Riots Rattle Ancient French Town - washingtonpost.com

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Lawmakers Denounce Weekend Disturbances by Self-Styled Anarchists in Poitiers

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 15, 2009

POITIERS, France -- Under a bright autumn sun, the narrow lanes of ancient Poitiers teemed with families enjoying a lighthearted celebration of street theater. Suddenly, a knot of black-clad youths emerged from the crowd. They donned plastic masks, pulled up their hoods and started destroying everything in sight.

In what police described as an organized attack, the band shattered store windows, damaged the facades of several banks and spray-painted anarchist slogans on government buildings. Aiming even at the historical heritage of this comfortable provincial town 200 miles southwest of Paris, they fractured a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's interrogation here in 1429 and -- in Latin -- scrawled "Everything belongs to everybody" on a stone baptistery that is one of the oldest monuments in Christendom.

The wanton destruction, which lasted for about 90 minutes early Saturday evening, was a dramatic reminder that France and other European nations, below their surface of stability and wealth, harbor tiny bands of ultra-leftist activists who still want to combat the market economies and parliamentary democracies on which the continent's well-being is founded.

"We will destroy your morbid world," one of the Poitiers protesters sprayed-painted on a wall near the city's landmark Notre Dame Cathedral.

Based on politics of violent rejection dating from the 1970s, the groups have been largely overshadowed in recent years by the more mundane violence of big-city drug gangs and disaffected immigrant ghettos, particularly in France. But they have surfaced recently in dramatic ways. French, German and other European ultra-leftists set fire to a customs shed and a hotel during the NATO summit in Strasbourg in April, and others launched violent attacks that marred an otherwise joyous music festival this summer in the streets of Paris.

The outburst in Poitiers was particularly shocking to its 90,000 residents, most of whom traditionally regard themselves as comfortably distant from the political tensions of Paris and the world. Shop owners and local political leaders voiced astonishment that police were caught by surprise and wondered who the violent protesters were and where they came from.

"It's really strange," said Christine Simon, whose little shop hawking New Age spirituality lost a display window and several art works in the rampage. "Here in Poitiers, there is never anything like this. I don't mean nothing ever happens. We have a cultural life and all. But nothing like this."

Mayor Alain Claeys, from the opposition Socialist Party, suggested to Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux that his ministry's intelligence agents should have picked up signals that the ultra-leftists were planning something. Joining many other Poitiers residents, he said those who organized the destruction must have come from outside the city, perhaps even outside France.

"Extremism and violence struck brutally in the heart of the regional capital," said former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who represents the area in the Senate. He vowed to meet with Hortefeux to "draw conclusions from these sad and unacceptable events."

Police acknowledged to local reporters that they had no idea who the ringleaders were. They took 18 people into custody Saturday evening and Sunday and, in a show of firmness, put eight of them on immediate trial Monday. Defense lawyers argued the eight were just locals swept up in the movement, however, and judges sentenced only three to prison terms, from one to four months.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's political coalition, the Union for a Popular Movement, urged harsh punishment for the rioters despite the difficulty in finding who was responsible. "Prosecutions must be organized, and we expect the strongest possible firmness from the courts," said Frédéric Lefebvre, the coalition spokesman.

Sarkozy, a former interior minister known as an advocate of no-nonsense law enforcement, repeatedly has urged tougher tactics to combat crime and suburban unrest. He was elected in 2007 in part because his hard line captured support from voters who traditionally had cast their ballots for the far-right National Front.

Hortefeux flew down from Paris for a one-hour appearance Monday to show government solidarity and vow that something would be done. "I hope the courts will crack down, and severely," he said.

A law is before Parliament that will give police new powers to monitor such groups, he said. But he added that it might also be necessary to use another law, dating from the 1930s, to disband them before they can cause further trouble.

Claeys, however, asked how Hortefeux would disband the groups if his ministry does not know who they are or where they come from.

The violence seemed to have been carefully planned, police said. They discovered caches of masks, hammers, batons and smoke bombs at several points in the city center, apparently hidden in advance for use during the riot. Once it broke out, police said, the protesters used canvas tarps to protect themselves from rubber anti-riot projectiles used by police.

The number of rioters involved in the destruction was estimated at 150 to 300, some of whom waved the black flags often associated with anarchist groups. Their tactics were particularly successful, officers said, because they grafted their riot onto a protest that was being staged by local opponents to a new prison. Organizers of the prison protest issued statements dissociating themselves from the violence.

Merchants, festival-goers and others who witnessed the rampage said the rioters apparently did not aim to injure bystanders. Two policemen were lightly injured during the violence, authorities said. And while the protesters spray-painted anarchist appeals on buildings, they did not shout slogans or otherwise explain their acts.

"Objective: destroy, destroy, frighten the bourgeois, then disappear," commented Hervé Cannet, an editorialist whose local New Republic newspaper office was one of the buildings vandalized.

Lawmakers Stage Rare Protest During Clinton's Russia Visit - washingtonpost.com

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Citing Election Fraud, Minority Parties Walk Out on Last Day of Clinton's Visit

By Philip P. Pan and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 15, 2009

MOSCOW, Oct. 14 -- The minority political parties in Russia's parliament walked out of the chamber in a rare act of protest Wednesday, embarrassing the Kremlin during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and demanding a recount of votes in local elections widely perceived to have been rigged.

The protest was unusual because the parties generally cooperate with the Kremlin in what the pro-democracy opposition says is a stage-managed legislature. It was the first time in nine years that all lawmakers outside the dominant United Russia party have engineered a walkout, suggesting growing political strains caused by the economic crisis and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's authoritarian policies.

Putin's United Russia, which holds 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, swept local elections Sunday, winning up to 80 percent of the 7,000-plus races and all but three seats on the 35-member city council in Moscow. Independent observers and opposition parties reported mass electoral violations, including clashes between voters and police in one province.

"This is outright fascism," Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, said Wednesday after leading his faction out of parliament. He was followed by the Communist Party, which accused Putin of bringing the political system to a new low, and Fair Russia, a left-wing party formed with Kremlin support three years ago.

Ilya Ponomaryov, a Fair Russia lawmaker, said his party was protesting not only election fraud, which has become routine in Russia, but also an attempt by the authorities to forbid debate on the subject in the Duma. "It was done in such an arrogant way that we felt it was useless to stay," he said. "They denied us the right to even speak. That's the minimum in a parliament. Otherwise, what's the point?"

