. He cited the examples of a Christian couple who were jailed eight weeks for distributing and possessing anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic publications, and groups trying to convert the very-ill patients at hospitals. The second risk is intolerance, not respecting the beliefs of others, sometimes even within the same families. He said some children who converted from their parents' religion have refused to fulfill rites or stayed away from their parents' funerals. The third risk concerns segregation of separate exclusive circles and not integrating with those of other faiths. This could be a direct preference to stay within their own groups or an indirect result of intolerance. This included not sharing meals or disapproving of yoga or taiji because they allegedly contain religious elements. The PM said the government foresaw this 20 years ago when a White Paper on the Maintenance of Religious Harmony was presented in 1989 and the Act passed a year later. He also said the government meets regularly with religious leaders, and because of this there is no need to take any action under the law.

A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum

By KETAKI GOKHALE

RAMANAGARAM, India -- A credit crisis is brewing in "microfinance," the business of making the tiniest loans in the world.

Microlending fights poverty by helping poor people finance small businesses -- snack stalls, fruit trees, milk-producing buffaloes -- in slums and other places where it's tough to get a normal loan. But what began as a social experiment to aid the world's poorest has also shown it can turn a profit.

That has attracted private-equity funds and other foreign investors, who've poured billions of dollars over the past few years into microfinance world-wide.

As WSJ's Ketaki Gokhale reports, India's booming micro-loan industry could be headed for trouble as more people seek the loans just to pay the bills -- not start businesses.

The result: Today in India, some poor neighborhoods are being "carpet-bombed" with loans, says Rajalaxmi Kamath, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore who studies the issue. In India, microloans outstanding grew 72% in the year ended March 31, 2008, totaling $1.24 billion, according to Sa-Dhan, an industry association in New Delhi.

"We fear a bubble," says Jacques Grivel of the Luxembourg-based Finethic, a $100 million investment fund that focuses on Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia, though it has no exposure to India. "Too much money is chasing too few good candidates."

Here in Ramanagaram, a silk-making city in southern India, Zahreen Taj noticed the change. Suddenly, in the shantytown where she lives, lots of people wanted to loan her money. She borrowed $125 to invest in her husband's vegetable cart. Then she borrowed more.

"I took from one bank to pay the previous one. And I did it again," says Ms. Taj, 46 years old. In four years, she took a total of four loans from two microlenders in progressively larger amounts -- two for $209, another for $293, and then $356.

Related Articles

• For Global Investors, 'Microfinance' Funds Pay Off -- So Far
  Investing in funds that make small loans to third-world borrowers has been lucrative the past 12 months. But the weak global economy has some investors worried about trouble ahead.
• Group Borrowing Leads to Pressure
  Hasina Bano, a silk reeling factory worker, says the most worrisome aspect of microfinance is that a woman's debts are public knowledge.

Journal Community

• Vote: What is the overall effect of microfinance loans on people in developing nations?

At the height of her borrowing binge, she says, she bought a television set. The arrival of microfinance "increased our desires for things we didn't have," Ms. Taj says. "We all have dreams."

Today her house is bare except for a floor mat and a pile of kitchen utensils. By selling her TV, appliances and jewelry, she cut her debt to $94. That's equal to about a fourth of her annual income.

Around Ramanagaram, the silk-making city where Ms. Taj lives, the debt overload is stirring up social tension. Many borrowers complain that the loans' effective interest rates -- which can vary from 24% to 39% annually -- fuel a cycle of indebtedness.

In July, town authorities asked India's central bank to either cap those rates or revoke lenders' licenses. "Otherwise, the present situation may lead to a law-and-order problem in the district," wrote K.G. Jagdeesh, deputy commissioner for the city of Ramanagaram, in a letter to the central bank.

Alpana Killawala, a spokeswoman for the Reserve Bank of India, said in an email that the central bank doesn't as a practice cap interest rates for microlenders but does press them not to charge "excessive" rates.

Meanwhile, local mosque leaders have started telling people in the predominantly Muslim community to stop paying their loans. Borrowers have complied en masse.

The mosque leaders are also demanding that lenders give them an accounting of their finances. The lenders say they're not about to comply with that.

The repayment revolt has spread to other communities, including the nearby city of Channapatna, and could reach further across India, observers say.

"We are very worried about this," says Vijayalakshmi Das of FWWB India, a company that connects microlenders with financing from mainstream banks. "Risk management is not a strong point for the majority" of local microfinance providers, she adds. "Microfinance needs to learn a lesson."

Nationwide, average Indian household debt from microfinance lenders almost quintupled between 2004 and 2009, to about $135 from $27 or so, according to a survey by Sa-Dhan, the industry association. These sums are obviously tiny by global standards. But in rural India, the poorest often subsist on just a few dollars a week.

Some observers blame a fundamental shift in the microfinance business for feeding the problem. Traditionally, microlenders were nonprofits focused on community service. In recent years, however, many of the larger microlending firms have registered with the Indian central bank as a type of for-profit finance company. That places them under greater regulatory scrutiny, but also gives them wider access to funding.

This change opened the door to more private-equity money. Of the 54 private-equity deals (totaling $1.19 billion) in India's banking and finance sector in the past 18 months, microfinance accounted for 16 deals worth at least $245 million, according to Venture Intelligence, a Chennai-based private-equity research service.

The influx of private-equity cash is the latest sign of the global rise of microfinance, pioneered by Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus decades ago. On Wednesday, Mr. Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was one of 16 people honored by President Barack Obama with the Medal of Freedom.

"We've seen a major mission drift in microfinance, from being a social agency first," says Arnab Mukherji, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, to being "primarily a lending agency that wants to maximize its profit."

