news20090531brt

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]

Sunday, May 31, 2009
Clint Eastwood
American film actor Clint Eastwood, born this day in 1930, emerged as one of the most popular Hollywood stars in the 1970s, playing such laconic and dangerous heroes as Dirty Harry, and later became an Oscar-winning director.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]

Sunday, May 31, 2009
1962: Adolf Eichmann hanged
On this day in 1962, the State of Israel hanged German official Adolf Eichmann, who had escaped from a prison camp in 1946 and spent some 14 years in hiding, for his part in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.

1819: American poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman was born on Long Island, New York.

news20090531jt1

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Kawasaki man held in triple stabbing
川崎３人刺殺で逮捕送検

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) A 57-year-old Kawasaki man was arrested Saturday after allegedly stabbing his landlord and two of his relatives to death out of an apparent grudge against the family, police said.

Sumitoshi Tsuda was taken into custody on suspicion of using a 20-cm kitchen knife to stab landlord Akihito Shibata, 73, his brother Yoshiaki, 71, and the brother's wife, Toshiko, 68.

Tsuda owned up to the killings but told investigators he had no intent to kill, suggesting the stabbing spree was not premeditated but instigated by quick anger, the police said.

I "lost patience with the noise they made," Tsuda reportedly told the police, citing noise from their door, washing machine and stair use.

The attack began at around 6:50 a.m. at the Koei-so apartment complex in Saiwai Ward when the elder Shibata came over to his brother's two-story apartment next door after hearing an argument erupt between his brother's wife and Tsuda, who lives next door.

The landlord was found dead in front of the apartment, while his brother and wife were found dead in their rooms on the first floor, the police said.

Their bodies were found by the landlord's 39-year-old daughter, who alerted police by dialing 110, the police said.

The suspect was extremely drunk at the time, and when police arrived, he was sitting on a tatami mat in his room with the knife stuck in the mat in front of him, the police said.

Tsuda had been living in the apartment complex for about five years and had a longtime grudge against the family, police said.

Tsuda's neighbors said he was occasionally late paying his 30,000-a-month rent but was more often seen arguing with the Shibatas over daily matters, such as noise from their washing machines.

Tsuda always cursed at his landlord and his relatives and often complained about the noise they made, his neighbors said. Occasionally, he would bang on their doors late at night when he was drunk.

"I got a warning after I failed to pay my rent," Tsuda was quoted as telling one neighbor. "The Shibatas are totally annoying because they do laundry even before the dawn. I'm suffering from insomnia."

He then started talking about a plan to "punch a hole" in the couple's washing machine, the neighbor said.

Even on Friday night, hours before the stabbings, Tsuda was speaking ill of his landlord while drinking at a nearby bar, another person close to the suspect said.

While some neighbors knew trouble was brewing, others were shocked by the sudden, violent ending.

The landlord "was a nice, quiet person and always said hello to me while I was walking my dog in the morning," said a housewife who lives nearby.

The apartment is in a residential area about 500 meters north of JR Kawasaki Station.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Nonprescription drugs to finally be deregulated
一般用医薬品（大衆薬）販売規制が緩和

(Compiled from Kyodo, Staff report) Consumers will be able to buy aspirin, cold medicine and other common nonprescription drugs at convenience stores and supermarkets starting on Monday, when the revised Pharmaceutical Affairs Law finally kicks in.

Convenience stores and supermarkets will be allowed to sell most over-the-counter drugs at outlets as long as they are staffed with sales clerks licensed as "registered venders."

Up to this point, stores were required to hire pharmacists to sell any kind of drugs, even aspirin. But since it's much easier to get licensed as a registered vender than a pharmacist, many retailers plan to hire an army of venders rather than pharmacists.

The revision will also let customers buy OTC drugs at convenience stores around the clock.

Online drugstores, however, are protesting the revision because it also bans sales of nonprescription drugs on the Internet.

The health ministry claims the ban is needed because many nonprescription drugs pose health risks when improperly used.

Last week, two online drugstores filed a joint lawsuit against the government demanding the revision's nullification.

Kenko.com Inc. and Wellnet Co. claim the new rule unjustifiably limits the scope of their business and say the ministry failed to recognize the fact that most online drug stores are adequately licensed and staffed by pharmacists.

Online shopping mall giant Rakuten Inc. is also campaigning against the ban. Every time a customer clicks the "Buy" button at a Rakuten-linked outlet, President Hiroshi Mikitani appears and asks the customers to join the campaign.

Rakuten is soliciting signatures for an online petition and had collected more than 1.5 million signatures as of Saturday afternoon.

As online drugstores to desperately search for an out, new entrants are bullish about their prospects.

A senior official at one convenience store chain said the new rules are good because they will let people get nearly all the OTC drugs they might need at more places instead of being forced to seek out a pharmacy or drug store.

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. President Ryuichi Isaka said the new rules will open up new business opportunities. Seven-Eleven plans to start selling OTC drugs in the Tokyo metropolitan area in June by teaming up with drug store chain Ain Pharmaciez Inc.

Smaller rival FamilyMart Co. is also preparing to sell OTC products in June at its outlets around the clock.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Hyogo back to normal as Kobe schools reopen
神戸、兵庫の両高校が再開

(Kyodo News) Two senior high schools in Kobe that were hit hard by the H1N1 swine flu outbreak reopened Saturday after closing for two weeks to contain the highly contagious disease.

After scheduling a special school day Saturday to check students' health, Kobe High School and Hyogo High School announced that classes would resume Monday, bringing all public high schools in Hyogo Prefecture back to normal.

Some private schools, however, continue to suspend classes.

Japan's first domestic case of the new H1N1 strain of influenza A, locally called "shingata infuruenza" (new-type influenza), surfaced at Kobe High School earlier this month. Several students then caught it at nearby Hyogo High School as the virus spread throughout the prefecture, turning Hyogo into ground zero for the outbreak.

Meanwhile, Osaka, Hyogo and Chiba prefectures said Saturday that they have confirmed yet more cases of swine flu, raising total infections nationwide to 377.

Most schools in west Japan resumed classes on Monday after being closed for about a week. But Kobe High School, which had 17 cases, and Hyogo High School, which had 43, opted to stay closed.

"I felt frustrated as I could not practice but now club activities can resume," a 17-year-old member of some basketball team said.

"I studied at home during the recess. I want to get back to my normal life," said a female student, also 17.

The prefectural education board said that no new H1N1 cases have been found at either of the schools since May 21, and that all of the students who were infected have recovered, it said.

Some experts said the spread of the new flu may have been facilitated through sports events they held jointly on May 8.

news20090531jt2

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[BUSINESS NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tourism looks for a boost
Major travel fair in Yokohama pitches destinations all over Japan

By KAZUAKI NAGATA
Staff writer

YOKOHAMA — Aiming to stimulate domestic tourism and boost foreign tourism, Tabi (Travel) Fair 2009 kicked off Friday in Yokohama with promoters and public organizations from around the nation pitching their local specialties.

"The situation facing the primary and secondary (agriculture and manufacturing) industries is quite tough in the rural areas. As a result, the flow of people (into remote areas) needs to be increased to energize these areas," said Takeshi Koda, executive director of the Japan Tourism Association.

"Tourism is one of the big pillars for that," he said.

Running through Sunday, the event at Pacifico Yokohama convention center is one of Japan's biggest travel exhibitions.

Drawing thousands of people, it features a variety of attractions, including a demonstration each day in which a huge tuna from Misaki Port in Kanagawa Prefecture is cleaned and served to visitors.

Many booths look for unique ways to attract visitors and promote their specialties. For instance, the Gero district, a famous "onsen" area in Gifu Prefecture, has brought in real hot-spring water.

Niigata Prefecture is playing up native son Naoe Kanetsugu, a feudal warrior in the 16th and 17th centuries currently the subject of an NHK drama starring the popular actor Satoshi Tsumabuki.

Koda of the Japan Tourism Association said the basic structure of the travel industry is in a state of flux. Since the 1990s, the most popular packages included only transportation and hotel arrangements.

But consumers now tend to travel based on a specific theme, such as visiting places in relation to historic figures or just to try local food, instead of going to a destination without knowing what to do once they get there, Koda said.

Norihiko Suzuki, who works for JTB's Hokkaido domestic product division, said that he is seeing the same trend and travel agencies will be working hard to meet this kind of demand.

While the swine flu outbreak has had a big impact on school trips, Koda said general travel hasn't taken much of a hit.

Isao Ohwada, executive director of the Hokkaido Tourism Organization, said school trips to the northern main island, involving about 3,000 people, have been canceled due to the flu scare.


[BOOKS]
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The violence specialists of Japanese politics

By JEFF KINGSTON

RUFFIANS, YAKUZA, NATIONALISTS: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960, by Eiko Maruko Siniawer. New York: Cornell University Press, 2008, 269 pp., $39.95 (cloth)

Japanese voters are frustrated because even if they throw the bums out of office, they know the opposition is much the same. These days money is the root of political scandals and influence buying, but here we examine how violence became institutionalized in Japan's politics from the first parliamentary elections in 1890 with devastating consequences for democracy.

Eiko Siniawer evokes the tensions between violence and democracy, and the messy entanglements that ensued. This is a gripping tale because she tells fascinating stories about the colorful violence specialists and their way of politics. In the late 19th century, these menacing "activists" swaggered about on tall wooden sandals, thumping stick in hand. Disrupting political gatherings was a matter of course and after cracking some heads, and otherwise intimidating voters and politicians, these ruffians enjoyed their carousing. They had their own codes of conduct and it was sporting for gangs to allow rivals to at least briefly disrupt meetings that they were assigned to protect so that the intruders could collect their fees. Parties openly wielded their thugs, concentrating on the mere 1 percent of the population — male and relatively wealthy — that enjoyed the right to vote. It was only later when the suffrage was expanded that it made more sense to bribe than beat voters.

