On Thursday, Philip Alston, a human rights lawyer who is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said that reports by three experts he had retained to examine video that appears to show the execution of prisoners in Sri Lanka “strongly suggest that the video is authentic.”
A screenshot from video exiled Sri Lankan journalists say was filmed in Sri Lanka in January 2009.
Mr. Alston explained that he had commissioned reports from the experts — in forensic pathology, forensic video analysis and firearm evidence — after the government of Sri Lanka responded to his request for “an independent investigation” by claiming that the video was fake based on reports produced by four investigators, two of whom worked for the Sri Lankan military, that were, Mr. Alston said, “more impressionistic than scientific.”
After making the results of the scientific analysis of the video public in New York, Mr. Alston called for an inquiry into the executions it appears to document, which a group of exiled Sri Lankan journalists say was a war crime recorded on a soldier’s cellphone in January 2009, near the end of the government’s war with Tamil separatists.
As The Lede reported in August, the video was first broadcast by Channel 4 News in Britain, which had obtained the video from the group Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka. On Thursday night, Channel 4 News broadcast a video report on Mr. Alston’s findings, which includes scenes from the graphic, disturbing video.
Mr. Alston made the full text of the experts’ technical analysis available for download on a United Nations Web site. In his introduction to that technical analysis — also available for download — Mr. Alston wrote that the experts had “systematically rebutted most of the arguments relied upon by Sri Lanka’s experts in support of their contention that the video was faked.”
A partial transcript of Mr. Alston’s remarks was published on Channel 4’s Web site. His call for “the establishment of an independent inquiry to carry out an impartial investigation into war crimes” which may have been committed in Sri Lanka was included in a news release from his office.
On Friday, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, responded to the findings of Mr. Alston’s experts by saying, “We reject these allegations,” Reuters reported. Mr. Bogollagama ignored the conclusions and pointed only to some of the details the experts said they were unable to explain, saying, “In light of those continued contradictory findings, we can’t accept it.”
As Jonathan Miller noted in a blog post on the Channel 4 News Web site, “the U.N. Secretary General, apparently prompted by Philip Alston’s findings, has resurrected the possibility of appointing a Commission of Experts to advise him on alleged violations of human rights and humanitarian law in Sri Lanka.”
In December another report by a forensic video specialist commissioned by The Times of London to examine the video concluded, “This is clearly an original recording.”
On Thursday, the Wikipedia entry on Mr. Alston was edited so that it temporarily read, “Philip G. Alston is a prominent international racist law scholar and human rights practitioner/ tool of western oppression of developing countries.”
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai made a second effort to fill his cabinet on Saturday, nominating 16 new ministers a week after Parliament had rejected most of his first choices.
But several Parliament members said they were as unimpressed by the new slate, which included many political unknowns, as they were with the first one. Their displeasure could prolong the stalemate that has left Afghanistan without a fully functional government since the widely criticized presidential election last summer.
Also on Saturday, Afghan officials signed an agreement that will allow the American military to begin the process of transferring responsibility for the notorious prison at Bagram Air Base to Afghan control.
When Parliament rejected 17 of Mr. Karzai’s first batch of 24 nominees, the move was hailed by some analysts as a sign of the legislature’s newfound independence.
The legislators asked that Mr. Karzai choose more technocrats who had expertise in the work of the ministries they were nominated to lead.
The new slate includes a number of highly educated nominees and three women, an increase over the first list and a point praised by several Parliament members. But they said the new list still depended too heavily on political ties to Mr. Karzai and not enough on competence.
“This is the same as the previous list,” said Mir Ahmed Joyenda, an independent Parliament member from Kabul, whose views echoed those of several Parliament members interviewed. “It is like a limited company and those people who have supported Mr. Karzai, they each have a share.
“They introduced new names, maybe they have higher education, but are not known to the people and do not have expertise in their ministries,” he said.
Another Parliament member, Daoud Sultanzoi from Ghazni, a predominantly Pashtun area, also cited a lack of substantive expertise. “In Afghanistan we need more than political confidants in these jobs, we need people who can build those ministries.”
He cited Mr. Karzai’s nominee for transportation minister, who he said was a hydroelectric engineer. “This is a ministry where we cannot afford to lose time,” he said. “We’re losing a lot of revenue in that ministry, aviation is a shambles, road transport is a shambles, so we need someone who can do that job, who knows about those specific areas.”
In contrast, the main Uzbek party, Junbish-e-Milli, which is allied with the former commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, said it was satisfied with the new list and hoped that it would be approved.
“All the tribes living in Afghanistan can see their presence in this list,” said Sayed Noorullah Sadat, a leader of Mr. Dostum’s party.
“We are happy with the ethnic distribution of posts; however, we were happy with the previous cabinet as well, but unfortunately they couldn’t get the vote of confidence,” he said.
Two Hazara members of Parliament agreed that the ethnic mix was representative, but that many of the nominees were unknown. “Still they are better than the old portraits who now hold the posts,” said Abbas Nooyan from Kabul.
The agreement on Bagram, signed by the Afghan ministries of Defense and Justice, clears the way for the American military to begin a program of training and preparation for the Afghans to take charge of the prison, which houses more than 700 detainees captured by the American military.
Initially, the Defense Ministry will run the center, but it will eventually be handed over to the Justice Ministry, which oversees jails and prisons, said Col. Stephen Clutter, the spokesman for American detainee operations in Afghanistan.
The prison was notorious for its conditions in the early years of the war, with hundreds of detainees held in cages and subjected to abuse and harsh conditions. A new prison was opened two months ago, improving conditions, although detainees there still have no right to a lawyer and can be held indefinitely without charge.
Three NATO service members were killed in the last two days, according to a NATO spokesman. One, who had been wounded by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, died Saturday. The other two died Friday, one when he was struck by a bomb in southern Afghanistan and the other from injuries from a vehicle accident.
In Herat, insurgents attacked a building on Saturday that was recently acquired by the United States government as a consular office. They fired at least one rocket that damaged the third floor.