Making loans in poorest India sounds inherently risky. But investors argue that the rural developing world has remained largely insulated from the global economic slump.

International private-equity funds started taking notice of Indian microfinance in March 2007. That's when Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm in Silicon Valley, participated in a $11.5 million share offering by SKS Microfinance Ltd. of Hyderabad, India, one of the world's largest microlenders.

"SKS showed the industry how to tap private equity to scale up," said Arun Natarajan of Venture Intelligence.

Numerous deals followed with investors including Boston-based Sandstone Capital, San Francisco-based Valiant Capital, and SVB India Capital Partners, an affiliate of Silicon Valley Bank.

As of last December, there were over 100 microfinance-investment funds globally with total estimated assets under management of $6.5 billion, according to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, or CGAP, a research institute hosted at the World Bank.

Over the past year, investors have poured more than $1 billion into the largest microfinance funds managed by companies, a 30% increase. The extra financing will allow the industry to loan out 20% more this year than last, much of it to countries such as the Ukraine, Cambodia and Bosnia, CGAP says.

Here in Ramanagaram, Lalitha Sharma recalls when the first microfinance firm arrived seven years ago. Those were heady times for her fellow slum-dwellers: Money flowed freely. Field agents offered loans to people earning as little as $9 a month.

Ketaki Gokhale/The Wall Street Journal

Ketaki Gokhale/The Wall Street Journal

Lalitha Sharma, top, racked up 10 loans from the many microlenders who have set up shop in her slum over the past few years. Here she helps with her husband's snack stand. Like many of her neighbors in Ramanagaram, India, she can earn about $8 a week, on average, working in the city's silk factories, one of which is shown above.

They came to Ms. Sharma's door, too. She borrowed $126. Under the loan's terms, she said she would use it to finance a small business -- a snack stand she runs with her husband. Many microfinance providers require loans to be used to fund a business.

But Ms. Sharma, a 29-year-old mother of three, acknowledges she lied. "You have to mention a business to get a loan," she says. "There was no other way to get the money." She used it to pay overdue bills and to buy food for her family. Ms. Sharma earns $8 a week, on average, in a factory where she extracts silk thread from cocoons.

Over the next four years, she took nine more loans from three different lenders, in progressively larger sums of $209, $272, $335 and $390, according to lending records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A spokesman for BSS Microfinance Private Ltd. of Bangalore, another of her lenders, declined to comment on her borrowing history, citing central-bank privacy rules.

This year, she took another $314 loan to pay for her brother-in-law's wedding, again saying the money would be used for business purposes. She also juggled loans from two other microlenders -- $115, $167 and $251 from the Bangalore lender Ujjivan, and $230 from Asmitha Microfin Ltd.

Ujjivan confirmed it issued three loans. An Asmitha official said he had a record of a loan to a Ramanagaram resident named Lalitha, but at a different address.

"I understand that it is credit, that you have to pay interest, and your debt grows," Ms. Sharma says. "But sometimes the problems we have seem like they can only be solved by taking another loan. One problem solved, another created."

Many of the problems in Indian microlending might sound familiar to students of the U.S. mortgage crisis, which was worsened by so-called "no-documentation" loans and by commission-paid brokers. Similarly in India, microlenders' field officers are often paid on commission, giving them financial incentive to issue more loans, according to Ms. Kamath.

Lenders are aware that applicants often lie on their paperwork, says Ujjivan's founder, Samit Ghosh. In fact, he says, Ujjivan's field staffers often know the real story. But his organization maintained a policy of "relying on the information from the customer, rather than our own market intelligence."

He says that policy will now change because of the trouble in Ramanagaram. The lender will "learn from the situation, so it won't happen again," he says.

It's tough to monitor how borrowers spend their money. Ujjivan used to perform regular "loan utilization checks," but stopped because it was so costly. Now it only checks in with people borrowing more than $310, Mr. Ghosh says.

BSS checks how loans are being spent a week after disbursing the money, and makes random house visits, according to S. Panchakshari, its operations manager. The company doesn't have the power to insist that borrowers not take loans from multiple lenders, he said in an email.

Lenders also tend to set up shop where others have already paved the way, causing saturation. There is a "follow-the-herd mentality," says Mr. Ghosh at Ujjivan. Microlenders "often go into towns where they see one or two others operating. That leaves vast chunks of India underserved, "and then a huge concentration of microfinance in a few areas."

In Ramanagaram district, seven microfinance lenders serve 22,500 women (most microloans go to women because lenders consider them less likely to default than men). Loans outstanding here total $4.4 million, according to the Association of Karnataka Microfinance Institutions, a group of lenders.

Lenders in Ramanagaram say the loan-repayment revolt was instigated in part by Muslim clerics who oppose the empowerment of women through microfinance. Most lenders are still servicing loans to Hindu borrowers, but have stopped issuing fresh loans to Muslims. "We can't do business with Muslims there right now," says Mr. Ghosh. "Nobody wants to take that kind of risk."

The irony is that, for years, Indian microlenders have touted themselves as bankers to the nation's impoverished minority Muslim community, which has long been excluded from the formal banking sector.

A 2006 report commissioned by India's prime minister found that while Muslims represented 13% of India's population, they accounted for only 4.6% of total loans outstanding from public-sector banks.

Islam prohibits the paying of interest, but mosque officials don't cite that as the reason for the loan-payment strike. They stressed the overindebtedness of the community, and the strains it's putting on family life.

Ramanagaram's period of wild borrowing irks some residents, both Hindu and Muslim. Alamelamma, a 28-year-old vegetable seller, says that she has benefited from microfinancing and that the profligate borrowers "have ruined it for the rest of us."

