Court Lets Stand the Ban on 'God' in Pledge

Court Lets Stand the Ban on 'God' in Pledge
By ADAM LIPTAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/national/01FLAG.html

The federal appeals court that outraged much of the country last summer when it declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of the words "under God" refused yesterday to reconsider that ruling.

At least until the United States Supreme Court takes up the case, which legal experts consider highly likely, children in public schools in the nine Western states that the appeals court covers will be barred from reciting the full pledge.

Over the vehement objections of nine of its 24 judges, the appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, let stand a slightly modified version of the 2-to-1 decision that a three-judge panel of that court handed down in June. The panel said then that the phrase "under God" in the pledge violated the separation of church and state mandated by the Constitution. Yesterday, the panel shifted the focus to public school decisions that allow the voluntary recitation of the words.

The June ruling was almost immediately stayed, pending a review and decision by the full court. The decision yesterday surprised legal experts. Some experts speculated that some of the judges had voted against rehearing the case simply to hasten a Supreme Court review.

Attorney General John Ashcroft indicated that the government would ask the Supreme Court to review the case. "The Justice Department," Mr. Ashcroft said in a statement, "will spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag. We will defend the ability of Americans to declare their patriotism through the time-honored tradition of voluntarily reciting the pledge."

Lawyers for the states and the federal government did not respond to questions about asking the Supreme Court to stay the decision, which formally takes effect next Friday. The appeals court covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Gov. Gray Davis of California said: "At the start of every court session, the Supreme Court invokes God's blessing. So does the Senate and the House of Representatives. Surely, the Supreme Court will permit schoolchildren to invoke God's name while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance."

Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, said that "the Supreme Court will almost certainly agree to hear the case," partly because "this is a hot button issue in which a majority of the justices probably disagree with the panel" and partly because of a disagreement between two appeals courts. The Ninth Circuit decision is at odds with a decision in 1992 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago.

The Ninth Circuit panel that rendered the pledge ruling in June issued an amended version of that decision yesterday. Like the earlier decision, the vote was 2 to 1. The decision now stops short of declaring the law passed by Congress in 1954 that added the words "under God" to the pledge unconstitutional. The panel focuses instead on public school decisions that allow voluntary recitations of the words.

The distinction makes the decision less sweeping. It may now not apply by implication to reciting the pledge in other official settings or to similar phrases in other laws and governmental statements.

The panel majority sided with the plaintiff, Michael A. Newdow of Sacramento, an atheist who said his daughter was injured when forced to listen to teachers lead a pledge that includes the assertion that there is a God. Mr. Newdow did not respond to requests for comment.

Denials of petitions for full-court rehearings are usually dry one- or two-sentence affairs. That was not so yesterday.

Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, writing for six judges, called the panel decision "wrong, very wrong — wrong because reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is simply not a `religious act' as the two-judge majority asserts, wrong as a matter of Supreme Court precedent properly understood, wrong because it set up a direct conflict with the law of another circuit, and wrong as a matter of common sense.

"If reciting the pledge is truly `a religious act' in violation of the Establishment Clause, then so is the recitation of the Constitution itself, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, the National Motto or the singing of the national anthem," a verse of which says, `And this our motto: In God is our trust."

The Constitution refers to the "year of our Lord," and the National Motto is "In God we trust."

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who along with Alfred T. Goodwin, was one of the two judges in the original majority, was the sole judge who explained his vote against rehearing. Such explanations are uncommon, and Judge Reinhardt said he wrote because he felt "compelled to discuss a disturbingly wrongheaded approach to constitutional law manifested in the dissent authored by Judge O'Scannlain" that noted the exceptional "public and political reaction" to the original decision.

"We may not — we must not — allow public sentiment or outcry to guide our decisions," Judge Reinhardt wrote. "Any suggestion, whenever or wherever made, that federal judges should be encouraged by the approval of the majority or deterred by popular disfavor is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution and must be firmly rejected."

Judge O'Scannlain responded that his opinion had "nothing to do with bending to the will of an outraged populace and everything to do with the fact that Judge Goodwin and Judge Reinhardt misinterpret the Constitution and 40 years of Supreme Court precedent. That most people understand this makes the decision no less wrong."

Judge O'Scannlain conceded, however, that Supreme Court precedent in this area could be "fractured and incoherent." Legal experts on both sides have said the original decision was a careful and coherent work of judicial craftsmanship.

Supreme Court decisions have prohibited many forms of religious observance in public schools, including prayers, Bible readings and minutes of silence. Judge O'Scannlain said the pledge was at bottom not about religion.

"Most assuredly," he wrote, "to pledge allegiance to flag and country is a patriotic act. After the public and political reaction last summer, it is difficult to believe that anyone can continue to think otherwise."

A number of Supreme Court decisions have indicated that the pledge is constitutional. The panel's decision said that those statements were observations made in passing, points that lawyers call dicta, and that they did not bind lower courts.

Legal experts said the 15 judges who voted not to rehear the case might have done so for any number of reasons, including agreeing with the original decision.

"There is a good argument that the Ninth Circuit's ruling is correct under United States Supreme Court case law, which is unclear," said Howard J. Bashman of Philadelphia, a specialist in appellate litigation.

The judges may have believed that case was not exceptionally important, the showing required by the rules that seek to discourage petitions for rehearings by the full court.

Four judges, including one who also joined Judge O'Scainlann's decision, would have granted the rehearing not on the ground that it was necessarily wrong, but because, as Judge M. Margaret McKeown said, "The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by schoolchildren presents a constitutional question of exceptional importance."

They may have been wary of the makeup of the 11-judge panel that would rehear the case. The Ninth Circuit is alone among the federal appeals courts in not having every active judge participate in so-called en banc, or full court, rehearings.

"You may have been afraid your side would lose," said Vikram Amar, a professor law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. "Or you may have thought the panel decision was correct but didn't want to be one of the unlucky ones, like Judge Goodwin, called upon to say so."

Some judges may have just wanted to hasten what they viewed as the inevitable Supreme Court review.

"You know this has the Supreme Court written all over it," Professor Volokh said. "So let them figure it out."

An Outspoken Arab in Europe: Demon or Hero?

An Outspoken Arab in Europe: Demon or Hero?
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/international/europe/01FPRO.html

ANTWERP, Belgium — He is pacing the room like a trapped panther, lithe and restless, as calls are coming in from the street. Thirty miles away, a large protest march is under way, but its organizer is stranded.

This is the man known as Belgium's Malcolm X, the country's most famous immigrant who is frightening many Belgians, including the government, with his radical plans and fast-growing following.

He is Dyab Abou Jahjah, 31, born in Lebanon, the founder of the Arab European League, a new immigrant protest movement.

On this day in February, he is working his cellphone in his sparsely furnished home in Antwerp because by order of a judge he is banned for three months from public events. But the news from the street cheers him. Marchers carry his photograph, some wear masks that show his face.

"I hate this, being stuck here," he said. "The police probably wished I was there so they could arrest me."

Well, perhaps not. In November he was held for five days on charges of incitement to riot but released for lack of evidence. Belgium's prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, called him a "threat to society."

It quickly turned him into a demon, and a hero. The result has been a flood of television appearances, newspaper articles, magazine covers and new recruits for his Arab European League.

"Recruiting is not hard," he said. "We're a civil rights movement, not a club of fundamentalist fanatics who want to blow things up. We're different because we are neither apologists nor extremists. We have such an appeal because we are filling a gap."

Mr. Abou Jahjah says he is part of a new generation of Muslim activists who are speaking out, frustrated with what they call discrimination, the lack of hope of finding a job, the problems of renting outside immigrant ghettos and, since Sept. 11, the distrust and even Islamophobia they feel.

Older immigrants who arrived from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey some 30 years ago, these activists say, have been too meek, too passive, co-opted by government funds or divided by ethnic or nationalist infighting.

The Arab European League, founded by Mr. Abou Jahjah two years ago, aims to empower Muslim immigrants. He demands affirmative action in schools, in the workplace, in housing. His premise: Arabs in Europe will only be taken seriously if they are proud and strong.

"In Europe, the immigrant organizations are Uncle Toms," he said. "We want to polarize people, to sharpen the discussion, to unmask the myth that the system is democratic for us."

The league's program calls on Muslim immigrants to resist pressures to integrate. "Assimilation is cultural rape," he said. "It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others."

He finds inspiration in Malcolm X and his movement in the United States for racial pride. "Of course the context is different," he said, "but Malcolm X was also against assimilation. He fought for civil rights and he was also inspired by Islam."

Mr. Abou Jahjah's followers are hard to quantify. Hundreds of young men and women have shown up at street rallies. A few dozen have participated in the so-called video patrols to film the Antwerp police, who the league says abuse Arab youths verbally and physically. They have distributed fliers saying: "Bad cops, the Arab European League is watching you." There is no headquarters; regulars meet at an Antwerp Internet cafe.

Critics say the prime minister and the minister of interior have overreacted. Mr. Abou Jahjah's influence is overrated, they argue, yielding more publicity than sting.

But Mr. Abou Jahjah says his Arab pride movement is already echoing elsewhere. His group has recently set up chapters in three Dutch cities, and he says he has been invited to France and Britain to start chapters.

Articulate, fast-talking, self-assured, he is indeed different from many Muslims here, who have largely come from the interior of Morocco, Turkey and Algeria.

Growing up in Lebanon, the son of university teachers, Mr. Abou Jahjah said he joined the Hezbollah resistance against Israel. "I had some military training, I'm still very proud of that," he said. In 1991, at age 19, he left. "I wanted to go abroad like a lot of Lebanese young people." He said he was accepted at the University of Michigan, but because of the Persian Gulf war, he did not get an American visa. He tried France, then Belgium, where he applied for political asylum.

"Most asylum seekers invent a story and I said I had had a conflict with the Hezbollah leaders," Mr. Abou Jahjah said. "It was just a low political trick to get my papers. Now they want to use this against me."

His marriage to a Belgian woman was brief, but it gave him Belgian citizenship. His wife said later that she was tricked into the marriage and tried unsuccessfully to sue him. It is hard to know the truth.

Now he has a degree in political science and speaks five languages. He has done odd jobs for a trade union and an immigrant organization. His chief lieutenant, Ahmed Azzuz, is studying law. There are others who are well-versed in law and politics. The group's manifesto says, "You do not receive equal rights, you take them."

Mr. Abou Jahjah's demands — Islamic schools, bilingual education for Arab children, hiring quotas for immigrants — are resented in this small nation of 10 million that struggles with its own identity.

Belgium's long linguistic conflicts have been tentatively settled in the Constitution, which recognizes Dutch, French and German as official languages, though they still coexist uneasily. So there was an outcry when Mr. Abou Jahjah demanded that Arabic be added to the mix.

"People freaked out over that," he said. "Why not," he added, with a quasi-innocence. "There are 70,000 German speakers and more than 300,000 Arab speakers." That mix, he has been told, grew historically. "I say history is not over."

Indeed, Mr. Abou Jahjah makes a point of causing consternation, above all in Antwerp, the country's second largest city, where he lives. Depending on who is talking, this city of half a million people is either an exemplary ethnic mix, a cauldron or a wake-up call for Europe.

Antwerp is the base of the far-right Flemish Bloc, a party that won one-third of the seats on the City Council with the slogan, "Our people first." It is also home to Belgium's largest group of Jews, many of them linked to the diamond trade.

Add to this a large immigrant population, up to one-third of them unemployed, said Mr. Abou Jahjah.

After unruly anti-Israel protests last April and more riots in November, when shops and a synagogue in the Jewish quarter were vandalized, the mayor warned that the Arab protesters were importing the Middle Eastern conflict and threatening the peace.

Filip Dewinter, the outspoken leader of the Flemish Bloc, said Mr. Abou Jahjah must be stripped of his Belgian citizenship and deported "because he lied about his refugee status and had a phony marriage." Mr. Dewinter regards Mr. Abou Jahjah as "a foreign agent, directed and paid from abroad."

At home, with his brother Ziad, a businessman, Mr. Abou Jahjah said the police had recently searched their homes and taken their computers, bank statements, "even Ziad's wedding pictures." There is nothing to hide, he said. Money comes from members in Belgium and several private donors in Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose names he has posted on the League's Web site, arabeuropean.org.

In May, he will run in the Belgian parliamentary elections. No, he will not support any of the six Muslims — Turks and Moroccans — already in Parliament. "They never defended the rights of immigrants," he said. "They don't want to rock the boat. We do. We're not guests here. We are citizens."

Palestinian Assets 'a Mess,' Official Says

Palestinian Assets 'a Mess,' Official Says
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/international/middleeast/01PALE.html

JERUSALEM, Feb. 28 — The Palestinian Authority's top finance official said today that he had identified $600 million in Authority assets in 79 commercial ventures, including money that he said appeared to have given rise to Israeli accusations of slush funds controlled by Mr. Arafat and others.

"Of all the issues in public finance that cause us to have a bad name, this probably is the one that had the biggest neon sign on it," said the finance minister, Salam Fayyad, a former official of the International Monetary Fund who has been praised by American and Israeli officials as an energetic reformer.

In an interview here, Mr. Fayyad described a jumble of individually managed investments of public money in concerns ranging from Canadian biopharmaceuticals to Algerian cellphones.

While declining to discuss in detail the performance of officials who previously controlled the investments, Mr. Fayyad said the money would now be managed by a publicly accountable board of directors of the new Palestine Investment Fund.

Mr. Fayyad's efforts are the most prominent of several reforms urged on the Palestinian Authority by the United States, the United Nations and others. On another front, Israeli officials have been meeting with Hani al-Hasan, the interior minister, to seek limited cease-fires in some areas.

Earlier this month Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, acceded to demands of the so-called quartet — the United States, United Nations, the European Union and Russia — and agreed to another crucial reform, the appointment of a prime minister. He has not yet said whom he would appoint or what powers he would grant the official.

After meeting with Mr. Arafat today, Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, said the Palestinian leader had promised to announce his nominee on March 8, at a meeting of the Palestinian Legislative Council, which can approve or reject the appointment.

Mr. Fayyad, who was appointed as finance minister by Mr. Arafat last June as he shuffled his cabinet under pressure from Palestinian reformers, has been repeatedly mentioned by Israeli officials and foreign diplomats as a potential prime minister.

But any appearance that he is Israel's candidate may undermine Mr. Fayyad's candidacy or effectiveness; he declined to discuss the matter today.

Israeli officials declined to comment on Mr. Fayyad's findings.

Mr. Fayyad commissioned a study by Standard & Poor's and the Democracy Council, a nonprofit organization, as part of an effort to track down the Palestinian Authority's assets and put its finances on a sounder footing.

The groups have produced a 345-page report, which Mr. Fayyad released today, of the 10 largest investments, which amount to more than half of the total assets. They are continuing their work on the 69 other investments.

"It's a mess," Mr. Fayyad said of the scattered portfolio. "We are all over the place. I mean, what business do we have being in 79 commercial ventures? Really."

He said he planned to begin selling off the assets, depending on market conditions. "Commerce is an honorable profession, but it's not for the state," he said. He said the rate of return on the assets varied widely, as did their present value.

For example, the report pegs the present market value of the Palestinian Authority's 23 percent stake in the Oasis Hotel Casino Resort in Jericho, in the West Bank, at $28.5 million.

The casino was once a popular destination for Israelis, but it has been closed during the current conflict. The Authority's investment would presumably be worth far more if the casino were functioning.

The study covers only the finances of the Palestinian Authority, which by agreement with Israel has limited power to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and not of the Palestinians' umbrella organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Authority identified what investments should be examined, according to a spokesman for Standard & Poor's.

Palestinians have long criticized some Authority officials as corruptly profiting from monopolies in goods like cement, but the report does not accuse any officials of corruption.

Mr. Fayyad declined to discuss the performance of individuals — some of whom are his colleagues in the Authority — while saying he supported public disclosure of the finances of public officials.

Under pressure from the United States, Israel has begun releasing customs duties and other taxes paid by Palestinians that by agreement it is supposed to pass to the Authority. Israel had sequestered the money, which amounts to more than $100 million dollars, saying the Authority would use it to finance terrorism.

Mr. Fayyad said the Authority had begun using the money to pay off unpaid bills — some dating to 1999 — for things like electricity, water and gasoline.

More People Seek Asylum in Britain, Spurring Foes

More People Seek Asylum in Britain, Spurring Foes
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/international/europe/01BRIT.html

LONDON, Feb. 28 — A record 110,700 people sought asylum in Britain last year, a number that is expected to inflame concerns over the country's immigration policy and increase pressure on the government to act swiftly to stem the flow.

Twenty percent more asylum seekers entered last year than in 2001, with most of the increase attributed to a surge in applications from people fleeing Iraq and Zimbabwe, the Home Office announced today. Britain and Italy were the only two countries in the European Union that had an increase in applicants.

Most of those seeking asylum in Britain wound up staying, even those whose claims were ultimately rejected.

More than 54,000 claims were turned down last year, and 13,335 people were deported. Of the 110,700 asylum seekers, 10 percent were given asylum and another 24 percent were granted "exceptional leave to remain."

"The provisional figures for 2002 are deeply unsatisfactory but no surprise," said David Blunkett, the home secretary and Britain's chief law enforcement officer.

The issue of asylum has created a political firestorm and dogged Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been accused of not doing enough to curtail the number of refugees admitted. The country's generous policy has attracted growing numbers of foreigners fleeing persecution and seeking economic opportunity.

Public opinion polls show that most Britons favor clamping down on asylum, a point the Conservative opposition uses to great advantage. Last month, one candidate for the far-right British National Party won election to a council seat in Halifax by campaigning against asylum seekers. Around Britain, several communities have vehemently protested plans to set up camps for asylum seekers in their areas.

Concern worsened after it was found that several of the Algerians recently arrested in Britain after police found traces of ricin, a deadly toxin, in their apartment had applied for asylum.

Mr. Blair has said he would like to see the number of asylum seekers cut in half by September.

Just today, Mr. Blair, visiting his Spanish counterpart, José María Aznar, announced an initiative to try to stem the influx. The two agreed to send forgery experts to several countries in Asia to train the authorities how to spot false documents.

Mr. Blunkett said a large portion of last year's asylum applicants had capitalized on lax security between Britain and France and entered the country through the Channel Tunnel.

Several came from the Sangatte camp in Calais, which the French government — under heavy British pressure — is now closing.

Bev Hughes, a Home Office minister, said the government had also heightened security at freight depots near Calais and started immigration checks in France. "As a result, clandestine entry through the Channel Tunnel has virtually stopped," Ms. Hughes said.

Oliver Letwin, the opposition home secretary, said there should be a quota for asylum seekers and applicants should be interviewed offshore with the help of the United Nations commission for refugees.

Online Library Wants It All, Every Book

Online Library Wants It All, Every Book
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/arts/01ALEX.html

The legendary library of Alexandria boasted that it had a copy of virtually every known manuscript in the ancient world. This bibliophile's fantasy in Egypt's largest port city vanished, probably in a fire, more than a thousand years ago. But the dream of collecting every one of the world's books has been revived in a new arena: online.

The directors of the new Alexandria Library, which christened a steel and glass structure with 250,000 books in October, have joined forces with an American artist and software engineers in an ambitious effort to make virtually all of the world's books available at a mouse click. Much as the ancient library nurtured Archimedes and Euclid, the new Web venture also hopes to connect scholars and students around the world.

Of course, many libraries already provide access to hundreds or even thousands of electronic books. But the ambitions of the Alexandria Library appear to surpass those of its rivals. Its directors hope to link the world's other major digital archives and to make the books more accessible than ever with new software.

To its supporters, the project, called the Alexandria Library Scholars Collective, could ultimately revolutionize learning in the developing countries, where libraries are often nonexistent and access to materials is hard to come by. Cheick Diarra, a former NASA engineer and the director of the African Virtual University, said he plans to begin using the Alexandria software this year at the university's 34 campuses in 17 African countries.

Still, the idea faces staggering logistical, legal and technical obstacles: copyright infringement, high costs and language barriers, to name just a few. Its success will depend on its ability to raise money from foundations and to forge links with governments and major universities that can offer access to their own books and materials. At the moment, the project is paid for mainly by the library, which is supported by the Egyptian government and Unesco. Its American founder, Rhonda Roland Shearer, also raised seed money from several private philanthropists, including $800,000 from the philanthropist Paul Mellon, who died in 1999. Its annual operating budget of about $500,000 is more than enough to start the first phase of its online collection, said Ms. Shearer, the American artist who designed the software. She is seeking grants from foundations as well but has no commitments, she said.

An effort so ambitious, though, is likely to require considerable capital as it grows, said David Seaman, the director of the Digital Library Federation. David Wolff, a vice president of production at Fathom, an online learning company owned by Columbia University and other institutions, agrees. "To maintain and grow such an ambitious Web service for a worldwide audience is going to require major infusions of capital," Mr. Wolff said.

The project's creators hope its philanthropic ideals and access to the Islamic world will help raise money. "When people are concerned about violence and fundamentalism, the library is a historical symbol of ecumenism and tolerance and rationality," said Ismail Serageldin, director of the Alexandria Library.

But the Internet venture may also be shadowed by some of the controversies that have plagued the entire library undertaking since it was first conceived three decades ago. Critics have often questioned its cost and asked whether its Enlightenment ideals can survive in a country where censorship is common. And a contribution from Saddam Hussein before the Persian Gulf war hase also raised eyebrows.

Although the library's administrative independence was established by law last year, its paper collection is still small and full of cheap, cast-off paperbacks.

The creators of the new database hope to leave those problems behind by making digital books and scholarly materials more accessible. Users of the Alexandria software will visit the Web site and see a sumptuously illustrated library, with calling cards and stacks, that will link them to online texts much like a standard commercial browser. They will store their digital selections from the library's collection on shelves in an on-screen personal locker.

The software also includes colorful virtual auditoriums, classrooms and offices with lamps where scholars can exchange information, teach classes or hold office hours. The rooms and lecture halls can easily be customized for the universities that choose to use the library's software for remote learning, said Ms. Shearer, whose nonprofit group, the Art Science Research Lab, will run the collective with the library.

Few people have used the software. But Richard Foley, a dean at New York University, said it was more sophisticated and easier to use than Blackboard, a tool to post academic material. "The real trick is not just to post information but to make it usable and interactive," he said. "This is a much less passive approach to information storage, retrieval and transmission."

The library has scanned only about 100,000 pages of its own material, mostly medieval Arabic texts, Mr. Serageldin said. But it has embarked on a plan to digitize thousands of books over the next several years, most of them Arabic texts, with French and English translations, he said. Other works are scheduled to be scanned elsewhere in Africa, including a whole library of crumbling medieval manuscripts in a monastery in Timbuktu in Mali, Mr. Serageldin said.

The library will also have access to one million books that are now being scanned by Carnegie Mellon University, which is creating its own vast digital archive and is one of Alexandria's partners. And the library has a vast trove of Web material already donated by the Internet Archive, a California partner with similar universal ambitions. The collective then plans to begin bargaining for access to digital collections at other libraries and universities around the world, offering access to its own materials and its network of scholars in exchange.

Eventually, Ms. Shearer hopes that private companies wanting access to its material will join, helping build revenue for the nonprofit collective and the library.

Not everyone is thrilled by the thought of their works ricocheting around the world free. In the United States, publishers have begun to find ways to seal off access to their copyrighted works. But unlike some for-profit digital libraries that have sprung up in the last decade, the cooperative is interested mostly in books that are already out of copyright, at least at first, said Frederick Mostert, a London lawyer who advises the group on copyright issues. In the meantime, the cooperative plans to begin urging authors to donate their digital rights in the hopes that the courts will let them be used.

Another possible obstacle may arise from the sheer breadth of the project's goals: digital library, lecture hall, international scholars' hub, gateway for ordinary readers and new software package. "It's hard enough to make an offering in any one of those categories," said Mr. Wolff of Fathom. "To combine them all is challenging, particularly in light of the fact that the decision makers in those areas may be different at any given institution."

But Ms. Shearer says the library's large ambitions are also an advantage. The current welter of different approaches to electronic books and resources is a problem for scholars, who will make use of the Web only if it can be made easy. The software she developed, called CyberBook Plus, was designed to allow its use in different formats and languages, with a heavy emphasis on visuals rather than posted text.

And putting everything in one place is no longer as risky as it was in the predigital era, said Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive. "One lesson of the original Library of Alexandria," he said, "is don't just have one copy."

Punch Drunk Jeremy Blake

last night, went to a very interesting talk and viewing of current work by Jeremy Blake, sponsored by MOMAJA, at the home of George Fellows, ex-CEO of Revlon. Jeremy was the art director for the film Punch Drunk Love. basically his work involves hypnotic and abstract saturated colored imagery set to soothing tone poems. very cool.

afterwards, stopped by the whitney for the opening of their new architectural exhibit, but got there late and didn't get to see too much. will have to go back.

China's Sparkle Bedazzles a Visiting Castro

China's Sparkle Bedazzles a Visiting Castro
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/28/international/asia/28CHIN.html

BEIJING, Friday, Feb. 28 — Forty years ago, the two countries were the closest of political brethren, building Communist paradises, marching to the same revolutionary beat. But time changed everything.

Today, while one brother, Cuba, has mostly stayed the course, the other, China, is brimming with entrepreneurs and foreign multinationals and has recently joined the World Trade Organization.

So when Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro, came to China for his first state visit in almost a decade this week, the reunion was warm but a bit awkward as well.

In meetings between President Castro and top Chinese leaders, from President Jiang Zemin to the new Communist Party secretary, Hu Jintao, there were handshakes and hugs and reaffirmation of loyalty, to be sure. But there were also some long hard looks saying, "My, how you have changed!"

Mr. Castro, meeting with Li Peng, head of China's legislature, said, "I can't really be sure just now what kind of China I am visiting, because the first time I visited your country appeared one way and now when I visit it appears another way."

He added cryptically, "You can say that every so often, your country undergoes great changes."

All week, China's leaders and its press have bent over backward to assure Cuba and the world that the socialist feelings are still there, even if political slogans have long since given way to advertisements and Mao suits to power ties. After all, politically, China and Cuba remain two of the last remaining one-party Communist states, even though China's economy has changed.

"As socialist countries led by the Communist parties, China and Cuba share the same ideals and faith," Mr. Hu said, according to the New China News Agency.

"The new leadership of China will continue its longstanding friendship with Cuba and make efforts to further bilateral ties," the agency quoted Mr. Hu as saying.

The Chinese Communists came to power in 1949. Mr. Castro a decade later. Both undertook vast experiments in collective and communal farming, converting their countries to a planned economy.

But since the early 1980's the Chinese have reversed that trend, whittling down the number of state-owned factories and industries as well as allowing competition and market forces in. The most obvious result has been the dramatic transformation of cities like Beijing and Shanghai into gleaming, international metropolises filled with cars and shopping malls.

"There are many things here I am unaware of, so I am very very happy to be able to talk with you this morning," he told Mr Li, the head of the Parliament.

Of course, there were practical matters to attend to as well. China, now wealthy, has been a continuing source of economic assistance to Cuba, whose lethargic planned economy was devastated by the loss of economic support from the former Soviet Union. China now provides Cuba with hundreds of millions of dollars in economic credits.

This week, Presidents Castro and Jiang signed a agreement regarding economic cooperation that included an aid package for Cuba.

That aid package was not mentioned by China's state media, but from the pictures splashed on China's state controlled media, it was clear that the revolution is not what it once was. The old revolutionaries still addressed each other as "comrade," But in the pictures, Jiang Zemin and Mr. Castro, both 76, are smiling broadly and shaking hands — both dressed in western suits and bright ties, as if for a power lunch.

Hong Kong Moves to Raise Birth Rate and Draw Richer Immigrants

Hong Kong Moves to Raise Birth Rate and Draw Richer Immigrants
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/asia/27HONG.html

HONG KONG, Feb. 26 — Local leaders announced today that they would begin accepting immigrants based partly on their wealth and talents and would adjust tax policies to encourage families to have more babies.

"We want to upgrade the quality of the population," said Donald Tsang, the administration's chief secretary.

The immigration and tax policies, similar to Singapore's, are part of a flurry of changes here as Tung Chee-hwa, the territory's chief executive, has pursued closer integration with mainland China in response to economic weakness here.

Mr. Tung's administration introduced tough internal security legislation to Hong Kong's Legislative Council today, as planned, and announced on Tuesday that it would cut welfare benefits and civil servants' pay in response to the declining cost of living.

Mr. Tsang, the second-highest official after Mr. Tung, said at a news conference that the government would also impose a tax of about $50 a month on employers of foreign domestic helpers. The minimum wage for such helpers would be reduced by an equal amount, to $420 a month, although some already earn considerably more than that.

Hong Kong's population of 7 million includes nearly 240,000 foreign maids, mainly from the Philippines, and they are encountering resentment because of high unemployment among native-born residents.

The proceeds from the tax are to be used for further training of the native-born. The financial penalty for employing foreigners may prompt some employers to hire Hong Kong citizens who can no longer find work because many factories have moved to the mainland.

Immigration policies have long been controversial here, especially the rate at which this former British colony, now a fairly autonomous Chinese territory, allows mainland residents to settle here permanently — 150 a day, almost all spouses or children of current Hong Kong residents.

Despite this emphasis on the reunification of families, mainland residents can wait up to a decade for permission to move here. There has been heavy intermarriage across the border since Britain handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997.

Businesses have been frustrated that this makes it hard for them to transfer experienced professionals here if they are mainland citizens . Under the new rules that Mr. Tsang announced tonight, a new category will be created for mainland managers and professionals to move here.

Immigrants will also be allowed to settle here if they invest at least $833,000. But mainland citizens will be excluded from the program because China's currency is not fully convertible and because Beijing has been wary of letting Hong Kong turn into a tax haven for the wealthy.

Singapore, Australia, Canada, Britain and other countries also have special immigration rules for people who invest large sums, and there have been periodic discussions in Washington over whether the United States should adopt that approach.

Mr. Tsang recommended that the government offer the same tax deductions for all children and end the current policy of offering smaller deductions for third and subsequent children. While Hong Kong remains one of the most crowded cities on earth, it has become concerned with a steep decline in its birth rate. On average, 10 women here give birth to a total of just 9 babies in their lifetimes, compared with the 21 babies that would typically be needed for a self-sustaining population.

Open to the Stars, Indoors and Out

Open to the Stars, Indoors and Out
By RAUL A. BARRENECHE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/garden/27WEIN.html

SÃO PAULO, Brazil
IN Brazil, Fernando Altério is known as Mr. Showbiz. He produces concerts by musical stalwarts like Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso, a singer and a songwriter who has a musical cameo in Pedro Almodóvar's movie "Talk to Her."

After the encores, Mr. Altério, 50, likes to take the backstage entourage home with him. The post-concert parties at his home here in Jardim Europa, an elegant neighborhood with houses tucked behind walls, rarely start before midnight. Mr. Altério's two-story living room plays center stage to a loungey, laid-back scene with a mix of musicians, friends and models, who linger over Scotch and Champagne as late as 5 a.m. A white archway acts as a giant proscenium framing a recessed dining area. Above the arch is a balcony, where guests can scan the crowd. When Mr. Altério slides open a wall of 21-foot-tall glass doors mounted on wheels, the vast living room becomes a giant open-air porch. Strains of Brazilian jazz follow the guests as they spill out into a courtyard garden that has a lap pool with a wall of smooth pebbles as a backdrop.

The showman behind Mr. Altério's $1.3 million party house is Isay Weinfeld, a São Paulo architect whose boldly scaled spaces have attracted a high-powered following and comparisons to Oscar Niemeyer, who created an unmistakably Brazilian brand of modern architecture at Brasília and elsewhere more than 40 years ago. Mr. Weinfeld's popularity derives from his use of Brazilian materials and textures, which yield an inviting tropical modernism that serves as an antidote to the chilly monastic minimalism of recent years.

The homes, stores and galleries Mr. Weinfeld designs for influential figures in Brazilian entertainment and fashion are soaring, wide-open spaces in keeping with the country's famous taste for the bold and beautiful. "Architecture must surprise, thrill, cause heart attacks," Mr. Weinfeld said. "I like to make architecture the same way that João Gilberto sings, that Paul Smith designs clothes, that Caetano Veloso thinks, that my daughter smiles."

His clients include Carolina Ferraz, the Brazilian actress, and Hector Babenco, director of "Kiss of the Spider Woman."

"Isay is like a doctor, very discreet," Mr. Babenco said. "He never mentions anything about his other clients. He doesn't play the games of the rich and famous. Despite being very sophisticated, he is a very austere person."

With his slouchy stance, button-down oxford shirts and neatly trimmed beard, Mr. Weinfeld looks more like a friendly music teacher than an architect. The two-bedroom apartment he shares with his daughter Paula, 21, an actress who is studying for a bachelor's degree in film, demonstrates his taste for simplicity. The apartment, in a nondescript 1950's tower, has Shaker-like 18th-century Brazilian wood tables and dressers, midcentury chairs and collections of vintage blue glass. "I love finding very simple pieces from every period," Mr. Weinfeld said.

On the walls are monochromatic canvases by his favorite artist, the Swiss-born Mira Schendel. "He buys mainly pieces that are white on white, but sometimes off white," said Luisa Strina, a prominent Brazilian art dealer. Mr. Weinfeld has been buying art for himself and for his clients from Ms. Strina since they met in 1974. He did a $70,000 renovation of her gallery on the fashionable Rua Oscar Freire here, and it reopened last March with an imposing exterior of black stucco to offset its neutral interiors.

His design for Forum, the flagship boutique of the fashion designer Tufi Duek, completed in 2000 on São Paulo's high-end shopping strip, is a typical mix of understatement and tropical spectacle. After walking through an all-white space — white-on-white floors, walls and ceilings — where the clothes are tucked discreetly to the sides, shoppers turn a corner to find a two-story atrium with a red staircase covered in tiny glass tiles, a showstopping Brazilian rendition of the stairs Marilyn Monroe slunk down in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."

The stairs lead up to a rustic counter with chunky wood stools, where shoppers are served wine or demitasse cups of Brazilian espresso; rising behind it is a wall of handmade wattle and daub, the same materials used to build rustic homes in northern Brazil.

"There are a lot of similarities between my work and the store," Mr. Duek said. "I wanted something modern, but with Brazilian characteristics. Isay knew how to interpret it."

If Forum has an unmistakable cinematic quality, it's no wonder. "Ingmar Bergman, Jacques Tati, Luis Buñuel and Andy Warhol have been much more of an influence on my architecture than Le Corbusier," Mr. Weinfeld said.

The influence is noticeable throughout his portfolio. At a house owned by the Sverner family in Jardim Europa a few blocks from Mr. Altério's home, Mr. Weinfeld clad a second-floor hallway with Brazilian arenite stone and washed it in light from a narrow skylight. The effect, he said, was inspired by a hallway in the Bergman film "The Silence."

Downstairs, he put a wall of sliding glass doors framed in caramel-colored pine that form a breezy link between the living spaces and a walled-in garden.

Mr. Weinfeld is hardly the first architect to look to the movies for inspiration, but few architects have actually made a film. Mr. Weinfeld and his friend Márcio Kogan, an architect who also practices in São Paulo, have written and directed 14 short films and one full-length feature, a comedy called "Fogo e Paixão" ("Fire and Passion"). The film was released in 1988, and it won the São Paulo Art Critics Association prize for best new director, which Mr. Weinfeld and Mr. Kogan shared. Mr. Babenco described their style as "a mix between Jacques Tati and John Waters, kitsch but economical."

