Friday, December 9, 2011
Leaders Renew Vows of Support for Afghanistan
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The transition timetable, which President Hamid Karzai outlined last year, is nonbinding and essentially unenforceable, and much depends on how and when responsibilities will be transferred. The conference’s final statement stopped short of any firm commitment to the timetable, instead expressing “support for the president of Afghanistan’s objective.”
The most concrete commitment was a promise to increase to 50 percent the proportion of international development funds to be disbursed through Afghanistan’s own budgeting process, a change to be made over the next two years and a huge shift from the current situation. Now, many donor countries send money directly to individual ministries or to nongovernmental organizations, undercutting the government’s ability to plan how to use the funds. Critics of the move pointed out that most Afghan ministries had proved unable to spend the money they already got.
Mr. Karzai promised to make concrete efforts to reduce corruption and find a way to end the fighting in his country, echoing pledges in the past. He painted a picture of a country that could flourish, lifting its “people from poverty to prosperity and from insecurity to stability.”
“Our vision is to be the peaceful meeting place of civilizations,” he said in an address. “Our location in the center of the new Silk Road makes us a convergence point of regional and global economic interests.”
Whether Afghanistan can get there without an enormous infusion of further foreign aid and the presence of a significant number of foreign troops seems doubtful — at least for the next few years. That point was underscored by the vague language around the timeline for handing over security responsibility.
The security transition timetable, though not the main focus of this meeting, was perhaps the most significant element for NATO leaders, most of whom will face election challenges well before 2014. The Western European democracies with the most troops in the country — Britain, France and Germany — are under great domestic pressure to reduce their presence, while the United States, which has by far the heaviest military presence, is hewing to a “conditions based” approach that allows its forces to slow any drawdowns in areas where the insurgency appears more tenacious or where Afghan troops and the police appear to have inadequate capabilities.
But for all players, shifting security to Afghan control is the basis of the exit plan.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged the unpopularity of the war in remarks to foreign leaders.
“We know the road ahead will not be easy,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Citizens of many nations represented here, including my own, wonder whether success is even possible — and if so, whether we all have the commitment to achieve it.”
But, she said, the Afghans had presented the most detailed plans yet for how to hand off control to Afghan security forces.
“Today was a real turning point,” Mrs. Clinton said.
The overall significance of the conference was hard to gauge because much of the final communiqué was a list of boards and commissions to be created, laws to be drafted and enforced, and schedules to be fleshed out. The same themes, if not always the exact pledges, have been sounded many times before by Mr. Karzai’s government, to little effect.
Mr. Karzai spoke only briefly about the reintegration of the Taliban and reconciliation with them, although it is a major effort of his government and of considerable concern to many Afghans and to foreign troops who are fighting here. The sparse commentary seemed to signal that months of Afghan government consultations, done internally and with foreign allies, had not produced consensus on exactly how to proceed.
The criticism of the plan to send more money through the budget process was pointed.
“The government cannot even spend its own annual government budget,” said Mohammed Younus Fakoor, a political analyst who commented on the independent television network Tolo. “How will they be able to spend more of the donors’ money?”
The concerns of women were a special focus for Mrs. Clinton, who has made women’s rights, especially in the developing world, a recurring theme. She met with leaders among Afghan women before the conference began to discuss their concerns that the peace effort with the Taliban would lead to renewed disenfranchisement for many women.
Fouzia Kofi, a former deputy speaker in the Afghan Parliament, said she was concerned by recent signals from Mr. Karzai’s government. If the reconciliation process is mishandled, she warned, it could “take the country back hundreds of years.”
Arezo Qani, who works with disadvantaged women in northern Afghanistan, expressed fears that rearming local militias, something the United States has pushed, would also threaten women. And she said women should be consulted in the drafting of new laws.
Mrs. Clinton assured them that protecting women’s rights was a “personal commitment of mine.” While she said the United States was open to an Afghan-led reconciliation, she added that “it can’t come at the cost of women’s lives.”
Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting.
In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger
On Gawker’s “big board,” reporters can check the most-viewed articles, a list updated hourly.
