Before her 21-year-old daughter died in a sledding accident in early 2007, Pam Weiss had never logged on to Facebook. Back then, social-networking sites were used almost exclusively by the young. But she knew her daughter Amy Woolington, a UCLA student, had an account, so in her grief Weiss turned to Facebook to look for photos. She found what she was looking for and more. She was soon communicating with her daughter's many friends, sharing memories and even piecing together, through posts her daughter had written, a blueprint of things she had hoped to do. "It makes me feel good that Amy had a positive effect on so many people, and I wouldn't have had a clue if it hadn't been for Facebook," says Weiss.
And she wouldn't have had a clue if she had waited too long. She managed to copy most of her daughter's profile in the three months before Facebook took it down. (See the best social-networking applications.)
Like a growing number of grieving relatives, Weiss tapped into one of the most powerful troves of memories available: a loved one's online presence. As people spend more time at keyboards, there's less being stored away in dusty attics for family and friends to hang on to. Letters have become e‑mails. Diaries have morphed into blogs. Photo albums have turned virtual. The pieces of our lives that we put online can feel as eternal as the Internet itself, but what happens to our virtual identity after we die? (Read "Your Facebook Relationship Status: It's Complicated.")
It's a thorny question, and for now, the answer depends on which sites you use. Privacy is a major issue. So are company policies to delete inactive accounts.
Facebook amended its policy a few months after Woolington died. "We first realized we needed a protocol for deceased users after the Virginia Tech shooting, when students were looking for ways to remember and honor their classmates," says Facebook spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder. The company responded by creating a "memorial state" for profiles of deceased users, in which features such as status updates and group affiliations are removed. Only the user's confirmed friends can continue to view the profile and post comments on it.
If next of kin ask to have a profile taken down, Facebook will comply. It will not, however, hand over a user's password to let a family member access the account, which means private messages are kept just that.
Rival MySpace has a similar policy blocking account access but has fewer restrictions on profile-viewing. (This inspired an entrepreneur to create MyDeathSpace.com, which started out aggregating profiles of the deceased and has since morphed into a ghoulish tabloid.)
E-mail is more complicated. Would you want, say, your parents to be able to access your account so they could contact all your far-flung friends — whom you don't have in your address book because you don't have an address book — and tell them that you've passed on? Maybe. Would you want them to be able to read every message you've ever sent? Maybe not.
Yahoo! Mail's rule is to keep accounts private. "The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for an account is to treat their online activities as confidential, even after their death," says spokesman Jason Khoury. Court orders sometimes overrule that. In 2005, relatives of a Marine killed in Iraq requested access to his e‑mail account so they could make a scrapbook. When a judge sided with the family, Yahoo! copied the messages to a CD instead of turning over the account's password. Hotmail now allows family members to order a CD as long as they provide proof that they have power of attorney and a death certificate. Gmail requires the same paperwork, plus a copy of an e‑mail the deceased sent to the petitioner. (See the top iPhone applications.)
If that sounds like a lot of trouble to put your loved ones through, several companies are eager to help you plan ahead — for a fee, of course. Legacy Locker, Asset Lock and Deathswitch are among the firms offering encrypted space for people to store their passwords and other information. "Digital legacy is at best misunderstood and at worst not thought about," says Legacy Locker founder Jeremy Toeman, who came up with the idea for his company midflight, when he was imagining what would happen to his many Web domains if the plane crashed. "I would be surprised if five years from now, it's not common for people to consider their digital assets alongside their wills."
His San Francisco-based site is looking to handle all the details of your online afterlife for $30 a year or a onetime fee of $300. To determine whether you have passed on, the firm will check with two "verifiers" (people you have designated to confirm your death) and examine a death certificate.
Deathswitch, which is based in Houston, has a different system for releasing the funeral instructions, love notes and "unspeakable secrets" it suggests you store with your passwords and account info. The company will regularly send you e‑mail prompts to verify that you're still alive, at a frequency of your choosing. (Once a day? Once a year?) After a series of unanswered prompts, it will assume you're dead and release your messages to intended recipients. One message is free; for more, the company charges members $19.95 a year.
From Health Care to Wars to Public Anxiety, Obama's Strength as a Leader Is Tested
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 6, 2009
As President Obama's senior advisers gathered at Blair House at the end of July for a two-day review of their first six months in office, what was meant to be a breath-catching moment of reflection was colored by a sense of unease.
To a sleep-deprived White House staff, the achievements since taking office that chilly morning of Jan. 20 seemed self-evident. The agenda of necessity they had carried out to stabilize the economy was rapidly making room for Obama's agenda of choice: changing the way Americans receive health care, generate and consume energy, and learn in public school classrooms.
But opinion polls showed support for the president and his policies dipping sharply, and the disheartening numbers had shaken the confidence of some of Obama's staff. Vice President Biden addressed the anxiousness when the Cabinet and senior staff met in the State Dining Room in the White House residence the next morning.
"Did you really think this was going to be easy?" Biden said, according to one participant.
The slide has only quickened. Emerging from an angry August recess, Obama is weakened politically and faces growing concerns, particularly from within his own party, over his strength as a leader. Dozens of interviews this summer in six states -- from Maine to California -- have revealed a growing angst and disappointment over the administration's present course.
Democratic officials and foot soldiers, who have experienced the volatile public mood firsthand, are asking Obama to take a more assertive approach this fall. His senior advisers say he will, beginning with his Wednesday address to Congress on health care.
His challenge, however, is more fundamental. Obama built his successful candidacy and presidency around a leadership style that seeks consensus. But he is entering a period when consensus may not be possible on the issues most important to his administration and party. Whatever approach he takes is likely to upset some of his most ardent supporters, many of whom are unwilling to compromise at a time when Democrats control the White House and Congress.
