Inside Indonesia - Listening to Papuan voices

Writing the history of the Act of Free Choice was a controversial endeavour

Pieter Drooglever

The English translation of Professor Drooglever’s book OneWorld Publications, Oxford, 2009

In November 2000, the Dutch Foreign Minister Josias van Aartsen commissioned the Institute of Netherlands History (ING) to write a study on West New Guinea leading up to and including the Act of Free Choice of 1969. The request came in the slipstream of renewed international interest in West Papua generated by the downfall of Indonesia’s President Suharto in 1998. Papuan people were finally able to speak out about their aspirations for greater autonomy or independence. Many of them expressed these aspirations with reference to promises allegedly made in Dutch colonial times. The past proved to be an active force in the present.

The Netherlands has played a large and controversial role in West Papua’s history. In the post-Suharto context many people in the Netherlands felt that an independent account of that role was required. This report was intended to be an independent academic study, rather than an endeavour to re-open a political discussion that had, according to both the Netherlands and Indonesia, been concluded many decades earlier. Instead, Minister van Aartsen and his supporters from the right-wing Protestant parties felt that the public – in the Netherlands, in Papua, in Indonesia and elsewhere – had a right to know what had happened.

The contract between the Institute of Netherlands History and the government explicitly stated that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would provide all necessary assistance and information, but could not influence the outcome of the study. As a historian and specialist on decolonisation and Dutch-Indonesian relations between 1945 and 1963, I was commissioned to conduct the study, which involved archival research and analysis in the Netherlands, Australia and the United Nations.

The result

The book, entitled Een Daad van Vrije Keuze. De Papoea’s van westelijk Nieuw-Guinea en de grenzen van het zelfbeschikkingsrecht (An Act of Free Choice. The Papuans of western New Guinea and the limits of the right to self-determination), was completed in November 2005. It contains a study on political and cultural developments in West New Guinea covering the period before and after the Second World War, as well as the position of New Guinea in the context of Indonesia’s decolonisation and during the Cold War. In particular, it reviews how the Dutch continued their rule in New Guinea after the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia over the rest of the archipelago in 1950, but were subsequently forced to hand over the territory to Indonesia in 1962. In this context, it also pays attention to the roles of the United States, its antagonists in the Cold War and the United Nations.

The book also outlines the developments within Papuan society, that society’s complicated entry into the ways and means of the modern world and the processes by which this generated a new Papuan identity. It considers the ‘New York Agreement’ reached between the Indonesian and Netherlands government and the surrounding negotiations which laid down the rules for the transfer of the administration to the UN in 1962 and to Indonesia in 1963, as well as events in and around West New Guinea during both the UN interim administration and Indonesian rule in the 1960s. The final chapters discuss the 1969 Act of Free Choice, which confirmed the inclusion of the territory into the Indonesian state, including the problems and flaws in this process.

On the whole, the book attempts to give a balanced view of the policies and actions of each of the parties concerned. It was not geared towards defending or rejecting any particular view, but rather traces the interaction between them. But in assessing these policies, the underlying questions remained the same: on what grounds did the outside world take charge of matters for the Papuans, one of the most underdeveloped people on Earth? What advantages did the international community seek for itself? And what benefits or misery did it bring for the Papuans? For the United Nations, it led to a testing of its principles and its capacity to translate them into policies. As such, it is a book for politicians, historians, legal experts and, above all, for those who want to know about the weight of the weak in the events of the modern world.

An academic study, not a government report

The book was, and had to be, an academic study. Both the author and the Institute of Netherlands History took this requirement very seriously. However, the study’s origins were in politics, and so inevitably it was drawn into the political context from the outset. Academics and politicians alike were suspicious that political intentions lay behind the project and would influence the result. The Indonesian government certainly held this view. Many prominent Indonesians felt that the Netherlands, by initiating this project, was planning to meddle in the controversial New Guinea affair all over again or, even worse, reopen a debate that was closed in 1962. Even some Indonesians who knew this was not the case believed that the book could be interpreted in this way, thereby adding to the unrest already existing in West Papua.

Many prominent Indonesians felt that the Netherlands, by initiating this project, were planning to meddle in the controversial New Guinea affair all over again

Despite Dutch government explanations and assurances that the study was without political motivation and designed only to provide a public record of events, Indonesia was never convinced. I was refused further access to Indonesia, either to do research in the archives in Jakarta, to interview Indonesian administrators and politicians, or to talk to the people in Papua. This was a major setback for the study, but it was no surprise.

I was able to continue my research without the assistance of Indonesia, as I had ample experience with Indonesia before and I was able to interview many of the relevant people outside of the country. Moreover, the richest archival sources were outside Indonesia. For the administration of Netherlands New Guinea and the dispute with Indonesia, the Netherlands archives contain abundant information, now laid fully open in the process of preparing for the documentary editions. For the later episodes, significant information is found in the Australian and US archives. For the Act of Free Choice, valuable information is available from the United Nations in New York. Nevertheless, a more open insight into Indonesia’s positions would have been welcome and it is hoped Indonesia’s views will be better heard in future publications. The Indonesian Institute of Sciences offers the best opportunity for this purpose.

The ramifications

The book was launched in The Hague on 15 November 2005. It did not go unnoticed in Indonesia. In Jayapura and Makassar, Papuans held large demonstrations calling for a new referendum. Many interested groups attended the launch in The Hague, including a strong delegation of the Papua Presidium, members of dissident groups from the Moluccas and Indonesian representatives. Among them was Dr. Astrid Sustanto, an Indonesian academic and parliamentarian, who sought to highlight the positive impacts of the Indonesian administration in Papua.

Dr Sustanto’s presence was certainly needed because in general most of the comments made at the event regarding Indonesia’s past and present administration of Papua were critical and Papuans used this opportunity to bring forward their concerns. The question remained: now that so much time had passed, was there still a right for the Papuans to ask for independence or are they better accommodated within Indonesia? No easy answer was available and opinions differed sharply.

The political reality, tensions and difficulties inherent in this question were reflected by the notable absence of the Netherlands Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ben Bot, who had not shown up to accept the book that had been written upon the request of his own ministry. In his stead, his predecessor Josias van Aartsen attended, together with the MP Eimert van Middelkoop, who had first requested the study in parliament. The Dutch government was not prepared to put relations with Indonesia at further risk. The minister’s position was heavily criticised in the Dutch media and in Congress, where it was felt that this was an excellent occasion for the Dutch government to show its continuing interest in the fate of its former colonial subjects. Meanwhile, it must be noted that Minister Bot had, notwithstanding his political aloofness in the matter, continued to facilitate the project until its conclusion, as had been decided by his predecessor in 2000.

Whatever the ensuing discussions, the book was not written to answer the political questions of the moment, though it may help defining the options. First and foremost it was meant as a record of historical fact regarding the transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to Indonesia and the incorporation of West New Guinea in Indonesia. The book will continue to serve as an important resource to aid understanding of the underlying historical context, which continues to drive conflict in West Papua. Previous accounts of this period had focused upon the views of the Netherlands, Indonesia, the US and the UN, and more often than not only upon one of these. Importantly, this book focuses upon Papuan sentiments on the transfer, as well as those of Indonesia and the international community. In this book the voices of Papuans are heard, for a change.

Pieter Drooglever (pieter.drooglever@planet.nl) is author of the Dutch government commissioned study on the Act of Free Choice, Een Daad van Vrije Keuze. De Papoea’s van westelijk Nieuw-Guinea en de grenzen van het zelfbeschikkingsrecht (ING-Boom, The Hague-Amsterdam 2005). The English translation is now available: An Act of Free Choice. Decolonization and the Right to Self-Determination in West Papua (Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2009).

Prices and Earnings: A comparison of purchasing power around the globe / 2009 edition

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Prices and Earnings: A comparison of purchasing power around the globe / 2009 edition (PDF; 1.2 MB)
Source: UBS

When UBS published its first Prices and Earnings com- parison 38 years ago, in 1971, it comprised 31 cities. Every three years since, we have drawn on the broad network of UBS branch offices, countless universities and our researchers’ personal contacts to update this comparison. Our study that now offers a detailed look at prices for goods and services, and wages and work- ing hours for 14 professions in 73 cities worldwide. Doha, Qatar, and Cairo, Egypt, are new to the list this time around.

TSA Targets Women Wearing Hijabs?

By Matthew Rothschild, January 7, 2010

Nadia Hassan is a frequent flyer. The forty-year-old MBA, who was born in Michigan, had never been hassled until Tuesday morning, January 5.

She was traveling with her five-year-old daughter and went to Dulles International to board a plane for Los Angeles.

She was in line to go through security.

“Before I could even get to the conveyor belt,” she says, “a lady in uniform comes up to me and asks me to remove my headscarf. I said, ‘No, I cannot, but you’re more than welcome to pat me down or search me.’ ”

The TSA agent stood there while she put her belt, shoes, coat, and laptop in the bins and went through the usual screening device with her daughter.

“But as soon as we went through the screening, she said, ‘Ma’am, can you come to the side for a full body pat-down?’ She did it right in front of four men, and she was touching me everywhere. And every article in my baggage was being checked for bomb-making materials.”

Hassan says she asked the man who was examining her bags what was going on.

“Ma’am, they just switched procedures on us this morning,” she remembers him saying. “Every woman wearing a head scarf must go through this type of search.”

The TSA denies this new policy, sort of.

“The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) current procedures for the screening of bulky clothing or headwear -- which have been in effect since 2007 -- remain unchanged,” it said in a statement. “The wearing of a hijab itself does not automatically trigger security checks. To ensure the highest level of security, passengers wearing loose fitting or bulky clothing -- including headwear -- may be subject to additional screening. In instances where passengers choose not to remove bulky clothing, including headwear, our officers are trained to offer a private screening area and may conduct a pat down search to clear the individual.”

Hassan calls the “additional screening” of women wearing hijabs “villainization.”

“I was born and raised in this country,” she says. “My father was a Marine and fought in the Korean War. We were taught to love this country. You’re targeting good Americans who just want to practice their faith and dress modestly.”

Hassan understands the need for “safeguarding Americans, myself included,” she says.

“But that morning I didn’t feel I was safeguarded or protected. I felt like I was being insulted. I felt like I was being targeted.”

In a separate incident on January 4, a Muslim woman with a Canadian passport was trying to fly from the airport in Halifax to Ohio to visit her husband. She believes she was held for questioning because she was the only woman wearing a head scarf, the Council on American Islamic Relations reports.

Nihad Awad, head of the group, objects to the policy of profiling women who wear headscarves. “Screening of passengers,” Awad said, should be based on an analysis of “people’s suspicious behaviors, not on their skin color or religious attire.”

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

Documents Show Officials Covered Up Deaths in Immigrant Deaths

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By NINA BERNSTEIN

Published: January 9, 2010

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.

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Nery Romero, who died in immigration detention in 2007.

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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

The family of Nery Romero in Elmont, N.Y., in 2007, after he was found hanging in his detention cell.

Boubacar Bah, who suffered fatal head injuries in an immigration jail the same year.

But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security.

The Obama administration has vowed to overhaul immigration detention, a haphazard network of privately run jails, federal centers and county cells where the government holds noncitizens while it tries to deport them.

But as the administration moves to increase oversight within the agency, the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.

As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told The Times that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity.

In another case that year, investigators from the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that unbearable, untreated pain had been a significant factor in the suicide of a 22-year-old detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, and that the medical unit was so poorly run that other detainees were at risk.

The investigation found that jail medical personnel had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee, a Salvadoran named Nery Romero, had been given Motrin. The fake entry was easy to detect: When the drug was supposedly administered, Mr. Romero was already dead.

Yet those findings were never disclosed to the public or to Mr. Romero’s relatives on Long Island, who had accused the jail of abruptly depriving him of his prescription painkiller for a broken leg. And an agency supervisor wrote that because other jails were “finicky” about accepting detainees with known medical problems like Mr. Romero’s, such people would continue to be placed at the Bergen jail as “a last resort.”

In a recent interview, Benjamin Feldman, a spokesman for the jail, which housed 1,503 immigration detainees last year, would not say whether any changes had been made since the death.

In February 2007, in the case of the dying African man, the immigration agency’s spokesman for the Northeast, Michael Gilhooly, rebuffed a Times reporter’s questions about the detainee, who had suffered a skull fracture at the privately run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. Mr. Gilhooly said that without a full name and alien registration number for the man, he could not check on the case.

But, records show, he had already filed a report warning top managers at the federal agency about the reporter’s interest and sharing information about the injured man, a Guinean tailor named Boubacar Bah. Mr. Bah, 52, had been left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours before an ambulance was called.

While he lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail about how to avoid the cost of his care and the likelihood of “increased scrutiny and/or media exposure,” according to a memo summarizing the discussion.

One option they explored was sending the dying man to Guinea, despite an e-mail message from the supervising deportation officer, who wrote, “I don’t condone removal in his present state as he has a catheter” and was unconscious. Another idea was renewing Mr. Bah’s canceled work permit in hopes of tapping into Medicaid or disability benefits.

Eventually, faced with paying $10,000 a month for nursing home care, officials settled on a third course: “humanitarian release” to cousins in New York who had protested that they had no way to care for him. But days before the planned release, Mr. Bah died.

Among the participants in the conferences was Nina Dozoretz, a longtime manager in the agency’s Division of Immigration Health Services who had won an award for cutting detainee health care costs. Later she was vice president of the Nakamoto Group, a company hired by the Bush administration to monitor detention. The Obama administration recently rehired her to lead its overhaul of detainee health care.

Asked about the conference call on Mr. Bah, Ms. Dozoretz said: “How many years ago was that? I don’t recall all the specifics if indeed there was a call.” She added, “I advise you to contact our public affairs office.” Mr. Gilhooly, the spokesman who had said he had no information on the case, would not comment.

On the day after Mr. Bah’s death in May 2007, Scott Weber, director of the Newark field office of the immigration enforcement agency, recommended in a memo that the agency take the unusual step of paying to send the body to Guinea for burial, to prevent his widow from showing up in the United States for a funeral and drawing news coverage.

Mr. Weber wrote that he believed the agency had handled Mr. Bah’s case appropriately. “However,” he added, “I also don’t want to stir up any media interest where none is warranted.” Helping to bury Mr. Bah overseas, he wrote, “will go a long way to putting this matter to rest.”

In the agency’s confidential files was a jail video showing Mr. Bah face down in the medical unit, hands cuffed behind his back, just before medical personnel sent him to a disciplinary cell. The tape shows him crying out repeatedly in his native Fulani, “Help, they are killing me!”

Almost a year after his death, the agency quietly closed the case without action. But Mr. Bah’s name had shown up on the first list of detention fatalities, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and on May 5, 2008, his death was the subject of a front-page article in The Times.

Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview that the newly disclosed records represented the past, and that the agency’s new leaders were committed to transparency and greater oversight, including prompt public disclosure and investigation of every death, and more attention to detainee care in a better-managed system.

But the most recent documents show that the culture of secrecy has endured. And the past cover-ups underscore what some of the agency’s own employees say is a central flaw in the proposed overhaul: a reliance on the agency to oversee itself.

“Because ICE investigates itself there is no transparency and there is no reform or improvement,” Chris Crane, a vice president in the union that represents employees of the agency’s detention and removal operations, told a Congressional subcommittee on Dec. 10.

The agency has kept a database of detention fatalities at least since December 2005, when a National Public Radio investigation spurred a Congressional inquiry. In 2006, the agency issued standard procedures for all such deaths to be reported in detail to headquarters.

But internal documents suggest that officials were intensely concerned with controlling public information. In April 2007, Marc Raimondi, then an agency spokesman, warned top managers that a Washington Post reporter had asked about a list of 19 deaths that the civil liberties union had compiled, and about a dying man whose penile cancer had spread after going undiagnosed in detention, despite numerous medical requests for a biopsy.

“These are quite horrible medical stories,” Mr. Raimondi wrote, “and I think we’ll need to have a pretty strong response to keep this from becoming a very damaging national story that takes on long legs.”

That response was an all-out defense of detainee medical care over several months, including statistics that appeared to show that mortality rates in detention were declining, and were low compared with death rates in prisons.

Experts in detention health care called the comparison misleading; it also came to light that the agency was undercounting the number of detention deaths, as well as discharging some detainees shortly before they died. In August, litigation by the civil liberties union prompted the Obama administration to disclose that more than one in 10 immigrant detention deaths had been overlooked and omitted from a list submitted to Congress last year.

Two of those deaths had occurred in Arizona, in 2004 and 2007, at the Eloy Detention Center, run by the Corrections Corporation of America. Eloy had nine known fatalities — more than any other immigration jail under contract to the federal government. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement was still secretive. When a reporter for The Arizona Republic asked about the circumstances of those deaths, an agency spokesman told him the records were unavailable.

According to records The Times obtained in December, one Eloy detainee who died, in October 2008, was Emmanuel Owusu. An ailing 62-year-old barber who had arrived from Ghana on a student visa in 1972, he had been a legal permanent resident for 33 years, mostly in Chicago. Immigration authorities detained him in 2006, based on a 1979 conviction for misdemeanor battery and retail theft.

“I am confused as to how subject came into our custody???” the Phoenix field office director, Katrina S. Kane, wrote to subordinates. “Convicted in 1979? That’s a long time ago.”

In response, a report on his death was revised to refer to Mr. Owusu’s “lengthy criminal history ranging from 1977 to 1998.” It did not note that except for the battery conviction, that history consisted mostly of shoplifting offenses.

A diabetic with high blood pressure, he had been detained for two years at Eloy while he battled deportation. He died of a heart ailment weeks after his last appeal was dismissed.

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Obama Takes New Route to Opposing Parts of Laws

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By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is lowering the volume in a long-running argument between Congress and the executive branch over when, if ever, a president has the power to bypass federal statutes he has signed into law.

Legal scholars said the administration’s new approach, which avoids repeating claims of executive power that the White House has previously voiced, could avoid setting off fights with lawmakers. But the approach will make it harder to keep track of which statutes the White House believes it can disregard, or to compare the number of laws challenged by President Obama with former President George W. Bush’s record.

In Mr. Obama’s first months in office last year, he followed recent precedent and frequently issued statements, when signing bills into law, that the executive branch could disregard provisions that he considered unconstitutional restraints on executive power.

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But Mr. Obama has not issued a signing statement since last summer, when one claim set off a bipartisan uproar in Congress. And the administration has decided that Mr. Obama will sometimes sign bills containing provisions it deems problematic without issuing a signing statement that challenges those sections.

Still, the administration will consider itself free to disregard new laws it considers unconstitutional, especially in cases where it has previously voiced objections elsewhere, officials said.

The White House disclosed its shift when asked why it had not put out a signing statement last month, when Mr. Obama signed a $447 billion spending bill for 2010. It contained several provisions that restricted executive power in ways that the administration had previously asserted were unconstitutional — including in signing statements attached to similar bills and in policy statements it issued about the spending bill as lawmakers drew it up.

“The administration’s views about certain provisions in the omnibus spending bill had previously been publicly communicated,” said Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, “so it wasn’t necessary to duplicate them in a signing statement.”

Since the 19th century, presidents have occasionally used signing statements to declare that parts of a bill were unconstitutional and need not be enforced or obeyed as written. But the tactic was rare until the second term of President Ronald Reagan, whose legal team developed a strategy of issuing the statements more frequently to increase presidential power.

Reagan’s successors continued that approach. And the practice escalated again under Mr. Bush, who used it to advance expansive theories of executive power. He challenged about 1,200 sections of bills — more than all predecessors combined — including a ban on torture and oversight provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

Mr. Bush’s assertive use of the tactic set off a national debate over its propriety. The American Bar Association declared that signing statements “undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers,” and argued that the Constitution gave presidents only two choices: veto a bill, or sign it and obey all of it.

But other scholars said the tactic was appropriate if a president cited only mainstream legal theories. Mr. Obama, whose advisers sided with the latter camp, has characterized Mr. Bush’s use of signing statements as an abuse and pledged greater restraint.

Mr. Obama nevertheless challenged dozens of provisions early last year. The last time was in June, when his claim that he could disobey a new law requiring officials to push the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to adopt certain policies angered Congress. The White House sought to reassure lawmakers that it intended to take those negotiating positions anyway and was merely noting its view that Congress cannot control foreign negotiations. Many lawmakers rejected that theory, and the House quickly voted 429 to 2 to bar officials from disobeying the restrictions.

Although the recent spending bill received no signing statement, it contained a similar provision about World Trade Organization negotiations, as well as several other types the administration had previously challenged. The White House issued several “statements of administration policy” warning that those provisions raised constitutional concerns while the legislation was pending, but Congress did not change them.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who led last summer’s backlash, said the White House risked losing Congressional support for international economic organizations. Mr. Frank also said it was “outrageous” to contend that if Congress disagreed with the administration’s opinion that a provision would be unconstitutional, the president could sign the bill and disobey it.

“They have a legitimate right to tell us their constitutional concerns — that’s different from having a signing statement,” Mr. Frank said. “Anyone who makes the argument that ‘once we have told you we have constitutional concerns and then you pass it anyway, that justifies us in ignoring it’ — that is a constitutional violation. Those play very different roles and you can’t bootstrap one into the other.”

But Peter M. Shane, an Ohio State University law professor, praised the approach as a step toward a return to the “normalcy” of how presidents used signing statements through Reagan’s first term. Mr. Shane has previously criticized the administration over its frequent early use of the device.

Still, Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2003-04, argued that an approach of issuing fewer signing statements would “not be terribly consequential” in practice because the executive branch could still override a provision that its legal team later pronounces unconstitutional.

Last year the Obama administration disregarded a statute that forbid State Department officials to attend United Nations meetings led by nations deemed state sponsors of terrorism. Congress has included that restriction in several recent bills.

When Mr. Bush signed one such bill, he issued a signing statement instructing officials to view the law as merely advisory, and they attended at least one such meeting on his watch. By contrast, when Mr. Obama signed another bill with an identical provision, he did not specifically single it out for challenge. But his administration later obtained an Office of Legal Counsel opinion pronouncing it unconstitutional, and officials continued to attend such meetings.

Unlike signing statements, opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel are often secret. Mr. Goldsmith said the administration’s approach of issuing fewer signing statements would mean “somewhat less accountability.”

“I think it’s a bad development if they are not going to highlight for the nation in all these new statutes where they think there are problems,” he said.

The White House, however, said it had given clear public notice about its views.

“Each piece of legislation,” Mr. LaBolt said, “is considered on an individual basis to determine whether a signing statement is necessary, and communications regarding the administration’s views on legislation such as Statements of Administration Policy will continue to be publicly available for Congress and all Americans to evaluate.”

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U.S. Has Few Resources to Face Threats in Yemen

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By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration confronts the latest terrorism threat in Yemen, its diplomatic and development efforts are being constrained by a shortage of resources, a lack of in-house expertise and a fraught history with a Yemeni leader deeply ambivalent about American help.

Administration officials said they focused on Yemen as a hothouse for Islamic terrorism from the day President Obama took office. The United States has tripled its foreign assistance to the country from 2008 levels and plans to spend up to $63 million on Yemen this year.

But by all accounts, that is a modest amount for a country that is suddenly a central threat on the foreign policy landscape; it is roughly the same amount the United States sends to Serbia. It illustrates how much the United States is stretched on the foreign policy front, and how hard it is to extend its resources beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beyond providing military and intelligence help — showcased in recent airstrikes on training sites for Al Qaeda — the administration has yet to develop a coherent plan for dealing with Yemen’s pervasive poverty and corruption, according to former diplomats and outside experts. Those ills, they say, are at the root of Yemen’s lure for terrorists.

“I don’t think we have a strategy for Yemen; I think we have some responses,” said Edmund J. Hull, the American ambassador there from 2001 to 2004. “It’s difficult to do because the problems in Yemen are so huge that you almost get stopped before you start.”

In an overburdened State Department, there are only a handful of Yemen experts, compared with 30 people from nine government agencies who are assigned just to the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke.

Washington’s limited insight into Yemen was on display Thursday, when the White House’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, expressed surprise that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was sophisticated enough to carry out a plot against an American jetliner. In fact, Mr. Brennan, a onetime C.I.A. station chief in neighboring Saudi Arabia, is widely regarded as one of the administration’s most knowledgeable officials about the country.

“It’s not that Yemen is the most mysterious and unknowable country in the world,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “One needs to ask why more wasn’t done sooner.”

The State Department said it had decided to step up its engagement with Yemen even before the botched Dec. 25 attack on the jetliner. In September, the United States signed an agreement with the Yemeni government for a three-year $120 million “stabilization program,” devised to create jobs and improve health and other public services on an accelerated timetable.

“We wanted to put together a package of quick-impact projects that would give people a sense that their lives are improving,” said Janet A. Sanderson, a deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees Yemen.

After the Navy destroyer Cole was bombed in Yemen in 2000, the United States embarked on a similar effort. In addition to focusing on counterterrorism operations, the State Department helped finance projects like a health clinic on the rugged highway between the capital, Sana, and Marib, a town in a remote region where Qaeda forces are known to cluster.

Improving health care is one way to make Yemenis less receptive to Al Qaeda and other extremists, Mr. Hull said. The United States had previously tended to focus its economic aid on politically influential places like Sana and Aden, the port city where the Cole was attacked. From 2002 to 2004, officials said, Qaeda elements in Yemen were on the defensive.

But Washington’s relations with Yemen soured after several Qaeda suspects escaped from a prison in Sana in 2006. After the release of a high-profile Qaeda operative in 2007, the United States suspended aid that Yemen was supposed to get through the Millennium Challenge program.

“You had this reversal and downward trend in relations,” Mr. Hull said. “Both we and they took our eyes off the ball.”

By 2008, nonmilitary aid to Yemen had dwindled to less than $20 million. Afghanistan is expected to receive $2.7 billion a year in nonmilitary aid, Pakistan $1.5 billion and Iraq $500 million.

The administration doubled Yemen’s economic aid last year, but as Barbara K. Bodine, another former ambassador, pointed out, the amount “works out to $1.60 per Yemeni.”

“That won’t even buy you a cup of coffee in Yemen,” she added, “and they invented coffee.”

Ms. Bodine, who was posted to Yemen at the time of the Cole bombing, said that even with the increased commitment, American aid was still overly skewed toward military support, much of it covert. Over time, she said, that could undermine Yemen’s struggling democracy.

“If they see David Petraeus more than Kathleen Sebelius, then we have a problem,” Ms. Bodine said, referring to the military commander and the secretary of health and human services, respectively.

State Department officials acknowledge that the United States has limited resources for Yemen, though given the intense scrutiny focused on the country, those numbers could rise. But they question whether more aid money would be used effectively, given the pervasive corruption there. As it is, the United States steers most of its dollars through outside organizations like CARE.

Officials also say the United States has to be realistic about what can be done in Yemen, given a long list of problems, including a water shortage, dwindling oil reserves and secessionist movements in the south, a major insurgency in the north and a growing young population with no jobs.

In a speech this week on development strategy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to labeling Yemen a lost cause. “In countries that are incubators of extremism, like Yemen,” she said, “the odds are long. But the cost of doing nothing is potentially far greater.”

The biggest hurdle to aid may be Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. While American officials said he appeared determined to root out Qaeda elements, his resolve has wavered over time, depending on his calculation of whether radical Islamists are a threat or benefit to him. Mr. Saleh is also worried about being too closely identified with the United States.

Saudi Arabia already pours an estimated $1 billion a year into Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Germany have longstanding ties.

“He hasn’t always been eager for American support,” a senior administration official said of Mr. Saleh. “That’s all the more reason to wrap this in broader international support. That makes it easier politically for him.”

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Hard Times Have Younger Floridians Catching the Early Bird

Image via Wikipedia

By DAMIEN CAVE

MIAMI BEACH — The early bird special at Cafe Prima Pasta began last year after the restaurant’s owner, Gerardo Cea, lost all his savings in real estate and began seeing his regular customers at the supermarket.

“They weren’t coming anymore,” Mr. Cea said. “They couldn’t afford it.”

He expected his offer of a 50 percent discount before 6 p.m. to attract the usual crowd of frugal retirees. But word kept spreading, and on most nights now, at least half the tables are filled with young families, singles or hip couples — women in short skirts and men who prefer “dude” to “sir.”

Across Florida in fact, the early-bird special is experiencing a revival. With that label and some newer versions, several restaurants have introduced early dining discounts since the recession started, and younger people are arriving in larger numbers at classic establishments that have been serving up free dessert for decades.

Image by Vidiot via Flickr

Part of it is purely business — promotions work when people have less money to spend — but restaurant owners, researchers and patrons say it also reflects a changing mood. It is a sign, they say, of shifting priorities, as Americans respond to tighter budgets with a demand for value and a willingness to alter their habits to enjoy a little fun.

Many restaurant owners, on Florida’s east and west coasts, now report seeing behavioral changes that remind them of the generation that survived the Depression. In addition to coming in early for specials, they said, more customers have been using coupons, sitting down only after studying the menu and wasting less food.

“The value of money has changed in America,” said James Accursio, whose family has owned the Capri, an Italian restaurant in Florida City, since it opened in 1958. “We’re not high rollers anymore.”

His restaurant is one of many experiencing a moment reminiscent of the movie “Cocoon.” As Mr. Accursio scanned his main dining room on a recent Saturday just before the early bird expired at 6:30, he saw more young faces where only old ones used to be. To his left sat the Dawkins family, ages 47, 33, 23, 8 and 3; by the door, a man with a full head of dark hair checked his iPhone across from his date; and near the back were the Slaters, a family of 11 that crossed demographic lines.

Their ages ranged from 80 — for Marty Slater, the matriarch, who said she had been coming to the Capri since she moved to Florida in the ’50s — down to 19. Economically, it was a middle-class group. On one side of the table sat an architect, a social worker and a manager in manufacturing. And nearly all said they had been hurt by the recession.

As a result, they said, old-fashioned restaurants like the Capri — think iceberg lettuce, not arugula — had become especially appealing because they offered consistent value, and it was not just the early bird’s filet mignon for $12.95. It was also the respectful treatment — the waiters in ties, the greetings of “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” the effort to remember the orders of regulars, and letting everyone stay as long as they wanted.

“When you go out now, you have to have a plan,” said Gary Green, 34, who married into the family after leaving Jamaica. At the Capri, he said, “there’s less risk.”

Katherine Slater, the restaurant’s only diner with a nose stud and dyed red hair, said she had only recently begun to understand what her elders saw in such places. “When I was young, 18, I was like, why would I want to go out to dinner there with my parents and my grandparents?” she said. “Now I’m 21. I appreciate it.”

Nearly everyone in the state feels a little poorer these days — with unemployment at its highest rate since 1975 and real estate values continuing to drop. That insecurity has reshaped the local mindset, say many Floridians under 55, and taken the shame out of scrimping.

For instance, Cassandra Eriser, 35, an aesthetician with cover girl looks who works giving facials at a South Beach spa, is not what most people imagine when they think early bird. But there she was at Cafe Prima Pasta on a recent Sunday at 5:30 p.m., finishing up a meal of tilapia with her boyfriend, a musician with a shaved head.

With wine and tip, the couple spent less than $25 each.

“It’s a great way to try a new restaurant without forking over a lot of money,” Ms. Eriser said.

Image by Don Nunn via Flickr

A few nights later at Cafe Prima Pasta, the urge to splurge brought out a party of 13. Mostly employees of a nonprofit in their 20s and 30s, they laughed as they explained that they were eating early for a simple reason: “Because we’re broke.”

At the early bird for Tropical Acres Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale, which opened in 1949, Edward and Denisa Wainwright said they were celebrating their anniversary there because it was affordable and still felt fancy.

“This reminds us of the New England style,” said Mr. Wainwright, 55. Even before the dessert cart arrived, he said he was full. A Harvard graduate, he said he taught at Kaplan Test Prep, making half what he used to make at a database company.

“We’ve had to get used to it,” Mrs. Wainwright, 52, said. “We don’t go out as much because of the money.”

In some circles, of course, the early bird still carries a whiff of mothballs, thus the rebranding. When Benihana tried it last summer in South Florida, they called it “twilight dining.” At Café Baci in Sarasota, which has also seen more young people lately, they use “early dining.”

Hudson Riehle, a senior vice president for research at the National Restaurant Association, said other restaurants around the country had tried “afternoon dining” or just ditched the label entirely, using “prix fixe” instead.

“The term ‘early bird’ may be a little dated from a lexicon standpoint, like ‘doggy bag,’ ” Mr. Riehle said. “But the concept has been and will continue to be an extremely effective marketing tool for certain restaurants in certain markets.”

At Cafe Prima Pasta, at least, the early bird has already become an institution, and almost too much of a success. Mr. Cea, 43, an immigrant from Argentina who learned the restaurant business in New York, said he recently realized that there were too many people arriving early with a taste for high-end meat and fish, like imported branzino. It was his turn to tighten the belt; a few weeks ago, he introduced a more limited menu.

“It’s beautiful, the American dream, it’s great,” Mr. Cea said. “But if you don’t put your feet on the ground, what it’s given you will be taken away.”

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Video of Sri Lankan Executions Appears Authentic, U.N. Says

By ROBERT MACKEY

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.

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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.”

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New Afghan Cabinet Picks Still Generate Resistance

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI

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.

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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.

Social networking among jurors is trying judges' patience

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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.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

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."