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April 21 - 27, 2011

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Puerto Rico Could

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Pierluisi Introduces Legislation to Increase of Federal Law Agents in U.S. Jurisdictions With High Crime Levels

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Justice Dept Files ADA Lawsuit Against Puerto Rico Justice Dept for Discriminatory Practices

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April 21 - 27, 2011

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Augusto Marín Important 20th Century Painter Dies

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The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Pierluisi Introduces Legislation to Increase the Number of Federal Law Enforcement Agents in U.S. Jurisdictions With High Crime Levels T

he Resident Commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, has introduced legislation to direct both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to establish a program to recruit, assign, and retain individuals to serve in federal law enforcement positions in jurisdictions that are experiencing high rates of homicides and other violent crimes.

Pierluisi filed the bill, the Federal Law Enforcement Recruitment and Retention Act of 2011, with Re-

presentative Michael Grimm (R-NY), who served as an FBI agent for nine years. The legislation is also co-sponsored by Representatives José Serrano (D-NY), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU), and Mike Quigley (D-IL). The bill has the important endorsement of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents 25,000 federal law enforcement officers from over 65 different federal agencies.

“This bill is my latest effort to increase the federal resources devo-

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Exquisite Cuisine in an Oppulent Setting ted to combating crime in Puerto Rico and to mitigate the existing disparities between the federal resources dedicated to the Island and those dedicated to the States. On many previous occasions I have expressed my concern with the present state of affairs and I will continue to do so until there is substantial improvement,” said the Resident Commissioner.

In the States, there is an average of 36 federal officers per 100,000 residents, whereas in Puerto Rico that number is only 31.

“The homicide rate in Puerto Rico is unacceptably high and the fact that there are not sufficient federal resources being brought to bear to prevent and respond to violence on the Island

is also unacceptable,” said Pierluisi.

According to Pierluisi, it is imperative that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security increase the number of authorized positions among their component agencies in Puerto Rico and other high-crime jurisdictions, and that they undertake intensive efforts to expeditiously fill those positions. The Resident Commissioner observed, for example, that nearly 20% of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s authorized positions in Puerto Rico are currently unfilled, and that almost 25% of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s authorized positions on the Island are presently vacant.

“When it is general knowledge that the great majority of homicides in Puerto Rico are linked to the drug trade, it is deeply troubling that two of the federal agencies responsible for leading the fight against narcotrafficking and money laundering are so short-staffed on the Island,” said Pierluisi.

“Likewise, when we know that Puerto Rico has a serious problem with unlawful weapons, it is inconceivable that over 50% of the authorized positions within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on the Island are unfilled,” he added.

Since taking office, the Resident Commissioner has been consistently calling for more federal resources to be devoted to fighting crime. Last July, Pierluisi wrote a detailed letter to Attorney General Holder—and met personally with the Attorney General in September—to express his concerns.

The Resident Commissioner also met last year with senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security. Last month, Pierluisi sent follow-up letters to both agencies to reiterate his concerns and to request a briefing on the specific steps they have taken—or plan to take in the near future—to combat drug-related violence in Puerto Rico.

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The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Puerto Rico Could Lose $200 Million Due to Federal Budget Cuts P T uerto Rico will lose some 10 percent of federal funds that had been allocated to the island up to September as a result of the $38-billion reduction in government spending agreed by the U.S. Congress.

Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in Washington, Pedro Pierluisi, said Monday that it was still unknown exactly how much the island will fail to receive, adding that a figure between $100 million and $200 million has been mentioned.

“The situation in Puerto Rico is the same as in the rest of the states. The situation is that we have to tighten our belts,” he said.

Pierluisi said that the goal of the Puerto Rican government is to make sure that the reductions agreed by Congress affect as little as possible the funds assigned to the island each year.

“The federal government is cutting funds and they’re going to cut ours proportionately the same as they’re cutting those for other states,” Puerto Rico’s representative in Washington said.

Pierluisi stressed that these are funds assigned to the island by the federal government and are not generated by Puerto Ricans.

The official estimated at $7 billion the sum of federal funds apportioned to Puerto Rico each year under the 2009 American Recovery and Reconstruction Act. The Puerto Rican government is concerned about the announcement of a $38-billion reduction in the federal budget up to next September because of the repercussions it could have on the island’s economy.

The Puerto Rican economy partly depends on funds it receives each year from Washington, particularly during the last five years when the country was plunged in a deep economic crisis.

Economic Development and Commerce Secretary José Pérez Riera said last week, however, that a number of indicators confirm the improvement of economic activity in Puerto Rico, where unemployment stands at 16 percent.

Justice Dept Files ADA Lawsuit Against Puerto Rico Justice Dept for Discriminatory Practices

he Justice Department today filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, charging the Puerto Rico Department of Justice (PRDOJ) with employment discrimination for failing to provide a reasonable accommodation to an employee with a disability, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The complaint alleges that the PRDOJ knowingly relocated an employee who uses a wheelchair to an office building that was not accessible to her.

As a result, the employee could not park her vehicle and enter the building without the assistance of others, and could not use the restroom during her work day. After the employee filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the PRDOJ

eventually relocated the employee to a more accessible office building, but continues to require her to attend long meetings on a regular basis at an inaccessible facility.

Title I of the ADA prohibits employers, such as the PRDOJ, from discriminating against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to job application procedures, hiring, advancement, discharge, employee compensation, job training and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment. In addition, an employer is required to make a reasonable accommodation to the known disability of an employee if it would not impose an “undue hardship” on the operation of the employer’s business.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Augusto Marín Important 20th Century Painter Dies

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ugusto Marín one of Puerto Rico most important painters from the late 20th century, died at 89 years old on April 14, 2011 of natural causes. Governor Fortuño declared 3 days of mourning stating that “Puerto Rico has lost a grreat artist.

Augusto Marín was born in 1921 in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He first studied art under the Spanish artist Alejandro Sanchez Felipe. He studied at the Art Student’s League in New York and at the Oris Art Institute in California. In addition to his studies in drawing, painting and mural, he learned the technique of stained glass with Arnaldo Maas and then completed his studies in Holland with Henri Mesterom. Lastly he studied lithography at the University of Notre

Dame, Indiana. He was also a teacher at the school of “Artes Plasticas del Instituto de Cultural Puertorriqueña” and at the “Colegio Regional de Carolina” of the University of Puerto Rico.

Marín’s body of work has evolved throughout the years, These two

paintings, executed in the early 60’s, demonstrate his exceptional mastery of color, lights, and shadows. The geometry of the execution draws the viewer’s attention to the characters portrayed, as well as the intimate action they perform. In these two works, one can see the influence of Pablo Picasso and Rufino Tamayo. The intimate scenes painted here, at once secretive and inclusive, are full of strong geometrical movement.

And yet, the serenity of color and expression balances the entire execution that reaches a sublime intimacy with the viewer.

Augusto Marín’s artwork is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Museum of the University of Puerto Rico, Museum of Ponce, PR. “Centro de Bellas Artes”, P.R. and the First Federal Savings Bank in Puerto Rico.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

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Congress, in a First, Removes an Animal From the Endangered Species List

By FELICITY BARRINGER and JOHN M. BRODER

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ongress for the first time is directly intervening in the Endangered Species List and removing an animal from it, establishing a precedent for political influence over the list that has outraged environmental groups.

A rider to the Congressional budget measure agreed to last weekend dictates that wolves in Montana and Idaho be taken off the endangered species list and managed instead by state wildlife agencies, which is in direct opposition to a federal judge’s recent decision forbidding the Interior Department to take such an action.

While the language on the Rocky Mountain wolves was a tiny item in budgetary terms, environmental groups said it set an unnerving precedent by letting Congress, rather than a science-based federal agency, remove endangered species protections.

The rider is the first known instance of Congress’ directly intervening in the list.

While Congress overrode the protections extended to a tiny Tennessee fish called the snail darter about two decades ago, it did so by authorizing the construction of a dam that had originally been tabled to protect the fish. In that case, Congress did not overturn scientists’ findings about the fish’s viability.

There are myriad restrictions and budget cuts for environmental initiatives in the proposed budget. Most appeared mo-

dest compared to the more drastic cutbacks in the original House budget. Federal agencies were still working through the extensive and complex list provided by Congress on Tuesday, trying to determine what their impact might be.

Among the cuts were $49 million from programs relating to climate change, $438 million from programs supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy, $638 million from environmental cleanup efforts by the Defense Department and $997 million from revolving funds through which the Environmental Protection Agency provides money for local water treatment and pollution cleanup programs.

The budget rider on the wolves, backed by two Western legislators — Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, and Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho — requires the Interior Department to adopt its earlier plan, removing wolves from the endangered list in those two states because it deemed that the states’ management plans, which include hunts of the animals, were acceptable.

The rider also precluded judicial review of this provision.

The wolf issue has great political resonance among the ranchers and hunters of Montana. The first group is concerned about livestock; the second about declines in elk and moose herds. Senator Tester is up for re-election in 2012.

The fact that the department is being

required to do what it had originally intended to do did not take the edge off arguments from environmental advocates that Congress had crossed a crucial line.

Michael T. Leahy, the Rocky Mountain region director for the group Defenders of Wildlife, said in an interview Tuesday, “Now, anytime anybody has an issue with an endangered species, they are going to run to Congress and try to get the same treatment the anti-wolf people have gotten.”

A spokeswoman for Interior Department said it would have no comment on the budget rider.

State officials want the population culled because of the threat wolves pose to elk, moose and deer. Ron Aasheim, a spokesman for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said Tuesday, “We need to be able to manage them as a state to balance them with other wildlife and landowner impacts pertinent to livestock.”

The two sides had recently reached

Budget Deal Deeply Cuts High-Speed Rail Program

By MICHAEL COOPER

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resident Obama’s fledgling highspeed rail program was dealt a serious setback by the budget deal that he struck with Republicans last week: new details released Tuesday showed that the agreement will not only eliminate financing for high-speed rail this year, but will also take back some of the money that Congress approved for it last year.

The cut is a major blow to one of Mr. Obama’s signature transportation goals,

which he set just months ago in his State of the Union address when he called for giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years. And it casts serious doubt on his proposal for spending $53 billion on a high-speed rail program over the next six years.

The cuts will not bring the rail program to a halt, as there is still unspent rail money that can be used on new projects.

But they leave the future of high-speed rail in the United States unclear, to say the least.

Roughly $10 billion has been approved for

high-speed rail so far, but that money has been spread to dozens of projects around the country. If Congress does not approve more money, it is possible that the net result of all that spending will be better regular train service in many areas, and a small down payment on one bullet train, in California.

This year, newly elected Republican governors in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin decided to reject billions of dollars in federal rail money that their predecessors had sought and won, arguing that the projects would be costly boondoggles. Florida spurned $2.4 billion that would have nearly paid for the nation’s first high-speed train, connecting Tampa and Orlando.

The depth of the cut in the budget deal came as something of a surprise. As late as Monday afternoon, an administration official had said that there would still be $1 billion available for high-speed rail this year — a cut from the $2.5 billion in last year’s budget, and the $8 billion in rail money in the stimulus bill that got the program started.

But when the budget bill was released overnight, that money was gone: “Notwithstanding Section 1101, the level for ‘Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, Capital Assistance for High Speed Rail Corridors and Intercity Passenger Rail Service’ shall be $0.” Another section of the new bud-

a proposed settlement of a federal lawsuit brought by environmental groups against the Fish and Wildlife Service and Idaho and Montana officials. But the judge, Donald W. Molloy, rejected the settlement.

Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, declined to comment on how all the proposed cuts would affect operations at his department. He did note that the agency responsible for regulating offshore oil and gas development would get an increase in money, allowing it to hire dozens of new inspectors, scientists and other officials.

Interior Department officials would not discuss the bill’s elimination of a program to expand wilderness areas in the West, a program prized by Mr. Salazar but bitterly opposed by many lawmakers from the region who argue that it will limit development of natural resources, hunting and recreational uses of public lands.

The National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service take relatively modest cuts.

Conservation programs at the Department of Agriculture will be reduced by $800 million, while the agency’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program will be cut by $350 million, essentially ending its financing for the rest of the fiscal year, officials said.

An E.P.A. spokesman, Brendan Gilfillan, said agency staff members were reviewing the spending measure. “We will have more details when that review is complete,” he said. get bill called for taking back $400 million of the $2.5 billion that was approved last year.

The trims — coupled with cuts to transit spending — were denounced by transportation advocates. “With gas prices in many parts of the country topping $4 a gallon, now is not the time to choke off funding for high-speed rail and transit, which saves oil and provides travelers with a more efficient and convenient alternative to sitting in traffic on America’s increasingly crowded roadways,” said Dan Smith, who follows federal transportation issues for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

But the cuts were cheered by many Republicans, who have questioned the program all along. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican with Tea Party support who canceled the Tampa-to-Orlando line, issued a news release on Monday celebrating premature reports that the high-speed rail program would be cut by $1.5 billion (it was ultimately cut by $2.9 billion).

Under the headline “Governor Rick Scott Helps Avoid Government Shutdown and Save Federal Taxpayers $1.5 Billion,” it began, “This weekend as Washington, D.C., insiders struggled to find billions to prevent a government shutdown, they found $1.5 billion worth of taxpayer money exactly where Governor Rick Scott left it: in the boondoggle high-speed rail proposal.”

But if some states have rejected the money, others are still clamoring for it: 24 states, the District of Columbia and Amtrak have applied for the money that Florida turned down.

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The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Reshaping Medicare Brings Hard Choices

By ROBERT PEAR

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resident Obama has deep disagreements with House Republicans about how to address Medicare’s long-term problems. But in deciding to wade into the fight over entitlements, which he may address in a speech, the president is signaling that he too believes Medicare must change to avert a potentially crippling fiscal crunch.

So the real issue now is not so much whether to re-engineer Medicare to deal with an aging population and rising medical costs, but how.

Even before they debate specific proposals, lawmakers across the ideological spectrum face several fundamental questions: Will the federal government retain its dominant role in prescribing benefits and other details of the program, like how much doctors and hospitals are paid and which new treatments are covered?

Will beneficiaries still have legally enforceable rights to all those services?

Will Medicare spending still increase automatically with health costs, the number of beneficiaries and the amount of care they receive? Or will the government try to limit the costs to taxpayers by paying a fixed amount each year to private health plans to subsidize coverage

for older Americans and those who are disabled?

Public concern about the federal deficit and debt has revived interest in proposals to slow the growth of Medicare, including ideas from Mr. Obama’s deficit reduction commission. Here are some leading proposals: Increase the age of eligibility for Medicare to 67, from 65.

Charge co-payments for home health care services and laboratory tests.

Require beneficiaries to pay higher premiums.

Pay a lump sum to doctors and hospitals for all services in a course of treatment or an episode of care. The new health care law establishes a pilot program to test such “bundled payments,” starting in 2013.

Reduce Medicare payments to health care providers in parts of the country where spending per beneficiary is much higher than the national average. (Payments could be adjusted to reflect local prices and the “health status” of beneficiaries.) ¶Require drug companies to provide additional discounts, or rebates, to Medicare for brand-name drugs bought by low-income beneficiaries. ¶Reduce Medicare payments to teaching hospitals for the cost of training

doctors.

In debate last year over Mr. Obama’s health plan, Republicans said repeatedly that he was “raiding Medicare” to pay for a new entitlement providing insurance for people under 65. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the Democrats were using Medicare as a piggy bank. Senator Jim Risch of Idaho said, “We are talking about a halftrillion dollars that is being stolen from Medicare.” Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said the cuts “threaten seniors’ access to care.”

Now it is Republicans, especially House Republicans, proposing to cut the growth of Medicare, with a difference.

“Any potential savings would be used to shore up Medicare, not to pay for new entitlements,” said Representative

Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee.

The House is expected to vote this week on his budget blueprint for the next 10 years.

Mr. Ryan points to Medicare’s prescription drug coverage as a model. That benefit, added to Medicare under a 2003 law, is delivered entirely by private insurers competing for business, and competition has been intense. Premiums for beneficiaries and costs to the government have been much lower than projected.

Republicans rarely mention one secret to the success of Medicare’s drug program. Under presidents of both parties, Medicare officials have regulated the prescription drug plans to protect consumers and to make sure the sickest patients have access to the drugs they need.

Many Democrats like Medicare as it is: an entitlement program in which three-fourths of the 47 million beneficiaries choose their doctors and other health care providers, and one-fourth have elected to enroll in managed-care plans. These Democrats acknowledge that care could be better coordinated, but say that could be done in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program, without forcing beneficiaries into private health plans offered

The San Juan Weekly by insurance companies.

Marilyn Moon, a health economist and former Democratic trustee of the Medicare trust fund, said serious discussion of changes in Medicare was warranted, and she noted that the government spent more than a half-trillion dollars a year on the program. Still, Ms. Moon said, it would be preferable to shore up Medicare without “the philosophical sea change” sought by Republicans, who would give private insurers more latitude to decide what benefits are available and what services are covered.