But Ponomaryov said the parties would return to parliament by the end of the week after receiving assurances that President Dmitry Medvedev would meet with them and support a proposal that would forbid the ruling party from silencing them in the future.

There was no immediate comment from Medvedev, who has called for greater political competition in Russia and had praised the elections as "well organized." But speaking to reporters in Beijing, Putin dismissed the fraud allegations. "Those who don't win are never happy," he said.

The protest came on the last day of a visit that Clinton has used to speak relatively forcefully about the shortcomings of the Russian political system, even as she has tried to strengthen relations with the Kremlin and persuade it to support sanctions against Iran if necessary.

Clinton met with human rights activists at a reception at the U.S. ambassador's residence Tuesday. "A society cannot be truly open when those who stand up and speak out are murdered," she told them. She added, "Those of you here today not only understand the risks, you live them."

She continued pressing the issue during an interview on the Echo of Moscow radio station Wednesday, saying that she met an activist at the reception who had been badly beaten and calling such attacks "a matter of grave concern" to the United States.

"All of these issues of imprisonments, detentions, beatings, killings -- it is something that is hurtful to see from the outside," she said. "Every country has criminal elements. Every country has people who try to abuse power. But in the last 18 months -- well, and even going back further -- there have been too many of these incidents."

She added: "I think people want their government to stand up and say this is wrong, and they're going to try to prevent it, and they're going to make sure the people are brought to justice who are engaged in such behavior."

Later, addressing 1,000 students at Moscow State University, Clinton criticized officials in Washington and Moscow who are skeptical of a closer U.S. relationship with Russia.

"I will be the first to tell you, we have people in our government, and you have people in your government, who are still living in the past. They do not believe us and Russia can cooperate to this extent. They do not trust each other," she said. "And we have to prove them wrong."

Clinton did not identify the officials. But the statement recalled a remark by President Obama this year describing Putin as having "one foot" in the "old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations." Later, after meeting Putin in Moscow, Obama said he was convinced that Putin was interested in moving forward.

Despite the correction, the Obama administration has often highlighted its relationship with Medvedev, the protege Putin selected to succeed him as president. Medvedev has seemed more open to sanctions against Iran and has presented himself as more interested in liberal political reforms than Putin, who remains the most powerful politician in Russia.

Clinton said nothing about the Duma protest before leaving Russia, but State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley expressed concern about the voting fraud allegations and said fair elections are key to fighting corruption. "And, of course," he added, "that's the vision that's been articulated by President Medvedev."

Use of Forests as Carbon Offsets Fails to Impress In First Big Trial - washingtonpost.com

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By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

More than a decade ago in the northeast corner of Bolivia, a group of polluters and environmentalists joined forces in the first large-scale experiment to curb climate change with a strategy that promised to suit their competing interests: compensating for greenhouse gas emissions by preserving forests.

The coalition of U.S. utility companies, two nonprofit groups and the Bolivian government had the common goal of making a dent in the worldwide deforestation that accounts for about 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions each year. The outcome of that experiment is fueling debate over a key element in international climate strategy.

While the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project has succeeded in keeping a biologically rich preserve of more than 6,000 square miles free from logging, it has fallen far short of its goal of reducing emissions. The mix of pragmatism and idealism -- providing powerful financial incentives to encourage influential companies and poor countries to work together to slow global warming -- shows the complexity of a much-heralded approach that Democratic lawmakers and international negotiators are trying to write into law.

Preventing the clearing and burning of tropical forests, which help absorb carbon dioxide and provide habitat to an array of species, has become a critical objective for environmentalists.

"It doesn't matter who caused the problem. We are in it together," said Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work on tree planting in Africa and appealed to President Obama in a meeting last week on the need to preserve forests overseas. "If forests can be kept standing, it would be good for developed nations, it would be good for the developing world."

It also gives the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases more affordable carbon credits under the cap-and-trade system Congress is now debating. Without international offsets, pollution allowances would be 89 percent more expensive under the climate bill authored by Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (Mass.), according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Sixty percent of the international offsets would come from tropical forests, the agency said.

"Including offsets from tropical forests in a climate bill is a key to affordability," said Nigel Purvis, executive director of the bipartisan Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests. "It would be geopolitically and economically foolish for us to push back on that."

But a report Greenpeace will release Thursday questions the premise of using forest conservation overseas to compensate for U.S. pollution, noting that Noel Kempff envisioned keeping 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere over 30 years but has lowered that expectation to 5.8 million. The revised estimates do not take into account that logging may have moved to areas to the north, east and southwest of the project. And the report notes that the project's three corporate underwriters -- American Electric Power, BP America and PacifiCorp -- overestimated how much carbon the project kept from entering the atmosphere, telling the EPA it accounted for 7.4 million metric tons from 1997 to 2004.

"At this crucial time, with the [climate] negotiations in Copenhagen and U.S. legislation, can we afford to take a gamble on what the backers of these programs say haven't been as effective as they anticipated?" said Greenpeace spokesman Daniel Kessler.

American Electric Power chief executive Michael G. Morris said Greenpeace is naive to suggest the world should create a multibillion-dollar fund to preserve forests instead of letting corporations undertake these initiatives to meet their bottom line.

"When Greenpeace says the only reason American Electric Power wants to do this is because it doesn't want to shut down its coal plants, my answer is, 'You bet, because our coal plants serve our customers very cost-effectively,' " he said.

Several forestry experts said the world has learned from the Noel Kempff project and has incorporated lessons from it in the policies that U.S. lawmakers and international negotiators are now shaping. The sharp cut in verified emissions reductions came from satellite technology and better computer models that adjusted the baseline for what would have happened if the project had not been conducted.

Toby Janson Smith, who directs Conservation International's forest carbon markets program, said two new global standards -- one measuring a project's carbon storage and another its social and environmental benefits -- have built "great confidence in the market" in the last couple of years.

And Sarene Marshall, deputy director of the Nature Conservancy's climate team, said any binding climate regime would allow emitters to use verified offsets only after the fact, rather than projected estimates. "We can definitely measure with a high degree of scientific accuracy, and this can be verified by a third party, what would have been the emissions from forests that were targeted for destruction," she said.