With his mix of striking high modernist spaces and native Brazilian accents, Mr. Weinfeld is the successor to Oscar Niemeyer. Still feisty and practicing in Rio de Janeiro at 95, Mr. Niemeyer adapted the cold, rigid International style of Le Corbusier to the temperament of his homeland — warm, sensual, often boisterous — with sweeping curves and soaring spaces.

Mr. Weinfeld's designs are not as curvaceous as Mr. Niemeyer's, but they are just as riveting. A 90-minute drive to the south of São Paulo, in the beach town of Tijucopava, Mr. Weinfeld built a home for a São Paulo family, the Bitters, who have a successful textile business. The towering living room has 15 1/2-foot-tall glass doors that pivot open on vertical hinges, leading to a cobalt pool and a sweeping view of the tropical coastline.

As a designer, Mr. Weinfeld conducts himself like a meticulous movie director: relentless in his quest for the perfect this or the ultimate that. The search for furnishings for his newest project, a 69-room boutique hotel in São Paulo, has taken him on shopping trips all over the world.

The hotel, which Mr. Weinfeld is designing with Mr. Kogan, is the brainchild of Rogério Fasano, the head of Brazil's most famous gastronomic family and an owner of the celebrated Fasano restaurant in São Paulo. Mr. Weinfeld met Mr. Fasano at the restaurant eight years ago, and they became friends.

To furnish the hotel, which will be named the Fasano and will open in April, they combed flea markets in London and Paris, furniture shops in New York City and antiques stores in Hudson, N.Y., where last November they found old frames in which they plan to mount guest-room mirrors. In Murano, Italy, they bought small handmade glass picture frames to display postcards of Brazil and Italy. The frames will add a touch of color to the modern but clubby rooms, which will be furnished in brown tones, with well-worn Florence Knoll leather sofas and Mr. Weinfeld's custom furniture in dark Brazilian imbuia wood.

In London, Mr. Fasano came across a building that was being built with what he considered the perfect brown brick for the hotel's exterior. He and Mr. Weinfeld tracked the bricks all the way to a manufacturer in North Carolina.

"Isay and I think in the same way," Mr. Fasano said. "I was looking for someone who could think about every detail."

Mr. Weinfeld's quest for detail now has him hunting for a grand piano to occupy center stage in Mr. Altério's living room. But he doesn't want just any shiny black baby grand — he wants one in natural wood to complement the textures and materials of Mr. Altério's home.

Mr. Weinfeld still hasn't found the perfect piano. But when he does, Mr. Altério said, "then we'll be playing live music at my parties."

The House of Speer: Still Rising on the Skyline

The House of Speer: Still Rising on the Skyline
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/europe/27SPEE.html

MUNICH — His name is Albert Speer, and his profession is architect and urban planner, and this Albert Speer shrugs with a certain resignation over the inescapable fact that his father had the same name and the same profession.

"I can't help it," Mr. Speer said over lunch in Munich, where he was on business trip, speaking of his name and the family heritage. "It is as it is."

Mr. Speer's father, about whom many books have been written, was, of course, Hitler's favorite architect, the man who developed the grandiose-totalitarian style of Nazi buildings. The elder Speer died in 1981 after spending 20 years in prison as a Nazi war criminal.

His son has been getting some attention in Germany lately because he recently submitted a grand design for the future development of China's capital, Beijing, as it prepares to hold the Olympic Games in 2008.

The plan submitted by Mr. Speer's Frankfurt-based Company, AS&P, involves a vast North-South axis some 10 miles long that would reach to the Olympic village in the north of the city, connect it to the Forbidden City, former home of the emperors, and finish at an immense new railroad station that would link China's capital with the rest of the country.

Not surprisingly, the question has been raised in Germany — though apparently not in China — whether something ghoulish from the past was being resurrected in the younger Mr. Speer's Beijing design. Was the son, consciously or not, trying to resurrect the spirit of his father, to build in Beijing what his father had been prevented by Germany's defeat in the war from building in Berlin?

"His Beijing axis is re-awakening old memories," read a recent article a week ago by Sophie Mühlmann in the German newspaper Die Welt. "Wasn't there a legendary north-south axis planned by the elder Speer for Hitler's new Berlin, which was to be called `world capital Germania?' Is his son trying to copy him, or rather outdo him?"

Mr. Speer's short answer to that question is: No, he was not copying or outdoing or even thinking much about his father as he conceived his design for the Beijing of the future.

But Germany is a country where questions about the past are always being raised. Berlin's recent re-emergence as the capital of a united Germany has been the occasion for repeated, often heated, debate about architecture, marked by concern that nothing be built to suggest the monumentalism of the Nazi era.

For Mr. Speer, who, despite his name has made a highly successful career elsewhere in Germany and around the world, questions about his axis and that other axis are both inevitable and not very welcome.

"We're even bigger here, much bigger, but the two are not comparable," Mr. Speer said, contrasting his plans for Beijing with his father's never-built concept for Berlin. Over the centuries, Mr. Speer said, architects have conceived large, all-encompassing designs, including grand urban axes, and they do not usually become occasions for speculation about the dark nexus of politics and art.

"This is an idealistic axis," he said of his concept for Beijing. "This is not an axis representing power. It's an axis that looks back to two and a half thousand years of Chinese history."

For him there is no escaping the fact that his father was the Hitler intimate who is among the Nazi leaders most studied and written about — a puzzling, complex and morally crippled figure who, though refined and intelligent, served the Third Reich loyally to the end.

"I've read the books," Mr. Speer said, mentioning two of them in particular, Gitta Sereny's "Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth" and Joachim Fest's "The Final Verdict." The son, in other words, is interested in his father and his complicated, much studied role, but he is clear that their professional attitudes are entirely unalike.

The proposed blueprint for Beijing, which, though requested by the Chinese government, has not been formally adopted, is the latest of many big ideas that Mr. Speer has developed over the years. Among his other projects, for example, undertaken in collaboration with the New York architect Peter Eisenman, is a design for the 2012 Olympic Games bid of Leipzig. Before that, he designed Expo 2000 in Hanover, a project that did bear an uncanny parallel to one of his father's, who designed the German Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair.

Mr. Speer maintains that an Expo is an Expo and there's no ghostly communication between father and son just because they have done comparable projects. Indeed, Mr. Speer's reputation is for the opposite of what his father did — not monumentalism for its own sake but environmentally conscious buildings in the tradition of what is sometimes called progressive humanism in architecture.

And yet, not very many sons had fathers who were in the innermost of Hitler's inner circles, and not many of those sons chose the same profession as their fathers. Speer senior was not only Hitler's architect, but also Hitler's efficient armaments minister and as such a user of slave labor, for which he was convicted in the Nuremberg trials.

The son spent his early childhood at Berchtesgaden, the town where Hitler had his Bavarian country house, going to school in the nearby village.

"I was 9 or 10, and from that perspective I imagined him like an uncle," Mr. Speer said, responding to a question about his childhood memories of Hitler. "For a child, he was a man like anybody."

Mr. Speer gently declines to elaborate on these particular memories, even when a questioner expressed some skepticism that Hitler could have made so ordinary an impression.

"Only in the media there is the shadow of my father," Mr. Speer said. "I've been out of the shadow of my father for many years."

Certainly, Mr. Speer seems a self-assured man, friendly, casual, the kind of man who wears a suit jacket over a navy blue turtleneck. If you've seen photographs of his father, you can see the family resemblance in Mr. Speer, the trim, regular features, gray hair, blue eyes. Mr. Speer looks at the world through rimless glasses.

In many ways, it is almost surprising how little Mr. Speer's name and family heritage have impeded his professional progress. He suspects that he has never worked in Berlin because nobody there would hire someone named Speer to work in the former Nazi capital. But Mr. Speer says that Berlin is "the only case" of that nature in a career that has, literally, spanned the continents.

When Mr. Speer was a boy, he stuttered, and he attributes that to the traumas of the war and its end, which included his father's trial and conviction. As a young man, he worked as a carpenter. Then, in 1955, he went to Munich to study architecture, a choice that a psychologist might suspect bespoke an effort to identify with his father.

But Mr. Speer points out that his father's father, the first Albert Speer, was an architect too, some of whose buildings are now classed as historic monuments in Germany. His great-grandfather, Bertold Speer, was also an architect. His mother's ancestors were craftsmen and artisans.

"Actually, I wanted to be an urban planner," Mr. Speer said, "but you couldn't study urban planning in those days, so I studied architecture."

In 1964, he won a competition that gave him enough money to travel in the United States. Back in Germany, he began to win commissions, many in the developing world — the Parliament building in Yemen, a Foreign Ministry complex in Saudi Arabia, a new town in Belize.

But it is in China that Mr. Speer has done some of his biggest projects — for example, the construction of an International Automobile City outside Shanghai, which a company brochure calls "the prime focus of China's future automobile industry."

And then, there is the concept for a north-south axis in Beijing, roughly 10 miles from end to end.

"It's not a project, it's an opportunity to catapault Beijing into the 21st century," Mr. Speer said. That might sound grand, but there are no triumphal arches three times the size of the Arc de Triomphe of the sort his father used to talk about with Hitler, no intention of outdoing the Pyramids.

Mr. Speer, who clearly enjoys talking about architecture and planning far more than he does about his father's Nazi past, describes as one of his principles an effort to adapt a design to its location, rather than to impose a recognizable architectural signature wherever he puts a building.

"My philosophy is to find something related to the situation," he said, "to the climate, to the history, to the people who are there."

In the Chinese case, he said, the history incorporates the ancient Chinese imperial idea, in which the emperor was placed toward the north of the urban axis, and beyond him was the North Star.

"It's not only an urban axis," Mr. Speer said about his Beijing proposal. "It's a philosophical and religious axis. We used that in our design. We transformed the Chinese character `zhong,' which means middle, into an axis surrounded by an ecological garden."

The Classicists of Contemporary Design

The Classicists of Contemporary Design
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/28/arts/design/28MUSC.html

THE search for intelligent life in architecture is artfully rewarded at the Whitney Museum's retrospective of the work of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, New York's brainiest architectural team. But intelligent visitors will have to pick their way through a few unwelcome booby traps: curatorial winks and nods designed to dumb things down for the chimerical unsophisticates to whom far too many museum shows today are needlessly pitched.

Entitled "Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller & Scofidio," the show surveys 21 projects in a variety of media, including buildings, building additions, product designs, temporary museum installations, commercial interiors, public art and theater design. Organized by Aaron Betsky and K. Michael Hays, and designed by the architects themselves, the show, which opens tomorrow, surveys work from the late 1980's to the present. (Regrettably, it does not include computer models of the outdoor spaces this husband-and-wife team have recently been hired to design for Lincoln Center. They are said to be dishy.)

Booby Trap No. 1 is planted in the show's subtitle. Architecture is an aberrant art form; weirdness is part of its splendor. Not far from my apartment is a standard 1960's office building whose lobby design bears the derangement typical of that era. Wow! Flying movie reels and floating metal mummies. Who had that great idea?

But aberrance is the last label I would slap on Diller & Scofidio, even in ironic jest. The partners are truth seekers, above all. Their typical procedure is to slam opposite concepts together — outside-inside, public-private and transparent-opaque are a few examples that come to mind — and then explore the richly nuanced terrain that emerges from the overlap.

And though architecture may overflow with delightful lies, Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio are not alone in pursuing truth with this structuralist approach. Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman have been following it for years. Before them, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown moved beyond black-and-white oppositions when they introduced what they called the "both-and" approach to American architecture in the 1960's.

Some consider this a postmodern technique, but in fact it is a classical approach, an ancient Greek attitude toward order. Holding opposites together is a primary function of classical art. Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio are classicists in this dialectical sense. The good, the true and the satirical are their stock in trade. Beauty slips in, too, if not as an end in itself, then as a seductive tactic this team is not above embracing.

You can avoid the other booby traps if you avert your eyes from the didactic wall texts. I love to read. I love children. I even love children's books. But it's painful to see work of this inherent clarity described in the pablum language that treats all museumgoers as prepubescent visitors from Mars. In this show, the art itself contains childlike as well as sophisticated rewards.

In essence a classical city, the show is similar in temperament to the model towns depicted by Renaissance painters. Those grid-based renderings followed the discovery of visual perspective and helped develop its application in architecture and town planning. Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio also engage in visual invention. Children of the media age, they have arrived at architecture via the video monitor, the surveillance camera, the reality show, the computer animation program and other devices deployed in the relentless assault of images on the modern mind.

In the midst of this pictorial saturation, to which museums themselves contribute, willingly or not, Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio present what amounts to a series of analytic tools: X-rays into the structure of visual culture. They want you to notice not only the painting on the wall, but also the wall, the way it is illuminated and the security monitors that capture you in the act of looking.

Sometimes the analysis involves real X-rays. "Tourisms: suitCase Studies," a project about tourist attractions originally created in 1991 for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is a traveling exhibition designed to fold up into the 50 pieces of Samsonite luggage that are themselves part of the show. X-ray scans, like those used at airports, reveal the lamps, wires, lenses and other hardware used to mount the project at each location. You could call this the first self-reflexive take on archi-tourism, a growing niche market of the travel industry.

In "Master/Slave," the largest project on view, dozens of miniature Japanese robots pass single file through a palm-size airport scanning device on their way to nowhere. Originating as an installation design for Rolf Fehlbaum's private toy collection, the work was first presented in 1999 at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris. The robots are silly, their automated movements ridiculous; their cost (up to $4,000 each) is preposterous, and the modern, gallery-size "terminal" is insanely out of scale with the dumb-dumb toy procession. But the modulation of these extremities — spatial, kinesthetic, logical and financial — endows the project with total Surrealist glee.

"Jet Lag," a play first presented in 1998 at the Lantaren Theater in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, recounted the true story of a grandmother and a grandson psychologically trapped in a protracted, Kafkaesque shuttling across the Atlantic and back by 747. Nowhere is Diller & Scofidio's inherent classicism more nakedly apparent than in its set designs for this play. In some scenes, the plane's fusilage, shown in cutaway view, recalls 18th-century depictions of Roman ruins.

So much for the city airport. Time to explore the hotel, the park, the shops, the sports stadium, the central business district and the night life. Though these urban zones are made up of past work, many of them have been remade for the Whitney show in punched-up versions that clear away the cobwebs. One, "Bad Press," greets visitors at the show's entrance on the Whitney's fourth floor.

Originally conceived in 1992, the work depicts a man's torso, clad in a crisply starched white shirt ironed in patterns likely to raise eyebrows in most offices. Projected onto a huge screen, the brightly lighted torso rotates from side to side, like those scary old black-and-white documentaries in which ancient Greek sculptures were seemingly used to put schoolchildren off the study of art for the rest of their lives.

"Pageant," a lightweight effort first shown at the 2000 Venice Architecture Biennale, conveys the mordant strain that recurs throughout much of Diller & Scofidio's work. The project, a computer-animation loop, presents the corporate logo as a mutant cultural gene. Accompanied by a low electronic hum, a black blob swiftly transforms itself into graphic icons for Nike, Chevrolet, Texaco, BMW, Playboy and other famous brands.

"Pageant" satirizes the monoculture, of course, but it also demonstrates the infinite number of differences our minds are capable of registering with only slight changes in pattern and form. These logos could be faces, except that sooner or later all of them revert to Disney mouse ears. It is nifty to see the great multinational corporations counted off like Mouseketeers. If this Botox trend continues, a similar destiny may await the human visage.

Many New Yorkers made their first acquaintance with Diller & Scofidio's work via "Soft Sell," a public art project first presented on 42nd Street as part of the Times Square clean-up operation in 1993. Anticipating the Disney invasion to come, the work featured a gigantic pair of juicy red female lips intoning a series of come-ons to puzzled passersby: "Hey, you . . . . Wanna buy a piece of the rock?"

This is a Cracker Jack box of a show, with far more prizes than nuts and corn. Come be surprised. I'm not going to give you more description, except to say that there is a large wall piece that involves an electric drill. Drills are noisy, and this piece, entitled "Mural," did nothing for the headache I had when I walked in.

Some visitors may find Diller & Scofidio's media-based projects derivative of work previously encountered in contemporary art museums. Bruce Nauman undoubtedly pioneered the Conceptual terrain explored by these architects. This does not, however, diminish the originality of their thinking, any more than the many precedents in the architects' own field do.

Virginia Woolf once proposed that a book be written called "The Loves of the Arts." It would have traced the history of creative exchanges between literature, painting, music and other media. The Whitney show's catalog could add a new chapter to that imaginary volume. Our time has been rich in cross-disciplinary encounters between art, architecture, photography, fashion and computer imaging. Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio are the major connectors. No one has conducted traffic between these productive zones more skillfully than they have.

Are Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio too smart for the good of architecture? This question has long haunted admirers of their work, if not the architects themselves. The risk with structuralist thinking is that it often leads to cynicism or, worse, a paranoid and fundamentally amoral view of culture itself.

Can a lawn not be enjoyed simply as a pleasant place for barbecue? Must it inevitably be seen as a contested zone for power? (The Osbournes might want to weigh in on that one.) When every quality automatically invites its opposite, do we not implode into nihilism?

Diller & Scofidio is still taking such risks, its recent work makes clear. But the show also demonstrates the many alternatives to nihilism that can arise from the initial dualistic approach. They include humor, insight, the translation of analysis into public urban space, theatricality and, not least, the extraordinary pleasure of seeing some truths about ourselves revealed with sensuality, wit and style.

It seems almost like icing on the cake that these revelations are made through precisely configured colors, textures, spaces and forms. Almost, but not quite. What you gather from this lineup of Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio's greatest hits is that the two are entertainers at heart. For all the self-reflexion of their work, they are a pair of buskers. They are so determined to delight their audiences, it's as if they expected tips.

Oddly, the show skimps somewhat on Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio's recent ventures into conventional architectural practice. In the last two years, they have completed fully realized buildings, or designs for them, in Asia, Europe and the United States. These include the Slither Building, a housing block in Gifu, Japan; the Blur Building, on Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland; the Eyebeam Atelier, a media school and gallery planned in Chelsea; and a new waterfront building for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Oh, yeah, the low-key presentation suggests. They do buildings. Big deal. Plumbing. Electricity. And they're bigger than a bread box.

Actually, this work is one of the biggest deals architecture has seen in a long, long time. What we're seeing here is comparable in significance to the first glimpses of the New Objectivity, the spartan style that preceded the formation of the Bauhaus. Diller & Scofidio's work is conceptually, rather than materially, based. Otherwise, its work bears the same hallmarks of classical rigor, structural exposure, broad affinity for popular culture and a dizzying air of experimentation. Early-20th-century buildings looked aberrant, too, until people began to recognize how much their animating ideas had in common with everyday life.

Like the Rem Koolhaas survey presented by the Museum of Modern Art in 1995, "Scanning" is a show in which many New York architects will take pride as well as pleasure. A couple of genuine, MacArthur Foundation-certified geniuses have come through. For too many promising architects, the first blush of fame is instantly translated into a sense of entitlement that far outstrips talent or achievement. Not with this pair. Like Mr. Koolhaas, Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio have earned our attention honestly, each amazing step along the way.

Met Gets Gift of 100 Works Collected by Son of Matisse

Met Gets Gift of 100 Works Collected by Son of Matisse
By CAROL VOGEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/arts/design/27GIFT.html

More than 100 works of art by the most prominent masters of the 20th century, including nearly 50 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by Henri Matisse, have been given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The gift, which comes from a foundation named after Matisse's youngest son, Pierre, and Pierre's wife, Maria-Gaetana Matisse, is one of the most important gifts of modern art the Metropolitan has ever received.

Valued at nearly $100 million, the gift not only substantially strengthens the museum's holdings in 20th-century art, but it also adds the work of Surrealist artists like René Magritte, Leonora Carrington and Wilfredo Lam who were not previously part of the museum's collection.

"This is a very special collection that represents a whole era," said Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met. "It is also a collection that has personality."

An exhibition of highlights of the gift is planned for next year.

Pierre Matisse, who died in 1989, was a dealer whose gallery on East 57th Street in Manhattan introduced now legendary 20th-century artists like Bonnard, Chagall, de Chirico, Balthus, Giacometti and Tanguy to collectors and museums in the United States. When he wasn't selling art he spent a lifetime quietly collecting the work of his favorite artists, which filled a town house on East 64th Street where he lived for more than 30 years.

The Met's gift consists of art from Pierre Matisse's personal collection. In 1990 the gallery's inventory was sold for a record $143 million to Sotheby's and the Acquavella Gallery in Manhattan.

"Pierre was an extremely private man, and these were things he loved and always lived with; nobody could tempt them out of him," said Eugene Victor Thaw, the collector and retired dealer, who was an executor of both Pierre Matisse's estate and that of his fourth and last wife, Maria-Gaetana von Spreti, who died in 2000.

The collection includes many paintings and drawings dedicated to Pierre Matisse with personal inscriptions by artists like Balthus, Dubuffet and Bonnard. There is also a trove he inherited from his parents, including nearly 50 paintings, drawings, bronzes and prints by his father.

The foundation's gift complements three other modern art collections that the museum has received over the past eight years. In 1995 Florene M. Schoenborn, a department store heiress, left the museum 18 works, including "Reclining Nude II," a 1927 Matisse bronze. A year later Klaus G. Perls, the Manhattan dealer, and his wife, Amelia, gave the Met 13 works by other School of Paris artists. In 1998 Jacques Gelman, a film producer, and his wife, Natasha, left the museum 85 works by modern masters, including "Young Sailor II," from 1906, one of the best-known examples of Matisse's portraits painted in the bold colors of the Fauve movement.

All four gifts to the Met are in large part the work of William S. Lieberman, the 80-year-old chairman of the museum's modern art department, whose longtime friendships with many of the great 20th-century artists, dealers and collectors have been accompanied by loyal bequests. Mr. Lieberman first met Pierre Matisse in 1946, and over the years he became friends not only with the dealer but also with three of his four wives.

"Pierre and I first worked together in 1947 when I began to organize a Joan Miró retrospective for the Museum of Modern Art," Mr. Lieberman said. "Pierre lived with only those artists he liked best. He was a man of impeccable taste. His eye was very, very good."

Growing up in Paris, Matisse had wanted to be a painter like his father and had studied with the André Derain. But in 1924, when he was 24, he sailed to New York from France. It was then that he abandoned the idea of painting and instead became involved in the commercial art world. After working with several Manhattan dealers, he opened the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1931 in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street. The gallery remained in that location for 58 years.

In the 1930's the New York art world was suffering through the Depression, yet Matisse was beginning to make a reputation showing the work of contemporary European artists like Bonnard, Chagall and Picasso. He also championed younger artists like Miró and Balthus, becoming friends with them and others, including Alberto Giacometti and Yves Tanguy.

Over the years he expanded his roster of artists, representing Latin American painters like Roberto Matta and Wilfredo Lam, English sculptors like Reg Butler and Raymond Mason, Spanish artists like Manolo Millares, Manuel Rivera and Antonio Saura and American figures like Alexander Calder and Joan Mitchell.

Matisse lived amid works by most of these artists, and the majority of them are included in the foundation's gift.

The Matisses began giving works to the Met in 1984, including a drawing by Henri Matisse and a painting by Miró. Alessandra Carnielli, director of the foundation, said that after their deaths it was easy to decide what works from the foundation would go to the museum.

"The core of the collection, the most important pieces, are very well known," she said. "It almost chose itself."

The nearly 50 works by Matisse going to the Met date from 1904, when Henri Matisse was 35, through 1952, when he was 83. They include four paintings, five bronzes, a dozen drawings, one painted ceramic, one gouache, one large painted paper cut-out and 25 original prints.

Among the most important and rarest is a pre-Fauve landscape, "The Chapel of St. Anne." Painted in St. Tropez in 1904, it captures the sun-dappled light of the south of France.

There are also two portraits of Pierre's sister, Marguerite, one from 1916 and one painted two years later in which she is far more grown-up, seated in a chair, clad in black and wearing a blue hat.

Another painting, "Lilacs," an early still life from 1914, has an image of a yet uncast sculpture, "Small Seated Nude," from 1908 painted to the right of the vase of lilacs. The Met has also received a cast bronze version of this sculpture.

Among the most important of the works on paper by Matisse is a finished gouache that is a study for the second version of the famous mural "Dance," which is in the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa. Measuring 11 inches by 30 inches, it is composed of brightly colored blues, pinks and yellows.

There are also many important drawings by Matisse, like a portrait of the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin from 1912, the violinist Eva Mudocci from 1915 and a very late and large drawing, "Tree," from 1951.

In addition to the Matisses, there are some particularly rare and personal paintings. "It's a typical group of his taste, not just blockbusters but interesting things he has lived with," Mr. Thaw said. A portrait of Pierre Matisse painted by Balthus in 1938 shows the dealer in a sports jacket and bright red socks, leaning forward, one hand in his pocket, one foot on a chair.

"Pierre never liked the portrait," Mr. Lieberman recalled. "He sent it out to be framed and then forgot about it." When he died, Mr. Lieberman added, the heirs of the framer tried to sell it to Mrs. Matisse. Lawyers got involved, and it was returned.

Matisse owned many works by Alberto Giacometti, and the Met has been given what experts consider his best still life, "The Apple," from 1937, a large painting — 28 1/4 inches by 29 1/2 inches — of a small apple sitting on a sideboard. Also by Giacometti is one of the finest of the artist's bronzes, "Tall Figure," one of his classic sculptures of a standing woman, executed in 1947.

"Pierre collected primitive art, getting much of his collection from Charles Ratton, a French dealer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Immediately after the war Ratton discovered a young painter who also collected a few primitive things and recommended that Pierre see him. It was Dubuffet."

In 1947 the Pierre Matisse Gallery introduced Dubuffet to the American art world. The foundation's gift includes one painting, two collages, a drawing and a pair of watercolors by the artist. The painting, "The Widow," from 1943, is of a nude woman seated in an armchair. It was painted a year before de Kooning's well-known "Woman," which is in the Met's permanent collection.

A great Surrealist painting by Miró, "Photo: This is the Color of My Dreams," from 1925 has also gone to the Met. In it the Spanish artist incorporates a French word in his painting.

Another Surrealist work to join the Met's collection is a haunting painting by Paul Delvaux, "Train Station at Night," from 1959. There is also an early painting by Tanguy, a classmate of Pierre Matisse's at school. Called "A Decisive Moment," the 1926 painting depicts a woman being run over by a cart. It is one of the artist's last representations of the human figure.

Another painting in the donated group that also shows a woman in distress is a self-portrait by the Surrealist Leonora Carrington, from 1938. Here the artist paints herself in riding breeches with wild dark hair, seated on a bright blue chair. Attached to the wall above her is a child's rocking horse, which she and her husband, the artist Max Ernst, had owned. Mr. Lieberman said it was considered Carrington's finest painting.

New Efforts to Recover Nazi Plunder

New Efforts to Recover Nazi Plunder
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/arts/design/27LOOT.html

Much of the art world is on the lookout as never before for lost Nazi plunder, but experts have become increasingly pessimistic that much more of it will ever be recovered and restored to its rightful owners.

This is the paradox confronting those who are trying to retrieve the prizes of history's biggest collective art theft, the German seizure of perhaps 600,000 important works from 1933 to 1945. As many as 100,000 pieces are still estimated to be missing, and some have undoubtedly been destroyed.

Much of the hope of recovery rests with a growing welter of Web sites that have been put up by American museums after looted art was found in some of them. In addition, the American Association of Museums, which says 15 cases of possibly stolen art are now being studied around the country, expects to activate its Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal, a central Web site, this year. Delayed for more than a year by financing problems, it is to be a shortcut to other sites listing thousands of works that have gaps in their provenance, or ownership history, during the Nazi period. Europe has its own Web sites.

But for all the efforts, experts say few if any lost works have been located through Internet postings, leading some prominent art recovery scholars to say that museums are doing too little too late.

"Museums hold themselves out as knowing everything," said Marc J. Masurovsky, an art search specialist who served on the 1998-2000 Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. "But now suddenly, they know nothing."

He said museums should impose the rigorous self-policing they pledged at a 1998 Washington conference that set the stage for the current intensified searches.

Harold Holzer, vice president for communications at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said, "We think the surest way to reach the most people is to post full provenance information on the Web." He said the Met's site was constantly updated. (The link is Provenance Research Project under metmuseum.org/collections.)

Museum directors, including Philippe de Montebello of the Met, while pledging to redress wrongs, say that the debate has become fogged by distortions and inaccuracies and that their institutions are, at worst, occasional innocent victims of murky dealings going back more than half a century.

Beyond the museums are private dealers and collections from which there is little hope of identifying and retrieving lost art.

"Obviously, what this is all about is the art world having to pay the price for lack of interest in provenance that they have shown for generations," said Willi Korte, a leading international investigator of stolen art. "It's a good idea to put it on the Internet and make it available, but I don't think there's a great deal of follow-up by museums."

Although the plunder was wide-ranging, its exact extent is unknowable. A London-based group, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which has its own central computer registry, says it has recovered 420 looted works since 1999 and is investigating some 7,000 others.

After the war, American investigators tallied the total number of art objects, books, Judaica, silver pieces and other valuables recovered from the Nazis in Europe. It came to some 10.7 million items, worth more than $37 billion today. In France, the center of the prewar European art world, the Nazis seized one-third of all art in private hands, much of it owned by Jews. Of the total (about 100,000 works, mostly paintings), about 70,000 pieces were restored to their owners after the war, said Hector Feliciano, a leading international art investigator and author of "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art." The other 30,000, including many Modernist masterpieces, remain missing.

The history of restitutions does not give much cause for optimism. For 50 years, little happened. In the face of Nazi genocide, property crimes drew scant interest. The cold war also thwarted international cooperation. The climate finally shifted in the 1990's with the fall of Communism, the publication of important books on wartime looting and the discovery of some stolen works in American museums.

Momentum for a serious accounting built after the Manhattan District Attorney's office seized Egon Schiele's "Portrait of Wally" (1912) in 1998. Claimed by the heirs of a Jewish gallery owner in Vienna, it was then on loan from Austria to the Museum of Modern Art.

By the late 90's, many museums were focusing on the issue, and a handful of significant returns had been made by institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Seattle Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art, where the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations said it had earlier discovered a stolen still life by the 17th-century Flemish master Frans Snyders.

Last year, Poland, which has recorded 516,000 objects lost during the war, recovered four from the United States, including a 16th-century Persian tapestry which the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had bought at a London auction in 1970. The Nazis had stolen it from the Czartoryski family, which lost thousands of treasures, including one of the most valuable still missing, Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Man."

For several years, the Web sites of 18 leading museums, including the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, have given detailed descriptions of hundreds of paintings and other works requiring further study. These works, created before 1946 and acquired after 1932, show suspicious gaps in their provenance.

Some museums are doing extensive proactive research. At the Harvard University Art Museums, Sarah Kianovsky, an assistant curator, has been vetting about 150,000 pieces, and has identified 6,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures whose provenance cannot be fully traced.

"It's like peeling onions," she said. "You go through a bag, peeling off all the first layers. Then you start again, peeling off the second layers."

Many experts, though, caution that the results may be meager. Too many owners have died or disappeared, and too many works were stolen too many years ago for easy investigation.

"A lot of people in the last half of the 90's thought we can lick this without any idea of how intractable the problem was," said Constance Lowenthal, former director of the International Foundation for Art Research, who now tracks Holocaust claims for private clients and institutions. Much depends on your perspective, she said. Is a painting with provenance gaps guilty until proven innocent? Or innocent until proven guilty?

Mr. Feliciano, the author who in the 90's found more than 2,000 looted paintings in French museums and institutions, said the art world had changed for the better in the last few years. Too often, though, he added, "Museums and art dealers still have to be sued or threatened with lawsuits in order for them to start doing the right thing."

Mr. Korte, the investigator, said many museums simply listed works with gaps in provenance, rather than using their expertise to compare a piece's history with the thefts of the era. This means that possible claimants, often elderly and without financial resources, must trace the missing artworks themselves, a process one critic likened to giving them balls of yarn to untangle.

Some museum officials also fear that the looted-art cases will lead to thornier foreign claims for the return of cultural property acquired long before the Holocaust under the looser standards of earlier eras.

"This is the big bad wolf that's panting at the door," Dr. Lowenthal said. "They're afraid it'll blow their house down." Yet it is possible, she said, to draw legal and moral distinctions between Holocaust claims and those involving national patrimony.

Edward H. Able Jr., president of the museum association, which has also published a guidebook on provenance, said widespread recovery was unlikely. "It will help us to reassure ourselves," he said, "but I don't know that it will uncover a lot." He declined to give details of the 15 inquiries now under way.

Mr. de Montebello of the Met told the presidential commission that the handful of looted paintings that have turned up in American museums could not be equated with the quantities that have emerged in Europe. He said that he and his colleagues were committed to helping resolve the issue, but that American museums hold fewer than 20,000 European paintings, many acquired before the Nazis came to power.

Still, some searches have been successful. "Every little bit helps, but we don't have a lot of time," said Monica Dugot, a lawyer and deputy director of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York State Banking Department, which is investigating more than 120 art claims involving no fewer than 16,000 objects. Because of its experience investigating the handling of dormant Holocaust victims' accounts by Swiss banks with New York branches, the office has been unusually successful in tracking art claims, Holocaust researchers say. Nine claims have been publicly resolved, and others are pending.

One claimant, Ruth Haller, the daughter of Ismar Littman, a German Jewish lawyer and art collector from Breslau who committed suicide in 1934, is seeking thousands of missing artworks. The Holocaust Claims Processing Office tracked two of them, paintings by Lovis Corinth and Karl Hofer, through various sales in Germany, Norway and London and returned them to Ms. Haller. But the pressure is intense, Ms. Dugot said: about every two weeks, another elderly claimant dies.

Lauder's Mix of Restitution and Collecting

Lauder's Mix of Restitution and Collecting
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/arts/design/27LAUD.html

Ronald S. Lauder, heir to the cosmetics fortune, former American ambassador to Austria, once a mayoral candidate, prodigious art collector and major benefactor of Jewish causes, knows a lot about art stolen by the Nazis, much of it from Jews.

Starting in the mid-1990's he became a vocal champion of restitution of the artworks to their rightful heirs, an issue that was then erupting across Europe and the United States after 50 years of silence.

As chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress, Mr. Lauder has been a patron of scattered efforts to help Jews reclaim what had been theirs. In testimony before Congress, he called these stolen artworks "the last prisoners of war."

But in an interview he also conceded that he had artworks in his collection whose provenance was at best ambiguous and at worst unknowable. And some critics say he has been too slow to check the provenance of his art, even given the historical difficulties of doing it, or to make the information he does have available to outsiders.

Mr. Lauder has a particular for two turn-of-the century Austrian artists, Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, many of whose works belonged to Jewish collectors before World War II. Many were stolen and lost during the Nazi years, and many of their owners were killed in the Holocaust.

Could it be that some of the missing drawings, works on paper that both artists turned out by the hundreds, are hanging on the walls of the Neue Galerie, the sparkling new addition to Museum Mile that Mr. Lauder opened on Fifth Avenue 14 months ago?

The answer, Mr. Lauder and experts say, may be unknowable.

"As for me, I am going to doubly, triply and quadruply check everything," Mr. Lauder said in the interview in his corporate office, filled with art, overlooking Central Park. "But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen" — that someone would present a claim to a work seized by the Nazis from a relative.