One gully away, Ms. Sharma, the heavy debtor, has a different view: She would like to see the microlenders kicked out of the community entirely. "Not just for now, but forever," she says.

—Rob Copeland contributed to this article.

Islamic Rebels Gain Strength in the Sahara

Moving South From Algeria, al Qaeda-Affiliated Insurgents Find Support Among Locals in Mauritania, Mali and Niger

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels are spreading far beyond their original battleground in Algeria and increasingly threatening Africa's Sahara belt, scaring away investors and tourists as they undercut the region's fragile economies.

Dozens of security personnel, as well as an American aid worker and a British tourist, were killed by militants in several attacks in the region this summer alone. The attacks -- which prompted this year's lucrative Paris-Dakar car race to relocate to South America -- have become more frequent and brazen. Recent hits occurred not just in the remote desert but also in Mali's tourist magnet Timbuktu and in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, where a suicide bomber attacked the French Embassy last weekend.

Though still dominated by the veterans of Algeria's civil war, this Saharan insurgency has grown deep local roots. Armed bands roaming the desert include hundreds of recruits from Mauritania, Mali and Niger -- vast and impoverished countries that straddle the Arab world and black West Africa, and that relied on the now-collapsed tourism industry as the key source of foreign exchange.

"What had started out as an Algerian problem is now engulfing Mali and Mauritania. They are the weak link," says Zakaria Ould Ahmed Salem, a specialist on political Islam at the University of Nouakchott.

An Islamist insurgency that cost 200,000 lives erupted in Algeria 18 years ago, after that country's secular regime annulled the second round of elections that the Islamists were poised to win. But it is only in the past few years, as Algerian security forces contained the violence at home, that the rebels -- who seek to create an Islamic state encompassing North Africa -- began mounting operations in neighboring Saharan countries that had been unscathed by international terrorism.

Underlining its wider ambitions, the main Algerian insurgent movement, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, re-branded itself in 2007 as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Actual operational links between AQIM militants in the Sahara and traditional al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan or Afghanistan are tenuous, if they exist at all, Western officials say.

But the group's new name has made it easier to find money and recruits for the cause outside Algeria. "Someone like Bin Laden is considered a hero here," explains Mohamed Fall Ould Oumere, publisher of La Tribune newsweekly in Nouakchott.

Mauritania, where most people speak Arabic and watch satellite TV chains like Al-Jazeera, is a particularly fertile ground for AQIM's growth, and accounts for a growing share of the movement's cadres, Western diplomats say. In Mali, Niger and Chad, the bulk of AQIM recruits also come from Arab-speaking communities, which in these countries are outnumbered by black African majorities.

AQIM is trying to spread south, "aiming to attract the young Muslims of the region -- white ones and black ones," says Isselmou Ould Moustafa, a specialist on AQIM who interviewed many of the group's members for his Mauritanian publication, Tahalil Hebdo.

Security officials in Nigeria recently claimed that AQIM trained in Algeria some members of Boko Haram, the Islamist sect whose armed uprising cost several hundred lives in northern Nigeria last month. According to some experts on AQIM, there is also evidence of contacts between the Saharan insurgents and the Shabaab, the radical Islamist militia controlling a chunk of Somalia. "It's an arc of fire," says Mr. Oumere.

All the governments in the region say they are fighting back. But the area's political instability and frequent bickering between neighboring countries have long made it easy for Islamist rebels to roam the Sahara, obtaining sanctuary and help from local tribes. Mali and Mauritania both have strained relations with Algeria. Planned regional summits to tackle the cross-border terrorism problem have been repeatedly postponed.

A military coup in Mauritania last year complicated the situation: The U.S. reacted to the overthrowing of Mauritania's democratically elected president by reducing military cooperation with the country and pulling out a reconnaissance plane that flew regular sorties over the Sahara to search for insurgents. Cooperation is likely to be restored now that Mauritania has held a democratic election last month.

Government officials here say that, without outside help, Saharan countries have little chance of defeating AQIM. "This is a zone that can't be controlled. We don't know who's out there in the vast desert and what are they doing," says Mohamed Ould Rzeizim, who served until this week as Mauritania's minister of interior.

To finance its campaign, AQIM is smuggling Europe-bound cigarettes, drugs and illegal immigrants through the desert, Mauritanian and Western officials say. Depots of untaxed cigarettes, often brought in by ship from South America, dot the desert along Mauritania's porous northern borders.

An equally important source of revenue for AQIM is ransom money -- estimated at tens of millions of dollars -- paid by European governments for the freedom of European tourists kidnapped in separate attacks in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and Niger. The hostages were usually transported across the Sahara to AQIM's bases in lawless northern Mali, where local officials helped negotiate the ransom collection and the tourists' release.

Mali's role as a sanctuary for AQIM has long infuriated Algeria and the U.S. The country appears to be taking a harder line after the Islamist rebels -- who refrained from killing their hostages in the past -- announced in June that they executed their British captive, Edwin Dyer.

A few days after the killing of Mr. Dyer, suspected militants also gunned down in Timbuktu the regional chief of Malian intelligence, Lt. Col. Lamina Ould Bou. The colonel, an ethnic Arab and former Islamist rebel, had played a crucial role in Mali's efforts against AQIM. According to Malian government accounts and al Qaeda Internet postings, armed clashes in the region in following weeks killed dozens of Malian troops and Islamist guerrillas.

"We are now engaged in a total struggle against al Qaeda," Mali's President Amadou Toumani Touré declared last month.

