Pakistan’s Leader Faces Increasing Political Challenges

Shakil Adil/Associated Press

In a televised address in late July, General Musharraf defended his record, citing economic growth.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 14 — Nearly five years after Sept. 11 turned Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, into one of Washington’s most indispensable allies, he finds himself squeezed from many directions, leading to one of the most serious political binds of his nearly seven-year tenure.

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K. M. Chaudary/Associated Press

Thousands gathered Monday in Lahore for a rally called by opponents of President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup in October 1999.

His two main political foes, who undermined each other for years, are linking arms in an effort to restore civilian rule. Some erstwhile allies on the religious right, emboldened by spreading rage against General Musharraf’s pro-American stance, have stepped up their criticism.

Corruption scandals have dogged some of his partners, including the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, who faces a no-confidence motion in Parliament next week. Inflation has increased. An ethnic insurgency in Baluchistan refuses to subside; Pakistan attributes it to unfriendly neighbors.

No one doubts that the president, who is also the army chief of staff, remains the most powerful man in Pakistan and enjoys the backing of the United States. “He still makes the political weather,” as one Western diplomat put it. But there are signs of weakness.

Last month a letter signed by a group of retired generals and government officials, including those who once worked with him, called for “the military’s disengagement from political power,” urging General Musharraf to shed his military uniform if he was to remain president.

In Washington there are also simmering concerns. A series of planned terrorist attacks with links to Pakistan as well as a sharp rise in crossborder Taliban attacks in Afghanistan have prompted renewed debate within the Defense Department about Pakistan, according to two people involved who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

They said that in particular, the sharply rising American casualty rate in Afghanistan had increased skepticism among some American military officers about the Pakistani intelligence service’s efforts to rein in the Taliban.

“There is an increasing view in the United States that Pakistan isn’t very helpful,” said one researcher involved in the debate, referring to frustration among some officers. “There are people who are really thinking twice about this relationship with Pakistan.”

At home, General Musharraf has been criticized for having little to show for his overtures toward India. Likewise, his post-Sept. 11 assault on suspected militants taking shelter in the tribal areas along the Afghan border, done at the behest of the Bush administration, has resulted in the capture of a number of leaders of Al Qaeda but also the deaths of hundreds of Pakistani troops and a mounting rage in the tribal areas.

At the same time, Afghanistan and India have been nipping at the general’s heels for not doing enough to crack down on militants who they say export violence to their respective countries. Religious radical groups continue to operate here, including those that have links with banned terrorist outfits.

They continue to be implicated in investigations of terrorism suspects half a world away, most recently the group Jamaat ud Dawa in the London airplane bombing plot. Even General Musharraf’s promise to reform radical madrasas, as Islamic religious schools are called, has yet to be fulfilled.

“There are new domestic eruptions, and he hasn’t yet drenched the fires on the foreign policy front,” said Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times in Lahore.

A Western diplomat here in Pakistan said, “Musharraf is in a weaker position than he has been in the past, no doubt about it.” The diplomat, who could not be identified by name because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the politics of this country, added, “There are constraints on him.”

But in Washington the official view remains strongly supportive. Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, credited General Musharraf with having kept his promise to “break” with the Taliban and their Qaeda allies.

Although the Taliban have reorganized inside Pakistan, Mr. Boucher said, General Musharraf’s government is trying to gain control of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“They’ve closed some camps; they’ve outlawed some groups,” he said in an interview. “You have to understand how deeply rooted extremism is in Pakistan.” Of the general’s cooperation with Washington, he added: “I think we’ve seen plenty. We certainly work with Musharraf.”

The coming months pose a big question mark. With elections expected before the end of next year, there is a concern among friends and critics alike: Will domestic politics further compromise his ability to drive through promised reforms?

For the sake of staying in power, political observers say, he must broaden his support. If he broadens it in favor of the right, his ability to crack down on religious extremists will be further compromised.