Mr. Lauder, who bought his first Schiele drawings as a teenager with his bar mitzvah money, says that few people paid attention to provenance when he entered the market in the late 1960's under the tutelage of Serge Sabarsky, whose collection also hangs in the Neue Galerie.

"I was like everyone else," Mr. Lauder said. "It didn't occur to me. It was not a question that people were looking at."

Mr. Lauder and his curators have since done provenance research on the works in the museum's collection, which belongs to the Lauder family, the Sabarsky Foundation and the museum itself.

Given his public stance on the restitution of stolen art, Mr. Lauder said, "I have a responsibility to be more aggressive than most."

Still, the Neue Galerie has yet to post the results of its provenance research on its Web site in accordance with a commitment by the American Association of Museums two years ago to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets. The agreement, covering art acquired after 1932 and produced before 1946, was intended to allow people anywhere a chance to look at American museum collections without having to travel here.

"We are only 12 to 14 months old, and it is taking us more time to get going and do the research necessary," Mr. Lauder said, adding that he would prefer that the museum post all provenance data at once rather than piecemeal.

Specific requests for provenance information on the collection were answered by the gallery, but often the research is sketchy and does not go back before World War II. In some cases the results are limited to the name of a New York art dealer, with no hint of prior ownership.

But the Neue Galerie's lapse is regarded as typical of Mr. Lauder, who has several times during his long career become ensnared in contradictions of his own making.

Because of his prominent position in the New York art world — he is chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, as well as a founder of the Neue Galerie and one of the city's best known collectors — experts in the field of art stolen by the Nazis are reluctant to comment publicly on his record. But several, speaking anonymously, noted that his different, sometimes overlapping roles have sometimes clashed awkwardly. One said he was inconsistent as a private collector and as head of the modern.

The issue of Holocaust-era art, which emerged first in Europe, became news in Manhattan in 1998 when District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau moved to seize two Schiele paintings that had been on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, on loan from the Leopold Foundation in Vienna. The works, "Portrait of Wally" and "Dead City III," were claimed by the relatives of their original owners, Viennese Jews whose collections and property were seized by the Nazis.

"Dead City III" was eventually sent back to Vienna, although some experts continue to challenge its provenance, which is similar to the provenance of Schiele drawings in some American museums, including a drawing entitled "Prostitute" at the Modern and another drawing, "I Love Antithesis," at the Neue Galerie.

All three pictures come from the collection of Fritz Grunbaum, a Viennese cabaret artist who was killed by the Nazis after they seized his art. His collection of Schiele drawings and watercolors was auctioned in Switzerland in 1956, and after the New York seizure of "Wally," the validity of the auction has been questioned, with no clarity about whether the works were ever in the possession of a lawful heir.

Tina Walzer, an Austrian art historian, said of the Grunbaum case: "There's never been restitution. What we know for sure is the Grunbaums were expropriated and that some of these objects reappear in Switzerland in 1956."

Museums like Mr. Lauder's with art from this collection "should at least make public that this once belonged to the Grunbaum collection," Ms. Walzer said, adding: "Why not make plaques that say where they came from? I think that would be a fair solution."

As the Modern's chairman, Mr. Lauder implicitly backed the museum's legal position on the seized paintings, which supported the Leopold Foundation's arguments that American courts do not have the right to intervene in the affairs of another country. But four years later, Mr. Lauder, as chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery, protested indignantly when the State Department, using the same argument, stopped a California court case in which an American heir was suing Austria for the return of six Klimt paintings taken from her uncle by the Nazis.

Asked about the inconsistency, Mr. Lauder said he excluded himself from participating in the Modern's case "because of wearing two or three hats."

"I have been consistent in my desire not to be involved," he said, adding that he still maintained that exceptions to sovereign immunity are needed for Nazi-era restitutions.

People who have worked closely with Mr. Lauder and who admire his tenacity on restitution issues, agree that he has a "blind spot" when it comes to his own collection. Certainly, his love for acquisition has gotten him in trouble before. When he was ambassador to Austria in 1986 and 1987, he was accused in parliament and the press of trading on his official position to buy and export valuable paintings and furniture.

Mr. Lauder bridled at the charges, which he said had been cooked up by Austria's right wing in response to his stance on Jewish issues. He denied that he had used his position, noting that the parliamentary inquiry was eventually closed.

At the time, he told one Austrian newspaper that his purchases were mostly souvenirs, not museum pieces, although the list of exports printed in the Austrian press included pieces of furniture by Josef Hoffmann and others, whose works are now represented in the Neue Galerie. Mr. Lauder said none of the pieces he bought as ambassador was on exhibit. "I own 120 Hoffmann chairs, and only 3 are on display," he said.

Three times in the last decade Mr. Lauder has been presented with claims to artworks: two medieval shields, which were returned to France and to Italy, and a Russian painting, also returned, that had been seized from a Russian museum by the Nazis.

Bermuda Defends Use of Hawaii Photos

Bermuda Defends Use of Hawaii Photos
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:54 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bermuda-Hawaii-Photos.html

HAMILTON, Bermuda (AP) -- A model on a beach might not surprise anybody in the Atlantic Ocean island of Bermuda. But a diver swimming in a school of barracuda?

Bermuda's Department of Tourism is defending its use of photographs from Hawaii and elsewhere in a promotional campaign, saying it's standard practice.

Generic stock pictures often are used in advertising, Michael DeCouto, the government agency's assistant director for marketing, said in comments published Friday by The Royal Gazette newspaper.

He said the photos were used by advertising agency Arnold McGrath to create ``an emotion.'' The Boston-based company did not immediately return calls seeking comment. DeCouto also could not be reached for further comment.

Local photographer Graeme Outerbridge investigated the photographs after he recognized one, of a model on a beach, as being from Hawaii rather than Bermuda. It was published in February's edition of Travel and Leisure magazine.

Outerbridge said the practice was dishonest.

``It's clearly not a Bermuda beach,'' he said. ``It's pretty outrageous for us to be using elements of other tourist destinations in our advertising campaign.''

The campaign includes two other photographs that DeCouto agreed were not of Bermuda -- one of a person swimming with a dolphin and one of a diver swimming in what appears to be a school of barracuda.

Such schools of barracuda aren't found off the shores of Bermuda, and would be misleading to divers who saw the photo, Outerbridge said.

DeCouto said it was impossible to tell what kind of fish they were.

The advertising campaign, which began in January, targets wealthy American adults and portrays Bermuda as sophisticated and close to the United States while retaining a British colonial charm.

Bermuda, which is a couple of hours flight from most East Coast cities, is known for its fabulous pink sand beaches -- the color derived from particles of shells and coral -- and the knee-length shorts that share the territory's name.

Frontline -- Behind Closed Doors

if you missed last week's Frontline documentary (as I did) on the battle within the administration over Iraq, you MUST see it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/

admittedly, Frontline has always had a liberal bias. however, the scope and detailed analysis of the program, including extensive interview clips with key players and observers, are as usual absolutely unparalleled. in addition, it is an excellent summary of the events that have led up to where we are now -- the twelve years that have elapsed since the close of the first Gulf War, the gradual frustration of the UN inspectors' efforts, and the intense struggle between the hawks and doves within the Bush administration.

thankfully, Frontline has placed the entire 52 minute program on the web. in addition, the Frontline website has numerous links to extensive additional content. as citizens we have a duty to be informed. so see it. *now*.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/view/

Extensive Additional Content
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/synopsis.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/links.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/themes/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/interviews/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/03/r_tv_frontline022103.htm

Voices raised in Chirac's party against veto

Voices raised in Chirac's party against veto
Thursday, February 27, 2003
by John Vinocur/IHT
http://www.iht.com/articles/88013.html

PARIS Significant elements - perhaps more than half - of Jacques Chirac's presidential majority in the National Assembly are making clear they oppose France's eventual use of its veto in the Security Council to block a new American-led resolution that would justify a strike against Iraq.
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The development did not suggest diminishing support for the French approach favoring more inspections and holding war out as a last resort.
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But it constitutes a clear statement of concern about where the current French position would eventually lead and the damage that a possible veto could do to relations with the United States, the future of the United Nations as an institution, NATO, and France's place in Europe.

Leaders of the National Assembly majority, the UMP, including Alain Juppe, the party's president, Jacques Barrot, leader of its legislative group, and former Prime Minister Edouard Baladur, chairman of the Assembly's foreign affairs commission, were reported in the newspaper Le Monde as arguing that a veto would represent an extreme position risking a complete breakdown with the United States and many European countries.

"You don't fool around with your veto right in the knowledge that there can be a war tomorrow that the Americans, our allies, are involved in," said Pierre Lellouche, an activist in the Assembly group. "We're not going to shoot them in the back."
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Asked in a radio interview if he meant that a veto would be a French bullet in the back of America, Lellouche replied, "Obviously."
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He told French journalists that a "a majority of the UMP" group now followed this line.
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Le Monde reported Wednesday that the position, originally backed by "a few Atlanticists," had been subsequently adopted by the leaders of Chirac's party, with Juppe at their head.
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"We're not going to tear apart the UN and Europe to save a tyrant," Claude Goasguen, another UMP legislator, was quoted as saying. Barrot, hardly regarded as a reflexive friend of the United States, added, "We're taking into account a concern not to uselessly destroy the relationship with the United States."
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The remarks preceded an Assembly debate Wednesday on Iraq in which there was wide bipartisan support and satisfaction with France's tactics so far. At the same time, calls in favor of a veto of the new American-, British-, and Spanish-sponsored resolution came from the Communist Party, coupled with a Socialist demand for a veto if necessary.
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In general, the anti-veto statements signaled concern among Chirac's supporters about the existence of an exit strategy for France from a diplomatic position whose outcome was uncertain, while war appeared a virtually sure thing. A presidential source said the veto issue was indeed important but that it was not current, and that no one could recall Chirac ever using the word in discussing Iraq.
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Some French lawmakers believe that beyond likely American rage at a veto, France would irreparably alienate a large number of its NATO and European Union partners in the process. They regard a French alignment with Russia, China and Germany as one without a future, and believe, according to Raymond Barre, a former prime minister, that there is no chance Russia and China would exercise their vetoes alongside France.
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Moreover, some think that French alignment with a basically pacifist German position is ill-advised. They believe this contradicts France's view of itself as a country having international military options and responsibilities. And they think Germany would rapidly seek to reintegrate the Euro-Atlantic community after a rapid and successful American intervention in Iraq.
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In his speech to the Assembly - the debate was a no-vote, low-risk operation for the government - Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin avoided any mention of the veto issue.
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But Juppe brought it up, and in a slightly circuitous way, made reference to the isolation that could be France's if it exercised its veto.
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He said: "French diplomacy has been able to avoid what some here have been pushing it towards and would have certainly isolated it: specifically, the inopportune use of its veto power."
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Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking to reporters, seemed most intent on making the veto discussion go away. Although the United States, Britain and Spain, all current Security Council members, are lobbying hard to find the votes to push the resolution through, he said the text did not have a Council majority.
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"We are not in that situation," he said. "Therefore, there is no reason to raise the hypothesis."
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Clearly, France wanted to divert domestic and international focus from what has been traditionally considered here as its ultimate lever of dissuasion, much better held quietly in abeyance than used.
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Yet, the leftist opposition in the Assembly would have none of this, seeking to outflank Chirac and de Villepin as so-called "peace warriors."
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Alain Bocquet, a Communist, said, "We ask for a French veto, if necessary, for any resolution which would justify George Bush's war."
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Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party leader, called for France "to go all the way," if necessary to block a war, and "not to exclude" using a veto.

< < Back to Start of Article PARIS Significant elements - perhaps more than half - of Jacques Chirac's presidential majority in the National Assembly are making clear they oppose France's eventual use of its veto in the Security Council to block a new American-led resolution that would justify a strike against Iraq.
.
The development did not suggest diminishing support for the French approach favoring more inspections and holding war out as a last resort.
.
But it constitutes a clear statement of concern about where the current French position would eventually lead and the damage that a possible veto could do to relations with the United States, the future of the United Nations as an institution, NATO, and France's place in Europe,
.
Leaders of the National Assembly majority, the UMP, including Alain Juppe, the party's president, Jacques Barrot, leader of its legislative group, and former Prime Minister Edouard Baladur, chairman of the Assembly's foreign affairs commission, were reported in the newspaper Le Monde as arguing that a veto would represent an extreme position risking a complete breakdown with the United States and many European countries.
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"You don't fool around with your veto right in the knowledge that there can be a war tomorrow that the Americans, our allies, are involved in," said Pierre Lellouche, an activist in the Assembly group. "We're not going to shoot them in the back."
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Asked in a radio interview if he meant that a veto would be a French bullet in the back of America, Lellouche replied, "Obviously."
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He told French journalists that a "a majority of the UMP" group now followed this line.
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Le Monde reported Wednesday that the position, originally backed by "a few Atlanticists," had been subsequently adopted by the leaders of Chirac's party, with Juppe at their head.
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"We're not going to tear apart the UN and Europe to save a tyrant," Claude Goasguen, another UMP legislator, was quoted as saying. Barrot, hardly regarded as a reflexive friend of the United States, added, "We're taking into account a concern not to uselessly destroy the relationship with the United States."
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The remarks preceded an Assembly debate Wednesday on Iraq in which there was wide bipartisan support and satisfaction with France's tactics so far. At the same time, calls in favor of a veto of the new American-, British-, and Spanish-sponsored resolution came from the Communist Party, coupled with a Socialist demand for a veto if necessary.
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In general, the anti-veto statements signaled concern among Chirac's supporters about the existence of an exit strategy for France from a diplomatic position whose outcome was uncertain, while war appeared a virtually sure thing. A presidential source said the veto issue was indeed important but that it was not current, and that no one could recall Chirac ever using the word in discussing Iraq.
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Some French lawmakers believe that beyond likely American rage at a veto, France would irreparably alienate a large number of its NATO and European Union partners in the process. They regard a French alignment with Russia, China and Germany as one without a future, and believe, according to Raymond Barre, a former prime minister, that there is no chance Russia and China would exercise their vetoes alongside France.
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Moreover, some think that French alignment with a basically pacifist German position is ill-advised. They believe this contradicts France's view of itself as a country having international military options and responsibilities. And they think Germany would rapidly seek to reintegrate the Euro-Atlantic community after a rapid and successful American intervention in Iraq.
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In his speech to the Assembly - the debate was a no-vote, low-risk operation for the government - Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin avoided any mention of the veto issue.
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But Juppe brought it up, and in a slightly circuitous way, made reference to the isolation that could be France's if it exercised its veto.
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He said: "French diplomacy has been able to avoid what some here have been pushing it towards and would have certainly isolated it: specifically, the inopportune use of its veto power."
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Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking to reporters, seemed most intent on making the veto discussion go away. Although the United States, Britain and Spain, all current Security Council members, are lobbying hard to find the votes to push the resolution through, he said the text did not have a Council majority.
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"We are not in that situation," he said. "Therefore, there is no reason to raise the hypothesis."
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Clearly, France wanted to divert domestic and international focus from what has been traditionally considered here as its ultimate lever of dissuasion, much better held quietly in abeyance than used.
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Yet, the leftist opposition in the Assembly would have none of this, seeking to outflank Chirac and de Villepin as so-called "peace warriors."
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Alain Bocquet, a Communist, said, "We ask for a French veto, if necessary, for any resolution which would justify George Bush's war."
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Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party leader, called for France "to go all the way," if necessary to block a war, and "not to exclude" using a veto.

Reactor Started in North Korea, U.S. Concludes

Reactor Started in North Korea, U.S. Concludes
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/asia/27NUKE.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — North Korea has restarted a reactor at its primary nuclear complex, American intelligence officials said today. Over time, the reactor could provide a continuing source of plutonium for nuclear weapons.

The action by North Korea — detected a day after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said there was no evidence the reactor was operating — was the latest in a series of steps it has taken toward building a significant nuclear arsenal, or at least appearing to do so. American officials are divided about whether the North Korean government is now on a determined course to produce more than half a dozen weapons or is still interested in drawing concessions from Washington.

President Bush and his advisers have played down the standoff, even while sending Mr. Powell to Asia to try to coordinate pressure to temper North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

North Korea had previously announced that it would "resume normal operations" at the plant but had been warned not to do so by the United States and others. The satellite evidence that led to the American announcement tonight was the first sign that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, had decided to ignore those warnings.

The latest move, one American official acknowledged tonight, will make it harder for the Bush administration to "take the position that this isn't a crisis." That argument had already been contradicted by American intelligence officials in testimony to Congress earlier this month.

"It's going to make this a significant test of how the president juggles this and Iraq at the same moment," a senior official said.

North Korea warned its citizens today to prepare for a war with the United States, saying the country might be the next target after Iraq. Mr. Powell and Mr. Bush have repeatedly said they have no "intention" of invading North Korea, though they have warned that all military options remain on the table if the security of the United States and its allies is threatened.

Today's action was not the most serious challenge to the United States and its allies that could have taken at Yongbyon, the nuclear complex north of the capital, Pyongyang.

American intelligence satellites have been closely watching a nearby reprocessor, which can be used to convert spent nuclear fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. The North Koreans already have 8,000 spent rods, enough to produce five or six weapons. If the reprocessor began operations, a move that could come in days or weeks, American officials say, North Korea would have sufficient enriched plutonium to be able to produce about one bomb a month through the summer.

"We have no evidence the reprocessor has started up yet," said a senior American official with access to the intelligence. "Either they are stopping just short of that, or they are waiting to turn the screws once again."

The five-megawatt reactor that was restarted can produce slightly more plutonium in a year than would be necessary for one bomb, according to some estimates.

On Tuesday, Mr. Powell noted that for all of its heated words, North Korea had not restarted its nuclear reactor or its reprocessor.

"I think that's a wise choice if it's a conscious choice," he said, on a trip in which he tried to get China and South Korea to agree to the American approach of isolating North Korea. Within hours of his departure from Seoul, American satellites were detecting the first plumes from the reactor, which sends off a distinctive heat signature once it is activated.

The reactor's operations were frozen in 1994 under an agreement reached with the Clinton administration. It stipulated that the 8,000 rods be placed in storage and watched by two inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But in October of last year, after the United States told North Korea it had discovered evidence the country was secretly starting up another nuclear project elsewhere, North Korea threatened to end the 1994 accord. On New Years' Eve it expelled the inspectors and broke the seals on the reactor and the reprocessing building. Workers have been seen reloading the reactor with fresh fuel.

The start up of the reactor does not pose an immediate threat; it would be a year before it produced enough waste for a bomb. But it complicates the diplomacy because the Bush administration insists that the nuclear operation must be frozen and the plant dismantled before there is any discussion of aid to North Korea.

In testimony to Congress, Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said the administration's main concern about North Korea was that it would sell its plutonium to terrorist groups or other states.

North Korea has demanded one-on-one talks with the United States, but Mr. Bush has refused, saying he would not "reward bad behavior."

Repress Yourself

Repress Yourself
By LAUREN SLATER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/magazine/23REPRESSION.html

You've been in therapy for years.You've time-traveled back to your childhood home, to your mother's makeup mirror with its ring of pearl lights. You've uncovered, or recovered, the bad baby sitter, his hands on you, and yet still, you're no better. You feel foggy and low; you flinch at intimate touch; you startle at even the slightest sounds, and you are impaired. Hundreds of sessions of talk have led you here, back to the place you started, even though you've followed all advice. You have self-soothed and dredged up; you have cried and curled up; you have aimed for integration in your fractured, broken brain.

This is common, the fractured, broken brain and the uselessness of talk therapy to make it better. A study done by H.J. Eysenck in 1952, a study that still causes some embarrassment to the field, found that psychotherapy in general helped no more, no less, than the slow passing of time.

As for insight, no one has yet demonstrably proved that it is linked to recovery. What actually does help is anyone's best guess -- probably some sort of fire, directly under your behind -- and what leads to relief? Maybe love and work, maybe medicine. Maybe repression. Repression? Isn't that the thing that makes you sick, that splits you off, so demons come dancing back? Doesn't that cause holes in the stomach and chancres in the colon and a general impoverishment of spirit? Maybe not. New research shows that some traumatized people may be better off repressing the experience than illuminating it in therapy. If you're stuck and scared, perhaps you should not remember but forget. Avoid. That's right. Tamp it down. Up you go.

The new research is rooted in part in the experience of Sept. 11, when swarms of therapists descended on New York City after the twin towers fell. There were, by some estimates, three shrinks for every victim, which is itself an image you might want to repress, the bearded, the beatnik, the softly empathic all gathered round the survivors urging talk talk talk. ''And what happened,'' says Richard Gist, a community psychologist and trauma researcher who, along with a growing number of colleagues, has become highly critical of these debriefing procedures, ''is some people got worse. They were either unhelped or retraumatized by our interventions.'' Gist, who is an associate professor at the University of Missouri and who has been on hand to help with disasters from the collapse of the Hyatt Regency pedestrian skywalks in Kansas City, Mo., in 1981 to the United Airlines crash in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, has had time to develop his thoughts regarding how, or how not, to help in times of terror. ''Basically, all these therapists run down to the scene, and there's a lot of grunting and groaning and encouraging people to review what they saw, and then the survivors get worse. I've been saying for years, 'Is it any surprise that if you keep leading people to the edge of a cliff they eventually fall over?'''

Based in part on the findings that encouraging people to talk immediately after a trauma can actually emblazon fear more deeply into the brain, researchers began to question the accepted tenets of trauma treatment, which have at their center the healing power of story. In Tel Aviv, three researchers, Karni Ginzburg, Zahava Solomon and Avi Bleich, studied heart-attack victims in an effort to determine whether those who repressed the event fared better in the long run. ''Repression'' is a word that radiates far beyond its small syllabic self; it connotes images of hysterical amnesiacs on magic mountains or mist-swaddled Viennese streets. But in experimental psychology, as opposed to psychoanalysis, repression has far more mundane meanings; it is used to describe those who minimize, distract, deny. Is it possible that folks who employ these techniques cope better than the rest of us ramblers? In order to address this question, Ginzburg and her collaborators followed 116 heart-attack patients at three hospitals in Israel with the aim of assessing who developed post-traumatic stress disorder and who went home whistling. Ginzburg's team was particularly interested in exploring the long-term effects of a repressive coping style; some earlier research demonstrated that those who deny are, in fact, better off in the short term. But there remained the larger questions: What happens to these stern stoics over time? Do they break down? Do memories and symptoms push through? Ginzburg's team assessed its subjects within one week of their heart attacks and then seven months later. During the first assessment, the team evaluated, among other things, the patient's general coping style using a series of scales that reflect the tendency to avoid and to deny. The researchers defined repressors as those who exhibited ''a specific combination of anxiety and defensiveness'' as measured on the self-reported scales.

They found that those patients who had high anxiety and low defensiveness -- in other words, those patients who had a lift-the-lid approach to their experience, thinking about it, worrying about it, processing it -- had a far poorer outcome than their stiff-lipped counterparts. Specifically, of the stiff-lipped stylers, only 7 percent developed post-traumatic stress disorder seven months after the infarction, compared with 19 percent of the voluble ones.

The Israeli study hypothesizes at one point that repression may work as a coping style because those who ignore have a uniquely adaptive perceptual style. Repressors, others posit, may be protected by their presuppositions regarding -- and subsequent perceptions of -- stressful events, meaning that where you see a conflagration, they see a campfire, where you see a downpour, they see a drizzle. Still other researchers suggest that repressors are good at repressing because they can manipulate their attention, swiveling it away from the burned body or the hurting heart, and if that fails, they believe that they can cope with what befalls them. They think they're competent, those with the buttoned-up backs. Whether they really are or are not competent is not the issue; repressors, Ginzburg suggests, think they are, and anyone who has ever read ''The Little Engine That Could'' knows the power of thinking positively when it comes to making it over the mountain.

eorge Bonanno, an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University Teachers College, has found similar results in his many inquiries into the role of repression and avoidance in healthy coping styles. And, unlike the Israeli researchers, Bonanno has used scales that go beyond self-report to determine who's repressing what and how that person fares. For instance, in a study of bereaved widows and widowers, Bonanno used a technique called verbal autonomic association. He had people talk about their loss while he looked at autonomic arousal (heartbeat, pulse rates and galvanic skin responses). What he saw: a subgroup of mourners who consistently said they weren't distressed while displaying high heart rates. ''These are the repressors,'' Bonanno says. ''And these people, the ones who showed this pattern, had less grief over time and had a better overall life adjustment, and this has been consistent across studies.'' Bonanno has recently completed a study involving adolescent girls and young women who are sexual-abuse survivors. ''The girls who chose not to talk about the sexual abuse during the interview, the girls who measured higher on repression scales, these were the repressors, and they also had fewer internalizing symptoms like depression and anxiety and fewer externalizing symptoms like hostility and acting out. They were better-adjusted.''

Bonanno pauses. ''I've been studying this phenomenon for 10 years,'' he says. ''I've been deeply troubled. My work's been in top journals, but it's still being dismissed by people in the field. In the 1980's, trauma became an official diagnosis, and people made their careers on it. What followed was a plethora of research on how to heal from trauma by talking it out, by facing it down. These people are not likely to believe in an alternative explanation. People's intellectual inheritance is deeply dependent upon a certain point of view.''

George Bonanno works in New York City, while Richard Gist works in Kansas City; the doctors have never spoken, but they should. They share a lot. Gist told me: ''The problem with the trauma industry is this: People who successfully repress do not turn up sitting across from a shrink, so we know very little about these folks, but they probably have a lot to teach us. For all we know, the repressors are actually the normal ones who effectively cope with the many tragedies life presents. Why are we not more fascinated with these displays of resilience and grace? Why are we only fascinated with frailty? The trauma industry knows they can make money off of frailty; there are all these psychologists out there turning six figures with their pablum and hubris.''

Gist, who speaks with a Midwestern twang and knows how to turn a rococo phrase, also insists on plain figures to back up whatever he says. According to Gist, meta-analyses of debriefing procedures, a subset of trauma work that encourages catharsis through talk, simply do not support the efficacy of many of the interventions. Both Gist and Bonanno say they believe that the accepted interventions, like narrative catharsis, remain in use for pecuniary, political and historical reasons, reasons that have nothing to do with curing people.

And the history of these reasons? The trauma field is broad and might have begun at any of a number of points: there was Freud, who originally believed that female hysteria was caused by childhood sexual abuse, only to abandon the idea later in favor, perhaps, of something less jarring to Victorian sensibilities; even before Freud, there was Jean Martin Charcot, who posited his patients' fits of hysterics to be somatic expressions of buried traumatic memories. But for modern-day purposes, the trauma industry seems to have started sometime in the early 1980's, when the women's movement asserted that post-traumatic stress disorder did not belong to Vietnam veterans alone; it belonged also to the legions of women who were abused in domestic situations. Mostly middle-class, well-educated women seeing private therapists began to whisper their stories, stories that contradicted the dominant belief in most psychiatric textbooks that incest occurred in one family per million. And yet here were Ph.D.'s and Ed.D.'s and Psy.D.'s and L.C.S.W.'s hearing that no, it happened here, and here, and here, behind this bedroom door, in this dark night, under the same shared suburban sky where we do not live safely. Thus, from their very inception, incest accounts were subversive stories, and their telling became acts of political and personal rehabilitation. Silence, as far as sexual abuse was concerned -- and this quickly radiated out to all forms of trauma -- was tantamount to toxic conformity. Only speech would save.

It makes sense, therefore, that the tools deployed to help survivors were largely verbal and emphasized narrative reconstruction. Trauma (the word means ''wound'' in Greek) is seen as a rupture in the long line of language that constructs who we are. The goal of treatment has traditionally been, therefore, to expand the story so that it can accommodate a series of unexpected scenes. By the early 1990's, neurological models of broken narratives were being developed. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, for instance, hypothesized that repressed trauma has very specific neural correlates in the brain. The event -- say, the rape, the plane crash -- is isolated, flash-frozen in a nonverbal neural stream, where it stays stuck, secreting its subterranean signals of fear and panic. The goal of trauma treatment has been to move memories from nonverbal brain regions to verbal ones, where they can be integrated into the life story.

This, to my mind, is a beautiful theory, one that blesses the brain with malleable storage sites and incredible plot power -- but whether it's true or not, no one knows. More to the point, whether it's true for all people, no one knows. While storying one's life is undoubtedly an essential human activity, the trauma industry may have overlooked this essential fact: not all of us are memoirists. Some of us tell our stories by speaking around them, a kind of Carveresque style where resolution is whispered below the level of audible language. Then again, some of us are fable writers, developing quick tales with tortoises and hares, where right and wrong have a lovely, simple sort of sound. If we are all authors of our experience, as the trauma industry has so significantly reminded us, we are not all cut from the same literary cloth. Some of us are wordy, others prefer the smooth white space between tightly packaged paragraphs. Still others might rather sing over the scary parts than express them at all.

ere's the question: at what cost, this singing? Jennifer Coon-Wallman, a psychotherapist based in Lexington, Mass., asks, ''By singing over or cutting off a huge part of your history, aren't you then losing what makes life rich and multifaceted?'' I suppose so, but let me tell you this. I've had my fair share of traumas -- I'm sure you have, too -- and if I could learn to tamp them down and thereby prune my thorny lived-out-loud life a little, I'd be more than happy to. Go ahead. Give me a lock and key.

Girvani Leerer of Arbour-H.R.I. Hospital in Brookline, Mass., doesn't necessarily agree with my lock-and-key longings. ''Facing and talking about trauma is one of the major ways people learn to cope with it. They learn to understand their feelings and their experiences and to move out, beyond the event.'' On the one hand, Gist told me, referring to the work done in Israel, ''Ginzburg's study, despite its limitations, is right on and has done us a great service.'' On the other hand, Dr. Amy Banks, a faculty member at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College, says: ''Ginzburg's study is interesting, but it's weak. It's saying repression is useful for repressors. Is repression useful for those of us with different styles? I doubt it. I think it's probably harmful.''

Banks's sentiments ultimately win out with doctors and patients, professionals and lay people. ''The Courage to Heal,'' a book by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis about trauma and talk, has sold more than 700,000 copies. Dr. Judith Herman, the director of training at the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Hospital, in her updated book ''Trauma and Recovery,'' continues to advocate narrative and catharsis. And a quick scan of trauma Web sites shows that plebeians like you and me are still chatting up a brutal bloody storm.

Beyond the general reactions, there are some specific methodological criticisms clinicians have with the Ginzburg study, one of which is its implicit comparison of sexual-abuse survivors to heart-attack victims. Banks says: ''Trauma that happens at the hands of another human being has a much greater psychological impact than trauma that happens from a physical illness, accident or even natural disaster. There's a bigger destruction in trust and relationships. And to further complicate things, sexual abuse usually happens over time, in a situation of secrecy, to what may be a preverbal child. A heart attack is a public event that involves fully verbal adults who have so much more control over their world.'' Yes and no. Certainly, sexual abuse has an element of shame that medical events don't tend to carry. But as Ginzburg notes at the start of her study, a heart attack is ''a stressful life-threatening experience.'' The death rate is high, the rate of recurrence higher still, and if that doesn't do it for you, consider the symbolic meaning of the heart, that central valentine in its mantle of muscle. Consider the fear when it starts to fibrillate, and then the pain, and afterward, you'll never trust that tired pump again. In both sexual abuse and devastating medical events, the sense of self is shattered, and this commonality may unite the disparate traumas in essential ways.

And yet clinicians still resist the relevance of the Ginzburg findings. Bononno says, ''We just don't want to admit they could be true,'' and that's true. The repression results appear to insult more than challenge us, and this feeling of insult is almost, if not more, interesting than the findings themselves. We are offended. Why?

Alexis de Tocqueville might know. In 1831, when he came to this country, he observed as perhaps no one has since its essential character. Tocqueville saw our narcissism, our puritanism, but he also saw the romanticism that lies at the core of this country. We believe that the human spirit is at its best when it expresses; the individualism that Tocqueville described in his book ''Democracy in America'' rests on the right, if not the need, to articulate your unique internal state. Repression, therefore, would be considered anti-American, antediluvian, anti-art and terribly Teutonic. At its very American best, the self is revealed through pen and paint and talk. Tocqueville saw that this was the case. So did Emerson and Thoreau and of course Whitman, who upheld the ideas of transcendentalism, singing the soul, letting it all out.

But the resistance to repression goes back even further than the 19th century. Expression as healing and, consequently, repression as damaging can be found as far back as the second century, when the physician and writer Galen extended Hippocrates's theory that the body is a balance of four critical humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Disease, especially emotional disease, Galen suggested, is the result of an internal imbalance among these humors, and healing takes place when the physician can drain the body, and soul, of its excess liquid weight. Toward this end, purging, emetics and leeches were used. Wellness was catharsis; catharsis was expression. It's easy to see our current-day talking cures and trauma cures as Galenic spinoffs, notions so deeply rooted in Western culture that to abandon them would be to abandon, in some senses, the philosophical foundations on which medicine and religion rest.

To embrace or even consider repression as a reasonable coping style is a threat to the romantic ideals so central to this culture, despite our post-modern sheen. Postmodernism, with its pesky protestations that there is no ultimate history or total truth, inadvertently ends up underscoring just these things. We're still all Walt Whitman at heart. Our response to the research illuminates this.

And of course, practically speaking, there are real reasons why we would not want to embrace the current findings. Our entire multimillion-dollar trauma industry would have to be revamped. There are in this country thousands of trauma and recovery centers predicated upon Whitman-esque expression, and sizable portions of the self-help industry are devoted to talking it out. While there wouldn't be a countrywide economic crash if repression came back into vogue, there would be some serious educational, political and medical upheavals. Federally financed programs would go down. Best to avoid that. Best to just repress the thought.

What would therapy look like if repression came back into vogue? Here's Dusty Miller. She lives and works in Northampton, Mass. She's well into her 50's, with blue eyes and moccasins. Her office is small and spartan. On the wall there is a picture of Audre Lorde and the words ''When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision -- than it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.'' Miller knows this to be true.

Before Miller was a psychologist, she was a patient. Before she was a patient, she was a victim, visited nightly by her father, who she says physically and sexually abused her, and this for years and years. At Cornell, where she was an undergraduate, Miller went into therapy, first to be told in the early 1960's that her memories were wishes and then to be told in the 1980's that they were true and that her job was to be Nancy Drew, shining a flashlight into all the dark places.

Which is what Miller did in the 1980's. She went back over and over the memories of trauma and got sicker and sicker. ''After many therapy sessions I'd be a quivering ball, and then I'd leave the office and take my credit card and go out and spend $500 on clothes I didn't need.'' A year or so into her recovered-memory therapy, Miller developed chronically aching joints and a low-grade fever. She could barely move, she was so fatigued. Months passed. Snow fell. Skies cleared. Miller knew she had to make a change. She had gone back to her memories for healing and wound up with a chronic disease. ''You know that saying 'It has to get worse before it gets better'?'' Miller says to me. ''Well, I used to believe that, but I don't anymore. That just leads you to fall apart. And you know the saying 'It's never too late to have a happy childhood'? Well, guess what? It is.''

So she quit her Nancy Drew therapy. One day, she told her therapist, ''I'm not coming back anymore.'' Then what did she do? Among other things, she took up . . . tennis.

Yes, tennis. Keep your eye on the ball, stay inside the bright white lines and hit hard. ''Tennis was so grounding and taught me so much grace and helped me to regulate my anxiety. It was tennis, not talk, that really helped.''

