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From the Los Angeles Times

Mexico catches a suspected leader of Beltran Leyva drug cartel

Sergio Villarreal Barragan's capture is the fourth major blow to drug cartels by Mexico's government in the past year.

From the Associated Press

September 12, 2010

MEXICO CITY

Mexican marines captured Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a presumed leader of the embattled Beltran Leyva cartel who appears on a list of the country's most-wanted fugitives, in a raid Sunday in the central state of Puebla, the government said.

The alleged capo known as "El Grande" did not put up any resistance when he was arrested along with two accomplices, a navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy told The Associated Press. The President's Office later issued a brief statement confirming the arrest took place in Puebla, capital of the state of the same name.

Villarreal's capture is the fourth major blow delivered to drug cartels by Mexico's government in the past year. First came the death of Arturo Beltran Leyva on Dec. 16, 2009. Then soldiers killed the Sinaloa cartel's No. 3 capo, Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, on July 29. And on Aug. 30 federal police announced the capture Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "La Barbie." The two men are not related.

Villarreal, "El Grande," appears on a 2009 Attorney General's Office list of Mexico's most-wanted drug traffickers, with a reward of just over $2 million offered for his capture.

He is listed as one of the remaining leaders of the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose top capo, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a raid by marines outside Mexico City.

Villarreal's capture comes about two weeks after the arrest of Valdez Villarreal, another alleged capo linked to the Beltran Leyvas.

The once-powerful Beltran Leyva cartel split following the death of Arturo -- known as the "Boss of Bosses" -- which launched a brutal war for control of the gang, involving mass executions and beheadings in once-peaceful parts of central Mexico. The fight pitted brother Hector Beltran Leyva and Villarreal against a faction led by "La Barbie." Hector Beltran Leyva remains at large.

The Beltran Leyva brothers once formed a part of the Sinaloa cartel, but broke away following a dispute. An indication of the problems facing the cartel is that three of the four main blows dealt to drug gangs in the past year involve Beltran Leyva leaders or operatives.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against the cartels soon after taking office.

In the central state of Morelos, police discovered nine bodies in clandestine graves Saturday in the same area where four more were recently found. The Public Safety Department said in a statement that all 13 victims were believed to have been killed on the orders of "La Barbie" in his battle for control of the cartel.

On Sunday, the military announced that it filed charges against four troops for the Sept. 5 shooting deaths of a man and his 15-year-old son along the highway linking the northern city of Monterrey to Laredo, Texas.

Authorities have said soldiers opened fire on the family vehicle when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, though relatives who were also in the car say they were shot at after they passed a military convoy.

The mother and wife of the two victims was also wounded in the shooting.

A captain, a corporal and two infantrymen are in custody in military prison and have been charged with homicide, the Defense Department said in a statement.

Mexico's military was already under scrutiny for this year's killings of two brothers, ages 5 and 9, on a highway in Tamaulipas, a state bordering Nuevo Leon.

The National Human Rights Commission has accused soldiers of shooting the children and altering the scene to try to pin the deaths on drug cartel gunmen.

The army denies the allegations and says the boys were killed in the crossfire of a shootout between soldiers and suspected traffickers.

The scandal renewed demands from activists that civilian authorities, not the army, investigate human rights cases involving the military.

More recently, soldiers killed a U.S. citizen Aug. 22 outside the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco.

In a statement to police, an army lieutenant claimed that Joseph Proctor, who had lived Mexico for several years, shot first at the military convoy on a highway between Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

The Defense Department says it is investigating the claim, which Proctor's father, William Proctor, says he found hard to believe.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-mexico-drug-lord-20100913,0,350771,print.story

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Al Qaeda in Iraq rises again

The militant group exploits a political vacuum in Baghdad and anger among minority Sunni Arabs to regain control in some areas.

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times

September 13, 2010

Reporting from Jarf Sakhr, Iraq

Sheik Sabah Janabi wears a painful-looking metal brace on his left hand, its rods pressing into the puffy flesh like the spring on a mousetrap. He fumbles a Marlboro from a pack with his good hand, sucks in the smoke and frowns.