If he broadens in favor of the political left, he will be more able to carry out his promise to crack down on extremism, but will then have to embrace a political nemesis: Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, who lives in exile, having been convicted of corruption. She has signed a pact with Nawaz Sharif, the other main opposition party leader, also in exile, and his Pakistan Muslim League.

“He is getting increasingly isolated and cornered,” Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, now retired from the army and one of the signers of the letter, said of General Musharraf. “There is a genuine urge and demand in the country to revert to democracy and give a fair deal to all the parties.”

For his part, the president presented a lengthy defense of his record in a speech to the nation in late July — one that also revealed the breadth of his troubles. Addressing inflation, he announced that government shops would sell basic staples to the poor at controlled prices.

He said the domestic budget had more than doubled during his nearly seven-year tenure, he outlined a development plan for restive Baluchistan, and he rattled off how many tractors and motorcycles were being produced in the country. The economy has grown at an annual clip of 7 percent over the last three years.

He criticized India and Afghanistan for suggesting that his efforts to tackle terrorist groups were less than robust. And on the subject of religious radicals, he urged mosques to refrain from using loudspeakers, demanded that “hate material” not be circulated and urged government officials to “look at the problem and take it seriously.”

It was remarkably similar to, though far more tepid than, wish lists he has presented before.

General Musharraf’s promise of madrasa reform fell under renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of the London subway and bus bombings in July 2005. At the time, he promised to expel foreigners studying in Pakistani madrasas and he ordered his government to register all of the madrasas by the end of last year.

Resistance was swift, especially from the coalition of Islamic religious parties. The government has not persuaded all madrasas to register. It has allowed foreign students to remain, so long as they have permission from their home governments. Enforcement is daunting.

Even his fiercest critics acknowledge that some of his troubles are the doings of others. For instance, they say, India’s recalcitrance at his Kashmir proposals — principally his offer to soften the so-called Line of Control that divides the territory between the countries — has weakened his credibility at home.

Except for the release of prisoners and opening of transportation links, they argue, nearly every piece of the India-Pakistan peace agenda remains unresolved, from smaller territorial issues to the hardest nut of all: the fate of Kashmir.

“He has tried, he has failed, and the Indians share responsibility for that,” said one of the general’s most trenchant opposition critics, Aitzaz Ahsan of Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

Likewise, there are the tribal areas. No civilian government, Mr. Ahsan conceded, could have sent hundreds of Pakistani troops to face the Taliban — and die — in the hilly redoubts in the north, as General Musharraf did at American urging.

But his policy has helped to push the tribal regions further beyond the writ of the government and has not quieted the Taliban and their allies. The Pakistani government insists that it is trying its best to root out Taliban and that it is unfairly blamed for Afghanistan’s failure to expel them from inside its own borders.

There is another opinion: that five years after Sept. 11 and Washington’s weariness in Afghanistan, Pakistan has no interest in completely quelling the Taliban. It would not be in General Musharraf’s interest, the argument goes, to forever lose all political influence over Kabul.

“The Pakistanis saw their concessions as temporary,” argued Stephen P. Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They have permanent interests in Afghanistan and are waiting for the U.S. to depart. Now that we are on our way out of Kabul, I can expect Islamabad to try to increase its support for its clients in Afghanistan.”

David Rohde contributed reporting from New York for this article.

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I'm 60 and I hate it: Bill Clinton Aug 15 2:59 PM US/Eastern Email this story

Bill Clinton hates it, but it is true: He will be 60 on Saturday, and he is often the oldest man in the room.

The former baby-boomer-in-chief and 42nd US president admitted at a world AIDS conference here -- at which delegates serenaded him with "Happy Birthday" -- that his approaching milestone filled him with trepidation.

"In just a few days, I will be 60 years old. I hate it, but it's true," the snowy-haired veteran of two tumultuous White House terms said.

"For most of my working life, I was the youngest person doing what I was doing. Then one day I woke up and I was the oldest person in every room," said Clinton, who was a youthful 44 when he was first elected president, in 1992.