Obama administration officials said Tuesday that Medicare could save $50 billion over 10 years by reducing medical

April 21 - 27, 2011

errors, injuries, infections and complications that prolong hospital stays or require readmission of patients.

In any program as big as Medicare, which accounts for one-fifth of all health spending, even decisions about small, seemingly technical questions can have vast consequences for beneficiaries, the health care industry and the economy as a whole.

Gradually raising the eligibility age, for example, would save $125 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office says.

But it would increase costs for people who would otherwise have Medicare. Some of those 65- and 66-year-olds

would obtain insurance from Medicaid or from employers, as active workers or retirees, thus increasing costs for Medicaid and for employer-sponsored health plans.

If Congress decided to make a fixed contribution to a private health plan on behalf of each Medicare beneficiary, lawmakers and lobbyists could spend years debating how to set payment rates and how to adjust them, based on increases in consumer prices or medical costs or the growth of the economy.

Those decisions would directly affect beneficiaries. Under the House Republican proposal, the Congressional Budget Office said, beneficiaries

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“would bear a much larger share of their health care costs,” requiring them to “reduce their use of health care services, spend less on other goods and services, or save more in advance of retirement.”

The history of Medicare is filled with unsuccessful efforts to rein in costs.

Private health plans entered Medicare with a promise to shave 5 percent off costs, but ended up costing more than the traditional Medicare program. For two decades, Congress has tried to limit Medicare spending on doctors’ services, but the limits have proved so unrealistic that Congress has repeatedly intervened to increase them.

Do-Nothing Congress as a Cure

By DAVID LEONHARDT

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trick question: If Congress takes no action in coming years, what will happen to the budget deficit?

It will shrink — and shrink a lot.

This simple fact may offer the best hope for deficit reduction.

As federal law currently stands, some significant tax increases are set to take effect in coming years. The most important is the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012.

Of course, both parties favor the permanent extension of most of those tax cuts — the ones applying to income below $250,000. Both parties also oppose big cuts to the military, Social Security and Medicare, at least in the short term.

Unfortunately, the deficit is likely to remain frighteningly large over the next decade without either cuts to those programs or tax increases.

Democratic and Republican leaders alike dance around this point. President Obama may call for “tax reform” in his deficit speech on Wednesday. He may even suggest that tax reform can reduce the deficit. He is very unlikely to explain which taxes will go up in his vision of reform, aside from some of those on the affluent. And while those increases will certainly help, they’re not enough.

The Republicans’ numbers are even fuzzier. The recent plan from Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, includes highly specific tax cuts for the affluent and still claims to reduce the deficit long before his proposed overhaul of Medicare begins. How? Partly by eliminating tax breaks — that is, raising taxes — although Mr. Ryan doesn’t say which ones. The savings simply appear under the heading “Tax reform.”

It’s as if tax increases were a mere technicality in any deficit-reduction plan.

In reality, finding a way to raise taxes may well be the central political problem facing the United States.

As countries become richer, their

citizens tend to want more public services, be it a strong military or a decent safety net in retirement. This country is no exception. Yet our political culture is an exception. It has made most tax increases, even to pay for benefits people want, unthinkable.

This is where the Bush tax cuts come in. They have created a way for inertia to be fiscally responsible.

They are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31 of next year, not long after the 2012 election. If Republicans win the White House and both houses of Congress, they will probably extend all the tax cuts, come what may for the deficit. If Mr. Obama wins re-election and Democrats control Congress, they are likely to extend the cuts on income below $250,000.

But if Mr. Obama wins and Republicans control the House, the Senate or both — an outcome that many analysts, at least for now, consider the most likely one — things could get interesting.

Republicans have said that they will not extend only part of the Bush cuts.

Late last year, when the cuts first expired, Mr. Obama yielded to Republican demands to extend all the cuts (while insisting that they expire again after 2012). He was right to do so, in my view, given the fragility of the economic recovery.

Next year, however, the economy should be stronger. When the economy is in good shape, modest tax changes often have little effect on growth. Look at the 1993 Clinton tax increase, which didn’t prevent the 1990s boom. Or consider the Bush tax cuts, which were followed by the slowest decade of economic growth since World War II. If Mr. Obama wins re-election, he could simply refuse to sign any budgetbusting tax cut for the rich — who, after all, have received much larger pretax raises than any other income group in recent years and have also had their tax rates fall more. Republicans, for their part, could again refuse to pass any partial extension.

And just like that, on Jan. 1, 2013, the Clinton-era tax rates would return.

This change, by itself, would solve about 75 percent of the deficit problem over the next five years. The rest could come from spending cuts, both for social programs and the military.

Over the longer term — 20 years — letting all of the Bush cuts lapse would close only about 40 percent of the budget gap. But 40 percent is a great start. No one is seriously suggesting that all deficit reduction should come from higher taxes. Much of it will have to come from slowing the growth rate of medical spending, which is the main cause of the longterm deficit.

To be clear, the end of the Bush cuts is not the ideal way to raise taxes. A better approach would be to close some tax loopholes while possibly even reducing rates. The tax code would then become simpler. Businesses and households would have to waste less effort trying to qualify for tax breaks.

Economists from the right and the left — from President Bush’s tax commis-

sion and Mr. Obama’s deficit commission — favor this idea. Politicians, including Mr. Obama and Mr. Ryan, say they do, too.

The problem is that many of the biggest loopholes are politically popular.

Saying you favor the vague principle of tax reform is easy. Coming out in favor of cutting the mortgage-interest deduction — or the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance or the corporate tax break for new machinery — is not so easy.

A small, bipartisan group of senators, known as the Gang of Six, is now working to do exactly that: devise a credible, specific deficit proposal. White House aides say Mr. Obama supports their overall effort. But they still face a tough task.

Ultimately, deficit reduction will have to involve cutting programs or raising taxes, if not both. Voters don’t particularly like either. So keep your eye on Jan. 1, 2013. The best hope for a solution may be the possibility that the two parties can’t agree to a solution.

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April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Fears About Immigrants Deepen Divisions in Europe

By RACHEL DONADIO

S

ince the global financial crisis, the European Union has been deeply divided over economic policy. With the Libya intervention, it has split over foreign policy. But today few issues are proving more divisive within the bloc than immigration.

That much was clear this week, when the fractious 27-member European Union rejected Italy’s idea to make it easier for immigrants who first land in Italy to travel elsewhere in Europe. At a time when a wave of immigrants fleeing the unrest in North Africa shows no signs of abating, the rejection raised the possibility of tightened intra-European border controls for the first time since visa-free travel was introduced in the 1990s.

Frustrations have been building here for weeks, and over the weekend Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi finally said enough was enough. Visiting the Italian island of Lampedusa, the point of entry for thousands of North African immigrants to Europe, he said: “Either Europe is something that’s real and concrete or it isn’t. And in that case, it’s better to go back to each going our own way and letting everyone follow his own policies and egotism.”

Mr. Berlusconi’s statement, echoed by other members of his government and criticized by his European counterparts, highlighted a looming showdown within Europe over how to handle the 23,000 migrants who have arrived in Italy since January.

Fears of immigrants, fanned by right-wing parties and voter discontent over economic malaise, have deepened already profound divisions within Europe. Experts say the issue is proving to be at least as problematic — and potentially as destabilizing — as Europe’s struggle to manage a succession of financial cri-

ses. And it adds a new source of friction over NATO’s intervention in Libya.

The majority of Africans seeking work or refuge in Europe are Tunisians, but a growing number are sub-Saharan Africans fleeing Libya. To reduce tensions in the makeshift tent camps in Italy where officials shipped the migrants who first arrived on Lampedusa, Italian officials said they would issue temporary residence permits to qualified migrants.

Italy had asked fellow European Union member states to recognize the permits as valid for entry — essentially condoning the migrants’ passage to France and beyond. At a meeting of European Union interior ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, other member states, chief among them France and Germany, said no.

In response, Italy’s interior minister, Roberto Maroni, asked, “I wonder if it makes sense to stay in the European Union?”

While European neighbors have criticized the Italians for their poor handling of the immigration situation, the stalwarts of Mr. Maroni’s Northern League party, known for its anti-immigrant stance and fierce Euro-skepticism, have criticized the interior minister for not being tough enough.

As in the divisions over economic and fiscal policies across Europe — highlighted last week when the European Central Bank raised interest rates, staving off inflation in Germany but putting the heat on southern countries struggling with debt — the immigration squabble once again showed the seams in the European project.

Coming after the financial crisis, the Libya intervention and the subsequent influx of immigrants are “an extraordinary series of tests on very different fronts for European cohesion

and European strategy, and the result is clearly very mixed,” said Ian Lesser, a senior trans-Atlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

“The migration piece of this is in some way the toughest,” he added.

“There, the measures are very direct; there’s a direct connection to public opinion and daily politics.”

Individual European countries have their own policies for handling immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Under European law, the country where migrants first arrive is responsible for determining their status, a norm that Italy and Malta have asked to be waived. (So far, they have been rebuffed.)

“At the same time,” said Hugo Brady, a senior research fellow in Brussels at the Center for European Reform, “free movement, passport-free travel, which didn’t even exist inside nationstates a few years ago, are huge achievements. The question is: Are they vulnerable?”

On Monday, not only did France reject Italy’s temporary visa idea, but its interior minister said Paris would use “all legal means at our disposal” to increase patrols on the French-Italian border. In recent weeks, France has turned back more than 1,000 North Africans trying to cross the border.

Germany criticized Italian officials for undermining the Schengen Agreement, which established passport-free zones, and said Italy should handle the immigrants on its own.

“Within this European solidarity, it is necessary for each individual country to first face its responsibility,” Germany’s interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, said in a television interview.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is contending with the rise of the

hard-right National Front, known for its anti-immigrant stance, while fears about immigration are also shaping German politics. Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition hinges on the Northern League.

As Europe’s divisions have widened, regional elections have taken on broader European significance, particularly in Germany. Responding to strong political pressures, Chancellor Angela Merkel recently reversed her party’s longstanding support of nuclear power — and still lost in Baden-Württemberg, where her Christian Democrats had held sway since 1953. Earlier, she insisted on stringent — and, many economists said, self-defeating — terms in the bailouts of Greece and Ireland, to placate angry German voters who objected to paying for what they saw was the profligacy of others.

There are also contradictions.

“In this renationalization of European countries, and the rise of xenophobia, governments are very careful toward new migration flows,” said Catherine de Wenden, the director of research at the Center for International Studies and Research at the Institut d’Études Politiques, or Sciences Po, in Paris. “At the same time, this is contradictory with liberal European models and the needs of the labor force in most European countries.”

Instead, Europe’s policy has been to hope that immigrants will not come and to try to persuade North African nations to compel their citizens to stay home. Although the collapse of governments in Tunisia and Egypt and the unrest in Libya have undone a variety of bilateral treaties with European countries, including agreements on migration, that policy is still in place.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

11

Japanese Officials on Defensive as Nuclear Alert Level Rises

By KEITH BRADSHER, HIROKO TABUCHI and ANDREW POLLACK

J

apanese officials struggled through the day on Tuesday to explain why it had taken them a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear power plant, as the government and an electric utility disagreed on the extent of continuing problems there.

The government announced Tuesday morning that it had raised its rating of the severity of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to 7, the worst on an international scale, from 5. Officials said that the reactor had released one-tenth as much radioactive material as the Chernobyl accident in 1986, but still qualified as a 7 according to a complex formula devised by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Japan’s new assessment was based largely on computer models showing very heavy emissions of radioactive iodine and cesium from March 14 to 16, just after the earthquake and tsunami rendered the plant’s emergency cooling system inoperative. The nearly monthlong delay in acknowledging the extent of these emissions is a fresh example of confused data and analysis from the Japanese, and put the authorities on the defensive about whether they have delayed or blocked the release of information to avoid alarming the public.

Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, an independent government panel that oversees the country’s nuclear industry, said that the government had delayed issuing data on the extent of the radiation releases because of concern that the margins of error had been large in initial computer models. But he also suggested a public policy reason for having kept quiet.

“Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk,” he said. “If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction.”

The Japanese media, which has a reputation for passivity but has become more aggressive in response to public unhappiness about the nuclear accident, questioned government leaders through the day about what the government knew about the accident and when it knew it.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan gave a

nationally televised speech and press conference in the early evening to call for national rebuilding, but ended up defending his government’s handling of information about the accident.

“What I can say for the information I obtained — of course the government is very large, so I don’t have all the information — is that no information was ever suppressed or hidden after the accident,” he said. “There are various ways of looking at this, and I know there are opinions saying that information could have been disclosed faster. However, as the head of the government, I never hid any information because it was inconvenient for us.”

Junichi Matsumoto, a senior nuclear power executive from the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, fanned public fears about radiation when he said at a separate news conference on Tuesday morning that the radiation release from Daiichi could, in time, surpass levels seen in 1986.

“The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl,” Mr. Matsumoto said.

But Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in an interview on Tuesday evening that he did not know how the company had come up with its estimate. “I cannot understand their position,” he said.

He speculated that Tokyo Electric was being “prudent and thinking about the worst-case scenario,” adding, “I think they don’t want to be seen as optimistic.”

Mr. Nishiyama said that his agency did not expect another big escape of radiation from Daiichi, saying that “almost all” the material that is going to es-

cape has already come out. He said that the rate of radiation release had peaked in the early days after the March 11 earthquake, and that the rate of radiation had dropped by 90 percent since then.

The peak release in emissions of radioactive particles took place following hydrogen explosions at three reactors, as technicians desperately tried to pump in seawater to keep the uranium fuel rods cool, and bled radioactive gas from the reactors in order to make room for the seawater.

Mr. Nishiyama took pains to say — and other nuclear experts agreed — that the Japanese accident posed fewer health risks than Chernobyl.

In the Soviet-era accident at Chernobyl, a burning graphite reactor pushed radioactive particles high into the atmosphere and downwind across Europe. The Japanese accident has mostly produced radioactive liquid runoff into the ocean and low-altitude radioactive particles that have frequently blown out into the ocean and fallen into the water as well.

The Nuclear Safety Commission ordered the use of a computer model called Speedi — short for System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information — to calculate the amount of radiation released from the plant, said Mr. Shiroya, the commissioner on the safety agency, who is also the former director of the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University.

To use the model, scientists enter radiation measurements from various distances from a nuclear accident. The model produces an estimate of the radioactive material escaping at the source of the accident.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Shiroya said those calculations were complex, and it was only recently that

researchers had been able to narrow down the amount to within an acceptable margin of error.

“At first, the calculations could have been off by digits,” Mr. Shiroya said. “It was only when there was certainty that the margin of error was within two to three times that we made an announcement,” he said, later adding, “I do not think that there was any delay.”

Even so, some people involved in the energy industry have been hearing about the results of the Speedi calculations for days. A senior executive said in a telephone interview on April 4 that he had been told that the Speedi model suggested that radioactive materials escaping the Daiichi complex were much higher than Japanese officials had publicly acknowledged, and perhaps as high as half of the releases from Chernobyl.

Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Shiroya said separately on Tuesday that that estimate had been wrong. But their two government agencies also released different figures for the level of emissions so far, and there appeared to be a degree of supposition embedded in the numbers.

Mr. Nishiyama’s agency said that emissions totaled 370,000 terabecquerels; a terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels. The agency’s figure is 20 percent of the former Soviet Union’s official estimate of emissions from Chernobyl.

But most experts say that the true emissions from Chernobyl were 1.5 to 2.5 times as high as the Soviet Union acknowledged. Mr. Nishiyama’s agency appears to have assumed that true emissions from Chernobyl were twice the official figure, and so calculated that the current nuclear accident had released 10 percent as much as Chernobyl.

Mr. Nishiyama’s agency is part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which promotes the use of nuclear power. Mr. Shiroya’s commission, which is independent from nuclear power operators and their equipment providers, issued an estimate that emissions totaled 630,000 terabecquerels.

Although Mr. Shiroya did not provide a comparison to Chernobyl, that works out to 34 percent of the official Soviet estimate of emissions and 17 percent of the unofficial higher estimate.

Mr. Shiroya also said there was a threefold margin for error involved.

The outside estimates of total releases would range from as low as 6 percent to as high as 51 percent of the unofficial totals from Chernobyl.

ART

12

April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Money Tight, Museums Mine Their Own Collections

By ROBIN POGREBIN

W

you’ve got to borrow.”

Indeed, one criticism of the Met’s Picasso show last year was that the museum’s holdings included much that was undistinguished. “The problem is the collection itself, which, despite some knockout items, is stodgy and almost bizarrely lopsided,” the New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote in his review.

The inward curatorial focus is evident at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which a few years ago drew crowds with splashy loan shows about motorcycles and Armani fashions. This winter, though, curators there decided that parts of the museum’s permanent collection were worth displaying twice, in back-toback exhibitions. So 24 of the 31 paintings featured in “Broken Forms: European Modernism From the Guggenheim Collection,” which closed in January, resurfaced a month later in “The Great Upheaval: Modern Art From the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918.”

Richard Armstrong, the Guggenheim’s director, said he made no apologies for the overlapping shows.

