Starting Points

Dec 27, 2009

ALBANY — Henry Hudson bobblehead? Check.

One-legged Peter Stuyvesant statuette? Yes.

A mirror emblazoned with the logo of New Amsterdam beer? Absolutely.

These are office knickknacks that only a true connoisseur of Dutch Americana could love. And there surely is no one who loves Dutch Americana more than Charles T. Gehring.

How else to describe a man who has spent the past 35 years painstakingly translating 17th-century records that provide groundbreaking insight and renewed appreciation for New Netherland, the colony whose embrace of tolerance and passion for commerce sowed the seeds for New York’s ascendance as one of the world’s great cities.

Toiling from a cramped office in the New York State Library here, Mr. Gehring, as much as anyone, has shed light on New York’s long-neglected Dutch roots, which have been celebrated this year, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that bears his name.

Mr. Gehring, by the way, only has about 4,800 pages left of the 12,000 pages of Dutch-era letters, deeds, court rulings, journal entries and other items that have been housed at the State Library for decades. They paint a rich picture of daily life in the colony, which the Dutch surrendered for good in the 1670s.

“Most historians don’t think much of the Dutch; they minimalize the Dutch influence and try to get out of that period as quickly as possible to get into English stuff,” Mr. Gehring said, explaining why he has spent half of his 70 years mining Dutch colonial history. “What you find out is how deeply the Dutch cast roots here and how much of their culture they transmitted to this country.”

Mr. Gehring, whose official title is director of the New Netherland Project, looks as if he has not trimmed his sideburns since he started translating the records in 1974, and he seems like the kind of mirthful man who would make a good Sinterklaas — the Dutch forefather of Santa Claus.

Mr. Gehring’s translations served as raw material for Russell Shorto’s critically acclaimed 2005 book about Manhattan, “The Island at the Center of the World.” The Netherlands of the 17th century, Mr. Shorto said in an interview, was “the melting pot of Europe.”

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“It was a place that people fled to in the great age of religious warfare; it was a refuge,” he added. “At the same time, they were known for free trade; they developed a stock market — and those things, free trade and tolerance, are key ingredients of New York City.” Mr. Gehring’s translation work, Mr. Shorto writes in his book, “changes the picture of American beginnings.”

Mr. Gehring, who was born in Fort Plain, N.Y., about 55 miles northwest of Albany, did his doctoral work in German linguistics at the Indiana University, where he specialized in Netherlandic studies. He came to Albany in the late 1960s to teach German at the State University of New York at Albany, but his real interest was Dutch history.

Mr. Gehring’s work is the most ambitious translation project in nearly two centuries. In 1974, shortly after Nelson A. Rockefeller became vice president and Malcolm Wilson replaced him as governor, a series of phone calls helped make it possible. It started with an idea at the Holland Society, a group dedicated to preserving the history of New York’s Dutch history.

“This guy in the Holland Society knew Rockefeller, and so he called Rockefeller and said, ‘Could you see if Malcolm Wilson could put money in the budget to start the translations up again?’ ” Mr. Gehring recalled.

The governor, he said, “put $20,000 in his discretionary budget — his slush fund that they had — and in the early ’70s that was a decent amount of money.”

And Mr. Gehring found himself uniquely qualified for the State Library job that came open as a result. As he put it, “I was the only one around who could read 17th-century Dutch.”

Although Mr. Gehring is a state employee, the translation project has survived largely on grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and donations. This year, however, the Dutch government decided to invest 200,000 euros — nearly $290,000 at current exchange rates — to help finance the project for the next three years.

The documents have held up through what Mr. Gehring called “a harrowing history,” including a 1911 fire in the State Library that singed many of the pages. The first set, records from 1638 to 1642, was lost completely.

“The translator at that time, Van Laer, has them out on his desk,” Mr. Gehring said, referring to the archivist and librarian A.F. Van Laer. “He’d just finished a new translation, and he’s checking his translation against the original, so his translation burns up and the originals burn up, but we still have an older translation to go by.”

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Gehring was joined in his work by Janny Venema, a Dutch-born translator and writer who, in Mr. Gehring’s estimate, has helped him translate about 7,200 pages. The project has brought to life the characters of New Netherland and its capital, New Amsterdam — which became New York City.

Some of those characters are well known, like Peter Stuyvesant, the domineering director general of New Netherland.

Mr. Gehring’s translation of the journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, a barber-surgeon and a likely ancestor of Humphrey Bogart, was turned into the graphic novel “Journey Into Mohawk Country,” by the artist George O’Connor. The journal chronicles van den Bogaert’s journey through the Mohawk Valley to Oneida, a pathbreaking trip in the winter of 1634.

Years later, van den Bogaert was made commander of Fort Orange, site of present-day Albany, but fled back into Indian country after his fellow colonists discovered he was gay. Van den Bogaert was pursued by the Dutch, captured and brought back, but he escaped when a sheet of floating ice damaged the fort. He drowned in the Hudson before he got very far.

These days, Mr. Gehring is translating records from the period of the Flushing Remonstrance, a 1657 document that helped lay the groundwork for religious freedom in America.

This chapter begins when a ship filled with Quakers, headed for Rhode Island, ended up in Manhattan instead.

“They started quaking in the streets,” Mr. Gehring explained. “Stuyvesant had them packed up and sent off right away.”

When Stuyvesant continued the crackdown on the Quakers, 30 people living in what is now Flushing, Queens, wrote a formal letter of objection. The Dutch West India Company, which operated the colony, ordered Stuyvesant to end the persecution.

Some figures in history present particular challenges to a translator, like Johannes Dijckman, a commander at Fort Orange whose scrawled script is difficult to decipher because, well, “he was a drunkard.”

After so many years, Stuyvesant, Dijckman and many other figures have become “not necessarily old friends,” Mr. Gehring said, “but they’re acquaintances,” and he has no plans to say goodbye.

“People keep asking me when I’m going to retire, or they assume I have retired,” he said. “Eventually I’ll fade out like the Cheshire cat, with nothing left but my smile.”

After health care, we need Senate reform

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By Ezra Klein
Sunday, December 27, 2009; B01

On Dec. 8, 1964, Mike Manatos wrote a letter that explains what's wrong with the Senate in 2009. This wasn't, of course, the subject of his letter. Manatos was no futurist; he was Lyndon Johnson's liaison to the Senate, and he was writing to update his bosses on Medicare's chances in the aftermath of the 1964 election. Surveying the incoming crop of senators, Manatos counted a solid majority in favor of the president's effort. "If all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45," he predicted.