Miller's own self-styled ''cure'' fueled her work as a clinician. She began to consider directing her clients away from their traumas and toward the parts of their lives that ''gave them more juice.'' She found that it worked. With trauma survivors, Miller now never begins a group session by asking, ''How are you feeling?'' ''Oh, my God, that would just be a disaster,'' she says. ''All I'd get was, 'Terrible, fearful, awful.' Instead I say, 'What strengths do you need to focus on today?''' In one session, Miller hands out paper dolls and bits of colored paper. Trauma survivors are told to glue the colored paper onto body parts that hurt or have been hurt, ''but then,'' Miller says, ''we don't stop there. We turn the dolls over, onto a fresh side, and participants use the same bits of paper to design a body of resilience.''

Miller's form of psychotherapy emphasizes doing, not reflecting. The actions at once block and dilute memories. She, along with other colleagues, has started a trauma resource treatment center in western Massachusetts for low-income women and their children, predicated in part upon the virtues of repression. At the center, there is a kitchen full of utensils, so women can stir and chop instead of sitting and talking, a computer room where women can type up resumes and query letters and, maybe best of all, an attic full of professional clothes so if a job interview is landed, the woman can don a second skin, a sleek suit, a pair of pumps. It's exhilarating.

Miller tells me: ''I worked with this woman named Karen, who said she was a sexual-abuse survivor and a schizophrenic. She had been in so much therapy and told her story so many times, and it reinforced her feelings of being sick. She'd been terribly infantilized by the mental health system, a system that tells women to recover by walking around clutching teddy bears and crying.'' Miller pauses. ''With this woman, we never asked her about her past. We saw it would be bad for her. Instead, we put her right on the computer. And then, when she'd learned the computer, we had her do some research work for us, interviewing. And it was incredible.'' Miller stares up at the ceiling, recalling. ''Karen did so well with the work we gave her. She learned to send e-mail, and that thrilled her.'' Consider this: teaching a schizophrenic sexual-abuse survivor how to press a button and hurl the self through space with cyber-specificity. Who wouldn't feel empowered?

''And then,'' Miller says, ''the feds came out to inspect our program like they do every year or two, and everyone had to go around the room and say, you know, like, 'Hi, I'm Dusty Miller, psychologist.' And when it was Karen's turn, instead of saying, 'Hi, I'm Karen, I'm a schizophrenic sexual-abuse survivor,' she said, 'Hi, I'm Karen, and I'm the lead ethnographer for the Franklin County Women and Violence Project.' I was so proud of her. We got her to stop telling her story, and she improved. There were tears in my eyes.''

And today? Karen is feeling better several years later. She has earned enough money at her part-time job to buy a ''used used car,'' and she sings in a community chorus. ''I think she sings mostly peace songs,'' Miller tells me, and what are peace songs, really, but pleas and wishes, pictures of perfection, the wreckage wiped away. Karen, schizophrenic, sexually abused, rarely discusses her memories anymore; she looks to her future, not to her past. Who wouldn't be happy to hear that? And yet, who wouldn't worry as well? Will the trauma treatment of the future be something simplistically saccharine, down by the riverside, or maddeningly upbeat? Or will the trauma treatment of the future be done in small square rooms where no tears are allowed, where the ceiling is lidlike, the walls the color of clamp?

Within the expression-versus-repression debate lurk ancient, essential questions and the oldest myths. In the fifth century B.C., Socrates claimed that an unexamined life was not worth living. Score one for the trauma teams. Around the same time, however, Sophocles described how a raging Oedipus, on a quest for knowledge, gouged out his own eyes when he finally learned the terrible truth; he would have been better off never asking. Score one for the Ginzburg findings. Who's to say which side is right, and when? There are times when a person would be better off diverted; just get a job, for God's sake, we want to say to the endless explorer who keeps reliving and revising the painful past. But then there are those folks with mouths as stern as minus signs, their faces like fists; they could use a little expressive therapy, for sure. In the end, we may need to parse repression, nuance it, so that we understand it as a force with potentially healthful and unhealthful aspects. Freud once defined repression quite benignly as a refocusing of attention away from unpleasant ideas. Of course there are times, in an increasingly frantic world, when we need to do that; repression as filter, a screen to keep us clean. So turn away. But run away? Therein lies the litmus test.

If you're breathless, knees knocking, and life is a pure sprint from some shadow, I say go back. Slow down. Dwell. As for the rest of us, let's do an experiment and measure the outcome. Let us fashion our lids; let us prop them proudly on top of our hurting heads.

Lauren Slater is the author of ''Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the 20th Century,'' to be published by W.W. Norton in 2004.

From a White House Roof, Solar Power Proclaims Gains

From a White House Roof, Solar Power Proclaims Gains
By LISA GUERNSEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/technology/circuits/27howw.html

THE White House may be occupied by an administration steeped in the oil industry, but solar power has quietly become part of the landscape at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Since September, a grid of 167 solar panels on the roof of a maintenance shed has been delivering electricity to the White House grounds. Another solar installation has been helping to provide hot water. Yet another has been keeping the water warm in the presidential pool.

James Doherty, an architect for the National Park Service, decided to install the systems a few years ago. It was time to replace the roof on what is affectionately called the Pony Shed, a maintenance building that replaced the stable that once housed Macaroni, a pony owned by President John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline.

The Park Service, which is responsible for the building, had already mandated that any refurbishments of its facilities should include environmentally friendly design where possible.

"We thought if we were able to reduce our energy consumption, that was a positive step forward," Mr. Doherty said.

He installed solar panels, called photovoltaic or PV modules, along with a new copper roof.

The panels are made up of thin wafers of silicon. When light photons hit the silicon atoms, electrons break free, creating a direct current. An inverter turns the electricity into an alternating current that can be fed into the White House power grid.

The thermal water systems are installed on the roof too, but they work differently. Heat from sunlight is absorbed by water flowing behind specially formulated black absorber plates. The water is warmed directly by the sun without the need for a traditional water heater.

To some, the word "solar" evokes images of the 1970's, and the flashbacks aren't pretty. Many people remember leaky roofs and maintenance problems that came with solar water-heating systems. The problem with photovoltaic modules, which became commercially available in the early 1980's, was their price tag. They were initially so expensive that the electricity cost 100 times as much as power from conventional sources.

"Today we are outgrowing that reputation," said Mark Farber, the chief executive of Evergreen Solar, a company in Marlboro, Mass., that supplied the solar roof modules.

Mr. Farber said that mass production and improved manufacturing techniques had pushed prices down, and estimated that photovoltaic technology now costs one and a half to four times as much as conventional power sources when costs are spread over time. But the cost can be lower than that of electricity from conventional sources in areas with high power bills and government subsidies for the use of alternative energy.

Glenn Hamer, executive director of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that the leaky water heaters that tainted the industry had been driven from the market.

A slow but steady resurgence of solar technology has taken place in the last two decades. In 1982, the year the government's Energy Information Administration started tracking shipments of PV modules, about 7,000 peak kilowatts (the measure used by photovoltaic companies) were shipped to purchasers in the United States. In 2001, about five times that many - 36,000 - were shipped.

Across the country, and particularly in California, where energy costs have spiked, more solar roofs are being installed each year. Some are generating a surplus of electricity that can be sold to the electric companies.

"It's starting to get very exciting," said Steven J. Strong, the solar designer who guided the White House project and whose company, Solar Design Associates, has been advocating the technology since the 1970's. "We're busier than ever."

At the same time, solar thermal systems for heating water have become almost commonplace for new pools, said Maureen McIntyre, editor of Solar Today, a monthly magazine. "We now have solar hot water systems that are mature and affordably priced and make sense," she said.

Still, solar power makes up only 1 percent of the total energy generated in the United States, according to Mr. Hamer of the industries association.

Many environmentalists do not expect a federal focus on solar power anytime soon, given that President Bush and many members of his team worked in the oil industry.

In fact, the announcement that solar technology had been installed at the White House came not from the government but from the solar industry, and only after the equipment had been in place for four months. The lack of fanfare may be because the scale of the project was small: the amount of electricity generated so far is minuscule. In the first four months, the panels generated about 1,100 kilowatt-hours of power, Mr. Doherty said.

Given that other institutions in the area pay 4.9 cents per kilowatt-hour in the winter, that translates into $54 in savings. Of course, that calculation does not take into account the cost of installing the system, which was $75,000 - higher than usual for such a project because of the logistics of doing construction at the White House. (The cost of installing the two hot-water systems was $25,000.)

Mr. Doherty said he expected the panels to yield more savings in the summer months, when traditional energy costs are higher and the PV modules capture more light. He stressed that the installation was a long-term investment. "We know it will pay for itself," he said.

Fred Rogers Dies at 74

Fred Rogers, host of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,' Dies at 74
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/obituaries/27WEB-ROGE.html

PITTSBURGH — Fred Rogers, who gently invited millions of children to be his neighbor as host of the public television show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" for more than 30 years, died of cancer early Thursday. He was 74.

Rogers died at his Pittsburgh home, said family spokesman David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on the show. Rogers had been diagnosed with stomach cancer sometime after the holidays, Newell said.

From 1968 to 2000, Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, produced the show at Pittsburgh public television station WQED. The final new episode, which was taped in December 2000, aired in August 2001, though PBS affiliates continued to air back episodes.

Rogers composed his own songs for the show and began each episode in a set made to look like a comfortable living room, singing "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," as he donned sneakers and a zip-up cardigan.

His message remained a simple one throughout the years, telling his viewers to love themselves and others. On each show, he would take his audience on a magical trolley ride into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where his puppet creations would interact with each other and adults.

Rogers did much of the puppet work and voices himself.

The show gained a wide audience among children and parents who appreciated its simple lessons and Rogers' soothing manner.

Rogers taught children how to share, how to deal with anger and even how not to fear the bathtub by assuring them they'll never go down the drain.

During the Persian Gulf War, Rogers told youngsters that "all children shall be well taken care of in this neighborhood and beyond -- in times of war and in times of peace," and he asked parents to promise their children they would always be safe.

Rogers came out of broadcasting retirement last year to record four public service announcements for the Public Broadcasting Service telling parents that children might be confused by the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"They don't understand what an anniversary is, and if they see the tragedy replayed on television, they might think it's happening at that moment," he said.

The series remained popular through the years, including with children of baby boomers who watched the show growing up. Its ratings peaked in 1985-86 when approximately 8 percent of all U.S. households with televisions tuned in. By the 1999-2000 season, viewership had dropped to about 2.7 percent, or 3.6 million people.

One of Rogers' red sweaters hangs in the Smithsonian Institution.

As other children's programming opted for slick action cartoons, Rogers stayed the same and stuck to his message.

"It looks like nothing much happens," Hedda Sharapan, an associate producer with the show, said in 2001. "Listening has been one of the main focus points."

Rogers was born in Latrobe. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1962 with a charge to continue his work with children and families through television.

He studied early childhood development at the University of Pittsburgh's graduate school and consulted for decades with the late Dr. Margaret McFarland, an eminent child development expert at the university. The show examined the tribulations of childhood, including anger, fear, even a visit to the dentist.

At a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the show in 1993, Rogers said, "It's not the honors and not the titles and not the power that is of ultimate importance. It's what resides inside."

Off the set, Rogers was much like his television persona. He swam daily, read voraciously and listened to Beethoven. He once volunteered at a state prison in Pittsburgh and helped set up a playroom there for children visiting their parents.

Rogers was an unseen puppeteer in "The Children's Corner," a local show he and Josie Carey launched at WQED in 1954. In seven years of unscripted, live television on the show, he developed many of the puppets used in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," including King Friday XIII, Daniel Striped Tiger and Curious X the Owl.

Rogers accepted an offer to develop his own 15-minute show in Canada. He brought the show, called "Misterogers," back to Pittsburgh and in February 1968 began its public broadcasting debut.

Rogers' gentle manner was the butt of some comedian's jokes. Eddie Murphy parodied him on "Saturday Night Live" in the 80's with his "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood," a routine Rogers found funny and affectionate.

Rogers is survived by his wife, Joanne, a concert pianist; two sons and two grandsons.

A Case for Iraq

over the last few weeks, i have become increasingly dismayed with the realization that few people are *really* paying attention to the issues at hand regarding Iraq, and that many people i know have seemed to tacitly jump onto the anti-war bandwagon without informed justification (other than a general desire to avoid a war).

after several discussions with my sister in paris (with french leaning sentiments), talk with friends of participation in the recent anti-war demonstrations, recent conversations with friends over a few dinners, and a few targeted requests for more information, i have replied with lists of articles and highlighted issues to those involved.

however, after last night's excellent and informed discussion on charlie rose, and with our nation and the world at an existential crossroads, i really felt inspired to bring more awareness of the critical issues involved to myself and those around me.

The Debate

with few people really paying attention, there has been much irresponsible talk. however to me, the fact that serious liberals have acceded to the assertion that force may be necessary has been more than instructive -- we are talking about editorials in The New York Times, arguments by leading liberal scholars, and statements by senators with 80% ADA ratings like Dianne Feinstein; not The National Review or Pat Buchanon.

last night's debate between Jonathan Schell (Peace and Disarmament correspondent at The Nation, and Harold Willens Peace fellow at the Nation Institute), and Michael Ignatieff (Director and Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice, JFK School of Government, Harvard University), and recent debates on the PBS Newshour and Meet the Press, were instructive at raising important issues:

1) the consequences of acting and not acting -- especially the fact that once Iraq secures nuclear weapons, we will be unable to act with force.

2) the essential threat of coercive force -- without which there would be no inspectors or hope of peaceful disarmament at all; and which by default has been American, as no other major power (other than the Brits) seems to want to make the sacrifice

3) the fact that sometimes force or threat of force is the only way to achieve good ends -- europe after 50 years of (american invested) reconstruction and reliance on America for its defense seems to be incapable of thinking in that paradigm anymore.

4) the opposing option of peaceful disarmament -- if it were credible, then we should take that option. but who can defend that peaceful disarmament can be credible after 12 years of efforts.

5) the fantasy that international multi-lateralism by itself can contain and order the world -- it is not even credible without the threat of force. and that force has been american. america has reluctantly and by default become the world's only guarantor of order.

6) the sense that the rest of the world would rather talk about the dangers of american power rather than the dangers of a ruthless expansionist dictator and his possession and potential proliferation of weapons of mass distruction. -- of course, not helped by american unilateral action over the last several administrations.

7) the pretext of oil -- it is a reason. but not about american oil barons getting rich. can anyone show us where the rich oil barons are from the 1991 war?? it is more a case of world and american economic stability - where gas prices don't double or triple and paralyze local economies.

8) the consistency of efforts -- how can we approach iraq and not approach others with the same tactics? because North Korea & Pakistan already have nukes. which is exactly why we should proceed now against iraq before they have them. otherwise it will be too late. given Iraq's record for the use of their weapons and power, we should be very afraid. we haven't seen North Korea or Pakistan invading another country or using bio-weapons on their own populations.

As the nation prepares to go to war, we should all be particularly aware of why our government is seeking to bring us to war. we should try to be as informed as possible, and not let ourselves be swayed by casual and irresponsible talk. i believe that our nation (and the world) is in a fight for nothing less than *national survival*, and we must be prepared to make painful sacrifices to preserve international order. i am not saying that everyone should by default support the war and the administration. but if you are disposed to opposing any use of force, be responsibly aware of what that position is and all that it implies.

More Articles

Following are a few articles (unfortunately quite lengthy) from both of the participants. if you can only read one, read Michael's first article from the January 5th, 2003 NYTimes Magazine on America as the de facto world empire. it is an excellent analysis of the entire issue, and the many potential dangers. (for those that cannot access the NYT, i have posted the entire article in the following post.)

Michael Ignatieff -- Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice, and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, JFK School of Government, Harvard University

"A role once played by the Ottoman Empire, then by the French and the British, will now be played by a nation that has to ask whether in becoming an empire it risks losing its soul as a republic. . . .

Why should a republic take on the risks of empire? Won't it run a chance of endangering its identity as a free people? The problem is that this implies innocent options that in the case of Iraq may no longer exist. Iraq is not just about whether the United States can retain its republican virtue in a wicked world. Virtuous disengagement is no longer a possibility. Since Sept. 11, it has been about whether the republic can survive in safety at home without imperial policing abroad. . . .

The fact that states are both late and hypocritical in their adoption of human rights does not deprive them of the right to use force to defend them. The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions -- and Iraq may be one of them -- when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/05EMPIRE.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1569
http://www.peacemagazine.org/0104/kahar.htm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/koso-n27.shtml
http://cobrand.salon.com/books/review/2000/05/04/glenny_ignatieff/

Jonathan Schell -- Peace and Disarmament correspondent at The Nation, and Harold Willens Peace fellow at the Nation Institute

"One way or another, the world is on its way to a single standard. Only two in the long run are available: universal permission to possess weapons of mass destruction or their universal prohibition. The first is a path to global nightmare.... If inspections fail, then containment will do as a second line of defense."

"We--that is, we, the peoples of the earth--have examined the case for war against Iraq and rejected it. We have stepped forward onto the streets of our cities and looked at ourselves, and have liked what we saw. We know our will. Now we must act. We can stop the war."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030310&s=schell
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=schell
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/International_War_Crimes/War_Accountability.html

More Editorials

Free Iraq??
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
A Last Chance to Stop Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/21/opinion/21POLL.html
Liberal or Conservative Idealism?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/18/opinion/18KRIS.html
Vote France off the Island
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/opinion/09FRIE.html
There is no nation we can rebuild by ourselves
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/opinion/12FRIE.html
Why the chinese should care
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/opinion/16FRIE.html
The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08KELL.html
Saving face? {and this coming from maureen dowd!}
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/opinion/16DOWD.html
The Yes-but Parade
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/opinion/20SAFI.html
Index of NYT Editorials
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/columns/index.html

Senator Byrd's speeches against use of force
We Stand Passively Mute (February 12, 2003)
Rush to War Ignores U.S. Constitution (October 3, 2002)
Other recent speechs

More Resources on TV

Newshour with Jim Lehrer -- M-F 6PM (ch21) 7PM (ch13)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/home.html
Frontline -- Thursdays 9PM (ch13)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
McLaughlin Group -- Sundays 10AM (ch4 NBC)
http://www.mclaughlin.com/
Meet the Press -- Sundays 10:30AM (ch4 NBC)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/meetpress_front.asp

The Burden of Empire

[periodic underlining added for emphasis...]

The Burden
By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/05EMPIRE.html

A role once played by the Ottoman Empire, then by the French and the British, will now be played by a nation that has to ask whether in becoming an empire it risks losing its soul as a republic. . . .

Why should a republic take on the risks of empire? Won't it run a chance of endangering its identity as a free people? The problem is that this implies innocent options that in the case of Iraq may no longer exist. Iraq is not just about whether the United States can retain its republican virtue in a wicked world. Virtuous disengagement is no longer a possibility. Since Sept. 11, it has been about whether the republic can survive in safety at home without imperial policing abroad. . . .

The fact that states are both late and hypocritical in their adoption of human rights does not deprive them of the right to use force to defend them. The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions -- and Iraq may be one of them -- when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror.

I.

In a speech to graduating cadets at West Point in June, President Bush declared, ''America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish.'' When he spoke to veterans assembled at the White House in November, he said: America has ''no territorial ambitions. We don't seek an empire. Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others.''

Ever since George Washington warned his countrymen against foreign entanglements, empire abroad has been seen as the republic's permanent temptation and its potential nemesis. Yet what word but ''empire'' describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? It is the only nation that polices the world through five global military commands; maintains more than a million men and women at arms on four continents; deploys carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean; guarantees the survival of countries from Israel to South Korea; drives the wheels of global trade and commerce; and fills the hearts and minds of an entire planet with its dreams and desires.

A historian once remarked that Britain acquired its empire in ''a fit of absence of mind.'' If Americans have an empire, they have acquired it in a state of deep denial. But Sept. 11 was an awakening, a moment of reckoning with the extent of American power and the avenging hatreds it arouses. Americans may not have thought of the World Trade Center or the Pentagon as the symbolic headquarters of a world empire, but the men with the box cutters certainly did, and so do numberless millions who cheered their terrifying exercise in the propaganda of the deed.

Being an imperial power, however, is more than being the most powerful nation or just the most hated one. It means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest. It means laying down the rules America wants (on everything from markets to weapons of mass destruction) while exempting itself from other rules (the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the International Criminal Court) that go against its interest. It also means carrying out imperial functions in places America has inherited from the failed empires of the 20th century -- Ottoman, British and Soviet. In the 21st century, America rules alone, struggling to manage the insurgent zones -- Palestine and the northwest frontier of Pakistan, to name but two -- that have proved to be the nemeses of empires past.

Iraq lays bare the realities of America's new role. Iraq itself is an imperial fiction, cobbled together at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 by the French and British and held together by force and violence since independence. Now an expansionist rights violator holds it together with terror. The United Nations lay dozing like a dog before the fire, happy to ignore Saddam, until an American president seized it by the scruff of the neck and made it bark. Multilateral solutions to the world's problems are all very well, but they have no teeth unless America bares its fangs.

America's empire is not like empires of times past, built on colonies, conquest and the white man's burden. We are no longer in the era of the United Fruit Company, when American corporations needed the Marines to secure their investments overseas. The 21st century imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science, an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known. It is the imperialism of a people who remember that their country secured its independence by revolt against an empire, and who like to think of themselves as the friend of freedom everywhere. It is an empire without consciousness of itself as such, constantly shocked that its good intentions arouse resentment abroad. But that does not make it any less of an empire, with a conviction that it alone, in Herman Melville's words, bears ''the ark of the liberties of the world.''

In this vein, the president's National Security Strategy, announced in September, commits America to lead other nations toward ''the single sustainable model for national success,'' by which he meant free markets and liberal democracy. This is strange rhetoric for a Texas politician who ran for office opposing nation-building abroad and calling for a more humble America overseas. But Sept. 11 changed everyone, including a laconic and anti-rhetorical president. His messianic note may be new to him, but it is not new to his office. It has been present in the American vocabulary at least since Woodrow Wilson went to Versailles in 1919 and told the world that he wanted to make it safe for democracy.

Ever since Wilson, presidents have sounded the same redemptive note while ''frantically avoiding recognition of the imperialism that we in fact exercise,'' as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said in 1960. Even now, as President Bush appears to be maneuvering the country toward war with Iraq, the deepest implication of what is happening has not been fully faced: that Iraq is an imperial operation that would commit a reluctant republic to become the guarantor of peace, stability, democratization and oil supplies in a combustible region of Islamic peoples stretching from Egypt to Afghanistan. A role once played by the Ottoman Empire, then by the French and the British, will now be played by a nation that has to ask whether in becoming an empire it risks losing its soul as a republic.

As the United States faces this moment of truth, John Quincy Adams's warning of 1821 remains stark and pertinent: if America were tempted to ''become the dictatress of the world, she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.'' What empires lavish abroad, they cannot spend on good republican government at home: on hospitals or roads or schools. A distended military budget only aggravates America's continuing failure to keep its egalitarian promise to itself. And these are not the only costs of empire. Detaining two American citizens without charge or access to counsel in military brigs, maintaining illegal combatants on a foreign island in a legal limbo, keeping lawful aliens under permanent surveillance while deporting others after secret hearings: these are not the actions of a republic that lives by the rule of law but of an imperial power reluctant to trust its own liberties. Such actions may still be a long way short of Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese, but that may mean only that the worst -- following, say, another large attack on United States citizens that produces mass casualties -- is yet to come.

The impending operation in Iraq is thus a defining moment in America's long debate with itself about whether its overseas role as an empire threatens or strengthens its existence as a republic. The American electorate, while still supporting the president, wonders whether his proclamation of a war without end against terrorists and tyrants may only increase its vulnerability while endangering its liberties and its economic health at home. A nation that rarely counts the cost of what it really values now must ask what the ''liberation'' of Iraq is worth. A republic that has paid a tiny burden to maintain its empire -- no more than about 4 percent of its gross domestic product -- now contemplates a bill that is altogether steeper. Even if victory is rapid, a war in Iraq and a postwar occupation may cost anywhere from $120 billion to $200 billion.

What every schoolchild also knows about empires is that they eventually face nemeses. To call America the new Rome is at once to recall Rome's glory and its eventual fate at the hands of the barbarians. A confident and carefree republic -- the city on a hill, whose people have always believed they are immune from history's harms -- now has to confront not just an unending imperial destiny but also a remote possibility that seems to haunt the history of empire: hubris followed by defeat.

II.

Even at this late date, it is still possible to ask: Why should a republic take on the risks of empire? Won't it run a chance of endangering its identity as a free people? The problem is that this implies innocent options that in the case of Iraq may no longer exist. Iraq is not just about whether the United States can retain its republican virtue in a wicked world. Virtuous disengagement is no longer a possibility. Since Sept. 11, it has been about whether the republic can survive in safety at home without imperial policing abroad. Face to face with ''evil empires'' of the past, the republic reluctantly accepted a division of the world based on mutually assured destruction. But now it faces much less stable and reliable opponents -- rogue states like Iraq and North Korea with the potential to supply weapons of mass destruction to a terrorist internationale. Iraq represents the first in a series of struggles to contain the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the first attempt to shut off the potential supply of lethal technologies to a global terrorist network.

Containment rather than war would be the better course, but the Bush administration seems to have concluded that containment has reached its limits -- and the conclusion is not unreasonable. Containment is not designed to stop production of sarin, VX nerve gas, anthrax and nuclear weapons. Threatened retaliation might deter Saddam from using these weapons, but his continued development of them increases his capacity to intimidate and deter others, including the United States. Already his weapons have sharply raised the cost of any invasion, and as time goes by this could become prohibitive. The possibility that North Korea might quickly develop weapons of mass destruction makes regime change on the Korean peninsula all but unthinkable. Weapons of mass destruction would render Saddam the master of a region that, because it has so much of the world's proven oil reserves, makes it what a military strategist would call the empire's center of gravity.

Iraq may claim to have ceased manufacturing these weapons after 1991, but these claims remain unconvincing, because inspectors found evidence of activity after that date. So what to do? Efforts to embargo and sanction the regime have hurt only the Iraqi people. What is left? An inspections program, even a permanent one, might slow the dictator's weapons programs down, but inspections are easily evaded. That leaves us, but only as a reluctant last resort, with regime change.

Regime change is an imperial task par excellence, since it assumes that the empire's interest has a right to trump the sovereignty of a state. The Bush administration would ask, What moral authority rests with a sovereign who murders and ethnically cleanses his own people, has twice invaded neighboring countries and usurps his people's wealth in order to build palaces and lethal weapons? And the administration is not alone. Not even Kofi Annan, the secretary general, charged with defending the United Nations Charter, says that sovereignty confers impunity for such crimes, though he has made it clear he would prefer to leave a disarmed Saddam in power rather than risk the conflagration of war to unseat him.

Regime change also raises the difficult question for Americans of whether their own freedom entails a duty to defend the freedom of others beyond their borders. The precedents here are inconclusive. Just because Wilson and Roosevelt sent Americans to fight and die for freedom in Europe and Asia doesn't mean their successors are committed to this duty everywhere and forever. The war in Vietnam was sold to a skeptical American public as another battle for freedom, and it led the republic into defeat and disgrace.

Yet it remains a fact -- as disagreeable to those left wingers who regard American imperialism as the root of all evil as it is to the right-wing isolationists, who believe that the world beyond our shores is none of our business -- that there are many peoples who owe their freedom to an exercise of American military power. It's not just the Japanese and the Germans, who became democrats under the watchful eye of Generals MacArthur and Clay. There are the Bosnians, whose nation survived because American air power and diplomacy forced an end to a war the Europeans couldn't stop. There are the Kosovars, who would still be imprisoned in Serbia if not for Gen. Wesley Clark and the Air Force. The list of people whose freedom depends on American air and ground power also includes the Afghans and, most inconveniently of all, the Iraqis.

The moral evaluation of empire gets complicated when one of its benefits might be freedom for the oppressed. Iraqi exiles are adamant: even if the Iraqi people might be the immediate victims of an American attack, they would also be its ultimate beneficiaries. It would make the case for military intervention easier, of course, if the Iraqi exiles cut a more impressive figure. They feud and squabble and hate one another nearly as much as they hate Saddam. But what else is to be expected from a political culture pulverized by 40 years of state terror?

If only invasion, and not containment, can build democracy in Iraq, then the question becomes whether the Bush administration actually has any real intention of doing so. The exiles fear that a mere change of regime, a coup in which one Baathist thug replaces another, would suit American interests just as well, provided the thug complied with the interests of the Pentagon and American oil companies. Whenever it has exerted power overseas, America has never been sure whether it values stability -- which means not only political stability but also the steady, profitable flow of goods and raw materials -- more than it values its own rhetoric about democracy. Where the two values have collided, American power has come down heavily on the side of stability, for example, toppling democratically elected leaders from Mossadegh in Iran to Allende in Chile. Iraq is yet another test of this choice. Next door in Iran, from the 1950's to the 1970's, America backed stability over democracy, propping up the autocratic rule of the shah, only to reap the whirlwind of an Islamic fundamentalist revolution in 1979 that delivered neither stability nor real democracy. Does the same fate await an American operation in Iraq?

International human rights groups, like Amnesty International, are dismayed at the way both the British government of Tony Blair and the Bush administration are citing the human rights abuses of Saddam to defend the idea of regime change. Certainly the British and the American governments maintained a complicit and dishonorable silence when Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988. Yet now that the two governments are taking decisive action, human rights groups seem more outraged by the prospect of action than they are by the abuses they once denounced. The fact that states are both late and hypocritical in their adoption of human rights does not deprive them of the right to use force to defend them.

The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions -- and Iraq may be one of them -- when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror. This does not mean the choice is morally unproblematic. The choice is one between two evils, between containing and leaving a tyrant in place and the targeted use of force, which will kill people but free a nation from the tyrant's grip.

III.

Still, the claim that a free republic may sense a duty to help other people attain their freedom does not answer the prudential question of whether the republic should run such risks. For the risks are huge, and they are imperial. Order, let alone democracy, will take a decade to consolidate in Iraq. The Iraqi opposition's blueprints for a democratic and secular federation of Iraq's component peoples -- Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans and others -- are noble documents, but they are just paper unless American and then international troops, under United Nations mandate, remain to keep the peace until Iraqis trust one another sufficiently to police themselves. Like all imperial exercises in creating order, it will work only if the puppets the Americans install cease to be puppets and build independent political legitimacy of their own.

If America takes on Iraq, it takes on the reordering of the whole region. It will have to stick at it through many successive administrations. The burden of empire is of long duration, and democracies are impatient with long-lasting burdens -- none more so than America. These burdens include opening up a dialogue with the Iranians, who appear to be in a political upsurge themselves, so that they do not feel threatened by a United States-led democracy on their border. The Turks will have to be reassured, and the Kurds will have to be instructed that the real aim of United States policy is not the creation of a Kurdish state that goes on to dismember Turkey. The Syrians will have to be coaxed into abandoning their claims against the Israelis and making peace. The Saudis, once democracy takes root next door in Iraq, will have to be coaxed into embracing democratic change themselves.

All this is possible, but there is a larger challenge still. Unseating an Arab government in Iraq while leaving the Palestinians to face Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships is a virtual guarantee of unending Islamic wrath against the United States. The chief danger in the whole Iraqi gamble lies here -- in supposing that victory over Saddam, in the absence of a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, would leave the United States with a stable hegemony over the Middle East. Absent a Middle East peace, victory in Iraq would still leave the Palestinians face to face with the Israelis in a conflict in which they would destroy not only each other but American authority in the Islamic world as well.

The Americans have played imperial guarantor in the region since Roosevelt met with Ibn Saud in 1945 and Truman recognized Ben-Gurion's Israel in 1948. But it paid little or no price for its imperial pre-eminence until the rise of an armed Palestinian resistance after 1987. Now, with every day that American power appears complicit in Israeli attacks that kill civilians in the West Bank and in Gaza, and with the Arab nations giving their tacit support to Palestinian suicide bombers, the imperial guarantor finds itself dragged into a regional conflict that is one long hemorrhage of its diplomatic and military authority.

Properly understood, then, the operation in Iraq entails a commitment, so far unstated, to enforce a peace on the Palestinians and Israelis. Such a peace must, at a minimum, give the Palestinians a viable, contiguous state capable of providing land and employment for three million people. It must include a commitment to rebuild their shattered government infrastructure, possibly through a United Nations transitional administration, with U.N.-mandated peacekeepers to provide security for Israelis and Palestinians. This is an awesomely tall order, but if America cannot find the will to enforce this minimum of justice, neither it nor Israel will have any safety from terror. This remains true even if you accept that there are terrorists in the Arab world who will never be content unless Israel is driven into the sea. A successful American political strategy against terror depends on providing enough peace for both Israelis and Palestinians that extremists on either side begin to lose the support that keeps violence alive.

Paradoxically, reducing the size of the task does not reduce the risks. If an invasion of Iraq is delinked from Middle East peace, then all America will gain for victory in Iraq is more terror cells in the Muslim world. If America goes on to help the Palestinians achieve a state, the result will not win over those, like Osama bin Laden, who hate America for what it is. But at least it would address the rage of those who hate it for what it does.

This is finally what makes an invasion of Iraq an imperial act: for it to succeed, it will have to build freedom, not just for the Iraqis but also for the Palestinians, along with a greater sense of security for Israel. Again, the paradox of the Iraq operation is that half measures are more dangerous than whole measures. Imperial powers do not have the luxury of timidity, for timidity is not prudence; it is a confession of weakness.

IV.

The question, then, is not whether America is too powerful but whether it is powerful enough. Does it have what it takes to be grandmaster of what Colin Powell has called the chessboard of the world's most inflammable region?

America has been more successful than most great powers in understanding its strengths as well as its limitations. It has become adept at using what is called soft power -- influence, example and persuasion -- in preference to hard power. Adepts of soft power understand that even the most powerful country in the world can't get its way all the time. Even client states have to be deferred to. When an ally like Saudi Arabia asks the United States to avoid flying over its country when bombing Afghanistan, America complies. When America seeks to use Turkey as a base for hostilities in Iraq, it must accept Turkish preconditions. Being an empire doesn't mean being omnipotent.

Nowhere is this clearer than in America's relations with Israel. America's ally is anything but a client state. Its prime minister has refused direct orders from the president of the United States in the past, and he can be counted on to do so again. An Iraq operation requires the United States not merely to prevent Israel from entering the fray but to make peace with a bitter enemy. Since 1948, American and Israeli security interests have been at one. But as the death struggle in Palestine continues, it exposes the United States to global hatreds that make it impossible for it to align its interests with those Israelis who are opposed to any settlement with the Palestinians that does not amount, in effect, to Palestinian capitulation. The issue is not whether the United States should continue to support the state of Israel, but which state, with which borders and which set of relations with its neighbors, it is willing to risk its imperial authority to secure. The apocalyptic violence of one side and the justified refusal to negotiate under fire on the other side leave precious little time to salvage a two-state solution for the Middle East. But this, even more than rescuing Iraq, is the supreme task -- and test -- of American leadership.

V.

What assets does American leadership have at its disposal? At a time when an imperial peace in the Middle East requires diplomats, aid workers and civilians with all the skills in rebuilding shattered societies, American power projection in the area overwhelmingly wears a military uniform. ''Every great power, whatever its ideology,'' Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once wrote, ''has its warrior caste.'' Without realizing the consequences of what they were doing, successive American presidents have turned the projection of American power to the warrior caste, according to the findings of research by Robert J. Lieber of Georgetown University. In President Kennedy's time, Lieber has found, the United States spent 1 percent of its G.D.P. on the nonmilitary aspects of promoting its influence overseas -- State Department, foreign aid, the United Nations, information programs. Under Bush's presidency, the number has declined to just 0.2 percent.