“We don’t feel particularly shy about recontextualizing exceptional works of art from time to time,” he said. “The only people who would have noticed were extreme insiders. Is it such a dereliction of duty to show great works twice in one year? The passion for novelty, I think, is counterproductive. We did it, we did it consciously, I have no qualms about it, and, to my eye, the paintings in question looked differently from show to show.”

While finances were “a partial motivator,” Mr. Armstrong said, “an even more profound one was a desire on the part of the trustees and the staff to see the collection more frequently.”

Finances have nevertheless been part of the decision. Although museums typically do not discuss exhibitions’ prices, loan shows always incur costs for transportation, customs fees and insurance. The Cincinnati Art Museum found it impractical to spend as much as $2.5 million a year on special exhibitions, given its declining endowment — down to about $70 million from about $80 mi-

hen the recession forced museums to cut back on expensive loan shows a few years ago, some worried that it would hurt attendance: With great works from around the world replaced by stuff hauled up from storage rooms, would art lovers’ hearts still flutter?

Now, though, many museum directors are finding virtue in necessity. Shows built largely from in-house collections have drawn well, they say, and curators are introducing the public to unsung treasures.

“If the recession has compelled us as museums in this country to focus even more intensely than we have in the past on our collections, that’s a good thing,” said Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art. “Because they’re our primary responsibility.”

Last year, for example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition on Picasso, stocked completely from the museum’s own holdings, drew 700,000 visitors. And when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened its Resnick Pavilion last fall, it celebrated by showcasing its new collection of early European fashions.

“The public doesn’t care whether you own it or borrow it,” said Michael Govan, the director of that Los Angeles museum. “They’re just interested in the presentation and the content.”

Museums all over the country are now concentrating on their permanent collections rather than staging blockbusters that rely on borrowed works of art. A survey by the Association of Art Museum Directors this year found that nearly three-quarters of its members were planning shows based on their permanent collections, compared with a little more than half who planned such exhibitions in 2005.

For all the upbeat talk, the trend can diminish the range and vibrancy of what museumgoers typically experience.

Many have become accustomed to traveling shows that offer rare tastes of, say, the personal effects of King Tut or splendors from the Vatican.

“No collection, no matter how large “Going Dutch: Contemporary Design and rich the museum, is ever deep enough From Local Collections and the Cincinnati and rich enough in any single area that Art Museum,” which has drawn visitors. it can be explored in depth,” said Philippe de Montebello, the former director of the Met. “You always have holes, where painters and artists are not represented.”

“Loan shows allow you to supplement the collections and to show art in many different ways,” he added. “You might want to show the relationship between Flemish art and Florentine art, and in order to do those thematic shows,

More exhibitions display works from permanent collections, like “The Great Upheaval: Modern Art From the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918.” llion in 2008 — when it has unexploited holdings like circus posters and Dutch contemporary design. As a result, last summer the museum mounted “See America,” nine small shows that highlighted different parts of the country through the museum’s collection.

Attendance at the museum has increased by 30 percent since it started emphasizing its permanent collection, said Aaron Betsky, the director. “I’ve really become very skeptical of traveling exhibitions,” he said.

Generally, it is smaller museums that have scaled back more often on loan shows. But even the larger institutions are turning a spotlight on their in-house collections.

At the Metropolitan Museum, Thomas P. Campbell, the director, told The Art Newspaper in 2009 that he expected the museum to reduce its large loan shows by about 20 percent. The museum, which bills its exhibition program as the largest in the world, subsequently said the reduction would be made over time as special-exhibition galleries on the second floor are turned into display spaces for the permanent collection. The museum is also using loans as a jumpingoff point for shows from the permanent collection, as in its current exhibition of Paul Cézanne’s card-player paintings.

“It’s not a knee-jerk reaction to economic pressure,” Mr. Campbell said.

“Every generation needs to rediscover its own resources.”

Several museums are reframing their collections through thematic shows, rather than by just exhibiting highlights.

At the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the show “California Dreamers,” which closed last October, featured its ceramics, and “Eat Drink Art Design,” which closed in February, its ta-

ble objects.

“I think people appreciate the collection more when it’s organized in a more intellectual and visual way,” said Holly Hotchner, the director.

Similarly, the Studio Museum in Harlem has been showcasing its 2,000 objects with shows like the current “Sculpted, Etched and Cut,” which displays the museum’s metal works, and the recent “Collected. Black & White,” a selection of photographs, paintings and works on paper.

“It has refined our sense of the collection,” said Thelma Golden, the museum’s director. “It allows us to do exhibitions with material we don’t have to borrow.”

The Indianapolis Museum of Art went from doing three major shows a year to two of longer duration because of financial considerations. But Maxwell L. Anderson, the museum’s director, said the blockbuster era was merely in hibernation. “That itch will come back as the economy recovers,” he said.

For now, museums seem to be presenting their permanent collections with pride. At the Guggenheim, crowds have responded well to a second chance to view paintings from the likes of Franz Marc and Gino Severini that are now on display in “The Great Upheaval.”

Roberta Smith, reviewing the exhibition for The New York Times, commended the adaptive reuse of the works that had been part of “Broken Forms.”

“Money is tight,” she wrote, “and collections are often roomy, full of underexposed artwork awaiting the illumination of curatorial insight.”

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, said museums should be prioritizing their holdings out of professional obligation, not economic necessity.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

13

New York Times Editorials How to Save a Trillion Dollars

By MARK BITTMAN

S

aving the 38 billion bucks Congress seems to agree upon is not a big deal. A big deal is saving a trillion bucks. We could by preventing disease instead of treating it.

Lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, some cancers kill more people than communicable ones. Treating diseases — and futile attempts to “cure” them — costs a fortune, more than one-seventh of our GDP. They’re preventable, and you prevent them the same way you cause them: lifestyle. A sane diet with exercise, meditation and intangibles like love prevent and reverse disease. A sane diet alone would save us hundreds of billions of dollars.

The American Heart Association editorial board stated flatly costs in the U.S. from cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death — will triple by 2030, to more than $800 billion annually. Throw in $276 billion of “real indirect costs,” like productivity, and you have a trillion. $38 billion in budget cuts seem like a rounding error.

Type 2 diabetes is projected to cost $500 billion a year come 2020, when half of Americans will have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is entirely preventable.

Ten billion dollars invested now might save a couple of hundred billion annually 10 years from now. Hypertension, cancers, diverticulitis are treated by a health care (better termed “disease care”) system that costs us $2.3 trillion annually now — before costs

double and triple.

It’s worth noting that the Federal budget will absorb its usual 60 percent of that cost. We can save some of that money, though, if an alliance of insurers, government, individuals — maybe even Big Food, if it’s pushed hard enough — moves us towards better eating.

The many numbers all point in the same direction. Look at heart disease: The INTERHEART study of 30,000 men and women in 52 countries showed that at least 90 percent of heart disease is lifestyle related; a European study of more than 23,000 Germans showed that people with healthier lifestyles had an 81 percent lower risk.

And those estimates might be on the low side. Dean Ornish, the San Franciscobased doctor who probably knows more about diet and heart disease than anyone, says, “My colleagues and I have found that more intensive diets than those studies used can reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease.”

In his latest book, “The Spectrum,” Ornish recommends that people at risk eat stricter diets (more plants, higher fiber, lower saturated fats and so on) than those who are generally healthy, but it’s not all or nothing — the more you change your diet and lifestyle, the healthier you are. “What matters most,” he says, “is your overall way of eating and living. If you indulge yourself one day, eat healthier the next.” I’ve been preaching similarly for years. But the

Pray. Hope. Prepare.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

W

hen I was in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, I wanted to change hotels one day to be closer to the action and called the Marriott to see if it had any openings. The young-sounding Egyptian woman who spoke with me from the reservations department offered me a room and then asked: “Do you have a corporate rate?” I said, “I don’t know. I work for The New York Times.” There was a silence on the phone for a few moments, and then she said: “ Can I ask you something?” Sure.

“Are we going to be O.K.? I’m worried.”

I made a mental note of that conversation because she sounded like a modern person, the kind of young woman who would have been in Tahrir Square. We’re just now beginning to see what may have been gnawing at her — in Egypt and elsewhere.

Let’s start with the structure of the Arab state. Think about the 1989 democracy wave in Europe. In Europe, virtually every state was like Germany, a homogenous nation, except Yugoslavia. The Arab world is exactly the opposite. There, virtually every state is like Yugoslavia — except Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

That is to say, in Europe, when the iron fist of communism was removed, the big,

largely homogenous states, with traditions of civil society, were able to move relatively quickly and stably to more self-government — except Yugoslavia, a multiethnic, multireligious country that exploded into pieces.

In the Arab world, almost all these countries are Yugoslavia-like assemblages of ethnic, religious and tribal groups put together by colonial powers — except Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, which have big homogeneous majorities. So when you take the lid off these countries, you potentially unleash not civil society but civil war.

That is why, for now, the relatively peaceful Arab democracy revolutions are probably over. They have happened in the two countries where they were most able to happen because the whole society in Tunisia and Egypt could pull together as a family and oust the evil “dad” — the dictator. From here forward, we have to hope for “Arab evolutions” or we’re going to get Arab civil wars.

The states most promising for evolution are Morocco and Jordan, where you have respected kings who, if they choose, could lead gradual transitions to a constitutional monarchy.

Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, countries fractured by tribal, ethnic and religious divisions, would have been ideal

trillion-dollar question is, “How do we get people to eat that way?”

I don’t have an easy answer; no one does. But it for sure will take an investment: it’s a situation in which you must spend money to make or save money. (Yes, taxes will go up, but whose taxes?) Some number of billions of dollars — something in the rounding error area — should be spent on research to figure out exactly how to turn this ship around. (The NIH, which pegs obesityrelated costs at about $150 billion, just announced a new billion-dollar investment.

Good, but not enough.)

Corny as it is to say so, if we can put a man on the moon we can create an environment in which an apple is a better and more accessible choice than a Pop-Tart.

Some other billions of dollars must go to public health. Again: we built sewage systems; we built water supplies; we showed that we could get people to eat anything we marketed. Now all we have to do is build a food distribution system that favors real food, and market that.

Experts without vested interests in the status quo come to much the same conclusion: Only a massive public health effort can save both our health and our budget.

Can we afford it? Sure. Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard-affiliated pediatrician and the author of “Ending the Food Fight,” says, “The magnitude of the deficit is small when you consider costs of nutrition-related disease; the $4 trillion that the Republicans want cut over a decade is about the same as the projected costs of diabetes over that

same period.”

In last week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Ludwig made a number of concrete suggestions, like restructuring subsidies, regulating the marketing of food to children and adequately funding school lunch programs.

His most novel ideas use existing and future technologies to help the food industry retain profits while producing less junky products: devising a method of preserving polyunsaturated fats, for example (dangerous trans-fats are widely used simply because they are stable) or making bread with real whole grains instead of refined ones.

(His research demonstrates that people who eat ultra-processed grains rather than whole grains for breakfast go on to consume 600 to 700 calories more than other people each day.) “I’m not arguing that the food industry should be philanthropic,” he says. “Its purpose is to make money. But the goal of the government should be to encourage industry to make money by producing more rather than less healthful foods.”

The best way to combat diet-related diseases is to change what we eat. And if our thinking is along the lines of diet improved = deficit reduced, so much the better. If a better diet were to result only in a 10 percent decrease in heart disease (way lower than Ludwig believes possible), that’s $100 billion project savings per year by 2030.

This isn’t just fiscal responsibility, but social responsibility as well. And the alternative is not only fiscal catastrophe but millions of premature deaths.

for gradual evolution to democracy, but it is probably too late now. The initial instinct of their leaders was to crush demonstrators, and blood has flowed. In these countries, there are now so many pent-up grievances between religious communities and tribes — some of which richly benefited from their dictatorships while others were brutalized by them — that even if the iron fist of authoritarianism is somehow lifted, civil strife could easily trample democratic hopes.

Could anything prevent this? Yes, extraordinary leadership that insists on burying the past, not being buried by it. The Arab world desperately needs its versions of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk — giants from opposing communities who rise above tribal or Sunni-Shiite hatreds to forge a new social compact. The Arab publics have surprised us in a heroic way. Now we need some Arab leaders to surprise us with bravery and vision. That has been so lacking for so long.

Another option is that an outside power comes in, as America did in Iraq, and as the European Union did in Eastern Europe, to referee or coach a democratic transition between the distrustful communities in these fractured states. But I don’t see anyone signing up for that job.

Absent those alternatives, you get what you got. Autocrats in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain shooting their rebels on the

tribal logic of “rule or die.” Meaning: either my sect or tribe is in power or I’m dead. The primary ingredient of a democracy — real pluralism where people feel a common destiny, act as citizens and don’t believe their minority has to be in power to be safe or to thrive — is in low supply in all these societies. It can emerge, as Iraq shows. But it takes time.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which is 90 percent Sunni and 10 percent Shiite, has made clear that it will oppose any evolution to constitutional monarchy in neighboring Bahrain, where a Sunni minority rules over a Shiite majority. Saudi Arabia has no tradition of pluralism. When we say “democratic reform” to Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, we might as well be speaking Latin. What their rulers hear is “Shiites taking over from Sunnis.” Not gonna happen peacefully.

Even evolution is difficult in Egypt.

The army overseeing the process there just arrested a prominent liberal blogger, Maikel Nabil, for “insulting the military.”

Make no mistake where my heart lies.

I still believe this Arab democracy movement was inevitable, necessary and built on a deep and authentic human quest for freedom, dignity and justice. But without extraordinary leadership, the Arab transitions are going to be much harder than in Eastern Europe. Pray for Germanys. Hope for South Africas. Prepare for Yugoslavias.

14 April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weeekly

LETTERS Sharks Devour Their Own Gentlemen would’ve allowed Sen. Héctor Martínez a few days to catch his bearings and do the right thing. Instead it was an immediate feeding frenzy of political opportunism.

For a narrative of how such an affair is handled in a dignified manner, read Octopussy by Ian Fleming. No, the movie doesn’t have it.

Bob Harris, Condado

To the Editor: The war on accountability continues. The NPP and Gov. Luis Fortuno continue, successfully and with unconditional surrender terms, to destroy any semblance of accountability We are now witnessing an attempt, probably successful, to eliminate all professional organizations , whether it be lawyers (accomplished), accountants, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc., etc. We have had such organizations since the Middle Ages to enhance the various professions and to let citizens know that the person doing their work has been approved by an organization that has expertise in that field and has accepted the credentials of that person. This has made perfect sense for hundreds of years, but in Puerto Rico, under the NPP, such perfect sense does not exist. The NPP is in total control of every aspect of Puerto Rico’s society, government, judiciary, and now will end any semblance of professionalism in professional fields.

The governor and the NPP do not like others having control of anything. They also do not like having an educated populace, which could jeopardize their control. This so-called Statehood party has done nothing to increase the English speaking skills of Puerto Rico’s students, and in fact, most of the NPP lack the ability to communicate with their stateside brothers-to-be. The entire island knows that hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on worthless contracts awarded to NPP and Fortuno allies, friends, and family, without any accountabili ty attached to those contracts. The offices responsible for monitoring such things, the comptroller’s office and the Justice Department, are not about to monitor their friends, or Fortuno’s friends. If they did, they would lose their jobs. We have the wife of the governor doing notary work and earning thousands of dollars for documents sent to her by the governor’s friends and party loyalists. Thus, the need for secrecy by the Fortuno’s regarding their income tax forms.

They do not want the public to know how much the First Lady is making signing hundreds of documents she probably does not read. There are revolutions all over the Middle East right now by citizens who are tired of being treated like scum by their leaders. There is very little difference between such dictatorships there than the NPP dicta-

torship here. Perhaps one day, the people on this island will wake up, finally find respect for themselves, find their dignity, forget party loyalties, and dispose of this N PP dictatorship. However, I am dreaming. I keep forgetting that this island’s inhabitants do not care that much about dignity, but they do care a lot about the benefits they can get without working. I am not talking only about the poor; I am talking about the rich who can get multi-million dollar contracts for doing work they know nothing about. That is the Puerto Rico tradition and I am afraid it is too deeply ingrained in the culture. Accountability? Forget that word.

It does not exist here, and the NPP will ensure it never exists here.

J. D. Aragon, Old San Juan

David Leonhardt’s article last Wednesday I was not surprised on reading just two days after the Obama-Boehner Compromise that neither may have known just exactly what they were agreeing to.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, of the 38 billion in claimed savings only 352 million would be pared from the deficit through Sept. 30. http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/7439/Government_Stupidity/eml So much ballyhoo for so little.

Again I would not be surprised to hear similar “corrections” to official numbers twenty years from now. I am reminded of a sinking ship’s captain asking the passengers to jettison non essentials in hopes of surviving the storm. By the time they get to agree it might be too late. In like manner, every attempt to reduce the debt will require tons of time, effort, political posturing and compromise.

Healthcare, which accounts to about one seventh of our GDP, meets my definition of significant.. Experts agree that future costs of Medicare are unsustainable and could end up being the hair to break Uncle Sam’s back. (Every year the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees publishes a consolidated summary of that year’s annual reports which makes excellent reading. http:// www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html), It’s clear to me that any serious balancing act must tackle big item numbers. We will not solve a problem of this magnitude by juggling and legislating half heartedly in ways that in the end, as the example above, turn out to be mathematically insignificant.