In this farming town that was a center of extremism when Iraq fell into its nihilistic civil war, Janabi sits in a darkened room, his white shirt half tucked in and his blue tie slightly askew. He talks about how gunmen tried to kill him three months ago and describes himself as a leader under siege.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is back from the dead.

Once vanquished by Janabi and other Sunni Arab fighters who joined the U.S.-backed Awakening movement, the Islamic militant group is carving out new sanctuaries here in the farmlands south of Baghdad, in the deserts to the west and in the mountains to the east.

Almost weekly, suicide bombers wage war in the Iraqi capital. Tribal leaders, local officials and some U.S. officers worry that Al Qaeda in Iraq has successfully exploited the country's six-month political vacuum and anger over arrests of Awakening members in Sunni areas to establish its new foothold.

"We went a lengthy time without huge car bombs, and suddenly we are getting them," a senior U.S. officer said. "Without good support for the Awakening, Qaeda is starting to morph back into areas."

Although Al Qaeda in Iraq is nowhere near its level of power in 2005 and 2006, when it controlled large swaths of territory in Baghdad and other cities, its ability to once more establish havens is an ominous sign that could point to the possible renewal of the country's sectarian war if the political void persists and communal resentments are not addressed.

The disenchantment of Iraq's minority Sunnis, who benefited under President Saddam Hussein and provided the ballast for the insurgency after U.S.-led forces ousted him in 2003, is ripe for exploitation.

"It's still self-defense and survival," the U.S. officer said. "The American military isn't on the scene. The Iraqi security forces are still not trusted in most areas, and the government of Iraq is absent. It doesn't mean they are joining Qaeda, but it means that some are not acting against Qaeda so Qaeda doesn't do anything against their families."

Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi said security forces were aware of the return of Al Qaeda in Iraq to Diyala and Anbar provinces and south of Baghdad. But he insisted that his commanders were on top of the situation.

"We have to recognize that we are dealing with the third generation of Al Qaeda that is more advanced, so we have to deal with this," Obeidi said. "There are definite signs of regeneration."

In western Iraq's Anbar province, where Al Qaeda in Iraq was dealt a knockout blow in 2007, security officials, prominent sheiks and former insurgents warn that the group, along with Hussein's Baath Party, has infiltrated the police force and has sleeper cells in command positions. Some of them speak of Al Qaeda's ability to move freely and potentially to overrun at least two cities for several hours.

In Diyala, to the north and east of Baghdad, areas have been marred by car bombings and several beheadings, including one of a Sunni cleric. Two weeks ago, Al Qaeda fighters killed eight Awakening members and then paraded and planted a black flag in the town of Sharaban. The group is now seen as having loose control in some of the province's mountains and has a substantial presence in the suburbs around its capital, Baqubah.

Al Qaeda in Iraq's rekindled influence can be traced back a year in Jarf Sakhr and other places, after the Shiite-led Iraqi government finished taking over the Awakening program nationwide in the spring of 2009. Soon army raids intensified in Sunni communities and Awakening salaries were often paid late. Progress on incorporating Awakening members into the security forces was tepid at best. The ranks of the paramilitary group were diminished, and Al Qaeda in Iraq used the opening to reassert itself.

"Villagers and simple people go to those people they are afraid of. They are terrified of Qaeda," said a former insurgent leader, who asked not to be identified for security reasons. "They are always going with the one who is strongest."

Two years ago, Sheik Janabi was mighty and Al Qaeda was weak. He claimed the loyalty of hundreds of men. Now his world is crumbling.

The players who put him on his pedestal have faded away: The Americans are mostly gone, and his backers from insurgent groups that fought Al Qaeda have left or been severely weakened. Some locals resent him and the power he amassed.

He has little to show for his tribesmen. Electricity is sparse; there are no hospitals and no jobs. Some have defected to Al Qaeda for money, others out of fear, frustration with Janabi or hatred of the government.

Two of his brothers have been killed. Janabi nearly met the same fate.

One morning in June, he left his farm in a white truck, his bodyguards traveling in a second car. Janabi was talking on his phone when a burst of gunfire raked his car and smashed out the back window. Bullets grazed his forehead and ripped his hand.