The Saharan rebels have so far targeted only foreigners and security forces, sparing civilian targets like restaurants and hotels. In Algeria, Pakistan and Iraq, by contrast, al Qaeda-affiliated militants showed no concern about killing large numbers of Muslim civilians.

"These youngsters are not yet ready to carry out blind attacks and to explode car bombs, Algerian-style. They have not yet completely broken with the Mauritanian society," says Mr. Moustafa, the AQIM expert. But, he cautions, bloodier attacks are likely to happen soon: "They have bad teachers. Their future targets will be Mauritanian."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Foreign Talent Loads the Bases in Minor Leagues

By JOEL MILLMAN

BOISE, Idaho -- Like many teenagers spending this summer abroad, Hak-Ju Lee is immersing himself in a foreign culture, making friends and tasting exotic food like moose stew. Unlike most teens, however, he's getting paid three-quarters of a million dollars to do it.

Mr. Lee, 18 years old, is a shortstop, and the culture he is experiencing is American minor-league baseball, where major-league teams develop their talent in small towns across the country.

For decades, minor-league rosters seemed the essence of America's heartland. But thanks to growing numbers of foreign players like Mr. Lee, the minors are fast turning into a veritable United Nations.

The Boise Hawks' Imported Talent

View Slideshow

Sean Flanigan for the Wall Street Journal

Hak-Ju Lee is one of 18 international players on the Boise baseball roster.

The gangly infielder is one of three South Koreans playing this summer for the Boise Hawks, an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. The Hawks' opening-day roster boasted 18 of 25 players from abroad -- mostly Venezuela and the Dominican Republic -- making it one of the most "imported" of all minor-league teams.

Recent changes in U.S. immigration law and growing competition in baseball for raw talent have allowed the minor-league farm system to flourish with imported players. It has been a home run for globalization, but bad news for U.S.-born players, who suddenly have much more competition. Across the minor and major leagues, the total number of foreign-born players is growing fast, to almost 3,500 of the 8,532 players under contract this summer, from 2,964 three years ago.

Boise Hawks' hitting instructor, Ricardo Medina, a native of Panama who translates at team meetings in what has become almost a bilingual program, notes that Mr. Lee and his Korean teammates are getting something else from their summer in Idaho. "I think they may be learning more Spanish than English," he jokes.

The three South Koreans on the Hawks' roster matches the total number playing at the major-league level. Today, 19 Koreans play in the minor leagues, compared with just seven five years ago.

This summer's crop of foreign players in the minors includes baseball's first-ever pros from India, two of them on the Pittsburgh Pirates' Gulf Coast league team. That league's rosters include players from Honduras, Haiti, Russia and the Czech Republic.

Minor League Baseball Becomes Melting Pot

As a result of unlimited work visas, minor league baseball is seeing a new influx of international players. Joel Millman reports from Boise, Idaho.

Eight teams have minor leaguers from Brazil, including Fábio Murakami, an outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies' Williamsport, Pa., minor-league team, the Crosscutters. Mr. Murakami is one of several South Americans of Japanese descent in the minors, a list that includes Claudio Fukunaga and Lucas Nakandakare, both from Argentina and under contract to Tampa Bay.

One Red Sox farm team boasts an even more exotic tandem: the brothers Crew Tipene Moanaroa, called "Boss," and Hohua Moanaroa, called "Moko." Born in New South Wales, Australia, the Moanaroas are believed to be the first members of New Zealand's Maori tribe to play baseball professionally in the U.S. "Boss" is a first baseman. "Moko" plays outfield.

New Zealand's representative in the minors is Scott Campbell. He plays third base for the Blue Jays' Eastern League affiliate, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

The surge of young foreign players into the U.S. minor leagues began in 2007, a few months after then-president and former major-league team owner George W. Bush signed the Creating Opportunities for Minor League Professionals, Entertainers and Teams Act, known as the Compete Act. It freed the farm systems of major-league teams from having to compete with all U.S. employers seeking H2B work visas for foreign employees, the supply of which usually was exhausted each year by February. Now, teams can import as many prospects as they want.

"There is no longer a limit on work visas," explains Oneri Fleita, the Florida-born director of minor-league development for the Cubs. "So, yeah, you might see more foreign players getting an opportunity."

The Cubs, who signed Korea's Hak-Ju Lee right out of high school, have become one of the most aggressive signers of foreign players. In 2006, 86 players in the Cubs' major and minor-league system were foreign-born. This year, 142 Cubs are imports.

The changes pose a challenge to American teens hoping to make the big leagues. Instead of signing hundreds of U.S. amateurs out of high school -- the traditional business model for stocking minor-league rosters -- teams are drafting fewer U.S. kids and signing more so-called nondraft free agents, the vast majority of them teenagers from Latin America.

Foreign Exchange

See the statistics of the players mentioned in this story:

Hak-Ju Lee (South Korea), Boise Hawks

Fabio Murakami (Brazil), Williamsport Crosscutters

Claudio Fukunaga (Argentina), Gulf Coast League Rays

Lucas Nakandakare (Argentina), Gulf Coast League Rays

Crew Tipene Moanaroa (Australia), Gulf Coast League Red Sox

Hohua Moanaroa (Australia), Gulf Coast League Red Sox

Scott Campbell (New Zealand), New Hampshire Fisher Cats

Eduardo Figueroa (Venezuela), Boise Hawks

George Matheus (Venezuela), Boise Hawks

Eric Gonzalez (Canary Islands), Lake Elsinore Storm

This summer, major-league teams spent over $70 million signing nondraft free agents from outside the country. That is up from $54 million last year, and just under $30 million in 2006, the last year before the Compete Act.