"Until last week, he was still trying to play ball with the Republicans who said, 'We're going to bring you down,' " said Karen Davis, 42, a musician from Jersey City who raised funds for Obama last year. "Now I'm thinking, 'This isn't what I voted for.' "
Obama has brought change over his first seven months in office, often through direct government intervention, to areas as different as the conflict in Iraq and the American auto industry.
The economy is improving and bailed-out banks are paying back the money with interest. A smooth Supreme Court selection has brought the first Hispanic justice, Sonia Sotomayor, to the highest bench. America's standing in the world is improving, according to many polls, after Obama's widely broadcast address to the Muslim world, prohibition of torture in interrogation and decision to close the military brig at Guantanamo Bay.
But Obama's spending plans that will require $9 trillion in new borrowing over the next decade have alarmed conservatives in his own party, and he could not head off an investigation by his own Justice Department into the Bush administration's interrogation policies that he had made clear he did not want. Unemployment is still rising. His decision to expand the war in Afghanistan, deploying thousands of additional U.S. troops, has not come with a clear plan for how to leave.
Even though polls show fallen approval ratings, Obama remains more personally popular than his policies. His senior advisers say his leadership strength derives from the ability to remain calm in the maelstrom of 24-hour news cycles, a mark of his once-long-shot 2008 campaign. The anti-government anger that has risen from a thousand town hall meetings over the recess is now testing Obama's celebrated communication skills and a political style one confidante described as "unsentimental."
"I know there is great value associated in this town with the straight right jab and the occasional knee to the groin," said David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser. "He'll throw the jab when he sees it, when he feels it's necessary. But he's not likely to throw the knee."
Economy Clouds View
The ferment beyond the Beltway and the challenge it poses to Obama's agenda this fall is apparent off the Orange Blossom Trail, a wide commercial strip that runs out of Orlando, past the check-cashing stores, self-storage centers and adult emporiums.
The Hunter's Creek development is a mix of 8,700 homes and condominiums, a middle-class sanctuary with neighborhoods named Falcon Pointe and Osprey Links. Like much of Central Florida, it has burst open along with the housing bubble. Foreclosure filings are pending against 1,000 properties there.
On a recent evening, Rep. Alan Grayson, a freshman Democrat, arrived for a housing forum, which like many of his recent public events involved a police presence. A Harvard-educated lawyer, Grayson offered grim if unsurprising figures in a region where even Disney has laid off hundreds of workers this year.
"We all know that what we need is a healthy economy," Grayson told them. "And it's in times like these that we discover what kind of people we are."
In his summer travels, Obama has argued that the stimulus program's $787 billion mix of spending and tax cuts, the bank bailouts, and the decision to prop up General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy have nudged the economy toward recovery.
But the view from the Hunter's Creek Community Center, where 150 of Grayson's constituents had assembled to hear how the government intended to help them keep their homes, was shaded by fear over the president's ventures into the private sector and other planned reforms.
"A large portion of our problem right now is the result of our own fault," John Kulifay, a stout, balding retired engineer, said when called on to speak. "The other problem is the government itself. Please keep your fingers out of this. Let us fix it."
Applause erupted, along with the cry, "Stop the redistribution!"
The anxiety stretches from New England to the Pacific Ocean, judging by recent visits, and is rooted in the measures Obama has implemented to shore up the economy.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly, said that "there were so many things we had to do, and those are the things that feed into the skepticism that government is taking over everything or can't get it right."
"These were things we had no interest in doing," the official said. "That's the irony."
Political Capital
Activist presidents always have spent political capital pursuing their goals, and Obama has proved the same. As he told volunteers at a health-care rally last month, "The easiest thing to do as a politician is to do nothing."
Before Obama's inauguration, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, set out the administration's goals for the year.
Major reform targets, particularly in the health care and energy sectors, would not be staged one after the other, as in past administrations, but pursued simultaneously at a time when the private sector had been battered by the financial crisis.
Emanuel's logic was a warrior's -- that is, the side with the initiative succeeds. Since then, the administration has pushed through a dozen pieces of legislation with little obvious public resistance, including measures to expand health insurance for children, ensure pay equity, regulate tobacco and protect consumers from credit card companies.
But the strategy will likely cost Obama an energy reform bill this year, as the health-care debate drags on past the provisional deadlines the administration had set.
"From a timing point of view, we just don't know if it's possible," another senior administration official said on condition of anonymity in order to describe an internal assessment.
The breadth of Obama's reform plans, coming after the expensive and interventionist economic rescue measures, is also riling conservatives in places like Lebanon, Pa.
"I don't believe this is just about health care," Katy Abram, a stay-at-home mom, told Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) at a recent town hall forum there. "This is about the systematic dismantling of this country."
As the audience cheered, Abrams, who is 35, continued, "I've never been interested in politics. You have awakened the sleeping giant."
Smaller than it was a decade ago, the Republican Party has shed many moderates, leaving few who are willing to work even with a Democratic president who has promised less partisan governing.
"At the root of his difficulties is a misperception on his part of the root cause of the problem," said Obama critic Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University professor and presidential scholar. "He sees the problem as Washington. Fine. But the basic cause is the evolution of the Republican Party."
Like Lyndon B. Johnson, Obama is pursuing a broad reform agenda with large Democratic majorities in Congress.
But Wilentz said it is harder for Obama to work across party lines without the collection of moderate Republican senators present in Johnson's time. The need for him to do so has been made more urgent by the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the filibuster-proof majority he represented.
"You can have an out-of-touch Republican Party, but in Washington that does great damage to reform efforts," Wilentz said. "He has done what he can to put the country on a new track, and in doing so he can't help but disappoint some of his supporters. But it's not a fan club."
Extreme Street Theater
At a late August town hall forum in Spring Valley, Calif., Robert Billburg, a 49-year-old Air Force veteran and Red Cross worker, watched a scene familiar to YouTube fans this summer.