A major raid by NATO troops in a rural district of Kandahar Province captured more than three tons of illegal drugs in a truck, including more than 5,300 pounds of processed opium, more than 1,000 pounds of wet opium paste and about 50 pounds of heroin, according to a NATO spokesman in Kabul.
By Del Quentin Wilber Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 9, 2010; C01
Al Schuler, one of 12 jurors weighing the fate of a 23-year-old charged with killing a homeless man in Maryland, was confused by the word "lividity" and what role it might have played in explaining the circumstances of the victim's beating death.
So, one night after deliberations, the retired engineer did what so many people do in the digital age: He looked up the definition on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. "It was just a definition, like going to the dictionary," Schuler said. "It was very innocent."
A Maryland appeals court didn't think so. In throwing out the defendant's first-degree murder conviction and ordering a new trial, the court ruled that Schuler's inquiry violated an Anne Arundel County judge's order prohibiting jurors from researching the case.
Schuler's query is just the latest example of how modern technology and an information-saturated culture are testing centuries-old notions of how juries and judges mete out justice. The issue garnered national attention recently in Baltimore, where five jurors were accused of using a social-networking site to inappropriately discuss the ongoing trial of the city's mayor.
Judges and legal experts are particularly concerned about how technology and culture are affecting jurors and a defendant's right to a fair trial. The Internet has provided easy and instant access to newspaper archives, criminal records, detailed maps, legal opinions and social-networking sites, such as Facebook, all at the anonymous click of a mouse in jurors' homes or on the tiny keyboards of their cellular phones.
"This is a generational change, and I don't know if the legal system is ready for it," said Thaddeus Hoffmeister, a law professor at the University of Dayton Law School, who closely studies jury issues.
Judges have long instructed jurors to avoid reading newspaper stories about trials and to not discuss the case with one another, aside from their deliberations. They also warn them not to conduct their own investigations. The rules are designed to ensure that jurors contemplate only the evidence admitted at trial and at the appropriate time. (Jurors are free to discuss cases when they are over.)
Still, in the good old days, the hurdles for industrious jurors were fairly high: They had to physically visit a crime scene or the library or the court clerk's office. To talk about the case with other jurors, they had to pick up a phone or meet in person.
Today, technology has wiped out those barriers, and people have become increasingly reliant on the Internet for information. They have also become more comfortable blogging about the most mundane aspects of their lives -- let alone a sexy trial.
Legal scholars and lawyers disagree about how to handle the problem. Some say judges should warn jurors more explicitly about the Internet, while others advocate giving jurors more information during trials.
Most throw up their hands. No matter what steps are taken, they say, jurors will probably just keep Googling and texting and tweeting.
"I'm not sure what you can do about it nowadays, to tell you the truth, especially for younger people," said A.J. Kramer, the District's federal public defender. "That's what they grow up doing. You just have to figure it's happening. They go home at night and look up whatever they can. That's what people do."
In recent years, a half-dozen cases have popped into public view because the misconduct was egregious enough that judges were forced to decide whether to grant new trials.
In June, for example, a federal judge denied requests by defense attorneys to throw out the conviction of a former Pennsylvania state senator because a juror had posted updates to Twitter and Facebook during the trial. "Day 1 has come to a close," the juror tweeted. In the days before the jury reached a verdict, he told his Facebook friends that they should "stay tuned for a big announcement Monday everyone!"
Last week, a New York appeals court upheld the second-degree murder conviction of a 30-year-old man despite a juror's Internet research into whether the victim's gunshot wound was inflicted at close range.
In both instances, the judges found the tweeting and research did not harm the defendants' right to a fair trial.
But that isn't always the case. In May, a Maryland appeals court ordered a new trial for a man accused of raping his 17-year-old daughter, because a juror had researched "oppositional defiant disorder" on the Internet. The court found the research, communicated to other jurors, "improperly and irreparably influenced the jury's deliberative process."
A New Jersey appeals court in July overturned the aggravated manslaughter convictions of three cousins because a juror had done Internet research about the victim, the defendants and the amount of prison time they faced and had told her colleagues about it. The men will get a new trial.
In Baltimore, defense attorneys for Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, who was convicted of embezzling about $500 in retail gift cards, accused five jurors of improperly becoming friends and chatting about the case on Facebook.
The attorneys alleged that the "Facebook Friends" may have bullied other jurors into the guilty verdict, contending that they were "a caucus separate and apart" from their colleagues. The counselors wanted Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney to throw out the conviction and hold a new trial.
The issue nearly forced Sweeney to question jurors about their conduct, but Dixon and prosecutors reached a surprise plea deal that ended her appeals.
Jurors would probably have faced a less-than-sympathetic audience with Sweeney, who is considered one of the state's leading authorities on jury issues. He penned a newspaper column in June that examined the collision of the Internet and the nation's trial system.
"Modern jurors, so used to instant access, may not fully appreciate the need to divest themselves of the trappings of information-gathering and communication that otherwise dominate their lives," the judge lamented in Baltimore's Daily Record.
Sweeney urged judges to order jurors to specifically avoid discussing their cases on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter -- a warning he repeated during Dixon's trial.
It appears that such admonishments were not enough for the "Facebook Friends."
By Dan Zak Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 9, 2010; C01
BALTIMORE -- "Anyone for 'sexting'?" asks the 69-year-old man in the navy blazer and brown loafers.
"Well if you give me your number," comes a voice from the crowd, which erupts in laughter.
Bunch of comedians, these linguists and lexicographers. They've crammed themselves in a dim, beige, boxy meeting room at the Hilton to vote on a word of the year and a word of the decade, a solemn task that falls to just about everyone these days.
Other outlets have already named words of the year for 2009 -- Merriam-Webster picked "admonish" (huh?) and the Oxford English Dictionary went with "unfriend" (hrmph) -- but the 121-year-old American Dialect Society thinks of itself as the granddaddy of them all, the first and last word in words of the year. Its hour-long quest must yield two words that are accurate, exciting and durable (never mind that their first-ever word of the year, in 1990, was the now-regrettable "bushlips"). Two words must satisfy both the crusty generation of veteran scholars and the giddy linguistic students whose jargon is a step ahead. It's a tricky exercise, and the result always feels slightly off, given that words are evolving at a frenzied pace and everyone has become his own lexicographer with his own definitions.