After his second term as President, George Washington delivered a wisdom packed Farewell Address meant to guide future generations of Americans, pretty much like Jehovah’s long ignored gift to Moses, the Ten Commandments. In this speech he adviced the nation to stay away from political divides and secondly, to stay away from foreign entanglements. Were it not for our Congressmen’s historical ignorance or disobedien-

ce, take your pick, balancing the budget would not be such an impossible dream.

We can’t expect President Obama to show up in Congress carrying a magic sword to cut right through the intractable knot of self interests any more than we could expect our hypothetical ship’s captain to throw overboard a little old lady’s family jewels. . Being a realist (his sister says “a pragmatist”) may be part of the reason. But I have a hunch that as smart as he is he lacks the political courage necessary, at least not in electoral season.

It’s a gamble he may regret someday. FDR’s challenge and great opportunity was the Great Depression and his sword was, partly, Social Security.

Obama’s could be socialized medicine. It would make a mathematically significant impact on the budget, it would hurt the least number of people while fulfilling a social need and place us in the list of civilized, democratic societies that have driven greed out of the temple of healthcare. Besides, let’s not forget that public opinion polls are designed in ways that do not always reflect the people’s true feelings, such as about rising healthcare costs or the spectre of privatized Medicare.

Perhaps by now the reader can see the relevance of Washington’s Farewell Address to our analysis. Partisan ideology , for example, makes it hard for a liberal or Leftist to take a stand against abortion. And for the GOP faithful not to see in socialized medicine another attempt by the Leftists to shift individual responsibility to a welfare state.

Ideology in effect has a paralyzing effect on voters who appear to be under a spell that makes them sometimes act and vote against their own self interests.

It is this kind of spell to which I attribute the absence of an open discussion on the pros and cons of socialized medicine. It is not even under consideration as a contingency plan by experts, including the Congressional Budget Office and David Leonhardt’s article that appeared in last Wednesday’s San Juan Star Weekly, although they all agree on the diagnosis.

Partisanship and prejudice against “creeping socialism” have obstructed free thought. The irony is that every card carrying member of the Tea Party or Ron Paul admirer could easily tell you that our U.S.A. has been down that slippery slope since 1914, the year the IRS was created to pay for the war to end all wars.

Finally, to continue with George Washington’s dual message, it’s time to ask ourselves why we have turned into the world’s cop. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year spent and another generation of post traumatic disorders and drug addiction to contend with. In a country where opinion polls direct public policy, the lives of thousands fighting our wars now appear to weigh less than the jobs lost. What a shame. And no end in sight.

I think the members of the The House of Representatives and the Senate would be well adviced to read George Washington’s Farewell Address. Come to think of it, all who value their American citizenship should.

Ed Martínez, San Juan, P.R.

San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

15

modern love

Want to Be My Boyfriend? Please Define

By MARGUERITE FIELDS

R

ECENTLY my mother asked me to clarify what I meant when I said I was dating someone, versus when I was hooking up with someone, versus when I was seeing someone. And I had trouble answering her because the many options overlap and blur in my mind. But at one point, four years ago, I had a boyfriend. And I know he was my boyfriend because he said, “I want you to be my girlfriend,” and I said, “O.K.” He and I dated for over a year, and when we broke up I thought my angsty heart was going to spit itself right up out of my sore throat. Afterward, I moved out of my mother’s house in Brooklyn and into an apartment in the East Village, and from there it becomes confusing.

So, a few days after the chat with my mom, when I found myself downtown drinking tea with my friend Steven, I asked him what he thought about dating. He has a long-term girlfriend, and I was curious how he viewed their relationship.

“The main thing,” he said, “is I don’t mind if she sleeps with other people. I mean, she’s not my property, right? I’m just glad I get to hang out with her. Spend time with her.

Because that’s all we really have, you know? I don’t want her to be mine, and I don’t want to be anybody’s.”

I sucked my teeth and looked over at the next table, where two men sat opposite each other. One looked over his shoulder and gave me a closed-mouth grin.

Steven explained that it’s not a question of faithfulness but of expectation. He can’t be expected not to want to sleep with other people, so he can’t expect her to think differently. They are both young and living in New York, and as everyone in New York knows, there’s the possibility of meeting anyone, everywhere, all the time.

For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll say I’ve dated a lot of guys. It’s not that I’ve gone out anywhere with a lot of these guys, or been physical with most of them, or even seen them more than once. But there have been many, many encounters.

I’ve met guys in the park, at the deli, at galleries, at parties and on the Internet. The Internet idea came from thinking that if I could sift through people’s profiles, like applications, I could eliminate the obvious lunatics.

And that didn’t work out very well. One leaned across the table an hour into dinner and screamed: “You love me!

I know you do!” Another stood outside my apartment with one finger on the buzzer and another covering the peephole, occasionally banging his fist, until he finally exhausted himself and left.

As for the guys I first met in person, there was the construction worker I ran into on the train twice before saying anything, kissed the third time, kissed the fourth time, got stood up by the fifth time and never saw again. Then there was the guy with tattooed knuckles, the young Republican, the Irishman on vacation and the guy who stole $300 from me to buy drugs. There was the activist, the actor, the librarian, the waiter and the bond trader.

So when my friends and I started having a conversation about the nature of monogamy, I thought I knew something about monogamy. Because, despite the fleeting nature of most of my encounters, and despite my own role in their short duration, I think what I have been seeking in some form from all of these men is permanence.

Sometimes I don’t like them, or am scared of them, and a lot of times I’m just bored by them. But my fear or dislike or boredom never seems to diminish my underlying desire for a guy to stay, or at least to say he is going to stay, for a very long time.

And even when I don’t want him to stay — even when

he and I find each other as strangers and remain strangers until we stop doing whatever it is we are doing — I still want to believe that two people can meet and like each other well enough to stay together exclusively, without the introduction of some 1960s rhetoric about free love or other noncommittal slogans.

But noncommittal is what we’re all about.

There was the guy with red hair and big steaklike hands that walked with me arm in arm through Washington Square Park, kissed me on the stoop of my mother’s brownstone and said he wanted to be my boyfriend. Until our next walk, when he kept his hands to himself and said he meant boyfriend “in the theoretical sense of the word.”

Then there was the installer of soy insulation who cooked soggy pasta and made me watch football and whimpered and kicked in his sleep. In the spring there was the guy 12 years older than me who shared an apartment overlooking Tompkins Square Park with an antediluvian man who walked around in graying long underwear.

There was the guy who wore more makeup than I did, and the one who waxed his eyebrows clean off his face. And the one who slept with a guy when he was drunk, then with another when he was sober. (But he insisted he wasn’t gay, just curious, and since when was I so uptight anyway?)

Over the summer there was the Jesuit taking a break from the seminary who stopped calling after I said I wouldn’t sleep with him on our third date. In the fall, back at school, there was the banjo player from the woods of New England who took me home to meet his family, then moved away and told me to wait for him. And I did, for months, until he called to say he was falling in love with me, and oh, man, I had to come see him right away (“Buy your ticket tonight!”), before he called again to say it was moving too fast and he wasn’t ready.

And on, and on, and on.

Then this winter I met a guy while waiting to have my computer fixed. He had big blue eyes and a wide red mouth and delicate hands and greasy brown hair. He sat down and asked what I was reading and did I have a boyfriend because he was asking me out. He smelled like incense and clean linen, and I was overwhelmingly and instantaneously smitten. Among other things, I liked his indifference, confidence and knowledge of foreign film directors.

On our first date he explained his theory of exclusive relationships, which was that they shouldn’t exist. We talked about our (and all of our friends’) divorced parents, about how marriage was nothing but a pragmatic financial

venture, and about the last time we cheated on someone.

He said that his disregard for monogamy wasn’t a chauvinistic throwback, but quite the opposite: the ultimate nod to feminism.

On our second date we watched coverage of the Iowa caucus, and later, after listening to jazz at his apartment, he crawled onto his bed, leaned against the headboard and said he didn’t burn artificial light after dark. I sighed and edged into bed next to him.

During the night he kicked and snored, grabbing greedily at me with his well-moisturized hands like a child snatching at free candy.

We overslept. In the morning I watched him dress frantically, the way a drifter would (gray pants and shirt tucked in and tie and vest and brown wingtip shoes and gray sweater and red scarf and jacket: it was lovely). He looked up occasionally from his scrambling to give a big toothy smile. I made the bed and drank the orange juice he bought for me the night before. We left his apartment and tried to find a cab.

As we crossed Hudson Street, we waded through a passing stream of preschool children walking in pairs, holding hands. I watched their teachers — one at the front of the line, one in the middle, one at the back — while he hailed a taxi.

A week passed before I saw him again. I was about to go back to school in Vermont, and he was headed to Jamaica on vacation. When I entered the restaurant, he said: “The nice part about having a shoddy memory is I forget how pretty some people are. You look beautiful.”

As we ate, we theorized about the effects of pornography on romantic relationships. Dinner ended; he had to go pack for his trip. I asked casually when I was going to see him again.

He sighed. “That’s a loaded question.”

I asked what he meant, because I thought the question was fairly straightforward.

Then it came. The story. The long, boring, aggravatingly rehearsed and condescending story. It spewed, overflowed and dripped off our table and onto the floor and underneath the shoes of the other patrons and into the street.

He said he had just gotten out of a long relationship, and now he was single and didn’t really know how this whole dating thing works, but he was seeing a lot of other people, and he liked me; he thought I was special. Cross my heart, he actually called me special.

WHEN he was done, he asked: “That’s what you were talking about, right? Seeing me again and the nature of our relationship? Like, what are we to each other?”

I said I just meant to ask when we were going to see each other again, because I thought that was the polite thing to do after a few dates, and I wondered if he wanted to make time for me to come back to New York to see him.

And he said no, that was “too much, too soon,” but if I’m ever in town I should call him. He would love to see me.

We left. It was raining, he hailed a cab for me, and we hugged without looking at each other. I got into the cab and rode away.

And tried to process it. And tried to remind myself that when we first met I thought he was an arrogant, presumptuous little man. I tried to think about my conversation with Steven. I tried to remember that I was actively seeking to practice some Zenlike form of nonattachment. I tried to remember that no one is my property and neither am I theirs, and so I should just enjoy the time we spend together, because in the end it’s our collected experiences that add up to a rich and fulfilling life. I tried to tell myself that I’m young, that this is the time to be casual, careless, lighthearted and fun; don’t ruin it.

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April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

The Death of Hitler A

dolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva (née Braun), committed suicide with him by ingesting poison. That +afternoon in accordance with Hitler’s prior instructions, their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker’s emergency exit, doused in petrol and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. The Soviet archives record that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive locations until 1970 when they were again exhumed, cremated and the ashes scattered.

There have been different accounts citing the cause of his death; one that he died by poison only and another that he died by a self-inflicted gunshot, while biting down on a cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the different conclusions. There was also an eye-witness account that recorded the body showing signs of having been shot through the mouth but this has been proven unlikely. There is also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments which were recovered. Further, the exact location of where Hitler’s ashes were scattered also differs, depending on the historical source consulted.

Preceding events By early 1945, Poland had fallen to the advancing Soviet forces and they were massing to cross the Oder River between Küstrin and Frankfurt with Berlin, 40 miles (64 km) to the east as their objective. To the west, Hitler’s Ardennes Offensive had been defeated by the Allies and in the north, the British and Canadian forces were crossing the Rhine into the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr. The American forces in the south had captured the Lorraine and were advancing towards Mainz, Mannheim and the Rhine. In Italy, German forces were withdrawing north, as they were relentlessly pressed by the American

and British (Commonwealth) forces as part of the Spring Offensive to advance across the River Po and into the foothills of the Italian / Austrian Alps. In parallel to the military actions, the Allies had met at Yalta between 4–11 February to discuss the conclusion of the war in Europe.

Hitler had retreated to his Führerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945 and by the end of February, was presiding over a rapidly disintegrating Third Reich. To the Nazi leadership, it was clear that the battle for Berlin would be the final battle of the war. By 1 April, American forces were already on the Elbe River and Stalin, distrustful of the agreements reached at Yalta, told Eisenhower that he had “lost interest in Berlin” and would commence the offensive in May 1945. However, he was adamant to conquer Berlin by International Workers’ Day (1 May 1945), and had authorised his forces on 16 April to commence the battle for the Seelow Heights, the last major defensive line outside Berlin. By 19 April, the Germans were in full retreat from Seelow Heights and by the evening of 21 April the Red Army had entered the outskirts of Berlin.

The first Soviet artillery shells had started falling on Berlin the previous eve-

ning. At the afternoon situation conference in the bunker on 22 April, Hitler suffered a total nervous collapse when he was informed that the instructions he had issued the previous day for SS-General Felix Steiner’s Army Detachment Steiner to move to the rescue of Berlin had not materialised. Hitler openly declared for the first time the war was lost and blamed the generals.

Hitler announced he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself. Later that day he asked SS physician, Dr. Werner Haase about the most reliable method of suicide and Haase suggested the “pistoland-poison method” of combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head.

By 25 April the Red Army encirclement of Berlin was complete and secure radio communications with defending units had been lost; the command staff in the bunker were depending on telephone lines for passing instructions and orders and on public radio for news and information. On 28 April, a BBC report originating from Reuters was picked up with a copy of the message being given to Bormann and another to Linge for Hitler. It reported that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had offered surrender to the western Allies

and that the offer had been declined. In the offer, Himmler had implied that he had the authority to implement and support such a surrender; Hitler considered this treason. During the afternoon his anger and bitterness escalated into a rage against Himmler. Hitler ordered Himmler’s arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler’s SS representative at Hitler’s HQ in Berlin) shot.

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Antony Beevor stated that afterwards Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, Hitler then took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. He signed these documents at 04:00 and then retired to bed (some sources say Hitler dictated the last will and testament immediately before the wedding, but all sources agree on the timing of the signing).

During the course of 29 April, Hitler learned of the death of his ally Benito Mussolini who had been executed by Italian partisans. Mussolini’s body and that of his mistress Clara Petacci had been strung up by their heels and later cut down and lay

The San Juan Weekly in the gutter where vengeful Italians reviled them. It is probable that these events strengthened Hitler’s resolve not to allow himself or his wife to be to be made “a spectacle of” as he had earlier recorded in his Testament.

That afternoon, Hitler expressed doubts about the cyanide capsules he had received through Himmler’s SS. To verify the capsules’ potency, Hitler ordered Dr. Werner Haase to test them on his dog Blondi, and the animal died as a result. That evening, at the final battle conference in the Führerbunker, General Weidling painted a stark picture of the German situation and declared that the fighting in Berlin would inevitably come to an end within the next twenty-four hours.

Hitler, “looking like a man completely resigned to his fate” conceded to the breakout of troops in small groups but forbade the surrender of the city. By 01:00 General Keitel reported that all forces which Hitler had been depending on to come to the rescue of Berlin had either been encircled or forced onto the defensive.

Suicide Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for fewer than 40 hours. Late in the morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler had a meeting with General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, who informed Hitler that the Berlin garrison would probably run out of ammunition that night. Weidling asked Hitler for permission to break out, a request he had made unsuccessfully before. Hitler did not answer at first, and Weidling went back to his headquarters in the Bendlerblock, where at about 13:00 he got Hitler’s permission to try a breakout that night. Hitler, two secretaries, and his personal cook then had lunch after which Hitler and Eva Braun said their personal farewells to members of the Führerbunker staff and fellow occupants, including the Goebbels family, Martin Bormann, the secretaries, and several military officers. At around 14:30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler’s personal study.

The remains of the above-ground portion of the Führerbunker in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Entrance is to the left and circular structure was for generators and ventilation.

Several witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, with Bormann at his side, opened the door to the small study. Linge later stated he immediately noted a scent of burnt almonds, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the aqueous form of hydrogen cyanide. Hitler’s SS adjutant, Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, entered the study and found the lifeless bodies seated on a small sofa. Eva, with her legs drawn up together, was to Hitler’s left and slumped away from him. Günsche stated that Hitler “...sat...sunken over, with blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with his own pistol, a PPK 7.65”. The Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol lay at his feet.

Although, according to Oberscharführer Rochus Misch, Hitler’s head was lying on the

April 21 - 27, 2011

table in front of him. Blood dripping from Hitler’s right temple and chin had made a large stain on the right arm of the sofa and was pooling on the floor/carpet. Eva’s body had no visible physical wounds and according to Linge, her face showed how she had died; cyanide poisoning.Günsche and Mohnke also stated “unequivocally” that all outsiders and those performing duties and work in the bunker “did not have any access” to Hitler’s private living quarters during the “decisive” time of death between 15:00 and 16:00 hours.

Günsche exited the study and announced that the Führer was dead. The two bodies were carried up the stairs to ground level and through the bunker’s emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery where they were doused with petrol.

After the first attempts to ignite the petrol did not work, Linge went back inside the bunker and then returned with a thick roll of papers.