These violence specialists, Siniawer explains, are so much more than a window into how democracy worked — they also shaped how democracy functioned and evolved. One of the key themes revolves around how "democratic politics attracted the very kind of violence that was often undemocratic in its consequences." Ironically, the roots of violence in democratic politics lay in the Freedom and Peoples' Rights Movement in the early Meiji Era. In trying to challenge the state and its monopoly on violence, prodemocracy activists resorted to violent means to promote political reforms.

Later these violence specialists became embedded in the system and they cultivated a chivalrous image as true patriots and protectors of liberty. However, overseas they advocated imperial expansion, playing a role for example in the assassination of the Korean queen, while at home they sided with industrialists against restive workers and the spread of communism. So despite posturing as the mailed fist of the common man, these violence specialists were usually in the thrall of the powers that be because they could pay. These thugs thrived because they provided protection, targeted opponents and helped win elections. They proved so effective in helping the antigovernment forces defeat the government in the 1890 elections that the government took off the gloves and used both ruffians and police, often indistinguishable in their tactics, to turn the tide in the following polls.

Siniawer suggests that violence did play a positive role in some respects in promoting democracy in the early stages, but as it became deeply embedded in the system it had undemocratic consequences. She makes a compelling argument that the everyday resort to violence facilitated the emergence of fascism in Japan during the 1930s. This movement involved the military, bureaucrats and yakuza. The dire consequences of the Great Depression for the Japanese provided an opportunity for extremists who celebrated and glorified violence, including assassination, while wrapping themselves in the flag of patriotism. Their bold actions contrasted with the impotence of political parties.

She argues that "never before had elite state figures and violence specialists been woven together so tightly," leading to military-dominated Cabinets and coups d'etat. She concludes that "when the strategies of the violence specialists were adopted by the state, the violence took the most frighteningly systematic, dominating and powerful of forms." As a result, the violence specialists were elbowed aside, supplanted by state actors in the 1930s.

Most of this excellent monograph focuses on political violence in the pre-World War II era, but the author argues that it remains a distinct aspect of contemporary Japanese politics even if it is infrequent. She writes, "The possibility of violence in Japan's democracy persists in part because yakuza involvement in politics continues. Yakuza may now deal more in money than violence when it comes to politics, but they still embody the threat of physical intimidation and coercion." Japan, she concludes, is not alone among democracies dealing with the reality and potential for violence by organized crime, citing Russia and Italy.

In elucidating Japan's culture of political violence, one in which violence was not episodic but deeply rooted, she places it at the center of Japanese political history. In doing so, she undermines tropes about Japanese harmony while presenting a comparative analysis that rejects notions of Japanese uniqueness.

news20090531jt3

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[MEDIA]
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Pigs, pimps, prostitutes and other things — Japan's New Age

By ALEXANDER JACOBY
Special to The Japan Times

Fifty years is a long time, especially in film history. The iconoclastic Japanese New Wave, born with the release in 1959 of Nagisa Oshima's debut feature, "A Town of Love and Hope," is now an established part of Japan's cinematic canon. And in contrast to the French Nouvelle Vague, several of whose practitioners are alive and working, the Japanese Nuberu Bagu (a katakana reading) looks, at first sight, like a thing of the past.

Of the major directors, Shohei Imamura and Hiroshi Teshigahara are dead; Nagisa Oshima is ailing; and Susumu Hani and Masahiro Shinoda are retired. But in this anniversary year, DVD releases and international retrospectives are proving to audiences the world over that their work is still alive and vital.

The three films by Imamura released this month on the Criterion DVD label show some of the reasons why. Imamura avoided both the decorum of the classical Japanese cinema and the generic lineaments of much recent popular filmmaking. Instead, he essayed an unflinching realism. The heroine of "The Insect Woman," brilliantly played by Sachiko Hidari, uses any means necessary to survive; Imamura observes her actions in precise detail, but without moral judgment, as if through an entomologist's microscope.

Meanwhile, the work of Oshima, currently the subject of an international touring retrospective, displays the stylistic invention for which the New Wave is particularly famed. Changing his style from film to film, Oshima experimented with both long takes and rapid montage, and employed Brechtian devices — text inserts, switches from black and white to color, moments of overt theatricality — to undermine audience involvement. Instead, the viewer is impelled to adopt a distanced, critical approach and to consider the political implications of Oshima's narratives.

Although the leading members of the Japanese New Wave were of roughly the same generation, having been teenaged or slightly younger during World War II, it was not a coherent movement. Kiju Yoshida, one of the filmmakers that critics have usually associated with the New Wave, goes so far as to claim that "the Japanese Nouvelle Vague did not exist; only individual film directors existed."

But it is still reasonable to group these individual artists together. Despite their differences, they shared one vital attitude: a desire to break with the past, to find new subjects and styles. Like their French counterparts, who excoriated what they called the cinema du papa — the French commercial cinema of the 1950s — the Japanese New Wave directors rejected the established traditions of their national cinema, which they saw as stale, overdependent on literary adaptation and out of touch with current realities. Oshima dismissed veteran filmmaker Kon Ichikawa as "just an illustrator," while Imamura claimed that the "self-sacrificing women" in films by Kenji Mizoguchi and Mikio Naruse did not really exist.

Yet ironically, the New Wave took shape mainly within the studio system. Although Hani and Teshigahara, who started out in documentary, made their first features without major studio backing, Imamura was under contract to Japan's oldest major studio, Nikkatsu. Oshima, Shinoda and Yoshida all started out at Shochiku, the company which had nurtured the restrained, traditional artistry of Yasujiro Ozu. In the early '60s, studio bosses like Shochiku's formidable head, Shiro Kido, hoped that younger directors with new ideas might invigorate a cinema undermined by the domestic attractions of television.

Yet these filmmakers could not thrive within the studio system. At Shochiku, Oshima and Yoshida were often unable to pursue or fulfill their own projects: Both eventually formed independent production companies. A significant boost came when Art Theatre Guild, an organization set up to distribute arthouse films in Japan, entered production. With some financial input from a major studio, Toho, but with creative policy firmly in the hands of influential husband-and-wife team Nagamasa and Kashiko Kawakita, ATG provided an environment where the New Wave directors could craft their most personal achievements. Oshima's socially critical masterpieces, "Boy" and "The Ceremony," and Shinoda's extraordinary avant-garde reworking of traditional theater, "Double Suicide," were made with ATG funding.

Significantly, the New Wave came to the fore in a time of social change and social unrest. In 1959 and 1960, when Oshima, Shinoda and Yoshida made their debuts, there were mass protests against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (ANPO). Oshima himself responded quickly to these events, making "Night and Fog in Japan" as a satire on the disunity of the radical left. When socialist politician Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated just days after the film's release, Shochiku, fearful that Oshima's film was inciting violence, withdrew it from circulation — one of the events which precipitated the director's departure from the studio.

By the mid 1960s, Japan's postwar economic miracle was at its height: 1964 witnessed the opening of the shinkansen, the Tokyo Olympics, and Japan's admission to the OECD. But there was a dark underside to this success story, and the New Wave directors were its chroniclers. Imamura's films can be read as an alternative social history, focusing on those excluded from the official postwar narrative of peace, reconstruction and economic growth. In films like "Death by Hanging," Oshima hit out at the power of the Japanese state and highlighted the oppression of the ethnic Korean minority in Japan.

The history of the New Wave shows both the rewards and penalties of innovation and independence. In the late 1960s, its directors were able to work on subject matter and in styles of their own choosing, producing some of the most individual and imaginative films in the history of Japanese cinema. But within a few years, funding became scarce. Oshima sought finance abroad for a diminishing trickle of films; Imamura spent the 1970s working on experimental documentaries; Yoshida made no features for over a decade; Shinoda stayed in work, but largely renounced formal experimentation for conventional narrative filmmaking.

Indeed, most of the New Wave directors latterly turned away from youthful iconoclasm. When Imamura filmed "Black Rain," about the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, in the late 1980s, he found himself echoing the quiet style of Ozu, whose assistant he had once been. Similarly, Yoshida, having criticized Ozu in his youth, later wrote a sympathetic book about his work. Most Young Turks mellow with age, but it is perhaps particularly appropriate that the innovators of the Japanese New Wave should have found their place, alongside the classical masters they once believed they had superseded, in the canon of Japanese cinema. That fact reaffirms the truth of Edward Seidensticker's remark: "The relationship between tradition and change in Japan has always been complicated by the fact that change is itself a tradition."

The subtitled Criterion Collection box set of Imamura's films, entitled "Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes," is now available. Subtitled DVD copies of Shinoda's films remain available for purchase in Japan. An Oshima retrospective is currently touring internationally; Tokyo's National Film Center will hold retrospectives of Oshima, Yoshida and Shinoda in early 2010.

news20090531lat1

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[World > Mexico under Siege]
Mexico drug traffickers corrupt politics
The cult-like La Familia Michoacana has contaminated city halls across one state, federal officials say. It sometimes decides who runs and who doesn't, who lives and who dies.

By Tracy Wilkinson
May 31, 2009

Reporting from Patzcuaro, Mexico -- There are few places in Mexico that better illustrate the way traffickers have corrupted the political system from its very foundation than Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon.

A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing an agenda that goes beyond the usual money-only interests of drug cartels.

Whether by intimidation, purchase or direct order, drug gangs can sometimes dictate who is a candidate and who is not, and put some of their own people in races -- a perversion, critics say, of democracy itself.