There's no smaller time capsule than a single word. In 2000, the American Dialect Society picked "web" to represent the 1990s, "jazz" for the 20th century and "she" for the millennium. Ten letters can evoke an entire epoch.
This past year can be distilled into single words using the top look-ups on Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, which gets 1.3 billion page views a year. "Empathy" shot up during the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. "Philanderer" was a hit-magnet during the Mark Sanford confessions. Michael Jackson's death sent the world scrambling for "emaciated."
The top look-ups are the linguistic nerve endings of people's curiosities at any given moment, says Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster. He regularly tweets the top look-ups to his 2,000 followers. Most recent blockbuster: "indigenous," which has trended since the premiere of the movie "Avatar."
Making these distinctions is "a way to have stillness in the midst of chaos," says Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, whose media-analysis software made "Twitter" the word of 2009 and "global warming" the word of the decade. "You can take a look at a group of words and say, 'These defined what happened.' "
Merriam-Webster adds 100 words to its database each year. Urban Dictionary draws 2,000 reader submissions a day. Global Language Monitor calculates that a new English-language word is born every 98 minutes and that 1.58 billion people are re-sculpting English as they use it as a universal linguistic currency.
We're living in a time of wildfire word creation, with no gatekeeper for slang and no way to settle on a term that will please everybody, says Jack Lynch, author of "The Lexicographer's Dilemma." Purists have always lamented the erosion of "proper" language, but it's a lexicographer's duty to describe the flux, not prescribe a paradigm.
"Language has been going to hell since forever," Lynch says. "Let's not worry about English. It's been doing fine for 1,500 years and it's going to outlive us all."
Steve Kleinedler has a tattoo of a phonetic vowel chart on his back. He yanks up his shirt to reveal the spider-webby design between his shoulder blades. He got the tattoo three weeks ago, which left time for it to heal before the Linguistic Society of America's conference, which started Thursday and provides the stage for the American Dialect Society's votes.
"Stylistically I think it looks interesting," says Kleinedler, 43, an editor at the American Heritage Dictionary. "It's got symbols. I'm a big font geek. And it speaks directly to my job."
Linguists' meet-and-geek
In the behavioral spectrum of American conferencing, the linguists and lexicographers fall on the social end, confides a waiter at the hotel's "tavern." They gab. "They're not like the scientists, who sit alone and order coffee without looking up," the waiter says. "And they linger."
In meeting rooms at the hotel, they ramble about Vedic Sanskrit and Oregon English and chide one another for talking too fast. The lobby echoes with chatter about clitics and fricatives and vowel fission. Conclusions are reached about Northern Virginia (natives have begun to speak like they're from Ohio rather than the South) and the effect of first names on longevity (people whose names begin with "D" seem to die sooner than others). Talks are given on "Learning to Talk Like a Heterosexual" and "The Effect on Dialect Features Under Intoxication" and how "Abbrevs Is Totes the Lang of the Fuche."
The gimmicky sideshow of this syntactic circus is the word of the year/decade debate and vote. It's the conference equivalent of an open bar: a free-for-all, slap-happy slugfest with words and phrases instead of booze.
Thirty students and scholars show up for Thursday's nominating session in a meeting room. They jaw about the possible displacement of "search" by "Google," how the flu-prevention term "Dracula sneeze" translates into American Sign Language. They argue the merits of "Salahi" as a verb and the pronunciation of H1N1 as "heinie." Then comes the slightly more awesome task of nominating words of the decade. A blue PowerPoint slide pops onto a screen and asks a simple question.
So who were we and what were we in the last decade?
"Confused," quips a man in a bow tie at the back of the room.
Celebration of words
The man in the bow tie is a 68-year-old dictionary editor from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and he stops by a table in the hotel tavern Thursday night to greet four fellow wordmen. The average age at the table is about 60, and there's a preponderance of tweed, cufflinks and monogrammed dress shirts. The 41-year-old Oxford English Dictionary editor literally wrote the book on the F word, and Allan Metcalf, executive director of the American Dialect Society since 1980, literally wrote the book on "OK" (subtitle: "America's Greatest Invention").
Sipping white wine, the men muse on the word of the year, which was a publicity stunt initially -- the society was tired of meeting in the shadow of the Modern Language Association -- but grew into an important tradition that has been copycatted over 20 years.
"It's a celebration of words," says Bill Kretzschmar, an English professor at the University of Georgia.
"It's exploration," says the dictionary editor from Poughkeepsie, Dave Barnhart.
"It's like all things in academia: the lower the stakes, the larger the passion," jokes Ron Butters, an emeritus professor of English at Duke.
"No, it's not, it's important," counters Richard Bailey, another professor emeritus, from the University of Michigan. "Language is an index of our social identity."
"The point of the word of the year thing is that choosing words reflects reality," says Jesse Sheidlower, the author of "F***." "If you choose wrong, you've failed in some important way."
At the opposite end of the hotel, in a noisy lounge, linguist students from William & Mary drain their martini glasses and hoot and holler about the word of the year. They think a variation of "Kanye" should've been in the running and they are irritated that "unfriend" came up as a possible nominee. The Oxford English Dictionary already made that blunder.
"We make fine semantic decisions that our parents would never make," says Kira Allmann, 22, a linguistics major. " 'Un' is like 'opposite' whereas 'de' connotes 'taking away.' "
"You're dealing with older white men from academia," says Erica Wicks, 22, earlier in the day, just after the nominating session. She and Elyssa Winzeler, 24, are editors of the Linguist List in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"I wonder how often 'Dracula sneeze' is used by younger people," Winzeler says.
"People who are 40 years older than us say they use 'search' more than 'Google,' but we don't," Wicks says. "But -- what's the line? History is made by those who show up."
And the winner is . . .