It was April Fools’ Day last year, and Politico’s top two editors sent an e-mail message to their staff advising of a new 5 a.m. start time for all reporters.
“These pre-sunrise hours are often the best time to reach top officials or their aides,” the editors wrote, adding that reporters should try to carve out personal time “if you need it,” in the midafternoon when Internet traffic slows down.
But rather than laugh, more than a few reporters stared at the e-mail message in a panicked state of disbelief.
“There were several people who didn’t think it was a joke. One girl actually cried,” said Anne Schroeder Mullins, who wrote for Politico until May, when she left to start her own public relations firm. “I definitely had people coming up to me asking me if it was true.”
Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.
Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.
The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all display a “most viewed” list on their home pages. Some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles.
Once only wire-service journalists had their output measured this way. And in a media environment crowded with virtual content farms where no detail is too small to report as long as it was reported there first, Politico stands out for its frenetic pace or, in the euphemism preferred by its editors, “high metabolism.”
The top editors, who rise as early as 4:30 a.m., expect such volume and speed from their reporters because they believe Politico’s very existence depends, in large part, on how quickly it can tell readers something, anything they did not know.
“At a paper, your only real stress point is in the evening when you’re actually sitting there on deadline, trying to file,” said Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor, in an interview from the publication’s offices just across the Potomac River from downtown Washington.
“Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out.” (Not all reporters are expected to be on their game by dawn, Mr. VandeHei added, noting that many work a traditional 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. newspaper day.)
At Gawker Media’s offices in Manhattan, a flat-screen television mounted on the wall displays the 10 most-viewed articles across all Gawker’s Web sites. The author’s last name, along with the number of page views that hour and over all are prominently shown in real time on the screen, which Gawker has named the “big board.”
“Sometimes one sees writers just standing before it, like early hominids in front of a monolith,” said Nick Denton, Gawker Media’s founder. Mr. Denton said not all writers have warmed to the concept. “But the best exclusives do get rewarded,” he added, noting that bonuses for writers are calculated in part based on page views.
The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at digital news organizations. Departures at Politico lately have been particularly high, with roughly a dozen reporters leaving in the first half of the year — a big number for a newsroom that has only about 70 reporters and editors. At Gawker, it is not uncommon for editors to stay on the job for just a year.
Physically exhausting assembly-line jobs these are not. But the workloads for many young journalists are heavy enough that signs of strain are evident.
“When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who’s been working for a decade, not a couple of years,” said Duy Linh Tu, coordinator of the digital media program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. “I worry about burnout.”
In Washington, the news cycle promises to become even more frenzied as outlets like The Huffington Post expand their operations there. The Atlantic Media Company, which publishes the National Journal and The Atlantic, plans to hire 30 new journalists for a new venture set to open this fall that will publish breaking news and analysis online.
At Politico, Mr. VandeHei, who has been known to pace between rows of reporters’ desks asking who has broken news lately, said editors experimented with monitoring how many articles reporters were writing, but decided that raw numbers did not give a full picture of a reporter’s performance.
A City Outsources Everything. Sky Doesn’t Fall.
“I’m walking along at night carrying an overstuffed bag,” he said, describing two of the incidents. “I look suspicious. This shows the sheriff’s department is doing its job.”
Chalk up another Maywood resident who approves of this city’s unusual experience in municipal governing. City officials last month fired all of Maywood’s employees and outsourced their jobs.
While many communities are fearfully contemplating extensive cuts, Maywood says it is the first city in the nation in the current downturn to take an ax to everyone.
The school crossing guards were let go. Parking enforcement was contracted out, City Hall workers dismissed, street maintenance workers made redundant. The public safety duties of the Police Department were handed over to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
At first, people in this poor, long-troubled and heavily Hispanic city southeast of Los Angeles braced for anarchy.
Senior citizens were afraid they would be assaulted as they walked down the street. Parents worried the parks would be shut and their children would have nowhere to safely play. Landlords said their tenants had begun suggesting that without city-run services they would no longer feel obliged to pay rent.
The apocalypse never arrived. In fact, it seems this city was so bad at being a city that outsourcing — so far, at least — is being viewed as an act of municipal genius.