"Now that I have more days behind me than ahead of me, I try to wake up with a discipline of gratitude every day," said Clinton, who left office in 2001 and has since devoted himself to his charitable foundation.

The man from Hope, Arkansas then reprised the tale of his own American dream, having been born into poverty and never knowing his father, who died before he was born, but then having a remarkable odyssey to the White House.

"I realize that I came from, by American standards, very humble circumstances when I was born in my home state at the end of World War II," said Clinton, an inveterate political campaigner.

"Our per-capita income was barely half the national average. And I had a totally improbable life.

"But I know I was not born in a log cabin that I built myself," Clinton said, turning his own life story into a parable for those worse off -- including the many developing-world AIDS victims stifled by poverty.

"I had teachers, a coherent community, a decent health care system. I knew that there would be some connection between the efforts I made in life and the results that I achieved," he said.

Clinton was the youngest US president to leave office, although he was not the youngest to enter the White House. That distinction belongs to his hero, John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.

# posted by Brian @ 2:02 PM 0 comments

That Narrator in the Third Season of ‘Laguna Beach’ Is, Like, So Lame

Michael Muller/MTV

From left, the court nobility in the third season of “Laguna Beach”: Kyndra, Kelan, Lexie, Rocky, Cameron, Tessa, Chase and Cami.

I’m concerned about the narrator of the third season of “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” Is the new girl up to the job?

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Michael Muller/MTV

Cameron tops the list of Kyndra and her alpha girls on “Laguna Beach.”

It’s an exalted post, the starring role, and not suitable for anyone with bad nerves. MTV’s bellwether verité series started in 2004 with diligent Lauren telling her tale; driven by an unusual conviction that she could turn her platinum will into daisy charm, she grimly pursued her Girl Scout merit badge in reality exhibitionism.

Jocky Kristin came next. Breezier and more self-assured than Lauren, Kristin didn’t care about merit, and instead played the second season of “Laguna Beach” as if it were N.C.A.A. lacrosse. (These days, while Lauren has kept plugging away at a simulated career on MTV’s spinoff “The Hills,” Kristin has skipped out on “Laguna” and embraced celebrity for its own sake on red carpets and in the pages of Life & Style.)

And tonight we welcome Tessa as Kristin’s successor, the top girl of this third “Laguna Beach” go-round. Tessa has long, matte black hair, small features and a nice, freckly tan. She’s perfectly proportioned and physically confident. All of that’s well enough. But there are two catches. First, she has a creaky voice that sounds like temporary audio; she cannot carry the voice-over. Second, and worse: she’s not popular. For “Laguna Beach,” that’s downright ominous.

The conceit of the first two seasons was that we were in “the real Orange County,” among the spray-tanned narcissists and overdressed shopaholics at the summit of the bourgeoisie. All the usual yearnings — for beauty, money, health, leisure, ocean views — were the controls of the experiment in “Laguna Beach,” so that what was left to bedevil the show’s teenaged characters was only that universal misery: love. Without too many moving parts, the action was easy to follow, a boon to the inventively shot reality series, which could have too easily lost focus and become a desultory art documentary.

You see my concern: that Tessa’s exclusion from the ranks of haughty Kyndra and scheming Cami, the big dogs here, is going to suffuse the drama with status anxieties that have no place on “Laguna Beach.” The adolescent outsider story is a favorite of fiction — writers like to recreate their own freaks-and-geeks experience of high school — but it’s hard to find new angles on it. The innovation of “Laguna Beach” has been to present hermetic court intrigue with its own logic, sidelining entirely the scullery maids and pageboys who have no chance at the upper ranks. Leave it to someone else to tell their sad story.