The Norwegian government, which has pledged $1 billion between now and 2015 to conserve forests in Brazil, has proposed that any global climate deal inked this year spell out that rich nations pay to protect tropical forests and establish an offset program only once developing countries improve their governance and accounting systems. Audun Rosland, a Norway climate negotiator, said his country wants this stored forest carbon to be on top of what industrialized countries are already doing. "We need both deep cuts in developed countries and developing countries," he said.

Markey, who focused on deforestation during a visit to Brazil last year, included a provision in his and Waxman's bill that sets aside 5 percent of the money from emissions allowances to conserve forests overseas, and the bill states that offsets must come from projects in countries that have a national deforestation plan or are working toward one. The Senate bill includes the same set-aside and slightly different project requirements.

But Kyle L. Davis, PacifiCorp's director of environmental policy and strategy, said the two bills' strict forest requirements might make it impossible for companies like his to find the 2 billion tons of offsets they promise.

And Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), a pivotal vote on climate legislation, said he remains concerned that this sort of system can lead to market speculation. "That's a very complicated area where there's not a lot of experience," Dorgan said.

In the end, according to Center for Clean Air Policy President Ned Helme, both U.S. and international officials need to figure out how to preserve tropical forests as part of any domestic and international climate agreement.

"In terms of selling the deal, this is an important part of the deal, because so many countries benefit," Helme said. "We have to make sure we're not overselling the promise."

Democrats Fire Back at Health Industry - washingtonpost.com

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By Lori Montgomery and David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Days after the insurance lobby began an aggressive campaign against a Senate plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, senior Democrats fired back, threatening Wednesday to revoke the industry's long-standing antitrust exemption.

Health insurance is one of only a few industries exempted from certain federal antitrust regulations, and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the exemption was "one of the worst accidents of American history. It deserves a lot of the blame for the huge rise in premiums that has made health insurance so unaffordable."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) joined Schumer in a stinging denunciation of health industry practices, but the insurance lobby dismissed their threat as "a political ploy."

The dispute came as House leaders pushed off a vote on health care until the first week in November and as Reid and other Senate leaders met for the first time with senior White House officials to discuss how to craft compromise legislation. High on their agenda was the array of contentious matters that must be resolved before a bill can come before the full Senate.

Among them is whether to create a government-run insurance plan, whether to fine people who do not purchase insurance and whether to require employers to offer coverage to their workers.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats sought Wednesday to shore up the support of a critical player in the health-care debate: the American Medical Association.

Senate leaders met with representatives of the AMA and other doctors' groups, then said they would press to repeal within days a decade-old law that subjects physicians who treat Medicare patients to regular pay cuts. The repeal would increase the federal budget deficit by nearly $250 billion over the next decade, but the influential organizations, whose members will face a 21 percent pay cut in January, had demanded a resolution to the issue as part of any health-care overhaul.

"It wipes the slate clean," said one representative from the medical groups who participated in a meeting Wednesday with Reid, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.). Instead of fighting pay cuts, the participant said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting, doctors could pursue pay "updates."

The first of those updates -- giving Medicare doctors a 0.5 percent pay increase in 2010 -- will remain in the Senate health-care bill, Democratic aides said. But by repealing future pay cuts before the debate reaches the floor, the chamber's leaders hope to short-circuit any Republican plans to add the expensive repeal to the larger bill, which could threaten its prospects for passage.

The move could, however, trigger a fight with House leaders, who want the Senate to approve strict pay-as-you-go budget rules before consenting to such a large increase in future deficits.

Experts differ as to how much latitude the antitrust exemption gives health insurers.

To the extent that it provides insurers with market clout, repealing the exemption could shift power to doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers, potentially leading to higher premiums, some experts said.

A repeal, said lawyer Richard T. Greenberg of the firm McGuire Woods, would allow the federal government to regulate arrangements by which insurers steer their customers to particular hospitals and other health-care providers.

David Dranove, a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said the exemption permits health insurers to exchange information about potential customers' medical risk before issuing policies.

Robert Zirkelbach, press secretary for the industry group America's Health Insurance Plans, said, "The health insurance industry is one of the most regulated industries in America," subject to regulators at the federal and state levels. "The focus on this issue is a political ploy designed to distract attention away from the real issues in this debate."

Staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.

Obama Administration Hopes to Improve Ties With China's Military - washingtonpost.com

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By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

During his first visit to China next month, President Obama hopes to strengthen ties with Beijing on efforts to combat climate change, address the global financial crisis and contain nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran. Perhaps most important, he also aims to improve the U.S. relationship with China's military.

The once-insular nation is broadening its international interests and investing around the globe, and its military is rapidly modernizing. So there is concern that U.S. and Chinese forces may find themselves bumping into each other without formal mechanisms in place for the two militaries to iron out disagreements.

Even as those worries grow, a longtime issue for China remains: It does not want the United States to sell weapons to Taiwan, which it still claims as part of its territory, and views that as the baseline of any talks. "The military relationship is a red-meat issue in China," said a senior Chinese diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "It is the one issue that could jeopardize our relations with the United States."

White House officials hope to diffuse that concern, arguing that the bigger matters between the two countries are more pressing than ever. Even at the height of the Cold War, senior administration officials have noted, the Pentagon had a more substantive relationship with the Soviet Union's military than it does with the People's Liberation Army today.

"China is reemerging as a great power," said Michael Schiffer, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. "Our militaries are coming into increasing proximity and increasing interactions. But we don't have any good mechanism to help us clarify misunderstandings."

The Obama administration got a taste of such a "misunderstanding" just two months into office. In early March, the U.S. Navy reconnaissance ship Impeccable was in the South China Sea hunting for Chinese submarines when it was swarmed by Chinese vessels that tried to block it and destroy its sonar equipment. A similar incident occurred in May in the Yellow Sea.

Both confrontations ended peacefully when the U.S. ships made it clear that they would leave; but the incidents highlighted "the risk," a senior Pentagon official said recently, "of having the entire bilateral relationship unravel based on the decision-making of 18-year-old seamen."

In the past, some U.S. officials said forging ties with the Chinese military wasn't that important. Even though its defense spending had risen dramatically, outpaced only by the United States', China's intentions were limited to defending its sovereignty.

But two developments have changed American thinking, analysts say. The first was the realization that every crisis between the United States and China -- including the Chinese army crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989 and the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 by U.S. planes -- has involved the nations' militaries.

