Washed It!

In a sharp setback, the United States and South Korea failed to reach agreement on an elusive free-trade deal but will continue pressing for an accord in the weeks ahead, President Obama said Thursday.

Obama had hoped to announce a deal on the long-stalled pact while in South Korea for meetings of the Group of 20 economic powers, but instead he will return home empty-handed.

“We have asked our teams to work tirelessly in the coming days and weeks to get this completed,” Obama said at a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

“We don’t want months to pass before we get this done,” Obama said. “We want this to be done in a matter of weeks.”

Prospects for reaching a deal seemed unlikely before Obama’s meeting and subsequent appearance with his South Korean counterpart.

At issue is a pact to slash tariffs and other barriers to trade, one that was signed in 2007 when previous administrations were in power. It remains unratified by lawmakers in both countries, and trade between the nations has slipped. The U.S. wants the deal to address a trade imbalance and beef access to South Korea’s market before submitting it to Congress.

Earlier in the day in a speech marking America’s Veterans Day, Obama condemned North Korea for continuing on “a path of confrontation and provocation” that he says deepens its isolation from the world and worsens the poverty of its people.

Obama said the reclusive communist nation must show a “seriousness of purpose” before the U.S. will restart six-party talks aimed at curbing the country’s drive to become a nuclear power.

He saluted the bravery of U.S. troops who defended South Korea during its war with North Korea.

Speaking at an Army garrison in a country where the U.S. keeps more than 28,000 troops, Obama said North Korea knows the path to prosperity and suggested its leaders take it.

“Because the Korean War ended where it began geographically, some used the phrase ‘Die for a Tie’ to describe the sacrifice of those who fought here,” Obama said. “But as we look around at this thriving democracy and its grateful, hopeful citizens, one thing is clear: This was no tie. This was victory.

“This was a victory then, and it is a victory today,” he said.

In the Veterans Day address, Obama said that, some 60 years after the war, the Korean peninsula provides the world’s clearest contrast between a society that is open and one that is closed, between a dynamic, growing nation like South Korea and a North Korea “that would rather starve its people than change.”

“It’s a contrast that’s so stark you can see it from space, as the brilliant lights of Seoul give way to utter darkness in the North,” he said, describing the difference as a direct result of the road taken by the reclusive, communist North.

Obama said the U.S. “will never waver” in its commitment to South Korea’s security and that North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will only lead to more isolation and less security. He urged Pyongyang to take another path, a road that he said will offer its people growing opportunity instead of crushing poverty.

The commander in chief spoke inside a packed gymnasium, addressing a uniformed audience of service members from the different branches of the U.S. military. They surrounded him from all sides and many snapped photos as he spoke.

Obama condemned North Korea, saying its circumstances were not “an accident of history” but a direct result of the country choosing “a path of confrontation and provocation.” That path, Obama said, includes its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and the deadly sinking earlier this year of a South Korean warship.

“In the wake of this aggression, Pyongyang should not be mistaken: The United States will never waver in our commitment to the security of the Republic of Korea. We will not waver,” he said. “The alliance between our two nations has never been stronger, and along the with the rest of the world, we have made it clear that North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will only lead to more isolation and less security.”

Obama said North Korea has another path available to it.

“If they choose to fulfill their international obligations and commitments to the international community, they will have the chance to offer their people lives of growing opportunity instead of crushing poverty — a future of greater security and greater respect; a future that includes the prosperity and opportunity available to citizens on this end of the Korean peninsula,” he said.

After the speech, Obama laid a wreath at a war memorial.
U.S. fails to reach free-trade deal with South Korea

President Obama, challenged by Indian students Sunday to explain why the United States had not labeled Pakistan a terrorist state, defended his administration’s efforts to help the Pakistani government root out extremism and urged Indians to remember their own stake in promoting their longtime rival’s stability.

Obama’s call to India for a gradual rapprochement with Pakistan, made during a sometimes lively town hall-style meeting at St. Xavier’s College in the Indian city of Mumbai, is likely to be repeated at a speech Monday to the Parliament in New Delhi.