That letter would never be written now. In today's Senate, 55 votes isn't enough to "win," or anything close to it; it's enough to get you five votes away from the 60 votes you need to shut down a filibuster. Only then, in most cases, can a law be passed. The modern Senate is a radically different institution than the Senate of the 1960s, and the dysfunction exhibited in its debate over health care -- the absence of bipartisanship, the use of the filibuster to obstruct progress rather than protect debate, the ability of any given senator to hold the bill hostage to his or her demands -- has convinced many, both inside and outside the chamber, that it needs to be fixed.

This might seem an odd moment to argue that the Senate is fundamentally broken and repairs should top our list of priorities. After all, the Senate passed a $900 billion health-care bill Thursday morning. But consider the context: Arlen Specter's defection from the Republican Party earlier this year gave Democrats 60 votes in the Senate -- a larger majority than either party has had since the '70s. Democrats also controlled the House and the presidency, and were working in the aftermath of a financial crisis that occurred on a Republican president's watch. This was a test of whether a party could govern when everything was stacked in its favor.

The answer seems to be, well, not really. The Democrats ended up focusing on health-care reform's low-hanging fruit: the bill the Senate ultimately passed does much more to increase coverage than it does to address the considerably harder problem of cost control, it strengthens the existing private insurance system and it does not include a public insurance option. And Democrats still could not find a single Republican vote, which meant they had to give Nebraska a coupon entitling it to a free Medicaid expansion and hand Joe Lieberman a voucher that's good for anything he wants. If the Senate cannot govern effectively even when history conspires to free its hand, then it cannot govern.

To understand why the modern legislative process is so bad, why every Senator seems able to demand a king's ransom in return for his or her vote and no bill ever seems to be truly bipartisan, you need to understand one basic fact: The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.

In decades past, the parties did not feel they had both. Cooperation was the Senate's custom, if not its rule. But in the 1990s, Newt Gingrich, then the minority whip of the House, and Bob Dole, then the minority leader of the Senate, realized they did have both. A strategy of relentless obstruction brought then-president Bill Clinton to his knees, as the minority party discovered it had the tools to make the majority party fail.

Unfortunately, both parties have followed Gingrich's playbook ever since. According to UCLA political scientist Barbara Sinclair, about 8 percent of major bills faced a filibuster in the 1960s. This decade, that jumped to 70 percent. The problem with the minority party continually making the majority party fail, of course, is that it means neither party can ever successfully govern the country.

Jeff Merkley, a freshman Democratic Senator from Oregon and former speaker of Oregon's House of Representatives, spoke to this issue in an interview last week. "When you use the word filibuster," he said, "most of us in America envision it as the ability to speak at length and even delay progress by taking hours. I count myself among those Americans." He sighed. "But it's not a filibuster anymore. It's a supermajority requirement. And when that becomes commonly used, it's a recipe for paralysis."

Tom Harkin, the veteran Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate's influential Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was even more dismayed by recent events. His efforts to curb the filibuster began in the 1990s, when he was in the minority. "People say I only worry about this because I'm in the majority," he said Tuesday. "But I come at this with clean hands!" Back then, his partner in the effort to reform the filibuster was Lieberman. "The filibuster," Lieberman said at the time, "has become not only an obstacle to accomplishment here, but also a symbol of a lot that ails Washington today." Lieberman has since stopped worrying and learned to love obstructionism. But Harkin hasn't.

This isn't just a Democratic concern, though Democrats, being in the majority, are the ones raising it now. In 2005, Senate majority leader Bill Frist nearly shut the chamber down over the Democratic habit of filibustering George W. Bush's judicial nominees. "This filibuster is nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority," he said at the time.

Potential solutions abound. Harkin would eliminate the filibuster while still protecting the minority's right to debate. Under his proposal, bills would initially require 60 votes to pass. Three days later, that threshold would fall to 57. Three days after that, 54. And three days after that, 51. Merkley has some other ideas. One is to attract Republicans to the project by phasing the filibuster out six or eight years in the future, when we can't predict which party will initially benefit.

There is real promise in Merkley's approach. The danger of reforming the Senate is that, like health-care reform before it, it comes to seem a partisan issue. It isn't. Members of both parties often take the fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans can govern effectively to mean they benefit from the filibuster half the time. In reality, the country loses the benefits of a working legislature all the time.

But members of both parties have become attached to this idea that they can block objectionable legislation even when they're relatively powerless. This is evidence, perhaps, that both parties are so used to the victories of obstruction that they have forgotten their purpose is to amass victories through governance. Either way, a world in which the majority can pass its agenda is a better one, a place where the majority party is held accountable for its ideas and not for the gridlock and inaction furnished by the Senate's rules.

Law professor Lawrence Lessig often compares the dysfunctions of the Congress to the woes of an alcoholic. An alcoholic, he says, might be facing cirrhosis of the liver, the loss of his family and terrible debt. Amidst all that, the fact that he drinks before bed at night might not seem his worst problem. But it is the first problem, the one that must be solved before he can solve any of the others. America, too, is facing more dramatic problems than the Senate rules: A coming budget crisis, catastrophic climate change and an archaic and inefficient tax system, to name a few. But none will be solved until we fix the dysfunctions of the Senate.

Ezra Klein reports on domestic and economic policy for The Washington Post and blogs at washingtonpost.com/ezraklein. The full interviews with Sen. Jeff Merkley, Sen. Tom Harkin and political scientist Barbara Sinclair can be found there. Klein will be online to chat with readers on Monday at 12 p.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

Anti-government protests turn deadly in Tehran

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By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; 2:57 PM

TEHRAN -- Security forces opened fire at crowds demonstrating against the government in the capital on Sunday, killing at least five people, including the nephew of opposition political leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, witnesses and Web sites linked to the opposition said.

"Ali Mousavi, 32, was shot in the heart at the Enghelab square. He became a martyr," the Rah-e Sabz Website reported.

In the heaviest clashes in months, fierce battles erupted as tens of thousands of demonstrators tried to gather on a main Tehran avenue, with people setting up roadblocks and throwing stones at members of special forces under the command of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They in turn threw dozens of teargas and stun grenades, but failed in pushing back crowds, who shouted slogans against the government, witnesses reported.