Just last week it became clear how deeply embedded La Familia is. Federal authorities detained 10 mayors and 20 other local officials as part of a drug investigation, saying the organized-crime group has contaminated city halls across the state. The roundup comes at the height of the electoral season, as Michoacan and the rest of Mexico approach local and national contests July 5.

Dozens of mayors, city hall officials and politicians have been killed or abducted in Michoacan as La Familia has extended its control in the last couple of years.


When congressional candidate Gustavo Bucio Rodriguez was slain at his gasoline station last month, authorities went out of their way to convince political leaders that he was the victim of common crime, showing them a surveillance tape of the killing by a lone gunman.

A few days earlier, the message was unmistakable. Nicolas Leon, a two-time mayor of Lazaro Cardenas, site of Michoacan's huge port, was tortured and shot to death. Left on his body was a message signed "FM" (Familia Michoacana) warning that supporters of the Zetas, the enforcement arm of a rival trafficking group, would meet the same fate.

Unlike some drug syndicates, La Familia goes beyond the production and transport of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine and seeks political and social standing. It has created a cult-like mystique and developed pseudo-evangelical recruitment techniques that experts and law enforcement authorities say are unique in Mexico.

No party has been spared its influence or interference, politicians of all stripes said in a series of interviews conducted before the arrests of the mayors.

"It is a way to win power with fear, where the authorities either don't have the capability to fight it, or have the capability but not the inclination," said German Tena, president of the Michoacan branch of the country's ruling National Action Party.

"There are mayors and politicians who 'let things happen,' and there are some who have sold their soul to the devil," said a high-ranking Michoacan state official who agreed to discuss the sensitive topic of corruption in exchange for anonymity.

Generally, though, traffickers' political influence in Michoacan has less to do with winning office and more with controlling officeholders, to create a buffer of protection that allows their business to proceed unimpeded, said a security advisor to Calderon.

Several political leaders said they tell candidates to keep a low profile and counsel supporters not to be too public about their endorsements. And they rarely publicize the illegalities they see.

"If we know or hear that a candidate is mixed up with narcos, we are not going to denounce it," said Fabiola Alanis, who heads the Democratic Revolution Party in Michoacan. "It is not my job. It would put my candidates in danger. There is nothing to guarantee that they would wake up alive."

The Obama administration recently added La Familia to its "kingpin" list, a designation that makes it easier for U.S. authorities to go after its assets, including any money in U.S.-owned banks.

"La Familia is absolutely a priority," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. With its swift rise to the short list of dangerous cartels, La Familia is "a modern success story in Mexican narcotics trafficking," the official added.

And with similar speed, La Familia has established footholds in the United States. The organization has drug-running operations in 20 to 30 cities and towns across the country, including Los Angeles, the official said.

For decades, Michoacan has been popular with traffickers, who were attracted to its fertile soil, abundant water, the rugged hillsides that provide cover and the Pacific port that eases transport. Especially in the rough, sparsely populated southern tier of the state known as the Tierra Caliente (Hot Land), a few gangs profited from vast marijuana plantations and, later, dozens of methamphetamine labs.

La Familia emerged this decade as a local partner of the so-called Gulf cartel, whose operatives were moving into the region along with their ruthless paramilitary force, the Zetas. La Familia and the Zetas gradually muscled out most of the other gangs, and La Familia announced its dominance by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall in the Michoacan city of Uruapan in September 2006. The gruesome calling card soon became all too common in areas where drug traffickers settle accounts.

Upon assuming the presidency in December of that year, Calderon launched the first of tens of thousands of troops against drug traffickers here.

Nonetheless, La Familia is stronger today than ever. It has expanded into the neighboring states of Guerrero, Queretaro and Mexico, which abuts the national capital, Mexico City, while battling remaining pockets of the Gulf cartel.

La Familia also has steadily diversified into counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealerships. The group offers money or demands bribes; increasingly, people in Michoacan pay protection money to La Familia in lieu of taxes to the government.


At least 83 of Michoacan's 113 municipalities are compromised by narcos, said a Mexican intelligence source speaking on condition of anonymity.

Purported leaders include Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, "El Mas Loco" (The Craziest), who is described as a religious zealot who carries a self-published collection of aphorisms (his "bible," authorities say) and insists that the group's traffickers and hit men lead lives free of drugs and alcohol.

Another leader, Dionicio Loya Plancarte, "El Tio" (The Uncle), is a former military officer. Both have million-dollar bounties on their heads.

They recruit at drug rehab centers and indoctrinate followers with an ideology akin to religious fundamentalism, complete with group prayer sessions. Some armed guards wear uniforms with the FM logo, witnesses say. Failure by a recruit to live by the rules is said to be punishable by death.

Moreno Gonzalez has also forbidden the sale and consumption of methamphetamine in Michoacan because it is such a destructive drug. It is for export only, primarily to the U.S. The Mexican army recently seized 200 pounds of ready-to-ship meth in a single raid, and the attorney general's office has identified 39 labs in the state.

Another leader, Rafael Cedeño Hernandez, was captured last month while he and more than 40 other alleged La Familia associates were celebrating a baptism in a fancy hotel in Morelia, the state capital. They were still in their party clothes -- Cedeño in a crisp white guayabera shirt, one woman in a yellow fluffy frock -- when police paraded them, handcuffed, before television cameras.

Cedeño's brother, Daniel, was running for Congress. After the arrest, he quit the race.

Daniel Cedeño Hernandez was not the only candidate for national office accused of having ties to drug traffickers. Valentin Rodriguez, a powerful two-time mayor running for Congress in a district around Patzcuaro, here in central Michoacan, has fended off repeated accusations that he has worked with La Familia.

"I am completely clean," Rodriguez told Mexican journalists in early April when the accusations surfaced again. "If those [jerks] have proof, let them show it," he said.

Efforts during the last two weeks of April to reach Rodriguez, who goes by the nickname The Dagger, were unsuccessful. He grew up so poor, people who know him say, that he couldn't afford to go to school. Today he has the largest avocado-packing plant in Michoacan, worth, by his own account, $30 million.

Rodriguez, who represents the Institutional Revolutionary Party, has acknowledged that he was questioned by federal prosecutors investigating drug trafficking. He was never formally charged.

Last week, another congressional candidate was gunned down (he survived) in Michoacan; Julio Cesar Godoy, a congressional candidate who is the brother of the state's governor, was hauled in for questioning as part of the narco-politics investigation; and the body of a founding member of Godoy's party was discovered in neighboring Guerrero a month after he was abducted.

CONTINUED ON news20090531lat2

news20090531lat2

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[World > Mexico under Siege]
Mexico drug traffickers corrupt politics
The cult-like La Familia Michoacana has contaminated city halls across one state, federal officials say. It sometimes decides who runs and who doesn't, who lives and who dies.

By Tracy Wilkinson
May 31, 2009

CONTINUED FROM news20090531lat1

In 2007, two Labor Party candidates in a local race were intercepted on a road in the Tierra Caliente by gunmen who handed a cellphone to one of them. At the other end was this candidate's just-kidnapped wife, begging for her life. The demand: Drop out of the party and run on behalf of another party, to ensure its victory. They did, and the party won.

The story is told by Reginaldo Sandoval, president in Michoacan of the Labor Party, who was himself abducted, held for a day and ordered to silence his criticism of the government and organized crime and to leave the state.

"It is difficult for us to work without fear, especially for those candidates who have a possibility of winning," said Sandoval, who remains in Michoacan. "We are at the mercy of the organized criminals and drug traffickers. We have lost the drug war."

[National]
City University of New York program plumbs for elites among immigrants
CUNY's Macaulay Honors College revives a New York tradition of giving opportunities to 'diamonds in the rough': immigrants and their sons and daughters.

By Geraldine Baum
May 31, 2009

Reporting from New York -- After completing a freshman seminar about immigration in New York, Anita Sonawane, a brainy undergraduate who happens to be a New York immigrant, had a transformative aha moment. It was something the professor said.

"Oh, come on, Anita, you know you're not going to be a doctor," Jeff Maskovsky, an urban studies professor at Queens College, told her, hoping to challenge the idea that the only way to succeed in America was to practice medicine.

No, she was not destined to be a doctor, she later realized. "Whenever I started talking, I couldn't help myself, politics just came into the discussion," says Sonawane, 18, a budding community activist and economics major.

Six years ago Sonawane arrived here from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with her Indian parents and nowhere to live. They ended up moving in briefly with the taxi driver who picked them up at the airport. The family has since bought an apartment in Queens, and her father has found work.

And today Sonawane is getting a first-rate education, same as any pedigreed New Yorker, but without the Ivy League price tag. She is among 1,200 scholars who attend for free the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York, the nation's largest urban public university.


This city has long created public institutions to educate immigrants and their sons and daughters, turning generations into doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs, not to mention Nobel Prize winners and Rhodes scholars. Now, that tradition is having a renaissance.

In recent years, many U.S. universities have established honors colleges, but CUNY's has an extra goal of turning ambitious immigrants and the children of the working class into worldly New Yorkers with a heart for public good.

Macaulay scholars are required to take a series of seminars about New York and clock 30 hours of public service. They each get a laptop, $7,500 to study abroad or defray costs during an unpaid internship and a "passport" to New York arts and cultural venues. Each student is also assigned four advisors who push and coddle, strategize and negotiate, with the intention of getting these least-entitled students on equal footing with the elite.

Ann Kirschner, Macaulay's dean, says that a decade from now, one way she'll know the Honors College is a success is if she reads that a graduate is elected mayor of New York: "It's not that we think New York is the only place to live -- well, secretly we do -- but we want our students to have a sense of themselves as people who can both achieve academically and become engaged New York citizens."