Despite the pointed exchange over Pakistan, Obama’s day with students included a session of impromptu dancing by the president and the first lady that offered personal images to balance the generally serious and carefully scripted elements in the Obamas’ first visit to this nation.

A day earlier, Obama met with survivors of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai by Pakistani extremists, but he was careful to avoid mentioning Pakistan.

On the second day of a 10-day Asia trip, Obama was clearly ready for more direct engagement on the matter. “I must admit I was expecting it,” he said, eliciting laughter from the college audience assembled outdoors on a sunny afternoon.

Obama said the U.S. approach toward Pakistan on the issue of terrorism has been “to be honest and forthright … to say we are your friend, this is a problem and we will help you with it, but the problem has to be addressed.”

He said he was “absolutely convinced that the country that has the biggest stake in Pakistan’s success is India.”

“So my hope is, is that over time trust develops between the two countries,” he said, “that dialogue begins — perhaps on less controversial issues, building up to more controversial issues — and that over time there’s a recognition that India and Pakistan can live side by side in peace and that both countries can prosper.”

India was partitioned to create Pakistan at the time of independence from Britain in 1947, and the two neighbors have fought three major wars since.

Although Indian students also grilled him about his views on jihad and Afghanistan policy, as well as his take on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Obama kept at least a part of his message focused on the main aim of his second extended trip to Asia: opening up markets to create job opportunities for Americans.

Over the weekend, he spoke about the “enormous untapped potential” in trade, calling on India to lower barriers in everything from retail imports to telecommunications. On Sunday, he told students that Americans were frustrated with the U.S. economy and how the midterm election results had forced him to make “some midcourse corrections and adjustments.”

“So I want to make sure that we’re here because this will create jobs in the United States and it can create jobs in India,” Obama said. “But that means that we’ve got to negotiate this changing relationship.”

Some listeners were skeptical, aware that Obama and other Democrats often speak disapprovingly of U.S. companies that “ship jobs overseas.” India has long been a favored destination for American outsourcing of data processing, call centers and back office functions.

“It is offensive,” said Lopa Mullick, an owner of an events-management company who attended Obama’s session at St. Xavier’s College. “It hurts us…. You’re not looking at all the opportunities that India has created for the U.S., at the economic benefits both sides get.”

Still, the young entrepreneur said she came to listen to Obama because she believes he can “shift the focus” and that he may actually want to do so.

During an earlier visit with schoolchildren, Michelle Obama broke out into a lengthy dance that dominated TV and inspired local newspaper headlines such as “When Michelle Got Into the Groove.”

The president himself showed off his footwork as schoolchildren enticed him to join the first lady in a traditional Indian dance during a Diwali celebration. It inspired some low-key moves, though mostly unrelated to the elaborate steps everyone else was doing.

cparsons@latimes.com

don.lee@latimes.com

Parsons reported from Mumbai and Lee from Washington.
Obama fields tough questions from Indian students

President Obama visited the site of the 2008 terrorist attacks here Saturday, making it the first stop of his two-week trip to Asia in order to convey a message to plotters of that attack and others.

“In our determination to give our people a future of security and prosperity,” he said, “the United States and India stand united.”

Obama spoke with a group of hotel employees and other survivors gathered in a hotel courtyard shortly after checking into the hotel. He is the first foreign head of state to stay at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel since the attacks, an event known in India by the shorthand 26/11.

In a scene some local newscasters compare to President Bush’s bullhorn declaration from the rubble of the World Trade Center, Obama then stood in a hotel plaza overlooking the Arabian Sea to issue his own defiant message.

“By striking the places where our countries and people come together,” he said, “those who perpetrated these horrific attacks hoped to drive us apart . . . (but) today the United States and India are working together more closely than ever to keep our people safe.”

Later the president visited a museum devoted to the life of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. He also plans to meet with some 200 American business leaders who have traveled to India to join Obama at a business roundtable promoting trade between the two nations.

First and foremost, said Obama’s economic point man, the trip is about improving trade relations and creating new opportunities for American jobs.

Nevertheless, as the first event of his four-day stay in India, Obama chose to highlight the terrorist attacks and what he said was a shared commitment to fighting extremists around the world.

During the attacks two years ago, millions watched horrific and vivid images of smoke pouring from the windows of this hotel, in a coordinated attack by a terrorist organization based in Pakistan. More than 170 people died.

Fully renovated since then, the Taj hotel now stands as a symbol of India’s resilience, administration officials say. Obama wanted to recognize India’s rejection of terrorism, according to close advisers.

One of those who met with Obama today was Karambir Singh Kang, the hotel manager. He lost his wife, Niti, and their two sons in the attacks, but then went on to help save others.

“Mumbai is a symbol of the incredible energy and optimism that defines India in the 21st century,” Obama said. “And ever since those horrific days two years ago, the Taj has been the symbol of the strength and the resilience of the Indian people.”
Obama visits site of Mumbai attacks, praises India’s resilience

Iowa’s rejection of three state supreme court justices who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage underscored the growing electoral vulnerability of state judges as more and more are targeted by special interest groups, legal scholars and jurists said Thursday.

“It just illustrated something that has been troubling many of us for many, many years,” California Chief Justice Ronald M. George said. “The election of judges is not necessarily the best way to select them.”

The three Iowa high court justices were ousted in the kind of retention election California uses for appeals court judges: They face no opposing candidates and list no party affiliation, and voters can select “yes” or “no.” Legal scholars have generally said that system is among the most effective ways of avoiding a politicized judiciary.

But a report by the Brennan Center for Justice this year found a “transformation” in state judicial elections during the last decade throughout the country. Big money and a campaign emphasis on how a judge votes on the bench has become “the new normal,” the report said.

“For more than a decade, partisans and special interests of all stripes have been growing more organized in their efforts to use elections to tilt the scales of justice their way,” said the report, which examined 10 years of judicial elections. “Many Americans have come to fear that justice is for sale.”

Although Iowa’s vote will have no immediate effect on marriage rights there, it sends a signal to other judges that voters are watching.

“It will pressure judges, or some judges anyway, perhaps even subconsciously, in their decision-making by what would be popular or what might meet the political preferences of the moment,” George said. “And the judge’s loyalty has to be first and foremost to the rule of law, and not to the political or social or economic pressures or personal preferences.”

Several jurists cited recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that they believe will further politicize the bench. One ruling permitted judges to take political positions during judicial races, and another overturned campaign contribution limits.

Anti-abortion forces targeted George and California Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin for removal in 1998 after they voted to overturn a state parental consent law. Both raised money and mounted campaigns to save their seats.

More dramatically, voters ousted the late California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues in 1986 after a campaign that charged the court was failing to uphold death sentences.

“The Rose Bird situation is now being replicated throughout the United States,” said Justice J. Anthony Kline of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. What happened in Iowa is likely to happen in other states, including California, where the Bird election generally has been seen as an aberration, he said.

“The independence of California courts has never been seriously challenged, ” Kline said. “But those days may be numbered.”

Most states elect judges, whereas federal judges receive lifetime tenure. Judges for Superior Court in California can be challenged.

A group opposed to gay marriage targeted the Iowa justices, who were on the ballot for their regular retention election, after last year’s unanimous Iowa Supreme Court decision to lift a ban on same-sex marriage. Even though a new governor will now appoint their replacements, the recall is not expected to affect same-sex marriage rights in Iowa.

“It was an attempt to intimidate judges,” said Dean Allan W. Vestal of Drake University Law School in Des Moines. “It had no immediate practical effect.”

The justices who were ejected from the bench blamed “an unprecedented attack by out-of-state special interest groups.” They included the Mississippi-based American Family Assn., the Washington-based Family Research Council and the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage.

Liberty Counsel, one of the groups that has been fighting gay marriage, praised the results.

“The justices crossed the line when they played the role of a legislator and abandoned judicial restraint,” said Mathew Staver, founder of the group.

George said pressure has come from both the left and the right in California judicial retention elections.

Rejection of Iowa judges over gay marriage raises fears of political influence

Repeated clashes over illegal immigration have marked the state’s political races for years, but a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll found that voters hold positive views about immigrants overall and favor accommodating illegal immigrants who have held down jobs in the state.

Asked whether immigrants represented a benefit or a burden to the state, 48% of voters likely to cast ballots in November said they were a benefit, and 36% said they strongly held that view. Only 32% said immigrants overall were a burden to California because of their impact on public services, and only 22% felt that way strongly.

Separately, 59% of likely voters said that an illegal immigrant who had lived and worked in the United States for at least two years should be allowed to remain here if discovered. More than 2 in 5 voters saidthey felt strongly that such an option should be available. Only 30% of likely voters thought the illegal immigrant should be deported, and only 19% backed that option strongly.

But views varied widely by political persuasion and age.

Liberals were most supportive of immigrants legal and illegal, with 75% saying immigrants were a benefit and 81% saying that working illegal immigrants should be able to keep their jobs. Voters under 45 agreed, with 59% saying immigrants were beneficial and 68% calling for illegal immigrants to keep their jobs rather than be deported.

Among conservative likely voters, 52% felt immigrants were a burden and 25% felt they were a benefit. Conservatives were the only group that leaned more toward deportation — by a narrow 2 percentage point margin.

Voters over 65 were more split, with 41% citing immigrants as a benefit and 36% as a burden. They also favored letting illegal immigrants keep their jobs, 55% to 33%.

By far the demographic group most supportive of immigrants was Latinos. Sixty-eight percent said immigrants were a benefit, a view shared by 43% of whites. And 76% felt illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country, a sentiment shared by 56% of whites.

The poll was conducted for The Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from Oct. 13 to 20 by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It included a random sample of 1,501 California voters, including 922 likely voters. Results for likely voters have a margin of sampling error of 3.2 points in either direction, with a larger margin for subgroups.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Californians hold positive views of immigrants; most oppose deportation

One night a few years back, a California communications executive named Deborah Bowker was worried about her husband, who was sick and hospitalized. An old friend told her she shouldn’t be alone, that she should come over and stay the night.

The guest bedroom at the friend’s house was used most often by grandchildren, and contained two tiny beds. That night, Bowker was crying herself to sleep in one of them when the door cracked open. Without a word, Carly Fiorina padded across the room and crawled into the other bed.

Bowker and Fiorina have been close friends since they went to MIT together, and little changed for 20 years — until Fiorina decided to run for the U.S. Senate, with Bowker as her chief of staff.

That fretful night doesn’t seem like a big deal now. Bowker’s husband recovered, and Fiorina might not even remember it, Bowker said with a laugh. Bowker said she hadn’t told the story before and wasn’t sure why she was telling it now — except that she hardly recognizes Fiorina in the image that’s been created through the veneer of politics.

Those closest to Fiorina, 56, describe her as loyal and fun-loving, witty and bright. But they are well aware of the other image — of a pompous diva, aligned with the most strident factions of her Republican Party, pampered by a golden parachute after being fired from her high-profile job.

Fiorina the candidate hasn’t always helped matters. Her tone on the stump can be caustic. At one point in her dogged campaign against the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Barbara Boxer, an open microphone caught her belittling Boxer’s hair as “so yesterday.”

In a sneering attempt to connect with a “tea party” crowd near Fresno recently, she referred to San Francisco — the center of the metropolitan area where she spent nearly half of her life, the city just up the road from her 5,400-square-foot Los Altos Hills estate — as “that faraway world.”

And her critics tend to roll their eyes when Fiorina — who was raised on opera and French lessons, was the daughter of a powerful judge and has a sterling academic pedigree — pitches herself as a kind of Horatio Alger. Her journey, she said at one recent campaign event, was “only possible in the United States of America.”

Getting to know the person friends call “the real Carly,” meanwhile, can be a confounding task. Stung by several episodes in her life, including the unraveling of her first marriage and the brouhaha surrounding her firing from Hewlett-Packard, where she was chief executive, president and chairman, she is private and guarded.

Fiorina’s work ethic is legendary, and her discipline is one reason Boxer — a lioness of the left seeking her fourth Senate term — is in arguably the toughest race of her career. But Fiorina can be so on-message that she comes across as a machine.

During a recent heat wave, Fiorina met with business leaders in a sweltering City of Industry warehouse. A visitor joked that the record heat might cause her to rethink her position on global warming. Fiorina was not amused, launching instantly into her talking points about climate change — contending that she reserved the right to “challenge the science.”

On the campaign trail, it can be difficult to envision the Fiorina who could often be found dancing with the interns and the secretaries at the end of corporate parties, long after the other executives were gone. Or the woman who, on a recent boat trip, suddenly disappeared; she had jumped off the stern and hauled herself onto a tiny raft with her step-granddaughters.

Friends say she’s a fair cook and has a nice touch on the piano. She was raised Episcopalian but is not a regular churchgoer. She does Jane Fonda-style aerobics, whether she’s home or on the road.

She reads policy briefs on her iPad but reads books the old-fashioned way. She’s a voracious shopper, said one friend of 20 years, and gave one Hong Kong jeweler enough business that he put her picture in the window. She has at her disposal a household net worth estimated as high as $121 million and yachts on both coasts, and will be one of the wealthiest members of Congress if she wins.

She and her husband, Frank Fiorina, a former AT&T executive with blue-collar roots in Pittsburgh, have been married for 25 years. It is a second marriage for both; she calls him a “hunk” with some frequency.

Last fall, she threw him a sock-hop-themed 60th birthday party, tracking down friends he hadn’t seen in 30 years. Fiorina was stylish as ever, said an old friend, Kathy Fitzgerald, in a black dress and textured stockings — and, since she was being treated for breast cancer, bald.

Cara Carleton Sneed was born in Austin, Texas. Her mother, a talented oil painter, was a refugee from a troubled childhood in Ohio. Her father, Joseph Tyree Sneed III, was a University of Texas law professor whose ambition in academia meant that she was perpetually “the new kid,” she wrote in her autobiography, as the family moved repeatedly.

In 1969, while teenagers across America experimented with a new counterculture, Fiorina was in Ghana, where her father was teaching students about the country’s new constitution.

Fiorina’s father soon joined the Stanford law faculty, and she graduated from Stanford with a degree in philosophy and medieval history — which, she jokes, rendered her unemployable. She bounced from job to job, working as a typist, a temp, a receptionist. In 1980, she signed on as a management trainee with AT&T.

Fiorina presents a sharp contrast in images

Thousands of activists from groups that support the Democratic Party gathered for a march and rally on the National Mall on Saturday in a bid to rejuvenate the enthusiasm of more liberal voters and stave off an expected GOP comeback in next month’s midterm elections.

Organizers said the rally included more than 400 groups representing black, gay and lesbian, labor, environmental and civil rights activists who gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the “One Nation Working Together” rally. People from all 50 states attended the rally demanding improvements on jobs, justice and education.

“We bailed out the banks, we bailed out the insurance companies, now it’s time to bail out the American people. We need to re-build the infrastructure and provide jobs, and savings for the American people,” Rev. Al Sharpton, civil rights activist, told the crowd.

After months of planning, the first groups of supporters arrived Saturday and festivities stretched well into afternoon. About 50 speakers and entertainers spoke at the rally including civil rights activists Rev. Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte, NAACP President Benjamin T. Jealous, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

“For the past two years President Obama has had to put up with the word no. Forty people, 40 people in the United States Senate have held down the working man of America. Forty Republicans have decided to say no.” liberal television and radio show host Ed Shultz said.

The progressive groups also focused on energizing democrats during the election season in which republicans and Tea Party activist continue gain momentum. It remains an open question of whether or not group organizers and activist can re-ignite democratic enthusiasm by November.

Laurie Christmas, traveled by bus from Toledo, Ohio to attended the rally. Christmas carried a sign that read “Health care. Not war fare,” on one side and a plea for green energy on the other. Christmas said she was excited to be surround by progressive thinkers but said she still has doubts about sparking progressive enthusiasm for the upcoming elections.

“Where are all the people who represented Obama in 2008,” Christmas asked as she pointed down the Mall. “There should be more people here.”

Cara MacDonald , a 21-year-old political science student from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va, sported her “I love pro-choice boys” T-shirt and said that even though democrats maybe frustrated this election, she does not believe they will shy away from the polls this November.

“It’s hard when people are riding the anti-Obama train,” MacDonald said. “But when democrats get people out to the polls, democrats win.”

The rally in part is a response to conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in August that drew thousands to hear a call to return to American values of liberty and faith. However, organizers said the “One Nation” rally had been planned since April.

A request to stop the One Nation rally was rejected by a Washington D.C. judge on Friday, according to Denise Gray-Felder, spokeswomen for. The request was filed by National Events, one of the companies that helped organized the Beck rally.

Beck has criticized the liberal response, in part because he said it includes members of socialist groups.
Terry Cardwell, 56 of Rome, N.Y., said she viewed the Beck rally as a “white revival,” and on Saturday she carried a sign that read, “Fear of diversity makes a bitter cup of tea.”

“I’m here to support what we started in 2008,” Cardwell said. “We can’t go back to what we’ve already had.”

jordan.steffen@latimes.com

Civil rights, labor groups rally on National Mall

PARACHINAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – NATO helicopters from Afghanistan attacked a militant-infested border region of Pakistan on Thursday, killing three Pakistani soldiers, a Pakistani official said, a raid that is certain to raise tensions.

A spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, however, said none of its helicopters had crossed into Pakistani airspace.

Pakistan has said it would consider “response options” if NATO forces continued to violate its sovereignty.

On Thursaday, two NATO helicopters attacked Teri Mangal village in Kurram, an ethnic Pashtun tribal region in the Pakistani northwest, a Pakistani security official said.

“The helicopters shelled the area for about 25 minutes. Three of our soldiers manning a border post were killed and three wounded,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

Thursday’s attack if confirmed, would be the fourth cross-border raid in recent days, which comes just as the United States steps up strikes by unmanned drone aircraft in Pakistan’s North Waziristan.

ISAF spokeswoman Major Sunset Belinsky said the helicopters targeted militants in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktia province, opposite Kurram, and they did not cross into Pakistan.

But Pakistan military officials had informed ISAF that their border forces had been struck in the attack, she said in a statement.

“ISAF is working with Pakistan to ascertain if the two events are linked. The matter remains under investigation,” she said.

A Pakistani security official said authorities had stopped trucks carrying supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan at a checkpost in neighbouring Khyber region after the incident.

“Yes, the NATO supplies have been stopped. It has been done locally,” he told Reuters.

The rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is seen by Washington as a critical battleground in its fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Though many analysts believe that the strikes by unmanned U.S. drones are carried out with the tacit approval of Pakistan, any border incursions by foreign troops is a highly explosive issue in Pakistan where anti-American sentiments run very high.

In 2008, Pakistani troops had fired on US military helicopters and forced them to return to Afghanistan after Pakistan army chief General Ashfaque Kayani said Pakistan would not allow foreign troops on its soil.

The latest series of raids began last Friday when two NATO Apache helicopters killed 30 insurgents on Pakistani soil after a rare manned pursuit across the border from eastern Afghanistan. It followed an attack by militants on a remote Afghan security outpost in Khost province, NATO said.

On Saturday, two Kiowa helicopters returned to the area and killed another four. Monday saw another possible border violation, with six militants killed in Kurram, a Reuters reporter in the area said. But an ISAF spokesman said it was “near the border,” rather than in Pakistan.

ISAF said in a statement issued late on Sunday that helicopters crossing into Pakistan were following its rules of engagement.
Pakistan says 3 soldiers killed in NATO strike

It was just before 11 a.m. when Isabel Marroquin Tambriz once more began to cry. Her wails were so piercing they rose above the brass band. They traveled down the dirt paths of the village, which grew ever more crowded with mourners.

“Walijoq caewaj!” she yelled over and over in Quiche. Wake up, my love. Wake up, my love.

In a casket outside her cinder-block home lay the body of her husband, Manuel Jaminez Xum. He was dressed in a pinstripe three-piece suit, finer than anything he’d worn when he was alive.

Following Maya tradition, his family had filled the coffin with the few clothes he owned so his spirit would not return to haunt them. For protection in the afterlife, near his right arm, they tucked a sword carved out of wood.

Los Angeles police say the 37-year-old man, whom acquaintances in California had identified as Manuel Jamines, was drunk and threatening two women with a knife when an officer shot him Sept. 5 in Westlake. Word of the shooting prompted protests in the neighborhood, where angry residents threw things at police.

In Guatemala, too, his death was news. Political leaders spoke out in his defense. And the day before his funeral, a throng of media lined up in Guatemala City for the arrival of the day laborer’s body, flown back from Los Angeles, where he had lived for seven years.

Five hours to the west in his damp, lush village on the steep slope of a small volcano named Xac, or Charred One, the Maya community of 2,000 reacted to the shooting with shock and indignation. In the decade or so since they began sending their men to the United States, Jaminez Xum was the first to have died there.

Like many of the 6 million Mayas who make up nearly half of Guatemala’s population, the people of Xexac have little to do with the outside world. They speak to each other in the Maya highlands language of Quiche. They cook with firewood. Converts to Christianity, they have six churches in the village but only two cars. Some of the young boys have skinny jeans and spiky hair, but the women dress in traditional knitted skirts and cotton shirts embroidered with brilliantly colored flowers.

Ten years ago, many in Xexac had never seen Guatemala City, let alone the United States.

“We didn’t know what Los Estados Unidos meant,” said Diego Guarchaj y Guarchaj, a childhood friend of Jaminez Xum.

Then a man from the village followed his wife’s relatives to Westlake and changed everything.

Diego Ixquiactap began to make money, hundreds of dollars each week. He started buying village land and built something never before seen in this world of wooden shacks: a white-washed, concrete block house with arched windows and doorway.

“It was beautiful,” Guarchaj y Guarchaj said. “Everyone saw it and knew we had to go too.”

In the years that followed, 60 to 70 men left Xexac, most of them to join brothers and cousins as day laborers in Westlake. They borrowed $3,500 to $5,000 from private lenders in nearby towns to pay their smugglers. And they agreed to pay 10% to 20% interest on the loans each month once they got to Los Angeles.

It was a risky decision.

Those who found steady work soon paid off their debt and began to construct their houses in Xexac — hacienda-like structures in pastel colors with Spanish colonial-style columns, spacious porches and wrought-iron windows. Those who struggled saw their debt climb and only seemed to worsen their families’ plight.

Jaminez Xum, an orphan raised by an uncle from the age of 2, decided to take his chances in 2003 when he realized that the $15 a week he was making in the coffee plantations would never be enough to properly care for his wife and his three young sons. Tired of living in a dark, cinder-block room with a dirt floor, no bathroom and nothing but wooden planks to sleep on, he wanted a real home with a garden and a porch.

His wife imagined it too as she walked past the nice homes built with money from America.

“It’s good,” Isabel told him. “You should go.”