Special Forces are more in evidence in the world's developing nations than Peace Corps volunteers and USAID food experts. As Dana Priest demonstrates in ''The Mission,'' a soon-to-be-published study of the American military, the Pentagon's regional commanders exercise more overseas diplomatic and political leverage than the State Department's ambassadors. Even if you accept that generals can make good diplomats and Special Forces captains can make friends for the United States, it still remains true that the American presence overseas is increasingly armed, in uniform and behind barbed wire and high walls. With every American Embassy now hardened against terrorist attack, the empire's overseas outposts look increasingly like Fort Apache. American power is visible to the world in carrier battle groups patrolling offshore and F-16's whistling overhead. In southern Afghanistan, it is the 82nd Airborne, bulked up in body armor, helmets and weapons, that Pashtun peasants see, not American aid workers and water engineers. Each month the United States spends an estimated $1 billion on military operations in Afghanistan and only $25 million on aid.

This sort of projection of power, hunkered down against attack, can earn the United States fear and respect, but not admiration and affection. America's very strength -- in military power -- cannot conceal its weakness in the areas that really matter: the elements of power that do not subdue by force of arms but inspire by force of example.

VI.

It is unsurprising that force projection overseas should awaken resentment among America's enemies. More troubling is the hostility it arouses among friends, those whose security is guaranteed by American power. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Europe. At a moment when the costs of empire are mounting for America, her rich European allies matter financially. But in America's emerging global strategy, they have been demoted to reluctant junior partners. This makes them resentful and unwilling allies, less and less able to understand the nation that liberated them in 1945.

For 50 years, Europe rebuilt itself economically while passing on the costs of its defense to the United States. This was a matter of more than just reducing its armed forces and the proportion of national income spent on the military. All Western European countries reduced the martial elements in their national identities. In the process, European identity (with the possible exception of Britain) became postmilitary and postnational. This opened a widening gap with the United States. It remained a nation in which flag, sacrifice and martial honor are central to national identity. Europeans who had once invented the idea of the martial nation-state now looked at American patriotism, the last example of the form, and no longer recognized it as anything but flag-waving extremism. The world's only empire was isolated, not just because it was the biggest power but also because it was the West's last military nation-state.

Sept. 11 rubbed in the lesson that global power is still measured by military capability. The Europeans discovered that they lacked the military instruments to be taken seriously and that their erstwhile defenders, the Americans, regarded them, in a moment of crisis, with suspicious contempt.

Yet the Americans cannot afford to create a global order all on their own. European participation in peacekeeping, nation-building and humanitarian reconstruction is so important that the Americans are required, even when they are unwilling to do so, to include Europeans in the governance of their evolving imperial project. The Americans essentially dictate Europe's place in this new grand design. The United States is multilateral when it wants to be, unilateral when it must be; and it enforces a new division of labor in which America does the fighting, the French, British and Germans do the police patrols in the border zones and the Dutch, Swiss and Scandinavians provide the humanitarian aid.

This is a very different picture of the world than the one entertained by liberal international lawyers and human rights activists who had hoped to see American power integrated into a transnational legal and economic order organized around the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court and other international human rights and environmental institutions and mechanisms. Successive American administrations have signed on to those pieces of the transnational legal order that suit their purposes (the World Trade Organization, for example) while ignoring or even sabotaging those parts (the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocol) that do not. A new international order is emerging, but it is designed to suit American imperial objectives. America's allies want a multilateral order that will essentially constrain American power. But the empire will not be tied down like Gulliver with a thousand legal strings.

VII.

On the new imperial frontier, in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, American military power, together with European money and humanitarian motives, is producing a form of imperial rule for a postimperial age. If this sounds contradictory, it is because the impulses that have gone into this new exercise of power are contradictory. On the one hand, the semiofficial ideology of the Western world -- human rights -- sustains the principle of self-determination, the right of each people to rule themselves free of outside interference. This was the ethical principle that inspired the decolonization of Asia and Africa after World War II. Now we are living through the collapse of many of these former colonial states. Into the resulting vacuum of chaos and massacre a new imperialism has reluctantly stepped -- reluctantly because these places are dangerous and because they seemed, at least until Sept. 11, to be marginal to the interests of the powers concerned. But, gradually, this reluctance has been replaced by an understanding of why order needs to be brought to these places.

Nowhere, after all, could have been more distant than Afghanistan, yet that remote and desperate place was where the attacks of Sept. 11 were prepared. Terror has collapsed distance, and with this collapse has come a sharpened American focus on the necessity of bringing order to the frontier zones. Bringing order is the paradigmatic imperial task, but it is essential, for reasons of both economy and principle, to do so without denying local peoples their rights to some degree of self-determination.

The old European imperialism justified itself as a mission to civilize, to prepare tribes and so-called lesser breeds in the habits of self-discipline necessary for the exercise of self-rule. Self-rule did not necessarily have to happen soon -- the imperial administrators hoped to enjoy the sunset as long as possible -- but it was held out as a distant incentive, and the incentive was crucial in co-opting local elites and preventing them from passing into open rebellion. In the new imperialism, this promise of self-rule cannot be kept so distant, for local elites are all creations of modern nationalism, and modern nationalism's primary ethical content is self-determination. If there is an invasion of Iraq, local elites must be ''empowered'' to take over as soon as the American imperial forces have restored order and the European humanitarians have rebuilt the roads, schools and houses. Nation-building seeks to reconcile imperial power and local self-determination through the medium of an exit strategy. This is imperialism in a hurry: to spend money, to get results, to turn the place back to the locals and get out. But it is similar to the old imperialism in the sense that real power in these zones -- Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and soon, perhaps, Iraq -- will remain in Washington.

VIII.

At the beginning of the first volume of ''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,'' published in 1776, Edward Gibbon remarked that empires endure only so long as their rulers take care not to overextend their borders. Augustus bequeathed his successors an empire ''within those limits which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries: on the west the Atlantic Ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa.'' Beyond these boundaries lay the barbarians. But the ''vanity or ignorance'' of the Romans, Gibbon went on, led them to ''despise and sometimes to forget the outlying countries that had been left in the enjoyment of a barbarous independence.'' As a result, the proud Romans were lulled into making the fatal mistake of ''confounding the Roman monarchy with the globe of the earth.''

This characteristic delusion of imperial power is to confuse global power with global domination. The Americans may have the former, but they do not have the latter. They cannot rebuild each failed state or appease each anti-American hatred, and the more they try, the more they expose themselves to the overreach that eventually undermined the classical empires of old.

The secretary of defense may be right when he warns the North Koreans that America is capable of fighting on two fronts -- in Korea and Iraq -- simultaneously, but Americans at home cannot be overjoyed at such a prospect, and if two fronts are possible at once, a much larger number of fronts is not. If conflict in Iraq, North Korea or both becomes a possibility, Al Qaeda can be counted on to seek to strike a busy and overextended empire in the back. What this suggests is not just that overwhelming power never confers the security it promises but also that even the overwhelmingly powerful need friends and allies. In the cold war, the road to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, led through Moscow and Beijing. Now America needs its old cold war adversaries more than ever to control the breakaway, bankrupt Communist rogue that is threatening America and her clients from Tokyo to Seoul.

Empires survive when they understand that diplomacy, backed by force, is always to be preferred to force alone. Looking into the still more distant future, say a generation ahead, resurgent Russia and China will demand recognition both as world powers and as regional hegemons. As the North Korean case shows, America needs to share the policing of nonproliferation and other threats with these powers, and if it tries, as the current National Security Strategy suggests, to prevent the emergence of any competitor to American global dominance, it risks everything that Gibbon predicted: overextension followed by defeat.

America will also remain vulnerable, despite its overwhelming military power, because its primary enemy, Iraq and North Korea notwithstanding, is not a state, susceptible to deterrence, influence and coercion, but a shadowy cell of fanatics who have proved that they cannot be deterred and coerced and who have hijacked a global ideology -- Islam -- that gives them a bottomless supply of recruits and allies in a war, a war not just against America but against her client regimes in the Islamic world. In many countries in that part of the world, America is caught in the middle of a civil war raging between incompetent and authoritarian regimes and the Islamic revolutionaries who want to return the Arab world to the time of the prophet. It is a civil war between the politics of pure reaction and the politics of the impossible, with America unfortunately aligned on the side of reaction. On Sept. 11, the American empire discovered that in the Middle East its local pillars were literally built on sand.

Until Sept. 11, successive United States administrations treated their Middle Eastern clients like gas stations. This was part of a larger pattern. After 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet empire, American presidents thought they could have imperial domination on the cheap, ruling the world without putting in place any new imperial architecture -- new military alliances, new legal institutions, new international development organisms -- for a postcolonial, post-Soviet world.

The Greeks taught the Romans to call this failure hubris. It was also, in the 1990's, a general failure of the historical imagination, an inability of the post-cold-war West to grasp that the emerging crisis of state order in so many overlapping zones of the world -- from Egypt to Afghanistan -- would eventually become a security threat at home. Radical Islam would never have succeeded in winning adherents if the Muslim countries that won independence from the European empires had been able to convert dreams of self-determination into the reality of competent, rule-abiding states. America has inherited this crisis of self-determination from the empires of the past. Its solution -- to create democracy in Iraq, then hopefully roll out the same happy experiment throughout the Middle East -- is both noble and dangerous: noble because, if successful, it will finally give these peoples the self-determination they vainly fought for against the empires of the past; dangerous because, if it fails, there will be nobody left to blame but the Americans.

The dual nemeses of empire in the 20th century were nationalism, the desire of peoples to rule themselves free of alien domination, and narcissism, the incurable delusion of imperial rulers that the ''lesser breeds'' aspired only to be versions of themselves. Both nationalism and narcissism have threatened the American reassertion of global power since Sept. 11.

IX.

As the Iraqi operation looms, it is worth keeping Vietnam in mind. Vietnam was a titanic clash between two nation-building strategies, the Americans in support of the South Vietnamese versus the Communists in the north. Yet it proved impossible for foreigners to build stability in a divided country against resistance from a Communist elite fighting in the name of the Vietnamese nation. Vietnam is now one country, its civil war over and its long-term stability assured. An American operation in Iraq will not face a competing nationalist project, but across the Islamic world it will rouse the nationalist passions of people who want to rule themselves and worship as they please. As Vietnam shows, empire is no match, long-term, for nationalism.

America's success in the 20th century owed a great deal to the shrewd understanding that America's interest lay in aligning itself with freedom. Franklin Roosevelt, for example, told his advisers at Yalta in 1945, when he was dividing up the postwar world with Churchill and Stalin, that there were more than a billion ''brown people'' living in Asia, ''ruled by a handful of whites.'' They resent it, the president mused aloud. America's goal, he said, ''must be to help them achieve independence -- 1,100,000,000 enemies are dangerous.''

The core beliefs of our time are the creations of the anticolonial revolt against empire: the idea that all human beings are equal and that each human group has a right to rule itself free of foreign interference. It is at least ironic that American believers in these ideas have ended up supporting the creation of a new form of temporary colonial tutelage for Bosnians, Kosovars and Afghans -- and could for Iraqis. The reason is simply that, however right these principles may be, the political form in which they are realized -- the nationalist nation-building project -- so often delivers liberated colonies straight to tyranny, as in the case of Baath Party rule in Iraq, or straight to chaos, as in Bosnia or Afghanistan. For every nationalist struggle that succeeds in giving its people self-determination and dignity, there are more that deliver their people only up to slaughter or terror or both. For every Vietnam brought about by nationalist struggle, there is a Palestinian struggle trapped in a downward spiral of terror and military oppression.

The age of empire ought to have been succeeded by an age of independent, equal and self-governing nation-states. But that has not come to pass. America has inherited a world scarred not just by the failures of empires past but also by the failure of nationalist movements to create and secure free states -- and now, suddenly, by the desire of Islamists to build theocratic tyrannies on the ruins of failed nationalist dreams.

Those who want America to remain a republic rather than become an empire imagine rightly, but they have not factored in what tyranny or chaos can do to vital American interests. The case for empire is that it has become, in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike. Even so, empires survive only by understanding their limits. Sept. 11 pitched the Islamic world into the beginning of a long and bloody struggle to determine how it will be ruled and by whom: the authoritarians, the Islamists or perhaps the democrats. America can help repress and contain the struggle, but even though its own security depends on the outcome, it cannot ultimately control it. Only a very deluded imperialist would believe otherwise.

Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, has written recently for The Times Magazine about Bosnia and Afghanistan. He is a contributing writer for the magazine.

Free Iraq??

The Gridlock Gang
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/opinion/26FRIE.html

William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of The Times of London, raised a very important question in an essay he wrote after watching the recent, massive antiwar demonstrations in Europe. Referring to the various banners carried by protesters, he noted: "There was, I thought, one slogan which was missing. There were quite a number which called for `Freedom for Palestine' [but] I looked in vain for one which called for `Freedom for Iraq.' . . . None of the speakers expressed any wish to free Iraq. . . ."

Mr. Rees-Mogg is quite right. When it comes to the Middle East, the whole issue of democratization and better governance simply is not part of the debate over the future. To the extent that it is, it is used as a tool to beat up on enemies, not a supreme value to be promoted for everyone.

Let's start with the Europeans. There is only one group of Arabs for whom Europeans have consistently spoken out in favor of their liberation — and that is those Arabs living under Israeli occupation, the Palestinians. Those Arabs who have been living under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein or other Arab dictators are of no concern to President Jacques Chirac of France and his fellow travelers.

We all know what this is about: the Jewish question. "For too many Europeans, Arabs are of no moral interest in and of themselves," observes the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen. "They only become of interest if they are fighting Jews or being manhandled by Jews. Then their liberation becomes paramount, because calling for it is a way to stick it to the Jews. Europeans' demonstrations for a free Palestine — and not for a free Iraq or any other Arab country — smell too much like a politically correct form of anti-Semitism, part of a very old story."

The truth is, France is not interested in promoting égalité, fraternité and liberté in the Middle East. It is primarily interested today in managing American power. It is primarily interested in positioning France to become the world's next great "Uncola," the leader of the alternative coalition to American power.

In fairness, though, before now the U.S. has never shown much interest in Arab democracy either. It treated the Arab states like big, dumb gas stations, and all the U.S. cared about was that they kept their pumps open and their prices low. Otherwise they could do whatever they wanted to their own people at home or out back.

Only after 9/11, as we realized that what was going on out back in these countries threatened us, did the U.S. begin to call for democracy in the Arab world — but only to get rid of Yasir Arafat and to punish those Arab regimes it did not like, namely Saddam Hussein's. You still have not seen any serious democratization effort being directed at Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Kuwait. For America, government of the people, by the people and for the people is only for our enemies, not our friends.

But then, other than a few courageous Arab liberals, Arab intellectuals have not made democracy promotion a supreme value either. In part it's because liberating Palestine has always been treated by them as a more important political value. And in part it's because many Arab societies are still so tribalized, and have such a weak sense of citizenship, they fear that democracy could bring forth fundamentalists, a rival tribe or anarchy. Hence the Arab saying: "Better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy."

Ironically, 9/11 began to change this view. You can see it in the lack of Arab support for Saddam. There is a much deeper awareness that leaders like Saddam are what have retarded Arab development. "But because Arab peoples and systems have never developed their own way of getting rid of bad leaders, they can only look to outsiders to do it — and that evokes the worst memories of imperialism and colonialism," notes Mr. Cohen. "They don't want to get rid of Saddam at the cost of being controlled by Americans." So they are paralyzed — wanting their Saddams removed, but deeply afraid of who will do it and what will come next.

What all this means is that when it comes to building democracy in Iraq, the Europeans are uninterested, the Americans are hypocritical and the Arabs are ambivalent. Therefore, undertaking a successful democratization project there, in a way that will stimulate positive reform throughout the region, will require a real revolution in thinking all around — among Americans, Arabs and Europeans. If done right, the Middle East will never be the same. If done wrong, the world will never be the same.

Bomb Blasts Wound 9 at 2 Beijing Universities

Bomb Blasts Wound 9 at 2 Beijing Universities
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/international/asia/26CHIN.html

BEIJING, Feb. 25 — Explosions apparently caused by homemade bombs ripped through cafeterias at two of China's most prominent universities around lunchtime today, Chinese officials and students said. At least nine people were wounded.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts at Qinghua and Beijing Universities and the motive was unclear, although the police were not calling it terrorism.

The first blast, at about 11:40 a.m., took place in a new upscale restaurant favored by faculty members at Qinghua University. The second, less than two hours later, was strong enough to blow out panels of glass at the Nongyuan cafeteria at Beijing University.

The police said the blasts appeared to have been caused by bombs made with dynamite. Students said the smell of gunpowder hung in the air. Within hours, the buildings housing the two cafeterias were cordoned off, and the immediate areas were patrolled by the police and members of China's State Security forces.

But elsewhere on the two bustling campuses, it was business as usual on a foggy late winter's day, with students heading to classes, dinners and films; and although some students expressed alarm that such violence could intrude on this usually quiet setting, most took the news in stride.

"I heard the explosion, and it was a bit scary at first, but that passed very quickly since at first everyone thought it was just an accident," said a Beijing University undergraduate in jeans and a black down jacket who identified himself only by his surname, Tao.

"If this was America, by now I bet they would have evacuated the campus," he said. "But that's not happening here."

Most of the wounded were university workers and none were students. Tonight, the electronic bulletin board for Beijing University, normally a hotbed of student gossip, contained only official notices about the incident as well as a request for witnesses to come forward — suggesting that student comments were being censored.

Most students on the campus said they felt that the blasts were probably related to personal grudges or revenge. "Why would a terrorist set off little explosions at two university cafeterias?" asked Jian Qi, a graduate student at Beijing University.

In a country where lawsuits and the court system are unreliable venues for those seeking justice, disgruntled citizens often solve disputes themselves. Guns are illegal, but small homemade bombs have been used as weapons because explosives are inexpensive and easy to buy.

The police in Beijing were already on heightened alert because China's yearly Parliament, the National People's Congress, meets next week. The meeting this year is particularly important because it will be the backdrop for a leadership change, a rare event in China, with the current president, Jiang Zemin, retiring.

Still, security on the two campuses was surprisingly light tonight. For many years after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, all visitors to Beijing University were screened by police guards at the gates, because many of the student organizers were affiliated with the university.

But that practice has recently waned, and tonight there was no attempt to check identification papers or parcels carried onto the campus.

Hong Kong Reducing Benefits and Wages

Hong Kong Reducing Benefits and Wages
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/international/asia/26HONG.html

HONG KONG, Feb. 25 — The leaders of this autonomous Chinese territory announced reductions in pay and welfare today that are expected to inflict the pain of deflation on hundreds of thousands of families.

To reflect the lower cost of many household expenses, especially rent, utilities and durable goods like washing machines and air conditioners, welfare benefits are to be lowered by 11.1 percent and civil service pay by 6 percent.

Consumer prices have dropped 13 percent here since 1999, a pace much steeper even than Japan's deflation, with only limited relief in sight. Yet welfare benefits have been unchanged since 1999, while civil service wages have risen slightly.

Government officials tried today to portray the reductions as having little effect on recipients' long-term standards of living, and as necessary steps to address Hong Kong's growing budget deficit. "This is not and should not be regarded as welfare cuts," said Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, the secretary for health, welfare and food.

Yet the effects of the reductions are likely to vary widely, depending on how government workers and welfare recipients spend their money. The main losers are likely to be the many people who bought condominiums during a real estate bubble in the 1990's and are now stuck with high mortgage payments and unable to take advantage of falling rents.

Civil servants are particularly likely to own their homes and find that their personal costs have not fallen as much as the government's price indices show. About 55 percent of Hong Kong residents own their homes, which are almost all apartments, not free-standing houses, a result of a severe shortage of land.

Residential rents for apartments owned by private landlords have been falling twice as fast as overall deflation, while prices for many other products, like food, have changed fairly little. But many welfare recipients live in Hong Kong's extensive public housing, where rents have not fallen as much. The full reduction in welfare benefits will take effect on June 1 for the able-bodied, and will be phased in by October 2004 for the elderly, people with disabilities or the medically unfit.

Civil servants' pay is to be reduced in two stages by Jan. 1, 2005, to levels prevailing in July 1997, when Britain gave the territory to China. This will mean a 6 percent cut for all but the most senior bureaucrats, who have received few recent raises.

The changes for welfare recipients and government workers had been widely rumored in the last few days as Hong Kong's leaders stepped up their warnings about the territory's poor fiscal health.

Deflation and weak economic growth have eroded tax revenues, while a steep decline in property prices has hurt government profits from the sale of land leases.

Hong Kong's three main business groups said over the weekend that they could accept an increase in the corporate profits tax of one percentage point, but they disagreed on the timetable.

The government received new support for its effort to control the deficit when the International Monetary Fund publicly called today for a plan to balance the budget here by 2006, warning that the deficit was approaching 6 percent of Hong Kong's economic output.

But some local economists have questioned the seriousness of the budget problem, contending that with the economy still weak, now is not the time to raise taxes or cut spending.

Vietnam Puts 155 on Trial in Graft Case

Vietnam Puts 155 on Trial in Graft Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/international/asia/26VIET.html

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Feb. 25 — A suspected underworld kingpin and 154 other defendants went on trial in Vietnam today, in a case that is testing how far the country will go to clamp down on rampant corruption.

As cameras rolled for a live television broadcast, charges were read for Truong Van Cam, a suspected organized crime boss, and the 154 other suspects, including police officers, Communist Party officials and journalists.

The case is the largest ever to reach the courts in Vietnam, which is one of the world's few remaining communist countries.

After charges were read for all of the defendants, Mr. Cam, better known as Nam Cam, slowly approached the bench for questioning. He said he had two wives and eight children. He also said that he had been running a restaurant when he was arrested in December 2001, and that he had been in trouble with the law several times for gambling.

Mr. Cam is charged with murder, bribery, gambling and sheltering criminals, and faces the death penalty if convicted. He is 55, a veteran of the defunct South Vietnamese Army and a former dockworker who is said to have taken control of a considerable chunk of Ho Chi Minh City's night life.

Several other defendants followed him to the bench for similar questioning.

Mr. Cam watched his first wife, Phan Thi Truc, walk past him after she addressed the court. She is charged with giving bribes, extortion and sheltering criminals. Mr. Cam's son, daughter, son-in-law and cousin also are defendants in the trial.

Outside the courthouse, several hundred onlookers stood on the sidewalk in the morning heat to hear the charges and Mr. Cam's statement being broadcast over loudspeakers.

"I was here very early to make sure I had a glimpse of Nam Cam," said Nguyen Van Kim of Ho Chi Minh City, who arrived at 4 a.m. "I think he will be sentenced to death."

Operating in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, the gang held such influence over the police that officers had to be brought in from other cities last December to arrest Mr. Cam and dozens of associates.

Other defendants include 13 police officers, 3 prosecutors and 3 journalists.

Finalists for Ground Zero Design Pull Out the Stops

Finalists for Ground Zero Design Pull Out the Stops
By JULIE V. IOVINE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/arts/design/26CAMP.html

Packed meetings at Town Hall, get-out-the-vote e-mails and head-to-head chats with Charlie Rose may not be as rugged and ritualized as photo-ops in the South Bronx, but in many ways the architects proposing designs for the World Trade Center site have been acting like media-age politicians.

The two finalists from an original pack of seven design teams — Daniel Libeskind from Berlin and Rafael Viñoly and Frederic Schwartz, the two front men on the Think team — grasped the political nature of the selection process from the start, playing straight to the public as if the citizens of New York City were the clients for the job.

With talk of truth and beauty, memory and monument, these architects have been selling themselves like movie stars. One firm has hired publicists; architects from both firms have been hosts of mini-salons for journalists and well-wishers at the Odeon bar and the Four Seasons Hotel, discussed their eye wear in print and made presentations to any civic or cultural group that would have them. Not since Gary Cooper appeared in "The Fountainhead" has the public been so riveted by architecture and architects.

"Usually, it's the client in the lead orchestrating the media and managing the political situation," said Robert Ivy, the editor in chief of Architectural Record magazine. "But in the absence of a strong client and with an ad hoc political entity acting as developer, it has fallen to the architects."

It has been 10 weeks since kickoff at the Winter Garden, where the highly orchestrated presentation of architectural designs for rebuilding at ground zero was as widely televised as any national convention. Since then stops along the campaign trail have included the quiet resignation of key members of one team, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, under the cloud of conflict of interest (the firm was already working for the developer Larry Silverstein); a profile of Mr. Libeskind in The New York Observer and regular appearances by Mr. Schwartz on New York Tonight, a cable program on New York One. On Monday, the finalists appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. Richard Kahan, the former chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority, said that there has never been anything like such high-profile performances by architects before a master plan, much less the design, has been completed.

"When we had architectural competitions for big things in the past like the Javits Center or Battery Park City, there was never any question who the developer was and what was going to get built," Mr. Kahan said. "All the community work was done beforehand and the design was kept under wraps. It was all very centralized."

But there are few certainties about building at ground gero, and even fewer expectations guiding the architects. Mr. Libeskind — with help from his wife, Nina, whose father served in the Canadian Parliament and whose brother is now a special envoy to Kofi Annan at the United Nations — has sought to make a public case for his scheme.

In a black leather jacket that has earned him comparisons to "Sprockets," the German intellectual played by Mike Meyers on "Saturday Night Live," Mr. Libeskind has been featured in Time magazine's new supplement on style and design. His cowboy boots and his spectacles have been written up in consecutive Sunday Styles sections of The New York Times. (Mr. Viñoly appeared there only with his eyeglasses, two pairs of them.) And Rolling Stone magazine has asked Mr. Libeskind to list a few of his favorite things.

Shortly before the finalists were selected, an e-mail message emanated from Studio Daniel Libeskind in Berlin urging friends, "in a shameless attempt to inflate public opinion," to vote for the Libeskind plan on the CNN and New York One Web site polls.

Some moves have backfired. The Libeskinds have worked their way through two New York publicists, telling the first one, Joanne Crevling, in a phone conversation from Berlin that they wanted air time with Larry King, Connie Chung and on "60 Minutes." When they hired a second publicist for an extra boost, Ms. Crevling protested and the Libeskinds moved on. "They don't understand," she said. "You can't come into this town and have a duplicate effort."

Some have felt that the personal touch has been heavy-handed. When The New York Post quoted a few negative reactions to the Libeskind scheme from the Battery Park City residents and family members of victims, Ms. Libeskind tried to contact some of them herself.

"After I was quoted in The Post," said Sudhir Jain, the president of the Battery Park Residents Coalition, "a third party called to see if I would meet with the Libeskinds to explain why I'd said what I did."

More recently, a second e-mail offensive by an employee in the Libeskind camp charged Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic of The New York Times, with favoritism following an article praising the Viñoly plan and criticizing the Libeskind one; the e-mail message called for a letter campaign of complaint to The Times. The employee quickly made a public apology; Ms. Libeskind said that she and her husband had not been told of the message in advance and were embarrassed by it.

Mr. Libeskind said the process has changed architecture. "We have no regrets," he said. "Whatever people want to talk about is fine. From now on, architecture will never be the same. There will never be a building without people talking about what is happening and what it's going to look like. From now on, architecture will be as interesting for people to talk about as the taste of wine."

Mr. Viñoly and Mr. Schwartz have had the advantage of being resident New Yorkers. Less visible in the press, they have actively courted New York's cultural and civic organizations. Mr. Viñoly has personally called or accepted invitations from the Municipal Art Society, The New York Times editorial board and the Labor Community Advocacy Network, with whom the Libeskinds had already met.

"Viñoly was eager to persuade us of his plans," said David Kallick, the coordinator for the labor group. "Libeskind on the other hand saw the project as requiring a back-and-forth process with the public as the ultimate client. He was not just campaigning."

Nikki Stern, a member of the board of Families of September 11, said that Mr. Viñoly and Mr. Schwartz had been in constant contact. Last week during a telephone interview with a reporter, she received an e-mail message from Mr. Viñoly offering to give her a ride to a lecture the architect was giving that night at a local bookstore. "They've asked me to find out what families don't understand and don't like about their design," Ms. Stern said. "I don't know how influential the families are anymore, but I appreciate their attention." Other widows have found the attention of the architects overwhelming, as if they were pushing them to choose sides, she said.

While the Libeskinds have interacted with journalists and supporters in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, Mr. Viñoly and Mr. Schwartz have held meetings at Mr. Viñoly's office, which fills an entire building downtown.

Such aggressive tactics are not the norm among architects, for whom a soft sell, like the cocktail parties at the Century Club favored by the architect I. M. Pei, is more common. But little has been ordinary about the ground zero project, and courting the public was clearly the winning approach.

The teams that behaved more aloofly are now kicking themselves.

"We were seriously behind in targeting the right people and getting across to decision makers," said Greg Lynn, an architect on the United team, a collaboration of young architectural stars from Manhattan, Los Angeles, London and Rotterdam. Referring to New York New Visions, a professional group that produced a 45-page analysis of all the schemes, Mr. Lynn added, "If we'd had half a brain we'd have called up Hugh Hardy" of New York New Visions "and trotted down to his office and explained it to him."

Other teams saw the aloof approach as taking the high ground. "We didn't promote," said Richard Meier who worked with his fellow New York architects Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and Steven Holl, calling them, at the Winter Garden presentation, "New York home team — some call us the Dream Team."

"We thought it was about the work, not promotion," he said. "We didn't behave the way the other teams behaved; it was not in the personality of our team. And it showed in the fact that we didn't get chosen."

As in the final stretch of any campaign, the gloves are coming off. A final decision is expected on Thursday, and last Thursday in an interview with the local news Web site Gotham Gazette, Mr. Libeskind dismissed the Think plan as "two skeletons in the sky." In conversations with several journalists, Mr. Viñoly has compared Mr. Libeskind's concept for the memorial site to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Will any amount of posing for the public and in the press make a difference to the decision-makers at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority? Billie Tsien, an architect on the board of the design corporation, said that the final decision would not be based on a vote but on the independent analysis of many factors. But, she added, a little chutzpah couldn't hurt.

"Whoever wins will have to be someone with the ego and an interest in manipulating the system," Ms. Tsien said. "And if getting out there now shows that they are going to hang in there for the long run and make it happen, so much the better."

Le Monde, Pride of French Press, Is Pilloried in Book

Le Monde, Pride of French Press, Is Pilloried in Book
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/international/europe/26FRAN.html

PARIS, Feb. 25 — It is France's journalistic icon, long considered a national symbol of sobriety and propriety, of moralism and slightly left-of-center centrism.

But now the daily newspaper Le Monde has been accused of abusing its power and selling its soul.

"La Face Cachée du Monde" ("The Dark Side of Le Monde"), a 631-page investigative book that will go on sale on Wednesday, tells tales of bias, conflicts of interest, hypocrisy and business mismanagement at the cherished newspaper of the French establishment that purports to speak the truth.

A "modern-day Pravda" run in a "climate of fear" is how Le Monde is described by the book's authors, Philippe Cohen, a journalist with the weekly magazine Marianne, and Pierre Péan, who exposed François Mitterrand's wartime ties to the Vichy regime of the 1940's.

Le Monde reacted swiftly to the accusations, threatening a lawsuit for libel and defending its reputation on its front page on Wednesday under the headline, "Does Le Monde Threaten France?"

The authors, respected investigative reporters, accuse the triumvirate that runs the paper — Jean-Marie Colombani, who is both editor in chief and chief executive, Edwy Plenel, the chief editor, and Alain Minc, the chairman of the board — of twisting the facts to cover up scandals, shape French politics and hide the paper's financial woes.

The authors maintain that Le Monde twisted the truth to favor certain politicians, including Édouard Balladur, the center-right presidential candidate in 1995, and Lionel Jospin, the defeated Socialist challenger to President Jacques Chirac in the 2002 presidential race.

The book also contends that Le Monde first wrote glowingly about the former president of Vivendi Universal, Jean-Marie Messier, who transformed the company from a water utility into a global media conglomerate, then turned against him viciously after a financial deal with him collapsed.

Mr. Colombani comes under particular criticism. The book quotes an anonymous source who charged that Mr. Colombani "embellished" the newspaper's books and that the group lost $28 million in two years. It describes him as a hypocrite who failed to impose the lofty ideals he called for in his editorials.

In an editorial full of gravitas but tinged with sarcasm, Le Monde wrote: "Today as in the past, Le Monde is quite flattered to be the object of so much curiosity, so many questions, so many polemics, which are transmitted these days through books. Because of their subjects these books are automatically sure to have broad media coverage and quick success in the bookstores.

"Le Monde should just be happy with the publication of a book that first of all is a collective tribute to those who help improve this newspaper. The problem is that this book asserts that we do not believe in either our projects or our convictions because we are manipulated by impostors, plotters and liars."

"Criticism is one thing, passion is another," the editorial continued, adding: "Hate is the saddest of all passions. And this book dedicated to us is, unfortunately, full of hate."

The editorial also described the book as an amalgam of "errors, lies, libels and calumnies," but added that in the interest of freedom of expression it would not seek to have it withdrawn from sale. Instead, it announced that it would initiate libel actions against the two authors, the book's publisher, Mille et Une Nuits, and L'Express Magazine, which published excerpts from the book.

Le Monde devoted a separate article to countering contentions by the authors that its accounting practices were like those used by Enron, the disgraced American energy company.

The book, which was printed as a paperback under tight security in Spain to prevent leaks, leaked nonetheless to the weekly L'Express, which published a special edition with lengthy excerpts a day before its normal publication date.

Le Canard Enchâiné, the satirical and investigative weekly, criticized the management of Le Monde for not responding to the book's criticisms. In its issue that will appear on Wednesday, the paper called the book "a litany of facts, testimony and documents that form a rude indictment against the management of the newspaper." It added that the book "can sometimes surprise with its aggressive tone," but said, "The managers of Le Monde did not answer the essential question, beyond all the polemics: what ties does Le Monde have or not have with big French companies and their managers?"

Libération, the left-of-center daily, assigned nine reporters to read and analyze the book for a two-page special report. "Colombani and Plenel will not just be able to brush off such a book," Libération said in a commentary. "Neither will they be able to avoid answering the accusations that are supported by substance."

Le Monde, which has a print run of about 400,000, was founded during the liberation of France in 1944 on the orders of Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Its simple layout, authoritative tone and highbrow style have earned it a reputation as the most important French publication in the world, and a must-read for the French elite.

Le Monde has a contract with The New York Times to publish a special weekend English-language supplement composed entirely of Times articles.

Iraqi Star Tours U.S. and Sings of Baghdad

Iraqi Star Tours U.S. and Sings of Baghdad
By NEIL STRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/arts/music/26SING.html

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Feb. 23 — In "Beauty and His Love," the singer Kazem al-Sahir confesses to his girlfriend that there is someone he loves more than her, someone whom he sleeps with every night, someone whom he dreams of daily. His distraught girlfriend begs him to reveal the name of this lover. Her name, he finally tells her, is Baghdad.

"It is one of my most popular songs," Mr. Sahir said, sitting in a restaurant at the Palms Casino Resort here for his first in-person interview since arriving in the United States from a video shoot in Morocco. "Whenever I sing it, the audience asks that I repeat it, again and again. But I will only sing it twice in a concert."

Mr. Sahir, 41, is not only Iraq's biggest pop star but also one of the most popular singers in the Arab world, a dashing romantic who has sold about 31 million albums. And as Iraq and the United States prepare for war, he has chosen to do something that almost any thinking person would say was foolish. He is starting an American tour.

