by Newsweek
Why Americans Think (Wrongly) That Illegal Immigrants Hurt the Economy
Job insecurity, strapped state budgets, and xenophobia may all play a role. But there's more to it than that.
By Arian Campo-Flores
At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 74 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants weakened the economy, compared to only 17 percent who said they strengthened it. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. They also replenish—and help fund benefits for—an aging American labor force that will retire in huge numbers over the next few decades. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants' impact on the economy and the reality?
There are a number of familiar theories. Some point to the ravages of the Great Recession, arguing that people are anxious and feel threatened by an influx of new workers (though anti-immigrant sentiment ran high at times prior to the crash of 2008). Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners provide a convenient repository for the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all of these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient.
To get a better understanding of what's going on, consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses and employers—meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agribusinesses in California's Central Valley. Granted, these producers' savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9 percent between 1980 and 2000. Not surprisingly, surveys show that those without a high-school diploma tend to oppose illegal immigration most fervently.
There's another distortion in the way immigration's costs and benefits are parceled out. Many undocumented workers pay money to the federal government, in the form of Social Security contributions and income taxes, and take less in return, says Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. At the state and local level, however, it's a different story. There, illegal immigrants also make contributions, through property and sales taxes, but on balance, they use more in public services, such as schools, health benefits, and welfare assistance. As a result, says Hanson, the federal government ends up with a net gain in its coffers, while "states get stuck with the bill."
This breeds resentment among taxpayers. In a 2005 paper, Hanson analyzed how the size of the undocumented population and its use of public assistance affected attitudes toward immigration. He found that among low-skilled workers, opposition to immigration stemmed mainly from the competitive threat posed by the newcomers. Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits.
Beyond these economic rationales for anti-immigrant views, there's a demographic one as well. Illegal immigrants used to be clustered in a handful of big states, like California, Texas, and New York. But in the 1990s, they began dispersing en masse, chasing jobs in the remote reaches of the country. As a result, California's share of the undocumented population dropped from 42 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. A group of 28 fast-growing states, such as North Carolina and Georgia, more than doubled their share, from 14 percent in 1990 to 32 percent in 2008. Natives in those areas had barely any experience with undocumented immigrants, and they felt overwhelmed by the sudden change. The once distant debate over illegal immigration was now bubbling up in the heart of their communities.
In a new book, “Brokered Boundaries,” Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez cite research showing that such rapid demographic change tends to trigger anti-immigrant sentiment when it gets entangled in inflammatory political rhetoric. They argue that in the past several decades, a "Latino threat narrative" has come to dominate political and media discourse. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan began framing immigration as an issue of "national security," they write. In the 1990s, the image of the immigrant-as-freeloader gained wide circulation. And in the 2000s, there was Lou Dobbs, railing against an "invasion of illegal aliens" that waged "war on the middle class." "The majority of Americans are more ambivalent than hostile [to undocumented immigration]," says Massey, a professor at Princeton. But "the hostile part can be mobilized from time to time," by what he calls "anti-immigrant entrepreneurs."
The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal (about a one tenth of 1 percent gain in gross domestic product, according to Hanson). Even for those most acutely affected—say, low-skilled workers, or California residents—the impact isn't all that dramatic. "The shrill voices have tended to dominate our perceptions," says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. "But when all those factors are put together and the economists crunch the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one." Too bad most people don't realize it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Sangmin Han' Selection
May 24, 2010
Clinton and Geithner Face Hurdles in China Talks
By MARK LANDLER
BEIJING — China and the United States opened three days of high-level meetings here on Monday meant to broaden and deepen the ties between the world’s largest developed and developing economies.
But the opening session instead laid bare a recurring theme between Beijing and Washington: the United States came with a long wish list for China on both economic and security issues, while China mostly wants to be left alone to pursue policies that are turning it into an economic superpower without putting at risk its prized geopolitical stability.
President Hu Jintao, welcoming the 200-strong American delegation in the Great Hall of the People, praised the “mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation” between the United States and China. Such coordination, he said, had helped speed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.
On the crucial issue of China revaluing its currency — something the Obama administration had pushed for — Mr. Hu made a specific reference to continuing “reform of the reminbi exchange-rate mechanism.” His language repeated China’s past promises to make its effectively fixed exchange rate respond more to the market, but the fact that the country’s top leader mentioned reform at all suggested it is on the leadership’s agenda.
Still, Mr. Hu also repeated that Beijing would move “under the principle of independent decision-making, controllability, and gradual progress.” Translation: China alone will determine the timing of any such move.
Economists said the deepening debt crisis in Greece, which came up immediately in the discussions on Monday, would make Beijing more reluctant to allow its currency to appreciate in value in the immediate future.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner did not mention China’s currency in his opening remarks, and the United States did not broach it in the first working session. The administration has decided not to prod Beijing at this meeting, officials said, concluding that it would resist outside pressure.
The United States is hitting similar hurdles on security issues. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed China to support measures against North Korea following the strong evidence that it torpedoed a South Korean warship in March. But China has been skeptical of North Korea’s role and is reluctant to punish Pyongyang, with which it has close ties.
And while China agreed to a watered-down United Nations resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, it has not signed off on annexes against specific Iranian individuals and companies. With big investments in Iran’s oil and gas industry, China may well be in business with some of them.
In her speech to the opening session, Mrs. Clinton cited Iran and North Korea as issues in which Beijing and Washington must find common cause. “Today, we face another serious challenge provoked by the sinking of the South Korean ship,” she said. “So we must work together, again, to address this challenge and advance our shared objectives of peace and stability.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Ma Zhaoxu, was noncommittal, saying of the Korea crisis, “We hope all the relevant parties will exercise restraint and remain cool-headed.”
Some of this is cultural, to be sure. Chinese officials tend to speak far less directly than Americans. Mr. Hu did not mention Iran and North Korea at all, referring only to regional “hot spots.” The fact that he frankly addressed the exchange rate of China’s currency, the renminbi, surprised some observers, and lent itself to varying interpretations.
For some experts, Mr. Hu’s pledge to “steadily advance the reform mechanism of the RMB exchange rate,” without repeating his previous references to the rate being “basically stable” was a sign of conciliation. “It’s important, the fact they haven’t mentioned it,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, the China economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
But others interpreted it as a pre-emptive move to take the issue off the table. Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, noted that the crisis in Greece had rattled the Chinese on two levels. It was likely to curb their exports to Europe, and it had strengthened the renminbi relative to the swooning euro, which makes Chinese goods more costly in foreign markets.
“That double hit on China’s exports almost certainly means that they’re not going to move forward unless there is evidence of stabilization in the euro and stabilization in Europe’s recovery,” Mr. Prasad said.
A senior Chinese official said that Beijing would keep a “high alert and attention on the euro zone sovereign debt crisis.” He noted that it could affect not only Europe’s economic recovery but also Chinese exports. China exports more to the European Union than to the United States.
The United States needed a 48-vehicle motorcade to ferry its delegation to this second round of the so-called strategic and economic dialogue. Among the prominent names: the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben A. Bernanke, the commander of the military’s Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, and the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius.
Some of the topics under discussion veered far from economics and security. Mrs. Clinton singled out Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for women’s issues, who is meeting with Chinese women’s groups to discuss their progress in women’s rights.
Mr. Geithner lobbied against Chinese government procurement rules that give preference to products with intellectual property developed in China. American businesses, particularly in technology, complain that this handicaps them and deprives China of state-of-the-art products.
“Innovation flourishes best when markets are open, competition is fair, and strong protections exist for ideas and inventions,” he said.
The Chinese have their pet issues as well: Beijing is pushing for the United States to loosen controls on exports of high-technology equipment with potential military applications. A raft of questions from reporters for state-run Chinese media organizations suggested a coordinated campaign.
If the United States seemed likely to leave Beijing with many of its wishes unfulfilled, there was one notable difference in this year’s meeting compared to the one last year in Washington: the American economy is growing again, which gave Mr. Geithner a rare chance to crow a bit.
Rather than identify the United States with the troubled economies of Europe, Mr. Geithner said America was holding its own with the big emerging economies like Brazil, India, and China.
“Economic growth in the U.S. and China is broader and stronger than many had anticipated, even a few months ago,” he said.
Michael Wines contributed reporting from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.
Clinton and Geithner Face Hurdles in China Talks
By MARK LANDLER
BEIJING — China and the United States opened three days of high-level meetings here on Monday meant to broaden and deepen the ties between the world’s largest developed and developing economies.
But the opening session instead laid bare a recurring theme between Beijing and Washington: the United States came with a long wish list for China on both economic and security issues, while China mostly wants to be left alone to pursue policies that are turning it into an economic superpower without putting at risk its prized geopolitical stability.
President Hu Jintao, welcoming the 200-strong American delegation in the Great Hall of the People, praised the “mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation” between the United States and China. Such coordination, he said, had helped speed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.
On the crucial issue of China revaluing its currency — something the Obama administration had pushed for — Mr. Hu made a specific reference to continuing “reform of the reminbi exchange-rate mechanism.” His language repeated China’s past promises to make its effectively fixed exchange rate respond more to the market, but the fact that the country’s top leader mentioned reform at all suggested it is on the leadership’s agenda.
Still, Mr. Hu also repeated that Beijing would move “under the principle of independent decision-making, controllability, and gradual progress.” Translation: China alone will determine the timing of any such move.
Economists said the deepening debt crisis in Greece, which came up immediately in the discussions on Monday, would make Beijing more reluctant to allow its currency to appreciate in value in the immediate future.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner did not mention China’s currency in his opening remarks, and the United States did not broach it in the first working session. The administration has decided not to prod Beijing at this meeting, officials said, concluding that it would resist outside pressure.
The United States is hitting similar hurdles on security issues. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed China to support measures against North Korea following the strong evidence that it torpedoed a South Korean warship in March. But China has been skeptical of North Korea’s role and is reluctant to punish Pyongyang, with which it has close ties.
And while China agreed to a watered-down United Nations resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, it has not signed off on annexes against specific Iranian individuals and companies. With big investments in Iran’s oil and gas industry, China may well be in business with some of them.
In her speech to the opening session, Mrs. Clinton cited Iran and North Korea as issues in which Beijing and Washington must find common cause. “Today, we face another serious challenge provoked by the sinking of the South Korean ship,” she said. “So we must work together, again, to address this challenge and advance our shared objectives of peace and stability.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Ma Zhaoxu, was noncommittal, saying of the Korea crisis, “We hope all the relevant parties will exercise restraint and remain cool-headed.”
Some of this is cultural, to be sure. Chinese officials tend to speak far less directly than Americans. Mr. Hu did not mention Iran and North Korea at all, referring only to regional “hot spots.” The fact that he frankly addressed the exchange rate of China’s currency, the renminbi, surprised some observers, and lent itself to varying interpretations.
For some experts, Mr. Hu’s pledge to “steadily advance the reform mechanism of the RMB exchange rate,” without repeating his previous references to the rate being “basically stable” was a sign of conciliation. “It’s important, the fact they haven’t mentioned it,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, the China economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
But others interpreted it as a pre-emptive move to take the issue off the table. Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, noted that the crisis in Greece had rattled the Chinese on two levels. It was likely to curb their exports to Europe, and it had strengthened the renminbi relative to the swooning euro, which makes Chinese goods more costly in foreign markets.
“That double hit on China’s exports almost certainly means that they’re not going to move forward unless there is evidence of stabilization in the euro and stabilization in Europe’s recovery,” Mr. Prasad said.
A senior Chinese official said that Beijing would keep a “high alert and attention on the euro zone sovereign debt crisis.” He noted that it could affect not only Europe’s economic recovery but also Chinese exports. China exports more to the European Union than to the United States.
The United States needed a 48-vehicle motorcade to ferry its delegation to this second round of the so-called strategic and economic dialogue. Among the prominent names: the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben A. Bernanke, the commander of the military’s Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, and the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius.
Some of the topics under discussion veered far from economics and security. Mrs. Clinton singled out Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for women’s issues, who is meeting with Chinese women’s groups to discuss their progress in women’s rights.
Mr. Geithner lobbied against Chinese government procurement rules that give preference to products with intellectual property developed in China. American businesses, particularly in technology, complain that this handicaps them and deprives China of state-of-the-art products.
“Innovation flourishes best when markets are open, competition is fair, and strong protections exist for ideas and inventions,” he said.
The Chinese have their pet issues as well: Beijing is pushing for the United States to loosen controls on exports of high-technology equipment with potential military applications. A raft of questions from reporters for state-run Chinese media organizations suggested a coordinated campaign.
If the United States seemed likely to leave Beijing with many of its wishes unfulfilled, there was one notable difference in this year’s meeting compared to the one last year in Washington: the American economy is growing again, which gave Mr. Geithner a rare chance to crow a bit.
Rather than identify the United States with the troubled economies of Europe, Mr. Geithner said America was holding its own with the big emerging economies like Brazil, India, and China.
“Economic growth in the U.S. and China is broader and stronger than many had anticipated, even a few months ago,” he said.
Michael Wines contributed reporting from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.
Junghwa Noh
U.S. Backs South Korea in Cutting Trade With the North
By CHOE SANG-HUN and MARK LANDLER
Published: May 24, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — Tensions escalated sharply Monday on the Korean Peninsula as the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, said that his nation would sever nearly all trade with North Korea, deny North Korean merchant ships use of South Korean sea lanes and ask the United Nations Security Council to punish the North for what he called the deliberate sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.
In Washington, the Obama administration said the South Korean measures were “entirely appropriate.” President Obama instructed American military commanders to coordinate closely with their South Korean counterparts to “insure readiness and deter aggression.”
“The Republic of Korea can continue to count on the full support of the United States,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Beijing, where she was attending high-level talks between China and the United States that have been overshadowed by the crisis. “Our support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal.”
The steps outlined by Mr. Lee in a nationally televised speech — coupled with new moves by South Korea’s military to resume “psychological warfare” propaganda broadcasts at the border after a six-year suspension — amounted to the most serious action the South could take short of an armed retaliation for the sinking of the ship, the South’s worst military loss since the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953.
“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again,” Mr. Lee said. “But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. Trade and exchanges between South and North Korea will be suspended.”
North Korea’s military immediately warned that if South Korea put up propaganda loudspeakers and slogans at the border, it would destroy them with artillery shells, the North’s official K.C.N.A. news agency reported.
Mr. Lee’s speech came just as economic and security talks between China and the United States began in Beijing. In meetings on Sunday evening and Monday, Mrs. Clinton pressed Chinese leaders to take a much tougher position toward North Korea, China’s historical ally. Mr. Lee’s speech was bound to add to the pressure on the Chinese, who have called for restraint.
Mrs. Clinton expressed confidence that the Chinese would agree to take at least some measures, noting that Beijing supported additional sanctions against the North after it tested a nuclear device last year. But other American officials cautioned that Beijing remains unconvinced of the need to punish North Korea in the case of the warship.
“I can say the Chinese recognize the gravity of the situation we face,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters after Mr. Lee’s speech. “This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region; it is one that every country that neighbors or is in proximity to North Korea understands must be contained.”
President Hu Jintao did not mention North Korea in his speech welcoming the American delegation, though he did say the two countries should “strengthen coordination on regional hot-spot and global issues.”
North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left 46 sailors dead. A growing body of evidence assembled by the South has suggested a North Korean torpedo sank the ship.
