At War Blog: A Modern Medal Is Met with Modern Protest

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It is only fitting that the announcement of a medal created for the digital age spawned its own Internet memes. As soon as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced the creation of the new Distinguished Warfare medal — immediately dubbed the Drone Medal — images such as the one below began appearing on blog after blog; in tweet after retweet.

The medal, Mr. Panetta explained, is intended to provide “recognition for the extraordinary achievements that directly impact on combat operations, but that do not involve acts of valor or physical risk that combat entails,” such as those piloting Predator or Reaper drones from a remote trailer. The medal has sparked much Photoshopped humor and heated online debate, much of it focusing on the Pentagon’s decision to rank it above the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, both given to troops in combat.

As the Distinguished Warfare medal heads toward production, more than 13,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that the status of the medal be revised.

“Bronze Stars are commonly awarded with a Valor device in recognition of a soldier’s service in the heat of combat while on the ground in the theater of operation,” the petition states. “Under no circumstance should a medal that is designed to honor a pilot, that is controlling a drone via remote control, thousands of miles away from the theater of operation, rank above a medal that involves a soldier being in the line of fire on the ground.”

This was a sentiment echoed by many on Twitter:

Similar commentary could be found in opinion pieces on news sites, such as The Business Insider, which called it “The Most Ridiculous Thing The Pentagon Could Do” and in longer anecdotes of protest on the comments section of the United States Air Force announcement:

2/21/2013 12:28:33 AM ET
I don’t like this at all my father was in ground combat from 1944 to 1945 in France Germany and Czechoslovakia his highest medal was the bronze star I have a copy of the award hanging in my living room I can’t even imagine what he went through. Now some guy sitting in an air conditioned building in Nevada is going to get a medal rated higher than the bronze star and the purple heart. I don’t care how many terrorists he killed or how many hours he sat in front of that screen how motivated he is or how well he does his job it is inconcievable to me that he or she can possibly earn a medal rated this high. Giving them a medal is ok but lets not degrade the honor of others who have risked their lives and in some cases actually been wounded in combat serving our country.
–Michael Sharkey, Trier Germany

According to the Defense Department, there is no controversy about the medal among military leaders. Each branch is in the process of drawing up their own specific guidelines and within two for four months, the first Distinguished Warfare Medals will be awarded.

“This is not a medal that will be awarded with the frequency of these other ones,”  Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Defense Department spokesman, told At War, when asked why the medal should be above the Bronze Star.

Although there were some forms of recognition for drone operators and cyber operators before, none recognized truly exceptional acts of service, he said.

“This medal is visionary because it fills a void that existed before,” he said.

Although few people other than Pentagon officials came to the defense of the medal, some did circulate a piece by Maj. David Blair in the Air and Space Power Journal outlining the case for medals for drone operators.

For instance, consider a scenario in which Predator crews track a critical high­ value target to a safe house where he is then kinetically struck by a dynami­cally retasked F­16. In this case, both platforms’ crews perform their du­ties with excellence and professionalism. Perhaps that excellence merits decorations, or perhaps “doing your job” shouldn’t merit decoration. Ei­ther way, giving the F­16 pilot an award for heroism while excluding the Predator crews from consideration for the same sends a very clear message about what the institution believes is worth recognizing. This message ripples back into commissioning sources and light ­training pipelines, perpetuating perceptions and relative performance discrepan­cies through selection bias.

Published in July 2012, months before the announcement of the news medal, Major Blair’s piece did not address the flip-side: What happens when a member of the Predator crew receives a medal deemed more prestigious than the one awarded to the the F-16 pilot?

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HTC Settles F.T.C. Charges Over Security Flaws in Devices

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WASHINGTON — More than 18 million smartphones and other mobile devices made by HTC, a Taiwanese company that is one of the largest sellers of smartphones in the United States, had security flaws that could allow location tracking of users against their will and the theft of personal information stored on their phones, federal officials said Friday.




The Federal Trade Commission charged HTC with customizing the software on its Android- and Windows-based phones in ways that let third-party applications install software that could steal personal information, surreptitiously send text messages or enable the device’s microphone to record the user’s phone calls.


