Candidate for President in Egypt Tempers His Expectations

Abstract: CAIRO — Hamdeen Sabahi says he does not really expect a fair race against his opponent for president of Egypt, the former military officer who led the takeover of the elected government. The state, he said, has already shown “bias” toward Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, so he has set a considerably less ambitious goal: he just wants a guarantee that there will not be blatant fixing. “I insist that it doesn’t include rigging in the sense of direct, flagrant alteration of the will of the people,” he said in a recent interview in his office. His meager expectations in many ways illustrate the breakdown of Egypt’s political life since the presidential election two years ago, when an energetic six-candidate race delivered spirited public policy debates, unforeseen turns and, finally, the first fairly elected president in the nation’s modern history. But in the coming contest scheduled for May 26 and 27 —the first election since the military ousted Mohamed Morsi, the former president, in July — Egyptians have seen their options dwindle to only two candidates: Mr. Sabahi , a leftist activist and former political prisoner who finished third in the last presidential election; and the former general, Mr. Sisi , the preferred candidate of the military, Egypt’s most powerful and popular institution. Given a sense of inevitability surrounding Mr. Sisi’s bid, it was “courageous” of Mr. Sabahi to run at all, said Rabab el-Mahdi, a political scientist at the American University of Cairo. But, she added, “You don’t know if he is someone standing in front of a train or if he is a signpost.” His supporters say it is foolish to dismiss Mr. Sabahi, who served in Parliament and is known as one of Egypt’s savviest politicians. His willingness to criticize Mr. Sisi has only broadened his appeal, they say. “I am the son of a popular movement,” Mr. Sabahi said. “Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi is the son of Egyptian state institutions.” But Professor el-Mahdi noted that Mr. Sabahi seemed to be attacking his opponent with less ferocity than he had shown in the last presidential election, one of many aspects of his candidacy that has led to questions about his motives. Critics of the military fear that the presence of Mr. Sabahi — who was a strong supporter of the military takeover — has lent undeserved legitimacy to a contest that strikes many as political theater. Mr. Sisi has yet to agree to participate in a public debate or to release any specific policy proposals, they note, reinforcing the notion that the election is a formality. Mr. Sabahi’s first major campaign event on Wednesday at a downtown Cairo hotel — an opportunity, perhaps, to breathe some fire into his candidacy — was instead dedicated to sober policy proposals. After Mr. Morsi’s polarizing tenure, the sense of political possibility in the country began to evaporate over the last 10 months as Mr. Sisi soared to prominence. His portrait was held aloft in public squares and hung in government buildings, as the military-backed cabinet eviscerated much of Egypt’s Islamist political opposition, killing or imprisoning thousands of Mr. Morsi’s supporters. Secular-leaning opponents — especially those who have spoken out against the military’s involvement in politics — have also been imprisoned. At the same time, a deadly campaign of attacks by militants targeting members of the security services has reduced the public discourse to monologues about terrorism and security by officials and the state and private news media. Several candidates who ran in the last election have declined to compete, dismissing the exercise as pointless. And Mr. Sisi, having swapped his fatigues for a suit, has so far conducted himself as if the presidency is already his, meeting with foreign dignitaries while avoiding public appearances or interviews that might provide insight into his plans. Mr. Sabahi, whose campaign posters are nearly impossible to locate, has been left trying to sharpen the differences between the two men on his own. That task is complicated by Mr. Sabahi’s own record, his fondness for vague, populist appeals and his legacy as a leader of the quarreling opposition under Mr. Morsi. He has continued to defend the storming of Islamist sit-ins by the security forces in August that killed hundreds of protesters, and has voiced support for a government decision to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that Mr. Morsi belongs to, calling the group “tyrannical.” But Mr. Sabahi, who founded a Nasserist party and has been sent to jail for his political activism over the years, has also criticized the government — and Mr. Sisi — in a manner seldom heard in Egypt these days. In the interview, he condemned the detentions of political prisoners, including Brotherhood members, and lamented that an “unacceptable McCarthyism” had cast a shadow over the country. He spoke about the need for “tolerance and reconciliation” after months of bloodshed, another rare sentiment here. Nonetheless, he was careful in criticizing Mr. Sisi, saying he would reserve judgment on his policies until the former general’s campaign released its platform. Mr. Sabahi questioned whether Mr. Sisi — who served as the country’s de facto leader during the most divisive period in recent memory — could ever unify the country. “If he’s part of the crisis,” Mr. Sabahi said, “will he be the most suitable person to present the solution?” Mr. Sabahi has been more direct in private: In an apparently leaked recording circulated on the Internet, the candidate can be heard referring to a “trial” for Mr. Sisi. Members of Mr. Sabahi’s team said they had already seen evidence of tampering in the race, though they did not accuse Mr. Sisi of being directly responsible. The campaign struggled to muster the 25,000 signatures required for Mr. Sabahi to qualify, hampered, aides said, by mysterious problems at registration stations and shadowy attacks by his opponent’s supporters. But Mr. Sisi does not appear to need much help to win. He has drawn support from segments of the public weary after years of upheaval, including voters who seem to yearn for a strong hand to lead the country. Despite Mr. Sisi’s advantages, Mr. Sabahi — a lifelong politician who rose to prominence as a student activist — had no choice but to run, said Gasser Abdel-Razek, a human-rights activist who is supporting Mr. Sabahi’s candidacy. He could not wait for Egypt’s fickle politics to present the perfect opportunity. “This is what he does,” Mr. Abdel-Razek said. “He can win a significant number of votes, if he keeps saying things that can get him into trouble,” Mr. Abdel-Razek added.

Election
Hamdeen Sabahi
Muslim Brotherhood Egypt
Egypt


5th in New York City, a Small Child, Dies With Swine Flu

Abstract: A fifth person in New York City — a child less than 2 years old — has died with swine flu , a spokeswoman for the city’s health department said on Monday. The spokeswoman, Erin Brady, cited patient confidentiality laws in refusing to release the victim’s name or say in what borough he or she lived. The baby was by far the youngest victim of the H1N1 virus in New York City. The first four who died ranged in age from 34 to 55. Ms. Brady said that tests had confirmed that the child had swine flu, but that it was not yet known whether that was the cause of death. She said the medical examiner would have to do more tests to try to establish what role the virus had played in the baby’s death. At the same time, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office said that tests on the first victim, an assistant principal at an intermediate school in Queens, had confirmed that the cause of death was swine flu. But the spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove, said that tests on that patient, Mitchell Wiener, 55, had listed “significant and contributing” factors: obesity and hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease. Mr. Wiener died on May 17, five days after he was hospitalized and three days after city officials closed his school, Intermediate School 238 in Hollis. Swine flu, first identified in April, is known to spread rapidly — more rapidly than seasonal flu , from what health department officials can tell. In a regular flu season, people under 2 and over 65 are particularly vulnerable, as are people with underlying health problems. What had been unusual about H1N1 was the initial spread among teenagers. Ms. Brady said on Monday that there were 47 confirmed cases of swine flu in the city jails on Rikers Island. But what appears to be a high number may be a function of testing. Officials have been testing inmates aggressively because the outbreak at Rikers, reported on May 15, involved an isolated cluster. Officials wanted to monitor it closely, much as they did at St. Francis Preparatory School, where they confirmed 69 cases and believe that hundreds of students and teachers may have had lower-grade cases of swine flu.

New York City
Swine Influenza
Epidemics
Medicine and Health


Ariel Sharon, Former Prime Minister of Israel, Is Said to Be Near Death

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel who has been comatose for nearly eight years , edged closer to death on Wednesday evening, suffering from kidney failure. A spokesman for the hospital that has been treating Mr. Sharon, 85, said that “there has been a deterioration in his medical condition.” A person who had been briefed on the situation, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its delicacy, said Mr. Sharon had suffered a setback about a month ago and spent two weeks in intensive care after emergency surgery, then seemed to have stabilized before the most recent turn. “It looks pretty bad, but it’s not a matter of hours,” said another person with knowledge of his situation who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Sharon, a controversial military commander who rose to hold many of his nation’s top positions, suffered a stroke after shaking up Israeli politics at the height of his power. An architect of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, he stunned the world and his own constituents with a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. He abandoned the Likud Party he led as prime minister to form the centrist Kadima Party, and he was believed to be preparing for further territorial concessions to establish a Palestinian state when he became ill. In a vegetative state since January 2006, Mr. Sharon has been breathing on his own but fed intravenously, and in September he underwent surgery to fix the feeding tube. A year ago, scientists announced that they had found surprising activity in response to external stimuli during a brain scan, suggesting Mr. Sharon might be able to hear and understand. He was taken back to his family farm in the Negev Desert for a weekend in 2010, but he has spent the rest of the last seven and a half years in Tel Hashomer hospital outside Tel Aviv, according to its spokesman, Amir Marom. His sons were with him on Wednesday, according to the people who had been briefed on the situation.


DNA Test Indicates Camel-to-Human Transmission of MERS

Abstract: In the clearest evidence yet that the MERS virus can be passed directly from camels to humans, genetic sequencing has shown that a 44-year-old Saudi man who died of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in November had a strain virtually identical to that in one of the camels in his herd, researchers said on Wednesday. Three of the man’s friends accompanied him as he visited his nine camels daily before falling ill and saw him put medicine in the nose of a calf with a runny nose, scientists from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah reported on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine . Samples taken by a veterinarian after the man was hospitalized and again after he died showed that the calf had the same virus. It recovered, and some of the other camels had antibodies to the virus, indicating they had also been infected and had recovered. Neither the man’s friends nor his daughter, who suffered cold symptoms after he fell ill, tested positive for the virus.