Sonawane was taking a seminar last year titled, "The Peopling of New York," when she had her epiphany. Maskovsky says he designed the course to upset students' notions of the city "as this wonderful melting pot."

"One of my challenges was to get students like Anita to think beyond Pollyanna ideas, and gain a serious, scholarly understanding of how different groups have unequal access to economic power and how they struggle between them," he said.

After Sonawane completed the course, one of her advisors and Maskovsky helped her secure an internship with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Our goal," the professor says, "is to take these diamonds in the rough -- kids brimming with possibility who haven't had private SAT training or top high school prep -- and challenge them to think broadly about their futures."

For a while this mission had fallen by the wayside out of a commitment to another public policy ideal: affirmative action. In the early 1970s, CUNY dropped admission standards; but in 2001, new leadership set aside money to create an honors college, naming it for a wealthy graduate, William E. Macaulay, who donated $30 million to turn a Manhattan townhouse into a center for CUNY's cream of the crop.

There is Sameen Farooq, 21, a premed student whose parents were doctors in Pakistan but now run a dollar store in Brooklyn. He is a frenetic volunteer and this year went to South Africa to help homeless children. "We see our future, and we're chasing it at 100 miles per hour," he said.

There is Ilya Ryvin, 19, a film production major who'd like to be the next Martin Scorsese. His advisors have pressed him to take more classes and volunteer. Next winter, he'll study film in Japan. He has not left the country since he arrived, at age 4, from Belorussia, now known as Belarus.

Many students, in fact, are driven academically but have to be encouraged to broaden their interests, says Pamela Degotardi, a Macaulay advisor. Some hold themselves back; others have parents worrying about them.

Degotardi recalls persuading parents of an Orthodox Jewish student, an English lit major, to let her to study at Oxford. It would be great for her academic standing, Degotardi told them. It turned out that sharing the adventure with a Christian girl and an African American boy was also important for her personal growth.

Degotardi says Macaulay students often have a sense of having achieved little through birthright and everything through self-transformation -- and struggle: "I keep a well-stocked supply of Kleenex in my office -- and chocolate."

Throughout the sprawling CUNY system, there is some resentment that at a time of budget cuts, a mere fraction of its 400,000 students are receiving such treatment and precious resources. But supporters say that by recruiting the city's top high school students for seven of CUNY's 11 campuses, Macaulay is not only elevating intellectual life throughout the system but also boosting CUNY's reputation nationally.

Since Macaulay's first graduating class in 2005, it has had Truman, Ford, Goldwater and Fulbright fellowship winners. And at graduation this week, , among the class of 2009 is a Rhodes scholar.

news20090531lat3

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[World]
Pakistani cities are new battleground for Taliban
Officials say troops have secured large areas of the Swat Valley and the main city of Mingora, but a recent spate of bombings in three cities signals a shift in the Taliban's tactics.

By Alex Rodriguez
May 31, 2009

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan -- Although the Pakistani military claimed victory in a key Taliban stronghold in the Swat Valley on Saturday, the government found itself confronting a new battlefront -- a bombing campaign in the country's cities.

Pakistani troops now have complete control over the main city of Mingora, with clashes lingering only on the outskirts, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said at a briefing Saturday.

Only a week ago, the military said it was expecting a long, hard-fought battle with Pakistani Taliban militants who had fortified themselves in the city's hotels and buildings. It now appears that, after initially putting up stiff resistance, many militants chose to flee.

"When they realized that they were being encircled and the noose was tightening, they decided not to give a pitched battle," Abbas said.

But the militants may have decided to fight another way: seeding fear in other parts of the country through well-coordinated bombing attacks.

Bombers struck in three Pakistani cities last week. On Wednesday in Lahore, gunmen attacked a building housing local police and Pakistani intelligence agents before detonating explosives in a van, killing 27 people.

A day later, attackers set off bombs on motorcycles parked outside busy markets in Peshawar, the largest city in northwest Pakistan, and exchanged fire with police. At least six people were killed and more than 50 injured. That night, suicide bombers killed four police officers on the outskirts of Peshawar and two people in Dera Ismail Khan, to the south.

As a result, security was tightened in Islamabad, the capital, and other major cities. In Peshawar, a pall of fear hung over the city as residents avoided mosques and bazaars. Schools and colleges were shut down, and extra police patrolled the streets.

"People are constantly living in terror," said Jan Alam, a security guard. "It's because of the offensive and these bomb attacks."

Pakistan launched the offensive in the Swat Valley to drive out the Taliban about a month ago. Troops have retaken large sections of the area once controlled by the Taliban, but the campaign has also led to a massive exodus of civilians who fled the fighting.

Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said up to 3 million people have left their homes and sought refuge either in tent camps or with friends and relatives.

The military offensive has the support of the Obama administration, which has grown increasingly concerned about the militants expanding control over northwest Pakistan. Earlier this spring, the Pakistani Taliban had extended its reach into the Buner district outside Swat, 60 miles from Islamabad.

On Saturday, military officials said the leader of the Taliban militants in Swat, Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, remained at large.

Pakistani officials have acknowledged that some Taliban fighters will inevitably escape the fighting. Authorities say militants have been shaving off their beards and losing themselves among the masses of refugees streaming into camps set up near Mardan, Peshawar, Karachi and Islamabad.

Last week, Pakistani authorities said they had arrested 39 suspected Taliban militants in refugee camps or at houses where refugees are staying. Abbas said troops have set up checkpoints on roads in Swat to intercept fleeing Taliban, but they do not have the manpower to patrol the myriad footpaths that run through the picturesque valley.

"They're able to flee, but we're trying to catch as many as possible," Abbas said.

More than 1,200 militants have been killed and 79 others have been captured since the offensive began, Abbas said. Eighty-one Pakistani troops have died in the fighting, he said. He did not release any figures on civilian casualties.

The military's claims about the offensive cannot be verified because the government greatly restricts journalists from accessing the conflict zone.

Pakistani troops had geared for a severe challenge in Mingora, where they faced fighters entrenched in an urban environment and using mines, fortifications and hidden weapons caches. Abbas said the militants had built bunkers in the city's hotels and government buildings. But after a round of fierce fighting at the start, the Taliban militants escaped.

The fighting left the city's infrastructure destroyed, Abbas said. Restoring electricity is expected to take at least two weeks. Pakistani officials said they don't know when refugees from Mingora can return to their homes. As many as 20,000 civilians stayed behind when the rest of the 375,000 residents fled to tent camps or relatives and friends to the south.

Pakistani authorities said they had been able to get some food and other aid to those civilians, but more is needed. A medical team was being sent to the city to reopen Mingora's hospital.

news20090531nyt

[Today's Newspaper] from [The New York Times]

[U.S. > Cyberwar ]
(Cyberwar : The Digital Arms Race
Computers, indispensable in peace, are becoming ever more important in political conflicts and open warfare. This series examines the growing use of computer power as a weapon.)

Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JOHN MARKOFF
Published: May 30, 2009

MELBOURNE, Fla. — The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers.

The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.

At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon’s computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.

The young engineers represent the new face of a war that President Obama described Friday as “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” The president said he would appoint a senior White House official to oversee the nation’s cybersecurity strategies.

Computer experts say the government is behind the curve in sealing off its networks from threats that are growing more persistent and sophisticated, with thousands of intrusions each day from organized criminals and legions of hackers for nations including Russia and China.

“Everybody’s attacking everybody,” said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run the Raytheon unit here.

Mr. Chase, who wears his hair in a ponytail, and Terry Gillette, a 53-year-old former rocket engineer, ran SI Government Solutions before selling the company to Raytheon last year as the boom in the military’s cyberoperations accelerated.

The operation — tucked into several unmarked buildings behind an insurance office and a dentist’s office — is doing some of the most cutting-edge work, both in identifying weaknesses in Pentagon networks and in creating weapons for potential attacks.

Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.

The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.

Executives at Lockheed Martin, which has long been the government’s largest information-technology contractor, also see the demand for greater computer security spreading to energy and health care agencies and the rest of the nation’s critical infrastructure. But for now, most companies remain focused on the national-security arena, where the hottest efforts involve anticipating how an enemy might attack and developing the resources to strike back.

Though even the existence of research on cyberweapons was once highly classified, the Air Force plans this year to award the first publicly announced contract for developing tools to break into enemy computers. The companies are also teaming up to build a National Cyber Range, a model of the Internet for testing advanced techniques.

Military experts said Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, which have long been major players in the Pentagon’s security efforts, are leading the push into offensive cyberwarfare, along with the Raytheon unit. This involves finding vulnerabilities in other countries’ computer systems and developing software tools to exploit them, either to steal sensitive information or disable the networks.

Mr. Chase and Mr. Gillette said the Raytheon unit, which has about 100 employees, grew out of a company they started with friends at Florida Institute of Technology that concentrated on helping software makers find flaws in their own products. Over the last several years, their focus shifted to the military and intelligence agencies, which wanted to use their analytic tools to detect vulnerabilities and intrusions previously unnoticed.

Like other contractors, the Raytheon teams set up “honey pots,” the equivalent of sting operations, to lure hackers into digital cul-de-sacs that mimic Pentagon Web sites. They then capture the attackers’ codes and create defenses for them.

And since most of the world’s computers run on the Windows or the Linux systems, their work has also provided a growing window into how to attack foreign networks in any cyberwar.

“It takes a nonconformist to excel at what we do,” said Mr. Gillette, a tanned surfing aficionado who looks like a 1950s hipster in his T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves.

The company, which would allow interviews with other employees only on the condition that their last names not be used because of security concerns, hired one of its top young workers, Dustin, after he won two major hacking contests and dropped out of college. “I always approach it like a game, and it’s been fun,” said Dustin, now 22.