The second was the conclusion that the People's Liberation Army wants to expand its activities around the world as China expands its international investments. Last year, China dispatched three navy ships outside of Asia for the first time in its modern history, sending them to fight piracy off Somalia alongside an international task force.

The Obama administration has held a series of high-level contacts with the Chinese army that will culminate with a visit to the United States this month by Xu Caihou, a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and the highest-ranking Chinese military official to come here in years.

But beyond that, China's military seems intent on keeping the Pentagon at arm's length, and U.S. officials point to number of concerns.

The Chinese have built up their conventional missile forces to such an extent that a Rand Corp. report concluded in August that an attack could "cut every runway at Taiwan's half-dozen main fighter bases and destroy essentially all of the aircraft parked on ramps," allowing China total domination of the skies above Taiwan. But this strategic shift has not been accompanied by significant talks between China and the United States, which is legally bound to provide for Taiwan's defense.

The Pentagon estimates that by next year, China will deploy as many as five Jin-class submarines, each with a capacity of 12 nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. But there is no protocol for how the American and Chinese navies should deal with incidents at sea.

China also has shown little interest in a dialogue about nuclear strategy. It now deploys mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles and has more than doubled, to about 80, its supply of nuclear-armed medium-range ballistic missiles. Except for one round of talks with the Bush administration, it has shared no information on its nuclear plans.

Three years ago Washington invited the head of China's nuclear weapons command to the United States, but he has yet to come.

China knocked an old satellite out of the sky in 2007 when it tested an anti-satellite weapon, and a recent space launch came within 100 miles of the international space station. But Beijing has not talked to the United States about how to deal with the debris or how its space program, run by the army, should interact with those of other nations.

China also is believed to be working on a new fighter jet. But it has not hashed out a protocol for what to do when its airmen encounter the American military in the skies. In 2001, a Chinese fighter bumped into a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane over Hainan Island. The fighter pilot was never found, and the Americans crash-landed on Chinese territory, sparking an 11-day standoff before the Chinese released the crew.

And while U.S. and Chinese diplomats have coordinated their strategies to confront North Korea's nuclear program, the Chinese military has rejected the Pentagon's request to discuss contingencies if the North Korean government collapses.

When Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy visited China in June, officials there gave her a list of what they called seven "obstacles" that needed to be removed if ties were going to improve, according to several American and Chinese officials and analysts. The Chinese said they wanted U.S. reconnaissance vessels out of their 200-mile exclusive economic zone, bristled at the fingerprinting of senior Chinese military officers when they entered the United States and objected to being a target of U.S. nuclear weapons.

But at the top of the list was a demand that the United States stop selling weapons to Taiwan.

Three times over the past three years, Taiwan has asked to buy dozens of new F-16 fighter jets from the United States, and each time Washington put the request off, fearful of alienating China. After his trip, Obama has to decide whether to sell Black Hawk helicopters and Patriot anti-missile batteries to Taiwan, and soon after that, he must decide whether to sell 66 F-16s. The United States last sold F-16s to Taiwan in 1992.

"Selling the F-16s to Taiwan would be a big, big problem for us," said the senior Chinese diplomat. "Cooperation on other things would naturally be affected."

Darfur Advocates, Rep. Wolf Intensify Pressure on Obama - washingtonpost.com

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By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Human rights groups and lawmakers are ratcheting up pressure on the Obama administration this week over its approach to ending violence in Sudan, saying the White House and the State Department are treading too cautiously in dealing with the government in Khartoum.

A coalition of U.S.-based advocates focused on the Darfur region -- where they say genocide is still being committed by the Sudanese government -- sent a letter to President Obama on Monday demanding the replacement of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration as special envoy to Sudan, arguing that his attempt to engage with the country's rulers "is wrong and deadly."

"The good-intentioned yet soft approach of the General towards the Government of Sudan is abused and exploited by a regime that has continued to rule Sudan with fire and blood throughout the last twenty years," read the letter from nine groups, including the Darfur Reconciliation and Development Organization, and several individuals.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in response, "The President is extremely grateful for the work General Gration has done thus far, and for all the work he'll do on this critical issue in the future."

In a separate letter to be released Thursday, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a member of the House Sudan caucus who has long been critical of the Khartoum regime, calls on Obama to personally intervene to ensure that no U.S. lobbying firm is allowed to represent the country. The Washington Post reported last week that Robert B. Crowe, a fundraiser for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), is attempting to secure U.S. approval for a lobbying contract with Khartoum.

"I urge you to personally engage on the issue of Sudan," Wolf writes to Obama. "You've rightly noted that 'silence, acquiescence and paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong,' and you've advocated for 'real pressures [to] be placed on the Sudanese government.' I wholeheartedly support these sentiments, but sentiments absent action ring hollow."

The sharply worded criticisms come as the Obama administration prepares to release a long-awaited policy on Sudan, which has been torn apart by a two-decade civil war and by government-backed massacres in the western region of Darfur that have killed more than 300,000 people and displaced millions.

Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Darfur. His government has embarked on an effort this year to persuade the United States to ease sanctions against Sudan, seeking to hire a lobbyist and helping to negotiate a $1.3 million consulting contract between Qatar and former Reagan aide Robert "Bud" McFarlane, records show.

The letters to Obama this week are the latest in a series of demands for a harder U.S. line on Khartoum. Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of semiautonomous southern Sudan, wrote to Obama last month, saying that Bashir continues to foment violence in the region, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.

"There has not been any transformation or reform at the center," Mayardit wrote, referring to Khartoum. "The status quo prevails. . . . Significant change in policy in relation to Sudan should only come when there is change in the reality of Sudan."

Obama May Be Met By Frustration in New Orleans Visit - washingtonpost.com

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By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Even before Air Force One touches down in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon, President Obama is discovering the burdens of rebuilding a city that feels abandoned by the federal government.

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, swaths of New Orleans remain devastated by the winds and floods that tore through. More than 65,000 homes remain abandoned. There is no public hospital. The levees that keep back the Gulf of Mexico are still vulnerable.

The responsibility for getting more federal help to New Orleans has now passed from President George W. Bush to Obama, and with it the impatience of the city's residents.