Economics plays a huge role. U.S.-born players drafted out of high school rarely sign a contract to turn pro without a cash bonus, most in excess of $100,000. This summer, the Cubs have forked out more than $6 million in signing bonuses to 26 U.S. prospects, an average of nearly a quarter million apiece.

While some foreign players like Mr. Lee got hefty signing bonuses, the majority do not. Latin players in particular can be had for a lot less -- just $10,000 in the case of Venezuelan pitcher Eduardo Figueroa, one of Mr. Lee's teammates. Third baseman George Matheus, another Hawk from Venezuela, received $15,000 for signing.

Lifting visa limits creates an opportunity for players like Eric Gonzalez, a 22-year-old Spaniard in the San Diego Padres' farm system. Mr. Gonzalez was the last player drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 2005, when he was a 17-year-old high-schooler in the Canary Islands. But under the work-visa cap then prevailing in baseball, the Braves would have had to release another foreign prospect to sign him, Mr. Gonzalez explains, "or else send me somewhere overseas to play, probably Australia."

So Mr. Gonzalez didn't get a shot, and instead polished his skills at the University of South Alabama. Signed by the Padres after graduating last year, he has already whipped through one level of minor-league competition, winning a promotion from the Fort Wayne TinCaps to the Lake Elsinore Storm in July. But the cash rewards will have to wait. "I signed for $1,000, before taxes," laughs Mr. Gonzales, one of two Spaniards in the minors this year. "Basically, I signed in exchange for a plane ticket and a work visa."

In the past, visa restrictions meant many foreign prospects were sent to play for sister teams in places like the Dominican Republic and Australia, where they tried to get enough visibility to fill a coveted visa spot. Nowadays, teams figure they can train foreign talent personally, and give youngsters a chance to learn English and assimilate with U.S.-born teammates.

On both counts, South Korea's Mr. Lee is an enthusiastic student. "Stolen base! Slider! Fastball! Right down the middle!" the teenager recently shouted with a smile, demonstrating the English terms he's mastered since arriving in Idaho.

Much like in an exchange-student program, local families host foreign ballplayers, getting season tickets in return. Mr. Lee lives in a suburban home festooned with heads of antelope and deer and other hunting trophies. He has learned to play Rock Band with his 17-year-old host-family "brother," a ballplayer who is entering his senior year in high school.

His typical teenage observation about life in America: lack of sleep. "Bus ride after game from Vancouver?" he groans, feigning fatigue. "Thirteen hours! Oh, my God. Tired!"

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com

Hostages Overcome Pirates on 2 Fishing Boats Off Somali Coast

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Using machetes and guns, the men fought a desperate battle to take control of two boats off the Somali coast. But this time, it was not pirates who attacked — it was Egyptian fishermen who had been held hostage for four months and who killed two of their captors and took others prisoner as they regained control of their two ships.

On Friday, the roughly three dozen newly liberated fishermen sailed toward home.

One pirate was in custody in Somalia after local fishermen found him near shore with machete wounds, the police there said. Another pirate, who said he escaped during the fight on Thursday, described the struggle in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

“They attacked us with machetes and other tools, seized some of our guns and then fought us,” said the pirate, who identified himself only by his nom de guerre, Miraa. “I could see two dead bodies of my colleagues lying on the ship. I do not know the fate of the nine others.”

The fishermen on both vessels coordinated their attack, and some of the pirates even cooperated with them, making it easier for the other gunmen to be overpowered, said Mohamed Alnahdi, the executive manager of Mashreq Marine Product, which had hired the fishing boats.

“The crew on both boats started their operations at one time. They were coordinating among themselves,” he said in a telephone interview from Bossaso, a Somali town where he spent more than a month trying to negotiate the fishermen’s release.

Mr. Alnahdi, whose company is based in Yemen, said the ransom talks had deadlocked on Thursday, with him offering $200,000 but the pirates demanding $1.5 million.

After the escape, the fishing boats, the Ahmed Samara and the Momtaz, sailed for Yemen, where the crews were to hand over the captured pirates. The men will then fly home to Egypt, said Mohammad Nasr, owner of the Ahmed Samara.

The struggle took place off the coastal town of Las Qorey along the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest waterways. It is infested with Somali pirates.

Pirate attacks worldwide more than doubled in the first half of 2009 as they surged in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia, which together accounted for 130 of the cases, according to an international maritime watchdog.

Naval patrols by ships from the United States, European nations, China, Russia and India have failed to halt the attacks.

The ending to the fishermen’s four-month ordeal was unusual, but it was not the first time a crew fought back.

In April, an American crew fought off Somali pirates until the captain, Richard Phillips, offered himself as a hostage in a bid to save their lives.

He was held hostage in a lifeboat for five days and was freed after United States Navy snipers killed three of his captors.

Somalia has not had an effective government since the 1991 overthrow of a dictatorship plunged the country into chaos. Pirates have operated freely around Somalia’s 1,900-mile coastline.

Legislation before Congress would require the Defense Department to put armed teams on ships flying the United States flag that are passing through high-risk waters, specifically around the Horn of Africa.

Iraqi Journalists Protesting in Baghdad Say the Government Is Trying to Censor Them

By SAM DAGHER

BAGHDAD — Nearly 100 Iraqi journalists, news media workers and their supporters protested in Baghdad on Friday against what they said was a growing push by the country’s governing Shiite political parties to muzzle them.

“No, no to muzzling!” they shouted as they marched down Mutanabi Street. “Yes, yes to freedom!”

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has sought to censor certain publications and books, block Web sites it deems offensive and pass a new media law that would clamp down on journalists in the name of protecting them.