Police conducted body searches at the gymnasium door. Signs depicted Obama as the Joker; others called him a Nazi. Liberal demonstrators dressed as cartoon-version fat cats in tuxedos and evening gowns held up signs reading, "Save health care, by a Congressman." The far edges of America's political spectrum were acting out street theater.
"I think the best description of him is a centrist technocrat," Billburg said of Obama, whom he supported. "So those on the extremes are going to be very disappointed."
Increasingly, they are.
During the campaign, Obama pledged to run an administration less concerned by partisanship than by ensuring effective government.
But from his first weeks in office, as his administration worked to secure a stimulus bill the president believed was essential to preventing a broader economic collapse, winning Republican support has been hard. Even the pursuit of it is now viewed by his Democratic base as a sign of weakness.
Only three Republican senators voted for the stimulus measure, written in large part by Congressional leaders but pushed through in the final hours by the White House. One of them -- Specter -- is now a Democrat. Not a single House Republican voted for it.
At the time, several senior administration officials said the amount of Republican support for a White House initiative would no longer be a measure of its success.
Yet Obama has allowed weeks of bipartisan Senate negotiations to take place over health-care legislation, and he has signaled a willingness to abandon a government-run insurance option to secure bipartisan support.
Many of Obama's senior advisers were schooled in Washington politics at least in part on Capitol Hill, including Emanuel, a former House member and pragmatist like the president who thinks allowing Congress to take the lead on legislation is generally the best way to ensure its passage.
But to Democrats like Grayson, who is defending Obama's agenda before sometimes unruly audiences, the president should be more forceful in the face of mounting opposition.
At his recent appearance at the Tiger Bay Club, Grayson told the lunchtime audience of business leaders that "there is a fight in Congress right now, not between Republican and Democrats, but between those who want to help and those who say, 'Thank God we're not helping.' "
Later, in an interview, Grayson said his advice for the president based on his experiences this recess is "to not only combat the lies, but to combat the liars."
"He must recognize that he has reached out his hand to the Republican leadership and they have spat on it," he said.
Holding Onto 'No Drama'
In addressing volunteers from Organizing for America last month, Obama warned those who had been central to the field operation of his grass-roots campaign that "everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up" in August and September.
It was meant as a warning not to believe the Beltway analysis that Obama, a skilled communicator and player of the long game, was losing control of his message and his broader agenda.
Governing requires the ability to appeal to Congress and the electorate simultaneously, and Obama is attempting to do that with the patience and unflappability that were the hallmarks of his "no drama" campaign.
To Obama and his senior staff, that means ignoring the "cable chatter," the president's catch-all term for media punditry and Hill partisanship, and the Washington ethic of winning in real time.
But a traditionally fractious Democratic Party is also finding that it is easier to remain united against an unpopular Republican administration, as it did during the Bush years, than it is to govern. And Obama stands at its head.
"There is something that has grown into the Democratic DNA over the last 30 years that makes our first reaction fear," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House deputy communications director. "And we can't keep our fear to ourselves."
Beyond the Beltway, many Democrats say they would be less afraid if Obama appeared less fearful himself, including on issues such as race and the legacy of torture that he has eloquently addressed in the past. In office, Obama has tended to view those subjects largely as distractions from his reform ambitions.
Rickey R. Hendon, a Democratic state senator in Illinois who served with Obama in the legislature there, said the president has always been "conciliatory, a consensus seeker" and that "hasn't changed in Washington, much to his detriment, I believe."
Obama's tentative leadership on race, as the nation's first African American president, has disappointed Hendon, who is also African American.
Even during the controversy over the arrest of the African American Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., which prompted Obama's "beer summit" to smooth hurt feelings, Hendon said the president "did his best to dodge it, to duck and dive."
"He probably does it just to avoid anything that could be racially charged," he said. "I disagree with it, but that's been his mode of operation. Why change now?"
Axelrod said the White House has been receiving advice, much of it unsolicited, to push back harder against the opposition, particularly as the health-care debate heads into the fall legislative session. He said the president intends to do so, but on his own terms.
"He's not going to get punked or pushed around," Axelrod said. "On the other hand, I don't think he's going to fill his day with gratuitous partisan back-and-forth, because it isn't productive and it's not healthy."
Polling director Jon Cohen and staff writers Kari Lydersen, Alec MacGillis, Keith Richburg, Philip Rucker and Karl Vick contributed to this report.
Wayang Golek is proclaimed a masterpiece, but what is its future?
Sarah Anaïs Andrieu
The puppeteer Dadan Sunandar Sunarya performing the story Cepot Kembar
As often happens in West Java during November, rain had been falling all day, so Bandung’s central public space, known as the Gasibu, was half-flooded. A large temporary stage had been erected, in front of which stood a large tent sheltering about two hundred chairs. Forty chairs were prepared with white covers for use by government officials, but only about ten were present. Only a few spectators sat behind them. TV and radio crews busied themselves trying to protect their equipment from the rain.
Dawala (left) and Cepot (right). Cepot is the most popular character amongst Sundanese audiences
A performance of wayang golek, the traditional rod puppet theatre from West Java, was scheduled to take place for the entire night. The troupe was already on stage waiting patiently behind their gamelan instruments. The show should have already started, and a crowd should have already gathered around the stage as customarily happens, but very few people had dared to brave the rain and the cold on this night. The improvised market that always appears besides wayang golek performances was barely visible, with only a few sellers offering food and snacks from the shelter of huge umbrellas.
At last, the show started at around half past nine with speeches reminding the audience of the purpose of the performance, namely the protection of the national cultural heritage, of which wayang golek is officially a part. After the audience was reminded too that the event had been sponsored by the National Department of Culture and Tourism and its provincial subdivision in West Java, the committee finally gave a sign to the puppeteer, or dalang, that he could start performing the story entitled Cepot’s Twin (Cepot Kembar).