"The people that I talk to are frustrated with the setbacks that they have had to endure, are frustrated with the nature of the bureaucracy that allows decisions to be unmade for long periods of time," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The frustration, she said, is a reflection of "the pent-up need . . . for a sense of serious attention from the federal government."

Obama has repeatedly sent Cabinet secretaries into New Orleans, often with money to jump-start stalled projects. White House officials say they have cut red tape and loosened $1.5 billion in assistance that was stuck in the federal pipeline. They say more than 3,500 people have been moved to permanent housing.

But civic leaders are grumbling that the president's scheduled five-hour visit to the hurricane- and flood-damaged area -- his first since taking office -- is not sufficient to communicate his concern.

"A town hall event and a mystery stop? That's it?" the Times-Picayune newspaper editorialized last week before the trip was finalized and a school tour was added. "The White House plan for President Barack Obama's first post-election visit to New Orleans seems to be lacking in substance and fun."

Criticism is also coming from Mississippi and southwest Louisiana, where storm-weary residents are asking why New Orleans is the only visit on Obama's schedule before a quick stop in San Francisco for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser.

The White House calls the criticism unfounded, noting that as a candidate and a senator, Obama visited the Gulf Coast repeatedly.

"The president has been to New Orleans five times since Katrina and has done most of the things people are saying they want him to do," spokesman Nick Shapiro said. "What he hasn't done is hold a public event where he can hear directly from the people."

As a candidate, Obama used the plight of the city as a rallying cry for change, often citing what he said was an inadequate response by the Bush administration to the needs of the people there.

"I promise you that when I'm in the White House, I will commit myself every day to keeping up Washington's end of the bargain," Obama said at Tulane University in February 2008. "This will be a priority of my presidency."

But like Bush, whose presidency was marred by the federal response to Katrina and its aftermath, Obama is faced with the politically sensitive challenge of helping citizens in the New Orleans area and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast recover while managing a national economic downturn.

"The issue here is what happens after his trip," said Amy Liu, deputy director of the metropolitan policy program at the Brookings Institution. "What does the administration do from now until the five-year anniversary of the storm? It's a landmark date. It's a natural reflection point to say, 'Boy, did all those public investments put New Orleans on the path to recovery?' "

White House officials say they are accelerating progress by using the clout of Cabinet secretaries to clear away bureaucratic hurdles. Longtime observers of the city's recovery efforts say Obama's creation of an arbitration panel has helped speed up funding for construction of schools, roads, sewers and other infrastructure.

"There were a lot of those matters just clogged up; they weren't moving," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview. "We set up special teams to go down there, really work the process and get that money out."

Napolitano said that "substantial progress" has been made during the past nine months because "our approach has been: Let's solve this problem and get this money out the door. If you go down there now, it's substantially different than it was a year ago."

But critics say the White House is unfairly tarring the previous administration, which they say eventually developed an effective operation aimed at distributing federal help to those in the affected region.

D.J. Nordquist, who served in the Bush administration's gulf recovery office, said billions of dollars were transferred to state and local agencies during the later years of Bush's presidency -- only to remain there, undistributed.

She said 30 percent of the $13.4 billion in disaster grants to the area has not been spent, the result of delays at all levels, not just the government. She noted that Bush also created programs to fast-track funding.

"We cut through the red tape, removed bottlenecks and, as a result, reduced the average time for processing grants from months to weeks through this expedited FEMA process we initiated," Nordquist said. "Overall, I don't think this blame game is healthy. There's been enough finger-pointing down in the gulf. The people down there deserve better."

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), whose district runs along the north and south shores of Lake Pontchartrain, said Obama has yet to throw the weight of his office behind "Category 5 flood protection" or coastal restoration for New Orleans.

"He made a lot of promises and was very critical of President Bush, saying that he would do a better job as president," Scalise said. "There are a lot of logjams that need to be broken through."

In response, White House officials noted that the president has ordered the creation of an Ocean Policy Task Force to focus on coastal regions and a Gulf Coast Interagency Working Group to study the issues there. Officials also said several agencies are working toward a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Category 5 hurricanes.

Crowley said the White House has not acted on her suggestion to designate a Gulf Coast recovery czar, and she wonders whether Obama and his advisers recognize the magnitude of the problems.

"It's hugely complex," she said. "I'm not going to say they didn't understand that. But their initiatives are having to make it through the various buzz saws that are in place."

No Friends of Facebook's, in a Generation That Is - washingtonpost.com

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By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Tomek Kott is so stubborn about not joining his friends -- in truth, nearly his entire generation -- on any social networking site that his wife launched a mini-crusade against him. Exploiting a tactic surely befitting our times, she whipped up a Facebook group last year called "Tomek Kott Must Join Facebook."

So far, it hasn't worked. Her husband, a 25-year-old physics graduate student who considers social networking a time-wasting cesspool of pseudo-communication, remains blithely unconnected.

"I am old-school in the personal touch way," said Tomek Kott, who lives in Silver Spring and has outsourced many of his digital communication duties to his wife, Anne. "All my friends from high school have also met my wife, and they're friends with her; my wife 'friended' them or whatever it's called."

Kott and others like him are social networking refuseniks: people in their 20s or early 30s who have gone off the grid, eschewing the ecology of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like. In Washington, refuseniks are not exactly operating in isolated, Luddite worlds: One is in a dance company, another is a rapper/hip-hop singer, another is a Georgetown undergraduate. Kott grew up in Redmond, Wash., where his father is a software engineer for Microsoft.

All of them, given their ages, qualify as exotic life forms.

The vast majority of their peers in the millennial generation are social networking pros: About 85 percent of all Internet users 18 to 34 visited Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in August, according to ComScore, a Reston-based Internet data research company. And about 84 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds check social networking sites at least once a week, according to a May study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

In the DCypher Dance company, friends of Natasha Hawkins, 28, consider her digital abstinence a nuisance.

They labor to send e-mails to share photographs, reexplain personal news that has been publicized on a Facebook news feed and wonder whether she knows about upcoming auditions or performances of other companies.

"Maybe I should pressure her to get on it," said Vikki Weinberger, 27, a fellow DCypher dancer who's been hesitant to do so because she doubts Hawkins will budge. "She's a very strong person in her morals and beliefs."

Hawkins, who eons ago joined and later left the social networking site BlackPlanet, views such realms as potential for drama and rumor. She believes in forging bonds the old way and preserving a tight circle of quality relationships.