Another engineer, known as Jolly, joined Raytheon in April after earning a master’s degree in computer security at DePaul University in Chicago. “You think defense contractors, and you think bureaucracy, and not necessarily a lot of interesting and challenging projects,” he said.

The Pentagon’s interest in cyberwarfare has reached “religious intensity,” said Daniel T. Kuehl, a military historian at the National Defense University. And the changes carry through to soldiers being trained to defend and attack computer and wireless networks out on the battlefield.

That shift can be seen in the remaking of organizations like the Association of Old Crows, a professional group that includes contractors and military personnel.

The Old Crows have deep roots in what has long been known as electronic warfare — the use of radar and radio technologies for jamming and deception.

But the financing for electronic warfare had slowed recently, prompting the Old Crows to set up a broader information-operations branch last year and establish a new trade journal to focus on cyberwarfare.

The career of Joel Harding, the director of the group’s Information Operations Institute, exemplifies the increasing role that computing and the Internet are playing in the military.

A 20-year veteran of military intelligence, Mr. Harding shifted in 1996 into one of the earliest commands that studied government-sponsored computer hacker programs. After leaving the military, he took a job as an analyst at SAIC, a large contractor developing computer applications for military and intelligence agencies.

Mr. Harding estimates that there are now 3,000 to 5,000 information operations specialists in the military and 50,000 to 70,000 soldiers involved in general computer operations. Adding specialists in electronic warfare, deception and other areas could bring the total number of information operations personnel to as many as 88,700, he said.

news20090531wp

[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

[Nation > Supreme Court]
Bias Case Looms Large for Nominee
Ruling on Firefighters' Lawsuit Raises Questions About Sotomayor's Philosophy

By Robert Barnes and Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 31, 2009

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has heard thousands of cases and has issued as many rulings in her nearly two decades on the federal bench, but the early debate over her judicial philosophy in her Supreme Court confirmation battle comes down to one paragraph.

It is the 134-word summary order in Ricci v. DeStefano, which upheld the decision of New Haven, Conn., to throw out the promotion test it had given city firefighters when no African Americans and two Hispanics qualified for advancement.

The case is under review by the Supreme Court that Sotomayor would join. If the decision is reversed -- which, from the tone of oral arguments in April, seems a distinct possibility -- the high court's ruling will probably come at the end of June, just as the Senate and the nation begin to consider Sotomayor's qualifications.

The White House, concerned that a reversal would be seen as an embarrassment for its nomination, is rolling out a multi-pronged strategy to explain the case and Sotomayor's role in it. The first step was to offer a collection of legal experts who say the ruling marks Sotomayor not as a judicial activist, or even a supporter of minority rights, but as a conservative jurist whose actions show how closely she hews to court precedent.

But White House strategists face a tough challenge in the sound-bite war. The New Haven case raises complex issues about workplace bias and how far governments may go to ensure they are not discriminating against minorities before they intrude upon the rights of those in the majority.

The white firefighters who brought the suit say it can be reduced to this: They were denied the promotions they earned because of the color of their skin.

Moreover, the scant order by a unanimous three-judge panel that included Sotomayor was devoid of legal reasoning for affirming the decision of a lower district judge, a curious dismissal for a case that represents significant questions of law and the Constitution.

Although most of Sotomayor's colleagues on the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit agreed with the approach, it was roundly criticized by her mentor, Judge José A. Cabranes, who was also appointed to the circuit by President Bill Clinton. Cabranes wrote on behalf of the Republican-appointed judges in denouncing the cursory nature of the review and in urging the Supreme Court to review the case.

"The opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case," Cabranes wrote. "This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal."

In New Haven, tensions between white and minority firefighters are the real-life consequences of the suit, and Sotomayor's nomination has ratcheted up the attention.

Gary Tinney, president of the local chapter of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters, said relations are not good in the department, where no one of any race has been promoted since the test was given in 2003.

"The feeling in there is just total isolation," Tinney said. "You have to watch your back."

The white firefighters -- known as the New Haven 20 -- have been instructed by their lawyer not to talk to newspaper reporters.

Tinney said firefighters have discussed how Sotomayor's appointment will bring added notice, but they generally avoid conversations about the suit. "It's not like anybody's going to change sides," he said.

The New Haven 20 set up a Web site to sell stickers and T-shirts to help pay legal fees. Meanwhile, local associations for black and Hispanic firefighters hold news conferences to explain their case.

"People do their jobs, but it's day-to-day," said Ron Morales, a fireman in nearby Bridgeport and the president of the International Association of Hispanic Firefighters. "This is always on our minds. There's a constant tension there."

The lawyer who argued at the Supreme Court last month on behalf of the white firefighters, Gregory S. Coleman, told the justices that such "regrettable and socially destructive racial politics" are the result of government policies based on racial classifications.

He found a receptive audience in the court's conservative justices but not among the liberals, including the justice Sotomayor would replace, David H. Souter, who is retiring.

Souter said New Haven found itself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't situation," facing lawsuits from minorities if it used the test results and from whites if it put them aside.

He wondered why it was not more reasonable to allow the city "an opportunity, assuming good faith, to start again."

Souter's comments are key to the White House's plan, should a reversal come, to portray Sotomayor as fitting exactly the seat that is opening.

"Nothing would change," said a senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy. "In fact, the reasonableness of her position would be established by the fact that a justice appointed by a Republican president . . . saw this the same way. How five conservative justices vote on the case isn't really the issue."

In the commentary after Sotomayor's nomination last week, some have mischaracterized the case and inflated the nominee's role. It does not involve racial quotas or even a municipal policy of affirmative action, nor does it involve preferences in hiring.

All who took the tests for promotion to lieutenant and captain already worked as firefighters for the city, so it is not a question of hiring less-qualified workers to meet diversity goals.

But the promotion results produced a heated debate in the city, and government lawyers warned the independent civil service board that if it certified the test results, minority firefighters might have a good case for claiming discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Federal guidelines presume discrimination when a test has such a disparate impact on minorities.

The board split 2 to 2, which meant the exam was not certified. Those who opposed using the results said they worried the test must be flawed in some way that disadvantaged minorities. (The test questions have not been made public.)

The white firefighters filed suit, saying their rights had been violated under both the law and the Constitution's protections of due process.

District Judge Janet Bond Arterton dismissed their suit before it went to trial. She said in her 47-page decision that the city was justified under the law in junking the test, even if it could not explain its flaws.

The case then went to the 2nd Circuit, where Sotomayor and judges Robert Sack and Rosemary S. Pooler heard the appeal. Oral arguments lasted an hour, with Sotomayor leading the questioning, as is her reputation. But instead of issuing a detailed and signed opinion, the panel said in a brief summary that, while it was "not unsympathetic" to the plight of the white firefighters, it unanimously affirmed the lower court's decision for "reasons stated in the thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned opinion."

"I was not surprised; I was stunned" by the limited nature of the ruling, said the firefighters' lawyer, Karen Torre. She has called the case "the most significant race case to come before the circuit court in 20 years."

The legal experts assembled by the White House last week reacted sharply to questions about whether the panel was trying to bury a controversial decision. "The notion that you're going to try and hide an opinion is pretty much nonsense," said Martha Minow, acting dean of the Harvard Law School and a friend of Sotomayor's since both were at Yale Law School. "It's just a quick opinion saying that 'we are bound, and we're not going to do anything further than what they did in the particular case.' "

A reversal by the Supreme Court would come at a bad time for Sotomayor but would not likely have a lasting effect -- "one news cycle," the White House official said hopefully. Conservative and liberal court experts agree that reversal rates say little about a judge's qualifications.

Sotomayor has had six cases reviewed by the Supreme Court, half of them reversed. "Aggregate reversal rates tell you nothing," said Temple University law professor David A. Hoffman, who notes the court customarily reverses three-quarters of the cases it decides to review. "The way to judge a judge is to read the opinions."

Former chief justice Warren E. Burger had three cases reversed the year he joined the court, according to the 1979 book "The Brethren." The reversal rate of the court's newest member, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., was also an issue in his nomination.

Kevin Russell, who also argues before the court and was one of the lawyers brought out by the White House, said it seems obvious that the Supreme Court's decision in Ricci will be a close one.

"People are going to be looking to the Supreme Court's decision in this case of Judge Sotomayor's work, fairly or not," he said. "How the court writes the opinion is going to affect the public reception."

news20090531gdn

[News > Science] from [The Guardian]

Why are they trying to gag a top British science writer?
When chiropractors drag a top science writer into the libel courts, the country has lost its backbone

Nick Cohen
The Observer, Sunday 31 May 2009
Article history

This week, Simon Singh, one of Britain's best science writers, will decide whether to carry on playing a devilish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He has already lost £100,000 defending his right to speak frankly. He could walk away. No one would think the worse of him if he did. Or he could go on and risk losing the full million by ensnaring himself in the rapacious world of an English judiciary that seems ever eager to bow to the demands of Saudi oil billionaires, Russian oligarchs and the friends of Saddam Hussein to censor critics and punish them with staggering damages and legal fees.

It seems no choice at all. Any friend Singh phoned would tell him to cut his losses and run. But if he were to turn to the audience, he would hear scientists all but screaming at him to go to the Court of Appeal and challenge a judgment that threatens the robust discussions open societies depend on. A national defence campaign is ready to roll on his command. At a preliminary support meeting, a cheering crowd acclaimed him as a free-speech champion.