Some of his men fired back madly and he was raced to a hospital, where they wanted to amputate his finger. He refused and chose to go to Jordan for surgery.

Sitting in his office decorated with a rumpled Iraqi flag and pictures of U.S. Gens. David H. Petraeus and Ray T. Odierno, Janabi says that one of Al Qaeda's leaders here is a rival member of his tribe, a man called Mohammed Awad. He and his colleagues call Awad "a man of no value" before he rose to his position in Al Qaeda. They dismiss him as an "illiterate" and lesser member of the tribe who was attracted to crime before he heeded an Islamic fundamentalist call.

The rift speaks to the tribal conflicts that Al Qaeda has manipulated to worm its way back into rural districts. Awad now holds sway in the countryside where Janabi lives; at night, Al Qaeda followers wander freely. Roads toward Ramadi and along the Euphrates River are treacherous by late afternoon.

Men stop by Janabi's office and they talk more about Al Qaeda. Janabi says at least 100 Awakening members are now loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq. He brags that with government support he could defeat the group in a month.

"I can't leave the field to these killers," he growls. "We sweated blood. I can't give up."

But his strut masks an anxiousness, apparent in the bags under his eyes and his occasionally dejected stares. He acknowledges that he could very well leave Iraq soon.

"Sabah can't be tough with Qaeda or they will kill him," said one prominent resident here, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "He is weak and trying to survive."

Janabi's relationship with officials in Baghdad remains tense. Zuhair Chalabi, in charge of the government's Awakening file, calls Janabi a Baathist and says that there are arrest warrants against him but that now is not the time to implement them.

Leaving his office, Janabi walks by his pickup and puts his good hand on the side of the abandoned vehicle, riddled with holes. A bodyguard sweats, gripping his rifle. Janabi glances around. A few people stand by their houses. The road will be dangerous soon and he cannot be sure whom to trust.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-qaeda-20100913,0,2216908,print.story

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Lester Tenny, right, a former U.S. prisoner of war during World War II, gives a copy of his book to Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada in Tokyo.

Japan apologizes to WWII POW group from U.S. The group's 90-year-old leader is a survivor of the Bataan Death March. The Associated Press TOKYO Japan's foreign minister apologized Monday for the suffering of a group of former World War II prisoners of war visiting from the United States and said they were treated inhumanely. The six POWs, their relatives and the daughters of two men who died are the first group of U.S. POWs to visit Japan with government sponsorship, though groups from other countries have been invited previously. "I offer my deep, heartfelt apology for the inhuman treatment you suffered," Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told the group. The POW group's leader, 90-year-old Lester Tenney of San Diego, who survived the Bataan Death March in 1942, said he welcomed the government's apology but still seeks recognition from the private companies that "used and abused" prisoners in their mines and factories, often under brutal conditions.

"At no time have we gotten from these private companies just a letter," Tenney said. "These private companies have kept quiet for 65 years. It is an insult, because by their keeping quiet they are hoping we will die off."

Japan surrendered in 1945 after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese leaders have apologized for the country's militarist past many times, but the government contends that all reparations issues were settled by treaties after the war.

Japanese courts have also ruled that reparations issues must be dealt with on a country-to-country basis, but cases challenging that are pending in several courts.

After a short time in Tokyo, each POW will travel to a city of his choice. Some will visit the factories, docks or mines where they worked.

Tenney was involved for decades in trying to arrange the visit and has lobbied for redress from the companies that used POWs after their capture. The companies have had no comment on the visit.

Tenney was taken prisoner in 1942 by the Japanese military and forced along with 78,000 prisoners of war -- 12,000 Americans and 66,000 Filipinos -- to walk from the Bataan peninsula on the Philippine island of Luzon to a prison camp. As many as 11,000 died during what became known as the Bataan Death March.

He was then brought to Japan and forced to work for Mitsui Mining Co. -- now Nippon Coke and Engineering Co. The company has ignored his requests to meet, and he said he does not plan to visit the site of his forced labor.