The action is the first attempt by the commission to police a manufacturer of mobile devices. As smartphones and tablets become a common way for consumers to shop, bank and chat online, personal information and privacy will need to be guarded.


HTC America, based in Bellevue, Wash., agreed to settle the civil suit with the commission by issuing software patches that close the security holes, and by creating a security program that will be monitored by an independent party for the next 20 years. The F.T.C. does not have the authority to assess fines in consumer protection cases.


“The company didn’t design its products with security in mind,” Lesley Fair, a senior lawyer in the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote in a blog post. “HTC didn’t test the software on its mobile devices for potential security vulnerabilities, didn’t follow commonly accepted secure coding practices and didn’t even respond when warned about the flaws in its devices.”


An HTC official said Friday that the company had already started to update its software and distribute it to users of some, but not all, of the affected phones.


“Working with our carrier partners, we have addressed the identified security vulnerabilities on the majority of devices in the U.S. released after December 2010,” Sally Julien, an HTC spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We’re working to roll out the remaining software updates now and recommend customers download them once available.”


“Privacy and security are important,” the statement added, “and we are committed to improving practices that help safeguard our customers’ devices and data.”


The trade commission charged that the security flaws resulted from HTC’s modifying the operating system software used on most of the affected phones. In the case of Android, created by Google, the system is designed to protect sensitive information and phone functions through what is known as a permission-based security model.


That requires a user, when installing an application that is not a standard part of the operating system, to be notified and to agree that the application could gain access to certain information or functions.


HTC, however, preinstalled certain apps on its phones in a way that, in addition to preventing consumers from removing them, disabled the permission-based model and allowed newly installed apps to have immediate access to personal data.


“The analogy isn’t exact,” wrote Ms. Fair of the F.T.C., “but it’s like giving a friend the combination to a safe only to find out he’s handing it over to anyone who asks.”


That security hole could, for example, let the rogue software secretly record users’ phone conversations or track their location.


Flaws in the security system could also give third-party apps access to phone numbers, contents of text messages, browsing history and information like credit card numbers and banking transactions. Those flaws also affected HTC phones that used Windows-based operating systems.


While HTC’s actions introduced numerous security vulnerabilities to its phones, a commission official said it was not clear how many users experienced illegal incursions into their phones and personal information.


The flaw in the company’s phones has been known since at least 2011. HTC acknowledged the problems at that time and developed software patches for at least some of the deficiencies that year.


But the problems were far from minor. The F.T.C. said that text-message toll fraud, in which a hacker causes a phone to send text messages to a number that charges the user for delivery of the message, “is one of the most common types of Android malware,” or malicious software.


HTC’s user manuals either said or implied that a user was protected against malware because of the permission-based security, the commission said.


The commission will collect public comments on the proposed remedies for 30 days, after which it will decide whether to formally carry out the order. If HTC subsequently violates the order’s restrictions and requirements, it faces civil penalties of up to $16,000 a violation.


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Well: Savory Pie Recipes for Health

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Pie is an indulgence often saved for holiday time. But this week Martha Rose Shulman shows us how to bake a pie and eat it too, without the guilt. She offers savory vegetable pies, showcased in whole grain crusts. She writes:

This week I slowed down and made pies: savory ones filled with vegetables … I used a number of different crusts for my winter pies. My favorite remains the whole wheat yeasted olive oil crust that I have used before in this column, but I also worked with a simple Mediterranean crust made with a mix of whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and olive oil. And for those of you who are gluten-free, I made another foray into gluten-free pastry and produced one I liked a lot, which was a mix of buckwheat flour, millet flour and potato starch. It had a strong nutty flavor that worked well with a very savory, very vegan, tofu and mushroom “quiche.” They are all simple to mix together and easy to roll or press out. And if you don’t feel like dealing with a crust, just use Greek phyllo. The important things, after all, are the savory vegetables inside.

Here are recipes for a pie crust and four savory winter vegetable pies.

Whole Wheat Mediterranean Pie Crust: A simple Mediterranean crust made with a mix of whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and olive oil.

Mixed Greens Galette With Onions and Chickpeas: A tasty way to use bagged greens in a dish with Middle Eastern overtones.