"I'd like to speak against all of these arguments for 'tweet' because they are all over 140 characters long," says someone back in that dim, beige, boxy room Friday evening, in which final arguments are made and raised hands are counted.
The jokes keep on coming. A couples therapist makes a case for "hiking the Appalachian trail" because she appreciates the euphemism, and her husband, with expert timing, stands up to second the motion. There's a posse of rebel linguists who won't let "sea kittens" and "Dracula sneeze" die. A gentleman in a gray suit argues against "H1N1" as word of the year because it would mean succumbing to the pork lobby. There are speeches against "9/11" as word of the decade because it would mean the terrorists win. Every two minutes someone shouts, "Fail!"
"I think my life has been more affected by 'Google' than '9/11,' " says a college student.
"People are currently tweeting that 'tweet' is being nominated for word of the year," observes someone else.
After much discussion, the final vote. A year and a decade, both recently laid to rest, receive the briefest kind of epitaph. The two words meant to evoke the feeling of this moment years from now: "tweet" for 2009 and "Google" for the Aughts.
After making some history, there's only one thing to do: pick up the free tote bag, head down the hall to the reception and suck down some chardonnay.
By Russell Contreras Saturday, January 9, 2010; B02
Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement -- cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings -- Arjun Ray, 25, is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.
For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, the Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, "Choli Ke Peeche" ("Behind the Blouse").
"Yeah," said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band's guitarists, "there are a lot of contradictions going on here."
Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, the Kominas have helped launched a small but growing South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants. It also is drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is "haraam," or forbidden. The movement, an anti-establishment subculture born of religiously conservative communities, is the subject of two new films and is a hot topic on social-networking sites.
The artists say they are trying to reconcile issues such as life in America, women's rights and homosexuality with Islam and old East vs. West cultural clashes.
"This is one way to deal with my identity as an Arab American," said Marwan Kamel, 24, lead guitarist in Chicago-based Al-Thawra. "With this music, I can express this confusion."
The movement's birth often is credited to the novel "The Taqwacore," by Michael Muhammad Knight, a Rochester, N.Y.-raised writer who converted to Islam. Knight coined the book's title from the Arabic word "taqwá," which means piety or God-fearing, and the term hard core. The 2003 book portrayed an imagined world of living-on-the-edge Muslim punk rockers and influenced real-life South Asians to form their own bands.
South Asian and Middle Eastern punk bands soon were popping up across the United States and communicating with one another on MySpace.
At the time of the book's release, Khan and Basim Usmani were experimenting with punk and building the foundation for the Kominas, which loosely means "scoundrels" in various South Asian languages. When Usmani, 26, came across the book, he was writing songs and sporting a mohawk -- just like the punk rocker on the novel's cover.
Usmani contacted Knight, who agreed to buy a bus on eBay for $2,000 to help launch the nation's first "Muslim punk rock tour" in 2007. Kamel bought a one-way ticket to Boston to join the tour, and Canadian drag-queen singer Sena Hussain met up with them along the way.
The musicians performed at several venues but were kicked off stage during an open-mike performance at the Islamic Society of North America convention in Chicago. Traditional Muslims at the convention decried the electric guitar-based music as un-Islamic, and others were upset that a woman dared sing on stage. The episode was documented by Pakistani Canadian filmmaker Omar Majeed in his documentary "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam."
"These guys are not prophetizing or preaching anything specific about Islam," said Majeed, whose film is scheduled for release this year in the United States. "They just happen to be young and Muslim, and they write songs and do art that expresses that idea."
Imam Talal Eid, executive director of the Islamic Institute of Boston, said some traditional Muslims might object to such music because they focus on its sexual elements rather than its use for spiritual enjoyment. "But I think we can come up with a moderate opinion that distinguished what is forbidden from what is not," Eid said. "It's a new issue among Muslims."
The musical style of each group varies. Some songs on the Kominas's album "Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay" lean toward the humorous and ironic, including "Suicide Bomb the Gap." In their song "Sharia Law in the USA," the lyrics mock the portrayal of Islamists: "I am an Islamist/I am the anti-Christ/most squares can't make a most-wanted list/but my-my how I stay in style." Their sound mixes hard-edged punk, ska and funk.
Al-Thawra sings about political events in the Middle East, with songs such as "Gaza: Choking on the Smoke of Dreams." Their music is closer to heavy metal.
Usmani said he grew up as a "nonreligious" Muslim American, so his journey into punk caused few problems. He admits, though, that his family doesn't like the drinking and smoking that pervade the music scene. Khan and Kominas drummer Imran Malik, 25, also said they aren't as observant as their families might like.
"I mean, if you put a sword to us, one of us might pray," Usmani said. During a recent Kominas performance in a Cambridge, Mass., club, Usmani played guitar while wearing a round-topped hat known as a pakul and a traditional lungi, a cloth that South Asian men wrap around their waists. An Iraqi woman in a hijab bobbed her head to the music while others slammed-danced in front of the stage. At one point, audience members yelled jokingly that their music was forbidden and playfully threw shoes at the band -- an act that is an insult among Muslims.
The bands are doing what American kids have done for generations: forming bands and making loud music. That they are Muslim doesn't mean there's a hidden message; Vote Hezbollah goes so far as to denounce violence on its MySpace page.
Usmani said despite their obvious ironic messages, he fears that his band and others like it will keep getting "stupid questions" about subjects such as Sept. 11, 2001.
Usmani said a reporter once asked him how he felt about some Muslims being terrorists. He responded by asking her how she, as a white person, felt about the African slave trade.
"We have people asking us about [issues that have] nothing to do with chords we want to play," Usmani said. "Or how loud we want to be."
Under a gray sky, the 21-year-old explained why she and her boyfriend have been sleeping outdoors in the bone-chilling cold, even after learning that she's pregnant. "I can survive out here," she declared, frost puffing from her mouth.
With her tangled brown hair, marblelike brownish-green eyes and smooth girlish features, Crum is a face of the homeless that Washington area residents rarely see. Her vinyl tent is hidden behind a clump of trees near Interstate 95, in an area where five other tents have been pitched by homeless campers. She and her boyfriend remained huddled in their tent even as snow fell early Friday and temperatures dropped to the 20s.