A witness reported seeing at least four people shot in the central Vali-e Asr Square. "I saw a riot cop opening fire, using a handgun," the witness said. "A girl was hit in the shoulders, three other men in their stomachs and legs. It was total chaos."

Fights were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and Najafabad in central Iran.

The protests coincided with Ashura, one of the most intense religious holidays for Shiite Muslims. The slogans were mainly aimed at the top leaders of the Islamic republic, a further sign that the opposition movement against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June election victory is turning against the leadership of the country.

At the Yadegar overpass, protesters shouted slogans such as "Death to the dictator" and "long live Mousavi." They fought running battles with security forces until a car filled with members of the paramilitary Basij brigade drove at high speed though the makeshift barriers of stones and sandbags that the protesters had erected.

About a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guards fired paintball bullets, teargas and stun grenades. When reinforcements arrived, they managed to push back the hundreds of protesters gathered at the crossing.

Similar scenes could be seen at several crossings of the central Azadi and Enghelab streets, witnesses reported. Large clouds of black bellowing smoke rose up as people honked their cars in protests.

"This is a month of blood. The dictator will fall," people shouted, referring to the mourning month of Muharram. Young men erected a flag symbolizing the struggle of the Shiite's third Imam Hussein, whose death was commemorated Sunday.

On Saturday, security forces clad in black clashed with protesters in northern Tehran after a speech by opposition leader and former president Mohammad Khatami. After the police intervened, thousands of protesters fanned out through the area.

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The roads were clogged with cars, many honking their horns in support of the protesters. About 50 armed government supporters attacked a building used as an office by the household of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, according to witnesses and the Parlemannews Web site, which is critical of the government.

"There are so many people on the streets, I am amazed," a member of the riot police said to his colleagues as he rested on his motorcycle in a north Tehran square. Two women in traditional black chadors flashed victory signs to passing cars, egging them on to honk in support of the opposition.

Earlier, hundreds of police officers supported by dozens of members of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and the paramilitary Basij force clashed with small groups of protesters along Enghelab (Revolution) Street, one of the capital's main thoroughfares, at times beating people in an effort to disperse them.

The protests, which followed anti-government demonstrations in other Iranian cities in recent days, come as Iran observes the 10 days of Muharram, a mourning period for Imam Hussein, the Shiite saint whose death in the 7th century sealed the rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over the succession of the prophet Muhammad. On Sunday, Shiites worldwide commemorate the day of his death during Ashura.

Special Correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie contributed to this report.

Fear and heroism aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 after attempted bombing

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By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A06

ANN ARBOR, MICH. -- First came an alarming popping sound, followed by silence, and then the unmistakable smell of smoke. Passengers began to shout and scream on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam.

"People were just running, and they were scared," said Veena Saigal, who turned from her seat on the Christmas Day flight and saw the fire's glow six rows back. "They were running toward the center of the plane, running to get away from the flames."

Jasper Schuringa, an Amsterdam resident, lunged toward the fire in Row 19, jumping from one side of the plane to the other and over several other passengers. He burned his fingers as he grabbed a piece of melting plastic held by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused Saturday of trying to bring down the passenger jet with a homemade explosive device.

Schuringa, a video producer, restrained Abdulmutallab as others used blankets and fire extinguishers to douse the flames.

"When I saw the suspect, that he was getting on fire, I freaked, of course, and without any hesitation I just jumped over all the seats," Schuringa told CNN on Saturday. "And I jumped to the suspect. I was thinking like, he's trying to blow up the plane."

The stretch of time from bafflement to abject fear to a calamity averted lasted just a few minutes on the flight, yet as they replayed those moments from their homes on Saturday, passengers described a drama that left many shaken long after the jetliner safely touched down.

"We heard a pop, then the smell and the reality kicked in for all of us. The reality was the fear in the flight attendants' eyes," said Charles Keepman, a Wisconsin businessman returning from Ethiopia, where he and his wife had adopted two children. "We're just thankful to the Lord that we were spared."

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, praised the quick reactions of those on the plane, which recalled the heroism of passengers who had subdued so-called shoe-bomber Richard C. Reid as he tried to ignite chemicals on a flight in December 2001 and the actions of people on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I am grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 who reacted quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results," Napolitano said in a statement Saturday.

The flight from Amsterdam to Detroit seemed long and uneventful until the final minutes, passengers said. Witnesses told the FBI that Abdulmutallab, 23, spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom before returning to Seat 19A and complaining of an upset stomach. He pulled a blanket over his head.

Then came the loud and sudden popping sound.

"What I heard was a firecracker, like a champagne bottle opening. I thought maybe something happened to a window or something hit the plane," said Saigal, who was returning to Ann Arbor from India in Row 13. "Then I smelled the smoke. When I turned around, I could see the fire glow."

Schuringa, on his way to Miami for vacation, leaped from the other side of the plane toward the fire as it spread from Abdulmutallab's pants to pillows on the floor. He said he reacted without thinking, fearful that the fire would cause an explosion that would bring down the plane and nearly 300 passengers and crew members.

As other passengers shouted for water, Schuringa pulled the melted plastic syringe from Abdulmutallab, shook it and threw it to the floor, the FBI said in an affidavit. Flight attendant Dionne Ransom-Monroe asked the suspect what was in his pocket, the FBI said, and he replied, "Explosive device."

The fire out, Schuringa marched Abdulmutallab to the front of the plane, helped by a flight attendant. They stripped off some of his clothes, searched him for weapons and handcuffed him, Schuringa said on CNN, explaining that the suspect seemed almost in a trance. Abdulmutallab said nothing and did not resist, he said.

"He looked like a normal guy," Schuringa said. "It's just hard to believe he was actually trying to blow up this plane."

Saigal, 63, said Schuringa "was holding him from the back, with a strong grip."

"When he went back to his seat, we all clapped," Saigal said of Schuringa.

Passengers and crew members worked to restore calm as the jet sped toward Detroit. Syed Jafry, an engineering consultant from Ohio who watched from Row 16, said the captain told passengers over the intercom: "There was an incident, and everything is under control. It is over. Fasten your seat belts. We are about to land."

As investigators explore how Abdulmutallab allegedly smuggled power and chemicals aboard the flight, Saigal and Keepman voiced distinctly different views of security in Amsterdam, the airliner's last stop before reaching Detroit.