“We don’t want to be the model for other cities to lay off their employees,” said Magdalena Prado, a spokeswoman for the city who works on contract. “But our residents have been somewhat pleased.”
That includes Mayor Ana Rosa Rizo, who was gratified to see her husband get a parking ticket on July 1, hours after the Police Department had been disbanded. The ticket was issued by enforcement clerks for the neighboring city of Bell, which is being paid about $50,000 a month by Maywood to perform various services.
The reaction is all the more remarkable because this is not a feel-good city. City Council hearings run hot, council members face repeated recall efforts and city officials fight in public. “You single-handedly destroyed the city,” the city treasurer told the City Council at its most recent meeting.
Four years ago, in what was probably the high-water mark of acrimony in Maywood, a deputy city clerk was arrested and accused of soliciting a hit man to kill a city councilman. The deputy clerk, Hector Duarte, was concerned that his salary might be reduced or his job eliminated during a previous round of bad fiscal times; he was sentenced to a year in jail and six months of anger management counseling.
This time, the councilman, Felipe Aguirre, has received no threats and has seen remarkably little anger. “This is a very bad economy,” said Mr. Aguirre, who like the mayor and fellow council members receives a stipend from the city of $347 every two weeks. Even if city employees lose their benefits, he said, “very good workers are still going to hang around.”
Jose B. Garcia, an assistant city planner, will now be working on contract. “I still have a job,” he said. “In that sense, I can’t complain too much.”
Maywood, which covers slightly more than one square mile, is one of the most densely populated cities in the country. The official population of 30,000 is believed to considerably understate the actual total of about 50,000.
It has some of the ills that plague other cities. Property taxes, a primary source of revenue, have declined to $900,000 from $1.2 million in 2007. Sales taxes have also dropped. But Maywood’s biggest problem by far has been its police department.
Islamist websites: McChrystal fired because Afghan war is lost
Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousif Ahmadi said in one statement President Barack Obama wanted to save face by firing Gen. Stanley McChrystal and bringing in Gen. David Petraeus. McChrystal was relieved of duty -- although he technically resigned -- Wednesday after he and his staff made comments in a Rolling Stone magazine article that appear to mock top civilian officials, including the vice president.
"History is evident of more powerful and experienced generals than General McChrystal and empires mightier than the United States of America being surrendered and bowed down before the Afghans," Ahmadi said, according to the website statement.
Ahmadi said McChrystal's strategy of increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan had been futile and led to the change in commanders. The Taliban spokesman said the change in command is useless because Petraeus, the new Afghan commander, is weak.
"Indeed, he has got no (more) special qualities than General McChrystal had," Ahmadi said in his statement.
In another statement, a group calling itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said Petraeus is mentally worn out because of the lengthy war, which began in October 2001.
"Nine years of military actions, different strategies and back-breaking monetary and life damages at the hands of mujahedeen have left the crusaders totally in distress," the statement said.
Last week, when Petraeus briefly fainted at a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, dehydration was cited as the cause. But the website said it was a sign that Petraeus knows the war in Afghanistan is lost.
"General Petraeus, being witness to the incidents in Afghanistan is the only person who realizes the gravity of (the) situation and described this situation well by falling unconscious," the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said.
"Through this action he gave the answer to many questions to which the members of committee were eager to listen. They should learn from this answer by General Petraeus and start working for the well being of their masses."
Ahmadi, in his statement, said Petraeus has "left a big question mark on his physical and mental health."
India pledges new aid for victims of Bhopal gas leak
The country's Cabinet has sanctioned about $270 million as part of plans to compensate the victims and clean up what is now a defunct plant of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) in the central city of Bhopal, authorities said.
Information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni told reporters Thursday that the new financial assistance would be delivered to more than 45,000 people deemed severely hit by the leak of poisonous gas from the pesticide factory 26 years ago.
Deaths, disabilities, cancer and total renal failures from the exposure will be covered under the package, she said.
Nearly 4,000 people died in the immediate aftermath of the escape of methyl isocyanate, a chemical used to produce pesticides, from the company's plant in Bhopal in December 1984. More than 10,000 other deaths have been blamed on related illnesses, with adverse health effects reported in hundreds of thousands of survivors.