Local officials say there might be scores of tents used by the homeless, scattered along highways and nearby wooded areas. Human services workers didn't group the 1,283 unsheltered people they found into categories such as individuals sleeping on benches, living in cars or camping in tents when they conducted the 2009 Count of Homeless Persons in Shelters and on the Streets for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The total number of homeless in the region was 12,035.
The phenomenon of homeless campers predates the recession, local officials said, and no one knows whether their numbers are increasing. Startled hikers sometimes stumble upon them on remote trails in Montgomery and Frederick counties in Maryland, and Prince William and Fairfax counties in Virginia.
The majority aren't living in tents because shelters won't accept them, said advocates for the homeless. They are frequently rugged loners who would rather sleep outdoors when it's freezing than abide by the strict rules of shelters: 9 p.m. curfews, 7 a.m. wake-up calls and alcohol bans backed by breathalyzer tests.
"The tent thing is a suburban thing" for homeless people who'd rather go it alone, said Pam Michell, executive director of New Hope Housing in Fairfax County. "It's the equivalent of the steam grate and the abandoned building in the city where the homeless sleep."
Advocates who monitor the homeless say tent dwellers often have a drug or alcohol addiction or mentalhealth issues. As local officials prepare to conduct the 2010 homeless census Jan. 27, workers are roaming the woods and trying to build relationships with campers by offering them health care and food, and reminding them that they are welcome in government-funded shelters.
"Living in the woods is a lot harder than living anywhere else," Michell said. "You get a lot older a lot faster. It damages your teeth, your skin. It affects your blood pressure. You get respiratory illnesses. We thought our outreach challenge would be mental health issues when we encountered people in tents. It was health issues."
Crum, who works 20 hours a week as a mess hall lunch server at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, said a full-time job with benefits would allow her and her boyfriend, Thomas Ardis Jr., 27, to leave their tent and get an apartment.
Last month, Crum was given a strong incentive to succeed. During a hospital visit for nausea, she discovered that she's pregnant. It was jarring news, but she vowed to keep the baby.
"I was raised in foster homes, and I don't want what happened to me to happen to him," she said.
Crum's descent into homelessness started a year ago, when she stormed out of her parents' home in Dale City. She said the people who adopted her when she was 9 wrongly accused her of drinking and using drugs with friends.
They also weren't fond of the unemployed Ardis, who's been charged with a string of misdemeanors for crimes such as petty larceny, failing to return rental property and disorderly conduct, according to court records. Wherever Crum went, Ardis was not far behind.
After two nights in a Prince William County shelter, where "one woman had really bad hygiene," Crum left disgusted and didn't go back. She moved into a tattered tent she owned.
When the tent fell apart, Crum bought another three months ago at a Dick's Sporting Goods store. She and Ardis pitched it in August beside a wooded trail that ends at the door of the winter shelter in Woodbridge.
When last month's storm dumped nearly two feet of snow on the area, Crum and Ardis abandoned the tent for a motel room but returned a day later.
On a recent afternoon, Crum huddled fully clothed in a sleeping bag, with Ardis nearby. Nick Hagler, who camped in a nearby tent before moving to permanent housing earlier in the year, stopped by for a visit.
"Hurry up and come in," Ardis shouted when Hagler, 26, unzipped the tent. "You're letting cold air in here!"
The floor was covered with clothing that could catch fire if the propane heater tipped. "I only turn it on at night," Crum said. "I turn it off before I fall asleep so it won't tip over and catch on fire."
No matter how cold it gets, police and other officials said they have no authority to forcibly take Crum or any other camper to a shelter, hospital or jail unless they are violating the law. "If a property owner asks us to remove them, we will," a spokeswoman for the Prince William police said. A D.C. government human services official said only a qualified psychologist can recommend removing a homeless person from the street against his or her will.
Gayle Sanders, director of the Hilda M. Barg Homeless Prevention Shelter in Woodbridge, about a mile away from Crum's encampment, said she and other women living in tents or on the street are welcome at the shelter.
But the shelter has strict rules, Sanders said. Boyfriends aren't allowed, and women can't grant them favors, such as washing their clothes. Hilda M. Barg is a family shelter, so women with possible physical and mental health disorders are restricted to certain areas so that they don't come into contact with children.
Crum's response to shelter living was nearly the same as the answer she gave to her worried parents the last time they talked. "They're, like, asking me to come home," she said. "I told them, 'No, we can make it out here.' "
On the birthday of Kim Jong-un, North Korea leader Kim Jong-il's son, newspaper drew attention to the "unusual brightness" and placement of Venus, which was seen as a good sign for Kim Jong-un.
By Donald Kirk Correspondent posted January 8, 2010 at 8:33 am EST
Washington —
At least one of the planets appeared to be properly aligned – in the rhetoric from Pyongyang – when North Korea’s heir apparent, Kim Jong-un, marked his 26th or 27th birthday Friday.
Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency reported several days ago that the “morning star” Venus “shed an unusually bright light” above the lake that fills the crater of sacred Mount Paektu on North Korea’s border with China.
Considering that North Korean mythology holds that Kim Jong-un’s father, Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, was born in a log cabin on a slope of Paektu, at 9,000 feet the highest peak on the Korean peninsula, observers take the report of Venus shimmering high above as a serious portent.
North Korea’s party newspaper Rodong Sinmun evoked the image of Paektu again on Friday, calling on readers to “toast to the endlessly bright future of Chosun (the traditional name for Korea) that will resemble the shape of the sun and the holy land of Paektu.”
The editorial, like the report on “the morning star Venus,” did not mention Kim Jong-un by name, but analysts are confident of the connection. “They believe Venus symbolized Kim Jong-un,” says Ryoo Kihl-jae, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, carefully measuring his words. “Many people who have visited North Korea say so.”
Whether or not Kim Jong-un is openly declared as heir to his father’s power, reports of birthday observances around the country leave little doubt of his rising stature.