Goat Cheese, Chard and Herb Pie in a Phyllo Crust: A garlicky mix of greens and your choice of herbs inside a crispy phyllo crust.

Tofu Mushroom ‘Quiche’: A vegan dish with a deep, rich flavor.

Winter Tomato Quiche: Canned tomatoes can be used in the off season for a delicious dinner.

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Well: Savory Pie Recipes for Health

Labels:

Pie is an indulgence often saved for holiday time. But this week Martha Rose Shulman shows us how to bake a pie and eat it too, without the guilt. She offers savory vegetable pies, showcased in whole grain crusts. She writes:

This week I slowed down and made pies: savory ones filled with vegetables … I used a number of different crusts for my winter pies. My favorite remains the whole wheat yeasted olive oil crust that I have used before in this column, but I also worked with a simple Mediterranean crust made with a mix of whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and olive oil. And for those of you who are gluten-free, I made another foray into gluten-free pastry and produced one I liked a lot, which was a mix of buckwheat flour, millet flour and potato starch. It had a strong nutty flavor that worked well with a very savory, very vegan, tofu and mushroom “quiche.” They are all simple to mix together and easy to roll or press out. And if you don’t feel like dealing with a crust, just use Greek phyllo. The important things, after all, are the savory vegetables inside.

Here are recipes for a pie crust and four savory winter vegetable pies.

Whole Wheat Mediterranean Pie Crust: A simple Mediterranean crust made with a mix of whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and olive oil.

Mixed Greens Galette With Onions and Chickpeas: A tasty way to use bagged greens in a dish with Middle Eastern overtones.

Goat Cheese, Chard and Herb Pie in a Phyllo Crust: A garlicky mix of greens and your choice of herbs inside a crispy phyllo crust.

Tofu Mushroom ‘Quiche’: A vegan dish with a deep, rich flavor.

Winter Tomato Quiche: Canned tomatoes can be used in the off season for a delicious dinner.

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F.A.A. Sets Terms for Boeing’s Battery Fixes on 787

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After meeting with Boeing executives, top federal aviation officials said on Friday that they would not approve any fix to the battery problems on the 787 jetliner until they were certain that the batteries would not fail again.




“The safety of the flying public is our top priority and we won’t allow the 787 to return to commercial service until we’re confident that any proposed solution has addressed the battery failure risks,” Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said in a statement.


At the meeting on Friday, more than five weeks after the plane was grounded, Boeing executives outlined the company’s latest proposals on how to keep the 787’s new lithium-ion batteries from overheating and how to vent any smoke or hazardous gases out of the plane.


Raymond L. Conner, the president of Boeing’s commercial airplane division, led the group of executives that met with Michael P. Huerta, the administrator of the F.A.A., and John Porcari, the deputy transportation secretary.


The meeting, however, was unlikely to bring about a quick lifting of the 787s’ grounding order. Boeing is asking the F.A.A. to approve the fixes even though safety investigators have not figured out precisely what caused the battery on one plane to ignite and the battery on another to start smoking last month.


After the meeting, federal officials said Boeing would be allowed to conduct a series of test flights to see how the fixes work and to fine-tune its proposals.


Boeing officials say that even though the causes of the battery episodes have not been determined, they have identified the most likely ways in which the new lithium-ion batteries failed. They now want the F.A.A. to approve changes meant to virtually eliminate the odds of future cases and to protect the plane and its passengers if a problem does arise.


In that sense, the meeting on Friday was also aimed at expanding the company’s emphasis from engineering work to the political arena. Besides evaluating the merits of its proposals, Mr. Huerta and the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, might have to make difficult decisions about how well the fixes minimize the safety risk. Mr. LaHood said last month that the planes “won’t fly until we’re one thousand percent sure they are safe to fly.”


But battery and aviation-safety experts say that it could be hard to meet that standard if the causes of the recent episodes are not totally clear. And the F.A.A. often has to walk a delicate line in balancing its role in promoting aviation as well as ensuring safety.


Engineers at the agency have worked closely with Boeing in developing the possible fixes, and their general support for the concept was crucial in enabling the company to bring those proposals to Mr. Huerta and Mr. Porcari.


But Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent board that is investigating the battery problems, said: “These kinds of things always raise the basic question: Is the F.A.A. really a participant or a regulator in this, and how does it play the role of regulator when the only way to get to a solution is by being a partner? It’s always a fine line.”


Mr. Goelz and other former safety officials said Boeing’s proposals were on the right track. But some battery experts said they would like to hear more details about how Boeing would keep the batteries from overheating before judging how well the plans would work.


Boeing has delivered 50 787s so far to eight airlines. The company has much riding on the innovative planes. They are the first commercial jets to be built mostly out of lightweight composite materials that reduce fuel costs. Boeing has orders for 800 more of these planes, nicknamed the Dreamliner.


Investigators at the safety board said a battery that ignited on a 787 parked at Logan Airport in Boston in January had suffered thermal runaway, a chemical reaction that leads the battery to overact. They said the problem started in one of the eight cells in the batteries and spread to the others.


On Friday, Boeing proposed adding insulation between the cells to minimize the risk of a short-circuit cascading through most or all of them.


The company also proposed to add systems to monitor the temperature and activity inside each cell. It would enclose the batteries in sturdier steel boxes to contain any fire, and it would create tubes to vent hazardous gases outside the plane.


Boeing said the redesigned batteries would fit in the same space. After the meeting, it also said in a statement that it was “encouraged by the progress being made toward resolving the issue and returning the 787 to flight for our customers and their passengers around the world.”


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Neighbors Kill Neighbors in Kenya as Election Tensions Stir Age-Old Grievances

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MALINDI, Kenya — In a room by the stairs, Shukrani Malingi, a Pokomo farmer, writhed on a metal cot, the skin on his back burned off. Down the hall, at a safe distance, Rahema Hageyo, an Orma girl, stared blankly out of a window, a long scar above her thimble-like neck. She was nearly decapitated by a machete chop — and she is only 9 months old.








Jonathan Kalan for The New York Times

Orma men were patrolling their village in the Tana River Delta, fearful of Pokomo attacks. Kenya’s disastrous 2007 vote set off clashes that killed 1,000 people.






Ever since vicious ethnic clashes erupted between the Pokomo and Orma several months ago in a swampy, desolate part of Kenya, the Tawfiq Hospital has instituted a strict policy for the victims who are trundled in: Pokomos on one side, Ormas on the other. The longstanding rivalry, which both sides say has been inflamed by a governor’s race, has become so explosive that the two groups remain segregated even while receiving lifesaving care. When patients leave their rooms to use the restroom, they shuffle guardedly past one another in their bloodstained smocks, sometimes pushing creaky IV stands, not uttering a word.


“There are three reasons for this war,” said Elisha Bwora, a Pokomo elder. “Tribe, land and politics.”


Every five years or so, this stable and typically peaceful country, an oasis of development in a very poor and turbulent region, suffers a frightening transformation in which age-old grievances get stirred up, ethnically based militias are mobilized and neighbors start killing neighbors. The reason is elections, and another huge one — one of the most important in this country’s history and definitely the most complicated — is barreling this way.


In less than two weeks, Kenyans will line up by the millions to pick their leaders for the first time since a disastrous vote in 2007, which set off clashes that killed more than 1,000 people. The country has spent years agonizing over the wounds and has taken some steps to repair itself, most notably passing a new constitution. But justice has been elusive, politics remain ethnically tinged and leaders charged with crimes against humanity have a real chance of winning.


People here tend to vote in ethnic blocs, and during election time Kenyan politicians have a history of stoking these divisions and sometimes even financing murder sprees, according to court documents. This time around, the vitriolic speeches seem more restrained, but in some areas where violence erupted after the last vote the underlying message of us versus them is still abundantly clear.


Now, the country is asking a simple but urgent question: Will history repeat itself?


“This election brings out the worst in us,” read a column last week in The Daily Nation, Kenya’s biggest newspaper. “All the tribal prejudice, all ancient grudges and feuds, all real and imagined slights, all dislikes and hatreds, everything is out walking the streets like hordes of thirsty undeads looking for innocents to devour.”


