Late Edition

Today, mostly sunny, not as warm as yesterday, high 73. Tonight, increasing clouds, low 65. Tomorrow, partly sunny, warmer, humid, high 82. Weather map is on Page D10.

VOL. CLXII . . . No. 56,254

2013 The New York Times

NEW YORK, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

$2.50

On Both Sides, PRESIDENT TESTS Syrians Make LIMITS OF POWER Pleas to U.S.

IN SYRIAN CRISIS

Lobbying Via E-Mail and Social Media OBAMA PARTS WITH PAST
By ANNE BARNARD

SIM CHI YIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Every night, residents keep guard around Zhuguosi, a rural village near Chengdu, to prevent demolition crews from destroying it.

Inside the End Of the U.S. Bid To Get Lehman

By BEN PROTESS and SUSANNE CRAIG

Picking Death Over Eviction

As Chinese Fight for Homes, Suicide Is Ultimate Protest
By IAN JOHNSON

At a closed-door meeting in early 2011, Wall Street regulators were close to throwing in the towel on their biggest case. The Securities and Exchange Commissions eight-member Lehman Brothers team, having hit one dead end after another over the previous two years, concluded that suing the banks executives would be legally unjustified. The group, noting that prosecutors and F.B.I. agents had already walked away from a parallel criminal case, reached unanimous agreement to close its most prominent investigation stemming from the financial crisis, according to officials who attended the meeting, which has not been reported previously. But Mary L. Schapiro, the S.E.C. chairwoman, disagreed. She pushed George S. Canellos, who supervised the Lehman investigation as head of the S.E.C.s New York office, to explain how executives who presided over the biggest bankruptcy in United States history could escape without a single civil charge. I dont get it, she said during a tense exchange with Mr. CanelContinued on Page B2

CHENGDU, China As she drove down a busy four-lane road near her old home, Tang Huiqing pointed to the property where her dead sisters workshop once stood. The lot was desolate, but for Ms. Tang it lives. Four years ago, government officials told her sister that Chengdu was expanding into the countryside and that her village had to make way. A farmer who had made the transition to manufacturer, she had built the small workspace with her husband. Now, officials said, it would be torn down. So my sister went up to the roof and said, If you want to, tear it down, Ms. Tang said. Her voice trailed off as she recalled how her sister poured diesel fuel on herself and after pleading with the demolition crew to leave, set herself alight. She died 16 days later. Over the past five years, at least 39 farmers have resorted to this drastic form of protest. The figures, pieced together from Chinese news reports and human rights organizations, are a stark reminder of how Chinas new wave of urbanization is at times a violent struggle between a powerful state and stubborn farmers a top-down project that is dif-

ferent from the largely voluntary migration of farmers to cities during the 1980s, 90s and 2000s. Besides the self-immolations, farmers have killed themselves by other means to protest land expropriation. One Chinese nongovernmental organization, the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, reported that in addition
LEAVING THE LAND The Human Cost

to 6 self-immolations last year, 15 other farmers killed themselves. Others die when they refuse to leave their property: last year, a farmer in the southern city of Changsha who would not yield was run over by a steamroller, and last month, a 4-year-old girl in Fujian Province was struck and killed by a bulldozer while her family tried to stop an attempt to take their land. Amid the turmoil, the government is debating new policies to promote urbanization. A plan to speed up urbanization was supposed to have been unveiled earlier this year, but it has been delayed over concerns that the move to cities is already stoking social tensions. New measures are also being contemplated to increase rural residents prop-

erty rights. In the past, many farmers chose to leave their land for better-paying jobs in the city. Many still do, but farmers are increasingly thrown off their land by officials eager to find new sources of economic growth. The tensions are especially acute on the edge of big Chinese cities. After having torn down the historic centers of most Chinese cities and sold the land to developers, officials now target the rural areas on the outskirts of cities like Chengdu. But such plans are opposed by local farmers. Many do not want to leave the land, believing they can earn more in agriculture than in factory work. Farmers on the outskirts of Chengdu, near the Continued on Page A6

BEIRUT, Lebanon The video from Kafranbel, a rebel-held village in northern Syria, has been sent by e-mail to members of the United States Congress and posted repeatedly on their Web sites often in long strings of comments about Syria that have flooded unrelated posts about health care or the openings of new constituent offices. Quoting Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr., the video shows village residents who have lost family members in President Bashar al-Assads crackdown on the Syrian uprising as they plead for American military strikes on their own country. You have to say yes! one little boy shouts. A young girl adds, You should feel ashamed, because you can save our lives but you never want to try. On the other side, equally passionate messages are bombarding the offices of American lawmakers from Syrians and SyrianAmericans who support Mr. Assads government or simply oppose the armed uprising. They use antiwar slogans and symbols and stress the growing influence of militants linked to Al Qaeda among the rebels. You shouldnt be standing against terrorism in Afghanistan and Mali, and when it comes to Syria, supporting it, said Johnny Achi, a Syrian-American electronic engineer who has lived for decades in Los Angeles. He is visiting Damascus as he helps run a Facebook-based campaign to mobilize Syrian-Americans to lobby their representatives against military intervention. As Congress prepares to debate whether to endorse President Obamas proposed strike on the Assad government, administration figures have spread out to press their case, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Continued on Page A8