Maryland: One Less Charge in Wikileaks Case

Abstract: The government on Tuesday dropped one charge against Pfc. Bradley Manning, the confessed source of vast archives of government documents made public through WikiLeaks, as pretrial hearings wrapped up. The trial begins June 3. The judge said prosecutors had decided not to pursue the charge that Private Manning, 25, had leaked a classified State Department cable in February 2010 knowing it could harm the United States. A military legal spokesman said prosecutors told the court Tuesday that they had accepted Private Manning’s plea to the lesser offense of leaking the cable. A conviction would have added eight years to his sentence. In February, Private Manning confessed to providing about 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks, pleading guilty to several charges carrying a penalty of up to 20 years in prison in a bid for leniency. But prosecutors decided to pursue more serious charges, which could result in life without parole.

Classified Information
WikiLeaks
State Department


Young Republicans Erase Lines on Social Issues

Abstract: CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Matt Hoagland, the county leader of a group of young North Carolina Republicans, is busy trying to ramp up enthusiasm for Mitt Romney at the grass-roots level. So there are a few things he avoids mentioning to prospective young voters he wants to woo, including the hot-button topics like abortion and same-sex marriage , which have dominated campaigns past. “Social issues are far down the priorities list, and I think that’s the trend,” Mr. Hoagland, 27, said. “That’s where it needs to go if the Republican Party is going to be successful.” Zoey Kotzambasis, vice president of the College Republicans at the University of Arizona , considers herself a conservative. But she supports both same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Those are not just her opinions. “A lot of the College Republicans I know share the same liberal-to-moderate social views,” she added. “And I think that’s changing the face of the party.” In a break from generations past and with an eye toward the future, many of the youngest leaders of the Republican Party are embracing views on some social issues that are at odds with traditional conservative ideology — if they mention such issues at all, according to interviews, experts and some polling. “When it comes to what you do in your bedroom, or where you go to church, or where you want to put a tattoo, we just couldn’t care less,” Mr. Hoagland said at a meeting last month of young Republicans in Charlotte. And some social conservatives say they are deliberately playing down their own views on issues as a tactical move to attract more young voters to the Republican Party. Polls show that Americans under 30 are the least likely to identify as Republican, and those in the millennial generation support President Obama by a wide margin. But in an effort to win votes by capitalizing on disenchantment with the recession and its slow recovery, Republicans are placing a renewed emphasis on fiscal issues, with hopes of energizing their young people — a group that had one of the lowest turnout levels in the history of presidential elections in 2008 and did not turn out in strong numbers in this year’s primaries. “I would prefer that Mitt Romney leave social issues sort of alone, because I do disagree with him on those things,” said Ms. Kotzambasis, whose group, like many others, operates mostly independent of any national party oversight. “He keeps saying that the first things he’ll tackle are health care and the economy, and I hope he tackles the economy. I’m graduating in a couple years, and it’s pretty dismal where I am.” What has become the norm, some experts say, is for young Republicans to take a cafeteria-style approach to issues that are important to them. And some established leaders see that as a boon to their party. “My theory is that, just as young people don’t have to buy a whole album on iTunes and can pick and choose just the songs they like, they can customize their political views — and they do,” said Kristen Soltis, a Republican pollster who is the communications adviser to Crossroads Generation , a new pro-Romney “ super PAC ” aimed at young voters. In her outreach to social moderates, Amelia Lutz, vice chairwoman of the Missouri College Republicans, calls her particular group “a welcoming, big-tent party.” A poll this year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the percentage of Republicans ages 18 through 29 who favor same-sex marriage has grown to 37 percent, up from 28 percent eight years ago. “The students I know who are conservative are far less so on social issues than our parents,” Ms. Kotzambasis, 19, said. “People are more accepting of different lifestyles.” Younger Republicans are also the most likely members of the party to say that “more people of different races marrying each other” and “more women in the work force” have been changes for the better, according to a separate Pew study conducted last year. Republican leaders also hope to tap into what they see as a growing libertarian streak among young conservatives — the same energy that Representative Ron Paul of Texas rode with some success through the early primaries, with a strong emphasis on minimalist government and individual freedoms. Those ideas may complement long-established ideals about deficit reduction and cutting the size of government, issues on which young Republicans do not differ much from older generations of Republicans, experts said. Asked what she thought would be the most effective message to reach young Republicans, Ms. Soltis echoed Ms. Kotzambasis: “Jobs, jobs, jobs could be it.” All of their characteristics taken together, young Republicans present a nuanced mix of political ideals that may well change the face of the party over time, experts say. “There has to be room for them or the Republican Party won’t exist, at the pace this generation is evolving,” said John Della Volpe, polling director at the Harvard Institute of Politics . With Mr. Obama currently leading Mr. Romney among Americans under 30 by 21 percentage points, according to the most recent Gallup poll, some Republican advisers said they would consider it a success if the margin shrinks by 10 points. “In some of these swing states, that could really be decisive,” Ms. Soltis said. North Carolina is one such state. In McLeansville, 20-year-old Eddie Souther has founded a new Republican youth group, the Collegiate Informed Voters of Guilford County, that is reaching out to students in Spanish and Arabic as well as English, hoping to cast the widest possible net for Mr. Romney. “We have a pretty significant Hispanic and Muslim population here,” Mr. Souther said, “and I’m just thinking about the future of the United States .” Some young conservatives, Mr. Souther among them, continue to oppose abortion and same-sex marriage but say they are playing down their personal views because they have made the calculation that such issues will not be a factor in this year’s races. Mr. Souther’s month-old group is going to be pushing on the economy and jobs, he said. “I’m definitely socially conservative,” he said. “I’m not for gay marriage or abortion. But those are not issues that we feel are going to be moved or dramatically changed in any way.” Other young Republicans spoke with passion about how their values had evolved over the past several years, especially while in college. Ms. Kotzambasis, at the University of Arizona, said she was “accepting pro-life arguments” in the seventh and eighth grades. “But when I went through puberty and became a young woman,” she said, “I realized I didn’t know what I would do in that situation, so I couldn’t judge someone else’s choices.” At least two members of her College Republican group, one of whom is a lifelong friend, recently revealed that they are gay, she said. And the open discussions that ensued greatly influenced the entire club, and solidified Ms. Kotzambasis’s own view. “I think people have become much more at ease and comfortable about it,” she said. “Honestly, there’s about zero judgment from the people in our club, and I think that reflects the direction my generation wants to take the party in.”

Republicans
2012 Presidential Election
US Politics
Voting
Youth
Mitt Romney
US


Joyce Brown of F.I.T., on Using Your ‘Third Ear’

Abstract: This interview with Joyce F. Brown, the president of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. What was your plan for your career when you were younger? A. I always knew I wanted to go into psychology. I’m a psychologist by training, which I think is a tremendous help in everything I do. Q. How so? A. Among the more important things I learned in pursuing the degree in psychology was an appreciation of an organization’s interrelationships. I think you have to follow process even if you’re not being a bureaucrat. I don’t want to be bound by the process, but I think respecting the process is important — respecting what everybody’s role is — then figuring out how to make everybody work together. One thing that emerged from the training, and what I do day to day, is to understand who’s responsible for what and to make sure I don’t then ask someone else to do that person’s job. It’s very easy to slip and do that. You can involve others, of course. They may have a suggestion that’s easy enough to incorporate, and then everybody owns a little piece of it. But you have to be clear about who’s responsible. Otherwise, people will cross wires, and that will create a ripple effect that’s totally unnecessary. Q. Other ways that you draw on your training in psychology? A. I am convinced that I have a third ear. I listen, and I really pay attention and try very hard to understand the nuances. I tell people that I will listen to what they say, and will try to incorporate what I can from their suggestions if I think they fit the objective we’re trying to achieve. If we’re not going to do what they’re suggesting, I’ll tell them why. I think people deserve that. I will tell you why, and then we will proceed. I think it works, because people feel that they were listened to, and were given the respect of an answer about why I might disagree. You gain a lot by being respectful of people’s ideas. Q. Talk about some other leadership lessons you’ve learned over the years. A. It’s important not to choose alliances too early. There are always issues and camps that develop in any organization. You may think you understand them, but you don’t. I don’t really think there are people who wake up every morning wanting to tear things down in an organization. But there are people with strongly held beliefs who are driven by various things — maybe their own need to be in the limelight, or maybe some deep philosophical belief. Image Joyce F. Brown is the president of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. Trained as a psychologist, she says her "third ear" helps her listen carefully to others' ideas, and to "try very hard to understand the nuances." Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Q. What have you learned from other leaders you’ve observed? A. I had people who were very helpful to me, who saw something they thought was worth developing, and they created opportunities for me. Their ability to analyze and to be thorough and to think about the impact of one decision versus another was interesting and helpful to watch. I also saw a lot of things I knew I didn’t want to do. Some people were emotional, histrionic, intolerant and wanted to humiliate people. I also saw people who didn’t pay attention to detail, which I think will sink you every time. My staff calls me Dr. Detail — lovingly, I’m sure. That doesn’t mean I micromanage, but I need to know the details. Things can come around and bite when you don’t pay attention to the real substance. I’ve also seen people who didn’t respect process. They reached down into the ranks and had other people doing things that marginalized the people they needed to rely on to really get the job done and move the organization forward. Q. How do you hire? What qualities do you look for? What questions do you ask? A. I’m really interested in who you are and if you fit in with the culture, with the team — how committed you are to the objectives and goals we’ve set, the vision we have. I like to know how they got here, so I always ask what they thought they were going to do when they were younger, when they went to college. Why did you choose your major? What did you think you were going to do? What was your vision for your career? How did you get where you are? What were the various things that happened along the way, because invariably it wasn’t a straight line. Then I like to know a little bit about where people grew up. Are they living in the same place they grew up, or did they leave their hometown to come to New York? Are they adventurous? Are they a risk-taker? What’s their passion about? What’s driving them? Q. What are you listening for? A. I’m listening for passion. I’m listening for a commitment to being the best, to being successful, and a commitment to something larger than themselves, not just their personal success. That kind of drive really does blossom into one’s work ethic and attitude and approach. Q. Anything you have a particularly low tolerance for? A. It’s kind of subtle, but I don’t like when people tear other people down because they’re not owning what might have been their mistake. If you don’t take any risks, you certainly won’t make any mistakes, but you’re not going to get that far, either. So it’s O.K. to make a mistake. You just need to own your mistake. That’s a bad sign for me if somebody doesn’t. The other thing I don’t like is people who waste other people’s time. They’ll have meetings with no point — everybody has to come together just because you can call them all together. Then, at the end of the day, everybody’s just wasted an hour and a half, and there’s no point to the agenda. Maybe they’re just trying to show they’re in charge of something that they really don’t fully understand. So they might ask 25 questions, or even 10, when they didn’t need to ask any. Ultimately when people can’t answer all their questions, it does sort of make them seem much more smart and more important. But it doesn’t really work when what you’re trying to do is build a well-oiled machine. All they had to say was: “How can I help you? Let’s figure this out.” They need to be committed to something beyond themselves.