Tenney and his wife, Betty, will instead visit the grave of a Japanese man in Matsuyama who stayed with them as an exchange student in San Diego, California, in 1968 and became a close friend. The Tenneys went to Japan for the man's wedding in 1988 and joined the newlyweds on their honeymoon.

Tenney taught accounting and finance at San Diego State and Arizona State universities after the war. He now resides in San Diego.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-us-japan-pow-20100913,0,1700684,print.story

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IRAN: Jailed activist, in a letter smuggled out of prison, says he's being tortured

Torture, forced confessions, and a kangaroo court. That's what jailed Iranian student activist Abdollah Momeni claims he experienced since his detainment and jailing last year in an extraordinary letter he wrote to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from his jail cell in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

"Beatings, verbal abuse and degradation, and illegal treatments started at the very moment of my arrest, Momeni wrote in the letter published on the website of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, or ICHRI.

"From the start of the interrogations, I was forced to write against my friends and those close to me. I appeared in court despite the fact that I was not allowed to have a lawyer of my own choosing representing me....my testimony was dictated to me by my interrogators beforehand," he continued.

Aaron Rhodes, ICHRI's policy advisor based in Hamburg, Germany could not provide Babylon & Beyond with details on how the group received Momeni's letter. But he insisted its contents were "authentic."

Momeni says he felt compelled to pen the letter after he learned about the supreme leader's remarks in a recent sermon in which he spoke of the "importance of opposing injustice and the need to observe fairness."

That same day, said the jailed activist, "I decided to write a letter addressed to you, thinking that perhaps the news about detention centers does not reach you."

His letter comes fresh on the heels of another similar note written by a political prisoner to Iran's chief prosecutor. In his letter, Hamzeh Karami, editor of a reformist news website, before his detainment following last year's disputed June 2009 election, claimed he suffered physical and mental abuse in detainment and that he was tortured into making a confession that he had sexual relations with relatives of Iranian opposition leaders.

Reports about allegations of continued mistreatment of detainees arrested in last year's post-election protests have steadily surfaced in the media and among human rights groups. In late August, Iran's prosecutor-general, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, suspended three high-ranking judiciary officials over mistreatment of detainees at Iran's Kahrizak detention center, according to Iranian media reports. Several other prison officials were also accused of involvement in the deaths of at least three detainees in the facility, the reports added. 

Momeni's letter alleges repeated abuse he has been subject to since his July 2009 jailing, including having his head stuck down a toilet bowl, constantly being threatened with execution and being beaten until losing consciousness. His crime? Demanding democracy and reform for Iran, he wrote. 

"The iron fist of interrogators would often result in my passing out," he alleged. "On several occasions the interrogator strangled me to the point of me losing consciousness and falling to the ground. For days following these strangulations, I suffered such severe pain in the neck and throat area, that eating and drinking became unbearable."

Hadi Ghaemi, the campaign's spokesman in New York, called on the Iranian authorities in a statement to probe allegations of torture and abuse by detainees and now allow for impunity.

"If Ayatollah Khamenei does not respond by launching a credible and independent investigation aimed at holding violators accountable, then there is ample evidence that these systematic and inhumane methods for extracting false confessions are sanctioned by him," Ghaemi said.

Photo: In a letter to Iran's supreme leader, student activist Abdollah Momeni claims he was tortured and dragged through a shame trial.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/09/iran-prisoner-torture-evin-letter-supreme-leader-human-rights.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29

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From the New York Times

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Senegal Court Forbids Forcing Children to Beg

DAKAR, Senegal — The judge spoke quietly, and decades of custom were quickly rolled back: the Muslim holy men were to be punished for forcing children to beg.

The sentence handed down in a courtroom here last week was gentle, only six months' probation and a fine for the seven marabouts, or holy men. Yet the result could be a social revolution, in the eyes of some commentators. By government decree, and under international pressure, Senegal has forbidden the marabouts to enlist children to beg on their behalf .

Outside the crowded courtroom, a dozen or more white-robed marabouts sat in an anxious conclave on the ground to discuss their colleagues' predicament. More than 40 had shown up in support, and they knew the stakes. If the government here follows through, thousands of children could be released from a practice that human rights groups condemn as exploitation under the guise of education but that religious leaders defend as essential for keeping their enterprises afloat.