It began on Saturday night with a private performance for the Maloofs, the Lebanese-American family that owns the Palms, and their guests. Mr. Sahir is scheduled to perform in Manhattan on Friday night at the Beacon Theatre.

"My friends, they didn't want me to come here now," Mr. Sahir said, conducting his first interview mostly in English since hiring a tutor two years ago. "It's a difficult time."

Brian Taylor Goldstein, the arts attorney who obtained Mr. Sahir's work visa, said: "Getting an Iraqi singer in right now was not the easiest thing in the world. And the V3 category of visa, for culturally unique performers like Kazem, has been especially difficult, because it often means the artist is coming from a non-Western culture."

It helped that Mr. Sahir had a Canadian passport, because his children and his wife, from whom he is separated, live there. Though he left Iraq in the early 1990's and has become a Canadian citizen (he has homes in Cairo, Dubai, Paris and Toronto), he still says that Iraq will always be his home. He said he felt compelled to tour so that he could "show another face of my country" and inspire Americans to "think good thoughts — not all bad thoughts — of my people."

When he sat next to Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, on a flight recently, Mr. Sahir said, he handed him a CD and wrote on it, "Don't forget about Iraqi children."

Fans of his long, symphonic, sinuous songs of romantic love include two Grammy winners: Carlos Santana, who has arranged to meet Mr. Sahir after the Iraqi singer's Berkeley show next week, and the soprano Sarah Brightman, who sang a duet with him, "The War Is Over," for her next album.

When the BBC World Service asked its listeners to come up with the "world's Top 10 favorite" songs, Mr. Sahir's "Ana wa Laila" ("Me and Laila') was No. 6, two places above Cher's "Believe."

With close-cropped black hair, a stocky build, a chiseled face, a hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans, Mr. Sahir looked more like a soccer player than a pop singer. He moved through the casino without bodyguards or an entourage, said he was not worried about his safety while in the United States, did not believe that the government here was monitoring his movement and seemed surprised when asked if it was difficult for him to get obtain a work permit.

In fact, to some degree, he seemed almost unaware that being an Iraqi in the United States today was far different from what it was 17 months ago, a change that has prevented many Middle Eastern musicians from obtaining work permits and visas. "He has no fear," said Dawn Elder, his manager in North America and Europe. "He says if something is going to happen to him, it's going to happen. He believes in living life to its fullest. And I agree: you need to not be afraid of life."

For others, to see him perform is to make a statement. Leigh-Ann Hahn, a world-music presenter who flew in from Los Angeles for the show, said: "When I told my mother I was going to an Arabic-owned resort to see an Iraqi musician, she was aghast. But I told her that he was a renowned vocalist, he was carrying a message of peace, and it was important that I have the opportunity to see him perform."

Iraq is considered by some to be the cradle of classic Arabic poetry and music, a tradition carried on by the Musical Institute of Baghdad, where Mr. Sahir studied. Born in northern Iraq, he lived in austerity with nine siblings. At age 10 he sold his bicycle to buy a guitar and started inventing romantic stories for his girlfriends. By age 13 he was not only writing love letters for his older brothers to send to girlfriends but also composing classical-based songs for his own girlfriends.

Known primarily as a songwriter for other musicians, he worked for several years to persuade the music establishment there to let him both compose and sing his own songs. And when he finally appeared on television with his own "Ladghat el Hayya" ("The Snake Bite") in 1987, it was banned for lyrics that discussed Baghdad's atmosphere of fear and restriction near the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

He soon earned a reputation for being an exacting, detail-oriented composer with one foot in the classical world and the other in the pop world. He revived traditional romantic classical music and incorporated out-of-use Arabic musical scales, paved the way for other contemporary Iraqi singers to seek fame outside the country, collaborated with some of the Arab world's finest poets and refused to replace his large orchestra with synthesizers. He is composing an opera based on the "Epic of Gilgamesh."

The Persian Gulf war and the ensuing embargo, however, had a heavy impact on his art and career, which was derailed for several years. "There was no electricity and no petrol," he recalled. "I had to bike two or three hours to see my friends. But I composed my best songs in this time."

During the bombings, he continued, he put all his music in a part of the house as far from his bedroom as possible. He wrote a note that he placed on top of the recordings, instructing whoever found them to release the music. This way, he said, if the house was bombed during the night, "either me or my music would survive."

When the interview turned political, Mr. Sahir politely sidestepped the questions, as he has throughout his career. But when asked what he would like to say to President Bush, he answered: "Think about the children and the innocent people. Don't let them suffer."

When asked what he would like to say to Mr. Hussein (whom he said he had never met), he laughed, looked at the floor and grinned. Whatever he thought, he kept it to himself.

Though he has written political songs about topics like Iraq's starving children, Mr. Sahir is primarily a singer of romantic songs — passionately delivered, occasionally playful, poems of love to make women swoon. "Ana wa Laila," which he tinkered with for some five years until he was satisfied, is a song about a man who cannot extinguish his passion for a woman who does not love him in return because he is not rich.

"Everything you see now on the TV is about the negative, the war, the weapons of mass destruction, the killings, the explosives," he said. "We need something lighter now to feel a little bit of hope and to relax."

At the Key West Room in the Palms the next night, the audience didn't quite relax as Mr. Sahir performed. And for that matter, neither did Mr. Sahir, who was at his exacting best, leading his band through a two-hour set. Keenly calibrating the mood of the audience, he constantly deviated from the set list, cut songs short and doubled the choruses of other hits, constantly challenging the 15 Arabic-American musicians performing with him for the first time. At the same time, he refused to play songs with complicated orchestrations — often stopping them after several seconds and then restarting — until the audience was playing full attention. When a scuffle broke out in the audience during his first big hit, "Abart al Shat" ("Crossing the River"), he quickly changed to less rousing numbers.

When he performed "Beauty and His Love," the audience sat patiently for this one, waiting for the right moment. As soon as he bellowed the name of his true love, the people in the audience erupted, rising to their feet. And for a brief moment, the word Baghdad in this country was associated not with war and tyranny but with beauty and homesickness.

Charlie Rose on Iraq

Just watched a really excellent debate on the Iraq issue between Jonathan Schell (Peace and Disarmament correspondent at The Nation, and the Harold Willens Peace fellow at the Nation Institute), and Michael Ignatieff (Director and Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice, JFK School of Government, Harvard University) on Charlie Rose.

if you're out on the west coast you can still catch it. on the east coast, you can catch it now (12am) on channel 25 WNYE.

Boots-n-All

there are a few good articles this last week from boots-n-all.

i was in stitches tonight from this one, "Are You Wearing Long Johns?". i started laughing as soon as i got to the third paragraph -- "The First Stage of Freezing. If it's less than -14° Celsius, you'll know it. " haha! we complain so much in NYC from the winter this year. but our winter would be a sunny spring day for those in upper canada!

and i've been lusting after a trip to macchu picchu in peru. which was vicariously and partially sated with this account, Four-Day Trek on the Inca Trail.

oh, to be travelling again...

Facing Down Iraq

Facing Down Iraq
NYT Editorial
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/25/opinion/25TUE1.html

Any lingering confusion about the fault line in the United Nations Security Council was erased yesterday by new American and French initiatives on Iraq. The United States wants a new resolution reaffirming the conclusion that Iraq has failed to disarm, effectively opening the way to a war sanctioned by the U.N. France, supported by Germany and Russia, prefers to give Hans Blix and his inspectors more time to see if they can disarm Iraq. The American resolution, introduced by Britain, deserves the Security Council's support.

A Council visibly moving toward authorizing force is the last remote hope of getting Iraq to disarm peacefully. Saddam Hussein reinforced that point himself yesterday by telling Dan Rather of CBS News that Iraqi missiles do not violate U.N. restrictions. That suggests he does not plan to carry out Mr. Blix's order to destroy missiles that exceed performance limits set by the U.N.

Winning majority support for this resolution and avoiding a veto will take deft diplomacy. Among the Security Council's 15 members, only the United States, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria have so far indicated their support. Wisely, Washington and London have decided not to push for a quick decision. Instead they are aiming for a vote by the second week in March. That will give hesitant Council members a further chance to gauge Iraqi conduct on core issues, starting with Baghdad's response to Mr. Blix's unambiguous instruction to begin destroying its illegal missiles by the end of this week.

The Security Council's previous resolution, last fall, opened two possible paths to disarming Iraq. One was peaceful, the other military. Regrettably, Iraq has let three crucial months go by without grasping what is clearly its last chance for peaceful disarmament. Instead of showing the inspectors its illegal weapons material and projects and cooperating in their destruction, as required, Baghdad has offered no meaningful cooperation.

It seems inconceivable that without the pressure of this latest resolution, Iraq will reverse itself and disarm. Yet that is the underlying assumption of the latest proposal by France, Russia and Germany. In the face of Baghdad's stonewalling, the Council needs to reunite and stand behind its firm warnings of last fall. What's needed is not more time but an entirely different attitude from Iraq.

Call to Arms Rang True for Child of Dissenters

[btw, this is about the son of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin]

Call to Arms Rang True for Child of Dissenters
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/18/national/18SERV.html

FORT BLISS, Tex. — When Joseph K. Goodwin graduated from Harvard in the spring of 2001, his ideas about where he was going did not include war.

But early in February, Lieutenant Goodwin ascended the stage at the Army's Air Defense Artillery School graduation ceremony here, recognized as one of two distinguished honor graduates in his 120-member class, picked by his commanders as among the best to lead his fellow soldiers in battle.

Standing next to a fleet of armored vehicles used to fire short-range Stinger missiles, which he could soon be called to operate in a conflict with Iraq, Lieutenant Goodwin, 25, was reticent about his accomplishments. "The real test," he said after the ceremony, "is when you get to where you're going."

A history and literature major, Joey, as his parents call him, was headed to Washington after college to work for Robert Shrum, the Democratic political consultant.

Politics is in the young man's blood. His mother is Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian. His father, Richard Goodwin, was an adviser and speechwriter for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Lieutenant Goodwin hoped to become a speechwriter, as his father had once done.

Then came the terrorist attacks against the United States. A week after the hijacked airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, the new graduate walked into an Army recruiting office near his family home in Concord, Mass., and announced that he wanted to enlist.

"All of a sudden you realize the country needs people to protect it," he said. "And then you think, who am I to expect someone else to do something that I am young and able-bodied enough to do myself."

With his Ivy League background, Lieutenant Goodwin is unusual in the military these days. Perhaps even more so being the son of well-known liberal parents who strongly opposed the war in Vietnam. But the patriotism that inspired him to enlist after Sept. 11. is typical of young people who signed up then.

"Many of the soldiers we're training now say they came in because they wanted to do something for their country at this time of need," said Col. John C. Hamilton, commander of the Sixth Brigade at Fort Bliss.

And the emotions of his parents — pride and fear — are not that different from other families of enlisted men and women. With the prospect of military action in Iraq, Lieutenant Goodwin and his family are facing the bracing realities of his decision.

If the young officer has doubts about the impending conflict, he would not reveal it. Politics, he made clear, was off limits as a topic of discussion in his new military role. "We're here to execute the political will of our country," he said on the eve of his Feb. 6 graduation.

His parents express themselves in less certain terms. In an interview at their home in Concord, the couple said they supported the Persian Gulf war as well as the military action in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks in 2001. But, like many Americans, they have reservations about the Bush administration's position on Iraq. "Is it right to go into Iraq?" Mr. Goodwin asked. "I really don't know yet."

Ms. Goodwin added, "There are still questions, things we're trying to understand."

Their worries may be colored by memories of another war. Both Goodwins had differences with President Johnson over the Vietnam War. Mr. Goodwin had been a top White House aide and had helped to shape the political oratory of President Johnson's Great Society. Vietnam severed the relationship. In 1966, after he resigned from the administration, Mr. Goodwin wrote a book that criticized the Johnson war policy, "Triumph or Tragedy: Reflections on Vietnam."

"We opposed that war not because we were pacifists, but because it was a disaster, and it was swallowing up the domestic initiatives of the Great Society, all of the things we had worked for," said Mr. Goodwin, who served two years in the Army in the 1950's.

Ms. Goodwin, too, wrote critically about President Johnson's war policies, before she met her husband. When she began working as an aide to the president in 1967, he often teased her, she said, by calling her "Miss Antiwar" or "pinko."

Since then she has studied how other presidents dealt with war: Roosevelt in World War II, Lincoln in the Civil War. During her son's training, Ms. Goodwin has also been dealing with accusations that a book she wrote on the Kennedys early in her career contained passages that were not properly attributed to another author. That episode, she said, "is happily in the past."

Since he walked into the Army recruiting center, Lieutenant Goodwin has shuttled through basic training in Fort Jackson, S.C., officer candidate school at Fort Benning, Ga., and has just completed officer basic course at Air Defense Artillery School. He is scheduled to return to Fort Benning for Army Ranger School in March.

"At first you're just thinking about completing the drills and getting through it," said Lieutenant Goodwin, a former high school wrestler whose compact build has muscled up from the physical regimen of the past year. "Then after a certain point you start to focus on the fact that you're training for actual combat. That's where I am now. Focused."

Lieutenant Goodwin's decision was not altogether surprising to his parents. "Joey was raised with a great sense of patriotism and America," Ms. Goodwin said. The family home is just down the road from the Old North Bridge, where the "shot heard round the world" touched off the American Revolution.

The family's focus on history also included instilling in the children the importance of informed dissent. Lieutenant Goodwin's older brother Michael, 26, a teacher in Vermont, is adamantly opposed to a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, a stance Lieutenant Goodwin called "as valid and necessary a form of patriotism as what I am doing."

Whatever ambivalence the Goodwins feel about the prospect of a war with Iraq, they have not a shred of doubt, they insisted, about their son's decision to join the military. "The soldiers are doing what they are called to do," Ms. Goodwin said. "You have to separate it. Joey answered a call within himself, and we're so proud of that."

The couple settle their nerves about the fact that their son may soon be called to fight by learning as much as they can about his experience. Their home is scattered with evidence of their efforts — a book chronicling Ranger training school in one room and Army-produced videotapes on basic training in another. Mr. Goodwin keeps a digital photo catalog of his son's progress on his computer.

Lieutenant Goodwin groaned sheepishly when he learned that his parents had been poring over his Army pictures with a reporter.

He admitted, too, that the prospect of war was daunting. "It's only natural, I'm sure, for any soldier to feel scared at times," he said.

Especially when the call to duty can come at any minute. As he finished dinner at a Chili's restaurant just outside the base, a group of soldiers strolled in and crowded around a table. They wore newly issued outfits, the color of sand.

"They've been called for deployment," Lieutenant Goodwin said, soberly. "You can tell by their uniforms." He shot a long, silent glance over at their table, said simply, "Ready," and stood to leave.

At Least 257 Die in Earthquake in Remote Western China

At Least 257 Die in Earthquake in Remote Western China
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/25/international/asia/25CHIN.html

SHANGHAI, Tuesday, Feb. 25 — A severe earthquake rocked a remote area along China's far western border on Monday morning, and Chinese officials said it killed at least 261 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other buildings.

Seismology officials said the quake had a magnitude of 6.8 and struck an area around the city of Jiashi, not far from the old Silk Road city of Kashgar and China's mountainous border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It hit just after 10 a.m. on Monday, as workers headed to offices and students started classes.

Authorities said in telephone interviews from the area that the People's Liberation Army had mobilized troops to help dig through rubble to uncover the dead and injured. By this morning the reported death toll had risen to 261, with estimates of the number of people who suffered injuries running at about 4,000, said Zhang Yong of the Xinjiang Seismological Bureau.

"Not a single house in our area escaped damage," said Li Juan, an official in the heavily affected township of Qiongkuer Chake. Ms. Li toured the stricken area after her four-story government headquarters buckled during the quake.

"The dead bodies are lined up all along the streets," Ms. Li said. "It's a horrible sight."

Residents reached by phone said that in accordance with local custom in the mainly Muslim area, relatives scurried to cover bodies in white cloth and arrange immediate burials. Many people who lost homes covered themselves in blankets against the sub-freezing temperatures.

The epicenter was about 25 miles east of the city of Jiashi, in Bachu County. Jiashi is about 35 miles east of Kashgar, which felt the tremor but did not suffer significant casualties or damage.

The official New China News Agency reported that nearly 9,000 buildings, including 900 classrooms and at least one large elementary school, were flattened around Bachu. One official blamed poor construction standards for the widespread damage. "The quality of the buildings in that area is quite bad," said Song Lijun, also of the Xinjiang Seismological Bureau. "Because schools were among the destroyed buildings, we fear that children are among the dead."

Mr. Song said he was uncertain how far the rescue effort had progressed or whether the death toll would rise substantially. Communications among small towns and villages in the area are considered poor, and officials suggested that it could be days before they knew the extent of the devastation.

In Beijing, officials initially played down the severity of the quake. Before meeting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, President Jiang Zemin of China told reporters he did not consider the quake a major disaster.

It seemed likely that Mr. Jiang's comments were based on early reports of light casualties.

But as fresh reports came in on Monday, the quake appeared to be one of China's most severe in recent years. Chinese officials are especially sensitive to the potential of tremors to wreak horrific damage since a huge earthquake in Tangshan in 1976 killed an estimated 240,000, one of the worst natural disasters.

Official news agencies reported on Monday evening that the central government had dispatched a rescue team to the area and that Wen Jiabao, the man expected to become prime minister at the meeting this spring of the Chinese Parliament, had taken charge of relief work.

The area affected in the quake lies about 1,750 miles west of Beijing in the Xinjiang region. The Muslim Uighur minority is the predominant ethnic group in the region, which is one of China's poorest.

Though a volatile fault lies under Xinjiang, causing frequent tremors, casualties are generally light. Relatively small numbers of people live outside the handful of big urban areas in the expansive territory, which consists largely of deserts and highlands.

Chinese news reports suggested that this was Xinjiang's worst quake in decades. In 1997, a spate of 11 earthquakes struck Xinjiang. One of them, on Jan. 21 of that year, struck only 12 miles from Jiashi, where the tremor occurred, and killed 12 people.

One of the largest in recent years came in March 1996. Twenty-four people were reported killed when a quake measuring 6.9 hit an area about 75 miles north of Jiashi.

The United States Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., reported that the quake measured 6.3, less severe than the Chinese measurement. It was unclear what accounted for the discrepancy.

Wretched Excess

[an old but interesting article...]

Wretched Excess
September 23, 2002 / VOL. 160 NO. 11
BY HANNAH BEECH / SHANGHAI
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020923/story.html

Flush with the spoils of capitalism, China's fledgling multimillionaires are living large. Mao would have had a cow

Pompadour slicked perfectly into place, Huang Qiaoling gazes lovingly at his palatial home. Here, amid hectares of overgrown rice paddies in the eastern city of Hangzhou, Huang has built a display worthy of his splendid success: a $10 million replica of the White House. Huang, one of the richest men in China, wanders blissfully through a hall filled with portraits of America's Presidents, then strides into the most hallowed room of all—the Oval Office. Every detail has been immaculately reproduced, from the $60,000 baroque sofa to the U.S. presidential seal on the carpet—naturally, made in China. "Everything you see here is just like Washington," says Huang. "Only it's all mine."

A few changes have been made to suit his personal taste. In one cabinet, Huang, the 43-year-old founder of a Chinese tourism empire has substituted tomes on American history with minibar bottles of Remy Martin and a gaggle of dime-store ceramic ducks. On the mantelpiece of the Green Room stands a statue of Genghis Khan, whom "President Huang," as his staff insists on calling him, counts as his personal hero. And outside the window of the Blue Room, which Huang uses as his office (it would be inappropriate, he says, to work in the Oval Office), is a one-third-size Mount Rushmore with employees' quarters tucked in the back. Meanwhile, in front of the White House stands a miniature Washington Monument. "I bet you've never seen anything so wonderful," says Huang. "This is my dream house."

But one man's ersatz castle is another's vulgar affront. Not long after Huang's mansion was completed in 1999, U.S.-led nato forces bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Huang found himself answering angry calls from Communist Party bureaucrats demanding to know why he had built an icon of imperialist America. "I told them it represented American culture, not politics, and it wasn't their business what I built with my own money," he says. "I had invested a lot in Hangzhou, and it doesn't do any good to disrupt my business. I was sure they didn't want me to move my money elsewhere." The complaints ceased. More recently, though, Huang received the irritating news that another entrepreneur has built an almost full-scale U.S. Capitol building on the outskirts of Shanghai. Still, he insists, it doesn't really faze him. "Everybody knows the White House is much more beautiful than the Capitol," he says, sinking into an $8,000 chair in the Oval Office. "Besides, I have built Mount Rushmore and the Washington Monument, too. Who can compete with that?"

These days, plenty of mainlanders can. Decades after Mao realized his vision of a classless, property-less society by destroying wealth and all of its manifestations, China's monied Elite is making a boisterous comeback. With the unleashing of private enterprise and the rapid development of coastal cities, China now boasts nearly 10,000 entrepreneurs each worth $10 million or more, according to researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. The country's affluent ranks are among the fastest growing in the world—the person who ranked 50th on a list of richest Chinese last year boasted $110 million; in 1999, No. 50 only had $6 million. Their commercial successes aren't necessarily glamorous—one of the richest men in China, billionaire Liu Yongxing, built his empire supplying pig feed. Nor are they superlatively well-off by the standards of America's Bill Gates or Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. But the economic clout of China's nouveaux riches has become hard to ignore. Last year, the Communist Party finally admitted these once shunned capitalists into its fold.

Yet there are mounting concerns that all this rapid accumulation of wealth may be getting out of hand. The gulf between the superrich and the poor has expanded to its widest point in more than half a century. To many, China's new moguls seem as greedily and crookedly voracious as America's 19th century robber barons. According to a recent poll by the People's University in Beijing, some 60% of Chinese believe the nation's rich used illegal means to attain their wealth. In a rare acknowledgment of the country's growing inequality, Lu Zhiqiang, a top government planning official, admitted in May that "Income distribution has become the most noticeable social problem in China." A Shanghai mayoral staff member says, "China's income divide is destroying the unity of our nation. The rich have to realize that their irresponsible spending patterns could threaten social stability."

The reckless profligacy of this privileged class can be explained in part by its humble origins. Many rich Chinese grew up poorly educated and knowing only privation. Now that their rice bowls runneth over, they have an all-too-human tendency to overeat. President Huang, for example, was raised in an impoverished farming village in Zhejiang province. One of the highlights of each New Year came when his family received a colorful calendar from the state—a token gift for their contribution to the socialist cause. Huang would gaze at it for hours, enraptured by the lush English gardens, the idyllic Swiss chalets, the gleaming marble mansions with manicured topiaries. One year, the calendar showcased marvels of American grandeur, including Mount Rushmore and the White House. It was this calendar that inspired his remarkable building spree.

Because so many Chinese went from nothing to everything in just a few years, their newfound riches have left them a little giddy. Conspicuous consumption? There's no other kind. To be suddenly wealthy in China is to be engaged in a full-blown, keeping-up-with-the-Chans spending contest. In June, a Bentley sold for 8.8 million yuan ($1.06 million) at a Beijing auction—apparently because eight is a lucky number, not because the car was worth that amount. Mainland tycoon Hui Wingmau bought a mansion in Hong Kong last year that was once the most expensive house in the world. In the gambling paradise of Las Vegas, Chinese jet-setters have displaced Japanese industrialists as the most prevalent—and most welcome—group of high rollers. Chinese entrepreneurs don't tend to do the Jeff Bezos thing—dressing down in wrinkled khakis. "In China, if you're rich, you have to look the part," says Wang Deyuan, who owns one of the top ad agencies in southern China. "You have to show you have money, otherwise no one believes that you're rich."

This show-me approach is not a purely modern phenomenon. Lavish displays of wealth have long been an integral part of Chinese society. No banquet is considered a success unless a full table of food is left over—if plates are empty, the host hasn't ordered enough to sate his guests. Wang knows that judicious strutting can lubricate business dealings. He and his wife, Wang Yanyi, who owns a bustling real estate company, live the high life in Shenzhen, that boomiest of Chinese boomtowns. On weekdays, they work hard and keep the flash in check. Indeed, 35-year-old Wang knows that many of his clients drive Mercedes, so he makes do with an Audi lest he embarrass them by appearing in a ritzier car than theirs.

But on weekends, the Wangs let the money flow, aware that cash buys respect and murmurs of envy from less fortunate friends. One recent Friday, they splashed out for a Cantonese banquet at a members-only eatery followed by aged Scotch and cigars at their favorite nightclub. An evening like this can easily cost them $1,000, but the outlay merely cements their reputation as coruscating icons of Shenzhen's glitterati. To look good for their nights out, they swoop into Hong Kong for intensive shopping trips. The Hugo Boss and Max Mara stores know them so well they call when a new shipment of clothes arrives. Wang Yanyi's image is further buffed by spa sessions, body detox therapy and cellulite-removal massage.

The Wangs are part of an alluring demographic, and its rapid emergence has enticed some of the world's most exclusive brands to China. Giorgio Armani, for example, will open four outlets in Beijing and Shanghai by the end of this year, and purveyors of luxury goods like Mercedes-Benz and Tiffany have similar expansion plans.

But Chinese consumerism often comes sans connoisseurship. A chef at the Door, a velvet-draped Shanghai eatery, remembers one customer ordering the most expensive Chateau Margaux on the wine list, then mixing it with a liberal splash of Sprite. "He just gulped it down, without even tasting the wine," recalls the chef. Taste matters little when the object is ostentation. At Shanghai's posh Plaza 66 mall, a clerk at a European fashion house recounts how a middle-aged man demanded to buy the five most expensive things in the store: "After paying for them, he tried to put on a suede coat and a pair of crocodile-leather loafers he'd just bought. I had to tell him they were for women, not men."

For others, a better way to blow money fast is to go overseas. A decade ago, most Chinese never ventured abroad as tourists because the state issued passports only to a select few. Getting permission for anything other than studying at Harvard or inking a joint-venture deal was nearly impossible. Today, though, Chinese are the fastest-growing bloc of travelers in the world. By 2020, 100 million Chinese are expected to go globe trotting. Mainlanders have already become Thailand's most numerous tourists and they'll soon be tops in Australia too. "It used to be the Japanese consumer that we were targeting," says Siriporn, a jeweler in Bangkok, who has started stocking extra jade and ivory for mainland customers. "But now we are told we have to pay attention to the Chinese, because they have so much money."

Wang Shi likes the attention he receives abroad. The head of China Vanke, a property development company in Shenzhen, was delighted last month when he saw Munich Airport now has signs in Chinese to help visitors like him through customs. At a five-star hotel in Tokyo, room service offered him a Chinese breakfast complete with rice gruel and soybean milk. "Five years ago, no one overseas cared about pleasing the Chinese," he says. "Now I feel like the world realizes we matter."

But for Wang, 51, going abroad was important for another reason: he was able to benchmark himself against other monied people. He noticed that Chinese tourists liked to travel together in nervous clumps led by a fussy tour guide. Westerners, he concluded, traveled alone or in couples. And they didn't just dutifully walk around cities or hit the gift shops. They bungee jumped, skied, parachuted. "I saw these people and realized that we Chinese don't really know how to live," says Wang. "We can take risks in business but not when we're having fun."

Inspired, the property magnate went home and decided to become a mountain man. Like many of China's rich, he had spent so many years working that now all he wanted to do was play. So far, he has climbed all the major peaks in China, along with Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Rainier. Almost every weekend, he takes a few buddies paragliding over the hills surrounding Shenzhen. Wang also started a club for wealthy businessmen to bond over a ski slope or mountain face—instead of a boardroom table or a karaoke mike. The club now has more than 200 members, who gather each year for a weekend of exertion followed by a party teeming with so many connected people that China's financial press considers it the event of the year. At the most recent confab in July, executives hiked at an alpine resort near Beijing—although, in truth, many skipped the walk to schmooze—then gathered for a swank meal at a hotel where Chairman Mao once summered. "My company is just another company," Wang says. "But people will remember me as the man who helped Chinese climb mountains."

Not surprisingly, China's wealthiest citizens indulge their kids with almost as much zeal as they indulge themselves. Zhou Zhiqin, a pharmaceutical supplier, lavishes attention on her "Little Emperor," a 13-year-old son who enjoys weekly horseback-riding lessons and unlimited access to the newest computer games. Last year, Zhou even commissioned a $2,400 oil painting of the boy. Although he's a teenager, her son sleeps in the same room as a maid, lest he kick off his covers in the middle of the night and catch cold. "We had nothing growing up," says Zhou, 39. "All I want to do is give my son the things he loves, so he knows how much we care about him." Her son responds, "I know that China was poor before, but I think parents sometimes exaggerate how terrible it was back when they were young."

For a teen, Zhou's son puts up fairly patiently with his mother's fussing over his hair and clothes. But more and more, he wants to hang out with his buddies, and he talks about how great it will be to get an SUV and cruise around on his own. (When her son announces this, you can almost hear Zhou's mental note: SUV for son when he turns 18.) Letting go won't be easy for Zhou. To make matters worse, her husband spends most weekends at a golf course, schmoozing with business colleagues and puffing on Dunhill cigars in the clubhouse. To ease the loneliness, Zhou began trying to occupy herself with games of mah-jongg or by going on house-hunting jaunts with friends who, like her, buy up historic Shanghai homes and renovate them in whatever style they fancy at that moment: baroque, Roman, Swedish modern.

When those diversions didn't work, she tried getting a pet, the current favored accessory of China's rich. The pet store offered dozens of pedigreed animals, including rare Bur-mese cats, poodles with ears dyed fluorescent colors and house pigs that grow no bigger than a beagle. Zhou settled on a white Pomeranian that cost $1,800 and racks up hundreds more in doggie salon bills each month. But even the pooch wasn't enough, so Zhou is now pregnant with her second child. Much of China may be bound by a one-child policy, but wealthy couples can easily pay the hefty fines for overprocreating. "If you have money, you can do anything," says Zhou, holding her eight-month-pregnant stomach. "Even things that are, well, a little bit illegal."

For centuries, Shaohui, a tiny hamlet in China's prosperous Fujian province, made its money off succulent mangoes and dragon-eye trees. No longer. Textile mills have transformed the region's rolling hills, and the rich have invaded too, building sprawling homes throughout the countryside. Just inside Shaohui, Wendie Xu's one-story bungalow has been replaced by a five-story mansion, courtesy of her husband's success as a cotton exporter. The house, which she proudly describes as "Los Angeles palace style," cost $600,000 to build. That's no small sum in rural China, where the average annual income is less than $300.

Her neighbours still live in a dirt-floor home. But inside Xu's palace, with its sweeping blue-tinted windows, you can't smell the mix of manure, coal and sewage that permeates lesser residences. Her family room boasts a massive chandelier, a built-in bar and a TV with 52 inches of viewing pleasure. In the foyer is an immense fountain with garish lights and a metal sculpture dancing in the water.

Yet there's something unsettling about the place. With her kids away at school and her husband often abroad on business, the house is eerily quiet. Even the TV doesn't enliven things: Xu still hasn't figured out how to use the remote correctly. Nor can she turn on the chandelier to brighten things up for fear of short-circuiting the neighborhood electricity. To pass the time, she spends hours in her darkened house reading romance novels.

Only a daily pilgrimage to the local temple soothes her loneliness. "I go to pray for my children," she says. "I wish they will find fulfillment." Most of the other worshipers are praying for something simpler: money. But Xu has that, and it isn't making her happy. "Money doesn't buy everything," she says, sitting in her family room without her family. "We all thought it would, but look at me now."

Such epiphanies are still new in China. But the realization that money may not buy happiness is spreading, fueled in part by an epidemic of divorce that is tearing through China's nouveaux riches. In Shenzhen, the joke is that the traditional Chinese greeting "Have you eaten yet" has been replaced by "Have you divorced yet?" Though low by Western standards, the divorce rate has doubled over the past decade to 20% of marriages in China's cities. Researchers at the All-China Women's Federation estimate the rate may be twice that among wealthier Chinese. Without the old Communist Party neighborhood watchdogs to monitor what is happening in everyone's bedrooms, affairs have mushroomed. And for many rich men, concubines have become the latest must-have in a life of endless toys and acquisitions.

In the suburbs of Guangzhou and Shanghai, entire "concubine villages" have sprouted up, jammed with beauty salons, karaokes and gyms to entertain the legions of kept women. Tang Ling's husband, a lumber merchant from the northeastern city of Shenyang, kept three concubines, or at least that's how many Tang knows about. "He got bored with me, then got bored with each mistress," she says, sitting in the splendid Beijing apartment she pried out of her husband after their divorce in June. "I think rich people in China have lost their sense of loyalty. They keep searching for something, but everything they find isn't good enough."

Still, China's rich keep searching, for what else is there, really, to do in life? Pan Shiyi, a philosophical real estate developer in Beijing, who has built luxury villas by the Great Wall for China's Elite, is exploring Taoism as a way to sate his soul. "I think we've realized that money is a false god," says Pan, lounging on the patio of his country retreat north of Beijing. "Houses, cars and other toys don't bring spiritual contentment." So what does? Pan, the great-grandson of an opium lord and son of a penniless party flack, shakes his head. He gathers his two toddler sons next to him and kisses each on the head. "I work so much I hardly see my boys," he says. "When Deng told us to go make money, we never expected that it wouldn't be all we needed."

Back in Hangzhou, though, President Huang isn't convinced that money doesn't buy it all. "Money is what makes dreams come true," he muses. "Without money, you don't count in China." This summer, the man who owns 22 companies—or, at least, that's how many Huang remembers owning—was busy drawing up plans to create Venice Town, Swiss Village and other European-themed wonderlands in Hangzhou for tourists to visit and live out their vacation fantasies. Next, he aims to create a mini-Las Vegas in China, complete with casinos and cabaret shows. "Las Vegas is a place made of dreams," says Huang, showing off his snapshots from a recent trip to the Nevadan oasis. "Imagine something so beautiful sprouting out of a desert. It reminds me of how China developed so quickly out of nothing."

Not so long ago, Huang himself had nothing. He started out as a cog in the communist machine, toiling away dismally in a state bookstore. But in 1987, he left with a few hundred dollars to his name, determined to fashion a small beach resort on the tropical island of Hainan. That resort spawned many others, and Huang is now a corporate titan, a budding Chinese Rockefeller. "The people who got in early had the most success," he says of China's economic boom. "No one else was even thinking about this [kind of] business, so it was completely open." One day, of course, his luck may run out. But today—feasting on deep-fried eel, braised seaweed and stomach stew in the Red Room of the White House—Huang is living the Chinese dream. And he's loving every wretchedly excessive minute of it.

Indian Nurses Sought to Staff U.S. Hospitals

Indian Nurses Sought to Staff U.S. Hospitals
By SARITHA RAI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/international/10INDI.html

BANGALORE, India, Feb. 9 — Annamma George has not taken an examination in 15 years, since she began her career as a nurse in a leading Bangalore hospital. But these days she pores over books alongside her 10-year old son, often studying late into the night. In a few weeks, Ms. George will take special exams that could qualify her for a nursing job in the United States.

Ms. George, 38, has attended monthlong classes and taken several practice licensing exams with questions that test not only medical education, but an applicant's knowledge of America's multiethnic society. In whose culture, for example, is a combination of milk and meat prohibited in the same meal? Catholics? Orthodox Jews? Seventh-day Adventists? Jehovah's Witnesses?