"I have close friends -- and I know how to reach them," she said. "People create arguments, actual arguments or disagreements as a result of Facebook. I am like, 'Really? It's a computer network?' We need to stop."

She knows not everyone approves of her boycott. "I probably have 20 e-mail requests to join Facebook, and I have not accepted," Hawkins, a risk analyst for the federal government, said with a half-chuckle. "My friends hate me."

Social networking holdouts can be ironclad about their beliefs.

Kiran Gandhi, a junior at Georgetown University, has one lone laggard friend who refuses to join to protect her privacy.

"When someone tells you that they don't have Facebook, it's untouchable. It's a sign of disrespect to try to convince them" to join, Ghandi said.

Gandhi's friend, a senior in Georgetown's foreign service school, agreed to be interviewed but only on the condition that her name be withheld. (She's serious about her privacy.)

"I don't feel the need to go to the most trendy party because everyone found it on Facebook," she said. "Not having Facebook allows me to focus on things I really care about."

On a broad level, there might be differences between those who tweet or issue status updates and those who don't. Pew researchers point to a new but very small study they conducted to show that resisters and adopters 18 to 29 have demographic differences: Social networkers are more likely to have an annual income of $75,000 or more, and nonusers are more likely to have only a high school education.

Yet even as the refuseniks assert a lofty stance on privacy and cling to precious -- perhaps enviable -- face-to-face communication, they inevitably rely on friends or relatives who are members of the very sites they protest.

Anne Kott said she is happily married to the man she met at Bucknell University, where she first joined Facebook. However, she cannot help but feel as though she is in his employ.

"I am his Facebook secretary," she complained. "His friends will send me a Facebook message, 'Do you have Tomek's number?' And, 'What's Tomek doing?' He occasionally looks over my shoulder to see what photos are up, but he has never shown interest in starting his own account."

Ricardo Thomas, 23, who works at a photo restoration shop in Prince George's County, didn't go to college and is the only person he knows not on Facebook. His hip-hop band has pages on YouTube and MySpace, but he rarely checks them and doesn't have a personal site anywhere because he hates typing and computers. He leans on his friends to keep him up to speed, even about the doings of his ex-girlfriend.

"Last week, I was over at a friend's house, and he showed me a picture on Facebook of a girl I used to" date, Thomas said.

And? "I didn't know she had a kid!" he said. His friend "showed me her pictures, and I started looking at her status -- she was single."

"I told my friend to write her a message for me, saying, 'Ricardo is right here and he said hi,' " Thomas recounted. "But Facebook is funny because they've got this thing called a 'wall,' and she deals with a lot of guys on the site. She says she's single, but I know she's dating."

His lack of membership on Facebook has other disadvantages. Sometimes Thomas doesn't find out about parties being touted on the site until the last minute. Last week he almost missed a gathering at Johana's nightclub in Petworth.

"We knew about this on Monday!" said bandmate Nicholas Hewitt, 20, who goes by Booka Wildboy Hewitt on Facebook, standing outside the club Thursday night.

"Yeah, you really bring me all the Facebook stuff to my attention," Thomas said sheepishly. "I know eventually I'm going to have to do it. It will make stuff much smoother."

It might be just a matter of time for Thomas and his ilk. Technological innovations -- from hybrid corn in the first half of the 20th century to cellphones in the latter part -- can take years for most to adopt.

But social networking sites are seducing laggards at supersonic speeds. Although MySpace's monthly traffic dropped to about 64 million unique monthly U.S. visitors in August, Facebook's has soared to 92 million, and Twitter's has exploded to more than 20 million -- up from 1 million last year. In the past year, the fastest-growing age group on Twitter is the demographic that initially rejected it: those 12 to 24, according to ComScore.

Facebook, which just announced that it has 300 million members, might never win over Tomek Kott. His wife realizes that.

The "Tomek Kott Must Join Facebook" page, which has 19 members (including this reporter), does allay some of Anne's frustration. On the group's message board, a Baltimore friend wrote supportive words to the beleaguered wife: "This is awesome. Well done Anne. Take it to that weird tall guy."

And although Anne was kind enough to make the group's page accessible by invitation only, she couldn't resist having a bit more fun at her husband's expense. "I loaded," she said, laughing, "a somewhat ridiculous photo of him."

Free Perks With Medicare Advantage Plans Aren't Really Free - washingtonpost.com

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By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

TUCSON -- Patrick Higney, 66, doesn't want to give up the freebies that come with his zero-premium Medicare Advantage plan: free aspirin and free Band-Aids, a free blood pressure machine and a free ear thermometer.

Nancy Smyth, 68, wants to keep the free gym membership that comes with the Medicare Advantage policy she bought from Health Net, a private HMO. And John Kizer, 72, hopes his plan will continue to offer free prescription eyeglasses and free hearing aids.

"Everybody's trying to save their little kingdom," Kizer, a retired dairy farmer, said last week after receiving a flu shot. The shot was free, of course.

Seniors in this Sun Belt retirement haven and across the country revel in the free perks that private insurance companies bundle with legally mandated benefits to entice people 65 and older to forgo traditional Medicare and sign up for private Medicare Advantage policies.

The trouble is, the extra benefits are not exactly free; they are subsidized by the government. And some of the plans pass their costs on to seniors, who pay higher co-pays and additional fees to get care.

"It's a wasteful, inefficient program and always has been," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said at a recent hearing. At its core, Rockefeller added, Medicare Advantage is "stuffing money into the pockets of private insurers, and it doesn't provide any better benefits to anybody."

President Obama has proposed cutting more than $100 billion in subsidies over 10 years, a contentious component of health-care reform that will be fought in earnest as the bills move through Congress. But unlike some issues that touch off partisan sparring, Medicare Advantage has an unlikely band of bipartisan defenders who have already battled to restore $10 billion of the proposed reductions.

In a health-care debate defined by big numbers and confusing details, the prospect of losing benefits such as a free gym membership through the Silver Sneakers program is tangible, and it has spooked some seniors, who are the nation's most reliable voters and have been most skeptical about reform.

Medicare Advantage was established in the 1970s (under a different name) when private insurers convinced Congress that they could deliver care at lower costs than Medicare. The program blossomed in the late 1990s when Congress bolstered it with millions in additional federal subsidies to for-profit HMOs. It has proven popular among younger, active seniors who had managed-care plans as workers, and about a quarter of Medicare's 45 million beneficiaries are enrolled.