Many of them struggle with ailments including shortness of breath, cancer, near-blindness, fatigue and heart problems.
Soni's announcement came barely two weeks after a court in Bhopal handed down a two-year sentence to seven Indian executives of the local subsidiary of the US-based Union Carbide Corp. (UCC)
The ruling sparked an outcry in India, with both government and judiciary coming under heavy criticism for their handling of what has been regarded as one of the world's worst industrial disasters.
Originally, the Indian defendants were tried on the count of culpable homicide. After an appeal, the country's supreme court downgraded the charges to death by negligence in 1996. Soni said the top court would now be petitioned again to revisit its 1996 scrapping of tougher charges.
As advised by a ministerial panel this week, India will also push the United States to extradite Warren Anderson, the former head of Union Carbide Corp., she said.
Anderson has been declared a fugitive from the Bhopal indictment in India, with an arrest warrant out for him.
Indian authorities, officials say, will use new evidence in support of the extradition plea: testimonies that the parent company was aware of what investigators believe were defects in its Bhopal plant.
India's federal police first requested that the United States extradite Anderson in 1993.
"However, this request remains unexecuted," the Central Bureau of Investigation noted in its statement on June 7, the day of the Bhopal ruling.
Currently, India has extradition pacts with 31 countries, including the United States.
Investigators have blamed the Bhopal tragedy on the maintenance and design of the site.
Union Carbide, however, said the leak was an act of sabotage by an employee who it said had tampered with the gas tank.
The company, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., paid a $470 million settlement to India in 1989.
But the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal said survivors had so far received an average of only $500 each in compensation.
Union Carbide says neither the parent company nor its officials are subject to the jurisdiction of Indian courts.
Sixteen years after the leak, Union Carbide became part of the Dow Chemical Corp. Union Carbide claims the issue has been resolved and Dow has no responsibility for the leak.
In her briefing, however, Soni said the government would pursue courts dealing with liability litigations.
"Appropriate applications may be filed before the courts concerned and request the courts ... to expeditiously decide the question of liability of the Dow Chemical company and/or any other successor to UCC, UCIL," she said.
Also, India's Cabinet recommended the country's attorney general examine the possibility of approaching the top court again for reconsideration of the 1989 settlement of $470 million.
Obama arrives in Canada for economic summit
Obama, who was greeted in Toronto by America's ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, is set to meet first with his counterparts in the G-8 nations, followed a broader G-20 summit over the weekend.
The meetings are taking place against a backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, with demands for more government stimulus balanced against fears of runaway deficits. At home, the Obama administration is struggling to push a new economic relief package through an increasingly skittish, debt-wary Congress. Overseas -- particularly in Europe -- leaders are increasingly being forced to enact unpopular fiscal austerity measures.
Also hovering over this weekend's meetings is the specter of protests and violence, which have plagued other recent meetings of world economic leaders.
Friday morning, before departing the White House, Obama referred to agreements reached in the first two G-20 summits he attended and added, "This weekend in Toronto, I hope we can build on this progress by coordinating our efforts to promote economic growth, to pursue financial reform, and to strengthen the global economy.
"We need to act in concert for a simple reason: This (recent economic) crisis proved and events continue to affirm that our national economies are inextricably linked -- and just as economic turmoil in one place can quickly spread to another, safeguards in each of our nations can help protect all nations."
Obama fears that a rollback too soon from government stimulus packages would send the world back into recession. The European Union, on the other hand, has sent a letter to all G-20 leaders asking for substantial budget cuts to come no later than 2011.
Also high on the agenda will be reforms to global banking regulations. Although all G-20 nations have pledged banking reforms, the reforms being considered in Europe and North America are diverging. Britain, France and Germany are calling for taxes on banks to pay down deficits and cushion future financial shocks. The U.S. government wants to discourage additional taxes, which officials fear would stunt consumer demand.
The weekend's sessions will offer a first appearance on the world stage for British Prime Minister David Cameron and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Both leaders arrived in Toronto on Thursday.
The G-8 meeting opens Friday at Deerhurst Resort in the Muskoka region of Ontario. The G-20 meeting opens Saturday in Toronto.