The proposed law, which was sent to Parliament last month, offers government grants to journalists and their families if they are disabled or killed because of “a terror act.” According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 167 Iraqi reporters and media support workers were killed in Iraq between March 2003 and July 2008. But the bill also defines what the government considers “moral” and sound journalistic practices.

Zuhair al-Jezairy, editor in chief of the Aswat Al Iraq news agency, who was in attendance, said that while the journalists’ grievances were legitimate, their message was diluted by the fact that most of them still viewed the government as their patron. “There are journalists who expect guns, land and salaries from the government,” he said.

Mr. Jezairy said that many Iraqi journalists — employed by outlets owned by the government, political parties and even neighboring countries with agendas in Iraq — had been turned into tools in the political struggle. There were abundant signs of this at the demonstration itself, which seemed to have as much to do with a recent spat over a bank robbery as with press freedom.

Sheik Jalaleddin al-Saghir, a Shiite cleric and member of Parliament from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Party, lashed out last week at news media reports that he said insinuated that his party was behind the robbery, in which eight billion dinars, or $7 million, was stolen and eight people were killed. He said many of the journalists were members of Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath Party and promised to punish the offenders.

Among those leading Friday’s protest were two Shiite politicians who are rivals of Mr. Saghir’s. As the event got under way, word spread that the journalists who organized it were in the camp of the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, who has ambitions of becoming the next prime minister. And the event was boycotted by the Iraqi journalists’ union, which was promised plots of land for its members earlier this year by Mr. Maliki.

One journalist in particular, Ahmed Abdul-Hussein, was the target of much of Sheik Saghir’s wrath. In a recent Op-Ed article in the state-owned newspaper Al-Sabah, which is loyal to Mr. Maliki, Mr. Abdul-Hussein wrote that “we know, that they know, that we know” that the party that stole the money was going to use it to bribe people in the national elections next year. He offered no proof and did not name the party.

“How many blankets can you buy with eight billion dinars?” he wrote. Sheik Saghir took that as a reference to his party, which distributed blankets and electric heaters to voters during the provincial elections last January.

Iraqi Refugees Held in Denmark Begin a Hunger Strike

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and CATHERINE CONTIGUGLIA

PARIS — When Danish police officers raided a church this week in Copenhagen to dislodge Iraqi refugees living there, they hoped to end a three-month-long stalemate.

Instead, the raid, and videos that are said to show the police beating the refugees’ supporters, have generated intensive news coverage, sparked a demonstration by thousands who demanded the Iraqis be allowed to stay in Denmark and led to a hunger strike by some of the refugees.

The trouble began Wednesday when the police arrived at the church to detain about 20 men who had been living there with permission from the church’s leader. Officials said they wanted to round up the men, who had been denied asylum, because they were not keeping in touch with the authorities who were working on their deportations.

When the men refused to leave the church, the police said they began to remove them against their will. But local activists who supported the refugees and had learned of the raid blocked the police vans in an attempt to stop the detentions.

Videos that are said to show the confrontation that followed show some activists being dragged away and one being clubbed by the police. In the end, the police arrested 19 of the refugees, all men, and, according to The Copenhagen Post, numerous protesters as well.

A woman identified as Christina Sondergaard, who was beaten by an officer with a baton , told Denmark’s TV2 on Friday that she would file a complaint against the police.

Katrine Jensen, 27, a spokeswoman for Kirkeasyl, a volunteer group supporting the Iraqis, said the police used batons and pepper spray to clear those trying to block them. She said that she was outside the church during the confrontation and that a number of the demonstrators were injured.

The raid was a joint operation by the National Police and the Copenhagen police. Flemming Steen Munch, a Copenhagen police spokesman, declined to comment on the accusations of brutality.

Justice Minister Brian Mikkelsen was quoted in the Danish news media as saying: “I think we would have preferred not to have to use force. But we happen to live in a democratic society which is built on people abiding by the country’s laws and rules — and there’s no special treatment just because you occupy a church.”

But The Copenhagen Post reported that a former prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, criticized the police action, saying, “It went beyond the bounds of common humanity and decency.” Iraqi refugees had been living at the Brorson Church since May, and the group that was there this week included about 40 women and children, who were not taken away.

The news of the raid on the church led to a peaceful demonstration on Thursday night in Copenhagen seeking asylum for all the refugees. Organizers said 20,000 people had gathered, but the police put the number at 12,000.

The arrested refugees were sent to the Sandholm immigration holding camp outside Copenhagen and nearly all have refused food since Thursday, according to Helge Norrung, a lawyer representing some of those detained. He said the Iraqis’ lives could be endangered by militants if they returned home.

An immigration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not talk about individual cases but said Denmark turned away refugees if it believed they would not be endangered by returning home.

An Iraqi delegation is scheduled to visit Denmark next week to discuss the fate of the refugees, officials and lawyers said.

Danish officials said that 300 Iraqis were granted asylum out of 562 who requested it last year.

Iran Tries to Suppress Rape Allegations

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran’s clerical leadership on Friday stepped up a campaign to silence opposition claims that protesters had been raped in prison, with prayer leaders in at least three major cities denouncing the accusations and their chief sponsor.

The accusations of rape — usually a taboo subject in Iran — have multiplied and provoked strong reactions in the days since a reformist cleric and presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, broached the subject last weekend. His allegations added fuel to an already volatile debate about prison abuse in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 12 election.

Also on Friday, a group of reformist former lawmakers issued an extraordinary statement on opposition Web sites in which they denounced the government’s harsh tactics and appealed to a powerful state body to investigate the qualifications of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although it was not clear who had endorsed the statement, or even if all of the lawmakers were in the country, it appeared to be the most direct challenge to the supreme leader’s authority yet in the unrest following the election.