Many private plans require no additional monthly premiums, yet the government pays an average of $849.90 in monthly subsidies to insurance companies for a person on Medicare Advantage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That is about 14 percent more than the government spends on people with standard Medicare, according to the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

"The promise of Medicare Advantage and Medicare HMOs was to save the government money, to save consumers money, all the while providing additional benefits and coordinating care," said Joseph Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center. "That promise has been unfulfilled overall because the plans are overpaid by the federal government at this point."

The insurance industry, foreseeing a loss in profits, warns that cuts would hurt seniors by increasing their premiums or co-payments and taking away some benefits. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an industry trade group, on Tuesday launched ads in several states citing a projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that "many seniors will see cuts in benefits."

"This is a program that more than 11 million seniors currently rely on, and seniors have expressed very high satisfaction with this program and want to be able to keep the coverage," said AHIP communications director Robert Zirkelbach. "Seniors are going to be shocked when they find out what these cuts are going to mean."

As Congress inches toward a final debate, millions of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries such as those here in Tucson are factoring heavily in the political calculus for lawmakers who want to cut spending without alienating this powerful constituency.

Their anxieties are leading to regional alliances among Democratic senators, such as Florida's Bill Nelson and New York's Charles E. Schumer, and GOP senators, including Arizona's Jon Kyl, whose states are home to disproportionately high numbers of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries.

Federal subsidies to Medicare Advantage insurers vary based on location. In Arizona, insurers stand to lose between $35 and $57 in monthly subsidies per beneficiary under the bills in Congress, according to AHIP.

Nationally, about 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have Medicare Advantage policies. But in Arizona, that figure is about 32 percent, and in Tucson it's nearly 40 percent, which explains why Kyl has been so outspoken.

"Seniors like the choices they now have, and they don't deserve to have them ripped away to help pay for this bill," Kyl, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday before voting against the panel's bill.

"It's going to be one of the biggest factors in the debate because seniors are a political force in this country," Kyl said in an interview. "The argument we're going to make is, 'That's not right, that's not fair to take these benefits away from seniors.' "

Smyth, a life coach who visits the Tucson Jewish Community Center several times a week for cardio workouts and yoga classes, said she supports health-care reform but does not want Medicare Advantage subsidies to decrease. "Where are they going to cut back?" Smyth asked. "I'm worried they'll cut Silver Sneakers."

In Tucson, many Medicare Advantage policies have no premiums, while some beneficiaries pay relatively small monthly fees to get added benefits such as dental care. But many pay fees for each doctor's visit, on top of co-payments as high as 20 percent of costs.

Many seniors said they were drawn to the plans because they were relatively healthy and visit hospitals rarely, and because their premiums would be substantially higher if they bought full-coverage supplements to traditional Medicare.

"The appeal is cost, obviously," said Norman Powers, 72, a retired electrical engineer, who signed up with his wife, Carole. He said they have not had any costly medical operations -- and then knocked on a wooden table. The gym membership that Health Net gave away has been a plus, he said.

"We do the full workout, treadmill, the works," Powers boasted. "And it's all free. We were paying $600 a year for our gym membership before."

With the annual Medicare enrollment period a few weeks away, Humana and other HMOs have hired new insurance agents in the Tucson area to hawk private plans to the swelling senior population, said Denise Early, an independent insurance agent. About 57,000 people here are on Medicare Advantage, and Pima County data show there were 58 policies on the market this year.

"The bottom line is, if you are living on $1,500 a month, and you're paying rent and have a car and groceries and other expenses, then Medicare Advantage with zero premium is attractive," said Lydia Baker of the Pima Council on Aging.

But Medicare Advantage policies can be frustrating, too. As with traditional managed-care programs, beneficiaries must consult through primary-care physicians in their insurers' networks, and the companies sometimes deny coverage. Bernie Keegan, 68, was hospitalized in March when he got sick and was throwing up blood. But his HMO did not cover some of his bloodwork or doctor's fees, leaving him with hundreds of dollars in medical bills.

"I'm kind of rolling over on my back here like a whipped dog," said Keegan, who directs a nonprofit organization. "I don't want to fight with insurance companies."

Keegan has a free gym membership. But he has yet to use it.

Stagnant Prices Prevent Social Security Increase - washingtonpost.com

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Obama Endorses $250 Emergency Payments

By Amy Goldstein and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 15, 2009

President Obama on Wednesday attempted to preempt the announcement that Social Security recipients will not get an increase in their benefit checks for the first time in three decades, encouraging Congress to provide a one-time payment of $250 to help seniors and disabled Americans weather the recession.

Obama endorsed the idea, which is expected to cost at least $13 billion, as the administration gropes for ways to sustain an apparent economic rebound without the kind of massive spending package that critics could label a second stimulus act

The administration is already developing plans to direct billions of dollars in federal money to small businesses through community banks, government sources said Wednesday. That would probably include funds originally targeted to help bail out huge corporations. Obama aides are also attempting to extend programs to make loans from the Small Business Administration cheaper and easier to obtain.

In recent weeks, the White House has examined a wide range of proposals to funnel money to constituencies seen as suffering. Administration officials have also been supportive of extending unemployment insurance benefits that were to expire at the end of the year and are contemplating an extension of an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers due to expire Nov. 30.

An increase in benefit checks each January has been a yearly ritual since the mid-1970s, when the government moved to ensure that its subsidies to retirees, pension recipients and others who receive Social Security benefits kept pace with inflation. Thursday's announcement by the Labor Department will mark the first time that the federal formula used since then, which is tied to the consumer price index, will translate into no increase at all. That is because consumer prices have remained stagnant in the weak economy -- a sharp reversal from this past year, when Social Security checks grew by 5.8 percent, an unusually large amount.

The unprecedented lack of a cost-of-living increase was first hinted at last spring in congressional budget estimates and in an annual report by the trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare, the government's main financial props for the elderly and the disabled. Since then, some senior citizens have complained to government offices and seniors advocates, and federal officials are anticipating a fresh and more vociferous outpouring of complaint once the announcement is official.