“Very sad, really heavy; this is a custom from our ancestors,” Chérif Aïdara, an Islamic lecturer in the group, said later. “This is how we teach the Koran .”

Outside the courtroom, Aboubacry Barro, a lawyer for the convicted marabouts, said: “This has been practiced since the beginning of time in Senegal. This is a case without precedent.”

A singular and ubiquitous feature of the landscape here seems about to change: the flocks of ragged boys known as talibés, who tender begging bowls to motorists and pedestrians on behalf of the marabouts.

The bowls are sometimes no more than old tin tomato cans; the children, some as young as 4, are often barefoot, and they spend perilous hours on the streets and sidewalks, weaving in and out of traffic in their torn, filthy T-shirts. When they return to their rudimentary living quarters in the evening, they must turn their coins over to the marabouts, or face severe punishment. Not infrequently, newspaper headlines on a back page announce the crushing of a little talibé in traffic.

Three weeks ago, after the government announced its ban, the police began rounding them up, along with other beggars. The children, in turn, led the authorities to their marabouts, officials here said.

Until then, they could be seen in every neighborhood of this Muslim West African metropolis. Ostensibly students in schools where the Koran is taught, the boys often leave these makeshift establishments knowing little of the Muslim sacred texts, according to Human Rights Watch , which estimates that there are as many as 50,000 on the streets of Senegal.

The marabouts depend on the pitiful gleanings of the children for their own livelihood, as they testified in court here.

“It's an abusive use of children,” said Ibrahima Thioub, a specialist in Senegalese history at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop here. “These kids in the street don't learn the Koran.”

Tidiane Baldé, a spokesmen for the marabouts at the courthouse last week — each of them has around 40 to 100 talibés — countered: “They don't have the means to feed the talibés. So they have to send them out.”

The custom is so ingrained that many Senegalese, even if they do not quite approve, continue to roll down their car windows and flip coins into the children's bowls, sustaining the practice. The government, dependent on support from powerful Muslim brotherhoods with large popular followings here, has only just begun to tackle the problem. There has been no popular pressure to do so. The outrage has come mostly from abroad.

So prosecuting the marabouts is a major break with precedent, Mr. Thioub said.

“It's something totally new, and very important, to take the marabouts to justice,” the historian said. “This risks becoming quite complicated for the government,” he added.

On Thursday, the Koranic Teachers' Association in Louga, an important provincial town, called for President Abdoulaye Wade to step down if the government persisted with the ban.

Still, like others here, Mr. Thioub is not certain that last week's prosecution amounts to more than a symbolic gesture to appease international donors. Indeed, the talibés have hardly disappeared: On Thursday morning, the day after the prosecution, in Fenêtre Mermoz, a neighborhood north of downtown, two little talibés, Omar and Mamadou, both 10, held out their begging bowls — old cans — to a passerby. Asked if the police had bothered them, they shyly shook their heads no.

“We have to wait and see if this is a one-time thing, or whether it's a real engagement,” said Matthew Wells of Human Rights Watch, who recently wrote a stinging report on the practice.

It was outside pressure that led to the ban, Prime Minister Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye made clear in announcing the measure. Senegal was “under threat from its partners,” he said late in August. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, an American foreign aid agency created by Congress , promised this impoverished country $540 million over five years in September last year, in a good-government grant.

“This was a question that interested specifically the Americans,” said Abdoulaye Ndiaye, a high official in the Ministry of Justice here. “We got a note on the trafficking act from the Americans,” Mr. Ndiaye said, referring to American legislation against human trafficking.

But pressure aside, he insisted that “what we are doing, we needed to do.”

Outside the courtroom, though, supporters of the marabouts were convinced that the government here had cravenly knuckled under. “It's aid donors who are behind this,” said Mohammed Diagne, an accountant. “They're attacking a whole system.” He added, “This is not something that just developed overnight.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/africa/13dakar.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Retiring Later Is Hard Road for Laborers

At the Cooper Tire plant in Findlay, Ohio, Jack Hartley, who is 58, works a 12-hour shift assembling tires: pulling piles of rubber and lining over a drum, cutting the material with a hot knife, lifting the half-finished tire, which weighs 10 to 20 pounds, and throwing it onto a rack.