Cutting off trade with North Korea is the most punishing unilateral action the South could take against the impoverished North. It will deprive North Korea of 14.5 percent of its external trade and $253 million in cash revenues a year, according to estimates by Lim Kang-taek, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
Mr. Lee also said that South Korea would block North Korean merchant ships from using South Korean waters, which would force the ships to detour and use more fuel. North Korean merchant ships made 717 trips to South Korean ports or through South Korean sea lanes last year.
Besides these unilateral measures, South Korea will “refer this matter to the U.N. Security Council, so that the international community can join us in holding the North accountable,” Mr. Lee said. “Many countries around the world have expressed their full support for our position.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to detail specific steps the United States is weighing until after she meets Mr. Lee in Seoul on Wednesday. Other administration officials said the United States might conduct joint naval exercises with South Korea in anti-submarine warfare in the waters off the Korean Peninsula.
But Mrs. Clinton did not suggest that the State Department would soon add North Korea’s name to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, as some members of Congress have demanded. Reinstating North Korea, which was taken off the list by the Bush administration, would only happen if there was evidence that it was involved in acts of terrorism, she said.
In a separate announcement, the Defense Ministry announced the resumption of propaganda blitzes aimed at the North, a cold war tactic with loudspeaker broadcasts along the border, propaganda radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by balloon. The resumption was bound to irritate the North Korea leader, Kim Jong-il, whose grip on power rests partly on denying outside information to citizens.
North Korea has already warned that such a move would prompt it to shut down the border with the South completely, raising the possibility of stranding 1,000 South Korean workers at a joint industrial park in the North Korean town of Kaesong. President Lee cited evidence that a multinational team of investigators released last week on the sinking of the ship, saying, “No responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea.” But he did not mention China by name.
Mr. Lee also stopped short of terminating the Kaesong industrial complex.
Delivering his speech from the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, Mr. Lee drew an analogy between the North’s surprise invasion that started the three-year Korean War on June 25, 1950, and the blast that sank the Cheonan.
“Again, the perpetrator was North Korea. Their attack came at a time when the people of the Republic of Korea were enjoying their well-earned rest after a hard day’s work,” he said. “Once again, North Korea violently shattered our peace.”
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Mark Landler from Beijing.
QUESTIONS
Do you think that is it right to solve this problem?
Did North korea is really deed to South korea ship?
By CHOE SANG-HUN and MARK LANDLER
Published: May 24, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — Tensions escalated sharply Monday on the Korean Peninsula as the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, said that his nation would sever nearly all trade with North Korea, deny North Korean merchant ships use of South Korean sea lanes and ask the United Nations Security Council to punish the North for what he called the deliberate sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.
In Washington, the Obama administration said the South Korean measures were “entirely appropriate.” President Obama instructed American military commanders to coordinate closely with their South Korean counterparts to “insure readiness and deter aggression.”
“The Republic of Korea can continue to count on the full support of the United States,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Beijing, where she was attending high-level talks between China and the United States that have been overshadowed by the crisis. “Our support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal.”
The steps outlined by Mr. Lee in a nationally televised speech — coupled with new moves by South Korea’s military to resume “psychological warfare” propaganda broadcasts at the border after a six-year suspension — amounted to the most serious action the South could take short of an armed retaliation for the sinking of the ship, the South’s worst military loss since the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953.
“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again,” Mr. Lee said. “But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. Trade and exchanges between South and North Korea will be suspended.”
North Korea’s military immediately warned that if South Korea put up propaganda loudspeakers and slogans at the border, it would destroy them with artillery shells, the North’s official K.C.N.A. news agency reported.
Mr. Lee’s speech came just as economic and security talks between China and the United States began in Beijing. In meetings on Sunday evening and Monday, Mrs. Clinton pressed Chinese leaders to take a much tougher position toward North Korea, China’s historical ally. Mr. Lee’s speech was bound to add to the pressure on the Chinese, who have called for restraint.
Mrs. Clinton expressed confidence that the Chinese would agree to take at least some measures, noting that Beijing supported additional sanctions against the North after it tested a nuclear device last year. But other American officials cautioned that Beijing remains unconvinced of the need to punish North Korea in the case of the warship.
“I can say the Chinese recognize the gravity of the situation we face,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters after Mr. Lee’s speech. “This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region; it is one that every country that neighbors or is in proximity to North Korea understands must be contained.”
President Hu Jintao did not mention North Korea in his speech welcoming the American delegation, though he did say the two countries should “strengthen coordination on regional hot-spot and global issues.”
North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left 46 sailors dead. A growing body of evidence assembled by the South has suggested a North Korean torpedo sank the ship.
Cutting off trade with North Korea is the most punishing unilateral action the South could take against the impoverished North. It will deprive North Korea of 14.5 percent of its external trade and $253 million in cash revenues a year, according to estimates by Lim Kang-taek, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
Mr. Lee also said that South Korea would block North Korean merchant ships from using South Korean waters, which would force the ships to detour and use more fuel. North Korean merchant ships made 717 trips to South Korean ports or through South Korean sea lanes last year.
Besides these unilateral measures, South Korea will “refer this matter to the U.N. Security Council, so that the international community can join us in holding the North accountable,” Mr. Lee said. “Many countries around the world have expressed their full support for our position.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to detail specific steps the United States is weighing until after she meets Mr. Lee in Seoul on Wednesday. Other administration officials said the United States might conduct joint naval exercises with South Korea in anti-submarine warfare in the waters off the Korean Peninsula.
But Mrs. Clinton did not suggest that the State Department would soon add North Korea’s name to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, as some members of Congress have demanded. Reinstating North Korea, which was taken off the list by the Bush administration, would only happen if there was evidence that it was involved in acts of terrorism, she said.
In a separate announcement, the Defense Ministry announced the resumption of propaganda blitzes aimed at the North, a cold war tactic with loudspeaker broadcasts along the border, propaganda radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by balloon. The resumption was bound to irritate the North Korea leader, Kim Jong-il, whose grip on power rests partly on denying outside information to citizens.
North Korea has already warned that such a move would prompt it to shut down the border with the South completely, raising the possibility of stranding 1,000 South Korean workers at a joint industrial park in the North Korean town of Kaesong. President Lee cited evidence that a multinational team of investigators released last week on the sinking of the ship, saying, “No responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea.” But he did not mention China by name.
Mr. Lee also stopped short of terminating the Kaesong industrial complex.
Delivering his speech from the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, Mr. Lee drew an analogy between the North’s surprise invasion that started the three-year Korean War on June 25, 1950, and the blast that sank the Cheonan.
“Again, the perpetrator was North Korea. Their attack came at a time when the people of the Republic of Korea were enjoying their well-earned rest after a hard day’s work,” he said. “Once again, North Korea violently shattered our peace.”
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Mark Landler from Beijing.
QUESTIONS
Do you think that is it right to solve this problem?
Did North korea is really deed to South korea ship?
Monday, May 24, 2010
news article
Women and veils Running for cover
May 13th 2010 PARIS From The Economist print edition
Both in Western Europe and the Muslim world (see article) the covering of female heads and faces is stirring passion—and posing a dilemma for governments
STRIKING a balance between personal and religious freedom, and the ideals of common citizenship, is proving to be an enormous test for all European countries with large Muslim populations—especially when some seem determined to assert, or even caricature, the practices of their homelands.
Certain things are easily settled: virtually everybody in Europe agrees in abhorring female genital mutilation, as practised in bits of Africa; or the harsh punishment of children in Koranic schools, which has occurred in Britain. But in recent months a third controversy has shown up contrasts between European countries and within them. This is over female headgear—and in particular, forms of dress in which all, or virtually all, the face is hidden. These include the head-covering burqa; and the commoner niqab, in which only a slit is left for the eyes. The burqa, imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban, has become a catchall term for headgear in which the face is wholly or mainly concealed.
Last month 136 of Belgium’s 138 lower-house legislators (who agree on little else, leaving their country near paralysis) voted to outlaw the burqa. Belgian police already have the right to stop people masking their faces, under an old security law; and in some cities this right is invoked to issue warnings to burqa-wearers, who number only a few dozen in the country. So it is hard to see what need the law serves. But a parliamentarian in Brussels said it created a rare moment of “pride in being Belgian” by “smashing the lock that has left quite a lot of women in slavery.” He hoped at least four European countries would follow.
This week France’s parliament approved a resolution deploring full-face cover, and legislation is due shortly. In Switzerland one of the 26 cantons has voted to work for a nationwide ban; the justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, backs a ban, at least in cantons that want it. The Dutch authorities considered outlawing the burqa, then stepped back. But in Europe as a whole, the idea of making people show their faces is no longer a xenophobic fantasy, but a mainstream political project.
With a fresh election due in June, Belgium’s law is on hold; but it may be the first of many European bans on “all clothing hiding the face totally, or mostly.” Belgian women who wear the burqa in public will risk a modest fine or even seven days’ jail. In Italy a woman was fined €500 ($630) last week for wearing the burqa in a town where the Northern League mayor had barred clothing that hinders police checks.
The resolution passed by French legislators has no legal force but it has huge symbolic impact. Recalling the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights, it says the all-over veil “puts women in a relationship of subordination to men”. On grounds of “dignity” and “equality between men and women”, it judges the garment “contrary to the values of the republic”. A law to ban the burqa will go to cabinet on May 19th.
In some places such moves have been promoted by the far right. Italy’s Northern League, which wants a national burqa ban, is xenophobic. In Britain the anti-European United Kingdom Independence Party is the only party to agitate for a burqa ban. Ed Balls, a minister in the outgoing Labour government, said it was “not British” to tell people what to wear in the street. Jack Straw, a senior Labour figure who once voiced dismay over women who hid their face when meeting him, is still “fundamentally opposed” to a ban. And Barack Obama said in Cairo last year that Western countries should not be “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear”.
In France, by contrast, the backers of a ban are neither extremists nor fringe feminists. It was first mooted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right president, who said last year that the burqa was “not welcome” on French soil. The first to call for a parliamentary motion was André Gerin, a Communist. This week’s resolution won broad support, including from the Socialists.
In many ways, the French move is the most intriguing test. France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, numbering 5m to 6m. It expects immigrants, or their offspring, of all faiths to adapt to French ways, not the other way round. France holds dear the ideal of laïcité, a strict ban on religion in the public arena that emerged from anticlerical struggles in the 19th century. It was in the name of laïcité that France banned the Muslim headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols) in state schools in 2004.
But France’s leaders do not cite laïcité as a reason for the burqa ban; to do so, they note, would mean accepting that hiding female faces is mandated by Islam. Most influential Muslims in France, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an official body, and Fadela Amara, a female Muslim minister, reject that reading. Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the CFCM, says “no Koranic text prescribes the wearing of the burqa or niqab.”
So the upcoming law—stating that “nobody may wear clothing that masks the face in any public place”—has been justified on two other grounds. One is security, and the need to be identifiable. (There was consternation earlier this year when two men clad in burqas robbed a post office near Paris.) The other is human dignity and equality between the sexes. “This is not a religious question,” argues Jean-François Copé, parliamentary leader of the ruling UMP party. Most French people view the burqa as a clear token of oppression; if libertarians defend it, this is seen as implying softness on ills such as domestic violence.
Recent news has reinforced that view. This week, in a town west of Paris, police arrested a man suspected of forcing his wife to wear the burqa, and of raping and beating her. (With such cases in mind, the upcoming French law would reserve the harshest penalties for a man found to have made his wife wear the burqa.) Mr Copé firmly rejects the idea that France is unjustifiably curbing liberty. He notes that: “On Fifth Avenue, you do not have the liberty to walk down the street completely nude.”
The motives of young French Muslim women—sometimes more inclined to hide their faces than their mothers were—are hotly contested. Many French analysts say a “re-veiling” trend among young girls reflects manipulation by zealots. Although no more than 2,000 women in France cover their face, the phenomenon is growing. Dounia Bouzar, a French Muslim anthropologist, told a parliamentary inquiry that many of the women were young. Intelligence sources say two-thirds are French nationals, and nearly a quarter converts. Many come from North Africa, where there is no face-covering tradition.
So France’s leaders are determined to press ahead. Two risks stand out. First, the ban, which some see as a ruse by Mr Sarkozy to woo far-right voters, may stigmatise Islam and create a defensive reaction. (This is why Mr Moussaoui, who dislikes the burqa, opposes a ban.) As the debate took off, a mosque in south-east France was sprayed with gunfire.
Second, it is unclear how the ban would work in practice. The Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative court, has questioned the legal basis for the ban. And what about foreigners? Mr Copé says that the ban would apply to visitors too: but would women from the Gulf states be hauled away from smart boutiques?
And then there are other problems: how could one prove that a woman wore a burqa under orders from her menfolk? And isn’t there a risk of such women facing further isolation in the home? That would be an odd result for a law designed in part to ensure sexual equality.
May 13th 2010 PARIS From The Economist print edition
Both in Western Europe and the Muslim world (see article) the covering of female heads and faces is stirring passion—and posing a dilemma for governments
STRIKING a balance between personal and religious freedom, and the ideals of common citizenship, is proving to be an enormous test for all European countries with large Muslim populations—especially when some seem determined to assert, or even caricature, the practices of their homelands.
Certain things are easily settled: virtually everybody in Europe agrees in abhorring female genital mutilation, as practised in bits of Africa; or the harsh punishment of children in Koranic schools, which has occurred in Britain. But in recent months a third controversy has shown up contrasts between European countries and within them. This is over female headgear—and in particular, forms of dress in which all, or virtually all, the face is hidden. These include the head-covering burqa; and the commoner niqab, in which only a slit is left for the eyes. The burqa, imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban, has become a catchall term for headgear in which the face is wholly or mainly concealed.
Last month 136 of Belgium’s 138 lower-house legislators (who agree on little else, leaving their country near paralysis) voted to outlaw the burqa. Belgian police already have the right to stop people masking their faces, under an old security law; and in some cities this right is invoked to issue warnings to burqa-wearers, who number only a few dozen in the country. So it is hard to see what need the law serves. But a parliamentarian in Brussels said it created a rare moment of “pride in being Belgian” by “smashing the lock that has left quite a lot of women in slavery.” He hoped at least four European countries would follow.
This week France’s parliament approved a resolution deploring full-face cover, and legislation is due shortly. In Switzerland one of the 26 cantons has voted to work for a nationwide ban; the justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, backs a ban, at least in cantons that want it. The Dutch authorities considered outlawing the burqa, then stepped back. But in Europe as a whole, the idea of making people show their faces is no longer a xenophobic fantasy, but a mainstream political project.
With a fresh election due in June, Belgium’s law is on hold; but it may be the first of many European bans on “all clothing hiding the face totally, or mostly.” Belgian women who wear the burqa in public will risk a modest fine or even seven days’ jail. In Italy a woman was fined €500 ($630) last week for wearing the burqa in a town where the Northern League mayor had barred clothing that hinders police checks.
The resolution passed by French legislators has no legal force but it has huge symbolic impact. Recalling the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights, it says the all-over veil “puts women in a relationship of subordination to men”. On grounds of “dignity” and “equality between men and women”, it judges the garment “contrary to the values of the republic”. A law to ban the burqa will go to cabinet on May 19th.
In some places such moves have been promoted by the far right. Italy’s Northern League, which wants a national burqa ban, is xenophobic. In Britain the anti-European United Kingdom Independence Party is the only party to agitate for a burqa ban. Ed Balls, a minister in the outgoing Labour government, said it was “not British” to tell people what to wear in the street. Jack Straw, a senior Labour figure who once voiced dismay over women who hid their face when meeting him, is still “fundamentally opposed” to a ban. And Barack Obama said in Cairo last year that Western countries should not be “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear”.