"They're very thorough," Saigal said. "Always in Amsterdam, you go through people questioning you . . . and they put your hand baggage, your purse -- not your shoes -- through security again."

Keepman, however, said security procedures in Amsterdam seemed less rigorous than the measures he had faced at the Detroit airport on his outbound flight.

"I have to be honest, it was lax compared to here," said Keepman, who co-owns a transportation logistics company. "They push you through quite quickly, especially on international flights, because there are so many people to get through."

Keepman was not impressed with the questioning session.

"They ask the questions," Keepman said. "But the person's going to look you right in the eye and lie to you: 'Are you carrying something that could explode on the plane?' 'Certainly not, sir.' "

Alleged terrorist known but not thought a threat

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By EILEEN SULLIVAN and DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 27, 2009; 1:21 PM

WASHINGTON -- The alleged Christmas Day terrorist had been in one of the U.S. government's many terror databases since November, which is when his father brought him to the attention of embassy officials in Nigeria.

However, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came to the attention of intelligence officials months before that, according to a U.S. government official involved in the investigation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because it is ongoing.

Still, none of the information the government had on Abdulmutallab rose to the level of putting him on the official terror watch list or no-fly list. On Christmas Eve, the 23-year-old Nigerian - who later claimed to law enforcement that he was operating on orders from al-Qaida - was able to carry a concealed explosive device onto a U.S.-bound airplane.

Officials warn it is still early in the investigation. But lawmakers are already calling for hearings, and the government may order a review. As President Barack Obama received regular updates on the investigation from his staff, his national security and policy aides have been asking whether the policies the U.S. has in place are working. These internal discussions marked the informal start to what will likely become a formal executive branch inquiry into an attack that failed because the bomb did not go off as planned and not because the intelligence community stopped it.

Passenger accounts and law enforcement officials describe the events around the Christmas Day attack this way:

On December 24, Abdulmutallab traveled from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then on to Detroit with an explosive device attached to his body.

Part of the device contained PETN, or pentaerythritol, and was hidden in a condom or condom-like bag just below Abdulmutallab's torso. PETN is the same material convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid used when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes. Abdulmutallab also had a syringe filled with liquid.

As the plane approached Detroit, Abdulmutallab went to the bathroom for 20 minutes. When he returned to his seat, he complained of an upset stomach and covered himself with a blanket.

Passengers heard a popping noise, similar to a firecracker. They smelled an odor, and some passengers saw Abdulmutallab's pant leg and the wall of the airplane on fire. Passengers and the flight crew used blankets and fire extinguishers to quell the flames. They restrained Abdulmutallab, who later told a flight attendant he had an "explosive device" in his pocket. He was seen holding a partially melted syringe.

The airplane landed in Detroit shortly after the incident.

On Saturday, federal officials charged the young man with trying to destroy the airplane. A conviction on the charge could bring Abdulmutallab up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

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U.S. District Judge Paul Borman read Abdulmutallab the charges in a conference room at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the former London university student was undergoing burn treatment. Abdulmutallab smiled as he was wheeled into the room, his left thumb and right wrist bandaged and part of the skin on the thumb was burned off. He was released Sunday to the custody of federal marshals, who said he was being held in an undisclosed location.

Abdulmutallab claimed to have received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, law enforcement officials said. He is also believed to have had Internet contact with militant Islamic radicals.

While intelligence officials said Saturday that they are taking seriously Abdulmutallab's claims that the plot originated with al-Qaida's network inside Yemen, several added that they had to yet to see independent confirmation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is incomplete.

Four weeks ago, Abdulmutallab's father told the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, that he was concerned about his son's religious beliefs. This information was passed on to U.S. intelligence officials.

Abdulmutallab received a valid U.S. visa in June 2008 that is good through 2010.

His is one of about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials said they lacked enough information to place him in the 400,000-person terror watch list or on the no-fly list of fewer than 4,000 people who should be blocked from air travel.

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Associated Press writers Larry Margasak, Pamela Hess, Matthew Lee and Lolita Baldor in Washington and Philip Elliot in Hawaii contributed to this report.

Plane suspect was listed in terror database after father alerted U.S. officials

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By Dan Eggen, Karen DeYoung and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A01

A Nigerian man charged Saturday with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day was listed in a U.S. terrorism database last month after his father told State Department officials that he was worried about his son's radical beliefs and extremist connections, officials said.

The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was added to a catch-all terrorism-related database when his father, a Nigerian banker, reported concerns about his son's "radicalization and associations" to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a senior administration official said. Abdulmutallab was not placed on any watch list for flights into the United States, however, because there was "insufficient derogatory information available" to include him, another administration official said.

Abdulmutallab was granted a two-year tourist visa by the U.S. Embassy in London in June 2008. He used the visa to travel previously to the United States at least twice, officials said.

On Friday, Abdulmutallab, 23, was subdued by passengers and crew members onboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 after he allegedly ignited an explosive device that set afire his pants leg and part of the airplane during preparations to land in Detroit.

The incident marks the latest apparent attempt by terrorists to bring down a U.S. aircraft through the use of an improvised weapon, and set in motion urgent security measures that disrupted global air travel during the frenetic holiday weekend.

The case also reignited a partisan debate within Washington over whether the Obama administration was doing enough to guard against terrorist attacks after the shootings last month at Fort Hood, Tex., and other incidents.

Passengers on international flights bound Saturday for the United States were required to undergo more stringent searches before boarding and were ordered to remain glued in their seats for the final hour of many flights. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said domestic passengers may notice additional security measures in coming days, but she did not specify them.

Abdulmutallab was charged Saturday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan with attempting to destroy an aircraft and with placing a destructive device onboard a plane, each of which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Paul D. Borman informed Abdulmutallab of the charges during a hearing at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, where he is being treated at the burn unit.

The suspect was rolled into a conference room in a wheelchair for the hearing. Asked whether he understood the charges against him, he replied, "Yes, I do." When a federal prosecutor asked how he was doing, Abdulmutallab replied, "I feel better."

The suspect allegedly told FBI agents after his arrest that he had received training and explosive materials from al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Yemen, a claim that U.S. law enforcement officials were still attempting to verify Saturday. The FBI said the device strapped to Abdulmutallab contained PETN, or pentaerythritol, which is the same plastic explosive used by al-Qaeda operative Richard C. Reid in his December 2001 attempt to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner by igniting a homemade bomb in his shoe.