In recent weeks, several members of Congress have proposed legislation that would, in varying ways, compensate Social Security beneficiaries and veterans for the lack of a built-in increase. Until Wednesday, those bills had attracted little notice. Their prospects have been uncertain at a time when deficits are rising, lawmakers are working on expensive changes to the health-care system and Congress has already enacted a stimulus package that included a similar $250 payment to retirees and others who depend on Social Security, veterans' benefits and federal pensions.

Obama's announcement, however, focused new attention on the prospect of further help to some of the nation's most economically vulnerable people. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said for the first time Wednesday that he, too, thought that "providing another economic recovery payment is the right thing to do." In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged lawmakers to support the idea, saying the original $250 payments in the stimulus package "proved an effective way to offer stability and security to millions of Americans and a boost to our economy."

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), however, has resisted the proposal, saying recently that, in light of the emergency payments for older Americans in the stimulus package, "it's not as if the Congress has forgotten seniors."

The new payments would cost an estimated $14 billion, according to legislative sources, although the White House said the price tag would be $1 billion less than that.

In urging lawmakers to provide a second round of payments to older Americans, the president said the extra help would "not only make a difference for them, but for our economy as a whole," adding that it would "be especially important in the coming months, as countless seniors and others have seen their retirement accounts and home values decline as a result of this economic crisis."

The White House has essentially latched on to an approach envisioned in legislation introduced last month by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). Their bills propose that the $14 billion measure be covered through extra Social Security payroll taxes on wealthy Americans -- specifically, on income between $250,000 and $359,000. "In the midst of a recession, when we are appropriately worried about unemployment and underemployment, we can't forget about seniors who are also hurting," Sanders said in an interview.

Since its origins in the Great Depression, Social Security has been a significant buffer between older Americans and poverty. It also provides subsidies to people who are disabled or who are survivors of workers who die prematurely. The average retiree gets a monthly check of about $1,150. The program provides 40 percent of all income received by elderly people in the United States; one in five older married couples and two in five older single people rely on it for at least 90 percent of their income.

The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment is set every year based on the percentage change in the consumer price index during the July-to-September quarter, compared with the previous year. The consumer price index captures changes in the prices of the full range of goods and services that people buy, including bananas, heating oil, telephone service, rent and hundreds of other items.

The consumer price index will be updated Thursday.

Lobbyists for AARP, the largest advocacy group for older Americans, contended Wednesday that the elderly need extra help even in a time of declining prices because they tend to spend more of their money than younger people on health care, the cost of which has been climbing more rapidly than the rate of inflation.

On the other hand, Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration under the Republican administration of President George W. Bush, said: "There is essentially no substantive case for this on policy grounds. . . . This is a case of both Democrats and Republicans bending over backward to do the politically popular thing for seniors."

Broadband Internet is Now a Legal Right in Finland

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The EU Parliament has on several occasions stated that access to the Internet is one of basic human rights. Now, Finland has become the first country to actually declare fast (broadband) Internet access a legal right.

In practice, this means that telecom companies in Finland will be required to provide all Finnish citizens – all 5.3 million of them – with broaband Internet connection of at least 1 Mbps, starting in July.

That’s not all. According to the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications Laura Vilkkonen, the plan is to provide all the citizens with even faster broadband speeds (100 Mbps) by 2015. “We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” she said.

This task is easier to achieve in Finland than most other countries, since its broadband penetration rate is among the highest in the world. In the US, the FCC may need as much as 350 billion dollars to expand broadband coverage throughout the country.

This decision by the Finnish Government is in contrast with the often heard proposals (especially in France and the UK, but also – surprisingly – in Finland) about the possible introduction of the three-strikes law, under which illegal file sharers would be disconnected from the Internet after repeated offenses. Making something a legal right doesn’t mean it cannot be taken away, but the government’s stance that broadband Internet access is similar to “banking services or water or electricity” should mean that net access should not be taken away from people lightly, if at all.

VOA News - Al-Shabab Militants Threaten Kenya for Recruiting Allegations

By Alisha Ryu Nairobi 12 October 2009

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Somalia's al-Shabab extremists have renewed their threat to launch attacks on Kenya. This time, the threat follows allegations the Kenyan government is recruiting ethnic Somalis in northeastern Kenya to fight al-Shabab in Somalia.

Ethnic Somalis in the Kenyan town of Garissa are telling reporters Kenyan authorities have recruited as many as 200 teen-aged boys there in recent weeks. The boys are allegedly being trained at a military camp in the coastal city of Mombasa.

Garissa resident Haile Mohamed Yusuf says her 18-year-old son believed he was going to be trained to join the Kenyan police when he left Garissa for Mombasa. She says there has been no word from her son since.

In neighboring Somalia, al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants, who control vast areas of the country, are using such reports to denounce what they say is a secret campaign by the Kenyan government to send Somali-Kenyan soldiers to Somalia to fight against them.

Al-Shabab's chief spokesman, Ali Mohamud Rage, alleges recruits are being trained in preparation for an assault on al-Shabab controlled towns in Middle and Lower Juba regions.

Rage says if the Kenyan government does not cease recruiting and training ethnic Somalis, al-Shabab will begin attacking inside Kenya.

Al-Shabab, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, is currently battling to overthrow the Western-backed government in the Somali capital Mogadishu and to gain full control of the country. Since it emerged in 2004, the group has been strengthening ties with al-Qaida and affiliated groups.

For months, Kenya's under-developed northeastern region, inhabited mostly by ethnic Somalis, had been the focus of efforts by al-Shabab to influence and recruit young men from Kenya.

In August, al-Shabab fighters stormed a school in the town of Mandera, ordering students to quit school and join the war against the "enemies of Islam" in Somalia. Some Kenyans have testified that they were offered as much as $650 from al-Shabab militants to go fight in Somalia.

The Kenyan government has not commented on allegations it is recruiting young men in the area. But Kenya's chief police spokesman, Eric Kiraithe, tells VOA that the country's security forces are prepared to deal with any al-Shabab threat.

"We have not seen the statement and certainly the matter will be investigated," said Kiraithe. [But] we have the capacity to protect the republic [in] every possible way."

In July, Somalia's embattled government appealed for neighboring countries, including Kenya, to send troops to Somalia to intervene in the conflict. Al-Shabab warned Kenya that if any Kenyan soldier is found across the border in Somalia, the group would send suicide bombers into the Kenyan capital.