In France, by contrast, the backers of a ban are neither extremists nor fringe feminists. It was first mooted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right president, who said last year that the burqa was “not welcome” on French soil. The first to call for a parliamentary motion was André Gerin, a Communist. This week’s resolution won broad support, including from the Socialists.
In many ways, the French move is the most intriguing test. France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, numbering 5m to 6m. It expects immigrants, or their offspring, of all faiths to adapt to French ways, not the other way round. France holds dear the ideal of laïcité, a strict ban on religion in the public arena that emerged from anticlerical struggles in the 19th century. It was in the name of laïcité that France banned the Muslim headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols) in state schools in 2004.
But France’s leaders do not cite laïcité as a reason for the burqa ban; to do so, they note, would mean accepting that hiding female faces is mandated by Islam. Most influential Muslims in France, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an official body, and Fadela Amara, a female Muslim minister, reject that reading. Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the CFCM, says “no Koranic text prescribes the wearing of the burqa or niqab.”
So the upcoming law—stating that “nobody may wear clothing that masks the face in any public place”—has been justified on two other grounds. One is security, and the need to be identifiable. (There was consternation earlier this year when two men clad in burqas robbed a post office near Paris.) The other is human dignity and equality between the sexes. “This is not a religious question,” argues Jean-François Copé, parliamentary leader of the ruling UMP party. Most French people view the burqa as a clear token of oppression; if libertarians defend it, this is seen as implying softness on ills such as domestic violence.
Recent news has reinforced that view. This week, in a town west of Paris, police arrested a man suspected of forcing his wife to wear the burqa, and of raping and beating her. (With such cases in mind, the upcoming French law would reserve the harshest penalties for a man found to have made his wife wear the burqa.) Mr Copé firmly rejects the idea that France is unjustifiably curbing liberty. He notes that: “On Fifth Avenue, you do not have the liberty to walk down the street completely nude.”
The motives of young French Muslim women—sometimes more inclined to hide their faces than their mothers were—are hotly contested. Many French analysts say a “re-veiling” trend among young girls reflects manipulation by zealots. Although no more than 2,000 women in France cover their face, the phenomenon is growing. Dounia Bouzar, a French Muslim anthropologist, told a parliamentary inquiry that many of the women were young. Intelligence sources say two-thirds are French nationals, and nearly a quarter converts. Many come from North Africa, where there is no face-covering tradition.
So France’s leaders are determined to press ahead. Two risks stand out. First, the ban, which some see as a ruse by Mr Sarkozy to woo far-right voters, may stigmatise Islam and create a defensive reaction. (This is why Mr Moussaoui, who dislikes the burqa, opposes a ban.) As the debate took off, a mosque in south-east France was sprayed with gunfire.
Second, it is unclear how the ban would work in practice. The Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative court, has questioned the legal basis for the ban. And what about foreigners? Mr Copé says that the ban would apply to visitors too: but would women from the Gulf states be hauled away from smart boutiques?
And then there are other problems: how could one prove that a woman wore a burqa under orders from her menfolk? And isn’t there a risk of such women facing further isolation in the home? That would be an odd result for a law designed in part to ensure sexual equality.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
A guilty verdict for North Korea
Their number is up
Evidence that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan puts it—and China—on the spot
May 20th 2010 SEOUL AND TOKYO From The Economist print edition
WHOEVER failed to erase the words “Number One” in blue Korean script etched inside the propulsion shaft of a deadly torpedo may well be in deep trouble in Pyongyang. On May 15th a ship dredging the site of the attack on a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 seamen made a spectacular find: propellers, motors and a steering section that international investigators say “perfectly match” those of a CHT-02D torpedo that North Korea sells abroad. What’s more, the blue marking was similar to one on a previously captured North Korean torpedo. This was as close to a smoking gun as the South Koreans could have hoped to find.
The discovery, combined with intelligence reports indicating North Korean submarines were out of port during the attack, allowed the investigators to conclude on May 20th that the Cheonan “was sunk as the result of an external underwater explosion caused by a torpedo made in North Korea.” Or as one person close to the investigation succinctly put it: “It was either the North Koreans, or it was the Martians.”
The South Korean government of President Lee Myung-bak had barely dared hope to find hard evidence of North Korean guilt, however strong its suspicions. In doing so, it pushes the belligerent regime in Pyongyang into a corner. True to form, it continued to deny its involvement on May 20th, calling the investigation a “fabrication” and threatened “all-out war” if new sanctions were imposed.
Diplomats say it will also make it harder for North Korea ’s main ally, China, not to accept the regime’s culpability. A senior official in Beijing reportedly called the incident “very unfortunate”. He did not comment on the investigation, though an official in Seoul said China’s ambassador was briefed on the results on May 18th.
In coming days China will come under pressure to issue a tougher response, during what could be some uncomfortable diplomatic meetings. Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, is to visit Beijing on May 24th and 25th. Following that, the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan are scheduled to hold a summit in South Korea on May 29th and 30th.
The proof of North Korean involvement, say diplomats, may help South Korea and its allies persuade China to back some form of United Nations condemnation of the attack. South Korea’s allies such as America, Japan, Britain and Australia were quick to express their outrage. But the toughest condemnation, in the form of a Security-Council resolution, needs China’s support, or at least abstention.
Beyond diplomatic measures, South Korea’s retaliatory options are relatively puny—and dangerous. South Korean diplomats suggest that the government may announce a halt to remaining business ties with the North, except through the cross-border industrial complex, known as Kaesong. It may close a shipping shortcut to North Korean vessels, and conduct joint training exercises with American maritime forces in the Yellow Sea.
A retaliatory strike, which some hawkish South Koreans are calling for, is something the pro-business President Lee is considered reluctant to do for fear of escalating the conflict. His party faces local elections that it is expected to win on June 2nd (his liberal opponents already accuse him, perhaps unfairly, of using the incident for political ends). After that he hosts an important G20 summit in November.
Among the population at large, there seems little stomach for a fight. Indeed, despite a national outpouring of grief, the senseless attack aroused surprisingly few public demonstrations of wrath with the North. Brian Myers, a writer on North Korea, notes that there was more palpable anger in 2002 when an American army vehicle ran over two South Korean schoolgirls.
However, he and other North Korea watchers think tough measures may eventually be called for. The more the cash-strapped regime in Pyongyang feels economically isolated, the more it is likely to step up its provocations against the South unless it is decisively put in its place, Mr Myers says. As it is, the North is in desperate economic straits. Six-party talks that aimed to encourage it to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for cash are stalled indefinitely as a result of the torpedo attack. International sanctions have hit other sources of hard currency.
China is its economic lifeline, as was shown again when Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s dictator, made a hasty trip to Beijing not long after the Cheonan incident to beg for continued economic support. At that point, Beijing had an excuse, in public at least, to take his claims of innocence at face value. It no longer does.
Evidence that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan puts it—and China—on the spot
May 20th 2010 SEOUL AND TOKYO From The Economist print edition
WHOEVER failed to erase the words “Number One” in blue Korean script etched inside the propulsion shaft of a deadly torpedo may well be in deep trouble in Pyongyang. On May 15th a ship dredging the site of the attack on a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 seamen made a spectacular find: propellers, motors and a steering section that international investigators say “perfectly match” those of a CHT-02D torpedo that North Korea sells abroad. What’s more, the blue marking was similar to one on a previously captured North Korean torpedo. This was as close to a smoking gun as the South Koreans could have hoped to find.
The discovery, combined with intelligence reports indicating North Korean submarines were out of port during the attack, allowed the investigators to conclude on May 20th that the Cheonan “was sunk as the result of an external underwater explosion caused by a torpedo made in North Korea.” Or as one person close to the investigation succinctly put it: “It was either the North Koreans, or it was the Martians.”
The South Korean government of President Lee Myung-bak had barely dared hope to find hard evidence of North Korean guilt, however strong its suspicions. In doing so, it pushes the belligerent regime in Pyongyang into a corner. True to form, it continued to deny its involvement on May 20th, calling the investigation a “fabrication” and threatened “all-out war” if new sanctions were imposed.
Diplomats say it will also make it harder for North Korea ’s main ally, China, not to accept the regime’s culpability. A senior official in Beijing reportedly called the incident “very unfortunate”. He did not comment on the investigation, though an official in Seoul said China’s ambassador was briefed on the results on May 18th.
In coming days China will come under pressure to issue a tougher response, during what could be some uncomfortable diplomatic meetings. Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, is to visit Beijing on May 24th and 25th. Following that, the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan are scheduled to hold a summit in South Korea on May 29th and 30th.
The proof of North Korean involvement, say diplomats, may help South Korea and its allies persuade China to back some form of United Nations condemnation of the attack. South Korea’s allies such as America, Japan, Britain and Australia were quick to express their outrage. But the toughest condemnation, in the form of a Security-Council resolution, needs China’s support, or at least abstention.
Beyond diplomatic measures, South Korea’s retaliatory options are relatively puny—and dangerous. South Korean diplomats suggest that the government may announce a halt to remaining business ties with the North, except through the cross-border industrial complex, known as Kaesong. It may close a shipping shortcut to North Korean vessels, and conduct joint training exercises with American maritime forces in the Yellow Sea.
A retaliatory strike, which some hawkish South Koreans are calling for, is something the pro-business President Lee is considered reluctant to do for fear of escalating the conflict. His party faces local elections that it is expected to win on June 2nd (his liberal opponents already accuse him, perhaps unfairly, of using the incident for political ends). After that he hosts an important G20 summit in November.
Among the population at large, there seems little stomach for a fight. Indeed, despite a national outpouring of grief, the senseless attack aroused surprisingly few public demonstrations of wrath with the North. Brian Myers, a writer on North Korea, notes that there was more palpable anger in 2002 when an American army vehicle ran over two South Korean schoolgirls.
However, he and other North Korea watchers think tough measures may eventually be called for. The more the cash-strapped regime in Pyongyang feels economically isolated, the more it is likely to step up its provocations against the South unless it is decisively put in its place, Mr Myers says. As it is, the North is in desperate economic straits. Six-party talks that aimed to encourage it to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for cash are stalled indefinitely as a result of the torpedo attack. International sanctions have hit other sources of hard currency.
China is its economic lifeline, as was shown again when Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s dictator, made a hasty trip to Beijing not long after the Cheonan incident to beg for continued economic support. At that point, Beijing had an excuse, in public at least, to take his claims of innocence at face value. It no longer does.
Man Who Shot Police Had Antigovernment Views
May 21, 2010 (New York Time-Jihwan Kim)
Man Who Shot Police Had Antigovernment Views
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.
The Arkansas State Police on Friday identified the pair — killed Thursday during an exchange of gunfire with the police — as Jerry R. Kane Jr., 45, of Forest, Ohio, and his son Joseph T. Kane, believed to be 16.
About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.
Jerry Kane, who used the Internet to question federal and local government authority over him, made money holding debt-elimination seminars around the country. He had a long police record and had recently complained about being arrested at what he called a “Nazi checkpoint” near Carrizozo, N.M., where court records showed he spent three days in jail on charges of driving without a license and concealing his identity before posting a $1,500 bond.
Sheriff Gene Kelly of Clark County, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he had issued a warning to officers on July 21, 2004, saying that Mr. Kane might be dangerous to law enforcement officers. Sheriff Kelly said he had based his conclusion on a conversation the two men had had about a sentence Mr. Kane had received for some traffic violations.
Sheriff Kelly said that Mr. Kane complained in 2004 about being sentenced to six days of community service for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt, saying that the judge had tried to “enslave” him. Mr. Kane had added that he was a “free man” and had asked for $100,000 per day in gold or silver.
“I feel that he is expecting and prepared for confrontations with any law enforcement officer that may come in contact with him,” Sheriff Kelly wrote in his warning to officers.
On an Internet radio show, Mr. Kane expressed outrage about his New Mexico arrest. “I ran into a Nazi checkpoint in the middle of New Mexico where they were demanding papers or jail,” he said. “That was the option. Either produce your papers or go to jail. So I entered into commerce with them under threat, duress and coercion, and spent 47 hours in there.”
Mr. Kane said he planned to file a counterclaim alleging kidnapping and extortion. “I already have done a background check on him,” he said of the arresting officer. “I found out where he lives, his address, his wife’s name.”
Mark Potok, who directs hate-group research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Mr. Kane had not been in the group’s database before Thursday. But he said that was not surprising, given the “explosive growth” in the antigovernment movement in recent years. With 363 new groups in 2009, there are now 512, Mr. Potok said.
JJ MacNab, who has testified before Congress on tax and financial schemes, said that she had been tracking Mr. Kane for about two years and that his business centered on debt-avoidance swindles.
Mr. Potok said such schemes were common in the movement, whose members consider themselves sovereign citizens.
“He basically promised them they would never have to repay their mortgage or credit card debt,” Ms. MacNab said.
Man Who Shot Police Had Antigovernment Views
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.
The Arkansas State Police on Friday identified the pair — killed Thursday during an exchange of gunfire with the police — as Jerry R. Kane Jr., 45, of Forest, Ohio, and his son Joseph T. Kane, believed to be 16.
About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.
Jerry Kane, who used the Internet to question federal and local government authority over him, made money holding debt-elimination seminars around the country. He had a long police record and had recently complained about being arrested at what he called a “Nazi checkpoint” near Carrizozo, N.M., where court records showed he spent three days in jail on charges of driving without a license and concealing his identity before posting a $1,500 bond.
Sheriff Gene Kelly of Clark County, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he had issued a warning to officers on July 21, 2004, saying that Mr. Kane might be dangerous to law enforcement officers. Sheriff Kelly said he had based his conclusion on a conversation the two men had had about a sentence Mr. Kane had received for some traffic violations.
Sheriff Kelly said that Mr. Kane complained in 2004 about being sentenced to six days of community service for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt, saying that the judge had tried to “enslave” him. Mr. Kane had added that he was a “free man” and had asked for $100,000 per day in gold or silver.
“I feel that he is expecting and prepared for confrontations with any law enforcement officer that may come in contact with him,” Sheriff Kelly wrote in his warning to officers.
On an Internet radio show, Mr. Kane expressed outrage about his New Mexico arrest. “I ran into a Nazi checkpoint in the middle of New Mexico where they were demanding papers or jail,” he said. “That was the option. Either produce your papers or go to jail. So I entered into commerce with them under threat, duress and coercion, and spent 47 hours in there.”
Mr. Kane said he planned to file a counterclaim alleging kidnapping and extortion. “I already have done a background check on him,” he said of the arresting officer. “I found out where he lives, his address, his wife’s name.”
Mark Potok, who directs hate-group research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Mr. Kane had not been in the group’s database before Thursday. But he said that was not surprising, given the “explosive growth” in the antigovernment movement in recent years. With 363 new groups in 2009, there are now 512, Mr. Potok said.
JJ MacNab, who has testified before Congress on tax and financial schemes, said that she had been tracking Mr. Kane for about two years and that his business centered on debt-avoidance swindles.
Mr. Potok said such schemes were common in the movement, whose members consider themselves sovereign citizens.
“He basically promised them they would never have to repay their mortgage or credit card debt,” Ms. MacNab said.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Mexican Drug Trafficking
Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration.
The authorities say most of the deaths have resulted from drug cartels fighting rivals. But soldiers and police have also been killed, as well as innocents.