But soon after the first scene, the dalang stopped and introduced three famous Sundanese comedians who launched into an interactive dialogue with the audience. Spectators asked questions via SMS, which were relayed by the comedians to specialists from cultural and governmental institutions to be answered. After an hour of jokes and questions, the humourists retired from the stage and the wayang performance continued. The dalang recommenced his task of guiding the well-known characters through diverse intrigues and adventures. The rain had stopped, but there were still only a few spectators. Even fewer stayed until the performance ended at three o’clock in the morning.
The structure of the performance, something usually subject to quite strict convention, was upset by the intervention of the humourists just after the story commenced
What happened that night raises many questions about contemporary wayang golek. Government officials left the performance – if they came at all – long before its end. Much more seriously, the structure of the performance, something usually subject to quite strict convention, was upset by the intervention of humourists just after the story commenced. Such a thing could not happen in performances sponsored by rural communities or households. Moreover, the radio and TV broadcasts stopped after the comedians had withdrawn from the stage, even though the wayang performance would continue for a further three hours. For the broadcasters, the entire performance was too long and convoluted.
Local heritage, global value
There is some irony in the rather shabby treatment granted to the performers on this occasion, for it was not long ago that wayang was given its own space on the world’s cultural stage. In 2003, UNESCO proclaimed ‘Wayang Indonesia’ as a ‘Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’. Indonesia’s cultural bureaucrats responded to this recognition: the performers at the Gasibu were advised by the organisers that the performance was being held to honour Indonesia’s commitment to the preservation of humanity’s cultural heritage. But the events of the evening indicated that wayang golek, despite its global value, was encountering difficulties negotiating its status in contemporary West Java and Indonesia.
A patron inserts money in Cepot’s clothing
Wayang golek is still considered an essential social and political media, as well as a mark of Sundanese identity within the national context. It also forms the basis for proud family heritages, as artists typically learn their puppetry skills directly from individual teachers who are often their own fathers. The UNESCO proclamation gave these performers hope of a worldwide audience, and since then, they have tried to have some say in the destiny of wayang golek. However, they feel it loses out on a national stage dominated by the culture of Central Java. The government, on the other hand, sees wayang golek as not only a distinctive regional genre, but also as something shared by the national Indonesian community. Since Indonesian independence in 1945, national cultural policy has attempted to gather the most important, aesthetic and spectacular traditions of each region as part of a unifying Indonesian culture. These icons are then disseminated throughout the country by the mass media and educational institutions as distinctive hallmarks of the regions – a practice that freezes regional culture and contributes to its standardisation. The UNESCO Proclamation enhances this process: after it was made, the government proposed a national action plan that included the creation of wayang schools, which would dispense standard teaching about wayang with adjustments for each regional ‘variant’.
Only bait
The Bandung performance illustrates an important paradox. On one hand, the government’s emphasis on heritage legitimises and supports the continued practice of wayang golek. But, on the other hand, it turns the puppet performances into a (profitable) museum exhibit, standardising them and preventing them from evolving.
Very few of the white chairs prepared for government officials were filled
On that November night, the wayang were simply bait, used to attract the audience’s interest, then all too quickly relegated to the background as ethnic scenery for the transmission of other messages. In the process, this event intended to support and safeguard traditional cultural heritage was turned into a demonstration of the government’s lack of confidence in wayang golek. ii
Sarah Anaïs Andrieu (sarahanais@gmail.com) is a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris where she is writing her doctoral dissertation about the political anthropology of the Sundanese wayang golek and its process of patrimonialisation.
Partial view of charred debris of Roger Buttin Social and Sports Center owned by French oil company Total, set ablaze in Port Gentil, 05 Sep 2009
Security forces in Gabon continued to clash with opposition demonstrators following the announcement that the son of the country's long-time ruler has been elected president. The French oil firm Total has evacuated foreign workers from Port Gentil, at the center of the violence.
Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou told French state radio that two people killed overnight in Port Gentil were looters shot by a home owner.
Rioters in Port Gentil burned the French consulate and looted nearby shops Thursday following the announcement that former defense minister Ali Ben Bongo won last Sunday's presidential election.
That violence brought an overnight curfew to Port Gentil which was repeated Friday and will continue, Ndongou says, "as long as necessary if calm does not prevail."
Prisoners in Port Gentil were broken out of jail and demonstrators attacked facilities of the French oil firm Total. Expatriate staff and their families have now been evacuated to the capital, Libreville, where Total says they will remain until it is safe to return to Port Gentil.
The French Foreign Ministry says French nationals elsewhere in Gabon should stay in their homes.
Ali Bongo greets supporters in Libreville after being declared winner of bitter presidential election in Gabon, 03 Sep 2009
Opposition demonstrators are targeting French concerns because of the long relationship between French leaders and the 42-year-rule of Gabonese PresidentOmar Bongo. His death in June raised expectations of change in Gabon. The election of his son in a vote that opposition candidates says was unfair has renewed allegations that Paris backed Ali Ben Bongo's candidacy.
The French Foreign Ministry says it was not involved in the campaign. It says Sunday's vote took place under "acceptable conditions" and losing candidates who want to contest the result should do so in Gabon's constitutional court.
Opposition leaders do intend to challenge a result that gave Bongo 42 percent of the vote. The electoral commission says former interior minister Andre Mba Obame and opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou each received about 25 percent.
Obame says the results are an "electoral coup." Mamboundou's party is calling on its supports to "resist" the outcome. Politicians allied with Mamboundou say he has gone into hiding after he was injured when police tear-gassed demonstrators following the results.
The African Union is calling on Gabonese to show "great restraint" and abstain from acts that might compromise peace and security.
PANIPAT, India -- Amir Jahan can spin thick, white thread into magnificent cloth, but the 46-year-old weaver has been unable to unravel her health plan to pay for stomach surgery.
Under a health-insurance program introduced a few years ago, the Indian government has provided health-insurance coverage for the country's hand-loom weavers, a group of 6.5 million workers, 60% of them female, who are mostly illiterate and invariably poor. Yet holding an insurance card hasn't helped Ms. Jahan, who says the coverage only pays for minor ailments and not for major problems, such as the removal of a stomach tumor.