With a renewed volley of opposition accusations in the air, a fundamentalist cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, called Mr. Karroubi’s claims of prison rape a “total slander against the Islamic system” and demanded in a sermon at Tehran University on Friday that Mr. Karroubi be prosecuted. “We expect the Islamic system to show an appropriate response to this,” he said.

Prayer leaders in Qum and Mashad delivered similar diatribes. Friday Prayer sermons usually reflect talking points given out by the office of Ayatollah Khamenei.

The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, had already dismissed Mr. Karroubi’s claims as “sheer lies” this week, saying an inquiry ordered days earlier had found no evidence that protesters detained in the demonstrations that followed the election had been raped.

Even before the rape claims emerged, hard-line political figures and clerics had been calling for the arrest of Mr. Karroubi, along with the leader of the opposition, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and former President Mohammad Khatami. In the course of a mass trial of reformists that began earlier this month, prosecutors have accused all three men of being linked to a conspiracy to topple Iran’s government through a “velvet revolution.”

But Mr. Karroubi appeared to be undaunted, and he pressed ahead with more claims of jailhouse sexual abuse in a statement posted on his party’s Web site late Thursday. He said he had received testimony from former prisoners that they had seen other detainees “forced to go naked, crawling on their hands and knees like animals, with prison guards riding on their backs.” Others told of watching as fellow prisoners guilty only of marching and chanting slogans were beaten to death, Mr. Karroubi said.

“Insults and criticism won’t make me silent,” Mr. Karroubi said, after dismissing Mr. Larijani’s quick investigation of the abuse claims as meaningless. “I’ll defend the rights of the people as long as I live and you can’t stop my hand, tongue and pen.”

The statement by the reformist former lawmakers appeared to be the strongest public attack yet on Ayatollah Khamenei. Long unquestioned, Ayatollah Khamenei’s status as a neutral arbiter and Islamic symbol has suffered since he prematurely blessed the election that many Iranians believe was rigged. In recent weeks, some protesters have begun chanting “death to Khamenei” — a phrase that was almost unimaginable before — and the same words have appeared in graffiti on buildings in Tehran.

The authors of the statement made their appeal to the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that has the power to appoint the supreme leader and, in theory, to dismiss him. The statement is unlikely to have much impact beyond angering conservatives, who control many seats in the 86-member Assembly.

The former lawmakers praised Mr. Karroubi for publicizing the rape accusations and angrily dismissed the mass trial of reformists now under way as a Stalinesque show trial. They also echoed opposition complaints about the brutality of the crackdown that followed the protests.

A day before the statement appeared, one member of the Assembly of Experts, Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, wrote his own letter calling for the group to hold an emergency meeting, opposition Web sites reported.

“I am calling honestly and for the benefit of the country that the Assembly of Experts should convene an open meeting and look into people’s complaints, as well as those of Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi,” Mr. Dastgheib wrote.

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

Pakistan Lifts Longtime Ban on Political Activities in Restive Tribal Areas

By SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Asif Ali Zardari announced Friday that he was lifting a longtime ban on political activities in the restive tribal regions in the northwest, hoping to reduce the influence of the Taliban and Islamic militancy in the areas.

The seven semiautonomous tribal regions have never been fully incorporated into the country’s legal and political system. They are instead still governed by a set of 100-year-old rules, known as Frontier Crimes Regulations, dating from the British empire.

Rights groups have long denounced the rules as draconian and Pakistan’s political parties have urged the government to do away with them, calling them a dark legacy of British colonial rule.

“Today, I am announcing the permission of political activities in the F.A.T.A. to bring them into the main political stream,” Mr. Zardari said in a live broadcast, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as the region is formally known.

Mr. Zardari chose a symbolic moment to make the announcement: the eve of the national holiday marking Pakistan’s 62nd year of independence from the British Empire.

But analysts here said the announcement also seemed timed to coincide with a visit by Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy for the region, who is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Saturday.

The ban on political activities and parties had created a vacuum that was increasingly exploited by militants and religious extremists, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to tighten their hold on the region as they mounted attacks on tribal elders and the area’s political overseers appointed by the central government, analysts and political workers here have said.

“Now, political parties can organize themselves in the tribal areas and political process can start,” said Sheik Mansoor Ahmed, an official of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party. “It was a longstanding demand.”

Farhatullah Khan Babar, the spokesman for Mr. Zardari, said that under the Constitution, the president was empowered to make regulations for the tribal areas, giving him the authority to lift the ban.

The reform package now envisages broad and fundamental changes in the colonial-era regulations, which had given the officials administering the areas, called political agents, unbridled power and authority.

Under the reforms, arbitrary arrest of men, women and children would be curtailed; a special judicial commission similar to a high court would be set up; and the finances of the political agents would be audited.

Still, the announcement was not welcomed uniformly.

Mr. Zardari’s coalition partners sharply distanced themselves from it.

“We were not consulted,” said Muhammad Zahid Khan, a senator belonging to the Awami National Party, A.N.P., a nationalist party that leads the government in the North-West Frontier Province.

“Whatever good or bad comes out of this decision, we do not own it,” he said.

Rights groups and analysts expressed concern over the lack of accord between the Pakistan Peoples Party and its coalition partners.

“The lack of agreement between the coalition partners would mean that the changes would become controversial and the whole process would not remain smooth,” said Ibn-e-Abdu Rahman, a director of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group.

“So far, as permission for political activities is concerned, it is a very healthy development,” he said. “It is an advance and would enable the people to gradually come out of the stagnant tribal relations.”