The upsurge in violence is traced to the end of 2006 when President Felipe Calderon launched a frontal assault on the cartels by deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to take them on. Mr. Calderon has successfully pushed the United States to acknowledge its own responsibility for the violence in Mexico since it is American drug consumers who fuel demand and American guns smuggled into Mexico that are used by the drug gangs.
With the prospect of a quick victory increasingly elusive, a rising chorus of voices on both sides of the border is questioning the cost and the fallout of the assault on the cartels.
Read More...
To many Mexicans, the rising count of gruesome drug-related murders is evidence that the government's strategy is not working. In September 2009, newspapers estimated the number of killings at more than 13,600 since Mr. Calderón took office.
The struggle began to effect relations with the United States as well. On March 13, 2010, gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband to death in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez. The gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children.
The shootings took place minutes apart and appeared to be the first deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico's powerful drug organizations, provoking an angry reaction from the White House. They came during a particularly bloody weekend when nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence, including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began arriving for spring break.
The killings followed threats against American diplomats along the Mexican border and complaints from consulate workers that drug-related violence was growing untenable, American officials said. Even before the shootings, the State Department had quietly made the decision to allow consulate workers to evacuate their families across the border to the United States.
In response to critics, Mr. Calderón has said his government was the first one to take on the drug trafficking organizations.
The strategy "has not only reversed the rising trend of crime and drug trafficking, but it has also weakened the conditions that allowed them to reproduce and to expand," Mr. Calderón said.
But Mexicans wonder if they are paying too high a price and some have begun openly speaking of decriminalizing drugs to reduce the sizeable profits the gangs receive.
Americans, from border state governors to military analysts in Washington, have begun to question whether the spillover violence presents a threat to their own national security and, to the outrage of many Mexicans, whether the state itself will crumble under the strain of the war.
While Mr. Calderon dismisses suggestions that Mexico is a failed state, he and his aides have spoken frankly of the cartels' attempts to set up a state within a state, levying taxes, throwing up roadblocks and enforcing their own perverse codes of behavior. The Mexican government has identified 233 "zones of impunity'' across the country, where crime is largely uncontrolled, a figure that is down from 2,204 zones a year ago.
The authorities have made a string of high-profile arrests of drug chieftains and have had success seizing large amounts of illegal drugs, guns and money. But the violence remains high and authorities acknowledge that they will never wipe out this multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The goal now is to turn what is a national security problem into one that can be handled by law enforcement.
Responding to a growing sense that Mexico's military-led fight against drug traffickers is not gaining ground, the United States and Mexico set their counternarcotics strategy on a new course in March 2010 by refocusing their efforts on strengthening civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuilding communities crippled by poverty and crime.
The $331 million plan was at the center of a visit to Mexico in March by several senior Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The revised strategy has many elements meant to expand on and improve programs already under way as part of the so-called Mérida Initiative that was started by the Bush administration including cooperation among American and Mexican intelligence agencies and American support for training Mexican police officers, judges, prosecutors and public defenders.
Under the new strategy, officials said, American and Mexican agencies would work together to refocus border enforcement efforts away from building a better wall to creating systems that would allow goods and people to be screened before they reach the crossing points. The plan would also provide support for Mexican programs intended to strengthen communities where socioeconomic hardships force many young people into crime.
The most striking difference between the old strategy and the new one is the shift away from military assistance. More than half of the $1.3 billion spent under Merida was used to buy aircraft, inspection equipment and information technology for the Mexican military and police. Next year's foreign aid budget provides for civilian police training, not equipment.
Military-to-military cooperation was expected to continue, officials said, despite reports by human rights groups of an increase in human rights violations by Mexican soldiers.
This revised strategy, officials said, would first go into effect in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, the largest cities on Mexico's border with the United States. Ciudad Juárez, a city of 1.7 million, has become a symbol of the Mexican government's failed attempts to rein in the drug gangs.
The public outcry generated by the violence in Ciudad Juárez forced Mr. Calderón to acknowledge that the drug war would not be won with troops alone.
The authorities say most of the deaths have resulted from drug cartels fighting rivals. But soldiers and police have also been killed, as well as innocents.
The upsurge in violence is traced to the end of 2006 when President Felipe Calderon launched a frontal assault on the cartels by deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to take them on. Mr. Calderon has successfully pushed the United States to acknowledge its own responsibility for the violence in Mexico since it is American drug consumers who fuel demand and American guns smuggled into Mexico that are used by the drug gangs.
With the prospect of a quick victory increasingly elusive, a rising chorus of voices on both sides of the border is questioning the cost and the fallout of the assault on the cartels.
Read More...
To many Mexicans, the rising count of gruesome drug-related murders is evidence that the government's strategy is not working. In September 2009, newspapers estimated the number of killings at more than 13,600 since Mr. Calderón took office.
The struggle began to effect relations with the United States as well. On March 13, 2010, gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband to death in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez. The gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children.
The shootings took place minutes apart and appeared to be the first deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico's powerful drug organizations, provoking an angry reaction from the White House. They came during a particularly bloody weekend when nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence, including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began arriving for spring break.
The killings followed threats against American diplomats along the Mexican border and complaints from consulate workers that drug-related violence was growing untenable, American officials said. Even before the shootings, the State Department had quietly made the decision to allow consulate workers to evacuate their families across the border to the United States.
In response to critics, Mr. Calderón has said his government was the first one to take on the drug trafficking organizations.
The strategy "has not only reversed the rising trend of crime and drug trafficking, but it has also weakened the conditions that allowed them to reproduce and to expand," Mr. Calderón said.
But Mexicans wonder if they are paying too high a price and some have begun openly speaking of decriminalizing drugs to reduce the sizeable profits the gangs receive.
Americans, from border state governors to military analysts in Washington, have begun to question whether the spillover violence presents a threat to their own national security and, to the outrage of many Mexicans, whether the state itself will crumble under the strain of the war.
While Mr. Calderon dismisses suggestions that Mexico is a failed state, he and his aides have spoken frankly of the cartels' attempts to set up a state within a state, levying taxes, throwing up roadblocks and enforcing their own perverse codes of behavior. The Mexican government has identified 233 "zones of impunity'' across the country, where crime is largely uncontrolled, a figure that is down from 2,204 zones a year ago.
The authorities have made a string of high-profile arrests of drug chieftains and have had success seizing large amounts of illegal drugs, guns and money. But the violence remains high and authorities acknowledge that they will never wipe out this multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The goal now is to turn what is a national security problem into one that can be handled by law enforcement.
Responding to a growing sense that Mexico's military-led fight against drug traffickers is not gaining ground, the United States and Mexico set their counternarcotics strategy on a new course in March 2010 by refocusing their efforts on strengthening civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuilding communities crippled by poverty and crime.
The $331 million plan was at the center of a visit to Mexico in March by several senior Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The revised strategy has many elements meant to expand on and improve programs already under way as part of the so-called Mérida Initiative that was started by the Bush administration including cooperation among American and Mexican intelligence agencies and American support for training Mexican police officers, judges, prosecutors and public defenders.
Under the new strategy, officials said, American and Mexican agencies would work together to refocus border enforcement efforts away from building a better wall to creating systems that would allow goods and people to be screened before they reach the crossing points. The plan would also provide support for Mexican programs intended to strengthen communities where socioeconomic hardships force many young people into crime.
The most striking difference between the old strategy and the new one is the shift away from military assistance. More than half of the $1.3 billion spent under Merida was used to buy aircraft, inspection equipment and information technology for the Mexican military and police. Next year's foreign aid budget provides for civilian police training, not equipment.
Military-to-military cooperation was expected to continue, officials said, despite reports by human rights groups of an increase in human rights violations by Mexican soldiers.
This revised strategy, officials said, would first go into effect in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, the largest cities on Mexico's border with the United States. Ciudad Juárez, a city of 1.7 million, has become a symbol of the Mexican government's failed attempts to rein in the drug gangs.
The public outcry generated by the violence in Ciudad Juárez forced Mr. Calderón to acknowledge that the drug war would not be won with troops alone.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sangmin Han
Strict cellphone ban expected in Prince George's schools
By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2010; 5:42 PM
First it was a quick phone call in a bathroom. Then it was texting underneath the desk. Now it's video of fights and confrontations in hallways.
Prince George's County educators have watched as advancing technology has expanded the ways in which cellphones can distract and get students in trouble. So, the school board is poised to adopt the strictest cellphone ban in the region.
Under the proposal, students would be required to leave their phones turned off and in their lockers, from the first bell of the morning to the final bell of the school day. Students would be able to use their phones only with the principal's permission, or if a teacher wanted them to use it for some educational purpose.
The board was scheduled to vote on the proposal Thursday, but tabled action to incorporate suggestions from the teachers' union and refine other details of the policy.
The ban is the latest chapter in a national struggle over the spread of iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones. Schools must balance demands from parents, many of whom appreciate being able to contact their children during the day, with demands from teachers, who say that even an otherwise quiet classroom can be distracted by silent electronic exchanges underneath the desk.
"When kids are in school, they need to be focused on academics," said Prince George's Board of Education member Donna Hathaway Beck (At Large), who wrote the policy with the backing of the rest of the board. "I kept hearing from teachers about what kids were doing with their cellphones," she said -- texting each other test answers, planning fights, "sexting" each other from the bathroom stalls -- and she thought a stronger, uniform policy was needed.
Evolving technology, and the changing ways students use it, has resulted in a shifting policies nationwide: Montgomery County loosened restrictions on cellphones this school year; New York City, by contrast, won a lawsuit brought by parents who disliked its ban against students possessing cellphones in school.
Most school systems in the Washington region have flexible policies, allowing students to carry powered-down cellphones in their pockets during the school day and turning a blind eye to lunchtime calls; most confiscate phones used inappropriately during class.
Prince George's County has had restrictions on cellphones, but the consequences were unclear and applied unevenly from school to school, board members said. Under the new policy, the first time a student is caught with a cellphone, it will be confiscated and returned at the end of the school day. The second time, a parent will have to pick it up. After a third offense, the student would be prohibited from bringing a cellphone to school at all.
Educators acknowledge that the devices have become thoroughly enmeshed in their students' lives. Still, they say, they need to create an atmosphere where students can concentrate on their lessons.
"We definitely acknowledge that it's become a part of their normal routine," said Rudolph Saunders, principal of Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro. He said his students sometimes text each other if they know a fight will happen after school. Students have also recorded fights with their phones' cameras.
"If I confiscated one every time I saw one, I'd have a boxful of phones," Saunders said. "I'd say teachers have to at least one time a day tell someone to put their phone away."
Next up for cellphone restrictions? Teachers, Beck said. One time, she said, "I walked into a classroom, and the teacher wouldn't get off her phone."
But that will have to be part of contract negotiations.
By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2010; 5:42 PM
First it was a quick phone call in a bathroom. Then it was texting underneath the desk. Now it's video of fights and confrontations in hallways.
Prince George's County educators have watched as advancing technology has expanded the ways in which cellphones can distract and get students in trouble. So, the school board is poised to adopt the strictest cellphone ban in the region.
Under the proposal, students would be required to leave their phones turned off and in their lockers, from the first bell of the morning to the final bell of the school day. Students would be able to use their phones only with the principal's permission, or if a teacher wanted them to use it for some educational purpose.
The board was scheduled to vote on the proposal Thursday, but tabled action to incorporate suggestions from the teachers' union and refine other details of the policy.
The ban is the latest chapter in a national struggle over the spread of iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones. Schools must balance demands from parents, many of whom appreciate being able to contact their children during the day, with demands from teachers, who say that even an otherwise quiet classroom can be distracted by silent electronic exchanges underneath the desk.
"When kids are in school, they need to be focused on academics," said Prince George's Board of Education member Donna Hathaway Beck (At Large), who wrote the policy with the backing of the rest of the board. "I kept hearing from teachers about what kids were doing with their cellphones," she said -- texting each other test answers, planning fights, "sexting" each other from the bathroom stalls -- and she thought a stronger, uniform policy was needed.
Evolving technology, and the changing ways students use it, has resulted in a shifting policies nationwide: Montgomery County loosened restrictions on cellphones this school year; New York City, by contrast, won a lawsuit brought by parents who disliked its ban against students possessing cellphones in school.
Most school systems in the Washington region have flexible policies, allowing students to carry powered-down cellphones in their pockets during the school day and turning a blind eye to lunchtime calls; most confiscate phones used inappropriately during class.
Prince George's County has had restrictions on cellphones, but the consequences were unclear and applied unevenly from school to school, board members said. Under the new policy, the first time a student is caught with a cellphone, it will be confiscated and returned at the end of the school day. The second time, a parent will have to pick it up. After a third offense, the student would be prohibited from bringing a cellphone to school at all.
Educators acknowledge that the devices have become thoroughly enmeshed in their students' lives. Still, they say, they need to create an atmosphere where students can concentrate on their lessons.
"We definitely acknowledge that it's become a part of their normal routine," said Rudolph Saunders, principal of Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro. He said his students sometimes text each other if they know a fight will happen after school. Students have also recorded fights with their phones' cameras.
"If I confiscated one every time I saw one, I'd have a boxful of phones," Saunders said. "I'd say teachers have to at least one time a day tell someone to put their phone away."
Next up for cellphone restrictions? Teachers, Beck said. One time, she said, "I walked into a classroom, and the teacher wouldn't get off her phone."
But that will have to be part of contract negotiations.
Angry Voters, but How Many?
The New York Times May 16, 2010
Angry Voters, but How Many?
By JOHN HARWOOD
Three United States Senate primaries on Tuesday offer new signs of the election-year intentions of America’s dyspeptic voters.
A few voters, anyway.
In Kentucky, Rand Paul’s bid for the Republican nomination will again test the strength of the Tea Party right against the establishment, represented by Trey Grayson.
In Arkansas, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s attempt to oust the incumbent Democrat, Senator Blanche Lincoln, will measure the left’s resistance to compromise in the age of Obama.
In Pennsylvania, the fight by Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican turned Democrat, to hold off Representative Joe Sestak for his new party’s nomination will show whether the combination of incumbency, age and partisan inconstancy is simply too much to bear.
Yet the voters rendering those verdicts will represent only a sliver of the population.
Consider the 2010 evidence to date:
Just 17 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the Texas primary for governor, which was a much-publicized battle between the incumbent Republican, Rick Perry, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Just 22 percent showed up in Illinois for contests for governor and for the Senate seat once held by President Obama. That turnout was the lowest in two decades.
“No groundswell of voters so far,” concluded Rhodes Cook, an expert on voting patterns. Nor does history suggest that one is likely in November.
Polls show that Republicans are at least poised to erode the Democrats’ House and Senate majorities. But as with the Democrats’ midterm gains four years ago, the uprising will almost certainly be narrow and targeted — not a mass movement.
Modest Turnouts
In 2008, when Mr. Obama’s candidacy galvanized Democrats and intrigued the nation, nearly 4 in 10 Americans declined to vote. Even at peak interest, the American appetite for democratic rituals is hardly universal.
Without a presidential race to lead the ballot, the appetite is even weaker. The last time more than half of the eligible citizens voted in a midterm election was nearly three decades ago, in 1982, census figures show.
Students of modern political history point out that this is often a problem for Democrats. Their less-affluent constituency traditionally goes to the polls at lower rates.
“We usually do well when the turnout is low,” said John Morgan, a longtime Republican demographic specialist.