Why smartphone buyers should wait
Given the relative likelihood of such launch jitters, should savvy consumers wait a few months before plunking down on the latest "it" phone?
Analysts say the buy-now or buy-later decision boils down to the importance of having a phone that works properly from minute one, but in general it's better to wait a few weeks or even months while hardware kinks — the hardest type of fix — are sorted out in the manufacturing process.
"Really, it’s a personal preference," said Tina Teng, a senior analyst for wireless communications at tech firm iSuppli. "If you don’t want to deal with the hassle [of early problems], then maybe wait a few months."
Michael Morgan, a mobile devices industry analyst for ABI Research, agreed. "If you are extremely dependent on being in contact at all times, maybe you want to wait a bit [before buying a new phone]," Morgan said.
Inevitable errors
Manufacturing flaws are a fact of life, Morgan noted: "Let's face it, I don’t think there is a product on Earth, from drugs to tech devices to cars, that doesn't occasionally have a glitch or two coming off of the assembly line."
Quality control and technical issues are nothing new for smartphones when they first hit the market. Once confirmed, manufacturers aim to iron out these wrinkles as soon as possible so a new product is not tainted. For example, HTC announced last week a software fix for its new EVO 4G, which is suffering from poor touch screen sensitivity.
Even though the iPhone 4 is a fourth-generation device, it underwent the biggest redesign in the history of the line, both on the outside and the inside and its operating system.
"The iPhone 4 has new hardware and new software, so there are two ways for things to go wrong," said Morgan.
So far, the phone's issues appear hardware-related, which as a class are more difficult to solve because they usually require sending the phone back for repairs or swapping it with a replacement.
In general, a software problem does not necessitate a product return, noted iSuppli's Teng. A software fix or "patch" is typically created by the manufacturer and then made available for download right on the phone.
Testing, testing
Even if snafus are easy to resolve, companies naturally wish to avoid them at all costs.
Before a new-fangled product ever gets into the hands of customers, tech companies thoroughly attempt to vet it in-house for functionality and durability.
One common practice is so-called dogfooding, Morgan said, which is "when an engineer has to walk around and live with the device he made," or eat his own dog food, as the expression goes.
Apple certainly seems to dogfood aplenty, as evidenced by the prototype iPhone 4 accidentally abandoned by an employee that caused quite a stir back in April.
Though this real-life testing process will often reveal some pesky design flaws, Morgan said, almost no amount of dogfooding can expose all the potential trouble spots.
During pre-release testing, "on the software side, there are always some bugs that haven’t been discovered," said iSuppli's Teng.
The Palm Pre that came out a year ago is one such phone that has had numerous bug issues, Teng noted.
Into the wild
For a popular smartphone to really earn its stripes, it must satisfy millions of customers in the hyper-competitive real world marketplace.
In the case of the iPhone 4, having a plugged-in, obsessed fan base such as Apple's can be a blessing for someone undecided about when to purchase the phone.
With hundreds of thousands of new iPhones making the rounds right out of the gate, any and all flaws, however minor, in these first few batches tend to get seized upon.
The yellow discolorations that have been widely reported on iPhone 4 screens on the device's first day out might be an example. After speculation on Apple-centric Web site forums, Apple support technicians have now reportedly confirmed over the phone to customers that this yellow is from a screen bonding chemical agent. The agent apparently has not had time to fully evaporate just yet because Apple rushed the product from the factory per strong demand.
As a company that must back its products, Apple is presented with the challenge of evaluating reams of such user-generated claims of subpar product performance or manufacturing defects. "It gets real tricky ... separating the wheat from the chaff ... [when you're a] company selling millions of handsets," Morgan said.
Complicating the picture is that buyers can have a sort of "tech hypochondria," in which they think something is wrong with their device, having heard or seen such claims, when in fact the device is working just fine.
For the patient consumer, however, this sort of scouring by the early adopters can be great for honing future versions of a desired device.
"You want to see the glitches and wait for [companies] to fix them before you buy it," Morgan told TechNewsDaily. "Once things are discovered, [companies] do their damnedest to fix it and make it better right away."
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