In truth, he makes an unlikely warrior. Singh is a serious and amiable man, whose accounts of the solving of Fermat's last theorem and code breaking won high praise and provoked no controversy. Last year, he published Trick or Treatment? with Professor Edzard Ernst on the reliability of "alternative medicine", and devoted a chapter to the strange history of chiropractic treatments. One Daniel David Palmer invented the therapy in Davenport, Iowa, in 1895, when he convinced himself that he had cured a janitor's deafness by "racking" his back.

Inspired by this miracle, Palmer developed the theory that "95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae", rather than, say, the germs that so bothered conventional doctors of the time. Chiropractic therapy was a new religion, Palmer declared, and he was a successor to Christ, Muhammad and Martin Luther. At home, he practised vigorous racking on his children.

His son, Bartlett, described how he beat them with "straps until we carried welts, for which Father was often arrested and spent nights in jail". Bartlett bought the first car Davenport had seen and paid his father back by running him down on the day of the Palmer School of Chiropractic Homecoming Parade.

Palmer died of his injuries a few weeks later, but his ideas lived on. In 2008, the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) announced that its members could help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying. Writing in the Guardian, Singh said the claim was "bogus". Chiropractic treatments may help relieve back pain, but Professor Ernst had examined 70 trials and found no evidence that they could relieve other conditions.

Singh is hardly a lone sceptic. A few weeks ago, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against a chiropractor who claimed he could treat children with colic and learning difficulties. Nevertheless, the BCA took Singh on and told me it had "numerous documents which demonstrate the efficacy of chiropractic" treatments.

Fair enough, you might think. Reputable medical authorities could test the evidence and decide whether the treatments work or not. Instead of arguing before the court of informed opinion, however, the BCA went to the libel courts and secured a ruling from Mr Justice Eady that made Singh's desire to test chiropractors' claims next to impossible. Because Singh used the word "bogus", the judge said he had to prove that chiropractors knew they were worthless but "dishonestly presented them to a trusting and, in some respects perhaps, vulnerable public".

The learned judge did not seem to understand that the worst thing about the deluded is that they sincerely believe every word they say. On Eady's logic, a writer who condemns as "bogus" a neo-Nazi's claim that a conspiracy of Jews controls American foreign policy could be sued successfully if lawyers jumped up and said neo-Nazis sincerely believed their conspiracy theories to be true.

The consequences of letting the libel law loose on scientific debate are horrendous. Science proceeds by peer review. A researcher's colleagues must submit his or her ideas to scrutiny without fear of the consequences. If they think they could lose their homes and savings in the libel courts, however, they will back off.

For alternative therapists are not the only ones answering their critics with lawyers. NMT, an American health giant, is suing a British doctor for questioning one of its treatments.

After the Singh ruling, the Sense About Science lobby group fears the commercial pressure to rush out new treatments will lead companies to quash doubters with writs in London courts and put public health at risk.

Watching recent libel cases has been like hearing rumours about parliamentary expenses. For years, I have wondered what it will take to turn a neglected scandal into a public outrage. After Eady ordered the censorship of a New York author's book on terrorism, which had not even been published in Britain, the US Congress began drafting a law which will guarantee that English libel judgments have no validity in America. The United Nations has condemned the judges' practice of welcoming rich libel tourists from across the world to their hospitable courts and urged Britain to allow free speech on matters of public interest.

In the Commons, MPs have railed against the absurdity of a legal system which forced a Danish newspaper to pay £100,000 for criticising the shady financial practices of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which duly collapsed six months later along with the rest of the Icelandic economy.

None of their despairing pleas has moved the government or persuaded the judiciary to reform itself. Maybe the Singh case will.

If he goes ahead with an appeal this week, bloggers, academics and the massed ranks of the scientific great and good are ready to join him. They have grasped what too many still fail to realise: the greatest threat to freedom of speech in Britain is not the state or the security services or the press barons, but a fusty and illiberal legal system, which has become a public menace.

news20090531slt

[Today's Paper] from [Slate Magazine]

Hackers Get Security Clearances

By Roger McShane
Posted Sunday, May 31, 2009, at 6:21 AM ET

The New York Times (NYT) leads with military contractors competing for work "hacking for the United States." The government's push into cyberwarfare has companies chasing billions of dollars in new defense contracts and running advertisements for "cyberninjas", says the Times. The Washington Post (WP) leads with an analysis of Sonia Sotomayor's role in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, which is under review by the Supreme Court. The White House is "concerned that a reversal would be seen as an embarrassment for its nomination." The Los Angeles Times (LAT) leads with a look at La Familia Michoacana, a "cult-like" and "particularly violent" drug cartel operating out of the Mexican state of Michoacan. La Familia "goes beyond the production and transport of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine and seeks political and social standing."

The NYT reports that nearly all of the major defense contractors in America "have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies." One industry official estimates that the government is spending $10 billion a year on computer security. But the contracts are not only for defensive efforts; the companies are also developing weapons to break into enemy computers and steal data or disable networks. This has led them to buy up smaller firms that look a lot like 90s start-ups, featuring "computer geeks in their 20s" who "like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances." Some actually are: One Raytheon employee was hired after he won two major hacking competitions. Let's just hope they don't start World War III.

The WP's lead story on Sonia Sotomayor and the Ricci case adds little to a topic that has been covered by columnists, bloggers, small papers, big papers and popular websites. The Post tries to sell the story by saying the case "raises questions about Sotomayor's philosophy." But there only seems to be one sentence devoted to any discussion of her broader judicial outlook. The headline is also a bit of false advertising. "Bias Case Looms Large for Nominee," the story is titled. But in the 32nd paragraph we are told that a reversal by the Supreme Court "would not likely have a lasting effect" on Sotomayor's nomination.

Not yet suffering from Sotomayor fatigue, the papers are chock-full of stories on the nomination. The NYT says "identity politics is back with a vengeance" as a result of the pick. But maybe that's justified, as minority judges always make waves, says the Times' Adam Liptak. Will that be true of Sotomayor? The LAT says, "The passion for minority rights that she showed from Princeton onward is scarcely reflected in a review of her judicial decisions." Regardless, Barack Obama wants to see a "timely" confirmation.

A U.S. law enforcement official tells that LAT that La Familia Michoacana is "a modern success story in Mexican narcotics trafficking." Through terror, murder and politics, the group has corrupted the government of Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon. In 2006 the group "announced its dominance by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall." More recently "dozens of mayors, city hall officials and politicians have been killed or abducted." Mexican authorities have tried to crack down on the cartel, recently rounding up 10 mayors and 200 other local officials suspected of drug ties. But the LAT says La Familia is "stronger today than ever."

The LAT notes that "La Familia has established footholds in the United States" as well, with "drug-running operations in 20 to 30 cities and towns across the country." The NYT takes the story from there, reporting on its front page that "Mexican drug cartels have pushed heroin sales beyond major cities into America's suburban and rural byways." But you won't find any specific references to groups like La Familia in the NYT piece. Connecting distribution rings in America to the cartels in Mexico has proved difficult, says the paper. "Those arrested here typically say they fear for the safety of their families in Mexico if word gets back that they have been too cooperative."

As the Pentagon moves into the future with cyberwarfare projects, the NYT looks at a man who keeps it stuck in the past. Critics describe Senator Daniel Inouye as "the most potent remaining champion of the parochialism that for decades has made major military projects hard to kill."

The Pakistani government has scored a "significant victory" over the Taliban, says the NYT. The military has taken control of Mingora, the most populous city in the Swat Valley. But the WP notes that "a significant number of insurgents are thought to have retreated into the nearby hills."

The WP asks a group of activists, journalists and policy experts "what the president should say in his address in Cairo" on Thursday. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute says, "It's a shame that President Obama chose Egypt, home to an aging autocrat who embodies the antithesis of hope and change, as the venue for this speech." She doesn't say which hopeful, changing, non-autocratic Middle Eastern country she would have chosen.

The WP fronts news that Susan Boyle, the improbable Scottish singing sensation, finished second on "Britain's Got Talent", the reality show that catapulted her to fame. The winning act was an acrobatic dance troupe named "Diversity", which can be seen here.

The NYT reports on the Obama-inspired artwork that can be found all over the internet. "Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy … has a presidency so fanned the flames of painterly ardor among hobbyist and professional artists," says the Times. Some of the work is good. Some of the work is bad. And some of the work is just plain weird.

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[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]

Saturday, May 30, 2009
Countee Cullen
Born this day in 1903, Countee Cullen was one of the finest American poets of the Harlem Renaissance, noted for his fresh and sensitive treatment of racial themes and for the lyric, wistful beauty of his verse.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]

Saturday, May 30, 2009
1431: Joan of Arc burned at the stake
Having led the French army in a momentous victory over England at Orléans during the Hundred Years' War, Joan of Arc was charged with heresy and witchcraft and, on this day in 1431, was burned at the stake.

news20090530jt1

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Japan, U.S. aim for tough U.N. response
日米、強力な国連決議を目指す
'Use of force' clause cited in draft measure against North

NEW YORK, (Kyodo) Japan and the United States are referencing a section of the U.N. Charter that sets out the Security Council's powers — including use of force — in a resolution being drafted to respond to North Korea's nuclear test earlier in the week.

The UNSC is "acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations," according to the draft obtained by Kyodo News.

Chapter VII spells out the powers the council can use to maintain international peace and security, including military action.

Seven key U.N. members failed Thursday to reach a final accord on a resolution the UNSC plans to adopt in response to North Korea's nuclear test, making it unlikely the new resolution will be adopted until at least next week.

Ambassadors of the five permanent council members — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — plus Japan and South Korea tried to iron out their differences during their third round of talks, which they held based on the draft paper, U.N. diplomatic sources said.

The major focus of attention was strengthening the enforcement of inspections of North Korean cargo as stipulated under Resolution 1718, according to the sources.