Comparing 2010 to one election with modest turnout in which his party captured both houses of Congress, Mr. Morgan observed, “This smells like 1946.”
Elections with low turnout can allow parties to tilt the outcome substantially through small shifts in the composition of those voting.
In the 1994 midterms, for example, overall turnout as a proportion of eligible citizens dropped slightly. But since Representative Newt Gingrich’s party was energized that year and President Bill Clinton’s was downcast, the result earned the moniker “Republican Revolution.”
“You can have a big-wave result,” Mr. Cook said, “without a big wave of voters.”
Important Blocs
Mark Gersh, who provides targeting data to Democratic candidates at the National Committee for an Effective Congress, sees several challenges for his party. One is defections to Republicans among important constituencies, including independents, suburban women and small-town voters.
Another is a wide enthusiasm deficit. In last week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 65 percent of Republicans called themselves highly interested in the campaign, compared with 46 percent of Democrats.
A third is the vulnerability of Democratic-held House seats that were won during the boom elections of 2006 and 2008, the latter with help from an exceptional Obama-driven turnout among young and black voters.
In 2008, nearly half of eligible citizens ages 18 to 24 went to the polls, the highest level since 1972, when 18-year-olds first gained the right to vote. Nearly two-thirds of eligible African-Americans voted, slightly exceeding the rate among whites.
Without Mr. Obama on the ballot, turnout among both groups will drop this year. But the fate of the Democrats’ Congressional majorities may turn on how much, which is why Democrats are spending $50 million to mobilize recently registered “surge voters.”
The party calculates that even a small return on that investment could salvage some seats now in jeopardy. “We’re talking about adding 3 or 4 percent in the toughest environment any candidate can have,” said Mitch Stewart, director of the Democratic Party network Organizing for America.
Mr. Gersh added, “If you have a 95 percent failure rate and still get 5 percent of them, that could be a big deal.”
Republicans acknowledge that Democrats may reap some residual benefit from Mr. Obama’s 2008 proficiency at finding and mobilizing new voters. But they also recall that Republicans had similar success in President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, only to struggle with motivating supporters two years later.
“The upgrade they got to their toolbox is not to be underestimated,” said Heath Thompson, a Republican consultant. “It gives them new targets. But they still have to motivate those targets.”
Angry Voters, but How Many?
By JOHN HARWOOD
Three United States Senate primaries on Tuesday offer new signs of the election-year intentions of America’s dyspeptic voters.
A few voters, anyway.
In Kentucky, Rand Paul’s bid for the Republican nomination will again test the strength of the Tea Party right against the establishment, represented by Trey Grayson.
In Arkansas, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s attempt to oust the incumbent Democrat, Senator Blanche Lincoln, will measure the left’s resistance to compromise in the age of Obama.
In Pennsylvania, the fight by Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican turned Democrat, to hold off Representative Joe Sestak for his new party’s nomination will show whether the combination of incumbency, age and partisan inconstancy is simply too much to bear.
Yet the voters rendering those verdicts will represent only a sliver of the population.
Consider the 2010 evidence to date:
Just 17 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the Texas primary for governor, which was a much-publicized battle between the incumbent Republican, Rick Perry, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Just 22 percent showed up in Illinois for contests for governor and for the Senate seat once held by President Obama. That turnout was the lowest in two decades.
“No groundswell of voters so far,” concluded Rhodes Cook, an expert on voting patterns. Nor does history suggest that one is likely in November.
Polls show that Republicans are at least poised to erode the Democrats’ House and Senate majorities. But as with the Democrats’ midterm gains four years ago, the uprising will almost certainly be narrow and targeted — not a mass movement.
Modest Turnouts
In 2008, when Mr. Obama’s candidacy galvanized Democrats and intrigued the nation, nearly 4 in 10 Americans declined to vote. Even at peak interest, the American appetite for democratic rituals is hardly universal.
Without a presidential race to lead the ballot, the appetite is even weaker. The last time more than half of the eligible citizens voted in a midterm election was nearly three decades ago, in 1982, census figures show.
Students of modern political history point out that this is often a problem for Democrats. Their less-affluent constituency traditionally goes to the polls at lower rates.
“We usually do well when the turnout is low,” said John Morgan, a longtime Republican demographic specialist.
Comparing 2010 to one election with modest turnout in which his party captured both houses of Congress, Mr. Morgan observed, “This smells like 1946.”
Elections with low turnout can allow parties to tilt the outcome substantially through small shifts in the composition of those voting.
In the 1994 midterms, for example, overall turnout as a proportion of eligible citizens dropped slightly. But since Representative Newt Gingrich’s party was energized that year and President Bill Clinton’s was downcast, the result earned the moniker “Republican Revolution.”
“You can have a big-wave result,” Mr. Cook said, “without a big wave of voters.”
Important Blocs
Mark Gersh, who provides targeting data to Democratic candidates at the National Committee for an Effective Congress, sees several challenges for his party. One is defections to Republicans among important constituencies, including independents, suburban women and small-town voters.
Another is a wide enthusiasm deficit. In last week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 65 percent of Republicans called themselves highly interested in the campaign, compared with 46 percent of Democrats.
A third is the vulnerability of Democratic-held House seats that were won during the boom elections of 2006 and 2008, the latter with help from an exceptional Obama-driven turnout among young and black voters.
In 2008, nearly half of eligible citizens ages 18 to 24 went to the polls, the highest level since 1972, when 18-year-olds first gained the right to vote. Nearly two-thirds of eligible African-Americans voted, slightly exceeding the rate among whites.
Without Mr. Obama on the ballot, turnout among both groups will drop this year. But the fate of the Democrats’ Congressional majorities may turn on how much, which is why Democrats are spending $50 million to mobilize recently registered “surge voters.”
The party calculates that even a small return on that investment could salvage some seats now in jeopardy. “We’re talking about adding 3 or 4 percent in the toughest environment any candidate can have,” said Mitch Stewart, director of the Democratic Party network Organizing for America.
Mr. Gersh added, “If you have a 95 percent failure rate and still get 5 percent of them, that could be a big deal.”
Republicans acknowledge that Democrats may reap some residual benefit from Mr. Obama’s 2008 proficiency at finding and mobilizing new voters. But they also recall that Republicans had similar success in President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, only to struggle with motivating supporters two years later.
“The upgrade they got to their toolbox is not to be underestimated,” said Heath Thompson, a Republican consultant. “It gives them new targets. But they still have to motivate those targets.”
In working couples, women's careers still take backseat
[ 2010-04-06 09:28 ] From China Daily
Women might be on a more even footing at work but at home their careers tend to take a backseat to their husband's job with women most likely to quit when both are working long hours, according to a U.S. study.
Researcher Youngjoo Cha, from Cornell University, found that working women with a husband who worked 50 hours or more a week found themselves still doing most of the housework and the care giving and were more likely to end up quitting their job.
An analysis of 8,484 professional workers and 17,648 nonprofessionals from dual-earner families showed that if women had a husband who worked 60 hours or more per week it increased the woman's odds of quitting her paid job by 42 percent.
Cha said the odds of quitting increased to 51 percent for professional women whose husbands work 60 hours or more per week, and for professional mothers the odds they would quit their jobs jumped 112 percent.
However, it did not significantly affect a man's odds of quitting his job if his wife worked 60 hours or more per week, according to the study published in the American Sociological Review in April.
For professional men, both parents and non-parents, the effects of a wife working long hours were negligible, according to the study called "Reinforcing Separate Spheres: The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Men's and Women's Employment in Dual-Earner Households."
"As long work-hours introduce conflict between work and family into many dual-earner families, couples often resolve conflict in ways that prioritize husbands' careers," Cha, who used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, said in a statement.
"This effect is magnified among workers in professional and managerial occupations, where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting tend to be strongest. The findings suggest that the prevalence of overwork may lead many dual-earner couples to return to a separate spheres arrangement -- breadwinning men and homemaking women."
Vocabulary
take a backseat: to allow somebody else to play a more active and important role in a particular situation than you do
Women might be on a more even footing at work but at home their careers tend to take a backseat to their husband's job with women most likely to quit when both are working long hours, according to a U.S. study.
Researcher Youngjoo Cha, from Cornell University, found that working women with a husband who worked 50 hours or more a week found themselves still doing most of the housework and the care giving and were more likely to end up quitting their job.
An analysis of 8,484 professional workers and 17,648 nonprofessionals from dual-earner families showed that if women had a husband who worked 60 hours or more per week it increased the woman's odds of quitting her paid job by 42 percent.
Cha said the odds of quitting increased to 51 percent for professional women whose husbands work 60 hours or more per week, and for professional mothers the odds they would quit their jobs jumped 112 percent.
However, it did not significantly affect a man's odds of quitting his job if his wife worked 60 hours or more per week, according to the study published in the American Sociological Review in April.
For professional men, both parents and non-parents, the effects of a wife working long hours were negligible, according to the study called "Reinforcing Separate Spheres: The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Men's and Women's Employment in Dual-Earner Households."
"As long work-hours introduce conflict between work and family into many dual-earner families, couples often resolve conflict in ways that prioritize husbands' careers," Cha, who used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, said in a statement.
"This effect is magnified among workers in professional and managerial occupations, where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting tend to be strongest. The findings suggest that the prevalence of overwork may lead many dual-earner couples to return to a separate spheres arrangement -- breadwinning men and homemaking women."
Vocabulary
take a backseat: to allow somebody else to play a more active and important role in a particular situation than you do
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Japanese Leader Backtracks on Revising Base Agreement
May 4, 2010 (From New York Times- Jihwan Kim)
Japanese Leader Backtracks on Revising Base Agreement
By MARTIN FACKLER and HIROKO TABUCHI
TOKYO — Backtracking on a prominent campaign pledge, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told angry residents of Okinawa on Tuesday that it was unrealistic to expect the United States to move its entire Marine Corps air base off the island.
Mr. Hatoyama’s government could hang in the balance. He has pledged to come up with a plan by the end of this month to relocate the Marine air base and resolve a stubborn problem that has created months of discord with Washington. His delays and apparent flip-flopping on the issue have fed a growing feeling of disappointment in the prime minister’s leadership, driving his approval ratings below 30 percent.
Visiting Okinawa for the first time since becoming prime minister, Mr. Hatoyama asked residents to entertain a compromise that would keep some of the functions of the base on the island while the government explored moving some facilities elsewhere.
“Realistically speaking, it is impossible” to move the entire base, called Futenma, off the island, he said. “We’re facing a situation that is realistically difficult to move everything out of the prefecture. We must ask the people of Okinawa to share the burden.”
But Okinawans seemed in no mood for burden-sharing, heckling him after he met with local officials. “Shame on you!” one man shouted.
During the campaign for last summer’s election, in which his Democratic Party dislodged the Liberal Democrats who had ruled Japan almost continuously for more than 50 years, Mr. Hatoyama called for adjusting a 2006 agreement with the United States, which stations about 50,000 troops in Japan. Under that plan, Futenma was to be moved to a less crowded part of Okinawa to address local concerns over noise, air pollution and safety.
But the Obama administration pushed back, with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates apparently refusing to entertain any thought of reopening the agreement. The standoff threatened to open the first breach in the two countries’ post-World War II security alliance. Later, during a trip to Japan, President Obama smoothed things over, reluctantly agreeing to consider Mr. Hatoyama’s proposals.
While Mr. Hatoyama has tried to accommodate the competing desires of the Americans and local residents, he finally had to admit that it could not be done. On Tuesday, Mr. Hatoyama had the unpleasant task of delivering the bad news, acknowledging that moving the base off Okinawa was unrealistic.
“When we consider the presence of North Korea and the state of the wider region, it is clear that we must maintain the Japan-U.S. alliance as a deterrent force, and that we must ask Okinawa to bear some of that burden,” he said after the meeting with local leaders.
“It has become clear from our negotiations with the Americans that we cannot ask them to relocate the base to too far-flung a location,” he said.
Mr. Hatoyama still has not divulged the specifics of his plan. But it is widely expected that it will involve the small island of Tokunoshima, where since January, when word got out, residents have marshaled their resources for a fight.
Tokunoshima, a small, semitropical island located between Okinawa and Japan’s main islands and blanketed with fields of sugar cane, was mentioned as a possible site for training activities and up to 1,000 of Futenma’s 2,500 Marines, said Takeshi Tokuda, the island’s representative in the lower house of Parliament, who was briefed on the plan.
But enraged islanders vowed that the move would never happen. “If he comes, our old people and mothers with children will sit in the street to block his way,” Seiichi Yoshitama, 65, a coffee farmer, said of Mr. Hatoyama. “We’ll even use our fighting bulls to stop him.”
They have held a series of increasingly large anti-base rallies, the largest on April 18, when more than half of the island’s 26,000 residents gathered, organizers said.
The mood on Tokunoshima is now overwhelmingly against the plan. The main road along the coast is lined with hand-painted signs saying “No Base!” The mayors of the island’s three towns agreed on Saturday to meet with the prime minister, but only to express their opposition in person, they say.
On Tokunoshima, as opposed to Okinawa, the opposition is driven by more than just a simple case of not-in-my-backyard syndrome, political experts and local residents say. The islanders say they do not want to end up like Okinawa, where there is widespread discontent over the American bases’ crime and noise. Older residents also have bitter memories of the war and its aftermath, when islanders staged hunger strikes against the American occupiers.
Residents and experts say Mr. Hatoyama’s troubles also reflect a weakening of Tokyo’s ability to impose its will on Japan’s regions. The Liberal Democratic Party relied on generous public works spending and back-room bargains to push through big projects like this one. Mr. Hatoyama, who rode to power with vows to cut wasteful spending and increase transparency in politics, may find his ability to make deals thwarted by such changes.
“It’s all more fluid now at the end of the L.D.P. era,” said Akira Okubo, mayor of Isen, one of Tokunoshima’s towns. “The center is weakening in Japan, and that gives us more freedom at the fringes.”
Not all islanders are against the base. A group of business owners led by Hidetada Maeda, an undertaker and former town council chairman in Amagi, another of Tokunoshima’s towns, released a list last week of incentives for accepting the base. They included subsidies for tourism and forgiveness of the $250 million debt of the island’s towns.
“This is a one-in-a-thousand chance to revitalize our island,” said Mr. Maeda, 62.
Most islanders, however, said they did not want economic incentives, which they said would only make their island dependent on Tokyo. “Once you start accepting that development money, it becomes addictive, like a drug,” said Koichi Tokuda, who owns a factory that makes vinegar from sugar cane. “We are not rich, but we are self-sufficient. We want to stay that way.”
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.
Japanese Leader Backtracks on Revising Base Agreement
By MARTIN FACKLER and HIROKO TABUCHI
TOKYO — Backtracking on a prominent campaign pledge, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told angry residents of Okinawa on Tuesday that it was unrealistic to expect the United States to move its entire Marine Corps air base off the island.
Mr. Hatoyama’s government could hang in the balance. He has pledged to come up with a plan by the end of this month to relocate the Marine air base and resolve a stubborn problem that has created months of discord with Washington. His delays and apparent flip-flopping on the issue have fed a growing feeling of disappointment in the prime minister’s leadership, driving his approval ratings below 30 percent.
Visiting Okinawa for the first time since becoming prime minister, Mr. Hatoyama asked residents to entertain a compromise that would keep some of the functions of the base on the island while the government explored moving some facilities elsewhere.
“Realistically speaking, it is impossible” to move the entire base, called Futenma, off the island, he said. “We’re facing a situation that is realistically difficult to move everything out of the prefecture. We must ask the people of Okinawa to share the burden.”