"Orthodox Jews," she says as she drills herself. "I want to give it my everything."

Across India, thousands of nurses are studying for these licensing exams and dreaming of better-paying jobs in the United States, where an acute shortage of American nurses has sent hospitals scrambling to recruit in an ever wider network abroad.

Previously, many American hospital recruiters had gone to the Philippines, Ireland and Canada to find English-speaking nurses — but even those sources of supply are drying up. Now the recruiters are focusing on India, opening the first major migration route to the United States for skilled professionals since the collapse of the Internet boom cooled demand for India's technology workers.

"It is the next revolution," said Sujana Chakravarty, secretary general of the Trained Nurses Association of India, a trade group in New Delhi. "And nurses are already outwitting software programmers by getting paid a lot better."

Until recently, jobs outside India had been hard to come by for the 30,000 nurses graduating each year. Some enterprising ones have headed to lucrative jobs in the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and some others to Europe, but opportunities in the United States had been limited.

Now, training and recruiting companies are springing up across India to prepare nurses for American jobs. Last summer, Vijay Madala, an entrepreneurial doctor who lives in Dallas, started a training company called Nurses Anytime and opened a center here in a refurbished colonial-style bungalow. Dr. Madala tells each class of about 30 nurses, "Work hard and your life will change." More than 70 of his graduates are now ready for the exams, Dr. Madala said, and by July, he expects to have 200 trained nurses a month "ready to go."

Since Indian nurses typically take home monthly salaries of about 4,000 rupees, or about $84, compared with American salaries of more than $4,000 a month, it is no wonder that many Indian nurses are eager to work in the United States.

Training centers are able to pick the best of the applicants. Nurses Anytime, for example, chooses those with a graduate nursing degree, fluency in English and at least three years' experience.

"With the supply of nurses in Canada, Ireland and Philippines drying up, India is the world's No. 1 source of trained nurses today," Dr. Madala said.

In Cochin, in the southern state of Kerala, Anisha Cherian, a former trainer of computer software programmers, has switched to training nurses, calling it "a better business in these times of software gloom."

In the central Indian city of Nagpur, Dhanananjay Gawande, a trained engineer, has also diversified from training software experts into training nurses. "This business is hot," he said.

Nurses Anytime has joined with Nursefinders Inc., a company based in Arlington, Tex., that recruits nurses for thousands of hospitals. Nursefinders pays Dr. Madala a fee for delivering trained nurses who have passed the nursing and English language exams.

Nurses Anytime has contracts with other American hospitals and nursing agencies. Representatives of Iasis Healthcare Corporation, a hospital company based in Franklin, Tenn., traveled here recently to interview a dozen nurses from Dr. Madala's training center, and they want 30 a month for the next 12 months, he said.

With a smile, he said he could not live up to the promise conveyed by his company's name.

Payment for the training varies. Mr. Gawande charges each nurse a fee of 10,000 rupees, or $210, for training. Dr. Madala said he did not charge his trainees because his American clients pay the cost. He did not specify how much they pay him but said American recruiters generally spend about $10,000 per nurse.

While demand for Indian nurses in the United States is strong, experts do not expect the exodus to reach the feverish levels as that of Indian software programmers in the 1990's during the Internet boom.

Difficulty getting work visas is one reason. Nurses can apply for an H1C work visa, but only 500 are granted each year.

Still, many Indian nurses are undaunted because American employers are pressing to hire more of them. Sheela Murthy, a Washington immigration lawyer who advises nurse recruiters and hospitals, said her firm normally dealt with a dozen immigration cases a month involving Indian nurses, but she said she had recently started receiving inquiries about bringing in nurses by the hundreds.

Ms. Murthy, a member of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association, said the group was lobbying in Washington for eased immigration rules covering nurses. She cited the projections of the government's own Health Resources and Services Administration that vacant nursing positions, which now total more than 110,000, will exceed 700,000 by 2020.

"The U.S. Congress is preoccupied with terrorist threats," she said. "But, to my mind, the nursing shortage is a colossal flaw in the American health care system, a life-and-death issue."

Casual Sexism - Korean "booking" clubs

[from my friend jenn...]

Casual Sexism
In the Korean "booking" clubs of L.A., speed dating meets ancient tradition.
by Cathy Hong, nerve.com
http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/hong/booking/

In Los Angeles, Koreatown is less an ethnic enclave than an overwhelming sprawl of salmon-hued bungalows and remodeled strip malls that rent out to acupuncturists, pool halls and karaoke bars. The minute you exit the 10 freeway and drive north just shy of Melrose, all you see are neon Korean characters advertising noodle shops and Korean Air stewardesses smiling beatifically from billboards. It's a disorienting hybrid of old and new.
Le Prive, K-town's biggest nightclub, fits right into the landscape. With its flashing neon floor, velvet banquettes and studio apartment-sized mirrorball, the place has all the accoutrements of the cheesy urban superclub, with an added element of sideshow. On any weekend night, almost every female patron will be "booked" — dragged by a waiter, usually against her will — to a table of waiting men.

On a recent Saturday night around 11:30, a waiter is pulling two bleach-blonde Korean girls across the dancefloor. The girls are protesting as mightily as their anorexic frames will allow: their stretchy miniskirts buckle; their Prada stillettos skitter across the marble floor. One of them grabs onto a faux marble pillar, pleading as if she's being forced into a Stalinist gulag. The waiter nonchalantly extricates her, and the three of them disappear into the crowd.
nerve sponsor
I'm sitting at a booth a few feet away, surveying the scene with Clara Lee. Blonde, slender and pretty, Clara is twenty-one, a community college student who started making the rounds of K-town clubs when she was seventeen. This is the first visit to Le Prive for both of us. "See! Another one!" Clara cries. She points to a different waiter, who's dragging a busty Asian girl in tassled boots. Before long, another waiter descends on our table and whispers in Clara's ear: "Can you help me out?" Clara looks at me and shrugs. She nods at the waiter, who takes her hand and whisks her off to a group of boys, who greet her with cheers.
I settle back into the booth, trying to process my first experience with booking. It's a bit like watching Wild Kingdom, I decide: you can never be too comfortable as a spectator.

Booking is boy-meets-girl on reverb, speedier than speed dating, a hook-up that's sparked and extinguished as fast as you can down a shot. It's a mating ritual that occurs almost exclusively in expensive nightclubs in Korea or Los Angeles, where Crown Royal is tossed back like Budweiser and cash is casually produced to pay for $2,000 drink tabs. In these clubs, Boy doesn't have to put his ego at risk and sidle up to a girl with a stammering line; instead, Boy leaves it all up to his waiter. This is how it works: at a guy's request, a waiter approaches a girl's booth. He might ask politely if she'd like to be booked. More likely, he'll grab her by the arm, drag her to a table and force her to sit down. Boy offers Girl a shot of Crown Royal and small talk ensues. But before Boy can offer another drink, Girl blurts, "I should get back to my friends" and leaves. Boy shrugs it off, knowing that another struggling girl will be delivered to his table within minutes. "The ones who request booking?" says Clara "Total sleazebags."
Things rarely work the other way around. If a girl books a guy, she's considered a ho. When getting booked, a girl feels compelled to drag her feet and act spectacularly uninterested. "When the girls see a guy they think is hot, they'll go, 'Take me over there,'" says Romeo, a waiter at Le Prive. "So I'll take her, but she'll play the whole dragging bit. Then she'll put her head down and won't even say hello until the guy says something." He considers this. "They don't want to look easy."

The evening we visited Le Prive, Clara and I got to the club around ten. We were greeted at the entrance by Romeo, who introduced himself as our personal waiter for the evening. Chatty and cute in a silk-tuxedo-and-Duran-Duran-bangs kind of way, he led us to a table and produced a tray loaded with a half-bottle of Crown Royal, four Cokes and an elaborate platter of fruits. Normally, this treatment costs $200, but if you arrive before 10:30 in an all-female group, it's free. You just have to promise to book.
"Booking makes you lazy," says Jeff, tipping back a beer. "I've lost all my pick-up skills."
Around eleven, Le Prive begins to fill with girls in J. Lo-style encasings and stiff-haired boys in baggy button-down shirts. Most of them are college students in their early twenties; some are gangbangers, but they dress interchangeably. The DJ is playing last year's Hot 97 hip-hop hits: Missy Elliot's "One Minute Man," Nelly's "Hot in Herre." The girls are all pretty and skinny. The boys look as homogenous as frat brothers. "Losers," Clara confides. "Some of them are nice and cute and can't help it when waiters bring girls. But the ones who request booking? Total sleazebags."
Sitting in a corner booth is Jeff, an overtanned guy with so much gel in his hair you can see each follicle. A former stockbroker who owns a Melrose boutique, he's twenty-seven but likes to tell girls he's younger. At his Midwestern college, Jeff was a jock but had a hard time competing with his white buddies for girls. In the booking clubs, it's pyunei (comfortable); he's with his own people. There's just one disadvantage. "Booking makes you lazy," he says, tipping back a beer. "I've lost all my pick-up skills."
But once his waiter starts bringing girls to his table, Jeff has no problem charming them into more than one drink. He's had plenty of one-night stands from booking, he tells me, and has divided them into categories. California girls are gold-diggers and passive. New York girls are aggressive and don't give a shit about your money. Korean girls are polite and naïve, while Korean-American girls are bitchy and savvy. Ajamas, or women older than thirty-five, are desperate, sexually adventurous and willing to risk the stigma of booking guys. When I told a Korean friend that I was writing about booking, he looked at me nervously. "Why?" he asked. "To show how fucked up we are?"
"The ajamas are easy," he says. "They're pretty pushy. I was booked to this one ajama, and she took me to a dance floor and was groping me."
As it turns out, like most of the guys I meet at Le Prive, Jeff is old fashioned. "I guess I like younger, shy girls," he muses. "They're more of a challenge."

The second time Clara is booked, I follow. The waiter deposits her at a table of college kids who look barely pubescent; one of them is celebrating his birthday. "Whas your name?" whispers the sloshed birthday boy, putting his arm around Clara. He peppers her with questions: How old are you? What do you do? Are you having fun? Curiously, clubbers always ask your age. In Korea, it's the first question asked in casual conversation: men need to know if you're older than they are, so they can address you in the honorific form. At Le Prive, where everyone speaks English, the question is vestigial. A UCLA professor says the scene isn't exactly innocent. "Many women are dragged against their will," she says. It's problematic and not safe."
Turning away from Clara, the birthday boy spies my notebook. "Whas that for?" he asks. I tell him I'm writing about Le Prive. "I don't want you talking shit about this place!" he says. "I don't want you to close it down!" I tell him that's not my intention, but he doesn't believe me.
Indeed, many young Koreans are oddly protective of booking. When I asked Le Prive clubbers about it, they all seemed to offer the same response: Why are we explaining this? they sighed. You're Korean. You know what it's all about. When I told a Korean friend that I was writing about booking, he looked at me nervously. "Why?" he asked. "To show how fucked up we are?"

Booking began in South Korea during the early '90s, as the nation's youth culture began shedding its Confucian chain mail and fumbling toward a sexual revolution. As the national economy boomed, Euro-style cafes and discotheques sprang up and became wildly popular. But social mores held fast: in Korea, loyalty to family remains paramount to individual choice.
"You have to understand how heavy the influence of arranged marriage has been," says Kye Young Park, an associate professor of anthropology at UCLA. "Courtship hasn't been developed in Korea, so booking became one way to compensate. There's a strong belief in romance in the U.S., but Koreans and other East Asians believed that was superficial. What was more important in choosing your spouse was if your family respected that person."
In Korea today, young adults still live with their parents until marriage. To compensate for the lack of independence, couples go to love hotels, private karaokes and video rooms for quickies. Booking may have developed as a transitional derivation of arranged marriages, partly because there is no pretense of choice. Girls can maintain the guise of chastity because they're forced into pairings; men can parade their masculinity without sacrificing their egos. It's a set-up without the chance of humiliation. "I used to see the club scene through drunker eyes," sighs Grace. "Now, I see a lot more stupid shit than I care to."
As for the popularity of booking in a Western milieu like Los Angeles, most clubbers say they go to places like Le Prive just to hang out with other Koreans. To them, booking isn't the draw; it's actually a pain in the ass.
Park says the scene isn't that innocuous. "These clubs are a very profitable business," she says. "There is so much excess and expensive drinks being brought. These entrepeneurs use a lot of influence on politicians: there are more liquor licenses issued in Koreatown than anywhere else in Los Angeles." Park also says that several of her female Korean students are furious about booking clubs: "Many women are dragged against their will," she says. "And there are female entertainers who are hired by club owners so that men will come back and buy more liquor. Women get promo tables, but they have to promise to book. It's problematic and not safe."
But what I see isn't that sensational. Watching the action in Le Prive, I'm reminded of the awkward rituals of middle-school dances, sweaty-palmed boys and bashful girls are unable to relax and have a normal conversation. It's a tribute to social dysfunction.

The crowd at Le Prive isn't exclusively Korean. Japanese, Chinese and Filipino kids are also regulars, and the club is reputedly a favorite of gringo celebrities like Nicolas Cage, P. Diddy, Oliver Stone, Mickey Rourke and the members of Linkin Park. When a celebrity is sighted, girls line up to get booked to him.
Grace, twenty-four, is a friend of Clara's who works at a law firm. Her trophy booking story is that she was once matched to Vince Vaughn. We decide to experiment by booking a guy.
That was a few years ago. Grace has gone clubbing in K-Town since she was sixteen, when she was much wilder. She tells me that when she was underage, one club manager would let her in for free but expected sex in return. "I used to see the club scene through drunker eyes," she sighs. "Now, I see a lot more stupid shit than I care to."

The next night, Clara, my friend Jen and I hit another nightclub, Saga. It's smaller and more Koreancentric, but otherwise there's the same music, the same $200-per-table fee and the same overuse of neon. At Saga, booking is more frenetic. When Clara arrives to meet me, she has barely enough time to take off her jacket before she's whisked off by the waiter. When she returns, we decide to experiment by booking a guy. As per custom, when a table wants to attract the waiter's attention, someone lifts up a candle. I hold ours for ten minutes. Finally our waiter arrives looking surly, and we make our request. The waiter raises one eyebrow.
"What if they don't want to?" he asks.
We're annoyed. As if he asks the same question of men. "Can you ask?"
"They might get angry," he replies.
"Can you at least ask?"
No matter how much of a Barbie-bashing feminist you are, once you're inside the booking environment you begin to adjust.
He relents, and we scan the crowd. These guys are more attractive than the ones at Le Prive, but not by much. Clara points to a preppy kid in a black polo shirt. "Him," she says hungrily. "I want him."
But Polo Guy is booking, so the waiter pulls over two young men who can barely speak English. We pour them drinks, and I introduce myself to the taller one in rusty Korean. His name is Alex; he's thirty, has recently moved to Los Angeles from Seoul and works in a Pasadena liquor store. He's actually pretty attractive: broad shoulders, endearingly naïve. Of all the guys I've talked to, he's the only one who hopes to meet a girlfriend here.
The two of them finish their drinks and begin to pour more Crown Royal into our shot glasses before realizing their faux pas. We booked the guys, so we're in charge of the liquor intake. I take our half bottle and pour him a shot.
"We're so sorry," Alex replies. "We're drinking all of your alcohol. We'll bring more from our table."
Alex's friend whispers to Clara that he is also sorry. Alex's friend is sorry about a lot of things. "My English is not so good," he says. "You must not like me." Clara attempts to reassures him, but he bows out. After five minutes of small talk that ends with the three of us staring into our drinks, Alex leaves too.

Around midnight, Clara's been booked a few times. She doesn't particularly mind it tonight. In one nightclub in Korea, she was booked thirty times in an hour. It's more intense over there, Clara says, more awful. When she first started booking, she liked the attention and the free drinks, but the formula's getting harder for her to swallow. "It's sexist, but it's not just the guys," Clara says. "The girls like to get booked. They order expensive drinks, then they leave."
Even the frattiest guy will admit the booking is sexist. But no matter how much of a Barbie-bashing, bell hooks-reading feminist you are, once you're inside the booking environment you begin to adjust. As you watch waiters toting around an endless stream of K-town Aguileras, you begin to think you wouldn't mind being booked yourself. When I was armed with a tape recorder at Le Prive, I couldn't understand why these women were willing to be pawned around. At Saga, I'm trying to pass as a customer, and I feel vulnerable, nervous that a waiter could swoop in at any minute. But after a few of them pass our table without even glancing at me, I get a little huffy. Insecurities appear like flashbacks to middle school: Maybe I'm not cute enough. Maybe I don't have enough make-up on. Aren't I bookable?
When a waiter finally approaches me, I'm relieved. He leads me to a table where a thick-necked guy is flanked by two grim-looking girls. I sit down awkwardly.
"What up," says the guy, who immediately pours me a shot of Crown Royal. "Let's drink."
I finish it, and he pours me another shot. I tell him I shouldn't. "Drink, yo," he demands. He says his friend, the one who booked me, is in the bathroom. One of the girls at the table is wearing so much liquid foundation I'm surprised she can speak. She also encourages me to drink, so I take a shot and wait for my vision to blur.
Then the guy I'm being booked to returns. His name is Chang, and he's obviously drunk. I ask him how old he is, and he shouts out "73!" I ask him if he enjoys booking, and he shakes his head: "I don't. But I don't have a choice. I sit down and the waiters just bring the girls. What can I do?" I give him a pass on that one, and ask about the girls: doesn't he find the Neanderthal act just a tiny bit troublesome? "They know what they're getting themselves into," he roars. "If they don't like it, they shouldn't come here. They all get booked. They all want it."

Once I'm back at my booth, Alex, the sweet boy from Seoul, sits down next to me and takes my hand.
"I'm drunk," he says. "Can I have your number?"
He invites Jen and I to do karaoke, and we follow him upstairs. Alex croons a Korean love song, swaying and gripping his chest with his palm. The accompanying video shows a montage of soft-focus beach scenes and a Korean woman peering wistfully out of her rain-soaked window. Jen and I opt for Skid Row's "Eighteen and Life."
At two a.m., the lights flare up, and the crowd begins to funnel out the door. Jen and I locate Clara, who had disappeared for an hour talking to friends. Intimacy seems to be the last thing on anyone's mind. Almost everyone is leaving with the groups they came with.
Alex is the only anomaly. Earlier, he told me all that he wanted was to settle down in a nice condo and have children with a woman he respected. As we're leaving, he asks for my number again. I take his instead. "I'll visit you in New York," he says. "There we can make more music?" I tell him that sounds nice, and we leave him sitting among the evening's detritus of empty beer bottles, platters of fruit rinds and stubbed-out cigarettes, the only man searching for someone to sing a book of songs with in a place where matchmaking speeds by in a stream of one-minute medleys.

Tiny, flat-chested and hairless!

[from a comment posted to amabelle's blog]

Tiny, flat-chested and hairless!
A WHITE MAN EXTOLS THE WONDERS OF ASIAN WOMEN.
Unzipped, by Courney Weaver, SALON | May 6, 1998
http://archive.salon.com/col/weav/1998/05/06weav.html

I have never been interested in blonds," said Ted. "Never! I mean, I've tried it, sort of the way gay guys have gone out with women, just to see what it felt like. But it didn't work."

Ted and I were sitting outside on unsteady green plastic chairs at a brew pub in North Beach. It was a freezing spring evening and gusts of fog were whipping up Columbus Street. He was here to talk about his penchant for Asian women -- a proclivity I'd started to notice in college among the frat boys, and as far as I could tell had pretty much evolved into an obsession for certain white guys.

I had two feelings about this. One was complete revulsion. The other was relief, since the kind of men who went for Asian women were not men I wanted to have anything to do with, so good riddance if they recused themselves from my dating pool.

Political correctness and dating have never mixed, but that doesn't keep people from trying to maintain appearances to the contrary. So far, I hadn't found a single man who would go on record for having an Asian fixation. Ted was different. Our mutual friend Carol had told me to expect honesty, and I, in turn, was prepared to be confrontational with a guy I assumed would be an overfed, overgrown Delta Phi reject.

But even before I met Ted, Carol had revealed a few things that had thrown me. Despite being a bona fide yuppie, with an annual six-figure income from his job as a financial consultant, Ted did not own a TV or a car. For entertainment, he shunned the opera and blockbuster movies, preferring instead fringe performance art and experimental dance, which he attended every weekend. He was attracted to this alternative culture, Carol said, because he felt it was so far removed from his own life and experience growing up in Montana -- he couldn't believe people did those things onstage, like strip, scream, sing, whatever. Afterward, if he was confused, he would approach the performers and politely but insistently ask them what the point of their show was.

Over a pitcher of pale ale, I tried to size him up. He was about my height, with nicely pressed, Gap-type clothes and expensive wire-rim spectacles. Occasionally, during our conversation, he would pull out a Chap-Stick and rub it thoughtfully over his lower lip. He looked not so much like Frat Boy Extraordinaire but like Bill Gates. And he seemed to find it not in the least bit odd to chat with a strange woman about his sex life.

Taking my cue from him, I said, "I, um, find this refreshing that you would talk to me openly." I took a sip of my beer and tried to appear professional.

"Sure," Ted said pleasantly. With no further preamble, he began. "I'm kind of a soft guy. I really find American women overly aggressive, and I've had some bad experiences."

"Oh?" I wasn't sure I wanted to hear this. Had he been raped?

"I went on two dates with a Western woman recently. On the second date she wanted to have sex. I mean, I think that's just too fast, but she was pretty insistent. I went along with it, and it wasn't good at all. I couldn't maintain an erection." He frowned at a group of drunken Scottish tourists shouting at the adjacent plastic table, blowing cigarette smoke in our direction.

"Really." I wrote that down, and then stopped. "Was she disappointed?"

"She had a good time, I mean several good times, if you know what I mean. She did ask if everything was OK. I just told her I wasn't really into it that night."

"Why did you have sex with her if you didn't want to?" I tried to control my irritation, which despite Ted's affability, I knew was going to hit me at some point during this exchange. I envisioned a blond naked woman, stretched out alongside Ted -- a woman who had probably taken his softie a lot more personally than she'd let on, and hadn't had "several good times," or at least as many as Ted seemed to think.

"Well, I am a man," Ted said mildly. "It was being offered."

I sighed. "Many white women find this very insulting," I said. I suddenly remembered the black woman who confronted my blond friend Lisa and her black boyfriend on the streets of Berkeley. And then an army of short men popped in my head." It seems a direct rejection of what American women are, or what they stand for or what they want to be -- strong, independent, assertive, equal. We assume that guys who date Asians are looking for a little docile maid."

"Really?" Ted seemed genuinely surprised. "Well, that's not the case with me. If anything, it's me who's doing the serving. And they make all the decisions, like where to eat and what to do.

"There's two types of Asian women," he continued. "Those that were born here, of immigrant parents, and those that were born over there. The ones recently immigrated will date either Western or Asian men, but the American-born tend to find Asian men too soft and effeminate. They want a stronger kind of man, so I think I'm sort of a compromise." He leaned over to the drunk tourist group. "Could you not blow your smoke over here? Thank you."

I rearranged my notes. I wasn't sure where to begin. "What kind of Asians are we talking about?"

"Chinese," he said firmly. "Koreans are thought to be the most beautiful, but I think they wear too much makeup. I remember when I was an adolescent boy, watching ABC's 'Wide World of Sports.' And those cute little Chinese gymnasts, with their small breasts. I remember being so excited by them. I don't like large breasts -- they're so sloppy or something."

I wrote that down. He added, "You know, I can't speak for every guy, but for me it's a real personal interest in Asian culture as a whole --"

"Is that right?" I looked at him levelly.

"Uh-huh. I've spent a lot of time there, and I like the simplicity of their life, the family values -- because I don't have that in my own life. My parents are together and all that, but we're not close. And I like the idea of having someone who's not like me, who's not another professional who works all the time, being a part of my life."

"So you want a bossy housewife. And the servitude cliché -- that's all a cliché?"

"I don't know where that came from," Ted said. "The American-born Asians, that plain doesn't exist with them. You serve them." He laughed.

"What about the exoticism?"

"Sure," he said. "There is something more exotic about Asian women. The physical is part of my attraction, the sexual is part of it, too."

"Go on." A homeless man approached us suddenly with an outstretched hand.

Ted smiled at him. "Could you not bother us? We're having a conversation. Thank you." The man shuffled away. "OK, let's see, the sexual part. Asian women: They don't have any sexual hang-ups. They'll do anything, and I think it's because their culture wasn't based in Christianity, with all the guilt and repercussions. They tend to be more experienced sexually and anticipate what you want."

"That sounds kind of servile to me," I said, as Ted filled my glass. I shivered.

"Well, it's not really. I think that's the biggest misconception. On a day-to-day basis, I give in to whatever my girlfriend wants."

"Getting back to the sex thing," I said, wrapping my sweater around me tighter, "how about I just throw out some more misconceptions? How about hair?"

"Absolutely. I hate body hair. Hairy cooter, big soft-on."

I wrote that down. "Better stay away from French women," I said. "OK. What else?"

He pondered. "They have beautiful, smooth skin. They age way, way better than Western women. And of course the problem with large breasts, which Western women tend to have, is that they never stay firm."

I scribbled that down, too. "Someday, Ted, you too will not be firm."

"I know. My center of gravity is already shifting. Oh, well."

I hesitated. "How about the rumor that Asian women are, well, tighter? Because they're smaller?"

"No," he said, and emptied his glass. "And I lament over that, I really do."

I read over my notes. Despite myself, and all my preconceived notions of Ted, I had to admit I really admired him. He was completely, thoroughly and unapologetically honest, without meanness or guile. How many men would truly admit what they wanted from a woman, physically or otherwise? And he had a surprising gentleness that confounded me. I thought about him at the performance-art shows, patiently but doggedly grilling the actors on their creative choices.

"I just have to say one thing," I said, still looking at my scribbles. "'Likes no hair. Small breasts. Tiny stature. Smooth skin. Ages well.' Doesn't that sound like a description of, well, a 10-year-old?" I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. "Do you think something in your sexual psyche is connected to pedophilia?"

"Maybe," Ted said cheerfully. "I've never thought about it, but I suppose it does sound like that." He seemed as unconcerned as if I'd just remarked on his taste in shoes. "Would you care for another beer? I'll be right back." He made his way to the bar, and the formerly aggressive tourists politely moved to one side, letting him pass.
SALON | May 6, 1998

Air Force Begins an Inquiry of Ex-Cadets' Rape Charges

Air Force Begins an Inquiry of Ex-Cadets' Rape Charges
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/national/20CADE.html

COLORADO SPRINGS, Feb. 19 — A team of senior Air Force officers from the Pentagon began an investigation here today after a number of women who had attended the United States Air Force Academy said they had been raped or sexually assaulted, only to face indifference, inaction or retaliation by academy officials.

Several former cadets at the Air Force Academy said academy officials undermined their cases when they reported being raped or abused. Some women said senior personnel were unsupportive and encouraged them to remain quiet about their experiences, lest they bring dishonor to the academy and themselves.

The complaints have reached such a point that Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado and a member of the Armed Services Committee, has called for Senate hearings into sexual assaults at all the service academies. Mr. Allard helped set the investigation in motion by telling the Pentagon of a former cadet's complaint that she had been raped and that academy officials had refused to investigate it.

"There is a real problem here," Mr. Allard said.

While Air Force officials have conceded that the sytem for reporting and investigating sexual abuse needs improving, they denied that they had been negligent in dealing with previous cases.

Many woman at the academy said the culture in which 84 percent of the cadets are men and where few were punished for sexual misconduct was so powerful that it effectively discouraged women from reporting offenses. Even the academy's 10-year-old support system for victims of abuse did little to help, they said.

"I probably knew 100 women when I was at the Air Force Academy," said Ruth, a cadet from Minnesota who said she left early in her sophomore year, in 2001, after she could no longer cope with the emotional trauma of a rape the year before. "I would say 80 experienced a sexual assault, and probably 40 of them were rape."

From 1996 through last year, officials at the academy say, a confidential hot line received 96 calls from women reporting a sexual assault, including 13 who said they were raped. Over the same period, the academy said, it investigated just 20 cases, which led to the dismissal of eight male cadets. In no case, they said, was the evidence strong enough for a court-martial.

Ruth said that early in her freshman year a woman from the academy's health counseling service told the women in Ruth's squadron that she had been raped twice and that "it will probably happen to you."

Ruth said the health counselor told the group that she did not report her rapes, adding, "You have two choices: pretend it didn't happen and deal with it; or report it." But Ruth said the counselor warned that if they reported a sexual attack and asked for an investigation, "your entire life at the academy is over, and you'll probably get kicked out."

Ruth said she never reported her rape to academy officials.

But Louise, a former cadet from Florida, said she did. She said she was raped by a fellow cadet who, she said, also sexually assaulted another woman in the squadron. But in the course of investigating her case, Louise said, investigators discovered that she had been drinking and socializing at inappropriate times, rules violations she said they used to undermine her credibility.

Louise said her case and the case involving the other woman in the squadron were dropped after investigators told them they could not find enough evidence of wrong-doing.

"It's ridiculous," Louise said. "They encourage you to report it, then after you report it, they throw it back in your face and tell you they don't have enough information."

Louise said she finally quit the academy after members of her squadron "hounded me out."

Marie, a former cadet from Pennsylvania who said she was raped last October, said her case, too, fell apart after academy officials charged her for infractions like drinking and improper fraternization, which undermined her efforts to press for a prosecution against her assailant. She left the academy last November, barely five months into her freshman year. Her case is open — for one reason, she was told, laboratory tests from her medical examination after the alleged rape are incomplete — but she said she held no hope for a satisfactory resolution.

"Mostly, I'm just disgusted with the academy," Marie said. "I wanted to stay. I worked so hard to get in. But they made my life hell. They made me feel like I did something morally wrong."

The accusations by these women and others came to light in a recent series of reports by KMGH-TV, the ABC affiliate in Denver. But it was a call from another former cadet that led Mr. Allard to write to Air Force Secretary James G. Roche last month, telling him that the woman said she "may have been raped" at the academy and that she said academy officials "refused to fully investigate the matter." Mr. Allard requested "a full and complete investigation." Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, made a similar request of Charles S. Abell, deputy under secretary of defense.

In response to the charges, Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III, commandant of cadets, said in a recent statement that the academy took "all allegations of misconduct, including sexual misconduct, very seriously." He said that every case "is thoroughly investigated" and that any suggestion that misconduct went unpunished was "unfounded and untrue."

But Mr. Allard said he doubted General Gilbert's assertion. "I don't trust him," Mr. Allard said. "I don't think he gets it."

With the Pentagon now involved, the academy did not make any senior officials available for questions today, nor did the Pentagon officials make any public statements. In an earlier interview with KMGH, Lt. Gen. John Dallager, the academy superintendent, conceded that sexual assault was a "hugely under-reported crime" and promised a full investigation and a new approach to dealing with complaints of sexual attack and rape.

"We are not going to sweep it under the rug," General Dallager told the station. "We don't tolerate and condone sexual harassment, much less sexual assault. So it's a serious issue. It's got all of our personal attention and involvement."

General Asks Air Force to Build Trust at Academy

General Asks Air Force to Build Trust at Academy
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/21/national/21CADE.html

COLORADO SPRINGS, Feb. 20 — With more women emerging to say they were raped or sexually assaulted at the Air Force Academy, the commandant of cadets conceded today that a survey last month showed that a fifth of cadets, and a much higher proportion of those who are women, lacked confidence in academy programs to help victims of sexual attacks.

The commandant, Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III, who oversees training, said the survey showed that 80 percent of cadets had "a high confidence" in academy leadership programs and would encourage a victim of sexual assault to take advantage of the them.

"But 20 percent did not share that view," General Gilbert said in an interview. "A disproportionate number of them were from our female population. Until everyone here has confidence in leadership, we have a problem."

About 84 percent of the 4,000 cadets are men.

The general commented as Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado, said as many as 10 women had contacted his office — at least six in the last few days — to say they had been raped or sexually assaulted while attending the academy. Mr. Allard said that about a third of the women remained enrolled and that the rest had left as a result of their experiences and disillusionment with a system that they say did not protect them.

"There seems to be more individuals who are willing to step forward," said Mr. Allard, who pressed for an Air Force investigation after a woman called his office last month to say that she had been raped and that academy officials refused to look into the accusation. "We started off dealing with one case. Now we have 8 to 10."

The Air Force began its inquiry last month, and a team of senior personnel from the Pentagon arrived on Wednesday. The investigation began after Mr. Allard and Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sent letters to Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asking for a full review of academy policies that are intended to encourage victims of sexual assaults to report incidents and to support victims after doing so.

A member of the group that arrived on Wednesday, Lt. Col. Dewey Ford, said that the collection of information and statistics here had just begun and that the group was deciding how to proceed beyond that, plans that could include interviews with rape victims and other cadets.

"We're just at the beginning stages now," Colonel Ford said. "We're sorting out exactly how to do what we need to do. All things are possible. But we haven't decided for sure what they are yet."

Colonel Ford said the material gathered would be passed along to Mary L. Walker, the Air Force general counsel, who would complete a report for Dr. Roche. Any recommended changes in policy would come from Dr. Roche.

General Gilbert, who has had his position for 18 months, said he had steadily tried to make sure that all cadets understood the seriousness of rape and sexual assault and that victims had resources available to them. He said he had sent an electronic message to every cadet on the issues and met each class at least once to discuss them.

"We want to do everything we can to provide a safe and secure environment, where the future leaders of the Air Force can develop," General Gilbert said. "Safety and security are paramount issues to me."

Nonetheless, he conceded that the academy had been unable to eliminate an atmosphere of fear and distrust that many victims said they encountered after sexual attacks or after reporting them to academy authorities. In recent days, women who left the academy after rapes or sexual attacks have gone public, describing a male-dominated culture that they said discourages them from reporting the attacks and, if they do, does not offer adequate legal or emotional support.

Several woman said that during the investigations into their accusations, academy officials used past rule violations like drinking or inappropriate fraternization against the women to undermine their credibility.

Mr. Allard said one of his greatest fears was that the academy allowed "one standard for men and another for women."

Echoing some victims' complaints that they had been punished for drinking while men were not, Mr. Allard said:

"If they're all drinking, they should all be treated equally. From the information I've gathered, the punishment dealt to men has been a lesser degree than punishment dealt to women."

General Gilbert defended the academy's judicial system, saying that although each case is different, each is prosecuted to the fullest extent of military law possible based on the available evidence. That has resulted in eight cadets being dismissed for sexual assaults from 1996 to 2002, even though over that period the academy investigated 13 rapes and seven other cases of sexual assault. Over that period, a confidential telephone line received 96 calls from women who reported sexual assaults, including 13 who said they had been raped.

"I have to adhere to the law," General Gilbert said. "But I take the harshest action I can take."

Even so, he added, he would encourage any woman who had been victimized by another cadet at the academy, including those who did and did not report previous incidents, "to come forward, no matter where you are."

"I gladly welcome any individual who has been victimized to come to me, to make sure you get the help you need," he said. "Rape is a crime. I will investigate every single allegation."

Mr. Allard, who has called for Senate hearings on the issues, said that he had met some of the Air Force investigators and that they had promised they would conduct a fair and impartial examination of problems and the male-dominated culture at the academy that women there say often protects the reputation of the academy at the expense of rape victims.

"They agree, at least initially, that there appears to be some validity to what the women have been saying," Mr. Allard said of the investigators. "I was heartened by their comments."