Bormann lit the papers and threw the torch onto the bodies. As the two corpses caught fire, a small group, including Bormann, Günsche, Linge and Goebbels raised their arms in salute as they stood just inside the bunker doorway. On and off during the afternoon the Soviets shelled the area in and around the Reich Chancellery. SS guards brought over additional cans of petrol to further burn the corpses. Linge later noted the fire did not completely destroy the remains as the corpses were being burned in the open where the distribution of heat varies. The burning of the corpses lasted from 16:00 to 18:30 hours. The remains were later covered up in a shallow bomb crater after 18:30 hours.

Aftermath Red Army troops began storming the Chancellery at approximately 23:00, about 7 hours and 30 minutes after Hitler’s death.

The first inkling to the outside world that Hitler was actually dead came from the Germans themselves. On 1 May, the Reichssender Hamburg, a part of the once powerful Deutschlandsender which had earlier sent transmissions across all of Germany, and indeed most of occupied Europe, now relegated to small pockets, interrupted their normal program to announce that an important broadcast would soon be made. There followed an announcement by Admiral Doenitz, Hitler’s self appointed successor, in which he called upon the German people to mourn their Führer who died the death of a hero in the capital of the Reich. Doenitz also stated that his only aim for continuing the war was to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. He added that as far and for so long as achievement of that aim was impeded by the British and the Americans, he would be forced to carry on Germany’s defensive fight against them, as well.

On May 2, the remains of Hitler, Braun, and two dogs (thought to be Blondi and her offspring Wulf) were discovered in a shell crater by a unit of SMERSH which had orders to find Hitler’s body. The autopsy recorded both gunshot damage to Hitler’s skull and glass shards in his jaw. [citation needed] Stalin was wary about believing his old nemesis was dead, and

17

restricted the information that was publicly released. The remains of Hitler and Braun were repeatedly buried and exhumed by SMERSH during the unit’s relocation from Berlin to a new facility in Magdeburg where they, along with the charred remains of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and those of his wife Magda Goebbels and their six children, were buried in an unmarked grave beneath a paved section of the front courtyard. The location was kept highly secret.

In 1969 Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky’s book on the SMERSH autopsy report was published in the West but because of earlier disinformation attempts historians may have thought it untrustworthy.

In 1970 the SMERSH facility, by then controlled by the KGB, was scheduled to be handed over to the East German government. Fearing that a known Hitler burial site might become a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains that had been buried in Magdeberg on 21 February 1946. A Soviet KGB team was given detailed burial charts. On 4 April 1970 they secretly exhumed five wooden boxes containing the remains of “10 or 11 bodies...in an advanced state of decay”. The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.

18

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Apps to Keep Your Dog Healthy, Active and, Maybe, Quiet

By BOB TEDESCHI

I

’m part owner of a nervous little dog with a bark like an ice pick through my brain and a tendency to use that weapon at random, several times a day.

Pippi, who is officially my wife’s dog, also has a fondness for dark chocolate. And when we make the mistake of leaving it within her reach, her behavior approximates that of a barking cocaine addict.

During those moments I sometimes wonder whether she might actually expire.

Smartphones can now answer that question with great precision and perform many other dog-related tasks because of apps like Pet First Aid ($4 on iPhone, $3 on Android) and PupTox ($1 on iPhone).

Others, like iSqueek ($2 on iPhone), Squeaky Fun Time (free on Android) and Dog Whistler (free on iPhone and Android) are meant to interact directly with your pet and may even help shorten your dog’s barking jags.

A third category of apps is meant to give your dog’s social life a little boost (as in the free Dog Park Finder for the iPhone) or let you leverage your pup to strengthen your own social network.

Here, DogBook is the one to watch. Free and only for the iPhone, this is the mobile version of the DogBook service on Facebook, which lets dog owners post profiles of their pets and connect with other canine lovers.

The app is promising, but flawed. You can search for Facebook friends who have also joined DogBook. But when I searched the list, very few had actually posted profiles of their dogs.

The app displays the profiles of your friends’ pets, but if my friends are any indication, these profiles offer limited (and not very entertaining) information. You can also view profiles of dogs who live near you, but because they belong to strangers, the information is even less interesting.

The search feature is marginally entertaining, though, because

you can search for specific dog names and breeds and see how many people within a certain geographic area own animals like yours.

A more useful tool for socially minded dog owners is Dog Park Finder, which puts the content of DogGoes.com into a mobile-friendly format. The free version of the iPhone app shows the location of roughly 2,600 dog parks, including those closest to you. Dog Park Finder Plus ($2) adds about 2,500 dog-friendly hiking spots and beaches. (Hey Walkies, a highly rated and free iPhone app, offers similar features, but is limited to New York City users.)

What if you’re out with your dog and it eats something toxic, like, perhaps, someone’s stash of dark chocolate?

Here is where PupTox and, to a greater extent, Pet First Aid come in handy. The apps can save you from a frantic trip to the veterinarian’s office.

Pet First Aid offers users a list of hazardous substances for household pets and points out toxic elements you may otherwise overlook. Avocados and antifreeze, for instance, can be toxic for pets.

The list includes a section on chocolate, where you can calculate the lethal dosages for dogs of certain weights. The app further differentiates between milk chocolate and pure chocolate.

Pet First Aid includes a section for adding veterinary contacts and pet identifications, and lists vaccinations and other information. One of its developers is also the publisher of PetCPR.com, which offers pet health advice.

Far bigger online publishers are also pushing their content to mobile phones, including AOL, which produces the free Paw Nation. This polished, useful iPhone app is technically pet-agnostic, but the information skews heavily in the direction of dogs.

Users can choose from several categories of stories and videos, including pieces on animal nutrition and health, celebrity pets and question-and-answer sessions with veterinarians and specialists from the American Kennel Club.

Some recent features include advice for giving dogs ibuprofen and Benadryl, tips for owners of snoring canines and guidance on why a dog’s ears can get smelly. (Tips: smelly ears can be cured with medicine, but you’re more likely to need a surgeon to get rid of snoring.)

App developers haven’t built programs for your dog to play with your device, as they have done with cats. But iSqueek and Squeaky Fun Time are close, in that they can at least attract your dog’s attention.

ISqueek, for instance, includes interactive photos of 18 different

squeaky toys. The toys were true to life and annoying. Perhaps predictably, Pippi was quickly drawn to the sound when I tapped the toys.

Squeaky Fun Time offered uninspired graphics and less sound control, but it was free and the closest thing to iSqueek that I could find on the Android platform.

The app that held the most promise for me was, likewise, free. Dog Whistler emits high-pitched tones that you can tweak in various ways, especially on the iPhone version, so you can train your dog to, for instance, not threaten your sanity with incessant barking.

The app receives mixed reviews, so I was prepared for the worst. (As one iTunes reviewer wrote, “It doesn’t work on the dog, but it really annoys my brother.”)

I opened Dog Whistler and waited for my daughter’s school bus to unload in front of our house — a trigger for Pippi’s most frantic barking. When it did, and Pippi started growling, I pointed the iPhone at her and hit the whistle.

Man, did it hurt my ears, but it didn’t keep her from barking.

Quick Calls Pinball Deluxe, new (and free) for the Android, runs in high resolution on phones and tablets. It includes three game tables. ... Fast Web Installer, which is free from Android and allows users to download apps to their phones from the AppBrain online store, is once again available.

Last year, Google disabled Installer, which works with one of the more popular Android app Web sites. ...

With GeoRing, new from Phone ($2), you can set your own songs as your ring tones.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

19

SCIENCE / TECH 20 April 21 -27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

A Curmudgeon’s View of the Energy Challenge

By JUSTIN GILLIS

O

ne of the world’s great minds on issues of energy use, food production and the connection between them is a fellow named Vaclav Smil, of the University of Manitoba. Bill Gates reads him. He is No. 49 on Foreign Policy magazine’s list of the top 100 global thinkers.

He is often a curmudgeon, but our editorial colleague Andrew Revkin recently pitted him against the environmental advocate Lester Brown on questions of future food supply, with Dr. Smil playing the optimist that time.

Anybody with a serious interest in the future of the planet could disappear for many days into Dr. Smil’s astonishing list of publications. A book he wrote called “Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production” is enough to change one’s whole view of humanity. It turns out many of us would not even exist but for a chemical breakthrough dating to 1909, one whose consequences have put enormous strain on the ecology of the planet.

Dr. Smil is just out with a fresh essay on energy, this time criticizing what he calls “the latest infatuations” in the field, like biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, electric cars, and so on.

He is by no means a coal-andoil-forever kind of guy; Dr. Smil believes the world must, and eventually will, convert to solar power, since it is the only renewable energy flux big enough to sustain human civilization. His main point in the new piece is not so much that researching energy alternatives is bad, but that rich countries, especially the United States and Canada, are guilty of focusing on these shiny, high-technology solutions, which he believes are not ready for prime time, while displaying an “astonishing unwillingness to adopt many readily available and highly effective existing fixes.”

He means greater efficiency in the use of the energy supplies we already have, of course. His argument to some degree echoes the work of other thinkers who have long argued that we waste enormous amounts of energy simply because we will not

invest enough capital up front in more efficient ways of doing things, investments that would save us money in the long run by cutting energy bills.

Dr. Smil brings the point home by noting that the United States and Canada use about twice as much energy, per person, as the citizens of European countries and Japan — “but, obviously, Pittsburghers or Angelenos are not twice as rich, twice as healthy, twice as educated, twice as secure or twice as happy as inhabitants of Bordeaux or Berlin.”

His main example of waste is the North American automotive fleet, which gets not much more than half the mileage per gallon as the European fleet. Indeed, Dr. Smil has been mocking the American penchant for sport-utility vehicles for years. One could make similar points about energy efficiency in buildings and factories, as the Obama administration has been trying to do with mixed success.

After making his case about waste, Dr. Smil then walks through the various ideas that have captured attention lately, and argues that most of them will make little contribution to our energy problems, at least in the next few decades. But he also finds some cause for hope: North American energy use per person is not rising. It has essentially been flat for decades, since the oil crises of the 1970s.

How hard could it be, Dr. Smil asks, to turn that flat line into a downward-sloping line, without anybody in the United States or Canada really feeling any pain?

In fact, with past support from Congress, the Bush and Obama administrations have already adopted efficiency standards for new cars, ending decades of inaction on that issue.

With gasoline prices rising again, the market is pulling even as the government is pushing. If that automotive policy survives political attack in the new Congress, and if corporations continue to pursue their stated goals of reducing energy consumption, it is not out of the question that total North American energy use could start edging downward even as the population continues to grow.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

PORTfolio Luis Miguel uis Miguel Gallego Basteri (born on April 19, 1970) is a Mexican singer. He is widely known only by the name Luis Miguel and is often referred to as “El Sol de México” (The Sun of Mexico).[ Beginning his musical career in his childhood, Luis Miguel has won four Latin Grammy Awards and five Grammy Awards.

At the age of fifteen, Luis Miguel received a Grammy Award for his duet “Me Gustas Tal Como Eres” (I Like You Just The Way You Are) with Sheena Easton. In 1991, the RIAA gave him a recognition for the high sales of the albums Romance and Segundo Romance. Luis Miguel is the only Latin artist to have two Spanish-language albums (Romance and Segundo Romance) go platinum in the USA. He was the only Latin artist to perform at the show “SINATRA: 80 Years My Way”, along with other pop icons such as Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Cole and Bob Dylan. In 1996, Luis Miguel became the first Latin artist to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His album Romances of 1997, became the first Spanish-language album ever debuting at #14 on the Billboard Top 200.

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Warner Music recognized Luis Miguel as the best-selling artist in the history of Chile with over 2.5 million records sold.

In 2003, Prince Felipe of Spain presented him with a special award for being the best-selling foreign artist in his country’s history. In 2008, Luis Miguel’s album Navidades became the first Christmas album ever being nominated to the Grammy in the category of Pop. His album Cómplices broke records in Mexico, by selling over 320,000 copies in its first day of release.

Just three days after its release, his new album achieved Quadruple Platinum certification in Mexico, Platinum in Argentina and gold records in Chile and the United

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

States.

Luis Miguel is also known by his high-grossing tours and his outstanding live performances. His Amarte Es Un Placer Tour had a length of 8 months and run through Mexico, USA, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil and Spain between 1999 and 2000. The tour consisted of 104 concerts and was attended by approximately 1.5 million fans. It was the highestgrossing tour ever made by a Latin artist, as well as the most extended. These two records have been broken by his Mexico En La Piel Tour. His 33 Tour peaked at #1 in the Billboard World Top Boxscore. The Mexico En La Piel Tour of 2005, peak #1 in the Billboard World Top Boxscore. In 2006, he was awarded with the “Estela de Plata” by giving 30 concerts at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico, gathering over 260,000 spectators.

Luis Miguel Gallego Basteri was raised in Mexico. He was born in Puerto Rico, where his father performed occasionally as a singer. Luis Miguel is from Spanish and Italian descent. His parents were Spanish singer Luisito Rey and Italian actress Marcella Basteri. Luis Miguel has two younger brothers. His father was from Cadiz, a city in southwestern Spain. During his child years, his father, who was also his manager, encouraged him to watch and analyze nearly every movie, recording, and concert performance of Elvis Presley. Luis Miguel’s mother was from Carrara, Italy. She disappeared mysteriously in 1986, when he

that has spanned over twenty-five years, was a teenager.

Luis Miguel refuses to speak to the he has become the main singer from Latin media about his personal life and keeps the America, having performed successfully matter private. Luis Miguel rarely grants pop music, bolero, mariachi and romaninterviews or attends award ceremonies. tic ballads. In the late 1980s, Luis Miguel He is always escorted by a diligent secu- made the transition from child star to conrity team and he is transported in several solidated international singer, and since trucks to distract paparazzis and reporters. then, he became one of the most revered Due to his secrecy he has become one of and popular Latin American artists ever.

His wide vocal range and performance has the most pursued Latin American artist.

He is recognized for his taste for been praised by critics and other artists all haute cuisine and for being a self-taught over. sommelier. He released his own vintage of wine, “Unico. Luis Miexican singer Luis Miguel, one guel”, a Cabernet Sauvignon. He of Latin America’s smoothest is a native Spanish speaker and also speaks fluent English, Itaand sexiest voices alive, announlian and Portuguese. ced today that he’ll be making a stop in Luis Miguel is father of Puerto Rico in May as part of his 2010-11 three: Michelle, born on June 13 worldwide concert tour. of 1989, from his relationship The crooner’s show will take place with Stephanie Salas; Miguel, May 13 at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliborn on January 1, 2007 and Daseum in San Juan. The heartthrob, whose niel, born on December 18, 2008, succesful singing career spans over two both from his relationship with decades, will perform a full array of his actress Aracely Arámbula. His hits plus material from his newest solo alnumerous relationships are wibum titled “Labios de miel.” dely covered by the Latin media.

“El Sol de Mexico,” as he’s widely In April 2010, he was brieknown, kicked off his ongoing internafly hospitalized at the Cedars-Sitional concert tour in late 2010, with pernai Hospital in Los Angeles. The formances in Las Vegas, Argentina, Chile, cause of the hospitalization was Perú, Bolivia and Paraguay, and this year not disclosed. he plans to also perform in San Diego, Los Luis Miguel is considered as one of the top male pop sinAngeles and San Jose, California. gers worldwide today. In a career

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En Pié de Lucha, Ballet Teatro Nacional W ith the purpose of raising funds, due to the critical financial situation, Ballet Teatro Nacional de Puerto Rico took over Teatro Yaguez in Mayaguez, recently.

Subsidized by the municipio of that community. The program consisted mostly in experts of the classical repertory, demonstrating that this company is motivated and has preference to focus on that prolongation of he classical ballet. Only one work stands out as a non classic.

The highlight of the first part; the grand pas-de deux from Swan Lake “The Black Swan”; Laura Valentín and José Rordríguez, consolidated the supremacy of this dramatic moment in all ballet repertory with every inch os splendid workmanship. Valentín showed the powerful drive require as the aggresive odile; partnered with proper assistance

by Rodríguez. The same couple on a different perspective, in the second part of the program became the epitome of lyrical line in the poetical expressive line of “Aguas Primaverales” to the music of Rachmainof. The couple had no inhibition to fill up every phrase of the choreography with deep understanding of

each particular detail.

Two fragment from “La Bayadere”, and “The Corsair”, are indeed two more classic moments to add to the main stream that the company feels like the territory they can handle with dexterity.

“The Ganzatti Wedding” from the first one; Ganzatti is the bride and Solor is the groom. Marena Pérez and Odemar Ocasio, took over these two roles with penache and as reliable interpreters of the roles stressing the reminiscent line which was the purpose of the ballet under the zarist Russia.

In the same scene, the “Brass idol” is a most attractive solo part that Omar Roman succeded in giving the extoic allure of the arms movement as well as the interpretation.

“Preciosa” is a popular melody that local composer Rafael Hernández gave a hint of national milestone. María Julia Landa exalted this enchanting music to the level of a romantic pas-dedeux that Lara Berrios and Elmer Pérez deeply moved by its charming quality impressed the audience.