A senior administration official said Abdulmutallab, who had studied engineering at University College London, was issued a two-year U.S. tourist visa in June 2008 in London and did not raise any red flags during screening before boarding Northwest Flight 253 at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, one of the most heavily secured air facilities in the world.

Administration officials acknowledged Saturday that Abdulmutallab's name was added in November to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, which contains about 550,000 individuals and is maintained by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center. TIDE is a catch-all list into which all terrorist-related information is sent.

Some, but not all, information from TIDE is transferred to the FBI-maintained Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB), from which consular, border and airline watch lists are drawn. The Transportation Security Administration has a "no-fly" list of about 4,000 people who are prohibited from boarding any domestic or U.S.-bound aircraft. A separate list of about 14,000 "selectees" require additional scrutiny but are not banned from flying.

Abdulmutallab's name never made it past the TIDE database. "A TIDE record on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was created in November 2009," one administration official said, but "there was insufficient information available on the subject at that time to include him in the TSDB or its 'no fly' or 'selectee' lists."

Several top Republicans criticized the administration's approach to counterterrorism, saying the government had not pieced together warning signs in recent cases, including the slayings of 13 people at Fort Hood, allegedly by a Muslim soldier. "I think the administration is finally recognizing that they got this terrorism thing all wrong," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee and a state gubernatorial candidate. "I think we came very, very close to losing that plane last night."

After being briefed by federal authorities, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Abdulmutallab did not undergo body scans that might have helped detect the explosive material when he went through security at airports in Nigeria and Amsterdam.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, released a statement saying he was "troubled by several aspects" of the case, including the visit by Abdulmutallab's father to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

Democrats in the House and Senate vowed to hold hearings in January but also urged caution in jumping to conclusions. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said a federal official briefed lawmakers about "strong suggestions of a Yemen-al-Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over U.S. airspace."

Administration officials said President Obama is seeking accountability in the incident, although he has not demanded any sort of special review. He is getting detailed briefings on the facts of the case and the airport security changes while on vacation in Hawaii, the officials said.

One administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Abdulmutallab received his 2008 tourist visa from the U.S. Embassy in London. "We interviewed him, and his name was run against the watch list maintained by [the Department of Homeland Security] and the FBI," the official said. "There was no indication of any derogatory information. There is every indication that whatever radicalization took place occurred recently."

In a new emergency order effective until Wednesday, TSA is requiring that all passengers bound for the United States undergo a "thorough pat-down" at boarding gates, concentrating on the upper legs and torso. All carry-on baggage also should be inspected, focusing on syringes with powders or liquids, TSA said.

In addition, passengers must remain seated and may not access carry-on baggage for the final hour before the landing or hold any personal item on their laps.

The extraordinary steps came as former senior U.S. officials spoke in unusually blunt terms about the apparent failure of aviation security measures to detect a common military explosive allegedly brought on board.

Michael Chertoff, who was homeland security secretary from 2005 to 2009, said terrorists appear to have exploited the natural inhibition of screeners to conduct overly intrusive searches, and he renewed calls for widespread expansion of whole-body imaging scanners that use radio waves or X-rays to reveal objects beneath a person's clothes. Chertoff said the government has sought to expand use of imaging scanners, but privacy advocates and Congress have raised objections.

"This plot is an example of something we've known could exist in theory, and in order to be able to detect it, you've got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren't easy to get at," Chertoff said. "It's either pat-downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven't figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."

Iran protesters killed, including Mousavi's nephew

Four protesters have been killed amid violence between anti-government crowds and police in Iran's capital, Tehran.

Opposition sources said the nephew of former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was among those killed when police opened fire.

A senior police official said three people had died in accidents, the fourth was hit by a bullet, but police were not carrying weapons.

Opposition websites also reported four deaths in Tabriz, north-western Iran.

There is no confirmation.

It is almost certainly the worst loss of life in protests since the disputed result of June's presidential election sparked days of clashes.

On Sunday, opposition parties had urged people to take to the streets as the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura reached a climax.

People were chanting "Khamenei will be toppled", opposition sources said, a reference to Iran's Supreme Leader.

Photo obtained by AP shows Iranian atnti-riot police coming under attack

In pictures: Tehran clashes

Thousands of demonstrators are reported to have taken part in the protests, in defiance of official warnings.

Initial reports from Tehran said the security forces fired in the air to disperse the protests.

Police sources, quoted by the Iranian Fars news agency, denied this, saying foreign media were exaggerating reports of unrest.

But state television later acknowledged there had been several fatalities, and Iranian police said they had arrested 300 people in Tehran.

Iran's deputy police chief Ahmad Reza Radan, speaking on state television, said the death of the person hit by a bullet was being investigated.

Of the other three fatalities in Tehran, according to Mr Radan, one had fallen off a bridge and the other two had died in car accidents.

Although there were deaths in the immediate aftermath of the disputed elections and protests in June, fatalities since then have been rare.

Mr Mousavi was at the hospital where his nephew Seyed Mousavi was taken after being fatally shot in the heart at Enghelab Square.

ANALYSIS

Jon Leyne, BBC News Tehran correspondent

The opposition hoped for a massive day of demonstrations, and they have managed that beyond their expectations.

Despite attempts by the security forces to disperse them, the protesters eventually took over a large section of central Tehran, leaving the police watching from the sidelines. And there are similar reports from across the country.

For much of the morning there was a series of violent confrontations.

Witnesses described how opposition supporters attacked the police with their bare hands, and the police eventually opened fire directly on the crowd.

The size of the demonstrations, and the death of a number of protesters, could dramatically change the nature and the intensity of the confrontation.

But neither side has a clear strategy of what to do next. The opposition is leaderless. The government is still pretending there are just a handful of troublemakers.

From day to day, it is not clear how the crisis will develop.

The security forces clearly have to tread a fine line between not appearing weak but also not provoking opposition protesters, says Siavash Ardalan of BBC Persian TV.

Police helicopters were seen flying over central Tehran as clouds of black smoke billowed into the sky, reports said.

On the ground, the security forces clashed with protesters trying to reach central Enghelab Square, witnesses said.

Protesters were chanting, "This is the month of blood", and calling for the downfall of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to opposition websites.