Amir Jahan spins thick white thread into magnificent cloth. She puts in 12 hours of work every day to earn about $15 a month.
"The health care is all a sham," Ms. Jahan says angrily. "I was refused treatment on grounds of huge expense. I won't ever go to be humiliated again."
Ms. Jahan's health-care issues represent the problems that come with trying to provide insurance to India's poor. Access to quality care remains a distant dream for many in this country of 1.1 billion.
Last year, the Indian government launched the National Health Insurance Program on promised health coverage of $700 per person for families earning less than $100 a year.
Holders of health cards have to register in their home states to access benefits, thereby precluding a large population of migrant laborers. Those who can get past the complex state-identification and qualification process often can't cope with hospital bureaucracies.
One of the biggest problems: Getting the impoverished weavers to pay $1 for the card that provides free access to health care for one year. Many weavers feel the investment in the card is a waste of valuable household income.
Other plans aimed at farmers, construction workers and other low-income groups have been dogged by problems.
In India, the hand-loom industry is the second-largest segment in the economy, after agriculture. The Handloom Weavers Health Insurance Program was backed by a private insurance company, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd., a joint venture of India's ICICI Bank Ltd. and Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. of Canada.
An initial payment of $1 entitles a family of four to coverage totaling 15,000 rupees, or about $300 -- but no more than $150 of that can be for any one family member. Beneficiaries receive coverage at designated hospitals and clinics, or are reimbursed for treatment at centers not on the list -- after upfront payments that can be difficult for weavers to afford.
According to insurance-company officials, the program has been implemented in 26 states across India, and covers 1.9 million weaver families. In the Lalahar Memorial Prem Private Hospital, here in Panipat, nearly 70 weavers line up each day for health services under the plan.
Many weavers work six days a week in factories, under poor conditions and with few benefits. Others, like Ms. Jahan, work from home, making clothing, rugs and other woven items for a variety of companies.
Ms. Jahan started working at the age of eight. Today, she says she works 12 hours, seven days a week, to earn about $15 a month. That isn't enough to support her seven kids, and the insurance card can only cover four family members.
Ms. Jahan's stomach surgery was $200, but she was told she could only use $150 from the card because of the spending cap for each family member. The remaining $50 had to be paid from her own pocket. She continues to work with the untreated stomach tumor.
The ICICI doesn't deny treatment to any individual, but "the weavers think it is an ATM card and want to get it cashed to the maximum limit," said ICICI manager Milan Maheshwari, based in New Delhi. "The government has fixed a cap, so that the benefits … can be extended to the entire family."
One of the program's goals was to cut out government intermediaries. In a past program, the Indian government was running a health package for the weavers that involved complicated payment procedures that deterred many participants, according to B.K. Sinha, development commissioner of hand-looms at the Ministry of Textiles in New Delhi.
The new program has won support among those who have been able to get long-neglected medical problems addressed. Working 12 hours a day on the loom from her dimly lit house, Janmati, who uses one name, suffered from blurred vision before she had eye surgery for $80 through the health card.
"Initially the hospital authorities hesitated, but finally agreed," says Janmati. "Thanks to the card, I got my vision back."
But broad participation hasn't panned out. The government acknowledged that only 40% of weavers are covered under the health program.
Insufficient funds -- 1.2 billion rupees ($25 million) preclude covering more, even if the weavers are willing. Nevertheless, "We intend to cover every handloom weaver in the country in the next two years," Mr. Sinha says.
On a simmering afternoon in Panipat, outside India's capital of New Delhi, a group of irate weavers surrounded an insurance agent to complain about the health-insurance scheme.
Mohammad Ali, 25, said he was denied treatment at one of the private hospitals in Panipat and ended up paying from his own pocket. Another man, Mohammad Irshad, grumbled that he couldn't get his wife covered under the same card because he couldn't provide proper identification for her. "Getting the insurance card is tedious," he says.
PAKA LUE SONG, Thailand — The soldiers patrolling this hamlet racked by insurgent violence measure their progress modestly: two years ago, when villagers saw them coming, they closed their shutters. Now, they say, most residents peer out of their wood-frame houses and offer strained smiles.
“The local people have started to open their hearts,” said Capt. Niran Chaisalih, the leader of a government paramilitary force garrisoned at the village school.
Paka Lue Song, only a 15-minute drive from the provincial capital, Pattani, is a starting point for Thailand’s influx of troops into the country’s troubled southern provinces, where ethnic Malay Muslims are battling for autonomy from Thailand’s Buddhist majority.
The number of people in security forces, including the army, the police and militias, in the region has doubled over the past two years to about 60,000, said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a leading expert on the insurgency and the associate dean at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani.
The huge increase in security forces initially helped reduce the violence as well as the death toll, which fell by 40 percent last year. But the number of killings has risen in recent months. More than 330 people have been killed so far this year, compared with 285 in the same period last year. Among the dead are civilians — including many Malays — soldiers and insurgents.
There have been so many killings in the three southern provinces — about 3,500 since 2004 — that the government began distributing a glossy brochure last year guiding victims’ families through the process of applying for government compensation.
Although the insurgency has been active for decades in the south, the current phase is considered particularly dangerous because the militants appear to have more of an Islamist agenda and because apparently sectarian attacks have strained the mutual tolerance between Buddhists and Muslims. It also comes at a time of deep political turmoil and social unease in Thailand that has hobbled several governments in the last three years and last year drove away many of the tourists who help sustain the country’s economy.
The surge in troops is palpable across the three southern provinces, only a few hours’ drive from Thailand’s main tourist beaches. There is now the equivalent of one soldier or police officer for every seven households. Soldiers in Humvees patrol the main roads, and police and military checkpoints screen motorists every few miles.