The resolution, adopted in October 2006 after North Korea's first nuclear test, bans Pyongyang from engaging in any ballistic missile or nuclear activity.

The resolution also says all U.N. members are "called upon" to take "cooperative action including through inspection of cargo to and from" North Korea.

The United States strongly proposed the new resolution include a phrase making cargo inspection on the part of the U.N. members "compulsory" rather than "calling upon" them to cooperate, the sources said. China remains cautious.

The draft paper's reference to Chapter VII reflects Washington's insistence that the chapter is necessary in view of possible military conflict during inspections of North Korean cargo by U.N. members, the sources said.

The paper, expressing "the gravest concern" at Monday's North Korean nuclear test, described the action as a "flagrant violation" of Resolution 1718.

The draft said the council calls on all U.N. members "immediately to enforce" measures stipulated by Resolution 1718.

According to the diplomatic sources, sanctions being considered by the key U.N. members are the expansion of the trade embargo against North Korea, an expanded freeze on the assets of North Korean entities, the imposition of financial sanctions and the designation of North Korean officials subject to a travel ban.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Roos may have green-tech agenda
Despite lack of experience, Obama's pick for U.S. ambassador spun as apt for 'stable' Japan

By ERIC JOHNSTON
Staff writer

OSAKA — John Roos, the lawyer President Barack Obama has picked as next U.S. ambassador to Japan, will likely emphasize closer public and private cooperation on developing clean and "green" technologies and take an interest in bilateral health care issues, U.S. sources close to him said Friday.

But while acknowledging the designated ambassador's wishes are likely to take a back seat to defense and regional security issues, especially given North Korea's recent actions, they also dismissed concerns over Roos' lack of Japan expertise.

The sources suggested such criticism was motivated partly by jealousy in certain quarters that Obama is appointing someone unknown rather than an established expert.

Roos, currently chief executive officer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Silicon Valley law firm, was a surprise choice for ambassador. The Californian has little Japan experience and accepted the position after Harvard professor Joseph Nye, a well-known Asian expert, and several others, including former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, reportedly declined.

"Roos has overseen and managed a global, technology-focused law firm since 2005," the White House said in a press statement announcing Roos had been tapped for the ambassador's post.

"Throughout his tenure, he helped lead the firm during the various waves of innovation in Silicon Valley, from the growth of software and communications to the Internet Age, the emergence of biotechnology, to the present focus on clean technology and renewable energy," the statement read.

"Obama has said he admires Japan's green technologies, especially its auto and consumer electronics industries. Roos' experience and interest in these areas makes him a natural fit to pursue new initiatives with Japan," said a Washington-based U.S. government official with experience in Japan, who spoke anonymously because Roos' appointment hasn't been confirmed by the Senate yet.

"The problem for many bureaucrats, politicians and mainstream media in Washington and Tokyo is that green technology and health care are areas they have little or no expertise in. They can talk all day about defense cooperation, finance and trade issues involving autos and agriculture, but not on green technology investments or health care initiatives," the official said.

"And they're afraid they'll be out of the loop."

Tobias Harris, who runs Observing Japan, a blog on Japanese politics, says the selection of someone who is not a prominent Washington insider is a sign the Obama administration sees Japan as a normal nation, free of the kind of problems that plague relations with countries like China.

"Roos' appointment should not be treated as Japan's being downgraded, but as Japan's not being a problem for Washington," he said.

"Japan, not being the source of major problems for the U.S., does not require a high-profile troubleshooter as ambassador," Harris said.

Still, with North Korea's recent nuclear test and missile launches, Roos is likely to find that traditional geopolitical concerns will be at the top of the agenda, although he may wish to speak to Japan at length on things like new hydrogen batteries.

"(Green technology and health care) will not replace bread and butter issues. Roos' number one task is reassuring Japan's elites that the U.S. will meet its obligations to come to Japan's defense," Harris said.

"That message ultimately has less to do with the messenger (the ambassador) than the messenger's persistence, and the extent to which the messenger has the backing of the administration," he said.

In preparation for his new post, Roos has been consulting academic experts at Stanford University's Asia Pacific Research Center, one of the United States's top centers for research on Japan and East Asia, but far away from more traditional think tanks and academic experts in Washington and New York.

While Roos personally has little Japan experience, the law firm he heads, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, has done business with several Japanese companies over the years, drawing up agreements involving Toshiba Corp., Sanyo Electric Co. and Japan Tobacco Inc.

Obama's selection of Roos could also turn out to be a wise political choice in a few months, after Japan holds its Lower House election. Roos is a graduate of Stanford University, where he also got his law degree and remains active as an adviser.

An election victory by the opposition's Democratic Party of Japan, currently predicted by many pundits, means Roos will likely deal with new prime minister and fellow Stanford alumnus Yukio Hatoyama, who received a doctoral degree in engineering from the university.

Some Japanese media originally reported that Nye, the clear preference of many Japanese officials, had accepted the offer of the ambassador's post.

news20090530jt2

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Output soars as jobs, spending, prices slide

(Compiled from AP, Kyodo) Japan's industrial production jumped at the fastest pace in 56 years in April, with predictions for further gains in May and June — a sign that manufacturers are recovering from the steepest recession since World War II.

But the pain is only getting worse for workers, families and the thousands of nonmanufacturers who employ 70 percent of the country. The jobless rate climbed to 5 percent — the highest in nearly six years — while household spending and consumer prices declined, the government said Friday.

Industrial output jumped 5.2 percent in April from the previous month, up for the second straight time. Makers of electric parts, chemicals and transport equipment posted particularly strong gains.

The result beat the 3.2 percent forecast in a Kyodo News survey and marked the biggest jump since March 1953, when it rose 7.9 percent.

Hit by an unprecedented slowdown in global demand late last year, manufacturers responded aggressively by slashing output and jobs to cut costs and trim stockpiles. Inventory levels fell 2.7 percent in April, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.

The outlook is bullish. Manufacturers expect production to soar 8.8 percent in May and 2.7 percent in June on brightening prospects for a recovery in global demand.

But the unemployment stats were miserable. The number of jobless rose by a record of 710,000, or 25.8 percent, to 3.46 million from the previous year. Some 1.14 million were laid off, marking a year-on-year surge of 530,000 — the largest jump ever, METI said.

This was reflected in the April job offers to job seekers ratio, which sank to a seasonally adjusted 0.46 from 0.52 the previous month, tying the record low from May-June 1999.

The number means there were only 46 jobs for every 100 people looking. The ratio was lower than the average of 0.49 projected by economists surveyed by Kyodo News and the 11th consecutive monthly drop.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Former stable master gets six years for young wrestler's hazing death
前親方、若い力士暴行致死で懲役七年の求刑

NAGOYA (Kyodo) The Nagoya District Court sentenced a former sumo stable master Friday to six years in prison for telling wrestlers at his stable to haze and beat a 17-year-old wrestler who died in the 2007 assault.

Presiding Judge Masaharu Ashizawa said that Junichi Yamamoto, 59, with his "immeasurable power" as stable master, ordered the two days of physical abuse that "grossly disrespected the victim's human dignity."

Yamamoto immediately appealed the ruling.

Three senior wrestlers at his stable who abused Takashi Saito, who went by the ring name Tokitaizan, received suspended prison terms and were dismissed by the Japan Sumo Association after their guilty verdicts were finalized.

The high-profile case has put the spotlight on questionable traditions in the sumo world, including the way new wrestlers are trained, prompting a rethink about its customs and traditions.

Prosecutors had sought a seven-year prison term for Yamamoto, who was also dismissed by the association, in October 2007.

The court accepted the prosecutors' contention that Yamamoto ordered the three wrestlers to attack Saito to punish him for trying to run away from the stable.

The judge also said a sparring bout that took place on the second day of the abuse "obviously deviated from the realm of normal practice."

Yamamoto's defense counsel tried to get a suspended term, claiming the senior wrestlers attacked Saito on their own initiative and that the sparring was a regular practice.

According to the ruling, Yamamoto hit Saito with a beer bottle during dinner on June 25, 2007, and told the three wrestlers to beat him with a wooden stick afterward.

Saito was smashed onto the ring and beaten with a metal bat by the wrestlers in a 30-minute sparring session the next day and died from shock from multiple trauma at a hospital.

Yamamoto, who was released from detention on bail of 8 million in March, about 13 months after his arrest, apologized to Saito's family during the trial but denied he ordered the assault.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Parts suppliers may get aid if GM fails, Nikai says

(The Associated Press) The government will consider helping out parts suppliers if they are seriously hurt by General Motors Corp.'s likely bankruptcy, trade minister Toshihiro Nikai said Friday.

Nikai is closely monitoring how domestic manufacturers may be affected if GM collapses and said the government "must consider measures" if there are any signs of serious trouble, according to a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official.

A person familiar with GM's plans has said it was "probable" that the Detroit-based automaker would seek bankruptcy protection on Monday. The person didn't want to be identified because the plans were still being discussed by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

GM's woes have been closely scrutinized in Japan, where it has business ties with more than 100 suppliers, many of them small companies vulnerable to cash shortages.

The recent news about GM has been received with relative calm even as executives acknowledge the possibility of a ripple effect hitting the industry and U.S. consumer sentiment.

Still, worries are simmering about some of the nation's smaller manufacturers, who may not be able to ride out the loss of GM business or handle their bad debts.

Some companies, including Aisin Seiki, have applied for a part of the U.S. Treasury Department's $5 billion support program for suppliers, but it's unclear whether they will receive any funds.

Nikai's comments appear aimed at allaying such fears by assuring the government will step in and help any cash-strapped manufacturers.