Tessa, MTV’s Web site says, has been confined to a hospital with health problems. How very not “Laguna Beach.” She’s also lost her friendship with Kyndra; it seems unlikely that they’ll ever reconnect. Kyndra, for her part, is unlikely to care about either health problems or social justice; she’s a mean girl of the highest order, with a Joan Collins manner that would seem to belong to someone twice her age. You can see how Tessa might strike her as sniveling.

If only Kyndra were in charge! On tonight’s episode, Tessa is scheming to steal the guys who have been deputized to Kyndra’s alpha girls. (The dimmish Cameron is at the top of their list.) She and her off-brand posse don’t seem to stand a chance.

“Laguna Beach” will keep its fans, but it might not earn new ones this season: Tessa simply introduces too much reality to the otherworldly fantasy of perpetual sunshine that has driven the show so far. Besides, she’s boring. Sure, sometimes, as in movies and novels, unpopular girls are secretly noble, sophisticated and brilliant, but sometimes — we have to admit — they’re just uncool.

LAGUNA BEACH

MTV, tonight at 10, Eastern and

Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Created by Liz Gateley; Gary Auerbach, Tony DiSanto, Ms. Gateley, Mark Ford, Kevin Lopez and Dave Sirulnick, executive producers; Adam DiVello, development executive for “Laguna Beach.”

# posted by Brian @ 1:56 PM 31 comments

Breast implants saves woman after Hezbollah attack Aug 15 8:07 AM US/Eastern Email this story

One Israeli woman has received an unexpected boost from her breast implants during the Lebanon war -- the silicone embeds saved her life during a Hezbollah rocket attack, a doctor said.

"This is an extraordinary case, but it's a fact that the silicone implants prevented her from a more serious and deeper wound," Jacky Govrin, of the hospital in Nahariya that treated the woman, told army radio Tuesday.

"The young woman went through surgery two years ago to have a larger chest," he said. "During the war she was wounded in the chest by shrapnel" that got stuck in the implants instead of penetrating further.

The woman did not emerge from her ordeal completely unscathed, however.

"The shrapnel was removed but the implant had to be replaced," Govrin said.

Copyright AFP 2005, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

# posted by Brian @ 1:42 PM 0 comments

Lindsay Wants to Entertain Troops in Iraq

TUESDAY AUGUST 08, 2006 09:00AM EST

TUESDAY AUGUST 08, 2006 10:55AM EST UPDATED

By Stephen M. Silverman

Lindsay Lohan Photo by: INFGoff

Lindsay Lohan wants to visit the troops in Iraq – accompanied by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I've been trying to go to Iraq with Hillary Clinton for so long," Lohan, 20, tells Elle magazine in its September issue, after she was asked if she had any big plans for next year. "Hillary was trying to work it out, but it seemed too dangerous."

She continues, "I wanted to do what Marilyn Monroe did (during the Korean War), when she went and just set up a stage and did a concert for the troops all by herself. It's so amazing seeing that one woman just going somewhere, this beautiful sex kitten, who's basically a pinup, which is what I've always aspired to be."

Even without Sen. Clinton, Lohan is confident she can handle an Iraq trip on her own. "I'm not afraid of going," she says. "My security guard is going to take me to a gun range when I get back to L.A., and I'm going to start taking shooting lessons."

On her desire to handle a gun, she says, "Yeah, I have a dark side. I watched all those videos on Charles Manson for a while."

Elsewhere in the Elle interview Lohan says she's never had plastic surgery ("I've never done anything") and isn't using cocaine ("I'm not. There you have it. It's not true").

But she does like to fool with the press – she was 40 minutes late to the Elle interview – and tell reporters "things that aren't true … just because it's fun." Then, too, she admits, when it comes to tabloid attention she "still sort of" loves it.

# posted by Brian @ 10:39 PM 0 comments

New York Area Is a Magnet for Graduates

These days, it seems, you need a college degree just to live in or around New York City.

Almost 5 million people over the age of 25 in the New York metropolitan area — more than a third of the region’s population — had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2005, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau. In Manhattan, nearly three out of five residents were college graduates and one out of four had advanced degrees, forming one of the highest concentrations of highly educated people in any American city.