But Okinawans seemed in no mood for burden-sharing, heckling him after he met with local officials. “Shame on you!” one man shouted.
During the campaign for last summer’s election, in which his Democratic Party dislodged the Liberal Democrats who had ruled Japan almost continuously for more than 50 years, Mr. Hatoyama called for adjusting a 2006 agreement with the United States, which stations about 50,000 troops in Japan. Under that plan, Futenma was to be moved to a less crowded part of Okinawa to address local concerns over noise, air pollution and safety.
But the Obama administration pushed back, with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates apparently refusing to entertain any thought of reopening the agreement. The standoff threatened to open the first breach in the two countries’ post-World War II security alliance. Later, during a trip to Japan, President Obama smoothed things over, reluctantly agreeing to consider Mr. Hatoyama’s proposals.
While Mr. Hatoyama has tried to accommodate the competing desires of the Americans and local residents, he finally had to admit that it could not be done. On Tuesday, Mr. Hatoyama had the unpleasant task of delivering the bad news, acknowledging that moving the base off Okinawa was unrealistic.
“When we consider the presence of North Korea and the state of the wider region, it is clear that we must maintain the Japan-U.S. alliance as a deterrent force, and that we must ask Okinawa to bear some of that burden,” he said after the meeting with local leaders.
“It has become clear from our negotiations with the Americans that we cannot ask them to relocate the base to too far-flung a location,” he said.
Mr. Hatoyama still has not divulged the specifics of his plan. But it is widely expected that it will involve the small island of Tokunoshima, where since January, when word got out, residents have marshaled their resources for a fight.
Tokunoshima, a small, semitropical island located between Okinawa and Japan’s main islands and blanketed with fields of sugar cane, was mentioned as a possible site for training activities and up to 1,000 of Futenma’s 2,500 Marines, said Takeshi Tokuda, the island’s representative in the lower house of Parliament, who was briefed on the plan.
But enraged islanders vowed that the move would never happen. “If he comes, our old people and mothers with children will sit in the street to block his way,” Seiichi Yoshitama, 65, a coffee farmer, said of Mr. Hatoyama. “We’ll even use our fighting bulls to stop him.”
They have held a series of increasingly large anti-base rallies, the largest on April 18, when more than half of the island’s 26,000 residents gathered, organizers said.
The mood on Tokunoshima is now overwhelmingly against the plan. The main road along the coast is lined with hand-painted signs saying “No Base!” The mayors of the island’s three towns agreed on Saturday to meet with the prime minister, but only to express their opposition in person, they say.
On Tokunoshima, as opposed to Okinawa, the opposition is driven by more than just a simple case of not-in-my-backyard syndrome, political experts and local residents say. The islanders say they do not want to end up like Okinawa, where there is widespread discontent over the American bases’ crime and noise. Older residents also have bitter memories of the war and its aftermath, when islanders staged hunger strikes against the American occupiers.
Residents and experts say Mr. Hatoyama’s troubles also reflect a weakening of Tokyo’s ability to impose its will on Japan’s regions. The Liberal Democratic Party relied on generous public works spending and back-room bargains to push through big projects like this one. Mr. Hatoyama, who rode to power with vows to cut wasteful spending and increase transparency in politics, may find his ability to make deals thwarted by such changes.
“It’s all more fluid now at the end of the L.D.P. era,” said Akira Okubo, mayor of Isen, one of Tokunoshima’s towns. “The center is weakening in Japan, and that gives us more freedom at the fringes.”
Not all islanders are against the base. A group of business owners led by Hidetada Maeda, an undertaker and former town council chairman in Amagi, another of Tokunoshima’s towns, released a list last week of incentives for accepting the base. They included subsidies for tourism and forgiveness of the $250 million debt of the island’s towns.
“This is a one-in-a-thousand chance to revitalize our island,” said Mr. Maeda, 62.
Most islanders, however, said they did not want economic incentives, which they said would only make their island dependent on Tokyo. “Once you start accepting that development money, it becomes addictive, like a drug,” said Koichi Tokuda, who owns a factory that makes vinegar from sugar cane. “We are not rich, but we are self-sufficient. We want to stay that way.”
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.
Friday, May 14, 2010
lee jeong hyun
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1989311,00.html
U.S. Base Impasse Could Topple Japan PM
By AP / ERIC TALMADGE
(TOKYO) — It is possibly the most controversial U.S. military facility in the world after the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Local residents like to call it the world's most dangerous base. An impasse over its future could bring down the government of a key U.S. ally.
But this hotspot isn't in Kyrgyzstan, or Afghanistan.
It's an airstrip on the sleepy, semitropical tourist haven of Okinawa that hasn't directly been involved in a conflict since the Japanese surrender in 1945 ended World War II. For decades, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has instead been a political quagmire — and now D-Day appears to be looming. (See pictures of Japan and the world.)
Haunted by a campaign pledge to relocate the base, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to settle the issue — or at least form a coherent set of proposals — by the end of this month. Polls suggest he will be under heavy pressure to resign, after barely nine months in office, if he fails to do so.
The debate has grown so convoluted and the pressure to find a compromise so intense that Hatoyama is suggesting a replacement airstrip be built on raised pilings so as not to destroy marine life below — an expensive, high-tech option that experts doubt would work and which has so far failed to appease many Okinawans. (See pictures of Japan in the 1980s and today.)
"It is a terrible idea," said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa's most prestigious college. "It's no better than the previous plan. It won't persuade Okinawans, and I don't think it will be welcomed by Washington, either."
So far, it hasn't been — working-level talks in Washington this week ended in discord.
The base, home to about 2,000 U.S. Marines, has long symbolized Okinawan concerns over safety, crime and economic development. But efforts to remove it have shaken support for America's most important alliance in Asia, a region where — with China ascending and North Korea unstable — Washington badly needs reliable partners.
All sides agree in theory that the base, a noisy helicopter and transport-plane hub located in a crowded city, should be closed.
An agreement to that effect was made in 1996, following uproar over the brutal rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The U.S. also has agreed to move about 8,600 Marines from other Okinawa units to the tiny Pacific territory of Guam by 2014.
But the devil is in the details.
Washington is demanding Futenma's replacement be built nearby. But suggested alternate sites have fiercely protested having the base moved into their backyard and, with Tokyo unwilling to rebuff its most important ally, the impasse has only festered.
Facing key elections in July, Hatoyama is scrambling to find a consensus by his self-imposed deadline of the end of the month. But his public support ratings have plummeted to the 20 percent level. Polls say many voters think he should step down if he can't demonstrate more leadership, and one of his coalition partners has said it may have to quit the government if Okinawa's concerns are not fully addressed.
Though the Obama administration has largely stayed out of the fray, the process has been a humiliating initiation for Hatoyama.
He ousted Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party last September with promises to forge a more equal relationship with Washington. As part of that pledge, he said Futenma's operations should be moved off Okinawa, where more than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are stationed.
Hatoyama recently backed down, painfully apologizing to Okinawa during a trip there for the "nuisance" the base causes. At the same time, he said there was no feasible alternative to building the new landing strip farther to the north in the town of Nago.
"The Hatoyama government is as docile a satellite of the U.S. as the LDP ever thought of being," said Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a private think tank based in San Francisco. "The U.S. is certainly the more culpable partner in simply refusing to negotiate, but the Japanese government is at fault in never standing up to us."
Johnson said Washington has stood firm because it is afraid that agreeing to close the base outright could lead to a flood of demands to close more. The U.S. has more than 100 bases and facilities — including depots and ports — across Japan.
The Pentagon operates more than 700 overseas bases worldwide.
"We had to be kicked out of the Philippines and Ecuador, and we paid through the nose to remain in Kyrgyzstan, probably including bribes to the former government there that has just been overthrown," Johnson said.
U.S. officials say a replacement for the Futenma base is essential because its air assets support the infantry units that will remain on Okinawa. They also argue that Okinawa — site of one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War II — is a key to Washington's strategy in the Pacific because of its proximity to China, Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.
"Is the Marine presence necessary in Okinawa? In terms of geostrategic location, the answer is a definite yes," said Mike Green, Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Okinawa is only a few days' sailing time and only a few hours' flight time from the major hotspots in the Western Pacific. Time matters in a crisis."
But that argument is drowned out in Japan's public debate.
Instead, a helicopter crash in 2004 just outside the base's gates on a university campus is used to justify claims the heavily populated area around Futenma is unsafe, though no one died in that accident. Japanese media frequently show images of schoolchildren playing soccer as C-130 transport planes buzz overhead, or of the razorwire fences and "keep out" signs that ring the airstrip.
Last month, 90,000 Okinawans protested the base and the relocation plan — the biggest demonstration against the base ever. This weekend, to mark the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from U.S. to Japanese administration, a human chain around Futenma is planned.
Organizers say they expect more than 10,000 people.
Weston Konishi, a Japan expert with the Washington-based Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, said Hatoyama's dithering has allowed opposition to the security alliance to swell.
"The political leadership in Tokyo has not adequately counterbalanced that sentiment," he said. "The U.S. forces are increasingly seen as both unnecessary and bothersome to local communities that host them."
U.S. Base Impasse Could Topple Japan PM
By AP / ERIC TALMADGE
(TOKYO) — It is possibly the most controversial U.S. military facility in the world after the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Local residents like to call it the world's most dangerous base. An impasse over its future could bring down the government of a key U.S. ally.
But this hotspot isn't in Kyrgyzstan, or Afghanistan.
It's an airstrip on the sleepy, semitropical tourist haven of Okinawa that hasn't directly been involved in a conflict since the Japanese surrender in 1945 ended World War II. For decades, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has instead been a political quagmire — and now D-Day appears to be looming. (See pictures of Japan and the world.)
Haunted by a campaign pledge to relocate the base, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to settle the issue — or at least form a coherent set of proposals — by the end of this month. Polls suggest he will be under heavy pressure to resign, after barely nine months in office, if he fails to do so.
The debate has grown so convoluted and the pressure to find a compromise so intense that Hatoyama is suggesting a replacement airstrip be built on raised pilings so as not to destroy marine life below — an expensive, high-tech option that experts doubt would work and which has so far failed to appease many Okinawans. (See pictures of Japan in the 1980s and today.)
"It is a terrible idea," said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa's most prestigious college. "It's no better than the previous plan. It won't persuade Okinawans, and I don't think it will be welcomed by Washington, either."
So far, it hasn't been — working-level talks in Washington this week ended in discord.
The base, home to about 2,000 U.S. Marines, has long symbolized Okinawan concerns over safety, crime and economic development. But efforts to remove it have shaken support for America's most important alliance in Asia, a region where — with China ascending and North Korea unstable — Washington badly needs reliable partners.
All sides agree in theory that the base, a noisy helicopter and transport-plane hub located in a crowded city, should be closed.
An agreement to that effect was made in 1996, following uproar over the brutal rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The U.S. also has agreed to move about 8,600 Marines from other Okinawa units to the tiny Pacific territory of Guam by 2014.
But the devil is in the details.
Washington is demanding Futenma's replacement be built nearby. But suggested alternate sites have fiercely protested having the base moved into their backyard and, with Tokyo unwilling to rebuff its most important ally, the impasse has only festered.
Facing key elections in July, Hatoyama is scrambling to find a consensus by his self-imposed deadline of the end of the month. But his public support ratings have plummeted to the 20 percent level. Polls say many voters think he should step down if he can't demonstrate more leadership, and one of his coalition partners has said it may have to quit the government if Okinawa's concerns are not fully addressed.
Though the Obama administration has largely stayed out of the fray, the process has been a humiliating initiation for Hatoyama.
He ousted Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party last September with promises to forge a more equal relationship with Washington. As part of that pledge, he said Futenma's operations should be moved off Okinawa, where more than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are stationed.
Hatoyama recently backed down, painfully apologizing to Okinawa during a trip there for the "nuisance" the base causes. At the same time, he said there was no feasible alternative to building the new landing strip farther to the north in the town of Nago.
"The Hatoyama government is as docile a satellite of the U.S. as the LDP ever thought of being," said Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a private think tank based in San Francisco. "The U.S. is certainly the more culpable partner in simply refusing to negotiate, but the Japanese government is at fault in never standing up to us."
Johnson said Washington has stood firm because it is afraid that agreeing to close the base outright could lead to a flood of demands to close more. The U.S. has more than 100 bases and facilities — including depots and ports — across Japan.
The Pentagon operates more than 700 overseas bases worldwide.
"We had to be kicked out of the Philippines and Ecuador, and we paid through the nose to remain in Kyrgyzstan, probably including bribes to the former government there that has just been overthrown," Johnson said.
U.S. officials say a replacement for the Futenma base is essential because its air assets support the infantry units that will remain on Okinawa. They also argue that Okinawa — site of one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War II — is a key to Washington's strategy in the Pacific because of its proximity to China, Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.
"Is the Marine presence necessary in Okinawa? In terms of geostrategic location, the answer is a definite yes," said Mike Green, Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Okinawa is only a few days' sailing time and only a few hours' flight time from the major hotspots in the Western Pacific. Time matters in a crisis."
But that argument is drowned out in Japan's public debate.
Instead, a helicopter crash in 2004 just outside the base's gates on a university campus is used to justify claims the heavily populated area around Futenma is unsafe, though no one died in that accident. Japanese media frequently show images of schoolchildren playing soccer as C-130 transport planes buzz overhead, or of the razorwire fences and "keep out" signs that ring the airstrip.
Last month, 90,000 Okinawans protested the base and the relocation plan — the biggest demonstration against the base ever. This weekend, to mark the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from U.S. to Japanese administration, a human chain around Futenma is planned.
Organizers say they expect more than 10,000 people.
Weston Konishi, a Japan expert with the Washington-based Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, said Hatoyama's dithering has allowed opposition to the security alliance to swell.
"The political leadership in Tokyo has not adequately counterbalanced that sentiment," he said. "The U.S. forces are increasingly seen as both unnecessary and bothersome to local communities that host them."
news
May 8, 2010
Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline
By LAURA M. HOLSON
Min Liu, a 21-year-old liberal arts student at the New School in New York City, got a Facebook account at 17 and chronicled her college life in detail, from rooftop drinks with friends to dancing at a downtown club. Recently, though, she has had second thoughts.
Concerned about her career prospects, she asked a friend to take down a photograph of her drinking and wearing a tight dress. When the woman overseeing her internship asked to join her Facebook circle, Ms. Liu agreed, but limited access to her Facebook page. “I want people to take me seriously,” she said.
The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud.
While participation in social networks is still strong, a survey released last month by the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half the young adults questioned had become more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago — mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry.
They are more diligent than older adults, however, in trying to protect themselves. In a new study to be released this month, the Pew Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves. “Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior. “Now you are responsible for everything.”
The erosion of privacy has become a pressing issue among active users of social networks. Last week, Facebook scrambled to fix a security breach that allowed users to see their friends’ supposedly private information, including personal chats.
Sam Jackson, a junior at Yale who started a blog when he was 15 and who has been an intern at Google, said he had learned not to trust any social network to keep his information private. “If I go back and look, there are things four years ago I would not say today,” he said. “I am much more self-censoring. I’ll try to be honest and forthright, but I am conscious now who I am talking to.”
He has learned to live out loud mostly by trial and error and has come up with his own theory: concentric layers of sharing.
His Facebook account, which he has had since 2005, is strictly personal. “I don’t want people to know what my movie rentals are,” he said. “If I am sharing something, I want to know what’s being shared with others.”