In the long run, a weakened GM is expected to be a growth opportunity for the country's automakers, which are strong at building smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles.

The Treasury has already loaned $19.4 billion to GM, which lost a whopping $6 billion in the first quarter, and will receive 72.5 percent of the new company's stock. In bankruptcy protection, GM is expected to close factories and cut jobs.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Unpaid postal insurance claims may total 400,000

(Kyodo News) There are likely about 400,000 cases of benefits not being paid to postal life insurance customers before postal privatization began in October 2007, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kunio Hatoyama said Friday.

The total is estimated at "between 300,000 and 400,000," Hatoyama told reporters after Japan Post Insurance Co. presented a report on the matter to the ministry.

Japan Post Insurance is examining some 13.01 million cases in which payouts should have been made by Japan Post, the state-run postal company that existed before privatization split it into four entities. Japan Post operated between April 2003 and September 2007.

Japan Post Insurance, one of the four entities, has so far found that 223,000 customers may have been short-changed, if payments related to claims made under policy riders are included, the report says.

The investigation is expected to find more failures before it is completed.

In addition, the amount of unpaid postal insurance benefits for reasons such as the absence of claims from policyholders totaled 292.1 billion as of the end of March.

Japan Post Insurance will start informing the policyholders concerned in July.

Life insurers in red
Earnings at the nation's top 10 life insurers plummeted in fiscal 2008 on losses caused by the global financial crisis, sending four of them into the red, earnings reports issued through Friday show.

Total losses linked to the global financial turmoil collectively amounted to 2.64 trillion, according to the reports.

The insurers that reported losses in 2008 were Mitsui Life Insurance Co., Daido Life Insurance Co., Taiyo Life Insurance Co. and Asahi Mutual Life Insurance Co.

Five others, including top insurer Nippon Life Insurance Co., reported net profits, but only because they tapped internal reserves to compensate for the losses.

Others that evaded losses in that manner were Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co., Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co., Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. and Sony Life Insurance Co.

The only insurer that effectively secured a profit was Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co.

On the basis of core operating profit — a key gauge of an insurer's profitability — Mitsui and Daido had losses and seven others suffered sharp profit declines. Sony Life was the only one that saw core operating profit rise.

Given the deterioration in earnings, Asahi and Mitsui will cancel dividend payments to policyholders for the first time in four years. Dai-ichi and Fukoku will reduce dividends.

Most of the 10 insurers saw their solvency margin ratios, a key indicator of their ability to pay out on policyholders' claims, fall from the previous year. But they still maintained solvency margin ratios well above the 200 percent line, suggesting they are financially sound.

news20090530jt3

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
JAPAN LITE
Islands of and for the old

By AMY CHAVEZ

"Rikimatsu-san, I'm cleaning the fishing boat today," I tell the old man as he passes in front of my house on the port. I am referring to the small fishing boat with a heap of green seaweed and shellfish sticking to the bottom of it — stuff you'd usually find on a Japanese dinner plate. But at least I know my boat will never go hungry.

I point out to him my intentions today because I am a little embarrassed that I haven't cleaned my boat for a while. I am sure he has noticed the growth of seaweed attached to the bottom, peeking out from underneath as if a dozen fish were doing rhythmic gymnastics with green ribbons.

"You never use that boat," he said. "Why don't you get rid of it?"

"But of course we use it," I said, thinking he must be joking.

Rikimatsu-san is one of my favorite old guys on the island. He is 80 years old now and he gave me the fishing boat, the Fujimaru (named after his wife), five years ago. He taught me how to fish for mamakari, aji, ayu, sardines and tachiuo. He still has a fishing boat of his own, but he rarely uses it. His sight has gone bad and he can't hear very well anymore. But that's not why he doesn't go out fishing. His wife won't let him.

"You have so many boats that just sit around here," he complains.

He's partly right. It's a bit cold to use the boats in the winter, so we use the ferry. For three to four months of the year none of our boats get used.

"And that sailing boat," he says, gesturing to the docks where it is tied up among some derelict fishing boats.

"But we have sailing reservations every day till July!" I protest. The sailing season is a very busy time for us.

"And that fishing boat," he says, pointing to our bigger 6.3-meter boat.

"We just went to Awashima and back on that boat last weekend."

"You never use your boats. You ought to get rid of them," he says, waving his hand in disgust. He mounts his bicycle and rides away.

I was dismayed. For a few seconds anyway. Welcome to senility!

And the island seems to be going through quite a bout of it recently. Last autumn, one of the old people complained that the neighbor, a classical pianist, played her piano too loud. Another person brought up the fact that my neighbor's potted flower garden wasn't actually on her own property but was flowing over into a national park, so she should remove the garden. So, she did.

Everyone is getting older. And everyone is going crazy.

With Japan having one of the highest aging populations in the world, the Inland Sea islands are turning into the world's largest chain of old folks' homes. On our island of 664 people, most of whom are over 60 years old, the island doctor prescribes talking to the sea and convening with the tides for most ailments.

Japanese people often move back home to take care of their aging parents, but no one comes back to the islands. The elderly must fend for themselves. And most of them do it pretty well.

It has occurred to me that the islands may be a modern form of obasute-yama, the mountains of Japanese folklore where old people were taken to "live out" their dying days alone with nature. Perhaps the islands have become obasute-shima. But I think most old people would be happy to come here: fresh seafood every day, electric obaa-chan carts, cool sea breezes and beautiful sunsets.

Makes you want to age a little faster, doesn't it?

Perhaps we should take out the Shiraishi lighthouse and instead erect a Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your retirees huddled in nursing homes. . ."

These people may be old, they may be crazy, but they'll never give up their island. This is the place that allows them to continue living on their own.

The other day an old woman wandered into the ferry port office. She had lost her way home. The ferry port manager called her by name, came out of his office to calm her down, then took her by the arm and walked her home.

I feel glad that these older people live on a small island where they can still get by on their own. Because even if they can't fend for themselves, there's always someone else who can fend for them.


[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Saturday, May 30, 2009
WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
A look at the outside and the in

By THOMAS DILLON

"Honne and tatemae" are terms that many feel are linchpinned to the Japanese psyche.

The first — honne — refers to the intimate truth of the soul, one's uttermost honest feelings, the rough skin under all the powder and rouge.

The second — tatemae — is the face one shows to the world. That toothy grin that perhaps hides one's desire to bite. Analogous to the aluminum siding that helps the house gleam on the surface, while the inside bursts with termites.

One wrinkle to these terms is that many Japanese feel that theirs is the only culture to be so Jekyll-and-Hyde-ish.

Some Japanese can be goofy that way. Like those who believe Japan is the only land with four seasons. Or those that claim the Japanese language is so tough that not even Japanese can speak it well. A claim they always communicate in sparkling Japanese.

But every culture has honne and tatemae. It's as human as flatulence. Which could mean that some people are more human than others.

I, for example, have a lot of . . . honne and tatemae. It waltzes through my life like a New York debutant, smiling while her partner tromps upon her foot. Tatemae cancels out the honne. At least from the outside.

But oh if only someone could peek on the inside . . .

I stand picking at stale munchies as the only foreigner at the party, when I notice this troll of a fellow edging my way and fidgeting with his plate. I catch the body language at once. He's going to trap me in the corner and practice his English.

So I gaze the other way and pray for rescue. Or that perhaps some construction crane will topple in the wind and rip the building in half. Maybe if I focus my willpower, the wind will blow and a crane will fall and this man will be sucked into the chasm. Or I will. Anything to get away. Maybe . . .

Yes? Oh, how do you do? Nice to meet you. Why, yes, it's a splendid party. Just delightful. I agree. Have you tried the rice crackers? Superb, aren't they? Good napkins too. Oh, no, I don't mind. Not at all. And your English sounds quite fluent to me. As clear as crystal.

But if the letter "L" had life, you'd be wanted for murder. And are those vowels in your mouth? Or marbles? I've heard better sounds from forks jammed in the disposal. Yet I enjoy the way you spit when you speak. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine I am on a distant beach being sprayed by surf. And not caught in this corner.

My hometown? Chicago, kind of. Oh yes, that's right. Chicago was home to Al Capone. You know well. No, I never met him. Not once. Unfortunately. That's been a while ago. Oh? You have been to Vancouver? For 10 days? No wonder you speak English so well.

And it's a wonder the Canadians let you escape. They are sensitive people and don't care to see any language butchered, let alone one of their own. If you'd been there any longer, I am sure they would have fed you to the bears. Bears are not sensitive, you see. They will eat anyone. Even someone with a necktie as bright as yours.

Oh, you teach English. I should have guessed. At your home. To small children. It sounds fascinating. Well . . . I am busy. But sure. Sometime, if it worked out, I'd enjoy meeting your students. I bet they're cute. And, yes, I'd love to speak with them and let them practice.

Just about as much as I'd love to take a power drill to my knee. I can't believe people pay you money to teach. Are you sure the money's real? Maybe the entire neighborhood is playing you for a joke. I'd check if I were you.

What? You have to go? So soon? Oh, too bad! I'll just have to eat all this great food myself. Uh, sorry, I don't have a name card. But thanks for yours. I'll be sure to get in touch. I'm glad we met. It was nice talking to you.

What luck! I was just about to throw myself on my chopsticks. I'll just drop h is card on the table. Who knows? Maybe someone will eat it. It looks better than the crackers. Probably is too. Now, how to get out of here?

Oh, you're back! You misread your wristwatch! Ha, ha. Yes, I do that all the time. You have another hour? Wonderful. No, wait! I'll get you more crackers myself. You just stay here. No, no. It's my pleasure. Honest. . . .

Or as honest as my tatemae will allow.

My honne, on the other hand, hopes the only thing I have to kill is an hour.