But he warned that there were still some vested interest groups in the tribal regions “that do not want complete democratization of the areas.”

Ahmed Rashid, a journalist based in Lahore and the best-selling author of the book “Taliban,” said he felt that the changes were introduced now under pressure by the United States and Britain.

“It is a good move,” Mr. Rashid said, “but I wish it had been done a year ago.”

Idle Iraqi Date Farms Show Decline of Economy

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — Late July and early August is date harvesting season in Iraq, when within the span of a few weeks the desert sun turns hard green spheres into tender, golden brown fruit prized for its sweetness.

But here in Iraq, one of the places where agriculture was developed more than 7,000 years ago, there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates — or much of anything for that matter.

As recently as the 1980s, Iraq was self-sufficient in producing wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and sheep and poultry products. Its industrial sector exported textiles and leather goods, including purses and shoes, as well as steel and cement. But wars, sanctions, poor management, international competition and disinvestment have left each industry a shadow of its former self.

Slowly, Iraq’s economy has become based almost entirely on imports and a single commodity.

“Ninety-five percent of the government’s revenues come from oil,” said Ghazi al-Kenan, an Iraqi economist. “And while they are trying to attract investment in the private sector, Iraq finds itself in very difficult circumstances — without sufficient electricity, machinery and a drought.”

The agricultural industry has been particularly damaged during the past few years, a situation perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the country’s once bountiful date orchards. Date palms have been left to die for lack of water, and fungi and pests have ruined thousands of tons of fruit because the country has only three crop-dusting airplanes and three qualified pilots. American military approval is still needed to fly.

Even the wealthiest and most influential date farmers are struggling. Faraoun Ahmed Hussain, the 62-year-old scion of a date-growing family who serves as the head of the government agency that oversees Iraq’s date production, said his family’s 62 acres in south Baghdad have been producing at the lowest level in memory.

“I could put more money into it, but the situation does not encourage it,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, the owner of such property would be a very wealthy man.”

Iraq, which once produced three-quarters of the world’s dates and grew 629 different varieties, is now an also-ran, falling behind Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Last year, the country produced 281,000 tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, about half the level of the mid-1980s.

The number of Iraq’s date palms has fallen, too, to fewer than nine million from 33 million in the 1950s, according to the government. Likewise, the number of date processing factories is down to six today, from 150 before the American-led invasion in 2003. Iraqi dates are now packaged in the United Arab Emirates — 865 miles away.

Iraqi and American officials say the declining fortunes in date production and other seasonal agricultural work have fed the insurgency with desperate, out-of-work young men.

The decline, Iraqi government officials say, has also led to both public health and environmental degradation. As growers have abandoned farms, the orchards that had once formed a lush green ring around Baghdad have shrunk, causing more frequent sandstorms in the capital this summer and higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Still, dates remain a staple in Iraq, valued for their ability to stay fresh without refrigeration, as a source of nutrition, and for uses as varied as making alcohol and desserts and feeding farm animals. They are also an inexpensive sugar substitute.

As the head of a partnership that includes his 12 brothers and 6 sisters, Dr. Hussain is the master of a once prosperous, now unkempt orchard on the banks of the Tigris River in the Dora neighborhood. On a blazing hot summer morning recently, he gave a tour. The story of the orchard, which his family has owned since 1910, has been one of slow decline.

Because the amount of money he receives for his crop from the Trade Ministry — the agency that buys most farm products in Iraq — is sometimes less than the cost of production, he says he no longer invests much in the farm.

Each year, even the most productive trees provide less. In normal times, each palm might produce 130 to 175 pounds of fruit a year.

Last year, each tree produced just about 30 pounds. This season, Dr. Hussain is hoping to rebound to 90 pounds per tree.

Many of the orchard’s 4,000 palms, which can live 120 years, are clearly unhealthy. A fair number have either brown fronds or a white fungus that resembles cobwebs.

Half of the orchard is irrigated by well water, the other half by the Tigris. But because of a drought, now in its second year, farmers have been ordered to limit irrigation to twice a month instead of once or twice a week.

Fruit trees — orange, grapefruit and pomegranate — planted beneath the palms, look to be nearly dying of thirst. The ground is bone dry and dusty.

Even some of the palms, which need very little water, are withering. Water salinity has also become a vexing problem.

Dr. Hussain pointed to some of the healthier palms.

“These trees are 40 years old, and I have some emotion, some love for them, because I planted them,” he said. “I’ve watched them grow.”

Even here, there are signs of Iraq’s war: Accompanying Dr. Hussain are five bodyguards, at least one of whom is armed.

And stationed at the edge of Dr. Hussain’s orchard is a 50-member Kurdish pesh merga military unit. They are protecting the home of Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, who is Kurdish and lives across the river from the orchard.

Dr. Hussain said that despite the instability brought by the war, Iraq’s date industry could recover if the Trade Ministry would increase payments to farmers.

And if Iraq’s date orchards can be restored to their former glory, he said, the rest of Iraqi agriculture might be able to similarly rebound.

The Trade Ministry, however, has said that given continuing depressed international prices for oil — Iraq’s lone dependable export — it cannot afford to raise payments to farmers.

None of Dr. Hussain’s children want to have anything to do with the family’s date orchard. His son is a pharmacist, his eldest daughter an engineer. The youngest daughter is a science student, but has no interest in agriculture.

Dr. Hussain said the date farm would almost certainly die with him.

“It will be sold,” he said shrugging. “It will be painful for me to do that, but I accomplished my duty for my family and for my tradition. There is nothing else to be done.”

Mohammed Hussein contributed reporting.