At the same time, crowds of pro-government demonstrators marched on Enghelab Street to voice support for Ayatollah Khamenei, witnesses said.

Protests were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and nearby Najafabad.

The French foreign ministry said it condemned the "arbitrary arrests and the violent actions committed against simple protesters who came to defend their right to freedom of expression and their desire for democracy."

The French government has continued to lobby the Iranian authorities to release a French university lecturer who was charged with spying during the election. Clotilde Reiss remains in Tehran, and last appeared in court on 23 December.

Disputed election

Tensions have risen in Iran since influential dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri died a week ago aged 87.

Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have sought to use Shia religious festivals this weekend to show continued defiance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

Demonstrators kick security forces in Tehran

There were chaotic scenes as forces and protesters clashed

Denied the right to protest, the opposition chose the highly significant festival of Ashura when millions of Iranians traditionally go onto the streets for ceremonies and parades, BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne says.

The festival mourns the 7th Century death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Iranian television had live coverage of the Ashura ceremonies, including those in Tehran attended by President Ahmadinejad.

Mr Mousavi came second in the June election, and anger at the result saw mass protests in Tehran and other cities that led to thousands of arrests and some deaths.

Mr Mousavi has said the poll, that returned Mr Ahmadinejad to power, was fraudulent.

Dec 26, 2009

With High-End Meal Perks, Facebook Keeps Up Valley Tradition

Image via Wikipedia

By FRANCES DINKELSPIEL

By 11:45 a.m., when the steel door to Facebook’s employee cafeteria rolls open for lunch, there is almost always a line of people waiting for food.

On one day, the menu may feature Thai-spiced cilantro chicken or salmon with red curry sauce. On another, there may be roasted quail, a variety of chocolate-infused treats or the signature dishes of some of the top chefs of New York.

Image by smiteme via Flickr

Dishing out such delicacies to hungry technology workers may seem like a throwback to the dot-com boom, when companies lavished every perk imaginable, like free massages and Aeron chairs, on employees. Indeed, Google is the only other major company in Silicon Valley that provides a similar array of culinary delights, even as other giants in the area, like Cisco Systems, have stopped handing out even soft drinks.

But Facebook’s motherly coddling of its employees actually taps into a long tradition in Silicon Valley, dating to the 1950s. That is when Hewlett-Packard began giving gifts to employees who married or had babies, treating its workers to free snacks and coffee during daily breaks and hosting a grand annual picnic at Little Basin, a vast redwood-covered tract the company bought in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The philosophy, part of a broader cultivation of employee loyalty and respect called the H.P. Way, inspired legions of technology companies, like I.B.M. and Apple, t0 believe that happier employees were more productive. Such now-common perks as casual Fridays and employee stock options eventually emerged from this movement.

Over time, as certain perks became common, companies looked for ways to separate themselves from the crowd, said Leslie Berlin, project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., set a new standard in 1999, when it hired its own chef and opened a cafe that provided three high-quality meals a day to its workers. Within a few years, Google’s work force had ballooned, and its cooks were serving 18,000 meals a day in 18 cafes.

Now Facebook, which competes fiercely with Google for talent and has many former Google employees in its ranks, may have become the new standard-bearer for corporate-sponsored dining.

Image by ulterior epicure via Flickr

The company, just a few miles from Google in Palo Alto, 18 months ago hired away one of Google’s top chefs, Josef Desimone. He serves about 12,000 meals a week — five days of breakfast, lunch, dinner and a daily snack, each with a different ethnic theme — using mostly organic, sustainable products.

In addition to preparing sophisticated meals, Mr. Desimone has turned food into part of Facebook’s cultural life. He brings in celebrity chefs and prepares menus that create a buzz, like one based on “The Simpsons” television series, featuring deep-fried pork chops that Homer Simpson would have loved. For the employee who just happens to eat the 400,000th or 500,000th meal, Mr. Desimone will prepare a seven-course gourmet meal complete with wine, white tablecloths and an amuse-bouche.

And for the serious food lovers in its work force, Facebook recently began offering cooking internships, where employees spend a day with the 50-member kitchen staff learning how to blacken chicken or chop basil.

Offering free food, and copious amounts of it, is part of Facebook’s strategy to encourage employees to work long hours. A significant number of the 800 employees at the company’s main campus are in their early 20s, fresh off their college years where they pulled all-nighters and hung out talking in their dorm rooms. Facebook is famous for its regular “hackathons,” where employees are invited to stay up all night and work on programs and platforms that are not part of their normal assignments; the kitchen staff participates by creating new dishes that are served at midnight, 3 a.m. and at breakfast time.

In short, food is a lubricant that helps keep the innovation machine running.

Image via Wikipedia

“The thinking for us is, what can we do to make our employees’ lives easier so they can focus on the job?” said Kathleen Loughlin, a Facebook spokeswoman. “They come into work and don’t have to worry about packing a lunch.”

Or breakfast. Fred Labbe, a credit analyst who arrives at work at 5:45 a.m. to reach the European markets, said he ate at least two meals a day at Facebook. “The food is fantastic,” Mr. Labbe said one recent morning as he savored a plate of scrambled eggs and a bagel smothered in glistening pink lox.

In the six months since he started at Facebook, Mr. Labbe said, he has put on at least four pounds — a problem so common that employees joke about gaining the “Facebook 15” after they begin work at the company.

Gaining weight is not the only downside to unlimited, high-quality food at the workplace.

“If you make work too convenient, too appealing, that becomes your life,” said Jan English-Lueck, a professor of anthropology at San Jose State University who has studied Silicon Valley culture. “It could be seen as this odd kind of golden cage that pulls people into work and keeps them totally tethered to it. Whether that’s a drawback or not depends on people’s perspective.”

Costs are also a consideration. Facebook, which opened its current cafe in May, will not comment on how much it costs to run. The company has said it expects to bring in more than $500 million in revenue this year.

Lucasfilm, Autodesk and Apple subsidize employees’ meals, but other companies have concluded that offering free food is not worth the expense. Cisco, which is sitting on $35 billion in cash, nevertheless decided in 2008 that the $20 million a year it was spending on free bottled water and soft drinks could be used more wisely elsewhere, said John Earnhardt, a Cisco spokesman.

Lance Choy, the director of the career development center at Stanford, said students did not accept jobs because of the quality of a company’s food.