No Direct Precedent for Proposed Strike After Chemical Attack

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON In asking Congress to authorize an attack on Syria over claims it used chemical weapons, President Obama has chosen to involve lawmakers in deciding whether to undertake a military intervention that in some respects resembles the limited types that many presidents Ronald Reagan in Grenada, Bill Clinton in Kosovo and even Mr. Obama in Libya have launched on their own. On another level, the proposed strike is unlike anything that has come before an attack inside the territory of a sovereign country, without its consent, without a self-defense rationale and without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council or even the participation of a multilateral treaty alliance like NATO, and for the purpose of punishing an alleged war crime that has already occurred rather than preventing an imminent disaster. The contrasting moves, ceding more of a political role to Congress domestically while expanding national war powers on the international stage, underscore the complexity of Mr. Obamas approach to the Syrian crisis. His administration pressed its case on Sunday, saying it had won Saudi backing for a strike, even as the Syrian president warned he would retaliate. [Page A9.] Mr. Obamas strategy ensures that no matter what happens, the crisis is likely to create an important precedent in the often murky legal question of when presidents or nations may lawfully use military force. Kathryn Ruemmler, the White Continued on Page A9

A Quest to Save AM Before Its Lost in the Static

By EDWARD WYATT

WASHINGTON Is anyone out there still listening? The digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasems Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series. Long surpassed by FM and more recently cast aside by satellite radio and Pandora, AM is now under siege from a new threat: rising interference from smartphones and consumer electronics that reduce many AM stations to little more than static. Its audience has sunk to historical lows. But at least one man in Washington is tuning in. Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, is on a personal if quixotic quest to save AM. After a little more than a year in the job, he is urging the F.C.C. to undertake an overhaul of AM radio,

MPI/GETTY IMAGES, CIRCA 1935

President Roosevelt delivering a fireside chat for AM radio.

which he calls the audible core of our national culture. He sees AM largely the realm of local news, sports, conservative talk and religious broadcasters as vital in emergencies and in rural areas. AM radio is localism, it is community, Mr. Pai, 40, said in an interview. AMs longer wavelength

means it can be heard at far greater distances and so in crises, he said, AM radio is always going to be there. As an example, he cited Fort Yukon, Alaska, where the AM station KZPA broadcasts inquiries about missing hunters and transmits flood alerts during the annual spring ice breakup. When the power goes out, when you cant get a good cell signal, when the Internet goes down, people turn to batterypowered AM radios to get the information they need, Mr. Pai said. He admits to feelings of nostalgia. As the son of Indian immigrants growing up in small-town Parsons, Kan., he listened to his high school basketball team win a 1987 championship, he said. I sat in my bedroom with my radio tuned into KLKC 1540, he recalled. On boyhood family road trips across the wide Kansas plains, he said, AM radio was a Continued on Page A12

MICHELLE V. AGINS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Williams Wins the Open Again

Serena Williams topped Victoria Azarenka for her fifth U.S. Open title. SportsMonday, Page D1.

City Rolls Out Its (Trusty?) Old Voting Machines

By THOMAS KAPLAN

Dented, dinged and dated, New Yorks battleship-gray lever voting machines have been hauled out of retirement because the city cant seem to get the hang of electronic voting. About 5,100 old machines, each weighing more than 800 pounds and made of 20,000 parts, have been lubricated, and the names of candidates from 2009 (Michael R. Bloomberg, anyone?) have been

removed and replaced with those of this years contenders. But there is a question no one can answer for sure: Will they work? Im very nervous about it, said Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, who leads a City Council panel that monitors the Board of Elections. Ms. Brewers interest is personal as well she is one of four candidates in a hotly contested Democratic primary for Manhattan borough president.

The lever machines to be used on Tuesday were acquired in the 1960s. In 2010, they were replaced with a $95 million electronic system that uses optical scanners to read paper ballots. But after long lines and chaotic polling scenes in 2012, as well as problems producing complete election results, the State Legislature this year authorized the return of the lever machines for the primary and any ensuing runoff, Continued on Page A17

NATIONAL A11-13

BUSINESS DAY B1-7

A Big, Polluted Problem

Lake Okeechobee, with a vulnerable dike and waters fouled by runoff, is a looming environmental crisis for FlorPAGE A11 ida far beyond its banks.

A Studio, Out of Rehab

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, once choking on debt, has remade itself into a creative and financial success. Some still wonder if it can sustain its turnaround. PAGE B1
ARTS C1-7 FASHION C8

Immigration to Back Burner

INTERNATIONAL A4-10

Serving Term, Making History

Asif Ali Zardari leaves office after five years as Pakistans first elected presiPAGE A4 dent to complete his term.

Syria and the budget are nudging aside immigration reform in Congress, but advocates are pressing on. PAGE A13
NEW YORK A14-19

City Opera Is in Peril

New Yorks second opera company says it might be forced to cancel most of this season and all of next unless certain PAGE C1 fund-raising goals are met.
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A20-21

SPORTSMONDAY D1-10

New Ideas? Not So Much

Until there are real technical advances in fashion, there will not be any radically new ideas, Cathy Horyn writes. Meanwhile, sincere and straightforward designs by Raf Simons, Miuccia Prada and Prabal Gurung, above, provide PAGE C8 some stimulating styles.

Jets Win in Smiths Debut

The rookie quarterback Geno Smith and the Jets beat Tampa Bay, 18-17. PAGE D1

Close Race for Moscow Mayor

A critic of President Vladimir Putin said he could force a runoff. PAGE A4

Two Prosecutors, Two Big Cases

Both the Brooklyn district attorney and his opponent made their names in raPAGE A14 cially charged trials.

Paul Krugman

PAGE A21

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