4,000 Cadets and a Quest for Flavor

4,000 Cadets and a Quest for Flavor
By GLENN COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/nyregion/24WEST.html

WEST POINT, N.Y. — It's really the kind of thing the Ivies might do.

Consider that, just for starters, 21 of the senior chefs here have already tuned up their skills at the Culinary Institute of America. About 30 managers are now immersed in an eight-week course taught by a consultant who trained the staff at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. And Glorious Food, the high-end caterer, has been brought in to give advice on food presentation and menus.

No, it's not Princeton, or Harvard, but the United States Military Academy at West Point, and "cadets expect nothing less," said Lt. Col. Derek S. Smith, officer in charge of the Cadet Mess. "We have to stay on top of new ideas as we increase the quality of our service, and the quality of our food."

This is a daunting challenge, since "military food" is one of the most venerable oxymorons in the language. There is also the stark reality that the entire United States Corps of Cadets, 4,000 strong, must be served in six minutes. They have but 24 minutes to eat.

That all adds up to 10,000 meals a day, 3 million meals a year. However, the food staff is also called upon to cater special events, such as a recent weekend dinner for 400 visiting cadets and officers from the Royal Military College of Canada.

Furthermore, there are four-star blowouts for the likes of President Bush, foreign heads of state and, the ultimate test, the annual October alumni summit, the Thayer Award Dinner, which last year drew 4,455 guests.

The budget for all this martial noshing is $20 million. On the balance sheet, over the course of a year, cadet meals cost an average of $5.75 per day.

If, as Napoleon said, an army marches on its stomach, then improved food and service are not insignificant matters at a time when West Point is girding for a potential war. "Our most important mission is to support our cadets," said Colonel Smith, 40, who supervises 300 people, including 104 cooks and a serving staff of 160.

A 17-year veteran who has served in Kuwait, Bosnia and Korea, Colonel Smith is hardly a career food-service warrior. While he once headed food-maintenance operations in Hungary, his real expertise isn't so much cooking as, well, explosives.

What, then, was the strategic impulse for his grand culinary upgrade? "My idea has always been to seek the advice of experts," he said. "We wanted to hire the best people there are."

Enter Jean-Claude Nedelec, the executive chef of Glorious Food, which catered dinner for 600 for the Museum of Modern Art the other night and fed 5,000 patriotic revelers at the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Mr. Nedelec has been studying the Cadet Mess, using a stopwatch and taking notes, "and it's an incredible operation," he said. "I am impressed that they get so much out of their staff and their budget."

So far he has made recommendations about presentation — silverware, plates, drinking glasses, serving platters and condiments available at meals. "These seem like small things," he said, "but they can make a big difference." He is also studying West Point's recipe roster to recommend improvements.

Naturally, there is grumbling about the chow — the soldier's prerogative since before the fall of Carthage — but a fair number of cadets are complimentary. "I'm surprised and pleased at how well they do, given how much time we have to eat, and how much time they have to serve us," said Keith Benedict, 22, a cadet sergeant major from Tucson. He is a Rhodes Scholar who will be able to make comparisons with the grub at Oxford University next year.

Indeed, food complaints "aren't high on the list of problems they come to me about," said Cadet Lt. Corey Boernsen, 23, the senior class president, from Winterset, Iowa. He was one of seven cadets at a wine tasting convened to choose the wines for graduation dinner. It was his first wine tasting, "but it will not be my last," he said.

At the Cadet Mess, each waiter covers 10 tables — or 100 cadets — a workload that is bearable because the food is served family style. The cuisine is hardly haute, and "they use more frozen and canned vegetables than we do," Mr. Nedelec said.

But all meals must conform to the Army's nutritional guidelines: 55 to 60 percent carbohydrates, 20 to 30 percent fat, 15 to 20 percent protein. About 3,500 calories a day are allotted for men, 2,500 for women; double portions go to football players and other athletes.

Every meal must take into account the "cadet preference issue," as it is called at West Point. "I could design a health menu, but they might not like it," said Kelli Kidd, the dietitian for the Cadet Corps. "So I walk around during every meal and ask the cadets what they think of the food."

Last year, Ms. Kidd added skim milk as an option along with the 1 percent that was already available; it was thirstily consumed. "I think there is a greater trend toward healthy lifestyles," Ms. Kidd said. She laughed: "But the day you tried to take their pizza away, that would be a bad day."

Cadets have collaborated in shaping many meals, such as the chicken fajitas, which began life as "vegetable wraps" with rice, veggies and shredded cheese that "no one liked very much," Ms. Kidd said. Cadets' complaints led to the addition of meat, then extras; ultimately, cadets said they preferred a more moist, spicier chicken, and suddenly it became a popular dish.

There are more transgressive options, of course, in the next-door village of Highland Falls, where the "McDonald's makes deliveries" to campus, said Raven Bukowski, 21, a cadet captain from Akron, Ohio.

Although the entire student body assembles for breakfast and lunch, the optional buffet-style dinners in the mess were attracting only 1,500 cadets 19 months ago, when Colonel Smith arrived. The rest were dialing for dinner at Chinese, Italian and other establishments.

So Colonel Smith assembled a sampling of the local menus and asked his culinary staff, "Can we make all this, but make it healthier?" They tried, and now more than 2,400 cadets journey to the mess at dinner.

They are only vaguely aware of the formidable machine working below the slate floor of the monumental mess hall. Robert Raap, the quality assurance manager of the mess, walked a visitor through the kitchens and the cavernous cold lockers. He pointed out chamber after chamber devoted to foodstuffs: the salad room, the bakery room and the "cook-and-chill" operation that prepares Brobdingnagian quantities of salads, sauces and gravies in advance. "Experts have come from Australia, Japan and Turkey just to see this operation," Mr. Raap said.

Food is cooked and warmed in nine giant ovens; three gas-fired units are large enough so that each can cook a third of the meat for the entire student body (that amounts to 1,400 pieces of chicken in one oven).

The kitchen can immerse 3,000 pounds of French fries in two custom-made fryers, "and those fries are incredibly good," Mr. Nedelec said. Then all the food is lifted from the kitchen up to the mess floor in 8-foot-wide dumbwaiters.

Even experienced food professionals who have catered mammoth events "cannot believe the things that are accomplished here," said Eric Weiss as he stood before a group of 25 managers, floor supervisors and servers.

Mr. Weiss, a food and wine consultant who has trained kitchen and service staff members of many luxury restaurants, was hired by Colonel Smith to lead a weekly 2 1/2-hour session on the finer points of hospitality.

"We don't want the wait staff to be servitrons," Mr. Weiss told the group. "Each of the cadets has an identity, and each of the servers does, too. Since so much of the cadets' lives are regimented, you can provide a feeling of warmth, comfort and connectedness."

For more than an hour, he drilled the group in procedures that would give their service a more personal touch. During a break, Mr. Weiss explained that "by teaching the managers, we believe this will filter down to the staff."

The managers seemed grateful for the attention. "I wouldn't miss a single one of these sessions," said Wilfredo Ramos, a quality-control supervisor who started as a waiter back in 1993. "This is my idea of what learning is all about."

Liked the Show, Loved the Afterparty

Liked the Show, Loved the Afterparty
By CARL SWANSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/fashion/23RYAN.html

THE opening of the Ryan McGinley photography exhibition early this month at the Whitney Museum did not draw the usual art-appreciation crowd. For one thing, there was hardly anybody over the age of 30. The afterparty, sponsored by the clothing designer Agnès B., Stella Artois beer and the indie magazine Index, was bigger than the museum event, packing a vast space on Hudson Street with exactingly mussed downtowners in trucker caps and vintage sneakers. The 22-year-old fashion designer Zac Posen was pressed up against a singer from a punk band called Le Tigre, and graffiti artists swilled beer with members of an electroclash band, W.I.T. The hall buzzed with the energy of a demographic celebrating itself.

As indeed it was. Mr. McGinley is 25 and first picked up a camera five years ago. His show, "The Kids Are Alright," part of the Whitney's "First Look" series introducing young photographers, documents his life in downtown Manhattan and his young, dirty, often half-naked and usually ecstatically stoned-looking friends.

At a time the art world is enamored with new photography, Mr. McGinley, with his detached yet intimate vision of what it is like to be underemployed, underweight and conversant with the underground culture, inspires comparisons with a young Nan Goldin, whose fly-on-the-wall photographs put Lower East Side friends on intimate display.

Sipping Earl Grey tea in his East Village walk-up shortly before his Whitney debut, Mr. McGinley discussed his anointment. Friendly and solicitous, he comes across more like someone's goofy younger brother than a rising art star, often breaking off into bashful giggles when talking about himself.

"I was in a group show at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, and the woman from the Whitney heard about it," he said, referring to Sylvia Wolf, the Whitney's photography curator. "Sylvia called me up and said, `Do you want to do a show at the Whitney? I'll give you a day to think about it.' And I was like, `Uh, I don't need a day.' " He leaned forward and widened his eyes big for emphasis.

But to say Mr. McGinley was plucked from obscurity would not quite do him justice. While other 20-year-olds busied themselves sending cover letters and getting dressed for job interviews, Mr. McGinley spent the last five years palling around with a steadily accumulating set of art mentors, including the Toronto filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, the photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark and Agnès B., publishing his photographs in hipper-than-thou magazines like Index and Vice, and generally insinuating himself in the New York art and music scene like the latest revived 1980's haircut.

"I've never seen something come to global domination so quickly," said Michael Bullock, advertising sales director of Index, which first published Mr. McGinley's work, in 2000, and put out a small book of his photographs last February.

Some are more impressed by Mr. McGinley's networking skills than with his artistic eye. An article in The Village Voice dismissed him as Vice's "gay lad mascot," and V, an insider's fashion magazine, teased him for having become famous by "ripping off the established vérité style of Nan Goldin and Terry Richardson." But Holland Cotter, writing in The New York Times, assessed his portrayal of friends, lovers and fellow artists as "relaxed and playful, as if the world were on recess" as opposed to Ms. Goldin's "noirish narcissism."

Mr. McGinley's apartment, which he rents with a painter named Gargantuan Dan and a D.J. who calls himself Kid America, bears all the hallmarks of someone tipping out of one world and into another. His bed is on cinder blocks, the sheets are from the Salvation Army and a pile of sneakers covers much of the floor. Then there's the gleaming MacIntosh G4, and the number for Hedi Slimane, the men's wear designer for Christian Dior, on a pad next to the phone.

Like the work of Mr. Clark and the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, Mr. McGinley's images of wan drug-using friends provide access to a certain world that the Range Rover crowd might find titillating.

"It's not just peering at beautiful young people; it's also being admitted to the circle," said Luc Santé, who wrote about bohemian New York in the book "Low Life" and who teaches the history of photography at Bard College. "Older viewers get that twinge of envy. The younger viewer gets that feeling they're not cool enough or something. It pushes a lot of emotional buttons."

Mr. McGinley maintains that he is not about pushing buttons. And although much of his work reflects his life as a young gay man, he does want to treat that matter-of-factly. His photograph of his friend and muse, Eric, masturbating, for example, might seem shocking, even deliberately so, but Mr. McGinley insists he is really trying "to make the sensational banal."

The same goes for his treatment of the beer and cocaine parties he chronicled in Vice. "It's about the happy effects of the drug, as opposed to Nan Goldin, which is about dramatic effect," he said. "They shouldn't make you sad. It's not about the art of drugs; it's about how the drugs induce your performance for the camera."

Ms. Wolf of the Whitney agrees with the distinction. "The thing that strikes me is that he has an almost innocent, exuberant approach, but it's tough-minded at the same time," she said. "It's not in the same vein as Larry Clark; they're not down and out. I see a generation that's been raised with visual images, where people are posing and scenes are staged."

Raised with computer technology, Mr. McGinley has never bothered to master the darkroom.

"I never learned how to color-print," he said. Instead, he scans negatives into his computer. "It's like D.J.'ing with an iPod," he said, "You don't have to collect records for 20 years. It's great if you're that guy. But nobody can tell the difference."

It's an attitude that irritates detractors. A lot of people are grumbling, said the photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia, a leading influence on fashion and advertising photography who teaches at Yale. "There's always going to be carping from photographers because there's such a large contingent of them who base their identity on some sort of technical aspect of it," he said. "And then somebody comes along and makes it seem easy."

Mr. McGinley grew up in suburban Ramsey, N.J. His father hoped he would be a tennis star. Instead he became a skateboarder. He and his friends would head into Manhattan after school and skate in Washington Square Park, a place that turned out to be something of a Groucho Club of networking opportunities for the freestyle set. It was there, in 1991, that he met Mr. Clark, when the director was looking for amateur actors to cast in "Kids," his brutal 1995 depiction of aimless youth. (Mr. McGinley's friend, Leo Fitzpatrick, got the lead.)

In 1996 Mr. McGinley moved to New York to attend the Parsons School of Design and study graphic design. One day in a graphics class he was having trouble getting a drawing of a church right, so — fed up with his inadequate efforts, and because he just found the idea of cheating funny — he decided it would be easier to take a photograph and trace it.

Within a year, he said, he was documenting everything in his life with a camera. In 1999 he got the attention of the editors at Vice and Index after self-publishing a book of his photographs at home on his Epson printer; assignments followed. Index also reprinted 1,500 copies of his book. He ran into Agnès B. at a party, where she saw his book and decided to exhibit his photographs in her Los Angeles store last summer. "I had to fight a bit with people I work with," she said. "It was the image of his friend masturbating, placed by the door, which got the most complaints."

Throughout his short career, Mr. McGinley has had a seemingly unerring ability to attract mentors and sponsors, and once in his orbit, it is easy to see how he does it. At his opening he worked a crowd with the ease of a Kiwanis clubman in his free Agnès B. suit, shaking hands and slapping friends on the back. Occasionally he pulled guests over to pose for souvenir Polaroids, which he posted on the wall.

While his work has the hipness of a party only very few people are worthy of attending, Mr. McGinley himself is constantly accommodating, inviting you in, sounding you out. Join me; let me take your picture, is the message he sends.

Mr. McGinley also seems to have reached a mellowing phase ahead of his peers. Once he had a reputation for partying: the high jinks that went on at his apartment were so legendary that they inspired Mr. Clark's latest exploration into the excesses of youth, a Showtime series on which Mr. McGinley has been collaborating. "He was interested in writing about what used to take place in my apartment," Mr. McGinley said of Mr. Clark's project. "It's settled down a lot."

"It was drugs, sex, total excess," said Gavin McInnes, editor of Vice. "Most people don't come out of that. But somehow he had the sense to just do his work."

The evidence is on the wall of the Whitney, although the activities have abated somewhat.

"Lately," he said, "I've slowed down a little bit to learn about this business of art."

Anna Wintour Steps Toward Fashion's New Democracy

Anna Wintour Steps Toward Fashion's New Democracy
By DAVID CARR
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/media/17MAG.html

At the Marc Jacobs show at the Armory on Lexington Avenue last Monday night, the actress Liv Tyler's arrival created ripples and P. Diddy landed with significant impact. But the flashes grew most incandescent when Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, arrived wearing a fur by Fendi. As a conga line of models began the show, viewers divided their attention among the clothes, the mannered walks of the models and the inscrutable reaction of Ms. Wintour, seated front and center with her daughter, Bee. The show ended in just 20 minutes, and before people even made a move for their coats, Ms. Wintour took three lightning quick strides and was gone.

Ms. Wintour likes being just ahead of the crowd. It was almost not so.

Just four years ago, she was more toast than toast of the town. Vogue, a Condé Nast magazine, was beset by defections of crucial personnel, including Kate Betts, a protégée who went to edit Harper's Bazaar. She seemed in danger of losing custody of fashion as supermodels gave way to actresses as vehicles for couture. Although still No. 1, Vogue was threatened by InStyle, Time Inc.'s hugely successfully hybrid of celebrity and fashion. Toss in coverage of her divorce and her relationship with J. Shelby Bryan, a former telecommunications executive, and Ms. Wintour's icy mien was tested by a very hot light.

But Ms. Wintour, 53, has managed to regain primacy by taking the 111-year Vogue in some decidedly un-Vogue directions. The cover, once reserved for young models who seemed to dine only on oxygen, will have a very pregnant 37-year-old Brooke Shields on the April issue. Never mind that Vanity Fair took a similar approach with Demi Moore in 1991, albeit with far less clothing. In the context of Vogue, where the cover models seem a different, more exalted species, a round person in the fullness of reproduction is very transgressive. While other editors of Vogue — she is just the third the last 40 years — used a combination of unachievable fantasy and fashion to stay on top, Ms. Wintour has become a stealth populist.

Fifteen years into her tenure, she preserves a persona of aristocratic chic, keeping herself at a tantalizing remove while her magazine becomes more accessible with each issue. Over the last few years, she has adorned Vogue's cover with celebrities and theme issues that readers crave, but are at odds with the magazine's haughty history.

Ms. Wintour, whose own haughtiness comes in spurts, said she was responding to the culture, not clutter.

"We don't believe in talking about other things that are out there," she said of the competition, her unlined face and steady gaze uninterrupted by the trademark sun glasses she seems to wear less and less. "Vogue is not supposed to be a coffee table book. I think that what we are really responding to is the moment."

Her binary high-low approach has shown results. Her magazine is lengthening its lead over its competition, and she all but invented several of the hotter designers at Fashion Week. The event last week made clear that Ms. Wintour's monarchic reign comes during a curiously democratic era in fashion. Fashion Week used to be a tidy rite for a select group of designers and journalists, but now there is big-screen TV at Grand Central, wall-to-wall coverage on cable and designers who market their wares to Target. The message is clear: fashion belongs to everyone.

As couture has become woven into pop culture, Ms. Wintour has worked to meet changing circumstances, something she is used to. After all, she responded to having a dead raccoon dumped on her plate by protesters from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals at the Four Seasons in 1996 by draping a napkin over it and calmly ordering coffee.

At Vogue, the clothing has always been the star, but in 2002, celebrities occupied nine of the covers. Theme issues, something that would have been branded as tacky 10 years ago, have become commonplace, including paeans to different sizes and ages, and even a recent ode to couples. The magazine remains a temple to the wealthy, well-bred and white, but its voice is friendlier, with less of the royal "we" pronouncing this season's must-have. For younger consumers, Ms. Wintour performed an arranged marriage of fashion and rock that resulted in the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards.

"She is not of the people, but she certainly understands them," offered Patrick McCarthy, editorial director of Condé Nast's sister company, Fairchild Publications. Both are owned by Advance Publications.

These are difficult days to market $5,000 frocks, but Vogue's newsstand sales were up almost 19 percent for last year, with a total circulation of 1.25 million, and the current issue is the second-biggest March issue ever. Although the celebrity-suffused InStyle has elbowed its way onto Vogue's turf, the magazine is dominant in the pure fashion category, with 2,890 pages of ads last year, compared with 1,436 for Harper's Bazaar, 1,858 for W and 1,534 for Elle, according to the Publisher's Information Bureau.

For the first quarter of the year, Vogue executives said the magazine is up 13 percent in ad pages compared with the period last year. Vogue published almost 2,900 pages of ads, down 8 percent from the previous year, but a better performance than the rest of the category.

"Last year, the magazine suddenly took off," said S. I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Advance Publications. "The magazine began to achieve a different level of interest."

Not everyone is applauding Ms. Wintour's long walk down fashion's runway.

There are designers who think her romance with European designers has hurt American fashion. "She has made a lot of money for Mr. Newhouse and herself, but she has hurt the American fashion industry irreparably," said the designer Geoffrey Beene. Many others complain that she favors those she favors, giving disproportionate coverage to designers like John Galliano, whose career was resuscitated after she gave him a coach ticket to New York from France and the staff at Vogue helped him obtain financing.

Ms. Wintour earns more than $1 million a year as editor of Vogue and has a clothing budget of more than $50,000, according to company executives. She lives in the fashion vernacular, but she aspires to an editorial agenda that goes beyond the common template of beauty and fashion of many women's magazines. The current March issue includes a profile of Senator John Kerry and for its March 2001 issue, the magazine sent a reporter to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for an article about an American worker surreptitiously educating women and children in Kabul. The magazine also publishes the writing of Jeffrey Steingarten, a much-heralded food columnist. Vogue's cover has been inserted into the public debate, including giving Hillary Rodham Clinton's public image and fashion approach a huge makeover in 1998.

Ms. Wintour's exacting nature has worn out many talented editors and writers, and many suggest that her managerial imperiousness is beyond temperamental to the toxic. Certainly, if assertion is one of the primary tools of editing, then Ms. Wintour remains well positioned.

Last Thursday morning, her office was host to a run-through of clothing and jewelry for a June article about beachwear and major jewelry. ("Sort of a hip-hop approach," she explained.)

The ritual resembled a miniature circus, with a variety of staffers in heels like small stilts elegantly pirouetting racks of clothing in one after another. As the ringmaster, Ms. Wintour's whip was merely inferred, but the pace was breakneck. Each outfit held her attention for approximately 30 seconds.

"I am not a great believer in long meetings," she said. "I try to be open to other points of view, but people look to you for a decision, and it's most helpful to make one. Even when you aren't completely sure."

Ms. Wintour seems completely sure fairly often. In a meeting later that morning to go though the April issue, 13 people gathered behind her while she gave a final look to pages laid out on the counter. They madly scribbled notes as she deconstructed dozens of pages in less than 20 minutes. They all seemed to exhale at once when Ms. Wintour finished going over the issue.

With Tina Brown out of the editing picture, Ms. Wintour is now the only magazine editor whose celebrity rivals that of her subjects. But it comes at a cost. This spring, "The Devil Wears Prada," a roman à clef written by her former assistant Lauren Weisberger and published by Doubleday, will be eagerly dissected by fashionistas.

It is a short stroll from the fictional Miranda Priestly, the ill-tempered editor of Runway magazine, to Ms. Wintour. In one passage in her book, Ms. Weisberger writes: "The tweed, belted jacket cinched her already tiny waist and complemented the perfectly fitted pencil skirt she wore beneath it. `Ahn-dre-ah. The latte is ice cold. I don't understand why. You were certainly gone long enough! Bring me another!' "

Sitting in her office with a latte off her elbow, Ms. Wintour smiled demurely when the book was mentioned.

"I always enjoy a great piece of fiction," she said with a wan smile. "I haven't decided whether I am going to read it or not."

Are You Hot? Not if You're a Sitcom Writer

Are You Hot? Not if You're a Sitcom Writer
By MIREYA NAVARRO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/fashion/23COME.html

LOS ANGELES

STACIE LIPP remembers the golden age of comedy in Hollywood. It was 1990, when a Harvard degree and a few clips from the Lampoon landed you a job as a writer for the hottest television sitcoms.

All it took for Ms. Lipp was a friend's tip that "Married . . . With Children" wanted a woman for its writing staff. Within a week of the interview, she was moving from New York to Los Angeles, where she settled in, at 22, for a six-year gig with the Fox hit.

From there it was an easy leap to "Roseanne" and "The King of Queens," and a salary in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Success stories like Ms. Lipp's became a national cliché. A 1993 Newsweek headline read: "Go to Harvard. Write Jokes. Make $$$."

But these are the days of voted-in relationships, humiliated talent and bug-eating heroes on prime time. At a moment when America wants to watch Lorenzo Lamas ask, "What's your breast size, because it's hard to see your breasts in that dress?" — as he has done on ABC's newest reality series "Are You Hot?" — comedy is no longer king.

Ms. Lipp's last show was canceled three years ago just as "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" ushered in the reality show craze — and ushered out her era of easy, funny money. In a case of terrible timing, she pitched one of her ideas to CBS the morning after the first "Survivor" finale. She might as well have been rejected by a good-looking bachelor with a wavy mane and no money.

"Nobody listened," she remembered. "They were buzzing. It could have been the best sitcom ever, and we were doomed."

This year, Ms. Lipp is pitching to cable.

"A grim reaper looms over the business right now," said Bill Martin, a veteran of "Third Rock From the Sun" and "In Living Color" and currently executive producer of "Grounded for Life," a family comedy on WB.

The number of new comedies on the networks has sunk steadily in recent years, from 62 in 1997 to 35 this season, according to the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Networks are furiously signing up shows like "Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People." And some comedy writers are turning into straight men and doing the unthinkable: signing up for reality. "We've kind of dumbed down, not by intention — the system demands it," said Bill Diamond, an executive producer with "Murphy Brown" in the mid-1990's.

First came the popularity of hourlong dramas. Then came network belt-tightening, which dried up development deals, cutting into writing staffs and salaries. And now the tidal wave of reality television has come. Mr. Diamond, who has worked in development since 1997, said the huge ratings for reality shows demonstrated the viewing public's boredom with "cookie cutter" and "setup punch line" laugh-track-type comedies that have populated television.

An executive with a major production studio, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said writers made themselves vulnerable because they did not figure out what the public wanted to see these days. Networks still have a great appetite for comedies, the executive said, but nobody is creating hits, and thus reality shows have become a quick fix.

"We have not found a breakout comedy on the order of `Friends,' " the executive said. "The breakout seems to be dramas like C.S.I."

The executive concluded: "Maybe comedy writers are not funny anymore."

The Writers Guild of America said that the increasing hours devoted to reality shows had reduced jobs for the more than 5,600 members who write for television.

Even in better times, the field was so competitive that half or more of all television writers were looking for work on any given day.

Matt Selman, co-executive-producer of "The Simpsons," arrived just in time for a taste of the good times. When he moved to Hollywood in 1994 as a 23-year-old fresh from the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, the town was crawling with graduates looking to make fast money writing comedy.

"It was a gold rush of overeducated, greedy people like myself who considered themselves funny," he said. He took the best of three quick job offers, writing for "Seinfeld" in 1995. Though he was dismissed within a year, he was hired by "The Simpsons," which has just broadcast its 300th episode and remains a rock in stormy waters.

"Now a lot of people who got in when I got in are unemployed or semiemployed," Mr. Selman said.

The proportion of writers to jobs is so out of whack that some agents are no longer taking on new writing clients. Others are telling clients with jobs to sit tight, or are steering them into more than one project to supplement incomes that have fallen 10 to 30 percent below established salaries, according to some writers' agents.

"The people who are working are not going hungry — it's getting the job that's hard," said Ian Greenstein, a partner in the Genesis Literary Agency, in Los Angeles.

As a result, some writers are seeking refuge in cable, turning to animation, abandoning the field altogether or taking jobs on reality shows, even if by definition these shows make their title obsolete.

Perry Dance, a comedy writer who also came to Hollywood during the golden years, is still golden — on reality television.

After freelancing scripts for "Roseanne" and "A Different World," then teenagers' sitcoms like "Sweet Valley High" and "Saved by the Bell," he switched to drama, and finally, with real reluctance, "Making the Band," an ABC reality series now on MTV about people vying for spots in a music group.

"What would I do in it?" he said he asked himself.

There was an answer: sit through hours and hours of unedited tape to pick out usable bits while working for half the pay (with no residuals from syndication).

Even "Girl Next Door: The Search for a Playboy Centerfold," which Mr. Dance also worked on for Fox, needs someone to structure the scenes to tell a story. But instead of making up jokes in a room full of sitcom writers, as he once did, Mr. Dance now sits alone in his office waiting for the jokes to come to him, in the form of contestants' natural slip-ups.

The nuggets he lives for now, he said, are moments like this: A hopeful on "Joe Millionaire" said she wanted to do charity work because she was a "mercenary," when she meant "missionary."

The worst part of the job is "when you have three-quarters of what you need for a great story, and there's no tape to give you that last quarter," he said. "There's no making it in reality. On a scripted sitcom, you would have resolved it."

He has, at least, tasted blockbuster success — as story editor on Fox's "Joe Millionaire," whose finale last Monday drew more than 40 million viewers.

"Reality is not `Frasier,' " he conceded, "but you don't feel too humiliated on `Joe Millionaire' when it's going to be the No. 1 show that week."

There are also opportunities in dramas, feature films and sitcoms on cable, but in the world of comedy writing, networks are considered the gravy trains. The average pay starts in the low $100,000 bracket, but after five years writers can easily be making more than $500,000 a year, writers and agents said. At the executive producer level, the income can exceed $1 million a year.

A decade ago, Ben Dougan, a senior at Harvard and past president of The Harvard Lampoon, would have been a shoo-in for a network job. He would love to land a job with "Saturday Night Live" or a television sitcom where "the comedy is the most important thing," but he admits that he may have a better shot in the realm of what he calls the "inadvertent comedy" of reality television.

Anyone with television ambitions is almost resigned to start out their career helping the lovelorn, the narcissistic and the tacky win contests rather than writing the next "Seinfeld."

The lucky ones with sitcom jobs have worries, too.

Bill Martin and Mike Schiff, both writers and producers on Fox's "Grounded for Life," said their comedy was playing its own version of "Survivor." The show started out on Fox in 2001 but was squeezed off the schedule by Fox's own reality shows.

"Our slot is now a piece of "American Idol," Mr. Martin said. The show later found another home, on WB.

"People tune in to reality shows by the millions," Mr. Schiff said. "One reason I don't get depressed is that they can't go past naked people having sex. What else can they do?"

In the cyclical world of television, those who keep the faith said, the next comedy heyday is just around the corner. All that is needed is that breakout hit.

There can be only so many reality shows, and despite their cheaper production costs and explosive ratings, there's no syndication afterlife — where productions make the big money — for them, many in the industry said.

"The sky is not falling," said Charles Slocum of the Writers Guild. But for now, the people the world of television once laughed with, revered and celebrated get mostly commiseration.

If the truth be told, many writers are reality fans.

"I wanted to watch `American Idol' to despise it, and I became another viewer," Mr. Martin of "Grounded for Life" admitted. "No! I can't believe they didn't pick her!"

Let Your Characters Tell You the Story

Let Your Characters Tell You the Story
By JOYCE MAYNARD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/books/24MAYN.html

A number of years back, a murder took place near where I lived in New Hampshire that left the citizens of the state riveted to their televisions. A young teacher at a small town high school — married, in her 20's, with aspirations to become a television journalist — was accused of plotting the murder of her husband.

I had so many questions. If in fact she had committed the crime as charged, what was the motive? What would inspire a teenager to put a gun to the head of a man he'd never met before and pull the trigger?

Part of what attracted people to following the case was that the accused woman, Pamela Smart, seemed so unlikely a killer. Pretty and well spoken, she had appeared on our television screens many times in the weeks before her arrest, making impassioned pleas that anyone who might know something come forward to assist the police in locating her husband's killer.

That person turned out to be Pamela Smart herself, with the assistance of a 15-year-old boy from the school where she taught, who said he was her lover.

I had so many questions. If in fact she had committed the crime as charged, what was the motive? What would inspire a teenager to put a gun to the head of a man he'd never met before and pull the trigger?

In my years as a journalist I'd conducted my share of interviews. But even if I could gain entrance to the jail, I knew that the questions I most burned to ask would never find their answers there.

I believed the best hope for locating my answers lay in the creation of fictional characters, modeled in some ways after the principals in the real case. And so, without a clear idea of where my story was headed — only a knowledge borne from living much of my life in small New Hampshire towns where I'd known boys not unlike the one now sitting in the county jail accused of murder — I began to write.

The first voice I adopted was that of the boy — a leap of imagination, you might say, for a woman then in her late 30's whose contact with 15-year-old boys, when she was herself that age, was only as a quiet and shy observer in my high school classroom and my own small town. I became the boy for a while, then I was his mother, then I was the schoolteacher, and then the disaffected girl who would ultimately win favor with the boy and the teacher by providing them with a gun.

Here's what I believe happens when a writer begins her story with an authentically realized character (as opposed to one from central casting, formed out of the necessity to see a certain preordained action take place). If she allows him to take shape slowly on the page, if she resists the urge to make assumptions based on what she thinks he should do, he'll take on a life of his own and very nearly reveal the direction of the story.

The process that comes to mind here, that most resembles the one I undergo when I embark on bringing a character to life on the page, is that old art class exercise I still love, the contour drawing. You set your pencil on the paper and keep your eye firmly locked on the face of your subject, and then you let the pencil begin to move. You don't look down at the paper. You don't allow yourself to tidy up the image, and because of that, the image you create is likely to be a strange one.

An eye may show up on a cheek, the brow intersecting an ear. The strange thing is, an honestly executed contour drawing, created by a patient hand and a more patient eye, often conveys a more accurate rendering of the subject than one of some more deftly executed suitable-for-framing likeness.

In every novel I've written, I began with character, and allowed the drama to emerge out of human nature and relationships. Whether or not the story I constructed in my novel "To Die For" ultimately answered the questions posed by the real Smart case never seemed of import to me. I didn't write a novel about that case, and the only authenticity I cared about was that I remain true to the nature and motivations of the characters I'd invented. By the time I reached the point in my telling of the story where the boy entered the condo and shot the husband, I didn't hesitate or agonize over the scene. I knew what he would do and say, same as I knew the woman would turn on him after.

It doesn't always work, this practice of ceding one's control to one's character out of the faith that he will lead you to the story. A while back, shortly after a high school shooting in San Diego in which the gunman had been a 14-year-old boy, I embarked again on a quest to locate the answers rarely uncovered by journalists in cases like that one: Why?

Once again I took on the voice of a boy (a different kind of boy this time: wisecracking child of divorce, abandoned by his mother, taunted at his school) and let him start talking. I constructed a world for him: the apartment complex where he lived, with the TV always on, the skate park where a bunch of boys stole his board, the first day he showed up with it. Two hundred pages later I'd located ample evidence for understanding his pain and sense of isolation, his longing to be heard.

I wrote his story right up to the morning he was due to go to school and open fire. But when the moment came to write the scene in which he put the gun in his backpack, I knew I'd failed. I still couldn't find believable motivation for that one small act, so crucial to everything else. I put the novel in a drawer.

In the fall of 2001 — a couple hundred pages into a different work of fiction — I stopped through New York City to see my older son for a few days. My plane landed on Sept. 9.

After the events of that week, the novel I thought I was writing no longer made sense to me. Or at least it seemed impossible at that moment to immerse myself in a story that did not in some way take into account the experiences of those days and the ones that followed, the sense of loss and the questions: What do we do now? Where does hope lie?

I spent close to a month in New York, walking for miles, studying the faces on fliers, listening to people on the street. I found myself focused in particular on the experience of young people during that time, tried to imagine my own children, if they had seen me go out the door that morning and never return.

Sometime over the course of those weeks I heard the story of a woman killed in the towers who had left two children, one by a former husband, one the child of the husband she'd been married to the day she died. Now the older child would be leaving the home of her little brother and stepfather to go live with her father.

I didn't know the particulars of that family's story and would not have invaded their terrible grief to ask. But as a parent, divorced many years, whose own children had navigated the territory between the worlds of divided parents, and as the mother of three nearly-grown children whose greatest source of strength outside themselves lay with one another, I knew some things about divisions in families and connections among sibling, and what I didn't know I believed the process of creating characters might reveal to me.

The novel I ended up writing that fall, winter and spring ("The Usual Rules," which has just been published) was not the one I was embarked on, that I'd planned to write that fall. My story was not, in the end, about Sept. 11 at all, and certainly not about the family whose story I heard mentioned that day.

To my surprise and relief, the novel I wrote turned out not to be a tragic one either, though the story I told was touched off by tragedy. The girl I created on the page, faced with the death of her mother, separation from a brother and stepfather she loved and the prospect of going to live with a father she barely knew, turned out to be a strong and ultimately hopeful person. I would not have been able to imagine, when I embarked on her story, how it might be that a young person could rebuild a life after the events of that day. My character told me.