“They are more attuned to Facebook or Google because they are cool organizations and do cool things,” Mr. Choy said. “I know once they get there, though, they are happy about the food.”

Ms. Loughlin said the quality of the food at Facebook was integral to attracting top employees. The company’s job site, in fact, says food “may be our most awesome perk.” When people come to interview, they are almost always served lunch, she said.

The cooking internship, which drew 40 applicants for six spots minutes after it was announced on the cafe’s Facebook fan page, allows selected employees to suggest a menu and then cook it.

Oliver Louie, an in-house lawyer chosen for the program, showed up at 7 a.m. at the company’s gleaming industrial kitchen on a rainy day in early December. Mr. Louie met up with Mr. Desimone and Dana Shepard, the kitchen manager, and in the course of five hours, he learned to sauté blackened chicken breasts, barbecue sausages, chop basil without bruising it, fry textured vegetable protein wheat balls and arrange condiments attractively.

“We get to enjoy the benefits every day,” he said, “but we don’t get to see the process. Working on this side gives me a whole new appreciation of that side.”

As Mr. Louie navigated the grills, cooktops and ovens, Mr. Desimone not only oversaw the cooking of lunch, but also the preparation of the dinner for eight he would serve that night for the woman who ate the company’s 500,000th meal. He planned to offer hamachi carpaccio, butterfish with morel mushroom ravioli, seared foie gras and apple-braised pork belly.

While that dinner would be special, Mr. Desimone said, all of the meals at Facebook used the freshest ingredients. He said he tried to use meat from animals that had not been exposed to antibiotics or genetically modified feed; organic produce; milk and butter from local purveyors like Strauss Dairy and Clover Farms; and live-caught or sustainable fish. Mr. Desimone uses eight kinds of salt in his cooking, including kosher salt he roasts in the enormous steel smoker next to the barbeque in a backyard.

Each lunch and dinner, the cafe offers a vegetarian or vegan entree; two main courses of meat, chicken or fish; a salad bar; two types of soup; and two desserts made by the pastry chef, Shannon Burum. All are served in orange or blue Le Creuset pans rather than in the rectangular steel pans normally used in cafeterias. Snacks, served from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., are especially popular on Thursdays when Mr. Desimone serves nachos. Mini-kitchens are also scattered throughout the building where people can pick up snacks and salads when the cafe is closed.

For a chef used to working long hours, a job at a place like Facebook Cafe offers new freedoms and chances to experiment.

“I love this gig,” Mr. Desimone said. “I get to change the menu every day. I get to make everything from scratch. I get holidays and weekends off. There aren’t a lot of chefs in that position.”

Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet

Image by michperu via Flickr

By STEFANIE OLSEN

When Benjamin Feshbach was 11 years old, he was given a brainteaser: Which day would the vice president’s birthday fall on the next year?

Benjamin, now 13, said he typed the question directly into the Google search box, to no avail. He then tried Wikipedia, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com, also without success. “Later someone told me it was a multistep question,” said Benjamin, a seventh grader from North Potomac, Md.

“Now it seems quite obvious because I’m older,” he said. “But, eventually, I gave up. I didn’t think the answer was important enough to be on Google.” Benjamin is one of 83 children, ages 7, 9 and 11, who participated in a study on children and keyword searching. Sponsored by Google and developed by the University of Maryland and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the research was aimed at discerning the differences between how children and adults search and identify the barriers children face when trying to retrieve information.

Like other children, Benjamin was frustrated by his lack of search skills or, depending on your view, the limits of search engines.

When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools.

Search engines are typically developed to be easy for everyone to use. Google, for example, uses the Arial typeface because it considers it more legible than other typefaces. But advocates for children and researchers say that more can be done technologically to make it easier for young people to retrieve information. What is at stake, they say, are the means to succeed in a new digital age.

“We’re giving them a tool that was made for adults,” said Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit research center in New York focused on digital education for children. Allison Druin, director of the human-computer interaction lab at the University of Maryland, suggested expanding the concept of keywords. Instead of typing a word into a search box, children could click on an image or video, which would turn up results.

Ms. Druin said that parents played a big role in helping children search. She proposed that search engines imitate that role by adding technology aids, like prominent suggestions for related content or an automated chat system, to help children when they get stuck.

Children’s choices of search engines differ only slightly from the preferences of adults. Google ranks most popular among children, followed by Yahoo, Google Image search, Microsoft’s Bing and Ask.com, according to the research firm Nielsen. (Among adults, Bing is ahead of Google Image.)

Irene Au, Google’s director of user experience, said that rather than develop a specific product for children, her team used research findings to inform how it could improve search for all ages. “The problems that kids have with search are probably the problems adults experience, just magnified,” Ms. Au said. “It’s helped highlight the areas we need to focus on.”

For example, Google has long known that it can be difficult for users to formulate the right keywords to call up their desired results. But that task can be even more challenging for children, given that they do not always have the right context for thinking about a new subject. One 12-year-old boy searching for information about Costa Rica used the search term “sweaty clothes” because that was what he associated with the jungle.

“If we can solve that for children we can solve that for adults,” Ms. Au said.

One way Google aims to overcome that problem is by showing related searches. Ms. Au said Google had tried various placements since related searches were introduced in 2007 and had found that it could be helpful to introduce such queries — or other content like video, images or news — at the bottom of the page.

A search on the word dolphins, for example, shows a set of related searches, (sharks, bottlenose dolphins) and two YouTube videos of dolphins at play. Ms. Druin called the bottom of the screen “valuable territory” because children often focus on their hands and the keyboard when they search and see that space first when they glance up.

Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, said that for certain types of tasks, like finding a list of American presidents, people found answers 28 percent faster with a search of images rather than of text. He said that because Bing used more imagery than other search engines, it attracted more children. Microsoft says Bing’s audience of 2- to 17-year-olds has grown 76 percent since May. “My daughter who’s 5, her typing skills aren’t great, but she can browse images of various dog breeds through visual search,” Mr. Weitz said.

In May, Google introduced Wonder Wheel, a graphical search tool aimed at making browsing easier. (To find it, click on “show options” on a page of search results; it appears halfway down the left column.) For a search on “apple,” the wheel shows prongs pointing to “apple fruit” or “apple store locator” in the left panel.