Sa-nguan Indrarak, the president of a federation of schoolteachers in the south, questions whether the army’s presence has been worth the $3.2 billion that the government has spent in the south over the past five years. (Teachers, obvious symbols of the Thai state, have been prime targets in the insurgency, with 95 killed since 2004.) Troops should leave and the government should train local security forces, who have a better understanding of the terrain, Mr. Sa-nguan argues.
Soldiers are resented in part because they behave inappropriately around both mosques and Buddhist temples, drinking, dancing and flirting, he said. But there have also been reports of human rights abuses; in January, Amnesty International published a report saying security forces “systemically engage in torture” — including using electric shocks — in their attempts to gather information and to force communities into withholding or withdrawing support for the rebels.
The insurgency has been distinct from other rebel movements in the region because the perpetrators remain shadowy, ill-defined groups that do not claim responsibility for the violence. Experts say they believe that the aims of the groups, among them the Pattani Islamic Mujahedeen Movement and the National Revolution Front-Coordinate, are to drive Buddhists from the area, discredit the government and put into place strict Islamic laws.
Although they say they believe that some financing for the groups comes from abroad, several counterterrorism experts in Thailand and elsewhere discount significant connections with other militant movements, like Al Qaeda and the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah. The movement here, they say, appears to involve a localized struggle over territory and control overlaid with historical resentment over the domination of the Thai state.
Malay Muslims make up about 80 percent of the 1.7 million people living in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala Provinces.
The ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup in 2006 raised hopes that the generals who took over, including several senior Muslim officials, would be more conciliatory than Mr. Thaksin, who had blamed bandits for the violence and oversaw a hard-line policy toward the area. But despite an unprecedented apology for Mr. Thaksin’s iron-fisted policies by a military-installed prime minister, the insurgency has ground on.
In Paka Lue Song, a village considered dangerous enough that local journalists refuse to enter it, army medics are trying to win over villagers by giving them free medical treatment. As soldiers prepared to walk through the village on a recent day, one raised the antenna of a radio to hear a dispatcher issue a bulletin: a police officer had been ambushed in Yala Province.
The soldiers proceeded on their mission, handing out vitamin C to children.
Second Lt. Pongpayap Petwisai, a 27-year-old army doctor, walked through the village prescribing medication for eye infections, dispensing balms for aching muscles and monitoring blood pressure.
“What we are trying to do is get people on our side,” said Dr. Pongpayap, who was partly inspired to become a doctor by the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.”
More recently, the government has also stepped up its program of providing weapons to local militias and “village guards,” especially in Buddhist enclaves. These volunteers now number about 71,000, according to Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, who monitors the insurgency for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent deadly conflicts.
She said she feared that the program could backfire, leading to vigilante killings if the weapons fell into the wrong hands.
Those who cooperate with the military are already at risk of being attacked by insurgents.
In Paka Lue Song, Dr. Pongpayap examined the injured hand of Gade Yusoh, a 57-year-old rubber tapper who soldiers said had been helpful to them.
Gunmen suspected of being insurgents fired into Mr. Gade’s house one evening three months ago while he was watching television. “I’m not afraid,” he said. His nervous laugh suggested otherwise.
It remains unclear if the programs aimed at winning the hearts and minds of villagers — a standard counterinsurgency practice — are working. When this reporter toured a neighboring village without the army medical team, local officials heaped scorn on the government initiative.
“They just want a photo opportunity,” said one local government official, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution by the army. Other criticism has been more public. Outside a village Dr. Pongpayap visited, graffiti appeared the day after.
“Don’t come back here,” it said. “If you shoot one of us, we will shoot two of you.”
PIPRI VILLAGE, India — Two very different recent scenes from India: At a power breakfast in New Delhi for many of the country’s corporate leaders and top economic officials, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee declared that India had “weathered the storm” of the global economic crisis and was witnessing “green shoots” in industry and services that signaled a return to more rapid growth by next year.
Hundreds of miles away in this farming village in Andhra Pradesh, in the south, weeds were the only green shoots sprouting in the black soil that belongs to the widow Chandli Bai. Her field went 12 weeks without rain during India’s annual monsoon season before showers finally arrived on Aug. 23, splattering down too late onto the dry dirt. Her summer crop of lentils was stillborn in the ground.
“We eat once a day,” said Mrs. Bai, 65, explaining how she and her family had survived the lack of rain.
For the past year, as the economic crisis convulsed much of the world, India wobbled but never tumbled over. And now that the world is starting to pull itself out of the mire, India seems poised to resume its rapid economic expansion. Government officials are projecting that growth will reach or surpass 6 percent this year and approach 8 percent next year, almost the pace that established India as an emerging global economic power second only to China.
But the cautious optimism about the broader economy has been tempered by a historic summertime drought that has underscored the stubborn fact that many people are largely untouched by the country’s progress. India’s new economy may be based on software, services and high technology, but hundreds of millions of Indians still look to the sky for their livelihoods; more than half the country’s 1.1 billion people depend on agriculture for a living even though agriculture represents only about 17 percent of the total economy.
No one thinks India is facing the type of famines that struck it decades ago; government grain stocks can replenish any shortfalls. But the drought has focused attention, again, on the problems facing Indian agriculture as the population continues to expand at the same time that water resources come under greater pressure.
During the 1960s, India introduced a “green revolution” that sharply improved grain output. Now, many analysts are calling for a second green revolution to address the complicated problems presented by global warming, rapidly diminishing groundwater supplies and stagnant incomes for farmers.
“A lot of us have gotten carried away and forgotten these problems exist,” said Bharat Ramaswami, an economist at the Indian Statistical Institute. “We need to think a little more about how this economic growth could better filter down to the poor.”
One problem now, as opposed to in the 1960s, is that there are no obvious technological breakthroughs to radically change the status quo. During the green revolution, India introduced high-yield seeds and fertilizers and expanded irrigation.