FIT
Joyce F Brown
Management
Job Recruiting and Hiring
Psychology


Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines’ Leader, Says Obama ‘Can Go to Hell’

Abstract: MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines complained on Tuesday that Washington was refusing to sell weapons to his government and said that President Obama “can go to hell.” Mr. Duterte, who has been angered by Washington’s criticism of his deadly campaign against drug users, threatened to turn to China and Russia for weapons purchases. “Instead of helping us, the first to hit was the State Department,” Mr. Duterte said in a speech to local officials. “So you can go to hell, Mr. Obama, you can go to hell.” Mr. Duterte, who took office on June 30, began a war on drugs that has claimed about 3,000 lives, the Philippine authorities say. Many of those killed were people suspected of dealing drugs who were gunned down by unknown assailants and left in the streets. The police say they have killed more than 1,200 drug sellers and users who resisted arrest. The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have expressed concern over the extrajudicial killings and have urged the Philippines to live up to its human rights obligations. Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have also urged the Philippines to stop its violent campaign. Mr. Duterte, who resents being criticized and often uses vulgar language to make his points, has repeatedly lashed out. Last month, he called Mr. Obama by a slur in Tagalog that can be translated as “son of a bitch.” The insult led Mr. Obama to cancel a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Duterte during a gathering of Asian leaders in Laos. Mr. Duterte later apologized. Rodrigo Duterte’s Most Contentious Quotations President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has a reputation for frank speechmaking that often angers the international community. And last week, in trying to rebut criticism that he was like Hitler, Mr. Duterte said he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of Filipino drug users just as Hitler killed millions of Jews during the Holocaust. He has since apologized several times to Jewish people around the world. During public appearances on Tuesday, Mr. Duterte said the United States was unwilling to sell his government missiles and other weapons. It was unclear what had prompted his statement. A spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Manila said she had no comment. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Duterte’s increasingly inflammatory comments directed at Mr. Obama, as well as his warnings of reduced ties, were “at odds with the warm relationship that exists between the Filipino and American people.” Mr. Earnest said the alliance between the two nations remained strong, noting that annual joint military exercises with the Philippines began Tuesday. But he said that the United States was “deeply concerned by reports of widespread extrajudicial killings by or at the behest of government authorities,” and that American officials would continue to raise concerns about those reports with Filipino officials. On Tuesday, Mr. Duterte said that it was his “sacred duty to keep the integrity of this republic” and that America’s rivals would be happy to sell him weapons. “If you don’t want to sell arms, I’ll go to Russia,” he said. “I sent the generals to Russia, and Russia said: ‘Do not worry, we have everything you need. We’ll give it to you.’ On China, they said, ‘Just come over and sign, and everything will be delivered.’” After his speech, Mr. Duterte visited a synagogue to repeat his apology for his Hitler remarks. While speaking there, he suggested he might eventually “break up” with the United States, which has been the Philippines’ strongest international partner since World War II.

Rodrigo Duterte
Philippines
US Foreign Policy
Barack Obama
Arms Trade


At a Libyan Hospital, Pride and a War’s True Cost Are Seen

Abstract: AJDABIYA, Libya — A short walk from the morgue, men gathered at noon Wednesday before a billboard that read “Free Libya ” and listed the dead and wounded in the fighting that had raged for days a couple of hours away along the Mediterranean. No. 15 was Mahmoud Abdel-Hamid, from Benghazi. No. 43 was Ibrahim el-Sharif, from Ajdabiya. “These are the new names,” one man said, pointing at the board. Some looked for friends, others relatives. A few were curious about whether they knew anyone. Osama Moghrabi simply nodded in recognition. “More will have to die,” he said. At Ajdabiya Hospital, a low-slung affair trimmed in cream and salmon, the guns have fallen silent, save for an occasional volley in the distance. Left to reckon with the aftermath are doctors who have volunteered from abroad, nurses who have traveled here from the rest of opposition-held Libya and what remains of the hospital’s staff, thrust into the middle of a protest that became an uprising and an uprising that has become a war. The conflict here feels anarchic, even bewildering, like a prisoner liberated from a cell and squinting into the sun. In the chaos, where men in mismatched uniforms amble around town with rifles, and pickups careen through streets with machine guns mounted in back, the hospital offers another narrative: the commitment to see a country through this trial. In stretches of calm punctuated by drama, there is the fervor of the quiet. “I never thought I would come here this way,” said Dr. Rida Mazagri, a soft-spoken volunteer neurosurgeon from Charleston, W.Va., who arrived two weeks ago. “But we have been waiting for 30 years for a spark. We’re not going to let it extinguish. Either he leaves or he finishes all of us. This land does not accept both of us here.” Dr. Mazagri said he felt helpless as he watched the war from afar, a once-disdainful expatriate who no longer felt estranged from his native country. After days of watching television, he had had enough. “ ‘Change the call schedule,’ ” he recalled telling his colleagues at the hospital. “ ‘I’m leaving. When I’m going to come back, I have no idea.’ ” He booked a ticket that took him to Atlanta, Rome and Cairo, then went overland across a border that had crumbled to Benghazi, the capital of opposition-held Libya. “It’s like a member of your family is ill and they might die without you saying goodbye,” said the doctor, 50, who grew up in Tripoli but left 23 years ago. Doctors here say 100 volunteers have joined him, from the United States, Egypt and South Africa, as well as from towns stretching from Benghazi to the Green Mountain region to Tobruk in the east. Aid organizations have sent supplies from Egypt and Qatar, and relief workers have managed to recover the dead and wounded from a mercurial battlefield where they said government troops seized two of their own this week. The staff takes pride in an oasis of organization in a region without it. “It functions,” said Dr. Walid Saad, a surgeon who was scheduled to begin training in the United States this summer. “It’s not like the cities, where there are no police. It’s not like the rest of the country, where there are no more structures of government.” As in much of Libya these days, rumors were volunteered as freely as predictions of the war’s imminent end — two days, a week, no longer. One doctor heard that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was headed on a personal jet to Greece, then Egypt. Another insisted that the government had deprived reluctant pilots of parachutes to stop them from deserting. In the cafeteria, an Arabic satellite channel blared the latest from the front. Residents of besieged Zawiyah, a town near Tripoli, appealed for medical aid. A frantic witness in Ras Lanuf shouted inaudibly to an announcer about government attacks. “Can you hear me, Mr. Muhammad?” the anchor pleaded. “It’s crazy, crazy,” Dr. Omar Ali said as he watched. “The inhumanity.” The Ajdabiya Hospital is not the region’s best. One in Benghazi is far larger, far better equipped. Ajdabiya is farther from the front line than a smaller hospital in Ras Lanuf, but doctors have had to evacuate it at times, as fighting neared. That leaves Ajdabiya as the place where the wounded come first, and it bears the scars of three weeks of fighting. Six rickety caskets, belonging to the Bab al-Salam Mosque, sat outside the morgue, next to an olive tree. The lid of one was scabbed with dried blood. Under a pallid gray sky, a pool of rainwater turned red gathered in another. Slogans crowded nearby walls. “No to tribalism, no to East and no to West, Libya is one tribe,” one read. The hospital’s parking lot felt like the whirlwinds that gather in the desert outside — force without direction. Relief vehicles barreled into the compound, in cinematic scenes of a post-apocalypse. “Free Libya” was scrawled on the hood of one by hand. Soldiers walked around in every version of camouflage: tan, green and an odd dark blue. Occasionally, a car pulled up to drop off another wounded fighter. At 5:30 p.m., it was a shivering Hassan Adam Mohammed, whose left eye was swollen shut by an explosion. “He maybe lost it,” said Dr. Wanis Obeidi, who was treating him. He surveyed the room, where each casualty seemed to harden the resolve of the staff. Since the uprising began, he has worked in Darnah, Bayda, Benghazi and now here. “Where they go, I’ll go,” he said of the fighters. Upstairs was Ibrahim el-Sharif, No. 43 on the list. After eight operations for a gunshot wound, his left leg still wasn’t right, blood leaking through the soiled bandages. “No regrets,” he said. Next door was Mamhoud Abdel-Hamid, No. 15, wiry and looking much younger than his 25 years. He faded in and out of consciousness as his father, Abdel-Hamid Humaiti, entered. He leaned down to kiss his son’s forehead, then looked away. “If he wants to go back, I’ll let him go,” his father said loud enough for his son to hear. He repeated the words, a little more vehemently, before stepping out of earshot. Much of his son’s right hand was amputated, he whispered, shaking his head. “He’s not able to fight anymore,” he said. “He can’t.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Bickering Belgians Find a Point of Unity in Toughening Borders

Abstract: BRUSSELS, Oct. 9 — This 177-year-old nation came a step closer on Tuesday to averting breakup after its squabbling linguistic communities managed to agree on the one issue that increasingly unites them: fear of immigrants. Belgium , divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, has spent 120 days since national elections without a new government. Political parties have been unable to agree on the country’s direction, and fears are growing that Belgium will dissolve. Yet signs of a breakthrough in the talks emerged Tuesday morning when the Christian Democrats and Liberals temporarily put aside their differences and agreed on a tough new approach to asylum policy and economic migration. Political analysts stressed that the crisis was far from over with the important issue of how to grant more autonomy to Flanders and Wallonia still hanging in the balance. They underlined, however, that the deal illustrated how immigration had become a unifying issue in the country. “A toughening stance on immigration has overtaken politics in Belgium and made immigration a swing issue, and we are seeing this across Europe,” said Pierre Blaise, secretary general of Crisp, a sociopolitical research organization in Brussels. Under the agreement, which will only come into effect if parties form a government, migrants from outside the European Union will be able to come to fill jobs only if there are not enough Union candidates. Belgian citizenship would only go to those who have spent five years uninterrupted in the country and who speak one of its three languages — French, Dutch or German.