“Techo de Cristal”, is the only non-classic work in the whole program.

Rodney Rivera the choreographer , has

taken the road to the realm of the profound controversial behavior of human nature of the relations of a conyugal relationship between man and woman.

The conflict goes beyond the dramatized expressed motives. The three couples represent stages in opposing situations the beginning of the infatuation, the climax of the love affair, and the unexpected ending of the relationship. The dancers were submerged in the action as well as the audience that was very identified with what was going on.

Danuel Rodríguez and Marena Pérez step in flamboyant and fiery, from the start. The floating jetes of Rodríguez and the clean cut-”foittes” by Pérez, set the stage on fire with “Flames of Paris”.

The last ballet came as a present for the ensemble to enjoy dancing for the sake of dancing. Rebecca Canchani created this masterpiece, that she gave the tittle of “Descalzos”, (barefoot). Canchani moved the group in every possible concept n the level of increasing mobility through creating an unlimited panorama of turns, jumps and musicality splendidly accomplished. This exhuberant choreography should be part of the company repertory. Hoping That the

ulterior motivation behind this show to obtain funds’ will move the good will of those enterprises interested in promoting the artistic efforts done by younger generation in performing arts.

April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

25

Kitchen

For Everything There Is a Season, Even Mangoes

By MELISSA CLARK

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N spring, it’s so easy to become wrapped up trolling the farmers’ market for the first skinny blades of rhubarb or pungent ramps, that you can forget there is an entire world out there, where seasons can differ from ours. In warmer climates, tasty things are ripening, just waiting to be called lunch.

Mangoes will never be local fare in New York, but the best ones are starting to come into American markets right now.

Beginning in April and peaking in May and June, mangoes from India, the Caribbean, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Mexico will fill the bins at produce markets, daring even the most entrenched New York locavore to pass them by.

Florida mangoes will hit the stores a little later, in June, in varieties beyond the ubiquitous red and green Tommy Atkins mango, a familiar if slightly forlorn site in supermarkets.

Bred for color and sturdiness rather than flavor, the Tommy Atkins mango tends to be tart and fibrous, a dental-floss affair if you bite the flesh off the pit. But if you have the patience to let one ripen on the counter until it’s fully fragrant and very soft, a Tommy Atkins can be perfectly juicy and pleasant, if never sublime.

Happily, the season of the sublime is nigh. The Indian Alphonso, banned from being imported until five years ago, when low-level irradiation was approved to kill an insect it harbored, is considered

the finest variety by mango connoisseurs.

With smooth, deep yellow flesh as juicy as an orange but much, much sweeter, they are absolutely worth the trek to Queens (or wherever your nearest Indian market is). Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights, 37-27 74th Street , (718) 898-3445, expects to have them for about six weeks beginning April 10.

Speckled, flat orange Haitian mangoes, and elongated yellow Ataulfo mangoes from Mexico, also know as Champagne mangoes, will be easier to find. Both are velvety fleshed and honeyed, though the Haitian tends to be brighter flavored while the Ataulfo is more candied.

Other excellent choices are large, bright-tasting Keitt and succulent Kent mangoes from Florida. These stay greenish when ripe, which can make them a hard sell, said Mario Andreani, a manager at Katzman Produce, a produce importer.

“That’s because we are not well educated when it comes to mangoes,” he said. “We don’t know what to look for, so we miss out on some of the gems.”

No matter what variety you end up with, the test for a ripe mango is to gently squeeze it. It should feel soft and slack beneath the leathery skin but not mushy.

If your mangoes are firm, put them in a paper bag to ripen more quickly.

I like to eat juicy ones over the sink, or even standing outside on the deck (they get pretty drippy). Just slice the fat cheeks away from the long, flat pit, and

Mango-Rose Water Lassi Time: 10 minutes (add time for chilling and churning if making frozen yogurt) 2 cups diced ripe mango 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt 1/2 cup whole milk 3 tablespoons sugar 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon rose water, more to taste Pinch kosher salt.

Combine the mango, yogurt, milk, sugar, 1/4 teaspoon rose water and salt in a blender. Purée until smooth. Taste and add more rose water if needed.

Pour into four glasses.

Yield: 4 servings or 1 quart frozen yogurt.

Note: If churning this into frozen yogurt, use at least 1/2 teaspoon of rose water and follow the manufacturer’s instructions for the ice cream maker.

Black Pepper Chicken Thighs With Mango, Rum and Cashews

Time: 30 minutes 1/2 teaspoon light brown sugar 1 1/2 teaspoon black pepper Pinch cayenne 1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 cup salted cashews 1 3/4 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch chunks 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 cup finely chopped scallions 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro stems 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tablespoons dark rum 1 large (15-ounce) mango, cut into 1/4-inch cubes (or use 2 small mangoes) 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar, to taste 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves.

1. In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and cayenne. Heat 1 tablespoon slurp the sweet meat directly from the skin. If you’d rather be neater, use a knife to crosshatch the flesh of the cheeks (but don’t cut through the skin), then push them out so you end up with little mango squares that can be easily scooped with a spoon or cut with a knife. Cut away the skin from the center piece to get even more flesh.

I like to keep mango recipes simple and preferably raw; heating mangoes eliminates some of their floral perfume.

Blending mangoes with milk or yogurt creates smoothies, lassis and milkshakes with all the fruit’s rich, peachy,

oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the cashews and sugar-spice mixture to the skillet; cook, stirring, until nuts are golden, 2 to 3 minutes.

Scrape nuts into a bowl.

2. Wipe out skillet with a paper towel. Season chicken all over with salt and remaining 1 teaspoon pepper.

Return skillet to medium-high heat and add the remaining 3 tablespoons oil. Add scallions and cilantro stems; cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add garlic and chicken. Cook, stirring occasionally, until chicken is golden and cooked through, about 12 minutes. Pour in the rum and cook, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan, until the rum evaporates, about 1 minute.

3. Remove pan from heat and immediately add nuts, mango, vinegar and cilantro leaves. Taste and adjust seasonings, if necessary.

Yield: 4 servings. complex flavor. Pour them into an ice cream maker and you turn a frothy drink into a frozen delight.

Pairing spicy chilis and sweet mango in salsa is a classic. I offer a twist with a chicken sauté, spiked with plenty of black pepper, a little rum and mangoes folded in at the end to brighten the mix.

And for what might be the sweetest cake in the universe, a syrupy, coconutand-condensed-milk-infused tres leches cake is further sugared with a purée of soft, ripe mango.

You couldn’t ask for a more luscious spring dessert.

Kitchen

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April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Mango Tres Leches Cake Time:1 1/2 hours plus cooling and chilling 5 tablespoons butter, melted, plus more to grease pan 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup plus 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar, more to taste 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon plus a pinch fine sea salt 6 large eggs, separated 1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar 2 cups cubed very ripe mango 1 can (15 ounces) unsweetened coconut milk 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk 1/4 cup Spanish brandy or cognac 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon.

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a 9-inch-by-13-inch baking pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, 3/4 cup of the sugar, the baking

powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, melted butter, 3 tablespoons of the milk and vanilla.

2. Using an electric mixer set on medium, beat the egg whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and beat until thick, fluffy and white but before peaks form. Add 1/4 cup of sugar, a little at a time, and continue beating until the whites are glossy and firm peaks form when the beaters are lifted.

3. Whisk half the flour mixture into the yolks (it will seem like paste). Whisk a quarter of the egg whites into the yolk mixture to lighten it. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in another quarter of the whites.

Sift half of the remaining flour mixture over the batter and fold in. Fold in another quarter of the egg whites followed by the rest of the sifted flour and finally the rest of the whites.

Scrape batter into the pan and smooth the top with the spatula. Bake until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Let cool.

4. Meanwhile in a blender or food processor, purée the mango with 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar, or to taste depending upon how sweet your mango is.

5. When the cake is cool, use a fork to poke holes all over the top, then cut the cake into 18 pieces, but don’t take the pieces out of the pan.

6. In a small saucepan over medium heat stir together the coconut milk, condensed milk, remaining 1/3 cup milk, brandy and a pinch of salt. Heat until steaming, then pour

it evenly over the cake. Cover and chill the cake for at least 1 hour or overnight.

7. Just before serving, whip the cream with the cinnamon and half of the puréed mango until thick and mousse-like. Taste and add more sugar if it tastes flat. Spread the mango cream on the cake, then dollop on the remaining mango purée. Use a spatula to swirl the mango purée into a marble-like pattern. Or use the purée as a sauce when you serve the cake.

Yield: 18 servings.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

27

Wine

Looking for Renewed Magic in Beaujolais

By ERIC ASIMOV

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OU don’t have to scratch too far under the surface of most wine lovers to find fond, possibly romanticized memories of a special bottle that changed everything for them.

Before that bottle they may have liked wine well enough. But then, often by chance, they drank a particular glass that opened them up to the range of possibilities in a bottle, transforming them into wine fanatics who forever after would plot ways of repeating that illuminating experience.

Often, the epiphany came after drinking one of the greats: a Bordeaux, a Burgundy, a Barolo, an old Napa cabernet. The pantheon was not a prerequisite: for me, the wine that opened the doors was a humble barbera d’Alba.

Younger people today, though, will rarely have the opportunities to drink the great wines that previous generations were almost able to take for granted.

They are simply too expensive.

Fortunately, far more good wines are available now than 30 years ago, especially on the humble end. Beginning wine drinkers have many more options for that transformative bottle. I think if I were to choose one wine today to serve with the hope of galvanizing interest, I might very well pick what for me epitomizes sheer deliciousness: a good Beaujolais.

It seems both an obvious choice and an absurd one. Beaujolais’s historic reputation as a juicy, joyous wine was at odds in the last quarter of the 20th century with its descent into a banal beverage more noteworthy for the marketing success of Beaujolais nouveau than for pleasure in the glass.

But in the last 15 years, Beaujolais has come back strong. Numerous small producers, focused squarely on quality, have seized the initiative in the region, setting a template for success in Beaujolais. In the process, they have not only revived the reputation of Beaujolais for exuberant, spirited wines, but have also won the region new respect for complexity and even age-worthiness. This is especially true of wines from the 10 crus, the highest echelon of Beaujolais terroir, which include the five best-known: Brouilly, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon and Moulin-à-Vent.

To get a sense of how far Beaujolais has come, raves for the 2009 vintage brought about a huge demand, something unheard of in this particular corner of the wine world since the heights of interest in Beaujolais nouveau. Yet along with the huzzahs, I have also heard a few

dissenting voices suggesting that the ’09s are not above reproach.

To judge for ourselves, the wine panel recently tasted 20 bottles from the ’09 vintage, focusing on the five lessheralded crus: Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Régnié and St.-Amour. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Daniel Johnnes, wine director for the Daniel Boulud restaurant group, and Byron Bates, a sommelier who plans to open a natural wine bar in the East Village this fall.

Why these crus? Well, why not? No reason, really, except a desire to focus on the unusual suspects. Many of the names in the tasting, and indeed, some of our favorite wines, are sure to provoke some head scratching and rapid Googling. I ask again, why not? These wines are worth it.

We all were impressed by the quality of the ’09s in the tasting. They seemed to capture many of the characteristics that make Beaujolais so good. Byron called it a really impressive vintage, and we could not help but concur.

“The tasting makes a really powerful argument for the joy of Beaujolais,” Daniel said.

And yet, as pleasurable as the wines were, I did get a sense of what has moved some to criticize the vintage. These wines are more dense and rich than is typical of Beaujolais. No, they didn’t stray into the realm of baked and jammy. But they are highly concentrated, and show less focus and definition than, say, the best wines in less-heralded vintages like 2006 or 2007.

This is a mild point, because the wines do offer so much joy. And if the characteristics of the various crus tend to converge in ripe vintages like 2009, it must be said that even under ordinary circumstances it takes a very fine taster indeed to divine from a glass the differences between, say, a Chiroubles and a Chénas.

As it turned out, we had only one Chénas in our tasting, and it did not make the cut. But each of the other four crus is represented in our top 10, with four from Régnié, three from Côte de Brouilly, two from Chiroubles and one from St.-Amour.

A Côte de Brouilly from Château Thivin was our top wine. It simply embodied what I love about Beaujolais, offering bright, expressive, exuberant flavors and a ravishing texture along with contemplative mineral and spicy notes. This wine is delicious now, and ought to be even more so in a couple of years.

I’m a big fan of Côte de Brouilly in general. The wines often seem textured

and complex to me, yet, as with most of these crus, they earn little attention. Our No. 3 wine, from Jean-Paul Brun’s Domaine des Terres Dorées, is a solid bet year in and year out. The ’09 was especially lively, energetic and complex. A final Côte de Brouilly slipped in at No. 10, the juicy, pleasing Cuvée des Ambassades from Domaine du Pavillon de Chavannes.

Only one of the four St.-Amours made our top 10, the Domaine des Billards, dense in keeping with the vintage yet greatly appealing, full of bright fruit, as is typical of St.-Amour. It was our best value at $19, though, to be honest, that honor might just as easily have gone to the luscious, spicy Domaine de Colette of Régnié for $15 or the vibrant Château de Raousset of Chiroubles for just $13. Why the Billards? It may be a little easier to find than the others.

Of the six Régniés in the tasting, four made our top 10, an excellent showing for the newest of the crus, created in 1988. In addition to the Colette, look for the dark, structured Julien Sunier, a new producer for me, the fresh, bold Charly Thévenet and the earthy, funky Christian Ducroux, a producer, I confess, whose wines I’ve enjoyed many times in the last few years.

Wine can be a lot of things, but it starts with enjoyment. The 2009 vintage of Beaujolais offers plenty of pleasure.

Tasting Report

Château Thivin, $23, ✩✩✩ ½ Côte de Brouilly 2009 Vibrant, expressive and plain delicious, with lingering flavors of earthy fruit.

(Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, Calif.)

BEST VALUE

Domaine des Billards, $19, ✩✩✩ St.-Amour 2009

Dense yet seductive, with bright, lingering fruit flavors. (David Bowler Wines, New York) Jean-Paul Brun, $20, ✩✩✩ Domaine des Terres Dorées Côte de Brouilly 2009 Lively and energetic, with flavors of spices, minerals and red fruit. (Louis/ Dressner Selections, New York) Domaine de Colette, $15, ✩✩✩ Régnié 2009 Bright, spicy fruit flavors, peppery and luscious. (Charles Neal Selections, Richmond, Calif.)

D. Coquelet, $27, ✩✩✩ Chiroubles Vieilles Vignes 2009 Spicy, well balanced and succulent with an inviting texture. (Louis/Dressner Selections) Château de Raousset, $13, ✩✩✩ Chiroubles 2009 Bright and accessible with lovely fruit and mineral flavors; a tad tannic. (Fruit of the Vines, Long Island City, N.Y.) Julien Sunier, $19, ✩✩ ½ Régnié 2009 Dark and structured with flavors of spicy fruit, flowers and minerals. (Joli Vin Imports, Berkeley, Calif.)

Charly Thévenet, $34, ✩✩ ½ Régnié Grain et Granit 2009 Fresh and lively, with bold fruit and floral flavors. (Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant) Domaine Christian Ducroux, $15, ✩✩ ½ Régnié 2009 Fresh and pleasantly funky with earthy aromas and flavors of flowers and red fruit. (Fruit of the Vines) Domaine du Pavillon de Chavannes, $19, ✩✩ ½ Côte de Brouilly Cuvée des Ambassades 2009 Pleasing floral aromas with juicy fruit and mineral flavors. (Vintage ‘59 Imports, Washington, D.C.)

FASHION & BEAUTY

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San Juan Weekly

Going Bananas for Citrus Colors in Summer Clothes

By SUZY MENKES

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hy orange? Why now? The sudden jolt of unexpected colors for the spring season has sent balls of fire bowling through the stores — if not yet much seen on the sidewalks.

The hot palette might have various origins: a glance back to the 1970s when orange and brown were a favored combination — not least for bathroom suites.

Or perhaps a feeling for tropical nature, because leaf green and banana yellow come not just as colors but also worked into lush and flamboyant patterns.

Yet the current citrus shades — including the emblematic oranges and lemons — seem rather to be a deliberate change from the “girly” pinks of the Paris Hilton era than any profound statement or obvious reference to the past.

What is indisputable is that color is everywhere from long skirts in orange or fuschia pink from the cheap-and-cheerful Zara chain to contrasting jackets and skirts from high-fashion labels like Gucci. Color blocks can also make a modernist statement, as in the great sweeps of cloth at Jil Sander.

Some of these painterly palettes and juicy mixes come under the influence of Yves Saint Laurent and last year’s retrospective exhibition in Paris of the designer’s work. Mixing colors that zing requires an artistic eye, and it was all the better that a designer like Marc Jacobs followed the YSL masterpieces. In much cheaper fabrics, but with shades carefully replicated, the color mixes look fine even at Main Street prices.