Defense commission could be springboard
Daily NK, one of several organizations in Seoul that write about North Korea, reported Friday on a “central conference” in Pyongyang and elsewhere featuring “commemorative events” for officials and “lectures for residents.” Such a conference is normally a grand affair, similar to those staged annually for Kim Jong-il’s birthday, which falls next month, or the birthdays of Kim Jong-il's father, Great Leader Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, and mother, Kim Jong-suk, who died in 1949.
The commemorations parallel meetings going on around the country to rev up support for a revaluation of North Korea’s currency that has stripped a small but rising mercantile middle class of much of the money hoarded from often illicit black-market dealings. The currency reform is widely viewed as having failed since while the newly valued money goes down markedly in value, hunger persists, and markets flounder.
For all the signs of Kim Jong-un’s growing stature, however, his exact age remains uncertain. That’s presumed to be because North Korea’s aging leadership may well see him as far too young and inexperienced while his father hastily grooms him for power by giving him increasing responsibilities and escorting him on visits to military units and factories.
The North Korean media has reported that Kim Jong-un was born in 1982, one year earlier than the year previously believed. His mother, Ko Young-hee, born in Japan, once a dancer in one of the troupes that performs for North Korea’s ruling elite as well as foreign visitors, reportedly died in 2004, likely from breast cancer.
Kim Jong-un is believed to be serving on the national defense commission while also serving an apprenticeship in the department of organization and guidance, a nebulous agency with tentacles throughout the armed forces, the government, and the Workers’ Party, the three pillars of the North Korean power ruling structure.
A position for Kim Jong-un on the defense commission could well serve as a springboard to succeed his father, the commission chairman, who took over the post well before the death in 1994 of his own father, Great Leader Kim Il-sung.
The Daily NK report adds credibility to a report by the rival NK Open Radio, which reported Thursday that about 7,000 people attended the “central conference” in Pyongyang and that North Koreans on Friday and Saturday are observing a two-day holiday. Ha Tae Keung, president of NK Open Radio, says his station, which broadcasts two hours of news and analysis daily by short wave into North Korea from Seoul, attributes the report to three different sources who inform the station from illegal cell phone contacts near the North’s border with China.
“Of course the observances symbolize to their people the North Korean regime power shift,” says Mr. Ha. “They officialize the power inheritance.”
New emphasis on youth
Yet another sign of the shift that’s under way is the emphasis placed in a New Year’s editorial published in all North Korean newspapers on the rising power of youth.
The editorial described “the youth” as “a shock brigade in the great revolutionary upsurge” – and called on young people to “become heroes, who add luster to the era of the great upsurge with undying labor feats and talented persons.”
Those lines, toward the end of a lengthy message that placed primary emphasis on rebuilding the economy, seems to be a reference to Kim Jong-un’s ascent. He is believed to have been on a fast track to power for at least a year while uncertainty prevails regarding the health of his father, said to be suffering from diabetes and a possible stroke.
Kim Jong-un “becomes more powerful as time goes on,” says Ryoo Kihl-jae. ”Some people argue that he now has a position on the national defense commission,” the center of power in North Korea.
Kim Jong-un seems to have gotten the nod ahead of two older brothers. It is assumed that he basically is a front person for a coterie of elderly leaders, including his uncle, Jang Sung-taek, brother of his late mother.
Mr. Jang’s place in that leadership, however, “will be valid only as long as Kim Jong-il lives,” says Mr. Ryoo. “It is not certain after Kim Jong-il dies.”
By Daniel de Vise Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 8, 2010; B01
Yiddish might be on its way out as a language offering at the University of Maryland, and its supporters are positively farklempt.
Funding will be cut after the 2010-11 academic year at Maryland's flagship public university for the sole professor of Yiddish, the evocative language of Eastern European Jews. That's the end of regular Yiddish instruction at U-Md., barring the intervention of a private donor, said Hayim Lapin, director of the school's Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies. The reduction comes as many colleges are cutting back on full-time foreign language instruction to lower their costs.
Proponents of Yiddish study say its elimination at U-Md. would deal a grave blow to the discipline, because the university hosts the oldest and strongest Yiddish program among the handful in the region. A 2006 survey by the Modern Language Association found 969 college students learning Yiddish at 28 institutions nationwide. Locally, Yiddish is taught at George Washington University in the District and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
At stake is the recorded history of the Ashkenazi Jews, whose historic tongue endures among Holocaust survivors, within Orthodox communities from Brooklyn to Jerusalem and in the original writings of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.
"Yiddish has a major, major written record," said Miriam Isaacs, a visiting professor who has taught Yiddish at U-Md. for 15 years. "The University of Maryland has bought up an enormous number of books. The [U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum] has an enormous collection. Who is going to read them?"
Her position is being cut, along with three others, as the center trims about 10 percent of its $700,000 budget for the next fiscal year and more in coming years, Lapin said. He has found sufficient funds to sustain her position for one more year. Thereafter, Lapin said, Yiddish will likely be taught on a "course-by-course" basis. The announcement prompted a strenuous letter-writing campaign by the cultural group Yiddish of Greater Washington.
"We raised hell. And we don't do that, generally," said Harvey Spiro, president of the group.
The population of Yiddish speakers has declined from more than 10 million at the start of the 20th century to perhaps a half-million today, according to scholarly estimates, diminished in Hitler's genocide and further eroded when Israel chose Hebrew as an official language.
"Yiddish has been dying for a thousand years," Singer once said, "and I'm sure it will go on dying for another thousand."
Hebrew is the language of prayer in Judaism. Yiddish, although rendered in Hebrew characters, is the everyday language. Irreverent, colorful and consonant-heavy, Yiddish passed from the lips of borscht belt comedians to the ears of the goyim, and thence into the Queen's English, introducing such priceless verbs as schlep, plotz, kvetch and utz.
Most assimilated American Jews have limited knowledge of Yiddish; the younger generation might hear it only on visits to bubbe.