The degree-holders are rapidly displacing the dropouts, a trend that may help reduce the demand for social services and drive down crime rates. But the trend also worries some sociologists who say it is evidence that lower-income residents are being pushed out.

Between 2000 and 2005, the number of people in the metropolitan area over 25 who had not finished high school declined by 520,000, a drop of almost 20 percent. During the same period, the number of college graduates in the region rose by almost 700,000.

“These numbers are startling,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College of the City University of New York. “It means the labor force in New York is becoming much more educated.”

Mr. Beveridge said the statistics also portended that the next set of census numbers, which are due in two weeks, will reveal a widening gap between rich and poor in the city. “If a big chunk of the labor force has become more educated, we can expect even more income inequality,” he said.

Pedro A. Noguera, a sociologist at New York University and the director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, said many New Yorkers would see the growing ranks of college graduates among them as a positive development that could ease the burdens on city services and lead to a lower crime rate.

“But unfortunately, it’s more likely to mean that it’s increasingly difficult for poor people without college degrees,” he said. “Affordable housing is not as available. The people who make the city work, who do the hard work in the city — the waiters and janitors — are not going to be able to live in the city.”

Mr. Noguera said the trend was not confined to New York. “Certain cities have become extremely attractive to affluent people,” he said, citing San Francisco and Seattle as others.

But according to the latest data, which comes from the 2005 American Community Survey, college graduates are flocking to New York City at a faster pace.

Many of the city’s new arrivals, including immigrants, have college educations, Mr. Beveridge said. And many of the residents who have died or retired and moved away had never finished high school, he said.

The rise in the ranks of the college-educated in the city is a blend of college graduates moving in to take high-paying jobs and residents obtaining degrees, said Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the Department of City Planning. He noted that enrollment at the City University of New York had increased to 218,000 students in 2004, up about 12 percent from 2000.

From 2000 to 2005, the number of New York City residents with at least a bachelor’s degree increased by about 285,000, a gain equal to the total number of college-educated people in San Francisco. During that period, the share of New Yorkers with a college degree rose to 32.2 percent from 26 percent, ranking New York fourth among the biggest American cities.

All parts of New York City became more educated, but Manhattan and Brooklyn stood out. In Manhattan, more than 57 percent of all residents had at least a bachelor’s degree, up from 50 percent in 2000.

That concentration ranked Manhattan first among counties with more than 1 million residents and seventh among all counties.

Brooklyn is becoming educated even faster. Since 2000, the number of college graduates there has risen by about 80,000, or 24 percent, while residents without a high-school diploma have declined by about 110,000, a 24 percent decline.

Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, said that Brooklyn was seeing immigrants and young professionals flood in and that a home there “is becoming less attainable for people that don’t have their college degree or more.”

He cited the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs and the shortage of affordable housing in the borough as factors fueling the change.

“We need those jobs too,” he said. “There will always be those who for whatever reason cannot attain high school or college education. There has to be room for them, too.”

But Mr. Markowitz also attributed the changes in Brooklyn to a wave of Chinese immigrants for whom “education is the center of their lives” and “an influx of residents from Manhattan and from across the country where Brooklyn is considered chic.”

New arrivals with college degrees say the city has become a more attractive place to start careers.

Jennifer Becker, 26, lived in Virginia after graduating from the University of Virginia, but moved to Manhattan last year when her husband, Christian, joined a law firm in the city.

“Part of it was just to be in the big city,” said Ms. Becker, the executive director of the university’s alumni club in New York. “I think people tend to come here for a few years and then move somewhere else.”

From the University of Virginia, for example, about 120 graduates head to New York to live each spring, up from about 75 just five years ago, said Carol Wood, assistant vice president for university relations. “We’re definitely seeing a lot of young grads come up here for jobs right after school,” Ms. Becker said.

# posted by Brian @ 9:33 PM 0 comments