Protests over police shooting resonate all the way to Guatemala

Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked yet another controversy Thursday saying a majority of people in the United States and around the world believe the American government staged the Sept. 11 terror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel’s survival.

The provocative comments prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech, where he also blamed the U.S. as the power behind U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used as fuel for electricity generation or to build nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad said the U.S. has allocated $80 billion to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and is not a fair judge to sit as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian leader — who has in the past cast doubt over the U.S. version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — also called for setting up an independent fact-finding U.N. team to probe the attacks. That, he said, would keep the terror assault from turning into what he has called a sacred issue like the Holocaust where “expressing opinion about it won’t be banned”.

Ahmadinejad did not explain the logic behind blaming the U.S. for the terror attacks but said there were three theories:

–That “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses, which is advocated “by American statesmen.”

–”That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.”

After Ahmadinejad uttered those words, two American diplomats stood and walked out without listening to the third theory: That the attack was the work of “a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.”

Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the U.S. Mission to the world body, issued a statement within moments of the walkout.

“Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people,” he said, “Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.”

Ahmadinejad said the U.S. used the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people. He argued that the U.S., instead, should have “designed a logical plan” to punish the perpetrators and not occupy two independent states and shed so much blood.

He boasted of the capture in February of Abdulmalik Rigi, the leader of an armed Sunni group whose insurgency in the southeast of Iran has destabilized the border region with Pakistan. He praised Iranian security forces for capturing him in an overseas operation without resorting to violence. Rigi was later hanged.

Ahmadinejad’s attacks on the United States and the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program dominated the opening of the General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned kings, prime ministers and presidents in his keynote address of the growing political polarization and social inequalities in the world and implored U.N. members to show greater tolerance and mutual respect to bring nations and peoples together.

“We hear the language of hate, false divisions between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ those who insist on ‘their way’ or ‘no way,”‘ he said.

In times of such polarization and uncertainty, Ban said, “let us remember, the world still looks to the United Nations for moral and political leadership.”

President Barack Obama, speaking soon after, echoed the secretary-general, warning that underneath challenges to security and prosperity “lie deeper fears: that ancient hatreds and religious divides are once again ascendant; that a world which has grown more interconnected has somehow slipped beyond our control.”

The U.S. president’s 32-minute speech — more than twice the allotted 15 minutes — covered global hotspots from Iran and Afghanistan to the Mideast and North Korea.

Obama said Iran is the only party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty “that cannot demonstrate the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program” and as a result the U.N. Security Council has imposed four rounds of increasingly tough sanctions.

“The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it,” he said. “But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.”

Ahmadinejad, speaking in the afternoon session, stressed that Iran will never submit “to illegally imposed pressures” from the U.N. nuclear agency which has been demanding that Tehran halt enrichment, a key Security Council demand as well.

“Iran has always been ready for a dialogue based on respect and justice,” he said.

But the Iranian leader said sanctions imposed by the Security Council were illegal and disrespectful.

The General Assembly hall was packed for Obama’s speech, with leaders and diplomats, including Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee, listening carefully, some snapping photos with cell phone cameras. Obama was interrupted twice by applause and received a prolonged and warm response at the end of his remarks.

Just ahead of Obama’s speech, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin sharply criticized the United States, saying that the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated that the “blind faith in intelligence reports tailored to justify political goals must be rejected.”

“We must ban once and for all the use of force inconsistent with international law,” Amorin told the General Assembly, adding that all international disputes should be peacefully resolved through dialogue.

Qatar’s Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani declared that terrorism “should not be treated by waging wars.”

He blamed wars fought to combat terrorism for spreading destruction, causing the death and displacement of millions of people “as well as economic and financial crises that shook the stability of the world and undermined the efforts made in dialogue among cultures.

“What we fear is for the war on terrorism to turn into commercial transactions, financial contracts and armies of mercenaries who kill outside of any international and human legitimacy,” the emir said. “These are all very dangerous things.”
U.S. walks out on Ahmadinejad U.N. speech