"Yiddish was just the language that my grandparents would speak amongst themselves at family gatherings. That's pretty much all I heard of Yiddish before I took this class," said Seth Salver, 21, a U-Md. senior from Miami, who has one set of Ashkenazi grandparents. "I thought it was my duty as a young Jewish student at a university to pay my respect to this language that so many people think is dying."
His grandparents were "tickled pink," Salver said, "when I called them and started saying 'vos makhstu,' " a Yiddish salutation he has learned to read and write.
The introductory Yiddish course taught by Isaacs each fall has been consistently full at 18 students, she said, although it is down to seven this year because of a scheduling change. Enrollment tends to dwindle in the intermediate course she teaches in spring, as students turn their attention to Hebrew, a language more central to the Jewish studies major. There is no major in Yiddish.
The rollback at U-Md. illustrates a larger trend in language instruction across higher education: Full-time, permanent teaching positions are being cut, and professors replaced with temporary or part-time instructors, said Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association.
The number of students studying foreign languages continues to grow, Feal said. But "you might see a reduced range of courses offered, you might see larger class sizes, and you might see fewer permanent professors."
By Leila Fadel and Michael Hastings Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, January 8, 2010; A10
BAGHDAD -- Five explosions that targeted mostly law enforcement officials ripped through a city in Iraq'sAnbar province Thursday, killing at least eight people and underscoring fears that the region's fragile security is deteriorating.
The homemade bombs struck the homes of the deputy police chief, two counterterrorism police officials and a lawyer in the small city of Hit, about 120 miles west of Baghdad, and injured at least 10. The attacks occurred one week after twin explosions killed at least 24 people in Anbar and ripped off the hand of provincial Gov. Qassim Mohammed Fahdawi. They also follow a series of about 40 assassination attempts in the province that have primarily targeted politicians, police officers, tribal chiefs and religious figures.
Anbar was considered an American model of success after Sunni tribal leaders and U.S. forces struck a deal to rein in insurgents in a place once known as a militant heartland. As American troops begin to withdraw from Iraq, the number of U.S. military enclaves in the western province has shrunk from 35 last year to five at present, and by August only three outposts will remain. American forces are largely confined to their base in Ramadi and no longer regularly accompany Iraqi security forces on operations.
Of late, a widespread and complicated power struggle has roiled the province, with elections scheduled for early March and multiple factions trying to assert control over the area, which makes up about one-third of Iraq.
Those forces include the newly elected provincial government, the central government in Baghdad and the traditional tribal leadership. At the same time, insurgents groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq have used the turmoil to reassert themselves.
After last week's bombings, police chief Tariq al-Assal -- widely viewed as ineffective -- was forced out and replaced with a temporary commander from the Iraqi army in Baghdad. Bahaa al-Azzawi was appointed directly by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, angering tribal chiefs, who saw the move as an affront to their power as well as that of the Sahwa fighters, members of the resistance who allied themselves with the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq but now feel abandoned by the government.
"If this weak government still exists after the election, we anticipate a disaster will happen in Anbar," said Sheik Mohammed Albuthaab, who leads an influential Anbar tribe but was left out of the consultations about the new police chief. "The provincial council spends its time traveling abroad to Turkey, Syria and Jordan, not living here."
It is unclear how long Azzawi will hold this post. The provincial council said it will select a permanent commander but did not specify when.
Assal, who had served as the head of Anbar police for two years, accused members of the provincial council of interfering in police matters, which he said led to the recent security lapses.
"Maybe the situation will be better now," he said in an interview. "How the government interferes with security is unacceptable."
Assal charged that last week's dual bombings were made easier because the 29 provincial council members have their own security details and convoys, which he said were not subject to his authority and could be easily infiltrated by insurgent groups.
He said he had urged Fahdawi, the governor, not to visit the scene of a car bombing last week outside the Anbar police headquarters in Ramadi. When the governor did arrive, with an entourage of bodyguards and vehicles, a man wearing a police uniform was able to sneak through the perimeter and blow himself up, injuring Fahdawi and killing a provincial council member, among others.
"The governor was playing Sherlock Holmes," Assal said. "How can I protect them when they don't follow my advice?"
Tribal leaders blamed Assal for the security lapses, saying that he was more interested in bringing investment to the province, not in security, and that the police were corrupt and the provincial government too weak to deal with al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"We don't need a jury system, we don't need a judge. The tribes will implement the punishments ourselves," Albuthaab said. "I would execute them all by my own hands. Anyone who is killing people deserves to be executed."
He said members of al-Qaeda in Iraq have been released from local prisons after the U.S. military turned them over to Iraqi authorities as part of the withdrawal agreement, an assertion supported by some Iraqi officials. Many of those former inmates have gone on to engage in attacks, Albuthaab said.
Despite the turmoil, all the parties want the Americans to stick to the pullout timetable.
Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said that although the violence has caused him some concern, the "security situation in Anbar isn't crumbling."
Hastings is a special correspondent. Special correspondents Aziz Alwan and Uthman al-Mokhtar contributed to this report.
By Leila Fadel and Qais Mizher Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, January 8, 2010; A10
BAGHDAD -- At least 15 parties will be banned from upcoming parliamentary elections because they have been linked to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party or have promoted Baathist ideals, Iraqi officials said Thursday.
The decision by the Justice and Accountability Commission, in charge of cleansing high-level Baathists from the ranks of the government and security forces, seemed to be an attempt to purge candidates with links to the old political order, many of whom are popular among secular nationalist voters. The move is a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures -- who turned to violent resistance over the past seven years -- into the political fold, part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the government.
Saleh al-Mutlak, a popular Sunni lawmaker who joined forces with Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and former Baathist with links to the CIA, called the move "foolish" and warned that it may lead to a popular uprising in the streets. Mutlak, an agriculturist, has long been a defender of former Baathists and grew popular among Sunnis, most notably in the western Sunni province of Anbar, during provincial elections last year.
"The reaction from the street will be very strong," said Mutlak, whose party, the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, was barred from fielding candidates in the parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 7. "The list we are in now is very strong, and it might get the biggest bloc in the parliament. . . . They are afraid, and they will try to weaken us."