More intriguing is the concept of color married to print, with the current generation of designers working digitally to offer bold and original combinations. From Stella McCartney’s apples and oranges, suggesting a childish freshness, to Miuccia Prada’s baroque twists of monkeys climbing through jungle patterns, the summer colors can take on a wild dimension.

Ms. Prada, who came out on the runway wearing dangling banana earrings after showing her summer collection in Milan, analyzed six months later her original thoughts behind the bright stripes and vivid fur stoles and those bold baroque prints.

“One of the ideas came from the men’s collection, the part that I most loved,” Ms. Prada said last week, explaining that she wanted to transform

that concept into “something exciting and glamorous” as “an ironic comment on the current obsession with glamour.”

“Out of uniforms and simple shapes, I wanted to do a musical: I was very excited by this idea,” the designer said. ‘’Separately, these days I have a passion for baroque, again as a symbol of our times. The perfect baroque musical is South America and Carmen Miranda. The fruits came from the typical baroque fruit center pieces and Miranda’s head pieces.”

With the striking and unexpected collection flying out of the stores, Ms. Prada said she believed that “the success of it is probably due to the color, the over-the-top fantasies, and

the joyfulness of it all.”

The Stella McCartney look was also upbeat and never meant as more than a simple seasonal offering, according to its designer.

“I wanted to add a punch of color in the collection, and I think doing it in a really bold citrus print gives it a slight sense of humor,” Ms. McCartney said. “But I also wanted it to be really easy to wear and just to have a feeling of summer, being free and light.”

Color and print have certainly put in a merry appearance after barren years — even decades — when neutral shades and the perennial black have ruled women’s closets.

But in the long march from catwalk to daily life, it seems that customers are cherry-picking the designer collections, putting one of Prada’s jungle leaf print skirts with a plain top and more generally choosing simple, often cropped, pants in vivid colors to perk up the usual plain leather or denim jackets.

Accessories, inevitably, seem a less risky investment in color, with tan bags lightened to the fashionable orange and shoes a riot of green or yellow.

When blue comes into the equation, it is typically a lagoon turquoise to fit the tropical island theme, while green and purple look drawn from parakeet plumage.

Is all this color, all at once, too much of a good thing? It is wise to remember that, like fireworks against a night sky, bright shades look great against black.

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

29

Screening Prostates at Any Age

By GINA KOLATA

W

hen, if ever, are people just too old to benefit from cancer screening?

The question keeps arising and has never been satisfactorily answered. Now it has come up again, in the context of a provocative new study on the popular P.S.A. test for prostate cancer. The paper, published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, finds that men in their 70s are being screened at nearly twice the rate of men in their 50s — and men ages 80 to 85 are being screened as often as those 30 years younger.

“That is mind-boggling,” said the lead author, Dr. Scott E. Eggener, a University of Chicago urologist.

“What we were hoping was that young, healthy men who were most likely to benefit would be screened at higher rates and that screening would tail off in older men.”

The American Cancer Society and the American Urological Society discourage screening for men whose life expectancy is 10 years or less.

The cancer is so slow-growing that it can take that long for screening to show a benefit.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force recently concluded that screening should stop at 75.

Dr. Mary Barton, scientific director for the group, said “it is more than just a lack of data” that led to that conclusion. “What data we do have for this group suggests it is a netharm situation,” she added.

But although 80-year-olds are much more likely than 50-year-olds to have chronic illnesses and a limited life expectancy, age should not be the deciding factor, Dr. Eggener said. “Health condition and life expectancy are far more important,” he said. “There are 50-year-olds that shouldn’t be screened and 70-yearolds that may benefit from it.”

The new study only included national data through 2005, the most recent year they were available, but, said Dr. Durado Brooks, director of prostate and colorectal cancers for the American Cancer Society, “there is no reason to believe it has changed significantly since 2005.” Doctors said there are several reasons screening seems to continue indefinitely as men age. They range from patient demands to malpractice fears to financial incentives and doctors’ own

lack of understanding of the risks and benefits of screening.

“There are a lot of pressures,“ said Dr. Gerald L. Andriole, a urologic surgeon at Washington University. “It is not all pure data that is promoting aggressive screening.”

Dr. Andriole is directing a National Cancer Institute study of 76,000 men that failed to find a screening benefit after 10 years. The men were aged 55 to 74 when the study began. P.S.A. screening is controversial at any age.

Screening proponents say the cancer institute study was flawed and point to a European study of 162,000 men aged 55 to 69 that showed a 20 percent drop in the prostate cancer death rate with screening.

Screening critics say the European study was flawed and add that there is a logical reason it has been hard to show a screening benefit.

They note that prostate cancer is a common cancer, found in most men’s prostates on autopsy, although often the men had no idea they had it. The cancer can be lethal, but it usually grows so slowly that men die with it, not because of it.

For most men, screening only has harms because it leads to biopsies and treatments with unpleasant side effects. And, they say, it might not help cure many deadly prostate cancers because those cancers may have already spread outside the prostate, microscopically seeding other organs, long before a P.S.A. test indicates a possible problem.

A positive P.S.A. test usually leads to a biopsy and then, if cancer is found, to a decision about whether to treat it. Nearly all men opt for treatment, which includes surgery to remove the prostate or radiation to destroy the cancer. Side effects can include impotence and incontinence.

Even younger men should weigh the harms of screening, says

Dr. Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical School. “You also have the potential to wreck their lives,” she said.

One reason treatment is the most common choice is that it is hard to know if a cancer is lethal. Pathologists can distinguish between cancers that look particularly aggressive and those that do not, but there is a real possibility that even if tissue obtained at a biopsy has only less aggressive tumor cells, more aggressive cells might still be lurking in the prostate.

But even with this uncertainty, prostate cancer specialists say, most men who are treated would not have died of prostate cancer, and that is especially true for elderly men, in particular those who are frail and have a limited life expectancy. Yet changing medical practice can be difficult.

“Anytime a practice becomes ingrained, it is difficult to eradicate,” says Dr. Brooks. “It is harder to get rid of an aberrant behavior than to adopt a new one.”

Dr. Andriole said the very concept of not screening is difficult.

“It is the hardest thing in the world not to look for a cancer and not to treat it,” he says. And doctors, he added, have many inducements to screen. They often are afraid they could be sued if they do not screen and a man is found to have a lethal cancer. And there are financial incentives.

“Urologists make money by finding ways to biopsy men and administer treatments,” Dr. Andriole said.

Screening, he added, “is promoted by hospitals and industry.” And, he added, “many patients demand it.”

Dr. Brooks of the cancer society says he travels the country and talks to primary care doctors about screening, and has learned that many have misconceptions about the test’s benefits.

“They often don’t appreciate the downside of screening,” Dr. Brooks said, “and they don’t appreciate the delay in benefit.” In addition, Dr. Brooks said, primary care doctors often “overestimate the likelihood that early detection of prostate cancer will lead to survival benefits.”

Added to that, Dr. Brooks said, is the length of time it takes to discuss the pros and cons of screening with patients. Often it is easier to just order the test.

Dr. Bruce Roth, a professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, said that ideally, a doctor should take a man’s overall health into account and not just go by age in ordering P.S.A. tests. But if a man has been screened year after year, it can be hard to suggest he stop because he may not live much longer.

Some men say the cautions just do not apply to them.

J. Allen Wheeler, who is 82 and lives in Portland, Ore., said he had his most recent P.S.A. test in January.

His doctor orders it routinely, he says, adding, “In all honestly, it’s part of my physical.” His doctor “just does it — that’s the understanding between us.”

Mr. Wheeler, who says his health is “fairly good,” said he could not foresee a time when he would stop having the test. He would like to know if he has cancer, he says, although he may decide not to be treated.

A 75-year-old Connecticut man said he had the test because he was healthy and wanted to stay that way.

“I think I am going to live to be 100,” he said, asking that his name be withheld to protect his privacy. A recent P.S.A. test found a small cancer, and he does not want to take a chance that it will grow slowly and not cause him problems.

“I am thinking seriously of having the whole thing taken out,” he says. “Hasta la vista.”

30 April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

A Tonsil Remedy Is Fitted for a New Century

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

T

he Tonsil Hospital is no more.

It opened on East 62nd Street in February 1921, its mission to remove the tonsils and adenoids of poor children on the East Side of Manhattan, thereby preventing sore throats and streptococcal infections and all their serious consequences in an era without antibiotics. Parents saw scarlet fever, named for its red, sandpapery rash, as a frightening and dangerous childhood illness; rheumatic fever, which sometimes followed strep, could seriously damage the heart.

But times have changed. Built on studies of throat infections and tonsillectomies, new guidelines from the American Academy of Otolaryngology, issued in January, suggest tonsillectomy for recurrent sore throats only if frequent or severe.

At the same time, the academy now recommends that the operation be considered for children who have trouble breathing while they sleep.

The new guidelines reflect changes in clinical practice, and attempt to bring scientific evidence to bear on an operation at times popular to the point of ubiquity.

In the era of the Tonsil Hospital, pretty much all children got tonsillectomies. Consider “Cheaper by the Dozen”: The 1948 memoir about two efficiency experts and their 12 children happens to contain the single funniest tonsillectomy chapter in literature (granted, competition is limited).

Six of the children undergo tonsillectomies, performed by a doctor in an operating room rigged in the family home in Montclair, N.J. The father of the family still has his tonsils, and the doctor is “rewarded” for his

cooperation by being allowed to remove them, too.

Leaving aside all the family dynamics, the chapter is notable for the matter-of-fact assumption that sooner or later, all tonsils need to be removed. And even after antibiotics were available, many if not most tonsils continued to be removed, through the 1950s and ’60s.

“It was the single most common operation in the United States,” said Dr. Ellen Wald, a specialist in pediatric infectious disease who is chairwoman of the pediatrics department at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

But which children really benefited from these operations, and which did not? “When I was in practice and first began to question this issue and was faced with the question of ‘Should my child have a tonsillectomy or not?,’ I never knew the right answer,” said Dr. Jack L. Paradise, professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Dr. Paradise and his colleagues tried to provide

A Vaccine for the Very Young Takes Aim at Bacterial Diseases

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

W

ith help from international donors, Congo introduced a new vaccine this month in an effort to save more of its babies from pneumococcal disease.

The donors and the country’s health minister, Dr. Victor Makwenge Kaput, acknowledged that the success will be hard to achieve. Congo is one of Africa’s largest and poorest countries. Vast stretches lack not just electricity and refrigeration, but paved roads. It has the world’s second-highest rate of infant mortality (after Chad). Its eastern provinces are con-

vulsed by fighting that mixes local tribal hostilities, rival Hutu and Tutsi militias from Rwanda, warlord armies and efforts to control areas containing diamonds and other minerals.

The pneumococcus bacterium, which can cause fatal pneumonia, meningitis or sepsis, kills about 500,000 children under the age of 5 each year worldwide; more than 125,000 of them are in Congo, according to a 2004 study by Unicef, which found that only malaria killed more Congolese youngsters. At first, the new vaccine (given at a health center in Rwanda, above) is being rolled out only in the capital, Kinshasa, and it will be extended to just two of the Congo’s 11 provinces.

In the last six months, pneumococcal vaccine has been introduced in Guyana, Kenya, Mali, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone and Yemen, through the Global Alliance for Vaccines Initiative, which has received more than $2 billion from Britain, Canada, Italy, Norway, Russia and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The alliance is seeking another $4 billion to reach more countries with this vaccine and a rotavirus vaccine against diarrhea.

an answer in a study, published in 1984, that looked at children with many well-documented episodes of throat infection (seven or more in the preceding year, for example). Those who got tonsillectomies had fewer infections in the first couple of years after surgery than those who didn’t, the researchers found. But the children who didn’t have surgery also had fewer and fewer infections as they got older.

Tonsillectomies were a reasonable option for children with severe, recurrent throat infections, Dr. Paradise concluded. But so was watchful waiting.

Later, Dr. Paradise studied children with fewer infections and concluded that the benefit of tonsillectomy was too “modest” to justify the risk, the pain and the cost of surgery in those children.

These days, many doctors are less likely to move to tonsillectomy for a smaller series of run-of-the-mill sore throats. I try to explain to parents that their children will grow out of these infections, and taking out their tonsils won’t necessarily do very much to expedite that process.

Yet at the same time, doctors are more willing to consider that children may need the operation if their tonsils obstruct the throat enough to affect breathing while they sleep.

Dr. Richard M. Rosenfeld, one of the authors of the new tonsillectomy guidelines and a professor of otolaryngology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, suggests that back when most children had their tonsils out, it was perhaps less common to see these sleep problems — what with all the tonsillectomies, there was “nobody breathing with a golf ball in the mouth.”

Now that more children are growing up with their tonsils intact, he said, “we created this new disease, sleep-disordered breathing.”

Some behavioral issues, including some attention problems, can be traced to a lack of deep, restful sleep.

A child suffering from obstructive sleep apnea will not simply grow out of it, said Dr. Kasey Li, a surgeon at Stanford University. Even if the tonsils do become less problematic at puberty, as sometimes happens, the child’s development will have been affected.

For problems short of obstructive sleep apnea, “the advice to parents is, if you’re even the least bit unsure, don’t do it — it’s an elective surgery, don’t worry about it, you can always re-address it,” Dr. Rosenfeld said.

“There’s very little harm to some watchful waiting till things sort themselves out.”

Parents should also know that in a significant number of children, the breathing problems — and everything that follows from disordered sleep — may persist even after the operation and need further treatment.

So the tonsillectomy, once routine, now requires a nuanced diagnosis. It may improve quality of life for some children, but there are limits to what it can accomplish — with sleep issues and behavior problems, and with recurrent infections.

It’s a far cry from where we were in the first half of the 20th century, when philanthropists provided poor children with a dedicated facility for tonsil removal. The Tonsil Hospital closed in 1946.

“I’m on the Upper East Side at Cornell New York hospital, 10 blocks from where the original hospital was,” said Dr. Edward McCoul, an otolaryngologist who wrote about the hospital last year in a medical journal. “I ask around, and basically no one I’ve mentioned it to has ever heard of it.”

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April 21 - 27, 2011

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The Burden of Supporting the Elderly

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

and Development has put together numbers on the old-age support ratio. That refers to the number of people who are of working age (20 to 64 years old) relative to the num-

A Report Criticizes Banks for Handling of Mortgages s part of its giant data release, the Organization for Economic Cooperation

By DAVID STREITFELD

B

anks were unprepared for a flood of foreclosures and did a poor job of handling them, in some cases moving ahead with evictions even when they should not have, according to a long-awaited report released Wednesday by federal regulators.

In response to the problems described in the report, mortgage servicers have signed consent agreements promising to put in new oversight procedures and make other changes. The examinations were conducted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Thrift Supervision.

During their review, the examiners said they saw an unspecified number of cases “in which foreclosures should not have proceeded due to an intervening event or condition,” including families in bankruptcy or those qualified for or in the middle of a trial loan modification.

The servicers include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — none of whom had an immediate comment. Two firms that handle aspects of the foreclosure process, Lender Processing Services and Mortgage Electronics Registration Service, also signed the consent agreement.

“Our enforcement actions are intended to fix what is broken, identify and compensate borrowers who suffered financial harm, and ensure a fair and or-

derly mortgage servicing process going forward,” the acting comptroller of the currency, John Walsh, said in a statement.

The report said that mortgage servicing departments of the banks did not properly oversee their own or third-party employees at law firms, had inadequate and poorly trained staffs and improperly submitted material to the courts.

As the enforcement actions have leaked over the last two weeks, they have been widely criticized by consumer and housing groups as little more than a slap on the wrist.

“The agreements are a huge disappointment,” said Alys Cohen of the National Consumer Law Center. “They rubber-stamp the status quo. The banks who caused the economic crisis and received government bailouts are getting a free pass while homeowners still struggle to save their homes.”

The release of the report and enforcement actions came six months after the servicers’ handling of foreclosures became a major issue. The servicers, under pressure from lawyers representing homeowners, admitted to lapses last fall and began foreclosure moratoriums.

State attorneys general, who started a separate investigation, are still working with the Obama administration to change the foreclosure process in a more fundamental way. About two million households are in foreclosure and another two million near it.

ber of people over retirement age (older than 65).

One reason for America’s fiscal problems is that the population is aging, meaning that there are relatively many old people to care for and relatively few young workers to support them. (Immigrants are helping with this burden, though.)

The United States is by no means the most challenged in this regard.

The chart shows that as of 2008, there were 4.7 working-age

Americans for each retirement-age American, a figure projected to fall to 2.6 by 2050. Compare that to Japan, where the number was 2.8 in 2008, and will fall to about 1.2 by 2050.

Note also that China, for all the demographic issues arising from its one-child policy, is on about the same footing as the United States — an old-age support ratio of 7.9 to 1 in 2008 (actually, much better than that in the United States) and 2.4 in 2050.

32 April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Cibuco Historical Center I

n the early 1900s, the US government was offering incentives in Puerto Rico to encourage sugar cane farming and the production of sugar products.

In 1914, in order to take advantage of those incentives, Genaro Bou Galí combined two former fruit farms into one hacienda (totaling 65 acres) and immediately planted it with sugar cane. He registered the name Melao de Cana “Cibuco” and started producing molasses under that label. In 1939, he built a house on the land for his daughter, Aurora. Aurora raised her family in that house.