As the election draws nearer, more alarm bells are ringing. Seven civilians were ambushed and killed in northeastern Kenya on Thursday in what was widely perceived to be a politically motivated attack. The day before, Kenya’s chief justice said that a notorious criminal group had threatened him with “dire consequences” if he ruled against a leading presidential contender. Farmers in the Rift Valley say that cattle rustling is increasing, and they accuse politicians of instigating the raids to stir up intercommunal strife.


Because Kenya is such a bellwether country on the continent, what happens here in the next few weeks may determine whether the years of tenuous power-sharing and political reconciliation — a model used after violently contested elections in Zimbabwe as well — have ultimately paid off.


“The rest of Africa wants to know whether it’s possible to learn from past elections and ensure violence doesn’t flare again,” said Phil Clark, a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “With five years’ warning, is it possible to address the causes of conflict and transfer power peacefully?”


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H.P. Reports Decline in First-Quarter Revenue and Profit

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SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett-Packard may have gained running room, but it remains unclear if it can leap successfully to technology’s new post-PC world.


The world’s largest maker of personal computers, printers, and computer servers has struggled for growth in a world increasingly full of smartphones, tablets and cloud computing services. Anchored in the traditional hardware, H.P. is challenged by new devices, which it does not make, and cutthroat competition in its old low-margin businesses, which is pressing margins.


On Thursday, H.P. reported lower first-quarter revenue, profit and profit margins. Sales were down in all five of H.P.’s major businesses, which also include software and services.


Meg Whitman, the chief executive, declared in an interview after release of the results that “the patient showed improvement.” She said that H.P. is building a number of consumer and business products, including new kinds of laptops and low-energy servers for cloud computing, that will renew the company.


Positive sustained growth, however, is still a year away, Ms. Whitman said. “2013 is ‘fix and rebuild,’ ” she said. “All of the pipe we laid in 2012, and will lay in 2013, will show up in 2014.” Of smartphones, perhaps the biggest missing piece of H.P.’s portfolio, she would say only: “We’re still working on it.”


Bill Kreher, an analyst with Edward Jones, said: “H.P. is trying to cut fat while restructuring. Cutting costs and investing at the same time is tough. It’s a three- to five-year turnaround, probably, but the world isn’t stopping for them.”


H.P. said net income fell 16 percent, to $1.23 billion, or 63 cents a share, from $1.47 billion, or 73 cents in the period a year earlier. Revenue fell 6 percent, to $28.36 billion.


The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. Using the accounting methods preferred by analysts, H.P. reported net income of 82 cents a share, above the 71 cents a share predictions. Analysts also expected revenue of $27.8 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.


H.P.’s shares were up 5.85 percent in after-hours trading after the announcement. The stock had closed at $17.10, up 2.4 percent, in regular trading.


For H.P. and others in high technology, many traditional categories no longer fit the realities of how people use their gear. Smartphones have not been considered part of the computer business, for example, but are commonly used not just to cruise around the Internet, but also to access personal and corporate data in the cloud.


Servers were considered part of corporate computing, but ordinary people use them with every Google search and Facebook update. Tablets are used for gaming and watching videos streamed from the cloud, but also for dissecting corporate spreadsheets, often at the same time.


On Thursday, the research group IDC acknowledged this new reality by releasing data on a “smart connected device” market, as opposed to a market of PCs and laptops. When smartphones and tablets were included along with PCs and laptops, IDC said, H.P. went from market leadership to fourth place, behind Samsung, Apple and Lenovo.


Ms. Whitman acknowledged the changes, and said her company was responding. “The model is changing more rapidly than anyone thought,” she said. “We’re in a personal systems business. PCs and laptops are an important part, but so are tablets and smartphones.”


Last year, Ms. Whitman announced H.P. would lay off 29,000 employees over three years. About 15,300 of them are already gone, she said. She ascribed the company’s better-than-expected performance to “operational efficiencies” that contributed to cash flow of $2.6 billion, a 115 percent improvement over a year earlier.


Much of that cash, she said, is going into research and development for products, like data storage that works faster and cheaper by managing workloads across several machines, and printers that can scan and search the contents of documents.