Mistrust of the intentions of social sites appears to be pervasive. In its telephone survey of 1,000 people, the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California found that 88 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds it surveyed last July said there should be a law that requires Web sites to delete stored information. And 62 percent said they wanted a law that gave people the right to know everything a Web site knows about them.
That mistrust is translating into action. In the Pew study, to be released shortly, researchers interviewed 2,253 adults late last summer and found that people ages 18 to 29 were more apt to monitor privacy settings than older adults are, and they more often delete comments or remove their names from photos so they cannot be identified. Younger teenagers were not included in these studies, and they may not have the same privacy concerns. But anecdotal evidence suggests that many of them have not had enough experience to understand the downside to oversharing.
Elliot Schrage, who oversees Facebook’s global communications and public policy strategy, said it was a good thing that young people are thinking about what they put online. “We are not forcing anyone to use it,” he said of Facebook. But at the same time, companies like Facebook have a financial incentive to get friends to share as much as possible. That’s because the more personal the information that Facebook collects, the more valuable the site is to advertisers, who can mine it to serve up more targeted ads.
Two weeks ago, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to review the privacy policies of social networks to make sure consumers are not being deliberately confused or misled. The action was sparked by a recent change to Facebook’s settings that forced its more than 400 million users to choose to “opt out” of sharing private information with third-party Web sites instead of “opt in,” a move which confounded many of them.
Mr. Schrage of Facebook said, “We try diligently to get people to understand the changes.”
But in many cases, young adults are teaching one another about privacy.
Ms. Liu is not just policing her own behavior, but her sister’s, too. Ms. Liu sent a text message to her 17-year-old sibling warning her to take down a photo of a guy sitting on her sister’s lap. Why? Her sister wants to audition for “Glee” and Ms. Liu didn’t want the show’s producers to see it. Besides, what if her sister became a celebrity? “It conjures up an image where if you became famous anyone could pull up a picture and send it to TMZ,” Ms. Liu said.
Andrew Klemperer, a 20-year-old at Georgetown University, said it was a classmate who warned him about the implications of the recent Facebook change — through a status update on (where else?) Facebook. Now he is more diligent in monitoring privacy settings and apt to warn others, too.
Helen Nissenbaum, a professor of culture, media and communication at New York University and author of “Privacy in Context,” a book about information sharing in the digital age, said teenagers were naturally protective of their privacy as they navigate the path to adulthood, and the frequency with which companies change privacy rules has taught them to be wary.
That was the experience of Kanupriya Tewari, a 19-year-old pre-med student at Tufts University. Recently she sought to limit the information a friend could see on Facebook but found the process cumbersome. “I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to limit my profile, and I couldn’t,” she said. She gave up because she had chemistry homework to do, but vowed to figure it out after finals.
“I don’t think they would look out for me,” she said. “I have to look out for me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/fashion/09privacy.html?fta=y
Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline
By LAURA M. HOLSON
Min Liu, a 21-year-old liberal arts student at the New School in New York City, got a Facebook account at 17 and chronicled her college life in detail, from rooftop drinks with friends to dancing at a downtown club. Recently, though, she has had second thoughts.
Concerned about her career prospects, she asked a friend to take down a photograph of her drinking and wearing a tight dress. When the woman overseeing her internship asked to join her Facebook circle, Ms. Liu agreed, but limited access to her Facebook page. “I want people to take me seriously,” she said.
The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud.
While participation in social networks is still strong, a survey released last month by the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half the young adults questioned had become more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago — mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry.
They are more diligent than older adults, however, in trying to protect themselves. In a new study to be released this month, the Pew Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves. “Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior. “Now you are responsible for everything.”
The erosion of privacy has become a pressing issue among active users of social networks. Last week, Facebook scrambled to fix a security breach that allowed users to see their friends’ supposedly private information, including personal chats.
Sam Jackson, a junior at Yale who started a blog when he was 15 and who has been an intern at Google, said he had learned not to trust any social network to keep his information private. “If I go back and look, there are things four years ago I would not say today,” he said. “I am much more self-censoring. I’ll try to be honest and forthright, but I am conscious now who I am talking to.”
He has learned to live out loud mostly by trial and error and has come up with his own theory: concentric layers of sharing.
His Facebook account, which he has had since 2005, is strictly personal. “I don’t want people to know what my movie rentals are,” he said. “If I am sharing something, I want to know what’s being shared with others.”
Mistrust of the intentions of social sites appears to be pervasive. In its telephone survey of 1,000 people, the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California found that 88 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds it surveyed last July said there should be a law that requires Web sites to delete stored information. And 62 percent said they wanted a law that gave people the right to know everything a Web site knows about them.
That mistrust is translating into action. In the Pew study, to be released shortly, researchers interviewed 2,253 adults late last summer and found that people ages 18 to 29 were more apt to monitor privacy settings than older adults are, and they more often delete comments or remove their names from photos so they cannot be identified. Younger teenagers were not included in these studies, and they may not have the same privacy concerns. But anecdotal evidence suggests that many of them have not had enough experience to understand the downside to oversharing.
Elliot Schrage, who oversees Facebook’s global communications and public policy strategy, said it was a good thing that young people are thinking about what they put online. “We are not forcing anyone to use it,” he said of Facebook. But at the same time, companies like Facebook have a financial incentive to get friends to share as much as possible. That’s because the more personal the information that Facebook collects, the more valuable the site is to advertisers, who can mine it to serve up more targeted ads.
Two weeks ago, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to review the privacy policies of social networks to make sure consumers are not being deliberately confused or misled. The action was sparked by a recent change to Facebook’s settings that forced its more than 400 million users to choose to “opt out” of sharing private information with third-party Web sites instead of “opt in,” a move which confounded many of them.
Mr. Schrage of Facebook said, “We try diligently to get people to understand the changes.”
But in many cases, young adults are teaching one another about privacy.
Ms. Liu is not just policing her own behavior, but her sister’s, too. Ms. Liu sent a text message to her 17-year-old sibling warning her to take down a photo of a guy sitting on her sister’s lap. Why? Her sister wants to audition for “Glee” and Ms. Liu didn’t want the show’s producers to see it. Besides, what if her sister became a celebrity? “It conjures up an image where if you became famous anyone could pull up a picture and send it to TMZ,” Ms. Liu said.
Andrew Klemperer, a 20-year-old at Georgetown University, said it was a classmate who warned him about the implications of the recent Facebook change — through a status update on (where else?) Facebook. Now he is more diligent in monitoring privacy settings and apt to warn others, too.
Helen Nissenbaum, a professor of culture, media and communication at New York University and author of “Privacy in Context,” a book about information sharing in the digital age, said teenagers were naturally protective of their privacy as they navigate the path to adulthood, and the frequency with which companies change privacy rules has taught them to be wary.
That was the experience of Kanupriya Tewari, a 19-year-old pre-med student at Tufts University. Recently she sought to limit the information a friend could see on Facebook but found the process cumbersome. “I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to limit my profile, and I couldn’t,” she said. She gave up because she had chemistry homework to do, but vowed to figure it out after finals.
“I don’t think they would look out for me,” she said. “I have to look out for me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/fashion/09privacy.html?fta=y
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
First lady lauds own 'mommy' ahead of Mother's Day
First lady Michelle Obama said Friday that having three generations of family living in the White House and raising her two daughters there is truly special.
Her voice breaking, Mrs. Obama also paid tribute to her mother, Marian Robinson, at a Mother's Day tea at the White House.
"There's no way that I could ever fully measure all that my own mommy has done for me," the first lady told more than 100 guests seated at round tables in the State Dining Room as she gestured toward her mother, seated at the head table.
"This woman who tries to take absolutely no credit for who I am, for some reason. She is my rock," Mrs. Obama said.
The first lady said her mother pushes her to be the best woman, mother and professional she can be, and has always been there for her.
"And as our family has grown, she's managed to expand her love for all of us. And raising our girls in the White House with my mom ... is a beautiful experience," Mrs. Obama said, her voice breaking as she spoke about her mother, who also lives at the White House. "The opportunity to have three generations living in the White House, it's beautiful. And I'm pretty sure the president's happy about it, too."
Mrs. Obama's Mother's Day event included former first lady Rosalynn Carter and granddaughter, Sarah Carter; President Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia Nixon Cox; and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's granddaughters Susan and Anne Eisenhower, along with young women who participate in Mrs. Obama's mentoring program, spouses and mothers of service members, and Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Jill.
Guests were served cucumber watercress sandwiches, smoked salmon blinis, chilled Gulf shrimp, blueberry scones and tea.
(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Web site.)
Her voice breaking, Mrs. Obama also paid tribute to her mother, Marian Robinson, at a Mother's Day tea at the White House.
"There's no way that I could ever fully measure all that my own mommy has done for me," the first lady told more than 100 guests seated at round tables in the State Dining Room as she gestured toward her mother, seated at the head table.
"This woman who tries to take absolutely no credit for who I am, for some reason. She is my rock," Mrs. Obama said.
The first lady said her mother pushes her to be the best woman, mother and professional she can be, and has always been there for her.
"And as our family has grown, she's managed to expand her love for all of us. And raising our girls in the White House with my mom ... is a beautiful experience," Mrs. Obama said, her voice breaking as she spoke about her mother, who also lives at the White House. "The opportunity to have three generations living in the White House, it's beautiful. And I'm pretty sure the president's happy about it, too."
Mrs. Obama's Mother's Day event included former first lady Rosalynn Carter and granddaughter, Sarah Carter; President Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia Nixon Cox; and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's granddaughters Susan and Anne Eisenhower, along with young women who participate in Mrs. Obama's mentoring program, spouses and mothers of service members, and Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Jill.
Guests were served cucumber watercress sandwiches, smoked salmon blinis, chilled Gulf shrimp, blueberry scones and tea.
(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Web site.)
Sunday, May 9, 2010
A Threat Creeping Toward the Pantry
by The New York Times
May 6, 2010
A Threat Creeping Toward the Pantry
By KIM SEVERSON
NEW ORLEANS — Margie Scheuermann, who has lived here for 78 years, went over her list as she waited in line Tuesday to buy local seafood at the Crescent City Farmers Market: a pair of soft-shell crabs, a pound of lump crab meat and five pounds of unpeeled white gulf shrimp.
“This could all be gone next week,” she said. “And if we don’t get fresh seafood, what are we going to do? You can’t cook.”
In good times and bad, New Orleans has always had a talent for living for the moment. So with oil from a gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico looming offshore, people here are buying and eating as much seafood as they can as fast as they can. At last Saturday’s farmers’ market, an entire load of 350 pounds of fresh shrimp, at $5 a pound, sold out in an hour.
At the P & J Oyster Company, one of the nation’s oldest oyster processors, a researcher at Louisiana State University who is studying the effect of oyster proteins on cancer cell growth called to order 25 pounds, just in case.
“You’ve got people who are scared and skeptical and want to wait it out, and people who are trying to load up,” said Al Sunseri, president of P & J.
He has not raised his prices yet, he said. But with some of his suppliers already out of stock, he knows it is just a matter of time.
There are still piles of oysters at classic restaurants here like Casamento’s, where $9 will get you a dozen shucked while you wait, but the crowds have been even more clamorous than usual.
The refrain was the same in South Mississippi, where families gathered for impromptu seafood boils, and along the Alabama shore, where seafood restaurants have rewritten menus to include seafood from other waters.
Along the Florida Panhandle, even outside the western edge that is closed to fishing at the moment, home cooks and commercial fishermen alike spent the week with one eye on the path of the oil spill and the other on the supply of grouper and shrimp.
But perhaps nowhere else in the gulf region is the fear of life without seafood as strong as it is in Louisiana. In the estuaries and marshes that make up most of the state’s 7,700 miles of tidal coastline, the mix of saltwater and freshwater creates a perfect breeding ground for sweet shrimp destined for étouffée; blue crabs whose meat is piled on seemingly every dish here; and oysters in all their cooked and raw forms.
“That marsh is really our pantry, and that’s why we are so afraid,” said Frank Brigtsen, the New Orleans chef who runs two restaurants that serve an abundance of Louisiana seafood.
Of all the gulf states, Louisiana also has the deepest financial stakes in keeping its fishing grounds healthy. Only about 20 percent of the seafood Americans eat is domestic, but the majority of that comes from either Alaska or Louisiana, said Albert Gaude, a fisheries agent with the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge. The shrimp industry alone, which produced 90 million pounds in 2008, brings in $1.3 billion a year.
So far, the portion of the Louisiana coast that is closed makes up only 23 percent of the fishing area, although it is on the exceptionally fertile east side of the Mississippi River. Only 6 of the state’s 30 oyster harvesting areas are temporarily off limits, just as a precaution.
But the talk here is about what happens when immeasurable gallons of oil and the estimated 100,000 gallons of dispersants BP plans to use to break it up work down into the food chain.
It is high spawning season now, and the water is filled with the larvae of fish, shrimp, oysters and crab. Dispersants and the oil droplets they leave behind can kill fish eggs, according to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report cited in a study by ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit news organization.
Small-scale fishing in the gulf is already fragile, chipped away at by seafood farms, imports and hurricanes. Oyster beds full of oil, and shrimp with no plankton to eat because it has been poisoned by oil, could be more than the small operators can withstand.
“We’ll be feeling it for 20 years if it gets into the estuaries,” said Glen Brooks, who runs seven hook-and-line grouper boats deep into the gulf out of Cortez, Fla., near Sarasota.
Along the Gulf Coast, where dinner conversations swing quickly from anger toward BP to opinions on the best places to eat brown speckled trout, petroleum and seafood have long been intertwined. The two industries rely on each other. Oil money sustains both the roadside seafood shacks that feed a rig worker’s family and the restaurants designed for expense-account lunches.
And then there are the rigs themselves, more than 3,000 of which dot the gulf. They act as reefs, attracting an extensive variety of species. Both recreational and commercial fishermen know to head toward the rigs to assure a good haul.
But the spill points up the fragile balance between oil and seafood. Pompano, a prized fish that can command $28 on a menu, has its favored breeding territory right in the oil’s path. The coastal marshes that act as nurseries for shrimp, oysters and crab also support dozens of young fin fish, including black drum and sheepshead, the workhorse fish of inexpensive New Orleans restaurants.
“I have a feeling they’ll be selling a whole lot of farmed catfish soon,” said Tenney Flynn, the executive chef and owner of GW Fins in the French Quarter.
At Felix’s Fish Camp Grill on Mobile Bay in Alabama, where as many as 900 people a day come for trout amandine and baked oysters, local seafood is likely to become scarce and cooks will have to buy from Texas, the Carolinas or even other countries, said the manager, Luis del Valle.
The seafood business can be as volatile as the stock market, and prone to speculation and gouging. Already, bidding wars are breaking out over loads of shrimp, and processors are prowling the docks with stacks of $100 bills, buying as much crab as they can, said Tim Sughrue, an owner of Congressional Seafood, a distributor in Maryland.
“It will be felt in terms of higher prices in every aspect of the oyster and crab industry, that’s for certain,” he said.
Large-scale increases are likely after Mother’s Day, said Jeff Tunks, a chef and restaurant owner who serves mostly gulf seafood at Acadiana in Washington. “We’re already at $19.50 a pound for jumbo lump crab meat, and that’s going to skyrocket,” he said. “How much are people willing to pay for crab cakes or shrimp étouffée? We’re going to find out.”
But those in the seafood business worry that diners will simply stop ordering anything from the gulf, even though gulf states regularly test the water and can trace where every load of commercial fish was caught.
In New Orleans, people are more philosophical. It is the Katrina effect, they say. Once you have lost your house and your boat, even members of your family, you learn not to worry about things you cannot control.
“So you buy 20 pounds of shrimp and put it in your freezer,” said Mirta Valdes, who has lived in New Orleans since emigrating from Cuba in 1963. “Tomorrow, there could be another storm and knock out all the electricity, and then you lose your stash anyway.”
May 6, 2010
A Threat Creeping Toward the Pantry
By KIM SEVERSON
NEW ORLEANS — Margie Scheuermann, who has lived here for 78 years, went over her list as she waited in line Tuesday to buy local seafood at the Crescent City Farmers Market: a pair of soft-shell crabs, a pound of lump crab meat and five pounds of unpeeled white gulf shrimp.
“This could all be gone next week,” she said. “And if we don’t get fresh seafood, what are we going to do? You can’t cook.”
In good times and bad, New Orleans has always had a talent for living for the moment. So with oil from a gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico looming offshore, people here are buying and eating as much seafood as they can as fast as they can. At last Saturday’s farmers’ market, an entire load of 350 pounds of fresh shrimp, at $5 a pound, sold out in an hour.
At the P & J Oyster Company, one of the nation’s oldest oyster processors, a researcher at Louisiana State University who is studying the effect of oyster proteins on cancer cell growth called to order 25 pounds, just in case.
“You’ve got people who are scared and skeptical and want to wait it out, and people who are trying to load up,” said Al Sunseri, president of P & J.
He has not raised his prices yet, he said. But with some of his suppliers already out of stock, he knows it is just a matter of time.
There are still piles of oysters at classic restaurants here like Casamento’s, where $9 will get you a dozen shucked while you wait, but the crowds have been even more clamorous than usual.
The refrain was the same in South Mississippi, where families gathered for impromptu seafood boils, and along the Alabama shore, where seafood restaurants have rewritten menus to include seafood from other waters.
Along the Florida Panhandle, even outside the western edge that is closed to fishing at the moment, home cooks and commercial fishermen alike spent the week with one eye on the path of the oil spill and the other on the supply of grouper and shrimp.
But perhaps nowhere else in the gulf region is the fear of life without seafood as strong as it is in Louisiana. In the estuaries and marshes that make up most of the state’s 7,700 miles of tidal coastline, the mix of saltwater and freshwater creates a perfect breeding ground for sweet shrimp destined for étouffée; blue crabs whose meat is piled on seemingly every dish here; and oysters in all their cooked and raw forms.
“That marsh is really our pantry, and that’s why we are so afraid,” said Frank Brigtsen, the New Orleans chef who runs two restaurants that serve an abundance of Louisiana seafood.
Of all the gulf states, Louisiana also has the deepest financial stakes in keeping its fishing grounds healthy. Only about 20 percent of the seafood Americans eat is domestic, but the majority of that comes from either Alaska or Louisiana, said Albert Gaude, a fisheries agent with the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge. The shrimp industry alone, which produced 90 million pounds in 2008, brings in $1.3 billion a year.
So far, the portion of the Louisiana coast that is closed makes up only 23 percent of the fishing area, although it is on the exceptionally fertile east side of the Mississippi River. Only 6 of the state’s 30 oyster harvesting areas are temporarily off limits, just as a precaution.
But the talk here is about what happens when immeasurable gallons of oil and the estimated 100,000 gallons of dispersants BP plans to use to break it up work down into the food chain.
It is high spawning season now, and the water is filled with the larvae of fish, shrimp, oysters and crab. Dispersants and the oil droplets they leave behind can kill fish eggs, according to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report cited in a study by ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit news organization.
Small-scale fishing in the gulf is already fragile, chipped away at by seafood farms, imports and hurricanes. Oyster beds full of oil, and shrimp with no plankton to eat because it has been poisoned by oil, could be more than the small operators can withstand.
“We’ll be feeling it for 20 years if it gets into the estuaries,” said Glen Brooks, who runs seven hook-and-line grouper boats deep into the gulf out of Cortez, Fla., near Sarasota.
Along the Gulf Coast, where dinner conversations swing quickly from anger toward BP to opinions on the best places to eat brown speckled trout, petroleum and seafood have long been intertwined. The two industries rely on each other. Oil money sustains both the roadside seafood shacks that feed a rig worker’s family and the restaurants designed for expense-account lunches.
And then there are the rigs themselves, more than 3,000 of which dot the gulf. They act as reefs, attracting an extensive variety of species. Both recreational and commercial fishermen know to head toward the rigs to assure a good haul.
But the spill points up the fragile balance between oil and seafood. Pompano, a prized fish that can command $28 on a menu, has its favored breeding territory right in the oil’s path. The coastal marshes that act as nurseries for shrimp, oysters and crab also support dozens of young fin fish, including black drum and sheepshead, the workhorse fish of inexpensive New Orleans restaurants.
“I have a feeling they’ll be selling a whole lot of farmed catfish soon,” said Tenney Flynn, the executive chef and owner of GW Fins in the French Quarter.
At Felix’s Fish Camp Grill on Mobile Bay in Alabama, where as many as 900 people a day come for trout amandine and baked oysters, local seafood is likely to become scarce and cooks will have to buy from Texas, the Carolinas or even other countries, said the manager, Luis del Valle.
The seafood business can be as volatile as the stock market, and prone to speculation and gouging. Already, bidding wars are breaking out over loads of shrimp, and processors are prowling the docks with stacks of $100 bills, buying as much crab as they can, said Tim Sughrue, an owner of Congressional Seafood, a distributor in Maryland.
“It will be felt in terms of higher prices in every aspect of the oyster and crab industry, that’s for certain,” he said.
Large-scale increases are likely after Mother’s Day, said Jeff Tunks, a chef and restaurant owner who serves mostly gulf seafood at Acadiana in Washington. “We’re already at $19.50 a pound for jumbo lump crab meat, and that’s going to skyrocket,” he said. “How much are people willing to pay for crab cakes or shrimp étouffée? We’re going to find out.”
But those in the seafood business worry that diners will simply stop ordering anything from the gulf, even though gulf states regularly test the water and can trace where every load of commercial fish was caught.
In New Orleans, people are more philosophical. It is the Katrina effect, they say. Once you have lost your house and your boat, even members of your family, you learn not to worry about things you cannot control.
“So you buy 20 pounds of shrimp and put it in your freezer,” said Mirta Valdes, who has lived in New Orleans since emigrating from Cuba in 1963. “Tomorrow, there could be another storm and knock out all the electricity, and then you lose your stash anyway.”
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The politics of disaster
Barack Obama has had a good spill so far. But his energy policy is now a mess
WHEN the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989 and dumped its oily cargo into Alaskan waters, it killed hordes of beautiful creatures and cost billions to clean up. The current spill in the Gulf of Mexico could prove even worse. A tanker can leak its load, but no more. A broken pipe connected to an oilfield may continue leaking until it is fixed. And since fixing it involves sending remote-controlled submarines a mile below the surface to tinker with mangled machinery in the dark, that could take a while. Small wonder that Barack Obama sounds so grave.
On April 20th an explosion crippled the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil rig. Eleven people are presumed dead. As The Economist went to press, a vast oil slick was drifting towards American beaches and oyster beds. Flying down to Louisiana on May 2nd, Mr Obama described the spill as “a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster”. He warned that it “could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our Gulf states and…jeopardise the livelihoods of thousands of Americans.” And he told television viewers that the federal government had “launched and co-ordinated an all-hands-on-deck, relentless response to this crisis from day one”.
He was mindful, no doubt, that his predecessor’s political fortunes took a plunge after another environmental disaster in the same region in 2005. The federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow and ineffectual, and George Bush dithered before visiting the wrecked city of New Orleans. He was widely decried as incompetent, insensitive, or both. Some people see parallels: Mr Obama also took his time to head for the Gulf coast, and was conspicuously larking around the previous night, telling jokes at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. (My approval ratings may be sinking, he said, but they “are still very high in the country of my birth”.) Hostile pundits mutter that the spill is “Obama’s Katrina”.
The label has yet to catch on, however. For one thing, Mr Obama is plainly juggling multiple crises, from floods in Tennessee to a bomb in Times Square. The oil spill has not produced wrenching televised images of human suffering, as Katrina did. And Mr Obama has not yet made any obvious foul-ups. Addressing Gulf coast residents, he sounded calm but firm. “Let me be clear,” he said, “BP [the oil firm] is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill.”
So far, the spill has probably not altered many people’s minds about Mr Obama. That could change: no one knows how long the crisis will linger, or how bad the damage will be. But for now, the spill’s main political effect has been to pollute the debate about energy. Before the rig exploded, America was inching fitfully towards a coherent energy policy. Not a perfect one, and certainly not a moment too soon, but a better one than before, and better late than never. Before the spill, Mr Obama’s approach was to offer something for everyone. To please greens, he proposed subsidies for renewable energy and curbs on greenhouse gases. To stop consumers from revolting, he was prepared to phase in those curbs slowly. To placate conservatives, he promoted nuclear power and recently came out for more offshore oil-drilling. That last idea is now on hold.
Any sensible policy needs to recognise two facts. First, fossil fuels are warming the planet. Second, America cannot suddenly stop using them. Since many Republicans deny the first point and some Democrats underplay the second, getting a bill through Congress is hard; and it has just got a lot harder. The Democrats will need at least a few Republican votes in the Senate, since they now control only 59 votes, one short of the number needed to break a filibuster. That is unlikely to happen before the mid-term elections—Lindsay Graham, the keenest Republican on the idea, was working on a bill with two Democrats but walked out last month when Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said that he had decided to tackle immigration first. Conceivably Senator Graham can be wooed back, possibly along with a couple of his colleagues. But the wooing will be a lot trickier if Democrats block new domestic drilling, as several propose. Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator from Florida, says that any energy bill allowing offshore drilling would be “dead on arrival”. Governors of coastal states are terrified, too. Charlie Crist of Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California both withdrew their support for drilling this week.
Lessons to be learned
Disasters can be instructive. Both regulators and oil firms will learn useful lessons from the Deepwater Horizon fiasco, and safety will surely improve as a result. But it is easy to learn the wrong lessons, too. After the accident on Three Mile Island in 1979, Americans grew scared of nuclear power and stopped building new reactors, even though no one died in that accident. Had the nation not panicked, it would now have many more nuclear reactors, making the shift to a low-carbon economy significantly easier. Similarly today, panic is likely but unhelpful.
So long as Americans do not reduce their consumption of oil, refusing to drill at home means importing more of the stuff, often from places with looser environmental standards. The net effect is likely to be more pollution, not less. Nigeria, for example, has had a major oil spill every year since 1969, observes Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation, a think-tank. Putting a price on carbon would eventually spur the development of cleaner fuels, and persuade Americans to switch to them. But in the meantime, oil is both useful and precious. Extracting it domestically, with tougher safety rules, would bring a windfall to a Treasury that sorely needs one. When the current crisis is past, Mr Obama may remember this.
WHEN the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989 and dumped its oily cargo into Alaskan waters, it killed hordes of beautiful creatures and cost billions to clean up. The current spill in the Gulf of Mexico could prove even worse. A tanker can leak its load, but no more. A broken pipe connected to an oilfield may continue leaking until it is fixed. And since fixing it involves sending remote-controlled submarines a mile below the surface to tinker with mangled machinery in the dark, that could take a while. Small wonder that Barack Obama sounds so grave.
On April 20th an explosion crippled the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil rig. Eleven people are presumed dead. As The Economist went to press, a vast oil slick was drifting towards American beaches and oyster beds. Flying down to Louisiana on May 2nd, Mr Obama described the spill as “a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster”. He warned that it “could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our Gulf states and…jeopardise the livelihoods of thousands of Americans.” And he told television viewers that the federal government had “launched and co-ordinated an all-hands-on-deck, relentless response to this crisis from day one”.
He was mindful, no doubt, that his predecessor’s political fortunes took a plunge after another environmental disaster in the same region in 2005. The federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow and ineffectual, and George Bush dithered before visiting the wrecked city of New Orleans. He was widely decried as incompetent, insensitive, or both. Some people see parallels: Mr Obama also took his time to head for the Gulf coast, and was conspicuously larking around the previous night, telling jokes at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. (My approval ratings may be sinking, he said, but they “are still very high in the country of my birth”.) Hostile pundits mutter that the spill is “Obama’s Katrina”.
The label has yet to catch on, however. For one thing, Mr Obama is plainly juggling multiple crises, from floods in Tennessee to a bomb in Times Square. The oil spill has not produced wrenching televised images of human suffering, as Katrina did. And Mr Obama has not yet made any obvious foul-ups. Addressing Gulf coast residents, he sounded calm but firm. “Let me be clear,” he said, “BP [the oil firm] is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill.”
So far, the spill has probably not altered many people’s minds about Mr Obama. That could change: no one knows how long the crisis will linger, or how bad the damage will be. But for now, the spill’s main political effect has been to pollute the debate about energy. Before the rig exploded, America was inching fitfully towards a coherent energy policy. Not a perfect one, and certainly not a moment too soon, but a better one than before, and better late than never. Before the spill, Mr Obama’s approach was to offer something for everyone. To please greens, he proposed subsidies for renewable energy and curbs on greenhouse gases. To stop consumers from revolting, he was prepared to phase in those curbs slowly. To placate conservatives, he promoted nuclear power and recently came out for more offshore oil-drilling. That last idea is now on hold.
Any sensible policy needs to recognise two facts. First, fossil fuels are warming the planet. Second, America cannot suddenly stop using them. Since many Republicans deny the first point and some Democrats underplay the second, getting a bill through Congress is hard; and it has just got a lot harder. The Democrats will need at least a few Republican votes in the Senate, since they now control only 59 votes, one short of the number needed to break a filibuster. That is unlikely to happen before the mid-term elections—Lindsay Graham, the keenest Republican on the idea, was working on a bill with two Democrats but walked out last month when Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said that he had decided to tackle immigration first. Conceivably Senator Graham can be wooed back, possibly along with a couple of his colleagues. But the wooing will be a lot trickier if Democrats block new domestic drilling, as several propose. Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator from Florida, says that any energy bill allowing offshore drilling would be “dead on arrival”. Governors of coastal states are terrified, too. Charlie Crist of Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California both withdrew their support for drilling this week.
Lessons to be learned
Disasters can be instructive. Both regulators and oil firms will learn useful lessons from the Deepwater Horizon fiasco, and safety will surely improve as a result. But it is easy to learn the wrong lessons, too. After the accident on Three Mile Island in 1979, Americans grew scared of nuclear power and stopped building new reactors, even though no one died in that accident. Had the nation not panicked, it would now have many more nuclear reactors, making the shift to a low-carbon economy significantly easier. Similarly today, panic is likely but unhelpful.
So long as Americans do not reduce their consumption of oil, refusing to drill at home means importing more of the stuff, often from places with looser environmental standards. The net effect is likely to be more pollution, not less. Nigeria, for example, has had a major oil spill every year since 1969, observes Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation, a think-tank. Putting a price on carbon would eventually spur the development of cleaner fuels, and persuade Americans to switch to them. But in the meantime, oil is both useful and precious. Extracting it domestically, with tougher safety rules, would bring a windfall to a Treasury that sorely needs one. When the current crisis is past, Mr Obama may remember this.
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