Mutlak accused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of attempting to sideline him politically. On Thursday, he confined himself to his hotel in the heavily fortified Green Zone after rumors of an assassination attempt. He said he plans to appeal the decision by the Justice and Accountability Commission in court.
Ali Faisal al-Lami, the general director of the Justice and Accountability Commission, said the panel decided to ban Mutlak's party from the elections because he had made statements in support of the Baathists.
By Sudarsan Raghavan washington post foreign service Friday, January 8, 2010; A01
ADEN, YEMEN -- A hatred of the government in southern Yemen is complicating U.S.-backed efforts to stem al-Qaeda's ambitions across the region, according to Western and Yemeni officials, analysts and human rights activists.
The concerns highlight the extent to which the United States, as it deepens its military engagement here, is teaming up with a government facing internal divisions that in some ways are more complex than those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In a speech Thursday, President Obama said the United States has worked closely with its partners, including Yemen, "to inflict major blows" against al-Qaeda. But experts familiar with the group here say it is poised to exploit the country's divide to attract recruits and more sympathy from the south's powerful tribes.
"Al-Qaeda dreams of secession," said Najib Ghallab, a political science professor at Sanaa University. "It wants to turn the south into the perfect breeding ground for global terrorism."
Once two countries, Yemen unified in 1990. But a brief civil war broke out in 1994. From the north, President Ali Abdullah Saleh dispatched thousands of Yemeni mujaheddin who had fought in Afghanistan as well as Salafists, who follow a strict interpretation of Islam, to fight the southerners.
Ever since, tension has gripped this vast region. The government's resources are stretched thin here, as it also grapples with a Shiite rebellion in the north.
Southerners contend that the government has denied them their share of oil revenue, and has dismissed many southerners from military and government jobs. A wave of protests has roiled the south, prompting a government crackdown. Many members of the Southern Movement, a loosely knit coalition, now demand secession.
"We no longer want our rights from the government. We want a separate north and south," said Ahmed Kassim, a secessionist leader who spoke in a hushed tone inside a car on a recent day in this southern port city.
In May, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate alleged to have masterminded the attempted bombing of an American jet on Christmas Day, declared its support for the southerners' demands for a separate state. The group's leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, promised to avenge the "oppression" faced by southerners.
Al-Qaeda's bonds in south
Southern Yemen, nestled at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, edges the strategic Bab el-Mandab strait, one of the world's oil shipping choke points. It is also a gateway to Somalia, where the Islamist militant movement al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaeda, is fighting the U.S.-backed Somali transitional government.
Al-Qaeda militants have thrived in Yemen's southern and southeastern provinces. They are shielded by tribal alliances and codes in religiously conservative communities that do not tolerate outside interference, even from the government. A shared dislike of central authority and U.S. policies in the Middle East has strengthened al-Qaeda's bonds with southern tribesmen.
The resentment persists here in Aden, where al-Qaeda militants bombed the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors.
Inside the dented white car, Kassim sat with another secessionist leader, Nasser Atawil. Now and then, they looked nervously out the window, concerned that Yemeni intelligence agents might overhear their conversation with a journalist.
They complained that the names of streets had been changed to northern ones. They said northerners had taken buildings, farms and land from southerners. Northerners, they contended, gain entry into better universities and had better careers.
Atawil, a retired army general, said his pension was half what his northern counterparts receive.
"What the government is doing will make al-Qaeda stronger here," he said.
In another corner of Aden, the managing editor of Al Ayyam, the largest and most influential daily in the south, said the government has banned his paper for sympathizing with the Southern Movement's cause.
"We are virtually under house arrest," Hani Bashraheel said. On Monday, journalists staged a sit-in to protest the shutdown. But clashes erupted between police and the paper's armed guards; a policeman and a guard were killed. On Wednesday, police arrested Hani and his father, Hisham Bashraheel, the paper's editor.
According to Human Rights Watch, Yemeni forces opened fire on unarmed protesters six times in 2008 and 2009, killing at least 11 and wounding dozens.
On Thursday, a senior Yemeni official denied the government was using excessive force and instead said some secessionists have targeted government forces.
"They claim they are a movement, but they are outlaws," said Rashad al-Alimi, deputy prime minister for security and defense.
Escalating tensions
With the ongoing government repression, concern is growing that violence could increase -- especially as the U.S.-backed war on al-Qaeda unfolds in the south.
Since July, there have been more reports of protesters bringing weapons to rallies, according to Human Rights Watch. In November, al-Qaeda militants killed three senior security officials and four escorts in the southern province of Hadhramaut.
The recent alliance between a powerful tribal leader and former jihadist, Tariq al-Fadhli, and the Southern Movement also has escalated tensions. Fadhli, who is from the south, fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Then Saleh sent him to fight against the former Marxist forces in the south during the civil war.
But in April, Fadhli broke ties with Saleh, injecting new momentum into the Southern Movement. Since then, protests against the government have intensified.
The government has accused Fadhli and the Southern Movement of colluding with al-Qaeda. They have denied this and accuse Saleh of using the specter of al-Qaeda to elicit support from the United States and its Middle East allies.
Still, some rights activists say an alliance is forming between some secessionists, Fadhli and al-Qaeda. Christoph Wilcke, a Human Rights Watch researcher for Yemen, said at least one al-Qaeda leader had joined Fadhli and the Southern Movement. He was killed in a U.S.-backed Yemeni airstrike last month, Wilcke said.
Any melding of the Southern Movement and al-Qaeda is far from established, he said. But that could change if the U.S.-backed war deepens without Washington pressuring Saleh to stop repression in the south. Angry southerners, meanwhile, have accused the government and the United States of killing a few dozen civilians in an airstrike last month. Yemeni officials say they killed militants and their relatives.
"It will change the sympathies if they have a common enemy in the United States," Wilcke said. "Al-Qaeda will become more of an ally. This is exactly what we don't want to get into."
A screenshot from video exiled Sri Lankan journalists say was filmed in Sri Lanka in January 2009.
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