Today, the challenge is more nuanced, involving a nationwide coordination effort to improve irrigation, better capture rainwater and conserve groundwater while lifting production — the type of complicated management task that critics say is rarely the strong suit of the Indian bureaucracy.
Every summer, India awaits the monsoon. Some years bring too much rain and catastrophic flooding; others bring too little rain. This summer, rainfall is down 25 percent, and roughly half of the rural districts were declared drought zones. As production has fallen, prices have risen for staples like rice.
To the eye, the drought can be deceptive. In Pipri Village, as in other areas, greenery is evident, even as nearly every field without irrigation is stunted.
In recent days, rains have returned to Pipri and some other areas, but not in time to save the summer, or kharif, crop. Located three hours from the high-tech center of Hyderabad, Pipri is one of thousands of Indian villages decimated by the drought.
On a recent afternoon, Mrs. Bai, the widow, stood at the edge of her ragged seven acres, her toes caked in dirt as she motioned to the remains of the pyre used to cremate her husband four months ago. The family had borrowed 80,000 rupees, or about $1,640, to treat his kidney disease; the failed crop left them without money to pay off the debt. Only one of her seven children reached 10th grade, and none can find work off the land.
“I may die before I can repay that loan,” she said.
This cycle of debt is a persistent problem, often blamed for periodic spates of farmer suicides, while the high illiteracy rate in the countryside makes it hard for farmers to switch to jobs in India’s services sector.
Before the national elections, the Congress Party announced a plan to forgive certain farm loans. Many farmers can also take part in a government employment program that guarantees 100 days of manual labor for roughly $2 a day.
But the drought has brought renewed pressure. An hour from Pipri Village, farmers recently clamored around a dilapidated branch of the government’s Syndicate Bank. One man came because of the false rumor that farmers were receiving a 1,500-rupee stipend (about $30). Others came looking for loans. “We need the loans to plant the other crops,” one farmer said. “They keep saying to come back next week.”
Before the drought, rural India was helping to buttress the national economy during the global downturn as rural consumption helped drive consumer spending. But parts of that demand were driven by backdated pay increases for millions of government workers. Now the government is subsidizing seeds and diesel fuel to help farmers through the drought, even as some economists worry that subsidies will worsen the federal deficit.
Too often, many analysts say, the government’s response involves such short-term fixes rather than efforts to tackle the structural problems in the rural economy. A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute noted that India spent $25 billion in 2008 on fertilizer subsidies, but only $5 billion on agricultural investment — even though investment yields 10 times more returns.
India, analysts say, must learn to produce more food with less water, even while lifting rural education levels so that farmers can shift to the higher paying jobs at the heart of India’s economic rise.
“We can manage the drought,” said T. Nanda Kumar, secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture. “We have managed earlier droughts. But we need to move some people out of agriculture. I don’t think that a 17 percent share of G.D.P. and a 50 percent share of employment are viable in the long run.”
Former Official's Bid for Immunity In Ex-Detainee's Case Is Rejected
By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 5, 2009
A Muslim man who was detained for weeks as a material witness in a terrorism case can sue former attorney general John D. Ashcroft, a federal appeals court in California ruled Friday as it rejected a bid for absolute legal immunity by the onetime Cabinet official.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit gave a green light to the case filed by Abdullah al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen who was taken into custody at a ticket counter at Washington Dulles International Airport in 2003, while he was on his way to Saudi Arabia to study Islamic law and Arabic.
At the heart of the lawsuit is a strategy launched by the Justice Department and the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Ashcroft, the attorney general at the time, asserted that authorities would take "suspected terrorists off the street" and engage in "aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses" to disrupt possible al-Qaeda plots. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III cited al-Kidd's detention in testimony to Congress about the bureau's success in protecting national security.
Al-Kidd and his attorneys argued that Ashcroft knew or should have known that the material witness statute was being used in a sweeping and abusive manner. Ashcroft, who is being defended by the Justice Department, maintained that the case should be dismissed because he had no personal involvement in al-Kidd's detention. He also argued that as the nation's chief law enforcement officer at the time, he enjoyed broad protection from lawsuits.
But Judges Milan D. Smith Jr. and David R. Thompson disagreed, writing that Ashcroft was not entitled to absolute legal immunity and that authorities had detained al-Kidd in part to conduct an investigation of his activities, without probable cause. Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote a partial dissent. All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.
Al-Kidd, a Muslim convert who had been a standout running back on the University of Idaho football team, was confined in a high-security cell lit 24 hours a day, according to the opinion. He was strip-searched and transported, in shackles, across three states for 16 days before a court ordered his release. Authorities could not offer evidence of criminal wrongdoing by al-Kidd, and he never testified in a court proceeding.
For more than 15 months after his release, al-Kidd was forced to live with his parents-in-law in Nevada, curtail his travel and report to a probation officer. Al-Kidd lost his job with a government contractor after being denied a security clearance. Since his arrest, he has separated from his wife, suffered emotional trauma and been unable to hold a steady job, the judges wrote.
At the time, authorities said they wanted al-Kidd to testify in connection with a visa fraud case against Sami Omar al-Hussayen. Al-Hussayen ultimately was acquitted of charges that he provided material support to terrorists. Other charges against him were dismissed after a jury failed to reach agreement.
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment on the al-Kidd ruling. A spokesman for Ashcroft said, "We will review the decision."
Earlier this year, a district court judge in California allowed a detainee's lawsuit against former Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo to go forward. The suit accused Woo of violating the detainee's constitutional rights by drafting memos that blessed harsh interrogation tactics. The case is being appealed.
The Supreme Court in May rejected a case by another detainee, Javaid Iqbal, who was part of a large-scale roundup of Muslim men on immigration charges throughout the United States after the Sept. 11. attacks. Iqbal had tried to sue Ashcroft and Mueller, alleging discrimination on the basis of race and religion, but the high court ruled that he could not produce sufficient evidence tying the government officials to the actions.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, said the al-Kidd ruling is "an enormous decision" that could help advocates finally understand how many Muslims were rounded up using material witness warrants.