Mr. Hartley performs these steps nearly 30 times an hour, or 300 times in a shift. “The pain started about the time I was 50,” he said. “Dessert with lunch is ibuprofen. Your knees start going bad, your lower back, your elbows, your shoulders.”

He said he does not think he can last until age 66, when he will be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. At 62 or 65, he said, “that's it.”

After years of debate about how to keep Social Security solvent, the White House has created an 18-member panel to consider changes, including raising the retirement age. Representative John A. Boehner , Republican of Ohio and the House minority leader, has called for raising the age as high as 70 in the next 20 years, and many Democrats have endorsed similar steps, against opposition from some liberal groups. The panel will report by Dec. 1, after the midterm elections.

Mr. Hartley says he feels like the forgotten man. Discussion has focused mostly on the older workers who hold relatively undemanding jobs at desks and computers that can be done at age 69 or beyond. But hard labor is not a thing of the past for older workers, who are on the whole less educated than younger ones.

A new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job like Mr. Hartley's — including hammering nails, bending under sinks, lifting baggage — that can be radically different at age 69 than at age 62. Still others work under difficult conditions, like exposure to heat or cold, exposure to contaminants or weather, cramped workplaces or standing for long stretches.

In all, the researchers found that 45 percent of older workers, or 8.5 million, held such difficult jobs. For janitors, nurses' aides, plumbers, cashiers, waiters, cooks, carpenters, maintenance workers and others, raising the retirement age may mean squeezing more out of a declining body.

Mr. Hartley had planned to retire at 58, but he and his wife had high medical expenses, and the company froze one year of its pension plan, reducing benefits. He is, he said, “stuck here.”

Workers like Mr. Hartley present a conundrum for a Social Security overhaul, said Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute, who favors raising the retirement age. People are living longer, and providing “old age” benefits to them when they are relatively young and healthy, he said, makes less available to them when they are older and frailer.

“We're close to the point when one-third of adults will be on Social Security and will be retired for a third or more of their adult lives,” Mr. Steuerle said. “It's true that some people in late middle age have issues of physically demanding jobs, but saying we're going to give everyone more years of retirement is not an efficient way of dealing with that issue.”

Any changes in Social Security's retirement age will not affect workers currently in their late 50s and their 60s, who are eligible for full benefits at age 66. But their experiences now are a harbinger of things to come, said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York, who opposes raising the Social Security retirement age because she says it will have a disproportionate impact on lower-income workers and minorities, who tend to have lower life expectancies and so fewer years of collecting benefits. At the same time, blue-collar workers often spend more years paying into Social Security because they start full-time work younger, she said.

“People who need to retire early — and they need to — are folks that start working in their late teens, whereas people who are promoting raising the retirement age are people who were in graduate school or professional school and got into jobs that would logically take them into their late 60s and 70s,” she said.

A study by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics found that for workers ages 55 to 60, the share who said their jobs required “lots of physical effort” all or almost all of the time declined between 1992 and 2002, to 18 percent from 20 percent, but the percentages who said they had to lift heavy loads, stoop, kneel or crouch increased.

In 2002, 29 percent of workers ages 55 to 60 said they experienced chronic pain in their jobs, and 46 percent said they had arthritis .

And though more Americans are retiring early, it is not always voluntary. A 2006 study by McKinsey & Company found that 40 percent of early retirees said they were forced into it, about half for health reasons.

“If you try to punish people for retiring earlier” by raising the retirement age, “you're punishing people who aren't choosing it,” Professor Ghilarducci said.

This is not news to Jim McGuire, 62, a ramp serviceman for United Airlines , who started lifting bags into airplanes 43 years ago. He has had rotator cuff surgery and separated a shoulder on the job.

“From 50 to 60 was a drastic change,” he said. “The aches and pains, the feeling that your back could go at any second. My hips are worn out. In a seven-day week, I take Advil five nights for the pain.”