Immigration and Refugees
Belgium
Brussels (Belgium)
French Language
Islam


A Web Cadre Turns the Tables on African Scam Artists

Abstract: PARIS, July 1 — Ever been tempted to respond to that e-mail message offering untold millions from the relatives of a deposed African dictator? For some, replying to such Internet scams is a rewarding hobby. They call themselves scam-baiters, and they have started taking justice into their own hands. Scam-baiters scam the scammer. They antagonize, humiliate and frustrate scammers who think they have an unwary victim. The baiters trade tips, tales and “trophies” on thriving discussion boards like those at 419eater.com , scamorama.com and aa419.org . (The 419 refers to the section of the Nigerian penal code that deals with fraud.) “My reason for scam-baiting is to waste the time and resources of the scammer,” said a scam-baiter with the Web name of Scam Patroller, who declined to provide any identification beyond an e-mail address. “Each minute a scammer spends on my bait cannot be used to scam a real victim.” Their motives may seem altruistic, but not all law enforcement officials approve of their tactics, which can include entrapment and public humiliation. Many of the scam-baiters succeed in getting embarrassing photographs of their targets posted on the Internet. “At first you might smile and think the trophy photographs are funny, but I have seen some with fraudsters in highly degrading positions,” said Ralf Zimmermann, a crime intelligence officer in the financial and high-technology crimes division of Interpol, based in Lyon, France. “They are fraudsters and they are not good people, but they have their human rights.” A scam-baiter known as Jason dinAlt, who was interviewed online, regards the scam practitioners as criminals who deserve any ridicule they receive. (His online pseudonym comes from the science fiction novel “Deathworld.”) The humiliations delivered by scam-baiters can be as elaborate as the scams themselves, including making the scam artists take complex and expensive trips to pick up nonexistent payoffs. “My most prized trophies are not physical ones — they are events,” Mr. dinAlt said. “My lad traveled 300 kilometers four times to pick up money that didn’t exist, and he was physically thrown out of the MoneyGram office and told to never come back.” Prized scam-baiter trophies include photographs of the practitioners and their accomplices holding signs intended to humiliate them and saying things like “I am a bad person” or making statements that are unsuitable for print. The Web site 419eater.com uses photos of scam practitioners holding signs as navigation tools for the site. Other images involve embarrassing additions to the photograph, like the fraud artist holding a fish on his head. One scam-bait video that turned into a YouTube hit shows scam artists in a Lagos grocery store acting out the dead parrot sketch from the television series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Over the course of a lengthy correspondence, the swindlers had been persuaded that the video would be entered into a contest offering a cash prize. The creator of that scam-bait, who identifies himself as Mike Berry, published a book of his favorite scam-baits, titled “Greetings in Jesus Name! The Scambaiter Letters.” Mr. Berry once persuaded a scam practitioner to carve a full-scale wooden replica of an old Commodore 64 computer keyboard. Like all scam-baiters interviewed for this article, Mr. Berry, the founder of 419eater.com, declined to speak on the telephone or provide a verifiable identity. Scam Patroller, in an e-mail exchange, said, “I won’t give out my home number to anyone for obvious reasons of anonymity and safety,” adding that his companion did not fully approve of his hobby. “She often worries about me baiting criminals.” Cloaking themselves in digital anonymity through proxy servers and fake e-mail addresses, scam-baiters invent multiple personalities and sprinkle e-mail addresses into Web site comments as bait. “I usually limit myself to 10 different personalities at a time,” Mr. dinAlt said. “Beyond that, it gets too confusing to keep up with each story line.” Responding to the e-mail solicitations, the scam-baiters start an exchange with the aim of moving up the hierarchy of the operation. The lower-level responders often follow a standard script until a likely victim is identified. At that point, the victim is passed to a higher-level practitioner to extract money. “You tailor your bait to get the scammer off the script,” Mr. dinAlt said. “Once you get them off the script, it is all downhill for the scammer from there.” Once the fraud artist is hooked, Mr. dinAlt usually exposes some part of the ruse as untrustworthy or dishonest, forcing him to show himself as trustworthy. “We tell them that in Western countries, sending a photograph with a sign is a symbol of trustworthiness, because a camera does not lie,” Mr. dinAlt said. “Some are so greedy they will do anything to restore the confidence of their intended victim, including pose with a fish on their head or have milk poured over them while holding a sign with a silly message.” Over the course of a lengthy correspondence, a bond can develop between a swindler and a scam-baiter. “I know him pretty well,” Mr. dinAlt said of a practitioner with whom he had exchanged roughly 400 e-mail messages over 18 months. “I know he was married but separated because of his womanizing, and fell out with his lifelong friend over cheating in a scam.” Despite respect for this person’s intelligence and sympathy for his financial plight, Mr. dinAlt said he held him in low regard. “He is an educated man in a country where there is no hope, and he could have been successful in different circumstances,” Mr. dinAlt said. “But he is a thief — albeit from circumstances beyond his control — but he is still a thief, and that is something I won’t accept.” For all the effort and time spent by scam-baiters, not everyone is convinced that they make a difference. “Given the scale of the problem, it is like the scam-baiters are cleaning a stadium with a toothbrush,” said Suresh Ramasubramanian, who manages antispam operations at Outblaze, one of the world’s largest e-mail companies. “This may be an entertaining hobby, but it is not saving the world.” Still, Interpol says the illicit e-mail messages — which hold out the prospect of large rewards in exchange for small advance payments — cajole, threaten and ultimately defraud an increasing number of greedy, naïve or frightened Internet surfers of billions of dollars a year. “These e-mail-based scams are growing as quickly as the Internet itself,” Mr. Zimmermann of Interpol said. “Every new user of the Internet is a potential victim.”

Frauds and Swindling
Computers and the Internet
Electronic Mail
Interpol
YouTube.com
Africa
Nigeria


Fire at Abandoned Warehouse in New Orleans Leaves 8 Dead

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The deadliest fire in decades here killed eight homeless people early Tuesday as they were burning debris in an abandoned warehouse to stay warm, the authorities said. Firefighters said they could not determine the sex or approximate ages of those who died because their bodies were so badly burned. A 23-year-old man who escaped the building said he had not been able to return to help his friends because of the smoke, said Thomas Butler, a Red Cross volunteer. The Orleans Parish coroner’s office said it was uncertain when the victims would be identified. A group of young people sitting nearby on the steps of an abandoned house said the dead were three women and five men. One woman in the group, Rachel Park, 27, of California, said the victims never thought of themselves as homeless. “They were all accomplished musicians or artists — jolly, happy people,” she said. Ms. Park knew the victims by only their first names and said their ages ranged from 19 to 30. The temperature early Tuesday was just below freezing, which is unusual for New Orleans. The warehouse is in a blighted neighborhood that was left even more so after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. The fire was reported just before 2 a.m., and fire trucks arrived within five minutes to find the building engulfed in flames, said Greg Davis, a Fire Department spokesman. Some of the victims may have been unconscious from carbon monoxide. Capt. Edwin Holmes, another Fire Department spokesman, said the fire was among the deadliest in modern history in the city, and the worst since 32 people died in a blaze at a French Quarter lounge in 1973. Homelessness in the city has worsened since Hurricane Katrina. Linda Gonzales of the New Orleans Mission estimated that as many as 3,000 people could be on the streets on any given night.

New Orleans (La)
Fires and Firefighters
Deaths (Fatalities)
Homeless Persons
Hurricane Katrina


Illinois: Move By Lawyers For Blagojevich Called ‘Harebrained’

Abstract: A federal judge has denied what he called a “harebrained” motion by Rod Blagojevich’s lawyers over what they claimed was potential misconduct by the jury forewoman at his retrial. Judge James Zagel threatened Monday to sanction the lawyer who drafted the motion for the impeached governor, who was convicted of charges including that he tried to sell President Obama’s old Senate seat. The defense asked Judge Zagel to investigate whether the forewoman violated the judge’s orders by possessing a questionnaire from the retrial and using it in a talk she gave to high school students. The motion had sought a new trial if court rules were violated.

Decisions and Verdicts
Senate
Blagojevich Rod R
Illinois
Zagel James
Jury System


Hendrick Motorsports Reclaims Spot Atop Nascar in a Week

Abstract: CONCORD, N.C. — Rick Hendrick jammed his leg into the No. 48 Chevrolet, straddled the driver’s side windowsill and held on for dear life on a precarious victory ride down the front stretch at Charlotte Motor Speedway last Saturday night. His Hendrick Motorsports driver Jimmie Johnson had just won the Nascar Sprint Cup All-Star Race, and in the giddy aftermath, Hendrick, 62, did not consider the risk of falling off or being hit by a projectile from the stands. He later called it the dumbest thing he had ever done. “My daughter was like, ‘Have you lost your mind?’ ” said Hendrick, who also wondered if he would face the wrath of Nascar’s president, Mike Helton, for breaking protocol. “I asked Helton; I thought for sure I’d get called to the hauler. He said, ‘We were so damned scared, we were too scared to get mad.’ ” Hendrick was still smiling about it days later. Then again, maybe he won’t be able to get that grin off his face, not after a week unlike perhaps any other in his nearly 30 years as a team owner in Nascar. All season, Hendrick had had to answer why a team that had dominated over the years had been strangely absent from victory lane. But over the last two weeks, things suddenly fell into place for Hendrick Motorsports. Johnson won the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina on May 12, ending a 16-race winless streak for Hendrick Motorsports that dated to last October and handing Hendrick his 200th Cup victory. Johnson’s pit crew won an annual competition in Charlotte, N.C., on May 16 to earn the best position on pit road for Saturday night’s All-Star race. Dale Earnhardt Jr., another Hendrick driver, won the All-Star Showdown that night, a qualifier for the All-Star race. Then Johnson won the first leg of the All-Star race, and Earnhardt won the fourth leg. Johnson, aided by his pit selection, capped it all by winning the race and giving Hendrick the ride of his life. On top of that, the Hendrick development driver Chase Elliott, son of the former Cup champion Bill Elliott, won twice in the lower levels of stock car racing in the same week. And two car dealerships in the massive Hendrick Automotive Group were honored for their performance by BMW. All that in one glorious week that has reaffirmed Hendrick’s position atop the sport heading into the Coca-Cola 600 here Sunday, when Johnson will no doubt be favored. “This has been kind of like having a birthday every day,” Hendrick said Tuesday before a private 200th-victory party in Charlotte that was headlined by the singer Brad Paisley. Hendrick’s winning streak ended Wednesday, when he fell short of the votes needed to be enshrined in the Nascar Hall of Fame. That will come soon enough. Hendrick has more victories in Nascar’s top series than any team except the now-closed Petty Enterprises, which had 268. It is enough, for now, for Hendrick to be back in victory lane after a lengthy absence. Johnson, a five-time Cup champion, had given Hendrick win No. 199 at Kansas Speedway on Oct. 9. Commemorative 200th-victory hats were ordered for the celebration that was to come. Each week, the hats were delivered to the racetrack just in case. For 16 races, the hats remained in their boxes. But with back-to-back victories, Johnson has reasserted his place atop the sport. He is not Hendrick’s only hope for a title this year, either. Earnhardt is still looking for his first win since 2008, but he has been strong all season and is third in points. Kasey Kahne, who arrived at Hendrick this season and struggled early, has put together five straight top-10 finishes to move up to 16th in points. If Hendrick could only solve Jeff Gordon, a four-time champion who is 24th in the standings. Gordon has endured a freakishly long run of accidents, pit-road miscues and bad breaks. He has finished outside the top 10 in the standings only twice in 20 years, and only once (11th, in 2005) since his rookie season. “If this was building my career, I’d be kicking the dog that I don’t have; I’d be upset,” Gordon said. But he has won too many races over the years, and has come close too many times this season, to believe he is slipping. In truth, despite the last week, Hendrick is not the dominant team it was even a few years ago. In 2007, Hendrick drivers won 18 of 36 races. In 2009, it was 13. In 2010, Hendrick won six races, all by Johnson as he captured his fifth consecutive title. But in 2011, the win total dropped to five, and Johnson was toppled as Tony Stewart won the Sprint Cup championship. “Nascar caught us,” Gordon said of the Nascar-designed racecar introduced in 2007 that has leveled the playing field, with strict limits on the ability of teams to adjust the design of the car. It will surely be a while before Hendrick can surpass Petty Enterprises’ record. As Hendrick chases Petty, so does Johnson. He is two championships from tying Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr., both of whom won seven titles. “I want to leave my mark in this sport when I hang up my helmet,” Johnson said. “We’re doing a great job of that.” One perfect week does not make a season. But it’s a start.

Automobile Racing
Hendrick Motorsports Inc
National Assn of Stock Car Auto Racing
Johnson Jimmie
Hendrick Rick


Palestinian Leader Insists on Halt to Settlements

Abstract: JERUSALEM — The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas , said Sunday that any American proposal for restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations must include East Jerusalem as part of a complete halt in Israeli settlement building. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Abbas’s position, which is consistent with Palestinian policy, would scuttle a proposed deal that the Americans hope will lead to resumption of the negotiations. In the past the sides have found ways to surmount such difficulties. Speaking to reporters in Cairo after meeting President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Mr. Abbas said that he had received no official American proposal regarding the peace process, but that for negotiations to take place, “there has to be a complete halt in settlements in all the Palestinian lands, first and foremost in Jerusalem.” His remarks were carried by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been considering an additional 90-day moratorium on the construction of settlement homes in the West Bank in return for security and diplomatic benefits from the United States. Israeli officials said Sunday that Mr. Netanyahu was still waiting for a letter from the Americans spelling out the terms of the understandings. One issue needing clarification was the amount of a United States subsidy to Israel to acquire 20 advanced American fighter aircraft. Mr. Abbas said in Cairo that American-Israeli military deals were not his concern, but that tying such deals to a resumption of the peace negotiations was “unacceptable.” Mr. Netanyahu has said that when he receives the letter from the United States he will go to his 15-member inner cabinet, where he said he expected to win approval for the deal. But two hard-line members of the inner cabinet, ministers from the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, have threatened to vote against the deal unless they are assured that building could continue in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 war. The annexation has never been recognized internationally, and the Palestinians claim the area as the capital of a future independent state. Mr. Netanyahu also faces strong opposition within his own conservative Likud Party for any further settlement moratorium. Thousands of opponents, mainly schoolchildren bused in from the settlements, demonstrated against the 90-day freeze outside the prime minister’s office on Sunday. Israel and the Palestinians began direct peace talks in Washington in early September, but a short time later, the Palestinians suspended the negotiations when an earlier 10-month Israeli moratorium on West Bank construction expired. Israel insisted that the last moratorium did not apply in East Jerusalem, and that the same would be true this time. The United States will not explicitly endorse Israeli building in East Jerusalem. Washington greeted the recent advancement of plans for more than 1,000 new Israeli housing units in East Jerusalem with dismay . But the Americans made do in the past few months with an Israeli commitment to avoid surprises and acts that could be deemed provocative. As part of its proposed deal with the Israelis, the United States is also said to have offered Israel diplomatic support that could lead to a veto of any Palestinian plans to seek United Nations Security Council recognition for a state. In a move that could further increase tensions with the Palestinians, the Israeli government on Sunday approved a $23 million, five-year project to renovate and develop the Western Wall Plaza and its environs. One of Judaism’s holiest sites, the Western Wall is located in the Old City, in disputed territory across the 1967 lines. The plaza for worshipers and visitors abuts a remnant of the retaining wall of the mount, which is revered by Jews as the site where their ancient temples once stood. Al Aksa Mosque now sits on the top of the mount. Also on Sunday, two Israeli soldiers received a three-month suspended prison sentence and were demoted to sergeant from staff sergeant for using a 9-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield by forcing him to check bags for explosives in Israel’s 2008-09 Gaza war. The two were convicted last month in an Israeli military court. Fellow soldiers and other supporters expressed relief at what they viewed as a relatively light sentence imposed by a judge, who said the soldiers’ misconduct had to be balanced against the difficult circumstances in which they were operating. These were the first serious convictions in Israel’s criminal investigations into the conduct of its soldiers during the three-week Gaza invasion that began in late 2008 and was aimed at stopping rocket fire at Israeli communities. In July, the army indicted several officers and soldiers for actions during the offensive. Several cases are still in progress.

Palestinians
Israeli Settlements
Abbas Mahmoud
East Jerusalem


Rome’s Mayor Reshuffles Executive Council

Abstract: ROME — Rome’s mayor, Ignazio Marino, shuffled his executive council on Tuesday, promising to improve transit and other services in the city, which have recently been under harsh scrutiny for troubles in garbage collection and other issues. Mr. Marino appointed four new councilors, responsible for transportation, tourism, schools and the budget. He chose two prominent figures, Stefano Esposito, a senator who has long been involved in the contentious construction of the high-speed railway in northern Italy, to be the city councilor for transportation; and Marco Rossi Doria, Italy’s former under secretary for education, to be in charge of education and the peripheries in Rome.

Rome
Ignazio Marino
Italy
Appointments and Executive Changes


Karim Benzema Is Scoring Again for France at the World Cup

Abstract: SALVADOR, Brazil — The opportunities and the goals came in rapid succession for Karim Benzema in his first World Cup match. Headers with space available. A display of sang-froid from the penalty spot. A cocksure and technically impeccable first-touch drive with his left foot; a ruthless blast from close range with his right that goalkeeper Noel Valladares’s fast-twitch talents were not nearly enough to thwart. It looked easy, perhaps too easy, against Honduras on Sunday, as Benzema scored twice and could well have been credited with a third when his angled shot off the far post rebounded back along the goal line and was mishandled by Valladares, eventually being ruled an own goal. But a match like the one he played against Honduras has come anything but easy for the 26-year-old Benzema. Although already on the Real Madrid roster, Benzema failed to make the French squad for the previous World Cup in South Africa, which turned out to be a stroke of good fortune when the team imploded and became personae non gratae in France. Image Karim Benzema battling Osman Chávez for the ball during the game against Honduras. Credit Armando Babani/European Pressphoto Agency Benzema also failed, for a long stretch, to convince at Real Madrid, where José Mourinho, the sharp-tongued coach, once said that as a leader in need of goals, he preferred to go hunting with a dog than with a cat. The cat was Benzema — all feline grace but unpredictable, difficult to read and to reach. For all his talent, Benzema has also had long stretches of futility, once going 15 matches and, to be brutally precise, 1,222 minutes without scoring for France from June 2012 to October 2013. Not many strikers would still get the chance to be a star at a World Cup for a major soccer nation after such a fruitless stretch. But that is exactly where Benzema finds himself as France prepares to face its first real test of this competition against Switzerland on Friday in Salvador. “I’ve a bit gone through all the emotions with Benzema in the last two years,” said Didier Deschamps, the French manager who was also the captain of the French team that won the World Cup in 1998. Deschamps benched Benzema for a time last year in favor of Olivier Giroud. But Benzema came around when France needed him most, starting and scoring the second goal in an improbable 3-0 victory over Ukraine last November in the return leg of a playoff that barely saved France’s place in the World Cup. Benzema has kept building from there: scoring 24 goals for Real Madrid this season as it won its 10th (and his first) Champions League title. Globally, he remains in the shadow of Real Madrid forwards Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale, but France needs him more than ever with the star winger Franck Ribéry out with a back injury. “I don’t know if it did me good or not good,” Benzema said this week of his time as a substitute. “What’s certain is that I was in a bad phase. That had to change. I had played quite a few matches. There was internal competition. At that moment, there were other forwards who were good, who were scoring. Me, I just kept working, talked with the manager. And I was the first to admit that I was not at my best.” Hugo Lloris, the French goalkeeper, can sense how much closer Benzema is now. “Karim is a player who needs responsibility, and he has even more with the absence of Franck,” Lloris said. “Honduras was a beautiful way for him to start the Cup.” Benzema is the son of a working-class French family of Algerian descent, which might lead one to believe that Zinedine Zidane, the son of working-class Algerian immigrants, was his main inspiration as a boy playing on the grass and cement in Lyon. That was not the case. Benzema, in his earliest years, had eyes only for Brazil and Ronaldo, the ultimate blend of predatory power and dexterity who was then in his prime. “My boyhood idol and still my favorite player,” Benzema said in an interview with France Football this month. “I learned many things watching his matches, his videos. I devoured them. I still watch DVDs of him sometimes. He remains my only reference. I also watched Zizou, but it’s Ronaldo who always made me dream.” That is quite a statement for a youngster who was 10 years old when Zizou, as Zidane is known, scored twice in France’s 3-0 victory over Brazil in the final of the World Cup in Stade de France. “I remember the day of the final: July 12, 1998,” Benzema said in the interview. “I was in summer camp with my sister. In the afternoon, we had a soccer tournament, World Cup-style with all the countries. Everybody was totally for France. Everybody wanted to play for Les Bleus in our little game, except for me. I was still for Brazil. But I changed sides after Zizou scored the second goal.” Benzema has since met Ronaldo and visited Brazil in 2009 with the Brazilian striker Fred, a former teammate with Olympique Lyonnais. But Benzema spends much more time these days with Zidane, who is an assistant coach at Real Madrid. Now, Benzema said, he considers Zidane part of his family. And even though Benzema is a true center forward and Zidane was a creative midfielder, Benzema gets advice from Zidane on things as varied as positioning, free kicks and movement away from the ball. They spoke again before the Honduras match. “He wished me good luck and told me to enjoy myself, to take chances,” Benzema said. “Afterward, he sent me a quick message and told me he was happy for us.” But true happiness in Brazil will come only with more goals and more French redemption after its 2010 campaign in South Africa, which included a training strike by the players and a level of internal tension and backstage intrigue worthy of Louis XIV’s court. Benzema was far from the tumult, but he and all the current French players are still paying for it. In a poll of French soccer popularity conducted by France Football and the French network Canal Plus last month, he did not even make the top 30. That could change in a hurry here. Although his Real Madrid teammates teasingly call him Gato, or cat, Benzema has been much more predictable — and productive — of late.

2014 World Cup
Soccer
Karim Benzema
France
Didier Deschamps
Real Madrid


Entrepreneurs Take Time to Organize Their Time

Abstract: Time management is such a good idea — especially for small-business owners. It can increase effectiveness, productivity and profitability, as well as reduce stress. If only it didn’t take so much, well, time. Kim Zoller Fenster is like many entrepreneurs who struggle to strategize for their business while managing employees and customers. As president of Image Dynamics in Dallas, however, one of her bread and butter services is helping her clients conquer their own time management and effectiveness issues. “What is very exciting and fun at the beginning, and is meant to help you, becomes a burden,’’ she said. “It becomes another thing on your plate, so you end up not doing it. It becomes one more thing you stress about that really should be helping you. The people in my office are much more organized than I am.” With relatively few resources and often no support staff, managers of the nation’s 26 million small businesses can find themselves even more pressed for time than overworked and stressed-out colleagues in big corporations. “Time management, even though it’s important for anyone, is more important for small-business owners simply due to the fact that they have more and varied responsibilities than a person working in a department or corporation. The small-business owner is very often the accountant, sales and marketing team, C.E.O. and janitor,” said Monica Ricci, owner of Catalyst Organizing Solutions in Alpharetta, Ga. Those who are not too overworked to avail themselves of time management advice are turning to coaches, books, software and seminars to help them bring order. Diedre Wachbrit, a lawyer in Westlake Village, Calif., is her own time management coach. She said she reassesses her skills every 6 to 18 months because she seems to need additional ones as her business grows. She is trying to teach herself to hand off tasks. “It’s work to delegate,’’ said Ms. Wachbrit, who specializes in planning for people with special needs and has a staff of 10. But she said it was important to resist the temptation to take two minutes to do something and instead to “take five minutes to think how someone else can do it, because that will save me hours if you think about how often I do that same task over and over again.” While the tools, agenda and to-do list for managing time are the same for the self-employed as for everyone else, entrepreneurs may have more control because they are the boss, not working for him. Time management experts say small businesses constitute no more than 20 percent of their clientele, despite the fact that entrepreneurs seem to have the most to gain. Coaches charge from $200 for half-day one-on-one sessions to $6,000 for a daylong group seminar. Half a day generally is enough time to visit a workplace and establish a plan of action for an individual, according to coaches. A big emphasis is on urging clients to keep control of their schedule and not let their employees, customers or e-mail hijack their day. Peter A. Turla, co-author of “Time Management Made Easy (Dutton, 1983),” teaches in-house seminars and said small-business owners must be disciplined and set priorities. “Time is one of your scarcest commodities,” he said. “Train other people that you have a job and that they need to leave you alone when you are working. You need to train yourself to the very same thing.” After working with Ms. Ricci, Jonas Berwick, a private detective in Lawrenceville, Ga., decided he should spend his time directing and expanding his seven-person business, not “the minutiae” like paperwork and routine administrative tasks. He reduced his workweek to 40 hours, from 70, and said that his stress level had dropped as well. Mr. Berwick later hired Ms. Ricci to conduct a seminar for his staff on overcoming procrastination. “Before, my life was one of worry and anxiety and stress,’’ he said. “I was a firefighter. All I did was put out fires. I never prevented fires from occurring, as I do now. I did not get any business growth or development accomplished.” Experts tell clients to establish business hours — whatever works for them and their family — and to set boundaries. It is easier said than done considering that many small-business owners work 70-hour weeks, go to sleep worrying about the job and think they must have their fingers in all aspects of the business. It is worth the effort, said Edward T. Reilly, president and chief executive of the American Management Association. “If someone has come to the conclusion that time management is important but they don’t have time for it, they simply have come to the wrong conclusion,” he said. Tanya Zingleman, a director and independent consultant with Southern Living at Home, sells home accessories tailored to Southern Living readers. She works from home and hired a coach when she started her business. “It was the best thing I ever did,’’ said Ms. Zingleman, who lives in Cumming, Ga. “I was really in need of basic time management skills that I had not learned in the corporate world. When I was home, I couldn’t get everything accomplished that I could at the office.” Donald E. Wetmore, who conducts time management seminars and has written books on the subject, said people must work smarter, not necessarily harder or longer. “Entrepreneurs don’t have anybody to account to but themselves,’’ he said. “They don’t have the structure of a 9-to-5 environment with tasks that are directed toward them. Time ultimately is the prime resource that companies succeed or fail by. It is a message not lost on John Schegg, president and owner of the Schegg Group. He took one of Mr. Wetmore’s three-day courses 18 years ago when he started his outplacement and executive coaching firm in Shelton, Conn. Each night he spends about 30 minutes laying out the next 11 to 12 hours he will work. “I am as productive as I could possibly be,’’ said Mr. Schegg, who has three full-time employees. “If I waste two minutes during the day, that’s shocking.’’ Small-business people must decide what to postpone, delegate or forget. Getting it done, Mr. Wetmore said, does not mean doing it yourself. Owners, however, tend to be reluctant to pay someone to do tasks they can do themselves, even when their efforts would be better spent elsewhere, Ms. Ricci said. Julie Morgenstern, author of “Never Check E-Mail in the Morning and Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work , Fireside, 2004)” said entrepreneurs were less open to the notion that they could change how they work than people in larger corporations. “Small businesses are more resistant to changing their behavior,’’ she said. “It’s hard for them to visualize that things can be different, because they live in a vacuum. Nobody is above them. They have no mentors. They are afraid that if they change what got them to where they are, they will fail and their business will collapse. There is no cushion and no safety net.”

Small Business
Entrepreneurship
Stress (Human)
Working Hours
Personal Finances
Time Management


To Lure Tourists, a Remote Village in Spain Turns Its Eye to the Arts

Abstract: GENALGUACIL, Spain — This Spanish village has a new cemetery, though no one has ever been buried in it. Built before the onset of the financial crisis, and against the wishes of residents who wanted their final resting place to be in the old village cemetery, it was yet another Spanish investment plan that failed. Yet the cemetery came to life, so to speak, last month when two Spanish artists plastered some of its walls and niches with spoof posters advertising the unlikely opening of a Guggenheim Museum in Genalguacil, population 522. The posters’ designers — Juan Francisco Casas and Eugenio Merino Troncoso — were among 13 artists who took part in a two-week festival that, its organizers hope, will turn Genalguacil (pronounced hai-nahl-gwah-THEEL) into “a museum village” by ensuring that whatever works were produced here would remain on permanent display. Many art festivals offer residency, subsidizing a place to stay for artists while they pursue their work. But the festival in Genalguacil was an unusual attempt to support Spanish artists while also bringing some measure of economic revival to a remote, ancient village, accessible only by a winding road that turns into a dirt track a few miles away. Genalguacil is among the so-called pueblos blancos, a series of whitewashed villages where many hang on cliffs, near the southern coast of Spain. Its church was built on the ruins of a mosque, and its streets still follow the layout originally designed by the Moors who conquered southern Spain. But those charms alone have not been enough to draw the level of tourism and commerce needed to keep all-such villages vibrant in a hilly region that remains far less visited than Marbella and the more accessible seaside resorts along the Costa del Sol. The eurozone’s economic downturn made matters worse, and it has left many Spanish regions like this one relying on their wits and imagination to change their fortunes. The biennial arts festival here was in some ways initially a victim of overreaching ambitions. In 2004, before the country’s housing bubble burst, the same mayor who added the unwanted cemetery built a three-story museum to house some of the art produced during the festival. “Ten years ago, everybody in Spain wanted to have a museum without even thinking about what to put inside,” said Fernando Bayona, who recently took over as the arts coordinator of the festival. “Today, I don’t think anybody would be building a museum of this size here.” The current mayor, Miguel Ángel Herrera, said the bet on contemporary arts to draw tourists was already paying off. During the two weeks of the festival, about 8,000 people visited Genalguacil, out of a total of 20,000 visitors expected this year, according to estimates from the town hall. The mayor’s artistic push also now involves attracting moviemakers to his spruced-up village. This month, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, a Spanish director, will film part of his new comedy, “Rey Gitano,” or “Gypsy King,” in Genalguacil. Mr. Herrera predicted that the town hall would close the year with a budget surplus — also thanks to greater spending discipline and steering clear of projects like adding an unused cemetery. “This investment was a disaster, I can’t think of any other word for it,” Mr. Herrera said. “It doesn’t make it any better, but this kind of thing really happened in most other municipalities around here.” Instead, the town invested in art, to its benefit and to that of the artists. This year, the festival had a budget of about 110,000 euros, or $144,400. Each of the selected artists received $1,300, as well as free food and accommodation during the two weeks. Even if that amounts to a modest wage, the festival still managed to attract some of Spain’s leading contemporary artists. Mr. Merino, the co-designer of the Guggenheim poster project, created something of a sensation two years ago at ARCO, a major Madrid arts fair, where he displayed “Always Franco,” a statue of the former Spanish dictator in a Coca-Cola fridge. In June, Mr. Merino had a show at the Unix gallery in New York, in which he expanded on his “political freeze” theme by placing busts of politicians like Fidel Castro and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia inside fridges. Image Every two years, Spanish artists gather at the festival to work. The city gives them a modest wage and free room and board. Credit Laura Leon for The New York Times The Guggenheim poster, he explained, was intended as a backhanded swipe at the ambition of many Spanish cities to replicate the success of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by importing foreign art rather than investing in Spanish artists. The latest major arts project to land in Spain is a planned Pompidou museum in Málaga that will be the first overseas offshoot of the Paris arts center. The museum is scheduled to open in 2015, in a cubelike structure along the port of Málaga, which has also become a major destination for cruise ships. “It really makes no sense that Spain has been cutting back its support to domestic artists but somehow feels it needs to import more from overseas,” Mr. Merino said. Spending two weeks in an isolated village alongside other artists, Mr. Merino argued, is an experience that can be more enriching than having work on display at ARCO or in a New York gallery. In fact, some of the artists said that taking part in the Genalguacil festival was a chance to meet not only other artists but also local residents. Nekane Manrique, a Basque painter, organized a yoga workshop at the start of the festival. Using photos taken during a yoga session, she then completed a painting of two women with their arms outstretched. Maria Bueno, another painter, asked residents for their favorite cooking recipe, as well as permission to then turn the recipe into a mural painting on the wall of their house or restaurant. “I think that is much more rewarding than having my work inside a museum, as if it was put inside a box,” Ms. Bueno said. “I really believe this festival should allow the village to breathe art in a way people here haven’t done before.” Like many other Spanish villages, however, Genalguacil has an aging farming population whose main preoccupation has not been admiring art. Francisco Izquierdo, a retired farmer, said that he did not have strong feelings about the murals and outdoor statues that now adorn his village, but that he appreciated the greater focus on aesthetics and the fact that “all this art has helped make this place a lot cleaner.” Still, even if arts and tourism added revenues and created some jobs, he said more needed to be done to guarantee the village’s long-term future. “There is no longer enough farming,” he said, “so the young continue to leave and the old stay.”

Genalguacil Spain
Spain
Art
Festival
Travel,Tourism
Economy


Interim Secret Service Chief Was in President’s Detail

Abstract: With anxiety growing over security at the White House and a Secret Service in disarray, President Obama on Wednesday called on a former member of the president’s personal detail to stabilize the agency until a permanent director is named. The interim director, Joseph Clancy, an agency veteran who retired in 2011, was named to the post after the director, Julia Pierson , resigned Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Clancy, 58, who most recently was special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, has spent the last three years in charge of security at Comcast in Philadelphia. “He is somebody who has earned the respect and admiration of the men and women who are his colleagues at the United States Secret Service,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. “He is also somebody who has the full confidence of the president and the first lady.” Mr. Clancy grew up in the Philadelphia area and went on to study at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He excelled at football and he was on West Point’s varsity squad, but his math grades suffered, according to his father, Patrick Clancy. When West Point officials tried to hold him back a year, he dropped out and transferred to Villanova University in Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in the late 1970s. After spending a few years as a schoolteacher, Mr. Clancy joined the Secret Service in Philadelphia in the 1980s and later worked in the New York field office, directing a team of agents that conducted major investigations. He was in charge of security at national special events before joining the president’s protective detail, according to a biography provided by Comcast. The White House announcement led to confusion about his résumé. The White House initially said that Mr. Clancy was a West Point graduate, but later in the day Mr. Earnest said he had the wrong information about Mr. Clancy’s educational history. Former colleagues said Mr. Clancy was a good choice to steer the agency through the controversy over security lapses at the White House. “He was on the president’s hip for the first few years of his presidency,” said Steve Atkiss, a partner at Command Consulting Group who worked with Mr. Clancy at the White House from 2005 to 2006. “He was someone who the president would personally know and have a lot of confidence in. Joe is someone who was a seasoned hand.” Mr. Clancy also worked with Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, specializing in White House security and serving as a member of their personal details. His tenure included a controversy of its own: Mr. Clancy was in charge of White House security when Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashed a party at the White House in 2009. Mickey Nelson, another former colleague, said Mr. Clancy was known in the Secret Service for his low profile and subtle sense of humor and was tagged with the nickname “Father Joe” for his no-nonsense demeanor. Mr. Nelson also made light of a career path Mr. Clancy did not pursue. “He was deciding to either go into the Secret Service or be a priest,” said Mr. Nelson, who served with Mr. Clancy for 25 years and was his partner in the presidential protection division. Mr. Nelson said that Mr. Clancy is married and has a son who is also a Secret Service officer. Mr. Clancy was enjoying corporate life and being back in the Philadelphia area, Mr. Nelson said, but a sense of duty and the chance to rehabilitate the Secret Service lured him back. Former colleagues said that while the job is expected to last only a few months, Mr. Clancy is not the type to play caretaker. His father said he was confident that his son was up to the job of steadying the Secret Service. “He usually makes good decisions,” he said. “I hope he did this time, too.”

Secret Service
Julia A Pierson
Joseph Clancy
Appointments and Executive Changes


In First Return to Japan Court, Jurors Convict and Sentence

Abstract: TOKYO — Japan ’s first jury trial in more than a half-century ended Thursday as a panel of three judges and six jurors convicted a Tokyo man of murder and then sentenced him to 15 years in prison. The jury in Tokyo District Court convicted the man, Katsuyoshi Fujii, 72, of fatally stabbing a 66-year-old female neighbor with a survival knife. Mr. Fujii had pleaded guilty, saying he attacked the woman after she knocked down bottles of water he had placed around his house to ward off cats, according to local news reports. In the most dramatic change to Japan’s criminal justice system since the end of World War II, juries are now empowered to decide guilt and sentencing. And in marked contrast to most Western judicial systems, jurors may directly question witnesses, defendants and victims. Although reticent at first, all six lay jurors asked questions during the trial, which lasted just four days. Criminal trials in Japan sometimes drag on for years, and the lack of transparency in the judicial process has often been frustrating to the public. The verdict closed a week of intensive coverage by Japanese media, with up-to-the-minute reports from the courthouse about details, like the questions being asked and the jurors’ facial expressions as they looked at bloody photos from the scene. Juries in criminal trials were discontinued in Japan in 1943, as World War II intensified. A 2004 law reinstituted the jury system, to begin this year. But opinion polls have shown the Japanese public to be highly skeptical of the jury system, primarily because of deep cultural aversions, including a reluctance to express opinions in public, to argue with colleagues and to question authority. Many Japanese have also expressed reluctance to participate in cases involving capital punishment. To educate and win over the public, Japanese courts have held hundreds of mock trials in recent years. The jurors, known as “saiban-in,” are selected from the election rolls and must be at least 20 years old. They also must have at least a junior-high-level education. Politicians and lawyers are excluded. Six lay jurors are teamed with three professional judges, with each of the nine having one vote. Even if the three judges vote that a defendant is guilty, a not-guilty ruling by at least five of the jurors will prevail. But if the six jurors vote for a guilty verdict, the ruling will not stand unless at least one of the judges agrees. Because the judges are involved in the jury’s deliberations, some legal analysts are concerned that the judges will dominate the discussion and perhaps skew the verdicts. Others see them as providing guidance to uncertain citizen-jurors. “The notion that judges should serve as educators for lay judges was supported by the longstanding belief among Japanese elites that the average Japanese citizen lacks the political maturity to participate in governance,” the legal scholar Ingram Weber wrote in the East Asia Law Review. “It was this notion that was used to torpedo previous attempts to introduce lay participation in criminal justice.” The new system, Mr. Weber wrote, has been “designed to democratize the criminal legal process” and serve as a way of “injecting a measure of common sense and public values into court decisions by giving lay persons a determining power over fact-finding and sentencing.” According to people at the court cited by Kyodo News, four of the jurors were women and two were men.

Japan
Jury System
Decisions and Verdicts


John McCain’s Comments on Bowe Bergdahl Bring Rebuke From Lawyer

Abstract: A day after the disclosure of an Army lawyer’s recommendation that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face neither jail time nor punitive discharge for walking off his Army outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, Senator John McCain, chairman of the committee that oversees promotions of senior military commanders, said that Sergeant Bergdahl was “clearly a deserter” and that he would convene a hearing if the sergeant was not punished. Mr. McCain’s statement drew a sharp rebuke on Monday from Sergeant Bergdahl’s lawyer, partly because the four-star Army general who will ultimately decide the fate of Sergeant Bergdahl is considered likely someday to face a hearing for his next job before Mr. McCain’s committee. Sergeant Bergdahl’s lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, accused Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, of improperly seeking to influence the outcome of a major military prosecution. Mr. McCain made the comments in an interview with The Boston Herald on Sunday in Pelham, N.H., where he was campaigning on behalf of one of his top allies, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. “If it comes out that he has no punishment, we’re going to have to have a hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee,” the newspaper quoted Senator McCain as saying about Sergeant Bergdahl. “And I am not prejudging, O.K., but it is well known that in the searches for Bergdahl, after — we know now — he deserted, there are allegations that some American soldiers were killed or wounded, or at the very least put their lives in danger, searching for what is clearly a deserter,” Mr. McCain told The Herald. “We need to have a hearing on that.” Under military rules, Gen. Robert B. Abrams, the commander of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., will ultimately decide what charges the sergeant will face. General Abrams, who also has the power to vacate any eventual conviction against Sergeant Bergdahl, is seen inside the military as someone likely to be nominated for other commands, which would require approval from Mr. McCain’s committee. Image Senator John McCain Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press Mr. Fidell said in an interview on Monday that Senator McCain’s comments in New Hampshire could influence how General Abrams and his advisers proceed and that the remarks might sway other people who could play a role in the case, including military jurors. “Senator McCain’s comments constitute unlawful congressional influence,” Mr. Fidell said in a filing on Monday before the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The Army has charged Sergeant Bergdahl with endangering the troops ordered to search for him after he disappeared in June 2009 — a charge that could mean life imprisonment — and with a count of desertion that carries a five-year maximum sentence. Sergeant Bergdahl was released in May 2014 after President Obama approved a deal exchanging him for five Taliban detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In an emailed statement, Dustin Walker, a spokesman for the Armed Services Committee, said the committee “will continue its longstanding oversight of the entire matter of Sergeant Bergdahl, not just his conduct, but also the administration policy that led to the release of five high-value Taliban detainees without congressional notification, as required by law.” “Chairman McCain,” the statement added, “wants the legal proceedings to run their course before making a determination how best to continue the committee’s oversight work.” At a preliminary hearing last month in Texas, the Army’s investigating officer, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, testified that jail time for Sergeant Bergdahl would be “inappropriate” and that the investigation had found no evidence to support claims that the sergeant had intended to defect to the Taliban or that any soldiers had been killed while specifically searching for him. General Dahl also testified that Sergeant Bergdahl had not intended to leave permanently, but that he had planned to hike 18 miles to a larger military base to inform a senior commander of what he believed were serious leadership problems in his unit. After that testimony, the independent Army lawyer who presided over the hearing, Lt. Col. Mark Visger, issued a recommendation that Sergeant Bergdahl face no jail time and no punitive discharge, according to Mr. Fidell. Army Forces Command officials have declined to comment on details of the case, saying they “continue to maintain careful respect for the military-judicial process, the rights of the accused, and ensuring the case’s fairness and impartiality.”

Afghanistan War
Desertion
Bowe Bergdahl
John McCain
Court-martial
Senate Committee on Armed Services


Stop the Campaign for a Playoff

Abstract: Still seeking change, President-elect Barack Obama has come out squarely in favor of an eight-team playoff system for college football, thereby proving (a) that he is capable of multitasking on his way to the White House and (b) that he can be wrong. Obama responded to Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” at the tail end of a lengthy interview shown Sunday night on CBS. The little digression took all of 45 seconds and should not cause any alarms for citizens who bluster that the new president should have weightier issues on his mind. Public servants are allowed to have feelings about sports, if it helps keep them sane. For example, one of the most appealing sides to the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared when he was not busting squeegee men and jaywalkers but was sitting near the Yankees dugout with a Yankees cap on his head and a beatified look on his normally prosecutorial face. Hizzoner was entitled to root, to have a life. Even presidents can get involved in sports. There is one theory that following their favorite team might keep them out of mischief, although that certainly did not apply to Richard M. Nixon, the prognosticator-in-chief from January 1969 until leaving rather abruptly in August 1974. Nixon once sent over a play to George Allen, the coach of the Redskins, who later tried a highly unsuccessful reverse during a 1971 playoff game. The consensus was that this was Nixon’s play, although neither party confirmed it. Earlier, Nixon — and here Obama may want to take notice — had sallied forth into the realm of college football. In his first year as the most powerful person on the face of the earth, Nixon attended the Texas-Arkansas game on Dec. 6, 1969, and proclaimed on national television that the winner would be the national champion that year, thereby shortcutting the established process of separate polls involving coaches and writers. The presidential opinion — with a plaque, no less — steamed the resident coach of Penn State, one Joe Paterno, whose team beat Missouri in the Orange Bowl, 10-3, to finish undefeated. However, Penn State fell short of undefeated Texas in the polls. Were the coaches and football writers influenced by the new president? “I don’t understand how Richard Nixon could know so much about college football in 1969 and so little about Watergate in 1973,” Paterno, a Republican, said in June of 1973, when Nixon was already developing that Pinocchio look over the 1972 break-in at Watergate.  To this day, asking Paterno about Nixon produces an ominous crackle from deep within, like an outdoor mosquito zapper. Forever scarred by the episode, Paterno favors a four-team playoff, thereby putting himself in the bipartisan company of the incoming president. When the leaders of the Bowl Championship Series voted last May to continue with the current system of a poll and a two-team championship game, Paterno was critical: “To be frank with you, I don’t know what the reasons are not to have a playoff,” Paterno said. “You can talk about missing class and all that kind of stuff; you see basketball go on forever. You have a lot of bogus excuses, but obviously, the majority of people who have the say don’t want it.” One person who wants a playoff is the basketball-playing, White Sox-rooting president-elect: “I think any sensible person would say that if you got a bunch of teams who played throughout the season and many of them have one loss or two losses — there’s no clear decisive winner — that we should be creating a playoff system,” Obama said on “60 Minutes.” Then he added: “Eight teams. That would be three rounds to determine a national championship. That would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of college football that disagrees with me on this. So I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.” Obama did not specify how he would throw his weight around. I think he was making a little joke, knowing he was venturing into the who-asked-you world of Nixon. The poor man is going to have other issues on his mind soon enough. Paterno was right about college basketball’s glorious jamboree every March. It says here that big-time college sports have virtually nothing to do with education, so let’s get over the sham fears of disrupting our scholar-athletes (that preposterous term).  College football was made for controversy, for letting old players and old fans and old coaches bicker into their dotage. After the 2003 season, the writers who vote in the Associated Press poll staged a rebellion, voting for Southern California, which had made a strong showing in the Rose Bowl. The coaches were obligated to vote for Louisiana State, the winner of the Sugar Bowl, the designated championship game. That little override by the writers created co-champions, and more important, sustained the human bickering that is so endearing to college football. The reality is that a playoff format would omit conference runner-ups that just might think they are among the best eight teams in the country. Watch the politicking that will ensue if Oklahoma knocks off Texas Tech on Saturday night. It’s great fun to watch institutions of higher learning squirm when only two bids matter. With all due respect to the new president, college football does not need to be sensible.

Obama Barack
College Athletics
Football
Presidential Election of 2008


The Best Sellers: Filed Under Sports

Abstract: The best-selling sports books in September 2016, according to the New York Times best-seller list. 1. THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown (Penguin). The American rowers who pursued gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 2. SHOE DOG by Phil Knight (Scribner). A memoir by the founder of Nike. 3. RUN FAST. EAT SLOW. by Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky (Rodale). A broad range of recipes for athletes created by an Olympic marathoner and a chef/nutrition coach. 4. BELIEVING IN MAGIC by Cookie Johnson with Denene Millner (Howard Books). A memoir by the wife of Magic Johnson. 5. UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House). An Olympic runner’s story of survival as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II. 6. HEAD BALL COACH by Steve Spurrier with Buddy Martin (Blue Rider). A memoir by a Heisman Trophy winner who coached the Florida Gators, the Washington Redskins and the South Carolina Gamecocks. 7. BARBARIAN DAYS by William Finnegan (Penguin). A Pulitzer Prize-winning surfing chronicle and memoir by a writer for The New Yorker that celebrates a lifelong obsession. 8. WRITINGS ON THE WALL by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld (Time). The basketball legend shares his views on, and personal experiences regarding, the racial, religious and political divide, as well as his thoughts on possible solutions. 9. THE QUEEN OF KATWE by Tim Crothers (Scribner). The true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenage chess prodigy from the slums of Uganda. 10. FIND A WAY by Diana Nyad (Knopf). A memoir by the champion swimmer who, in 2013, at age 64, swam 111 miles in shark-infested waters, from Cuba to Florida, in 53 hours. And One … 18. THE PERFECT PASS by S. C. Gwynne (Scribner). How two little-known college coaches in Iowa introduced offensive plays and passing techniques that revolutionized American football at every level.