The court's majority opinion comes as senior officials in the Obama administration and Congress debate whether terrorism suspects can be subject to preventive detentions, without criminal charges, as a national security strategy.
The opinion bemoaned that some "confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions . . . because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing or to prevent them from having contact with others in the outside world. We find this to be repugnant."
Film About Clinton Opens a Review of Corporate Spending
By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 5, 2009
More than 100 years of restrictions on corporate support of political candidates will be at stake next week when the Supreme Court considers whether a quirky case about a film denouncing Hillary Rodham Clinton should lead to a rewrite of the way federal elections are financed.
In an unusual hearing in the midst of their summer recess, the justices will decide whether to move beyond the particulars of "Hillary: The Movie" to more profound questions about the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and how that squares with political spending.
The justices will consider casting aside previous rulings that uphold laws restricting corporate support of political candidates.
The court ruled in 1990 that corporations, because of their "immense aggregations of wealth," possessed a unique ability to drown out the voices of individuals in the nation's political conversation. That precedent was reinforced in 2003 when the court upheld the federal campaign finance law that limits the electoral influence of corporations, unions and special interest groups.
Conservative justices have chafed at the restrictions, especially in the federal legislation commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act. And they have been joined by like-minded colleagues in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
That the court would overturn a decision made as recently as 2003 has advocates of campaign finance reform erupting about "judicial activism" and speaking in apocalyptic terms.
"It would unleash corporations to use their massive wealth to overwhelm the federal system, with disastrous consequences for the country," said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime campaign finance reformer who now leads Democracy 21, a watchdog group.
He imagines corporations demanding fealty from lawmakers on health-care reform or auto industry bailouts with the promise of millions of dollars for their campaigns -- or the threat of the same amount used to finance a challenger.
Others see the potential for partisan advantage.
"If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama's $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama," Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, wrote for the online magazine Slate.
But Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who has urged the court to overturn the precedents, said that the "sky-is-falling rhetoric of the other side is simply not true."
Smith, a Republican appointee to the commission who is now a law professor at Capital University in Ohio, said there is no evidence that corporations would spend millions of dollars targeting specific lawmakers.
While nearly half the states ban or greatly restrict corporate spending on behalf of candidates -- and could have their laws rendered unconstitutional by the court's decision -- the rest do not, Smith said. States such as California, Texas and Virginia allow corporate spending, without the "predicted catastrophes" advanced by advocates of campaign finance reform, he said.
That the court is considering such a broad challenge to corporate spending is a surprise. The case at hand arises from a conservative group's production of a scathing look at Clinton produced during her run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
A lower court said the film ran afoul of a McCain-Feingold provision that forbids corporations, unions and special interest groups from using money from their general treasuries for "any broadcast, cable or satellite communications" that refer to a candidate for federal office during election season.
In the past, that has meant 30-second to one-minute campaign ads. But the lower court said the same rule applied to Citizens United's 90-minute film about Clinton, which it proposed to broadcast on demand on cable channels.
But during oral arguments in March, conservative justices were more interested in the larger questions of how far government could go to corral corporate spending. Even though the law is specifically about broadcasts, justices asked the government's lawyer whether the ban could include books that endorsed a candidate.
When the deputy solicitor general said that theoretically it could, the justices seemed rattled.
"It's a 500-page book, and at the end it says, 'And so vote for X.' The government could ban that?" Roberts asked.
Instead of deciding the case at the end of the term in June, the court set a special hearing for Sept. 9 to decide whether to overturn its two precedents.
One was the court's 5 to 4 decision in 2003 declaring McCain-Feingold constitutional.
That decision cited the court's 1990 ruling in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, in which it upheld a state law banning corporations from using their profits for ads supporting or opposing candidates. Congress had done the same for corporations and unions in 1947 regarding federal elections, and a ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates dates to 1907 and President Theodore Roosevelt.
The issue has united conservatives and split liberals, who generally support campaign finance restrictions but are torn about the restrictions on political speech.
Noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams is representing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who originally urged the court to strike down McCain-Feingold and has been allowed to intervene in next week's hearing. An association of reporters is also worried that the law's exemption for the news media is either not broad enough to support new forms of expression, or that that law could be changed in the future.
Supporters of McCain-Feingold criticized the justices' move as an abandonment of the court's policy of sticking by its precedents even when its membership has changed. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided the necessary vote to find McCain-Feingold constitutional, was replaced by Alito, who is skeptical.
"The court is not supposed to turn on a dime because of a change in justices," said Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission member who advised McCain and supports the legislation.
But Steve Simpson, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, said justices may have become frustrated with trying to balance McCain-Feingold's restrictions on campaign finance with the constitutional guarantee of free speech. "A number of principles are sort of banging into each other here," he said.
There is not much mystery about where the justices stand. Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have said Austin should be overruled, and have been consistent critics of the campaign finance reform act.
This will be the first hearing for Souter's replacement, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But judging from the decisions and speeches she has made about the dangers of campaign contributions, it would be a surprise if she voted differently from Souter.
Roberts and Alito are key. Both have supported every challenge to McCain-Feingold since joining the court, loosening some of the law's restrictions, but so far they have been reluctant to declare prohibitions on corporate spending unconstitutional.
The oral argument is also the first for Solicitor General Elena Kagan. She has warned the court that it should not undermine such a "long-standing and central principle of federal and state campaign finance law" without a more detailed record of what it would mean.
Her counterpart, coincidentally, is a former solicitor general, Theodore B. Olson, whose duty it was in 2003 to defend McCain-Feingold. Now, his brief for Citizens United reinforces the threats of "criminalization" of speech that worried justices at the oral argument:
"When the government of the United States of America claims the authority to ban books because of their political speech, something has gone terribly wrong and it is as sure a sign as any that a return to first principles is in order."
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