Mr. McGuire said that he did not have a planned retirement date, but that he hoped to make it to 66. Since United's pension plan was taken over by the government, cutting his benefits in half, he says Social Security has become a much bigger part of his future plans.

For Bobbie Smith, 69, a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home in Miami, getting older has just meant using her body more judiciously. Providing direct care to the elderly, Mrs. Smith belongs to one of the fastest-growing work forces in the country and one of the grayest .

“I learned to arrange work so it won't be so hard on me,” she said. “I try to encourage patients to the point that they help themselves.”

She said she planned to continue working, even as she got older than some of her patients.

“What am I going to do if I sit at home, keep cleaning the house?” she said. “I need the money. I bought me a car, and I want to pay for it. But I would still work.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/us/13aging.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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In From the Cold

OPINION

To weaken the Afghan Taliban, American military commanders are hoping to lure fighters away from the insurgency with the promise of jobs, security and a better life. The idea is a good one. Like so much else in Afghanistan, this important initiative has badly faltered.

According to American officials, there are a significant number of lower-level militants and tribal leaders who are not true believers but have allied with extremists because they had no choice, needed the money or were so disillusioned with the Afghan government that they forgot the horrors of Taliban rule. But as The Times's Rod Nordland recently reported , in the last six months only a few hundred fighters have taken up the government's offer to come in from the cold.

President Hamid Karzai pledged last year to make a more aggressive effort at “reintegration.” The United States Congress promised $100 million; an additional $150 million was pledged by Britain, Germany, Japan and others. The money is not coming in as fast as we would like to see. But the real problem — once again — is that Mr. Karzai and his appointees have failed to put a credible reintegration program in place.

The program is supposed to be administered by a newly created High Peace Council. Nearly two months after an international conference agreed that the council would run the program, Afghan officials are still bickering over who should be in charge. Mr. Karzai's office promised earlier this month to announce the council's membership shortly. He needs to follow through. They need to be competent individuals — not cronies — who will work closely with NATO. The program must be publicized, and the benefits and protections on offer must be clearly explained — and delivered.

Afghans need to run things, but the government will also need a lot of help from American diplomats and NATO commanders. In the past, some fighters who put down their guns didn't get the jobs they were promised; some were killed by former comrades or new neighbors who didn't want to forgive or forget. That's not a recipe for persuading others to follow suit.

It may be that large numbers of insurgents won't come in until the Taliban start losing big battles. Or it may be that insurgents will not leave the battlefield until negotiations between Afghan and Taliban leaders on some kind of reconciliation deal are under way.

So far, there is no real sign that Taliban leaders even want to negotiate. That is yet one more reason to try to persuade lower-level insurgents to abandon the fight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/opinion/13mon2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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On Not Returning to Normal

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

Political theorists, lawyers and policy-makers sometimes assume that responses to emergency should — morally should — aim at a speedy return to a “normal” that predated the emergency. This is implicit in the metaphor of resilience often used by officials for emergency response. “Resilience” suggests that the preferred aftermath of an emergency is quickly regaining one's former shape, bouncing back. Presumably it is possible to bounce back with a few permanent bumps or scars, but at the limit we might speak of an invisible mending ideal of emergency response: when the response is genuinely successful, the effects of the emergency entirely disappear: before and after are indistinguishable.

The first thing to be said about the invisible mending model is that it is highly ambitious, even as a model of ideal emergency response. We normally expect firemen to put out the house fire. Replacing what is charred is not their responsibility. Neither is making the house habitable. In the same way, an emergency medical response is not supposed on its own to restore people to full functioning or health. The governing norm is that of removing or reducing the threat to life and limb. The larger aim of returning to normal involves a much larger set of agents than those who confront the emergency, and a much greater length of time.  Such was the case, as we now know, in the days that followed the attacks of Sept. 11. The efforts of the immediate responders to this grave emergency eliminated dangers and saved lives, but did not, could not, effect the complete and invisible mending that the language often used to describe their efforts implied.

Invisible mending may be a bad ideal of emergency response for two further reasons. First, the status quo ante — the way things were before — may be an emergency waiting to happen. Rebuilding water-damaged housing on a flood plain only invites more water damage. Instead of restoring things to their former condition, it is at least arguable that emergency response should usher in discontinuity. Perhaps people living in highly vulnerable flood plains have to be encouraged to move; or perhaps new forms of flood-resistant construction have to be developed.

The second reason why emergency response can be geared to the wrong ideal when it aims at invisible mending is that restoration can serve to continue a morally questionable status quo ante. Even when returning  to normal after a crisis does not return people to an emergency waiting to happen, it can return them to a “normal” that is unacceptable in other ways. The peace process in Northern Ireland has made violent paramilitary activity, including bombing, largely a thing of the past. This marks a return to a normality of non-violence that has not been seen for decades.  But there are many urban areas where high walls built during the Troubles separate loyalists from nationalists. The walls can be torn down. But extreme sectarian ill-feeling will go on: that is a continuity that the peace process has not broken.

Aiming simply to return to a former normality can have an unwelcome complacency about it, sometimes a defiant complacency. A determination to go on exactly as before —just to spite an enemy or attacker or simply a critic — is a recognizable human response to attack, enmity or criticism. Perhaps it also displays a kind of resilience. But unless continuity has a significant value of its own, the determination to go on exactly as before may have little to be said for it. Emergencies may better be seen as occasions for fresh starts and rethinking. Because they take life and make death vivid for those who survive emergencies, they properly prompt people to appraise lives that are nearly cut short.

Consider the following clichéd vignette. Bloggs, a ruthless businessman, spends 20 years, seven days a week, clinching deals. He is run down, eats too much, drinks too much. This leads to a heart attack. He takes this heart-attack as a wake-up call. The teenage children he has neglected, his wife; his dog — all of these figures appear in a new light. He decides to lead a new sort of life that gives them the attention and appreciation they deserve. The heart attack leads Bloggs to this decision, let's say, and not the decision to lead his old business life on a new sort of diet. The heart attack may have been caused by the bad diet, and it is open to interpretation as a wake-up call about eating and drinking. But it is naturally seized upon as an opportunity to take stock more generally and change a way of life.

A public emergency can be seized upon in the same way, even if one is not at its sharp end. This is how it was with September 11. Through the live television coverage the whole world was there. Many viewers throughout the world identified strongly with the victims; so that their deaths reminded us of our mortality, and  prompted us to take stock. To this extent we took September 11 as a wake-up call.  We opened our minds to questions of how we could live better.

There are philosophers such as Ted Honderich who think that the responsibility Westerners had before September 11 for not not living better lives by alleviating global inequalities contributed to the overall  responsibility for  the September 11  attack. Honderich wrote in “After the Terror” in 2003: “[T]he atrocity at the Twin Towers did have a human necessary condition in what preceded it: our deadly treatment of those outside our circle of comfort, those with the bad lives. Without that deadly treatment by us, the atrocity of the Twin Towers would not have happened.”

But this is a puzzling thing to think.  It may be true that the rich in the world should wake up to the fact that they can do much more for the poor of the world. It may be true that the earlier this is done the better. It may be true that there was an opportunity to start on this task on September 12 2001, as opposed to September 12 2003. It may therefore be true that people should have started on this task on September 12 2001. What does not seem to be true is that they should have started to do this because of the reasons for the September 11 attack. There is no reason to think that the Al-Qaeda operatives who flew the airplanes, or their masters, had any agenda with respect to global inequality. And it is hard to understand an attack on the Twin Towers or Pentagon as a means of reducing inequality. This crucial and fairly obvious point is fatal for Honderich's way of arguing.

September 11 caused many people to take stock of their lives, and many governments to reappraise their priorities in foreign policy. Not every such reappraisal has led to better lives or better policies. But there is something important about the opportunity that emergency offers for not going on in the same old way. For us to break from our past because of an emergency is not at all for us to be broken by an emergency.

Tom Sorell is John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics and director of the Center for the Study of Global Ethics at Birmingham University. He is the author of several philosophical works, including “Moral Theory and Anomaly” (1999), and is currently working on a book on the moral and political theory of emergencies.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/on-not-returning-to-normal/?pagemode=print

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