Children also tend to want to ask questions like “Who is the president?” rather than type in a keyword. Scott Kim, chief technology officer at Ask.com, said that because as many as a third of search queries were entered as questions (up to 43 percent on Ask Kids, a variant designed for children), it had enlarged search boxes on both sites by almost 30 percent.

In September, Google also increased the length of its search box and the size of its font for related searches. Google said the change was meant to enhance ease of use for everyone.

Future trends in search may also be helpful to children. The move toward voice-activated search like the Google voice search on iPhones and Android phones and audio and video search will prove beneficial to children with limited abilities, experts say.

Benjamin Feshbach, who’s now considered a power searcher, has his own ideas.

“I think there should be a program where Google asks kids questions about what they’re searching for,” he said, “like a Google robot.”

Bloggers Crash Fashion’s Front Row

Image via Wikipedia

By ERIC WILSON

NOT everyone thought it was adorable in September when a 13-year-old wunderkind blogger named Tavi was given a front-row seat at the fashion shows of Marc Jacobs, Rodarte and others.

Oh now, don’t misunderstand. She was totally adorable. You could have gobbled her up, with her goofy spark plug style — a Peggy Guggenheim for the Tweeting tween set. Her feet, in designer stockings, did not quite touch the ground. Within a matter of months, Tavi Gevinson, the author of a blog called Style Rookie, was feted by designers, filming promotions for Target, flown to Tokyo for a party with the label Comme des Garçons and writing a review of the collections for no less than Harper’s Bazaar. Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designers of Rodarte, described her in the pages of Teen Vogue as “curious and discerning.”

Rather, it was what the arrival of Ms. Gevinson, as a blogger, represented that ruffled feathers among the fashion elite. Anne Slowey, who has spent decades climbing the editorial ladder to a senior position at Elle, dismissed the teenager’s column as “a bit gimmicky” in an interview with New York magazine. And in an instant, the subtext in her complaint was read by dozens of Ms. Gevinson’s fans as an example of the tension between old media and new, when one leapfrogs ahead of the other.

As a relatively new phenomenon in the crowded arena of journalists whose specialty it is to report the news of the catwalks, fashion bloggers have ascended from the nosebleed seats to the front row with such alacrity that a long-held social code among editors, one that prizes position and experience above outward displays of ambition or enjoyment, has practically been obliterated. After all, what is one to think — besides publicity stunt — when Bryan Boy, a pseudonymous, style-obsessed blogger from the Philippines, is seated at the D & G show in Milan between the august front-row fixtures of Vogue and Vanity Fair, a mere two positions to the right of Anna Wintour?

“There has been a complete change this year,” said Kelly Cutrone, who has been organizing fashion shows since 1987. “Do I think, as a publicist, that I now have to have my eye on some kid who’s writing a blog in Oklahoma as much as I do on an editor from Vogue? Absolutely. Because once they write something on the Internet, it’s never coming down. And it’s the first thing a designer is going to see.”

Perhaps it was to be expected that the communications revolution would affect the makeup of the fashion news media in much the same way it has changed the broader news media landscape. At a time when magazines like Vogue, W, Glamour and Bazaar have pared their staffs and undergone deep cutbacks because of the impact of the recession on their advertising sales, blogs have made remarkable strides in gaining both readership and higher profiles. At the shows this year, there were more seats reserved for editors from Fashionista, Fashionologie, Fashiontoast, Fashionair and others, and fewer for reporters from regional newspapers that can no longer afford the expense of covering the runways independently.

But it is somewhat surprising that designers are adjusting to the new breed of online reporter more readily than magazines, which have been slow to adapt to the demand for instant content about all things fashion. Blogs are posting images and reviews of collections before the last model exits the runway, while magazine editors are still jockeying to feature those clothes in issues that will be published months later.

So it is not without reason that some editors feel threatened, or that seasoned critics worry that they could be replaced by a teenager. The designers and publicists who once quivered before the mighty pens are now courting writers from Web sites that offer a direct pipeline to potential customers. Sure, magazines and newspapers have started their own blogs and tweets, but reading them, you often sense a generational disconnect, something like the queasy feeling of getting a “friend” request from your mother on Facebook. (From Glamour.com: “Dating Tips: Why It’s Important to Get That Number.”)

Sites that include readers in the conversation are thriving, in a sense democratizing the coverage of style, much as designers and retailers — with lower priced fast-fashion collections — have democratized fashion itself. Garance Doré and Scott Schuman, two photographers who have become stars online (and who are a couple off-line), have created popular blogs with the simple idea of posting images of stylish people and opening them to public comment. Now designers are seeking their advice on communications strategies and even design — Ms. Doré and Mr. Schuman have worked on projects with Gap.

Other sites have gained credibility along with traffic. Fashionista.com had 103,512 unique visitors in November, and Fashionologie.com had 27,125, according to the online tracking agency Compete. Jezebel.com (a saucy blog that includes coverage of fashion) shot ahead of Style.com (the Condé Nast fashion site) for the first time this fall with more than a half-million visitors. These are considered large audiences for dispatches on such trivial developments as models refusing to wear Alexander McQueen’s crazy shoes or that such-and-such designer is looking for an intern.

The personalities behind those sites, in turn, are becoming as famous as some magazine editors. Marc Jacobs named one of his bag designs after Bryan Boy, while Sephora asked Lauren Luke, whose makeup videos are an Internet sensation, to preside over beauty contests in its stores. Designers are thinking differently in response to consumers who want instant gratification. Doo-Ri Chung, for example, describing her new basics collection in The Financial Times this fall, said her customer has a “blog mentality, not a magazine mentality.”

“The old idea of reading a magazine and planning ahead, that’s not something that younger customers do,” she said. “It’s a different world, and designers have to adapt.”

Still, the popularity and novelty of such sites have raised concerns that their writers might be unduly influenced by designers or beauty companies. New guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, announced in October, require blogs to disclose in their online product reviews if they receive free merchandise or payment for the items they write about. This bothered some bloggers, and reasonably so, since magazine editors commonly receive stockpiles of the same expensive goodies to review in their pages, and that practice is rarely disclosed even though magazines are beholden to advertisers for their livelihood.

Those guidelines also seem excessive at a time when magazines and newspapers are changing their tone to embrace the online culture. On several fashion sites last week, it was reported that Vogue is planning to feature a group of bloggers in its March issue, including Tommy Ton of Jak & Jil, Ms. Doré and, yes, even Bryan Boy.