On Tuesday, Dell, H.P.’s main American rival, said its first-quarter revenue fell 11 percent, to $14.3 billion, while net income was off 31 percent, to $530 million, or 30 cents a share.


Michael Dell, Dell’s founder, has proposed taking his company private, for about $24.4 billion, to focus on reorganizing Dell away from the eyes of Wall Street.


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Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

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After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

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Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

Labels:

After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

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Citigroup Toughens Executive Bonus Rules

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Responding to anger over executive pay, Citigroup is changing the way it calculates the bonuses given to top executives. It announced on Thursday that part of the $11.5 million in compensation awarded to the new chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, would be closely tied to performance. So far, though, the changes are only affecting a small portion of Citigroup’s executive compensation packages without reining in the big bonuses that have become one of the hallmarks of Wall Street.




Citigroup has been a prominent symbol in the debate over the outsize Wall Street compensation. The changes come less than a year after Citi shareholders voted against a $15 million pay package for Vikram S. Pandit, then the chief executive. That vote was the first time shareholders had united to oppose compensation at a giant financial firm.


In April, the bank’s powerful chairman, Michael O’Neill, took the reins of a five-member committee on executive pay. He said in a regulatory filing Thursday that the committee had come to its new formula after meeting with investors who hold more than 30 percent of the bank’s total outstanding shares.


A portion of the pay packages given to Citi’s executive will now be linked to the company’s performance relative to other big banks. “When our shareholders spoke last year about Citi’s compensation structure, we listened,” Mr. O’Neill said in the filing.


Nell Minow, a shareholder advocate at GMI Ratings, said the new approach was “far from perfect, or even good, but it’s less terrible than it used to be.”


Citi’s board members will continue to approve base salaries, cash bonuses and deferred stock given to top Citi executives, the same way they were in the past. But now a new segment of the pay, called performance share units, will be linked to the new metrics. For 2012, Mr. Corbat was awarded $3.1 million in performance share units. That amounts to 27 percent of his total $11.5 million pay package.


The new formula still puts Mr. Corbat at a similar compensation level to his peers. Mr. Corbat is being paid the same amount for 2012 that JPMorgan Chase recently said it was handing to its chief executive, Jamie Dimon. JPMorgan’s board cut Mr. Dimon’s pay from $23 million a year earlier after the bank suffered a multibillion-dollar trading loss. Bank of America announced this week that its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, would receive $12.1 million, a raise from 2011.


United States politicians and regulators have chosen not to impose significant new rules on how company’s determine their executive pay, despite widespread public anger about the ballooning bonuses across corporate America in the wake of the financial crisis.


The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act for financial regulation mandated that banks offer shareholders a chance to approve their executive compensation plans. But the votes are not binding.


Last April, 55 percent of Citi’s shareholders voted against the bank’s bonus packages, after compensation experts criticized the bank for leaving the pay up to the discretion of the board. The vote was seen as a stinging rebuke for the bank, which has struggled to recover from the financial crisis.


Citigroup has been steadily working through soured loans, whittling costs and unwinding unprofitable business lines. As part of its stark cost-cutting, the bank also announced in December that it would slash 11,000 jobs worldwide.


Since Citi’s shareholders rejected Mr. Pandit’s compensation, Citi has overhauled its top management. In a move that surprised Wall Street, Mr. O’Neill abruptly unseated Mr. Pandit and his top lieutenant, John P. Havens. Mr. Corbat, who was chosen to take over as chief, has vowed to continue the cost-cutting and refocusing that began under Mr. Pandit.


The company’s filing Thursday laid out the formula that will be used to calculate the new performance share units, incorporating both the performance of the company’s stock compared with similar banks, and the so-called return on assets, a measure of a bank’s profit relative to its overall size.


Anne Simpson, the director of corporate governance for the country’s largest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, said she was glad the bank had responded to the shareholder vote. But she said she was concerned that it had not adequately taken into account the amount of risk the bank was taking.


“We’d like to make sure that the incentive structures aren’t focusing on revenues and returns without thinking about risk, because that’s how we got ourselves into the financial crisis,” said Ms. Simpson.


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