Later, her parents moved into an adjacent building on the hacienda. Aurora inherited the hacienda in 1960, and later sold it. In 1992, the town of Corozal bought 30 acres of the original hacienda, and a few other surrounding properties, to make this historical park.

When we arrived at the park, the place looked empty and we we were concerned that we drove all the way there for nothing. But the lady at the front gate (where you pay your entrance fee) called the tour guide for us. Our tour guide, Anna, met us in the parking lot and took us to the house to begin our tour. Lucky for us that Anna was working that day — she is the park’s only bilingual guide. The original house was destroyed by Hurricane Georges in 1998. The existing house is a re-creation, though the beautifu-

lly tiled proches are original. The house is furnished with period furniture, though it is not original to the property. Anna spent some time talking about the family, the house and the history of the property. She took us through each of the rooms and explained which of the family members used which room.

Today, one of the rooms in the house features displays about the history of the town of Corozal.

The printed information is all in Spanish, but Anna took the time to give us an interesting narrative about the history of the town.

Next to the main house, Genaro Bou Galí made an addition so that him and his wife could live close to their daughter in their old age.

Today, that addition houses a collection of artifacts and information related to the sugar industry in Puerto Rico. Again, the printed information was all in Spanish, but Anna took the time to explain each of the displays to us.

This little “museum” was chock full of information relating to sugar, slave trade in Puerto Rico, and the types and locations of sugar mills throughout Puerto Rico in each stage of the island’s history. Here, and throughout the

property, they have pieces and parts from many sugar mills that were located around the island.

After we finished with the house and museum, Anna led us past the bronze statues, Nuestra Herencia, which represent the ancestral roots of the Puerto Rican people — the Spanish, African slaves, and the Taino Indians. In the distance, behind the statues, you can see a cave, Cueva los Quinteros, in the side of the cliff face. Anna told us that petroglyphs have been found in that cave. But, sadly, the only way to reach the entrance to the cave is by rappelling down from above it.

Next, we boarded a trolley that took us past a playground and picnic area, and then on to the petroglyph area. They have made

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a beautiful, nature boardwalk that leads down and around to where you can see huge boulders with carvings on them. Anna talked about the trees in the area and their uses — medicinal, construction, etc. After a short walk on the boardwalk, we got to the area of the petroglyphs. There are 21 drawings, most in a narrow passage-way between huge boulders. You can only see a couple of the petroglyphs from the boardwalk, and they don’t allow you to go down to the petroglyph, since they are trying to perserve them. However, they did the next best thing — they made molds

April 21 - 27, 2011

of the original petrogylphs, and they have reproductions of the rock faces on the wooden deck.

That allows you to get up close and personal with each of the etchings.

Anna explained how the chief and high priests woud come here and talk with the spirits and Taino gods, and carve the things they saw. There are 2 carvings that are unique to the area, and they bear a remarkable resembelance to how aliens are usually depicted in the movies. Maybe they really did see something from out of this world! After we finished looking at the petroglyphs, we continued on the boardwalk and returned to the trolley. Then we were whisked off to an area that is planted with sugar cane. Here, they have two different types of sugar presses — animal powered and electric powered. The electric press was originally used in a sugar mill in Bayamon.

Sometimes, during busier times of the year, or when they

have a group of school kids on a tour, they will actually press the sugar cane to get the juice.

They weren’t doing that the day we were there, but Anna turned on the electric sugar press so we could see how it worked. Then she gave us some (previously squeezed) sugar cane juice (or Gurapo) to try. It was sweet and natural tasting … an interesting flavor.

Next, the trolley took us past a little lake, where you can and use the free paddle boats. The boats and lake were being refurbished this day, but, even from the road, we saw turtles, birds, and iguanas. It was very pretty. Finally, the trolley made a complete loop around the property, and were back in the parking lot where we started. All in all, it took about one hour for the tour. But people, especially a family, could really spend some time enjoying the playground, paddle boats, and

33

picnic area. There is also a restaurant on the property. I was really pleased with this park — it was educational and beautiful.

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is a mix of Moorish, Ottoman and Mughal styles. Free tours are held on Saturday at 10 and 11 a.m. and 2, 5 and 8 p.m.

1 p.m.

5) A BOHEMIAN BREAK Funky, bohemian and cheap are not adjectives normally used to describe anything in Abu Dhabi, but Zyara (Madinat Zayed area, next to Hilton Corniche Residence; 971-2-627-5007) is a rare bird indeed.

Abstract art and couches upholstered with wild fabrics provide the décor at this cafe-restaurant, where locals and expats noodle on laptops (thanks to free Wi-Fi) and flip through Time Out Abu Dhabi. The menu ranges from French toast (22 dirhams) rry-toting international crowd. to savory manakish (warm flatbread rolled in spices and sesame seeds; Saturday 10 dirhams) and a dish called foul 10 a.m. (mashed beans stewed with tomato, 4) ISLAMIC GLORIES It’s hard not to be awestruck garlic and olive oil; 20 dirhams).

3 p.m. as you stand on what is said to be the world’s largest handmade Per- 6) NORMAN’S SOUK Arabia goes avant-garde at the sian carpet (about 65,000 square Souk at Central Market (Khalifa feet), gazing up at a huge, glittering chandelier in the main prayer Street; 971-2-810-7810; centralmarhall of the enormous Sheikh Zayed ket.ae/souk), a soaring new shopGrand Mosque (Al Salam Street; ping center of geometric wood slats 971-2-441-6444; szgmc.ae), which and colored glass that was desigcan hold more than 40,000. Opened ned by Norman Foster. Trouble finin 2007, the marble mosque, with its ding a date? Zadina (ground floor; 82 domes and some 1,000 columns, 971-2-658-8637) has them in abundance: plain dates (100 dirhams per kilo), dates stuffed with pistachios (125 dirhams per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds), chocolate truffles made with dates (450 dirhams per kilo), and much besides. For tea glasses (six for 400 dirhams) and other glassware etched and painted with Arabesque patterns, visit Kudu for Arts (ground floor; 971-2-627-8980; kuduforarts.com). Electronics stores, boutiques, waterpipe cafes and henna artists also fill the space.

36 Hours in Abu Dhabi

By SETH SHERWOOD

W

HAT would you do with $600 billion in cash? If you’re the capital of the United Arab Emirates, rich in oil, the answer is easy: go shopping. Once aloof from the spendthrift ways of neighboring Dubai, Abu Dhabi — which, so far, has not experienced the unrest many Arab countries are facing — is now ticking off items on a five-star shopping list. Top-notch museums? New branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim are rising from the sands. High-profile events?

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Abu Dhabi Film Festival and Gourmet Abu Dhabi have made their debuts in recent years. Toss in a multibillion-dollar hotel project and a stunning new mosque and you have one of the world’s most ambitious new destinations.

Friday 5 p.m.

1) ON THE CORNICHE Come early evening, all of Abu Dhabi — expat professionals from Europe, South Asian laborers, local families in white dishdashas (for the men) and black abayas (for the women) — strolls along the Corniche, a picturesque seaside walkway. It’s the perfect vantage point for taking in the city’s fast-rising thicket of skyscrapers. Finish up at the Heritage Village (Marina Mall breakwater; 971-2-681-4455; free admission), an ersatz old fortress that tries to recreate the Abu Dhabi of yore through camel enclosures, Bedouin tents and traditional artisans. At its beachfront cafe, Al Asalah (971-50-526-5575), sip a watermelon juice (15 dirhams, or $4.15 at 3.60 dirhams to $1) while watching the twinkling city skyline across the bay.

9 p.m.

2) PALACE INTRIGUE Even if you can’t afford to make a withdrawal from the ATM that dispenses bars of gold, the gargantuan and garishly opulent Emirates Palace Hotel (emiratespalace.com) is worth a visit. Built at a cost of $3 billion, the 362-room behemoth is said to be the most expensive hotel ever built and contains some fitting hangouts. Hakkasan restaurant-lounge (971-2-690-7999; hakkasan.com) opened last year with Asian-cool décor and cocktails like the Hakkatini (orange flavored vodka, Campari, Grand Marnier, apple juice; 50 dirhams). For a traditional Emirati dinner, hit Mezlai (971-2-690-7999).

Reserve an outdoor tent and sample local specialties like creamy shark velouté, sautéed chicken livers (with garlic, cinnamon and pomegranate sauce) and lamb nachif (slow cooked in zesty garlic-turmeric sauce).

A three-course meal for two runs about 450 dirhams, without wine.

11 p.m.

3) GLITTERY NIGHTS The fastest-growing part of town is the formerly dusty Yas Island (yasisland.ae), now brimming with diversions: a lush 18-hole golf course, a Formula One track, a sprawling indoor theme park (Ferrari World; see below), a marina and a host of five-star hotels. Hugh Grant, Sir Richard Branson and Prince are among the luminaries who have been spotted in the fractal-like white interior of Allure (Yas Island Marina, 971-2-565-0050; nightcluballure. com; cover, 150 dirhams). Opened last year by the Cipriani restaurant group, the glittery nightclub serves three-liter bottles of Cristal Champagne (68,000 dirhams) and Bellini cocktails (65 dirhams) to a BlackBe-

The San Juan Weekly

5 p.m.

April 21 - 27, 2011

of slick black surfaces and red banquettes where a young crowd drinks Left Bank Iced Teas (vanilla vodka, rum, cachaça, Bombay Sapphire, sour mix and ginger beer; 40 dirhams) and other creative cocktails.

Everything goes white and bright at Sho Cho (971-2-558-1117; sho-cho. com), a sushi lounge whose drink list includes concoctions like the Sho Cho Infusion(Bacardi, ginger, lime, brown sugar, ginger beer; 43 dirhams).

7) PEDAL TO THE METAL Speed freaks, thrill jockeys, car buffs and lead-footed drivers will get their kicks at the futuristic Ferrari World (Yas Island; 971-2-496-8001; ferrariworldabudhabi.com), an amusement park that pays tribute to the most popular red product to come out of Italy since tomato sauce. The curvaceous complex houses pulsequickening rides, from Formula One simulators to one of the world’s fasSunday test roller coasters. Between thrills, 10 a.m. check out the car exhibitions and the 10) HIT THE BEACH acrobatic musical show. Admission: Started in 2008 and still expan165 to 225 dirhams. ding, the new (and free) Corniche 8 p.m.

Beach is endowed with powdery 8) SULTANIC CHIC sand, translucent sea and abundant If the designer Terrance Conran water sports, including waterskiing had read “1,001 Nights” too many ti- and parasailing (971-50-781-2312; mes, the result would be something empros.ae). There are even a few prilike Pearls & Caviar (Qaryat Al Beri; vate family beaches — outfitted with 971-2-509-8777; pearlsandcaviar. sun beds and umbrellas — that can com), a sultry den near the Shangri- be rented for 10 dirhams.

La hotel with chain-mail curtains, a Noon mosaic floor and a D.J.-spun soun- 11) A BOUTIQUE BRUNCH dtrack. The menu also melds OcciCafé Arabia (15th Street betdent and Orient to original effect. Es- ween Karam Street and Airport Road; pecially good are the tuna carpaccio 971-2-643-9698), a stylish new cafe (with pomegranate seeds and crispy and boutique, showcases creations thin bread) and tender strips of beef from numerous Arabic-speaking nadrizzled with hummus. The zucchi- tions. Ensconce yourself on the roofni fries in a chickpea batter that are topped with a spicy tomato and redpepper chutney are also excellent.

A three-course dinner for two costs around 400 dirhams.

11 p.m.

9) DRINKS IN THE SOUK Any lingering myths that there is no alcohol in the Islamic world will be put to rest at Souk Qaryat Al Beri (971-2-558-1670; soukqaryatalberi.com), a sprawling bazaar filled with canals, boutiques, restaurants and ample booze-soaked nightspots.

Left Bank (971-2-558-1680) is a den

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top terrace or airy ground-level salon and feast on Lebanese fattoush (a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, red pepper, whole-wheat bread chips, powdered sumac and pomegranate syrup), Syrian fatteh (warm yogurt with croutons, chickpeas, garlic and mint), Moroccan-style mint tea and more.

Afterward, shop for Palestinian ceramics (55 dirhams) and Egyptian mirrors (from 175 dirhams). Or score a chocolate bar made from camel’s milk. A high-end blend of East and

West, it encapsulates the flavor of the new Abu Dhabi.

IF YOU GO A sprawling low hotel complex with 128 rooms, One to One - The Village (Al Salam Street; 971-2-495-2000; onetoonehotels.com) has an impressive gym, a pool, a beer and shisha garden and several restaurants. Doubles from about 465 dirhams, or $130.

The towering Aloft hotel (Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center; 971-2-654-5000; aloftabudhabi.com) has 408 rooms done in a sleek and angular style and contains the popular rooftop bar Relax@12, among others.

Doubles from 405 dirhams.

Picturesque waterways run past the luxurious Shangri-La (Qaryat Al Beri; 971-2-509-8888; shangri-la.com), affording lovely views of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque on an opposite bank. Amenities include a private beachfront, the Asian-inspired Chi spa and the opulent Pearls and Caviar restaurant and lounge. Doubles from 960 dirhams.

Games

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April 21 -27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9 Click the “check sudoku” button to check your sudoku inputs Click the “new sudoku” button and select difficulty to play a new game

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Wordsearch

Answers on page 37

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April 21 -27, 2011

HOROSCOPE Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

Prepare for a fresh start. Now is the time to get on with all the new things on offer. Leave disappointment behind you, once and for all. Begin to renew your efforts; you will be repaid in kind. Take definite steps towards a goal. Boring commitments do not have to hang over your head; shift your attitude up a gear. Deep thought will be productive.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Do not squander your opportunities. An open mind attracts many new possibilities, so ditch that jaded feeling and prepare for a big shift in a direction you had not anticipated. You may feel you have seen it all before.

But what is looming ahead is nothing you bargained for. There is no point anticipating problems. Stay positive.

Gemini

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Opportunities to spread your wings should be welcomed. Why not pull out all the stops and give that mad cap idea a whirl? Plenty of romantic opportunity could make you like the proverbial kiddie in the sweetie shop; so watch your step. Planet Jupiter will expand your luck and opportunities in love over the next while.

Scorpio

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Make a request re something close to your heart. Precipitous events will keep you on your toes. But do not be too proud to rely on the support of loved ones. You have all the answers tucked away somewhere; dig deep.

There is no need to clam up amidst an apparently threatening situation. All is not as it seems, and there will be a turnaround.

(May 22-June 21)

Success may reach you through the back door, and why not. Life repays you in the strangest ways; all you have to do is be eternally grateful. Reveal the truth of a situation.

Why allow others to believe something stupid, inaccurate, or unreal? Clear up a mess and stay ahead of the game. Be patient, but do not settle for less.

Sagittarius

Cancer

Capricorn

(June 22-July 23)

End a situation at this time if it has not been working out for you. Things can be finalized and sorted if you make an effort, now! Be open to a financial return or settlement.

Keep communication clear and obstacles will evaporate. Whats the rush? An unusual link is beneficial. Intelligence and a bit of organization will reap dividends.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Stay ahead of the competition by getting a word in first. Watch finances, and certainly do not spend unnecessarily in a bid to impress. Stay alert and do not get caught unawares. Give something worthwhile your best shot. Ditch that petulant mood if at all possible. Your best luck arrives when you dont try too hard. Be patient.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Let things just happen this weekend. Events have their own rhyme and reason. But you are about to be pleasantly surprised at the way everything comes together, so long as you do not force your hand. Use your charm to elicit a financial return; force will not work. Listen to the advice and opinions of others; you might learn something.

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

You will probably unexpectedly rumble a secret. Better keep quiet? Do not sniff around; simply let things manifest before your eyes.

Premature action is not advised, so hold back for the moment. If you already took a leap of faith which looks like it may have gone pear shaped; dont panic. Help is at hand, and fate will honour you.

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Unknown factors may make you feel uneasy.

A lot is going on beneath the surface, and being so intuitive, you sense it. For sanitys sake though keep things straightforward.

Take even the most dubious character at face value, and your reward will be in heaven.

Romance is well highlighted so long as you work at it!

Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19) Look your best, and do not be ashamed to let your assets do the talking. The free spirited aspect of your nature does not often get a word in edgeways, so blossom and flourish whilst you let your hair down. Its time to live a little dangerously. What is the point in being curtailed by stress or fear? Finances take a lucky turn.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

Ignore your intuition and live to regret your folly. This is your ultimate shortcut to good decisions, especially when you have so much on your mind. You need to sort out ways to sleep easy, so follow through with what really makes sense. Take a gamble in romance and follow a hunch. Think big with all your latest ventures.

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Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 36

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The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

Two Cows And A Chicken

Cartoons

Herman

Ziggi

Š 2007 Cartier

The San Juan Weekly

April 21 - 27, 2011

Himalia Pearls collection

1054 Ashford Avenue, San Juan (787) 724-4096 - www.cartier.com

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April 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly