The Way They See It

Supplemento al numero
odierno de la Repubblica
Sped. abb. postale art. 1
legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times
The Way They See It
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON
OHN MCCAIN HAS said his worldview
was formed in the North Vietnamese jail
where as a prisoner of war he learned to
stand up to his country’s enemies and lost any
youthful naïveté about what happens when
America shows weakness.
Barack Obama has written that his views
began to take shape in Jakarta, where he
lived as a boy and saw the poverty, the human
rights violations and the fear inspired by the
American-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto. It was there, he wrote, that he first understood how foreigners react to “our tireless
promotion of American-style capitalism” and
to Washington’s “tolerance and occasional
encouragement of tyranny, corruption and
environmental degradation.”
As the two presidential campaigns tell the
story, those radically different experiences in
different corners of Southeast Asia have created two men with sharply different views about
the proper use of American power. Mr. McCain’s campaign portrays him as an experienced
warrior. Mr. Obama’s campaign portrays him
as a cerebral advocate of patient diplomacy.
But as the campaign has progressed toward
Tuesday’s election, both men have taken surprising detours. They may have formed their
worldviews in Hanoi and Jakarta, but they
forged specific positions amid the realities of
an election battle in post-Iraq America. The
result has included contradictions that do not
fit the neat hawk-and-dove images promoted
by each campaign.
J
DANIEL ADEL
THE BACK STORY Senator John McCain’s conflicting impulses toward deliberation and aggression have
been the currents of his career. Senator Barack Obama’s lifelong penchant for control would likely translate
into a disciplined White House. Page IV.
Engagement in Iran
The potential confrontation with Iran over its
nuclear program has emerged as the No. 1 case
study in how the candidates would use diplomacy and the threat of military force against a
hostile state. Both have declared they would
Continued on Page IV
WORLD TRENDS
An upheaval over
land in Paraguay.
III
BUSINESS OF GREEN
In Italy, redesigning
nature to clean it.
VI
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
What’s for supper?
A little blood.
VII
I NTELLIGENCE: T i m e to fo rg ive G e rm a ny, Page I I.
P U B B L I C I TÁ
What Was That You Said?
that “people actually worked faster
We only have 10 fingers, two
LENS
in situations where they were interhands and one brain. But getting
rupted, but they produced less.”
them to juggle as many tasks as
Professor Mark, who has studied
possible has become a matter of
multitasking, calls it “bad for insurvival in the digital age.
novation.”
We e-mail while eating. We
phone while driving. We text
Perhaps the pace that multitasking engenders has become a bad
message while cooking. We use
habit as well. Matt Richtel and Ashshort sentences. Or no sentences
lee Vance reported in The Times
at all.
that the enforced idleness computer users
And though Zen masters have long
must endure while their machines start up
advised that while drinking tea, a person
has become such a source of frustration
should only drink tea, today’s caffeine fix
is often interrupted by devices that twitter that manufacturers are responding.
Telling the reporters that “it’s ridiculous
and beep.
to ask people to wait a couple of minutes,”
But just how much actual work is getting
Sergei Krupenin, executive director of
done as our minds dart among gadgets,
DeviceVM, is marketing quick-boot prodeadlines and distractions?
grams designed to calm impatient con“You have to keep in mind that you sacrisumers who cannot stand glacially slow
fice focus when you do this,” said Edward
start-ups like, say, longer than 30 seconds.
M. Hallowell, a psychiatrist and author of
But just as technology helped create the
“CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked
attention deficit generation, technology is
and About to Snap!”
also providing ways of coping with fragHe told The New York Times’s Alina
mented lives.
Tugend that multitasking is like “playing
Some students and professionals who
tennis with three balls.”
Gloria Mark, a professor at the Universi- want better focus are turning to drugs
used for treating attention deficit disorder.
ty of California at Irvine, told Ms. Tugend
Benedict Carey, in a Times article, quoted an anonymous posting on the Chronicle
of Higher Education Web site, extolling
the advantages of the drug Adderall: “I’m
talking about being able to take on twice
the responsibility, work twice as fast, write
more effectively, manage better, be more
attentive, devise better and more creative
strategies.”
And what about those people who are so
used to flipping between windows, channels and gadgets that they are incapable of
carrying on a normal conversation?
Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology has developed
software and a cellphone-like device that
monitors the nuances of conversations and
over time teaches its users how to communicate more effectively and pay attention
to others. As Anne Eisenberg wrote in The
Times, “such tools could help users better
handle the many subtleties of face-to-face
and group interactions.”
For those who do not have a digital
device to warn them of rude or inattentive behavior, however, there is always a
stand-by from the analog age: the brutally
honest co-worker, friend or spouse.
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II
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA RY
ED IT O RIAL S O F T HE T IMES
Barack Obama
For President
American newspapers traditionally
make endorsements in local, state and
national elections. What follows is the
preference of The New York Times in
this year’s presidential race.
Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s
future truly hangs in the balance.
The United States is battered and
drifting after eight years of President
Bush’s failed leadership. He is leaving
his successor with two wars, a scarred
global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect
and help its citizens — whether they
are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters,
searching for affordable health care
or struggling to hold on to their homes,
jobs, savings and pensions.
As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After
nearly two years of a grueling and ugly
campaign, Senator Barack Obama of
Illinois has proved that he is the right
choice to be the 44th president of the
United States.
Mr. Obama has met challenge after
challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of
hope and change. He has shown a cool
head and sound judgment. We believe he
has the ability to forge the broad political
consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.
In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther
and farther to the fringe of American
politics, running a campaign on partisan
division, class warfare and even hints of
racism. His policies and worldview are
mired in the past. His choice of a running
mate so evidently unfit for the office was
a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments
of 26 years in Congress.
Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology,
now lying in ruins on Wall Street and in
Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama
has another vision of government’s role
and responsibilities.
In his convention speech in Denver,
Mr. Obama said, “Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it
should do is that which we cannot do for
ourselves: protect us from harm and
provide every child a decent education;
keep our water clean and our toys safe;
invest in new schools and new roads
and new science and technology.’’
The Economy
The American financial system is
the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies. Those
ideas have been proved wrong at an
unfathomable price, but Mr. McCain is
still a believer.
Mr. Obama sees that far-reaching reforms will be needed to protect Americans and American business.
Mr. McCain talks about reform a lot,
but his vision is pinched. His answer to
any economic question is to eliminate
frivolous spending by lawmakers—
about $18 billion in a $3 trillion budget
— cut taxes and wait for unfettered
markets to solve the problem.
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Mr. Obama is clear that the nation’s
tax structure must be changed to make
it fairer. That means the well-off Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Mr. Bush’s tax cuts will have
to pay some more. Working Americans,
who have seen their standard of living
fall and their children’s options narrow,
will benefit.
National Security
The American military — its people
and equipment — is dangerously overstretched. Mr. Bush has neglected the
necessary war in Afghanistan, which
now threatens to spiral into defeat. The
unnecessary and staggeringly costly
war in Iraq must be ended as quickly
and responsibly as possible.
While Iraq’s leaders insist on a swift
drawdown of American troops and a
deadline for the end of the occupation,
Mr. McCain is still talking about some
ill-defined “victory.” As a result, he
has offered no real plan for extracting
American troops.
Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he
has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American
forces. Mr. Obama also has correctly
warned that until the Pentagon starts
pulling troops out of Iraq, there will not
be enough troops to defeat the Taliban
and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama would have a learning
curve on foreign affairs, but he has already showed sounder judgment than
his opponent on these critical issues.
His choice of Senator Joseph Biden —
who has deep foreign-policy expertise
— as his running mate is another sign
of that sound judgment. Mr. McCain’s
long interest in foreign policy and the
many dangers this country now faces
make his choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska more irresponsible.
The Candidates
It will be an enormous challenge just
to get the nation back to where it was
before Mr. Bush, to begin to mend its
image in the world and to restore its
self-confidence and its self-respect.
Doing all of that, and leading America
forward, will require strength of will,
character and intellect, sober judgment
and a cool, steady hand.
Mr. Obama has those qualities in
abundance. He has drawn in legions of
new voters with powerful messages of
hope and possibility and calls for shared
sacrifice and social responsibility.
Mr. McCain has spent the last bits of
his reputation for principle and sound
judgment to placate the limitless demands and narrow vision of the farright wing.
Mr. McCain could have seized the
high ground on energy and the environment. Earlier in his career, he offered
the first plausible bill to control America’s emissions of greenhouse gases.
Now his positions are a caricature of
that record: think Ms. Palin leading
chants of “drill, baby, drill.’’
Mr. Obama has endorsed some offshore drilling, but as part of a comprehensive strategy including big investments in new, clean technologies.
Mr. Obama has withstood some of the
toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called
un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have
linked him to domestic terrorists and
questioned his wife’s love of her country.
Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of
Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”
This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush
drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John
Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant
theme of his failed presidency.
The nation’s problems are simply
too grave to be reduced to slashing
rhetoric and negative advertisements.
This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest
leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all
of those qualities.
DAVID BROOKS
Ceding the Center
There are two major political parties
in America, but there are at least three
major political tendencies. The first is
orthodox liberalism, a belief in using
government to maximize equality.
The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government
to maximize freedom.
But there is a third tendency, which
floats between. It is for using limited
but energetic government to enhance
social mobility. This tendency began
with Alexander Hamilton, the first
secretary of the Treasury, who created a vibrant national economy so
more people could rise and succeed.
It matured with Abraham Lincoln and
the Civil War Republicans, who created the Land Grant College Act and the
Homestead Act to give people the tools
to pursue their ambitions. It continued
with Theodore Roosevelt, who broke
up corporate monopolies.
Members of this tradition have one
foot in the conservatism of Edmund
Burke. They understand how little we
know or can know and how much we
should rely on tradition, prudence and
habit. They have an awareness of sin,
of the importance of traditional virtues and stable institutions. They understand that we are not free-floating
individuals but are embedded in thick
social organisms.
But members of this tradition also
have a foot in the landscape of America, and share its optimism and its Lincolnian faith in personal transformation. Hamilton didn’t seek wealth for
its own sake, but as a way to enhance
the country’s greatness and serve the
unique cause America represents in
the world.
Members of this tradition are Americanized Burke followers, or to put it
another way, progressive conservatives.
This tendency thrived in American
life for a century and a half, but it went
into hibernation during the 20th century because it sat crossways to that
era’s great debate — the one between
socialism and its enemies. But many
of us hoped this tradition would be reborn in John McCain’s campaign.
McCain shares the progressive conservative instinct. He has shown his
sympathy with the striving immigrant
and his disgust with the colluding corporatist. He has an untiring reform
impulse and a devotion to national service and American exceptionalism.
His campaign seemed the perfect
vehicle to explain how this old approach applied to a new century with
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
A statue in Washington, D.C., of Alexander Hamilton, who believed a
vibrant economy would help all Americans.
new problems — a century with widening inequality, declining human capital, a fraying social contract, rising
entitlement debt, corporate authoritarian regimes abroad and soft corporatist collusion at home.
In modernizing this old tradition,
some of us hoped McCain would take
sides in the debate now dividing the
Republican Party. Some Republicans
believe the party went astray by abandoning its tax-cutting, anti-government principles. They want a return
to Reagan (or at least the Reagan of
their imaginations). But others want
to modernize and widen the party.
Some of us hoped that by reforming
his party, which has grown so unpopular, McCain could prove that he could
reform the country.
But McCain never took sides in
this debate and never articulated a
governing philosophy, Hamiltonian
or any other. In a recent issue of The
New York Times Magazine, Robert
Draper described the shifts in tactics
that consumed the McCain campaign.
The tactics varied promiscuously, but
they were all about how to present
McCain, not about how to describe
the state of the country or the needs
of the voter.
The Hamiltonian tendency is the
great, moderate strain in American
politics. In some sense this whole
campaign was a contest to see which
party could reach out from its base
and occupy that centrist ground. The
Democratic Party did that. Senior
Democrats like Robert Rubin, Larry
Summers and Jason Furman actually
created something called The Hamilton Project to lay out a Hamiltonian
approach for our day.
McCain and Republicans stayed
within their lines. There was a lot of
talk about Congressional spending.
There was a good health care plan that
was never fully explained. And there
was Sarah Palin, who represents the
old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.
As a result, Democrats now control
the middle. Self-declared moderates
now favor Obama by 59 to 30, according to the New York Times/CBS News
poll. Voters over all give him a 21 point
lead when it comes to better handling
the economy, according to the Wall
Street Journal/NBC News poll.
McCain would be an outstanding
president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the
right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never
escaped the constraints of a party that
is ailing and a conservatism that is
behind the times. And that’s what has
made the final stage of this campaign
so unspeakably sad.
INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN
A Witch Hunt in New York
NEW YORK
On September 4, Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the United States, attended the
opening game of the American football
season between the New York Giants
and the Washington Redskins. It was
a happy occasion at Giants Stadium —
made more festive by the home team’s
victory.
Ischinger, now a senior executive
of Allianz, a big German insurance
company, was a guest of the Tisch
family, prominent New York Jews who
own half the Giants and a lot of New
York real estate. Their get-together involved business as well as pleasure.
Negotiations were nearing completion on a deal under which Allianz
would pay more than $25 million a
year to have the company name on the
Giants’ new $1.3 billion stadium being
built next to the old one in New Jersey
and set to open in 2010. The Tisches,
having done due diligence on Allianz,
seemed happy with the idea.
Then, all hell broke loose.
Within a week of the game, the
New York Daily News had a headline
screaming that the Giants “deal with
the devil.” An illustration showed the
stadium with a swastika daubed on it.
Send comments to
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The spark for the uproar was the
fact that Allianz, in common with
most large German companies that
existed at the time, dealt extensively
with Hitler’s Third Reich, insuring
concentration camp facilities. It has
taken decades for Allianz to resolve
compensation claims from heirs to
victims of the Holocaust.
By September 12, the deal was off.
Both sides tried to smooth over the
debacle, but Allianz, which has large
holdings and thousands of employees
in the United States, was left in a state
of shock.
“Nobody predicted this kind of
firestorm,” Ischinger told me.
I am appalled by New York’s Allianz
witch hunt. I lived in Berlin for three
years, a period covering the establishment in 2000 of a multi-billion-dollar
fund negotiated by the United States
and German governments to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers and settle
outstanding insurance claims.
As part of this accord, the International Commission on Holocaust Era
Insurance Claims, of which Allianz
has been a core member, has paid out
more than $300 million.
Yes, it is late in the day. But the
United States was party to this international pact. Allianz has long been a
global corporate citizen of high repute.
Stuart Eizenstat, the senior Clinton
administration official who negotiated the agreement, was among those
consulted by the Tisches before the
uproar started.
Memory is volatile and irrational.
As Pierre Nora, the French historian,
has remarked, “Memory is life. It is in
permanent evolution.”
The “evolution” took several decades, but Germany, like Allianz, has
confronted guilt and strived to make
amends. No other nation has agonized
so much over finding an adequate memorialization of monstrous national
crimes.
It is time for reconciliation. It is time
to stop invoking the devil. It is time to
stop daubing swastikas. It is time to respect Allianz’s American employees.
I said memory is irrational. The
United States has a magnificent Holocaust Memorial Museum but no
equivalent Washington institution
dedicated to the ravages of race. Why
does the Holocaust, a German crime,
hold pride of place over slavery and
segregation?
I am not sure. But it is clear that the
election of Senator Barack Obama
would be a victory over painful United States history. If America can do
that, New York and its large Jewish
community can also triumph over
the hateful manipulation of painful
memories.
•
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Repubblica NewYork
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
III
WORLD TRENDS
U.S. Resupplies Lebanon’s Military in Hopes of Stabilization
By ROBERT F. WORTH
and ERIC LIPTON
BEIRUT, Lebanon — For years, the
Lebanese military was ridiculed as the
least effective armed group in a country
that was full of them. After the army
splintered during the nation’s 15-year
civil war, its arsenal slowly rotted into a
museum of obsolete tanks and grounded aircraft.
Now that is starting to change. At a
base north of Beirut, Lebanese soldiers
drive new American Humvees, and
some tote gleaming new American rifles
and grenade launchers. The weapons
are the leading edge of a new American
commitment to resupply the military of
this small but pivotal Middle Eastern
country, which emerged three years ago
from decades of Syrian domination.
The aid — the first major American
military assistance to Lebanon since the
1980s — is meant to build an armed force
that could help stabilize the fractured
state, fight a rising terrorist threat and
provide a legitimate alternative to the
Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which
controls southern Lebanon. Hezbollah
refuses to disarm, arguing that it is the
only force that can defend the country
against Israel.
Some American officials express concern about extensive military aid to a
country so recently free of Syrian control
and in which Hezbollah, which has close
Syrian and Iranian ties, continues to gain
political power. And that is a concern for
Israel, which has been lobbying for a lower level of support to remove the possibility that American tanks and helicopters
Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut,
and Eric Lipton from Washington.
The United States has made a commitment to resupply the Lebanese military. A look at Lebanon’s wish list.
WHAT LEBANON WANTS
■ Air defense
■ 12 AH-1 Cobra
■ At least two armed
■ Tow IIA
system
helicopters*
coastal patrol boats
antitank missiles
APPROVED BUT NOT YET DELIVERED
More than 12 million rounds of ammunition
Helicopter parts
■ 1,000 disposable shoulder-fired rockets
■ M107 sniper rifles
■ More than 285 Humvees delivered as of May 2008, with
another 312 to be delivered in the coming months
■ 200 cargo transport trucks
■ Assault rifles, automatic grenade launchers, advanced sniper
weapon systems, antitank weapons, urban warfare bunker
weapons and body armor for troops
■ A secure tactical communication system
■ Night-vision equipment
■ Small hand-launched, remotely
piloted aerial vehicles that can provide
video surveillance
■ Upgrades to Lebanese military
helicopters
■ About 40 M198 howitzers, which are
towed artillery pieces that can fire up
to 15 miles
■ Automatic grenade launchers
■ More night-vision equipment
■
■
Sources: Department of Defense; State Department; Lebanon officials
might one day be used against it.
These doubts, and the contrast with
the robust American military aid to Israel, have provoked some anger in Lebanon. A television comedy here depicted
American envoys handing out socks and
toy airplanes to Lebanese generals.
Still, officials at the State Department and the Pentagon say rebuilding
*The Pentagon says the request is for
“close air support platform,” not a
specific aircraft.
Lebanon’s military is essential to peace
efforts in the region. “United States
policy is that Lebanon be sovereign and
independent and the Lebanon government and its institutions govern all of
Lebanon’s territory and disarm militias,” said Christopher C. Straub, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the
Middle East.
The plan to rearm Lebanon was born
in 2005, after the country’s so-called
Cedar Revolution forced Syria to withdraw. In 2006, the 34-day war between
Israel and Hezbollah bolstered the idea
that Lebanon needed a stronger military.
The army was in terrible condition.
After a brief injection of American aid
BOLIVIA
Kms. 160
PARAGUAY
BRAZIL
Paraguay R.
San Pedro
ARGENTINA
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Andrea Machain contributed reporting
from Asunción, Paraguay.
■ M60 tanks
WHAT LEBANON HAS RECEIVED SINCE 2006
New President
Emboldens
The Landless
In Paraguay
SAN PEDRO, Paraguay — On the
edge of a farm here, Rogelio Silva, a
peasant organizer, looked out over the
half-dozen tents where his Paraguayan
compatriots were cooking soup over a
campfire. Near the roadside, two banners tied between trees expressed a
common sentiment in Paraguay’s agricultural heartland these days.
“Get out, Brazilians,” one read.
“Land or death,” read another.
Peasant farmers, emboldened by the
election of Fernando Lugo as president
in April, have been invading dozens of
farms along the border with Brazil. They
say that Paraguayan land is being occupied illegally by Brazilian farmers, and
that corrupt officials have allowed these
outsiders to acquire land for decades.
Just days after Mr. Lugo, a left-leaning former Roman Catholic bishop,
was inaugurated in August, the local
police forcibly removed more than 500
in the early 1980s, it split along sectarian and political lines. “It was like a police force, but undertrained and underequipped,” said Elias Hanna, a retired
Lebanese general.
In fact, the army was deliberately
kept weak by Lebanon’s Syrian overseers, who did not want a strong alternative force. That was part of what
allowed Hezbollah to grow into such a
formidable power.
Now, however, American officials
express faith in the independence and
professionalism of the army. Americandriven audits have shown that almost
nothing given to the army has ended up
in Hezbollah’s hands.
An important moment for the army
came in the summer of 2007, when it won
a three-month battle with Islamists in
the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee
camp in Tripoli. That clash underscored
the need to re-equip the army, which
had to drop bombs by hand from Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, a hopelessly
inaccurate method that resulted in the
near-leveling of the camp.
Lebanese commanders say they are
anxious about the slow pace of American military support so far. Of the $410
million committed since 2006, less than
half has been delivered — mostly ammunition, communications equipment,
vehicles, rifles and other light weapons.
Lebanese officials say they need
heavier weapons. In particular, they
want an air defense system, which
would allow them to argue that they
could replace Hezbollah as a defensive
force against Israel in the south.
“It’s the ABC of any army to have the
capacity to defend itself,” a high-level
Lebanese officer said.
Lebanon’s Military Wish List
Asunción
Ciudad
del Este
Landless peasants
in Paraguay are
threatening to invade
dozens of border farms
they say are occupied
illegally by Brazilian
farmers. Peasants with
machetes gathered
in August outside a
plantation near San
Pedro.
Area of
detail
Paraná R.
BRAZIL
THE NEW YORK TIMES
peasants squatting on farmland here.
Within a few more days, the peasants
were back.
“The Brazilian owners tried to throw
us out, but we are not leaving,” Mr. Silva
said. “We need to fight for what is rightfully ours, for what was stolen from us.”
Paraguay’s landless peasants’ movement has become a violent armed struggle that continues to flare up dangerously. In a recent clash between peasants and the police, one peasant died
and three officers were wounded after
the authorities evicted peasants from a
farm they were occupying.
In the aftermath of that confronta-
sive in Paraguay, but also
are creating tensions between the country’s new
NOAH FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
government and Brazil,
tion, Mr. Lugo’s government said that
whose officials say they are
it would enforce a longstanding law closely monitoring the clashes. “The anagainst foreigners buying agricultural ti-Brazilian sentiment is not at all something the majority of the Paraguayans
land from citizens.
The landless peasants see Mr. Lugo, share,” said António Francisco Da Costa
who lived and worked as a priest here e Silva, an adviser in Brazil’s embassy
in San Pedro for 11 years, as their best in Asunción. “But it is a concern.”
chance in decades to help them win
The immigrant Brazilian farmers are
back land for small-scale cultivation. practicing large-scale mechanized agriHis election as the candidate of the Pa- culture, mostly growing soybeans; that
triotic Alliance for Change broke the offers little work for the peasants and is
61-year grip of the Colorado Party, and leading their communities to shrink in
he has promised broad agrarian reform numbers.
in a country that has failed even to keep
The peasants say soybean farming
a reliable registry of land titles.
is also contaminating water supplies,
The land conflicts not only are explo- a charge that farm organizations deny.
The peasants demand that the government, at a minimum, comply with a law
that requires landowners to preserve 25
percent of forested areas.
Mr. Lugo has urged the landless peasants to cease their farm takeovers and
give him more time to enact a comprehensive agrarian reform.
The current clashes are threatening to
escalate to levels seen in Bolivia, where
the government’s push to redistribute
land has generated a violent reaction
and created a major political challenge
for President Evo Morales, said Riordan
Roett, the director of the Latin American
Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. “The fear is this could spin out of
control and you could have real violence
in the countryside for the first time in
Paraguayan history,” he said.
On the Bosporus, Tales of Sultans and Snakes
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
ISTANBUL — Murat Belge is one of
Turkey’s most important intellectuals.
He is also one of this city’s most erudite
tour guides.
So when he boards a boat on Sunday
mornings for a trip up the Bosporus to
talk about his beloved city, several hundred people line up to listen.
His interest is history, and his talks
are bursting with 19th-century gossip.
The paranoid sultan who lived directly
on the sea to be able to control it. The
maid who went into prostitution to support her mistress, whose Albanian husband had stolen the couple’s money. A
Crusades-era tree that was cut down in
1934 for a gardening school.
History can be slippery in Turkey,
which became a modern state in 1923,
assembled from the ethnic patchwork of
what remained of the Ottoman Empire.
The official version is kept under lock
and key, and writers can be punished
for trying to open it.
Mr. Belge, a prominent leftist who
teaches comparative literature at Bilgi
University in Istanbul, knows this well.
He was imprisoned for two years during a military coup in the 1970s, and
has been prosecuted (but not jailed)
in recent years, on grounds including
columns he wrote in support of a conference on Armenians in the early 20th
century, the time of the genocide of the
Armenian population in the Ottoman
Empire. But that does not seem to have
dented his irreverence. “We have a very
unhealthy relation with our history,’’ he
said. “It’s basically a collection of lies.’’
His strong affection for this beautiful
city — piled on top of itself throughout
the centuries — and his loving attention
to detail gives audiences a fresh look at
their own environment.
The journey begins in Europe (part of
the city is in Europe and part in Asia),
not far from Dolmabahce, an Ottoman
palace built in the 19th century when the
empire was already in deep decline. The
balconies, Mr. Belge said, were brought
to Turkey by European designers.
“Tanzimat emerges from that peninsula,’’ Mr. Belge said, motioning to a
green finger of land, where minarets of
the 17th-century Blue Mosque spike the
skyline.
Tanzimat, a 19th-century period of
reform, was a brief stab at modernization when the Ottomans established a
Parliament and, briefly, a Constitution,
as well as giving more rights to ethnic
and religious minorities. It was a time of
brisk international trade, with far more
ships coming to port than in the early
years of the Turkish republic, he said,
adding, “Ottomans were much more
globalized in that respect.’’
The wooden waterfront mansions, or
JOHAN SPANNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Under the tutelage of Murat Belge, passengers on the Bosporus can
learn about yalis, 19th-century wooden waterfront houses.
yalis, are among Mr. Belge’s favorite
features of the Bosporus. The snake yali
got its name when a sultan spoke admiringly about it to a servant. The man happened to know the owner, and fearful
that the yali would be taken by the sultan, replied that it looked nice from the
outside, but was infested with snakes.
Mr. Belge pointed to a court office that
had burned. “In Turkey, there is a habit
that justice buildings burn so that the
archives disappear,’’ he said. Then he
indicated an empty space where a yali
had been destroyed by an out-of-control
ferry. “Living on the Bosporus is good,
but there are consequences,’’ he said.
Repubblica NewYork
IV
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
WORLD TRENDS
A Life of Transformation
And Discipline for Obama
By JODI KANTOR
From his days leading The Harvard
Law Review to his United States presidential campaign, Barack Obama has
always run meetings by a particular set
of rules.
Everyone contributes; silent lurkers
will be interrogated. (He wants to “suck
the room of every idea,” said Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser.) Mention a theory
and Mr. Obama asks how it translates
on the ground. He orchestrates debate,
playing participants off each other —
and then highlights their areas of agreement. He constantly restates others’
contributions in his own invariably more
eloquent words. But when the session
ends, his view can remain a mystery,
and his ultimate call is sometimes a surprise to everyone who was present.
Those meetings, along with the career they span, provide hints about what
sort of president Mr. Obama might be if
elected. They suggest a cool deliberator, a fluent communicator, a professor
with a hunger for academic expertise
but little interest in abstraction. He may
be uncomfortable making decisions
quickly or abandoning a careful plan. A
President Obama would prize consensus, except when he would disregard
it. And his lifelong penchant for control
would likely translate into a disciplined
White House.
Winning the presidency on Tuesday,
as polls predict he will, would be the latest in a lifetime of dramatic, self-induced
transformations: from a child reared
in Indonesia and Hawaii to a member
of Chicago’s African-American community; from an atheist to a Christian;
from a wonkish academic to the smoothest of politicians; and now, just possibly,
from an upstart who eight years ago
was crushed in a Congressional race to
the first black commander in chief of the
United States.
Turning deficits into assets could
well be called the motto of his rise. He
transformed a fatherless childhood into
a stirring coming-of-age tale. He used a
glamourless state senator’s post as the
foundation of his political career. He mobilized young people into an energetic
army. And even though his exotic name,
Barack Hussein Obama, has spurred
false rumors and insinuations about his
background and beliefs, he has made it a
symbol of his singularity and of America’s possibility.
But if he wins the right to occupy the
Oval Office, Mr. Obama would have
a new set of deficits. Just 47 years old
and only four years into a national political career, he has never run anything
larger than his campaign. His promises
are as vast as his résumé is short, and
some of his pledges are competing ones:
Senator Barack Obama’s
grandparents, Stanley and
Madelyn Dunham, helped
raise him in Hawaii and play
a large role in the life story
he presented to the American
electorate.
OBAMA FOR AMERICA VIA GETTY IMAGES
progressive rule and centrist red-blue
fusion; wholesale transformation and
pragmatism.
Mr. Obama has prized order. Even
at Occidental College in Los Angeles,
during what he has called his dissolute
phase, students remember him as a
model of moderation. “He was not even
close to being a party animal,” said
Vinai Thummalapally, a friend from
those years.
When it comes to making decisions,
Mr. Obama’s impulse for control translates into a kind of deliberative restraint.
He resists making quick judgments or
responding to day-to-day fluctuations,
aides say. Instead he follows a familiar
set of steps: Perform copious research.
Solicit expertise. Project all likely scenarios. Devise a plan. Anticipate objections. Adjust the plan, and once it’s in
Aggression
Tempered
By Experience
The Way They See the World
And America’s Role in It
From Page I
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Senator John McCain raced through
the final days of the presidential race
reciting a familiar admonition. It is the
same mantra he has called upon to steel
himself for moments of conflict as a collegiate boxer at the Naval Academy, a
prisoner of war bracing for interrogation, a legislator cajoling colleagues for
votes, or a Republican primary candidate rallying crowds against an all-butcertain defeat.
“Game face on!” he murmurs to himself, borrowing the advice of so many
athletic coaches.
Some friends say the expression is a
metaphor for an essential tension that
runs through Mr. McCain’s life. He
is often deliberative, self-critical and
flexible, his advisers and fellow senators say, and has frequently corrected
course during his 36 years in public life.
“He is a much more supple mind than he
is usually portrayed,” said Philip Bobbitt, an international relations scholar
the senator consulted this summer.
But when he confronts an adversary,
a starkly different John McCain can
emerge, fired up with certainty for an
all-or-nothing battle. “I am going to win
this thing and you are going to have to
run me over to defeat me,” said former
Senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat close
to Mr. McCain, explaining his friend’s
attitude.
The conflicting impulses toward deliberation and aggression have been the
alternating currents of his singular career and, if Mr. McCain wins the White
House, could shape his presidency.
In the Senate, he is almost as well
known for his handwritten apology
notes as for his outbursts. (“I think I
learned a few things in prison, but possibly one of the most important things
was the value of friendship,” Mr. McCain wrote in one note provided to The
New York Times. “Chalk it up to the
‘McCain temper.’ ”) He fires advisers
who disappoint or embarrass him, but
then keeps seeking their advice. He
frets publicly that his ambition might
tempt him to compromise his principles, but he also races headlong into
battles in pursuit of political power.
If elected on Tuesday, which polls say
is unlikely, Mr. McCain would arrive
well-scarred at the White House: 72
years old, the oldest president to enter
office, the first Vietnam veteran and
a survivor of five and a half years in a
North Vietnamese prison camp.
Driven as much by his notion of honor
as by ideology, Mr. McCain could make
an unpredictable chief executive. By default he is a limited-government conser-
place, stick with it.
Mr. Obama has struggled with the
unpredictable questions. He does not always react swiftly to unexpected shifts.
When Russia blitzed into neighboring
Georgia, he took several days to settle
on a position. After Senator John McCain’s surprise selection of Governor
Sarah Palin as his running mate, the
Obama campaign seemed to struggle
to respond.
The only time Mr. Obama slips from
“his normal cool self,” said Marty Nesbitt, a close friend, is “when something
surprises him.”
Mr. Obama’s message of change can
be hard to understand, and he has spent
his entire career searching for the right
way to fulfill his desire for broad social
renewal. First he became a community
organizer; then he tried the law. Since
then he has set his sights on changing
government institutions, one higher
than the next. Even in the Senate, he told
a reporter, it was possible to have a career that was “not particularly useful.”
His critics point to his “present” votes
in the Illinois Legislature, in which he
did not choose sides, avoiding difficult
matters like trying juveniles as adults.
At least 36 times (out of thousands of
votes) Mr. Obama was the only senator
to vote “present,” or one of just a few.
But defenders say Mr. Obama’s reticence is as intellectual as it is tactical.
He is suspicious of generalizations.
Most of the time, Mr. Obama speaks
lightly of the historic nature of his candidacy. But a few times during the campaign he allowed voters to see just how
heavily America’s divided past sits
on his slender shoulders. That weight
seems like part of the answer to a central
Obama mystery: where all of that burning ambition comes from, what possesses him to push so hard and so fast.
Nearly two decades ago at Harvard
University, Mr. Obama had his first taste
of a barrier-smashing presidential victory. Gordon Whitman, one of the classmates who decided that long-ago election for president of the Harvard Law
Review, recalled: “We all understood
there was a chance to make history.”
John McCain, then a Navy captain, early in his political education, with
Senators William Cohen, center, and Barry Goldwater around 1980.
John McCain is quick
to start a fight, and
quick to apologize.
vative, but he readily bends those convictions. He has regularly picked fights
with both parties, but also knows how to
force through bipartisan deals.
Mr. McCain has called his decisionmaking style “instinctive, often impulsive,” as he put it in “Worth the Fighting For,” a 2002 memoir written with
his aide Mark Salter. “I don’t torture
myself over decisions. I make them as
quickly as I can, quicker than the other
fellow if I can.”
He first tasted politics in 1977 as the
Navy’s liaison to the United States Senate. He was 40 and turned the assignment into a training seminar for his own
political career. Escorting lawmakers
on overseas trips and entertaining
them with stories of his naval escapades, Mr. McCain listened as the senators gossiped over evening cocktails,
or brought him into closed committee
staff meetings. And he capitalized on
their goodwill: Senator William Cohen
of Maine, best man at Mr. McCain’s
1980 wedding, and Senator John Tower
of Texas, both Republicans, provided
invaluable help in his 1982 election to a
House seat in Arizona.
As a senator or presidential candidate, Mr. McCain prefers to make decisions by consulting experts with oppos-
ing views. “He encourages disagreement in front of him, to see the evidence
that disagrees with where he might
be headed,” said Kevin A. Hassett, an
economist close to Mr. McCain.
He can take defeat hard. After conservatives blocked a major tobacco bill
he had negotiated in 1998, Mr. McCain
excoriated his own party for consigning children to lung cancer. After losing
fights over campaign finance rules, he
would lash out at his opponents as corrupt.
He relishes conflict, his friends say,
and would make a confrontational president. As Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close
friend put it: “The man will run across
the street to get in a good fight.”
In more reflective moments, Mr. McCain says he tries to maintain a stoic
detachment about the prospect of victory or defeat, a habit of mind he says he
acquired as a Navy pilot and prisoner of
war. “I tend to be fatalistic about these
things,” he said not long after he had
locked up the Republican nomination.
Contemplating his 2000 run at the
White House, he worried about balancing his ambition for the prize with his
own sense of virtue, he wrote in “Worth
the Fighting For.”
After his loss, he professed himself
grateful, at the age of 65, for what might
be left of his time. “I did not get to be
president of the United States. And I
doubt I shall have reason or opportunity to try again,” he wrote, but added,
“I might yet become the man I always
wanted to be.”
never allow Iran to have nuclear
weapons, but have not fully explained
how they would obtain the leverage to
stop its nuclear program peacefully.
Mr. Obama’s declaration that he
would meet Iranian leaders without
preconditions has opened him to Mr.
McCain’s accusation that he is naïve.
Mr. Obama has backtracked, saying
he never suggested the first meetings
would be at the presidential level.
When pressed, he has said “we will
never take military options off the
table.”
The harder question is how to force
Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program before it produces
enough material to build a weapon.
Mr. McCain has emphasized that “we
have to do whatever’s necessary” to
stop Iran from obtaining a weapon.
In 1994, when North Korea was at a
similar stage in its nuclear program,
he said that if diplomacy failed to shut
down its production facilities within
months, “military air strikes would
be called for.”
In a post-Iraq world, he has been
more circumspect. He no longer talks
about “rogue state rollback,” the
phrase he used in 2000 to describe
a strategy of undermining governments like those in North Korea, Iran
and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Recently he has expressed more interest
in changing Iran’s behavior than its
government. But the main prescription he has offered relies on gradually escalating economic sanctions,
the same path taken by the Bush administration. So far that strategy has
failed.
Intervention in Pakistan
Mr. McCain often notes that he
vowed to do whatever it took to win
in Iraq. But when it comes to the war
in Afghanistan, he has been extraordinarily reluctant to advocate crossborder attacks into Pakistan, even
though top American military commanders have said that is a prerequisite to victory.
Mr. Obama has been far more willing to threaten sending in American
ground troops, a position Mr. McCain
dismisses as unwise. He says Mr.
Obama does not appreciate how Pakistanis would react to an incursion by
an ally, even into ungovernable territory.
That was President Bush’s view as
well until July, when he issued secret
orders allowing Special Operations
forces to conduct ground incursions
into Pakistan to keep insurgents from
forming a safe haven. Mr. McCain has
not condemned Mr. Bush’s action, but
he has suggested that such operations
should never be discussed in public
and that Mr. Obama revealed his inexperience by raising the possibility.
Mr. Obama has said he would send
American personnel over the border
to kill leaders of Al Qaeda. But American policy since the attacks of September 11 has backed hunting down
Qaeda members anywhere, including
inside Pakistan. A harder question is
whether to go into Pakistan to hunt
down Taliban or other militant groups
using the sanctuary to mount attacks
against Americans in Afghanistan or
to strike the Pakistani government.
On that question, Mr. Obama has been
ambiguous.
Dealing With Great Powers
After the Russian attack on Georgia
in August, Mr. McCain strongly defended Georgia, while Mr. Obama issued a more even-handed statement,
calling for a return to the uneasy status quo that had prevailed in South
Ossetia.
Although this reaction was closer to
the Bush administration’s, Mr. McCain seized on it to portray Mr. Obama
as weak. His friends say Mr. McCain’s
criticism of Russia was a direct outgrowth of his prisoner-of-war experience and his cold war upbringing.
The difference between the candidates has also played out in their responses to a proposal by four prominent cold warriors — former Senator
Sam Nunn, former Defense Secretary
William J. Perry, and former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and
Henry A. Kissinger — to move toward
reducing the American nuclear arsenal to zero. Both candidates say they
support the goal, but Mr. McCain has
sounded less enthusiastic, saying he
would reduce nuclear weapons “to the
lowest level we judge necessary.”
By contrast, Mr. Obama has argued
that unless the United States and Russia radically reduce their arsenals,
they will never persuade smaller nations like Iran and North Korea to forgo their nuclear weapons programs.
Mr. McCain emphasizes military
power first, though his advisers also
say that on global warming, among
other issues, he has shown a flexibility that President Bush rarely demonstrated. More than any other candidate, Mr. Obama has emphasized socalled soft power — the ability to lead
by moral example and nonmilitary
action. His advisers acknowledge that
his challenge if elected, as many polls
predict he will be, is to convince the
world that an untested young senator
also has a steely edge.
Repubblica NewYork
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
V
AMERICANA
Polynesian Pipeline Feeds
A Texas Football Power
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN HARKIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Trinity High has 16 players with roots in Tonga, a Pacific Island
kingdom. From left, Setefano Maile, Sioeli Pauni, Elikena Fieilo
(kneeling), Vaimaali Sapoi and L.T. Tuipulotu.
Trojans — and the need for a
“When you think of Texas
roster with phonetic spellhigh school football, you
#+)(**
ings for the announcers.
think of country kids, farm
“That would stop the
kids; you don’t expect to
cursing,” said Ofa Faivasee players from the South
Siale, projects manager
Pacific,” said Sioeli Pauni,
'&%$"
for the Euless Parks and
who has two sons on the
Community Services DeTrinity team.
partment.
The parents of many playStudents at Trinity speak 53
ers work at the Dallas-Fort
languages, and the flags of 31 naWorth airport. Others are self-emtions hang in the school’s entrance. ployed as landscapers, carpenters and
The proximity of Euless to Dallas-Fort masons. Meanwhile, their sons are resWorth International Airport, which is olute football players who weigh from
located partly within the city limits, has 90 to 150 kilograms and find in football
brought a remarkable diversity to this a brisk physical exertion similar to the
Tongan national sport of rugby.
town of 54,000.
Each time he knocks a defensive
Thirteen of the 24 Trinity players who
have made the all-state team since the player on his back, Uatakini Cocker,
1980s, and 16 members of the current a 1.8-meter, 135-kilogram offensive
tackle, screams: “Mate ma’a Tonga,”
roster, are of Tongan descent.
from Laos to Rwanda. Nine of the 22
starter players are Tongans.
“It makes you a better person, learning to accept different people,” said
Dontrayevous Robinson, one of Trinity’s star players, who is African-American.
Trinity has a Polynesian Club, and
Polynesian students frequently join the
choir and participate in the arts. About
10 Polynesian players from Trinity (50 as of early October) are now playing
college football.
“I think they set the tone for the whole
school,” said Susan Kaufman, who
coaches women’s volleyball. “They are
self-confident. Their culture is taught
to respect authority. They are very big
on family and see the team as an extension of the family. They are nonmaterialistic, which means at Trinity, you can
be who you are, no matter what your
background is. You can have pink hair
or a mullet or be a Goth. Whoever you
want.”
Siège social : 27, avenue de Friedland - 75008 Paris - RCS 187 500 038 - Imprimeur : Contrast
By JERÉ LONGMAN
EULESS, Texas — Public-address
announcers at games for Trinity High,
America’s top-ranked high school football team, sometimes inadvertently
twist players’ names into what Pacific
Islanders consider swear words. Anywhere else in this state, where high
school games can draw tens of thousands of fans, such mispronunciations
would not be an issue. But the Trinity
Trojans hardly fit the familiar image of
Texas football.
A pipeline from the Pacific Island
kingdom of Tonga has delivered a
Polynesian influence to this town’s
churches, markets and football team,
which won state titles in 2005 and 2007
among Texas’ largest schools. Players
of Tongan descent have brought imposing size, strength and toughness to the
meaning, “I will die for Tonga.” Later,
the playful Cocker said, he often has to
explain his heritage to opposing players and fans in this typical postgame
conversation:
“Are you Mexican?”
“Polynesian.”
“Samoan?”
“Tongan.”
“O.K., because you would be a very
big Mexican.”
The presence of 3,000 to 4,000 Tongans here has lent an unmistakable
touch of Polynesia to Euless and Trinity
High. The Hawaiian Market advertises
kava root used for a traditional drink. A
nonprofit organization called Voice of
Tonga addresses concerns about immigration, culture, language and health.
Half of Trinity’s 2,189 students in
grades 10 through 12 are white, with a
roughly equal mix of black and Hispanics and about 275 Asians and Pacific
Islanders. This year’s football team is
represented by at least eight nations,
Students
headed to
an Arapaho
languageimmersion
school in
Wyoming.
The goal is to
create a new
generation
of native
speakers.
KEVIN MOLONEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tribe Tries to Revive a Fading Language
By DAN FROSCH
are younger than 55.
RIVERTON, Wyoming — At 69, her eyes soft
That is what tribal leaders hope to change.
and creased with age, Alvena Oldman remembers About 22 children from pre-kindergarten through
how the teachers at St. Stephens boarding school first grade started classes at the school.
on the Wind River Reservation would strike stu“I want my son to talk nothing but Arapaho to
dents with rulers if they dared to talk in their na- me and my grandparents,” said Kayla Howling
Buffalo, who enrolled her 4-year-old son, RyLee, in
tive Arapaho language.
“We were afraid to speak it,” she said.
the school. Ms. Howling Buffalo, 25, said
WYOMING
“We knew we would be punished.”
she, too, had been inspired to take ArapRiverton
More than a half-century later, only
aho classes because her grandmother
about 200 Arapaho speakers are still
no longer has anyone to speak with and
alive, and tribal leaders at Wind River,
fears she is losing her first language.
fear their language will not survive. As
Such sentiments have become more
part of an intensifying effort to save that
pronounced in the five years since Hellanguage, this tribe of 8,791, known as the
en Cedar Tree, 96, made an impassioned
Northern Arapaho, recently opened a
plea to the tribe’s council of elders.
new school where students will be taught in Arap“She said: ‘Look at all of you guys talking Engaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will cre- lish, and you know your own language. It’s like the
ate a new generation of native speakers.
white man has conquered us,’ ” said Gerald Red“This is a race against the clock, and we’re in the man Sr., the chairman of the council of elders. “It
59th minute of the last hour,” said a National In- was a wake-up call.”
dian Education Association board member, Ryan
Studies show that language fluency among
Wilson, whom the tribe hired as a consultant to young Indians is tied to overall academic achievehelp get the school started.
ment. “Language seems to be a healing force for
Like other tribes, the Northern Arapaho have Native American communities,” said Ellen Lutz,
suffered from the legacy of Indian boarding insti- executive director of Cultural Survival, a group
tutions, established by the federal government based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is workin the late 1800s to “Americanize” Native Ameri- ing with the Northern Arapaho. At a recent cercan children. It was at such schools that teachers emony to celebrate the school’s opening, held in
instilled the “kill the Indian, save the man” phi- an old tribal meeting hall, three young girls sang
losophy, young boys had their traditional braids shyly in Arapaho. Behind them, a row of elders sat
shorn, and students were forbidden to speak tribal quietly, legs shuffling rhythmically as familiar
words carried through the building.
languages.
“They are the ones who whispered it on the
The discipline of those days was drummed into
an entire generation of Northern Arapaho, and playground when nobody was looking,” Mr. Wilmost tribal members never passed down the lan- son said, referring to the elders. “If we lose that
guage. Of all the remaining fluent speakers, none language, we lose who we are.”
Learn on Monday
Lead on Tuesday
Gil Mendelson, HEC MBA 2009
HEC Part Time MBA. The MBA with immediate impact.*
www.mba.hec.edu
Repubblica NewYork
VI
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
BUSINESS OF GREEN
In Italy, Redesigning Nature to Restore It
LATINA
PROVINCE
ITALY
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
148
Ninfa
AP
AN
PI
PO
NT
AY
W
IN
E
M
A
R
Terracina
S
H
E
S
TERRACINA, Italy — Before Michele
Assunto hauls in his fishing net from the
banks of a reed-lined canal here, he uses
a pole to push the garbage out of the way.
“They really need to clean this up,” he
growls.
In many parts of this affluent coastal
region between Rome and Naples, canals dumping effluent into the Mediterranean from farms and factories coexist with fishermen and beachgoers. This
area needs considerable work to return
to a more pristine state. For places as far
gone as this one, however, a new breed
of landscape architect is recommending
a radical solution: not so much to restore
the environment as to redesign it.
“It is so ecologically out of balance
that if it goes on this way, it will kill itself,” said Alan Berger, a landscape
architecture professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who
was excitedly poking around the smelly
canals recently. “You can’t remove the
economy and move the people away,”
he added. “Ecologically speaking, you
can’t restore it; you have to go forward,
to set this place on a new path.”
Instead of simply recommending that
polluting farms and factories be shut,
Professor Berger specializes in creating new ecosystems in severely damaged environments: redirecting water
flow, moving hills, building islands and
planting new species to absorb pollu-
A fisherman in the highly
polluted Pontine Marshes south
of Rome. A landscape architect
seeks to create an ecosystem to
cleanse them.
Rome
ITALY
Area of
detail
Sabaudia
Porto Badino
Kms.
30
THE NEW YORK TIMES
CLAUDIO PALMISANO FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
tion, to create natural, though “artificial,” landscapes that can ultimately
sustain themselves.
He recently signed an agreement with
Latina Province to design a master ecological plan for the most polluting part
of this region. He wants the government
to buy a tract of nearly 200 hectares in a
strategic valley through which the most
seriously polluted waters now pass.
There, he intends to create a wetland
that would serve as a natural cleansing
station before the waters flowed on to
the sea and residential areas.
Better regulation is also needed, to
curb the dumping of pollutants into
the canal. But a careful mix of the right
kinds of plants, dirt, stones and drainage channels would filter the water as it
slowly passed through. The land would
also function as a new park.
Professor Berger acknowledged that
the approach was different from the
kind normally advocated by established
environmental groups like the World
Wildlife Fund or the Nature Conservancy, which generally seek to restore land
or preserve it in its natural state, often
by closing down or cleaning up nearby
polluters. But that approach may not
work in places that are already severely
degraded, Professor Berger said.
“The solution has to be as artificial as
the place,” he said. “We are trying to invent an ecosystem in the midst of an entirely engineered, polluted landscape.”
At first glance, Latina does not look
like an environmental disaster zone.
Bordered by mountains to the east and
the Mediterranean to the west, it is a
place of spectacular rural vistas and
even a few famous beach resorts, like
Sabaudia.
Indeed, the environment here is successful, in economic terms at least. Two
thousand years of “water management”
have turned the once-malaria-infested
Pontine Marshes into a region that is
among Italy’s most prosperous. It is
home to industrial parks, resorts filled
with weekend homes, and farms — some
of which make Italy the world’s leading
producer of kiwis.
Latina’s prosperity is built on drained
swampland, kept habitable by six pumps
as huge and noisy as airplanes, put in
place in 1934 by Mussolini. Each day
they pull millions of liters of water out
of the soggy ground, directing it into an
elaborate system of cement-lined canals
that ultimately dump it into the sea.
But prosperous does not necessarily
mean sustainable.
Professor Berger came to Rome’s
American Academy in 2007 on a yearlong fellowship to study the history of
the Pontine Marshes. It was only after
he started to collect data on the land and
the water that he realized how damaged
the area was.
Professor Berger found that half of
the water in the system was severely
contaminated, with phosphorus and
nitrogen levels that get worse as it runs
through the canals toward the coast.
Presented with his research, officials
were surprised at the level of pollution.
“He studied the zone from a different point of view than ours,” said Carlo
Perotto, the planning director for the
province. “We had different people concerned with water, industry and agriculture. He opened a new way of thinking.”
As the Economy Struggles,
Clean Energy Loses Ground
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
HOUSTON, Texas — Alternative
energies like wind and solar are facing big new challenges because of the
credit freeze and the plunge in oil and
natural gas prices.
Shares of alternative energy companies have fallen even more sharply
than the rest of the stock market in recent months. The struggles of financial institutions are raising fears that
investment capital for big renewable
energy projects will get tighter.
Advocates are concerned that if the
prices for oil and gas keep falling, the
incentive for utilities and consumers
to buy expensive renewable energy
will shrink. That is what happened in
the 1980s when a decade of advances
for alternative energy collapsed amid
falling prices for conventional fuels.
“Everyone is in shock about what
the new world is going to be,” said
V. John White, executive director of
With oil prices falling,
wind and solar start
to look expensive.
the Center for Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Technology, a California
advocacy group. “Surely, renewable
energy projects and new technologies
are at risk because of their capital intensity.”
After years of rapid growth, the
sudden obstacles mean the renewable
energy industry will have to depend
more heavily on government subsidies, mandates and research financing, at a time when Washington is
overloaded with economic problems.
John Woolard, chief executive officer of BrightSource Energy, a solar
company, said he believed the longterm future for renewables remained
promising, though “right now we are
looking at tumultuous and unpredictable capital markets.”
Venture capital financing for some
advanced solar projects and for experimental biofuels, like ethanol
made from plant waste, is drying up,
according to analysts who track investment flows.
At least two wind energy companies
have had to delay projects because of
trouble raising capital. Several corn
ethanol projects have been delayed
for lack of financing in Iowa and Oklahoma since September, and one plant
operator in Ohio filed for bankruptcy
protection in mid-October. Tesla Motors, the maker of battery-powered
cars, announced that it had been
forced to delay production of its allelectric Model S sedan, close two offices and lay off workers.
Investment analysts say stock offerings by clean-energy companies
across global markets have slowed to
a crawl since the spring, and for the
full year could total less than half of
the record $25.4 billion for 2007.
Worldwide financing for new construction of wind, solar, biofuels
and other alternative energy projects this year fell to $17.8 billion in
the third quarter, from $23.2 billion
in the second quarter, according to
New Energy Finance, a research
firm in London. The slide is expected
to be sharper in the fourth quarter
and next year.
Total worldwide investment in renewable energy increased to $148.4
billion last year, from $33.4 billion
in 2004, according to Ethan Zindler,
head of North American research
at New Energy Finance. This year,
he said, the upward momentum has
halted and total investment for 2008 is
likely to be lower than in 2007.
In the 1970s, just as in recent years,
high prices for fossil fuels led to rising
interest in renewables. But when oil
prices collapsed in the 1980s, the nascent market for renewable energy
fell apart, too. Congress eliminated
tax credits for solar energy, ethanol
could not compete with cheap gasoline and a boom in wind farms in California failed to catch on in the rest of
the United States.
The epicenter of investment and
development then moved to Europe,
where government support for renewables is strong. It began shifting
back to the United States only when
heating oil and natural gas prices shot
up again in recent years.
The central questions facing renewables now, experts say, are how
long credit will be tight and how low
oil and natural gas prices will fall. Oil
and gas are still relatively expensive
by historical standards, but the prices
have fallen by half since July. Some
economists expect further declines
as the economy weakens.
Government mandates, including
state rules requiring renewable power generation and federal requirements for production of ethanol, ensure that alternative energy markets
will continue to exist to some degree,
no matter how low oil and gas prices
go. But the credit crisis means some
companies that would like to build facilities to meet that demand are going
to have problems.
“If you can’t borrow money, you
can’t develop renewables,” said Kevin
Book, a senior vice president at FBR
Capital Markets.
LAWRENCE ANDERSON/ESTO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The owners’ son crawls up a bamboo-floored ramp to the bedroom, past bookcases made of sunflower husks.
Architect’s Challenge: Ultra-Green on a Budget
By MICHAEL WEBB
about a third of the going rate for
CULVER CITY, California —
architect-designed houses of this
Thomas Small is an accomplished
size in the Los Angeles area.
cook, so it’s important for him to
The 390-square-meter house,
which is low-maintenance and has
try new and exotic ingredients eva small carbon footprint, rises to
ery now and then. When it came to
the 9 meters allowed by zoning.
the construction of his eco-friendly
The house fulfills the owners’ amhouse, that’s exactly what his archibition to create a work of art that is
tects gave him. After all, crushed
intensely green: it relies on crosssunflower husks and shredded blue
ventilation for cooling and passive
jeans don’t sound like typical buildsolar energy for heating, and reing blocks.
cycled water irrigates the garden.
But in the world of green design,
Three sides of the house are clad
such ingredients are not rare. So
in folded steel panels the color of
now, Mr. Small and his wife, Joanna
a good burgundy wine. The fourth
Brody, along with their two young
side, the south wall, is a geometric
children and a pair of large French
CLAUDIO SANTINI
assembly of concrete, acrylic and
Briard dogs, share a prefabricated
glass, inspired, Mr. Sander said,
urban building that has become an Thomas Small and Joanna Brody’s house,
by a Georges Braque Cubist piece,
example for others looking for cre- made of a prefabricated steel shell.
“Aria of Bach.”
ative ways to go green.
To create rigid buttresses that
The project began with a chalIt was an unorthodox vision for a site support the upper floors, wire mesh and
lenge from one friend to another. “We
want the greenest house you’ve ever containing little more than a decrepit rebar were wrapped around Styrofoam
designed, but we have almost no mon- bungalow. Hoping to start a family and and sprayed with concrete. For insulaey,” Mr. Small recalled telling Whitney eager for abundant space and natural tion and sound absorption, the ceiling
Sander, who, with his wife, Catherine light, Ms. Brody, 44, and Mr. Small, 49, and walls were lined with two layers of
Holliss, runs Sander Architects, of Ven- bought it a few years ago, exchanging a shredded jeans, part of them exposed.
ice, California. Another goal was that it three-story Santa Monica town house Held by wire mesh, they complement
be a quiet retreat and acoustically reso- for a bargain on a tree-lined cul-de-sac. the screw-on panels of fiberboard, made
The bungalow wasn’t worth saving, of crushed sunflower husks and rising
nant to accommodate a passion of his,
so in its place the architects gave them a to five meters in the living area.
chamber music recitals.
A shallow ramp made of broad bamInspired by the house Charles and Ray prefabricated structure with a customEames created in 1949 from a prefabri- ized steel frame and panels. The mate- boo stair treads serves as a gallery for
cated steel frame and doors, windows rials, which cost $22,000, arrived on a concerts on the concrete floor below.
and the like ordered from a catalog, the flatbed truck and were erected in three The ramp leads to the second-floor masarchitects took the project on the condi- weeks, for $18,000. The contractor, Sean ter bedroom, where clear windows near
tion that they could pursue a novel strat- Icaza, embraced the chance to master the ceiling offer a prime view of the light
egy. Besides using acrylic, Panelite, re- a new way of building, but the biggest shows outside. “I love waking up to uncycled steel and Styrofoam, they would cost was time: with a tight budget, plan- shaded light and watching the passage
try unusual ingredients like sunflower ning and construction stretched out for of the moon,” Ms. Brody said. “On July
husks for wall panels and bookshelves, three years. The final cost, including Fourth, we watched four fireworks disand blue jeans (for insulation).
trim, plumbing and so on, was $528,000, plays from our bed.”
Repubblica NewYork
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
VII
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
By NATALIE ANGIER
The newly published book “Dark
Banquet” offers a jaunty, instructive and charmingly graphic look
at nature’s born phlebotomists —
creatures from wildly different
twigs of the phylogenetic tree that
all happen to share a fondness for
blood.
The book was written by Bill
Schutt, a biologist and bloodsucking aficionado who holds joint positions at the C. W. Post campus
of Long Island University and
the American Museum of Natural History in nearby New York,
where he arrived one recent day
to discuss the meal plan variously
known as sanguivory and hematophagy, and who does it and
when, why and how.
Among his examples are vampire bats tuned to extract blood
from large slumbering mammals
and bats that aim instead for the
warm breast plates of birds; New
World leeches that track their
hosts through the water and Old
World leeches that relentlessly
stalk down blood bearers on land;
the notorious vampire finches
of the Galápagos that daintily
peck open dribbling wounds on
the hindquarters of blue-footed
boobies; and the candiru, tiny,
eel-like catfish that are reputed
to have the power to swim up a
person’s urethra and suck blood
from the bladder and thus are often more feared than their fellow
river dwellers, the piranhas.
Dr. Schutt explained that hematophagy is a difficult, dangerous trade, in some ways harder
than merely killing and eating
your prey outright, which is why
blood eaters from different taxonomic
orders have evolved a similar set of
utensils: the needle-like teeth, the natural clot busters and pain deadeners.
Blood feeders must also be stealthy
and wily and good at escaping the swats
and fury of their often much larger
hosts. The common vampire bat, Desmodus, which feeds on large terrestrial
in blood every night or risk starving to death.
Small wonder that exclusive
blood feeding is rare among verThe small bat is native
tebrates, and that two of the three
to South America and
species of vampire bats are found
feeds at the heels of
in such low numbers they are at
cattle.
risk of extinction. The only reason
that the species known as common vampire bats are common,
said Dr. Schutt, is that they have
learned to feed on cattle, pigs and
other livestock.
“They love it when we clear out
the rain forest to make way for
ranches,” he said.
The only other vertebrates
known to subsist solely on blood
are certain types of candiru, a
poorly studied but much feared
group of 2-centimeter catfish
found in the Amazon and Orinoco
Rivers. A hematophagous candiru’s usual method is to parasitize a larger catfish, infiltrating the
host’s gill slits, grasping onto the
flesh inside, rupturing blood vessels, pumping out the blood with
its highly mobile jaws and then,
Two thousand or so species
after a minute or two, darting out
of flea feed on the blood of
again.
mammals and birds.
Yet for at least a century, the fish
have been reputed to target the
human urethra as well, supposedly enticed by the scent of urine:
fish, after all, urinate through
their gills. Despite the antiquity
and persistence of the legend,
there is only one confirmed case,
from 1997, of a candiru making its
way into a human urethra, where
it probably had no time for a blood
meal before suffocating.
There are also a few dabblers in
blood-eating. The vampire finchSHONAGH RAE
es of the Galápagos live mostly on
is why the great majority of exclusive seeds, nectar and eggs, but they suppleblood eaters are arthropods — bedbugs, ment their diet with occasional high
iron snacks, by persistently pecking at
ticks, chiggers, female mosquitoes.
For larger feeders, though, it is as the wings and tail region of one of the
much of a challenge to survive on blood islands’ blue-footed boobies.
Once the finch draws blood, said Dr.
as it is to acquire it. Lacking dietary fat,
vampire bats cannot pack on adipose Schutt, “you’ll see five finches waiting
stores and must consume the equiva- behind it like customers at a deli counlent of half their 30-gram body weight ter.”
Vampire Bat
Vampire Finch
The finch feeds on blood
occasionally, pecking at
the rump of a seabird.
A Natural
Taste
For Blood
Candiru Catfish
The South American fish
draws blood from the gills
of fish, and is said to swim
up the urethras of humans.
mammals, creeps along the ground like
a spider and, in addition to flying, can
spring straight upward almost a meter
into the air.
Aquatic leeches aim for hidden
pockets and crevices: dip your head
into leech-infested waters, and the segmented, toothy worms may slip up your
nostrils.
Moreover, even though we rightly
cherish our own blood as the indispensable elixir of our lives, it turns out that it
is surprisingly thin gruel. Blood is more
than 95 percent water, with the rest consisting mostly of proteins, a sprinkling
of sugars, minerals and other small
molecules, but almost no fat. Tiny creatures can subsist on such a mix, which
Flea
Stalking Africa’s Primate Hunters,
And Perhaps the Next Pandemic
By ELIZABETH SVOBODA
For Nathan Wolfe, a 38-year-old visiting professor of epidemiology at Stanford University,
an ordinary workday involves chasing primate
hunters through the dense foliage of rural Cameroon, sloshing through mud and streams, dodging
branches and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Dr. Wolfe says he enjoys the adventure. But he
has a broader purpose: staving off global pandemics before they happen.
The subsistence, or “bushmeat,” hunters he
tracks face a singular occupational hazard: their
blood often mingles with that of their prey. Because
Nathan Wolfe tracks hunters in Cameroon
to study the transmission of viruses.
animals like chimpanzees and orangutans are genetically similar to humans, the likelihood of virus
transmission between species is very high.
Both H.I.V. and Ebola, for example, have documented primate origins, and a paper published
in Nature in February noted that 60 percent of
emerging human pathogens came from animals.
“We’re starting to expand the watershed of
global disease control,” Dr. Wolfe said. “Before,
the best thing you could do was develop a vaccine,
but now people are recognizing that’s not going to
be enough.
“If you find diseases before they’ve really
emerged,” he continued, “you can control them
early on, before you get a major epidemic.”
That pre-emptive-strike approach to epidemic
management, he said, is what makes chasing the
Cameroonian hunters so crucial.
When he can persuade the hunters, whom he
calls “sentinels,” to supply him with blood samples, he can form a better idea of which new animal
diseases they are exposed to — and, by extension,
which emerging viruses could pose the biggest
threat to humans.
Since he began his hunter studies, he has come
across several viruses never before seen in humans, including retroviruses from the same family as H.I.V.
“With epidemics, people have been standing on
the shore, waiting for the gusher to hit the ocean,”
Dr. Wolfe said, referring to the tidal-wave impact
a widespread epidemic could have around the
world. “But to prevent epidemics, you have to
look at the various little sources that feed into the
river.”
Dr. Wolfe started the Global Viral Forecasting
Initiative this year. If new disease strains could
be culled before they had a chance to take hold in
humans, he reasoned, health organizations would
have to spend less money and energy on developing
expensive vaccines and treatment drugs.
While outsiders and colleagues alike have endorsed Dr. Wolfe’s forecasting tactics, putting
them into practice is difficult.
Thanks to new techniques for sequencing DNA in
the viruses they find, epidemiologists can quickly
identify the most virulent new pathogens. The next
step is to determine how quickly it can spread. Dr.
Wolfe’s colleagues and other scientists have developed computer simulations that can be customized
to take account of population size and density, family size and transportation patterns.
Once Dr. Wolfe and his colleagues isolate a new
virus or variant that seems to be spreading in a
small area, they can zero in on its primary characteristics — the likelihood that a sick person will infect someone else, for instance — and feed the data
into the simulation to generate an idea of how the
virus could spread.
The results offer a rough but valuable estimate
of how and where a nascent epidemic could take
hold. So far, simulations show that for all but the
most virulent new pathogens, there is “a reasonable combination of policy options well within the
range of the health authorities that, if prepared in
advance and implemented quickly, could stop a
global disaster,’’ said Dr. Donald S. Burke, dean
of the Univeristy of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School
of Public Health, who helped create some of the
simulations. He added, “If that’s the case, then by
God, we better get ready.”
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Repubblica NewYork
VIII
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2008
ARTS & STYLES
Artist’s Modern Motifs Evoke Culture of Brazil
By CAROL KINO
COURTESY OF JAMES COHAN GALLERY
Standing in a back exhibition space at James Cohan
Gallery in Manhattan, the Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes discussed her four latest paintings, which were
propped against the walls.
“This one is based on squares, kind of a grid,” she
said, pointing to “Mulatinho,” whose blocks of color are
broken up by dots, rippling stripes, stylized flowers and
a piece of carefully painted fruit.
Although Ms. Milhazes clearly considers herself
a geometric abstractionist, those are hardly the first
words that come to mind when regarding her work, the
focus of a solo show at the gallery.
Squares often come laced with lines and dots, circles frequently mutate into eye-popping targets, and
everything is laden with motifs that evoke the multilayered culture of her home, Rio de Janeiro. There are
arabesques, roses and doily patterns, borrowed from
Brazilian Baroque, colonial and folk art, as well as flowers and plants inspired by the city’s botanical garden,
which is next door to her studio.
Yet Ms. Milhazes, 48, maintains that her
compositions are essentially geometric.
“Sometimes I put the square behind,” she
said, referring to the initial layer of the painting, “and I build up things on top of it. The
squares may disappear, but they are still a
reference for me to think about composition.
And I’ve always been very loyal to my ideas.”
Today her career seems as overflowing as
her paintings themselves. In addition to the
show at James Cohan, her first major career survey is
on view at the Pinacoteca do Estado in São Paulo, Brazil. By early November, within a span of a month, three
limited-edition projects will have been issued. She has
also just completed a new site-specific window installation for a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Tokyo.
She frequently shows in Europe, especially London,
as well as in Latin America, Asia and New York.
The New Way to Communicate
Works by Beatriz Milhazes, left,
include: far left, “Popeye” (2008).
Growing up under the former military
dictatorship in Brazil, Ms. Milhazes did
not have access to the mainstream art
world. Although Brazil has had an avantgarde art scene since the 1930s, opportunities for young artists in Rio were limited in
JOAO WAINER
the early 1980s, when she embarked on her
career. Back then Latin American collectors typically
focused on work from past eras.
For a young painter who longed to see the work of
20th-century masters like Mondrian and Matisse, the
situation was especially arid. “Twenty-five years ago,
if you didn’t travel, you never would see paintings,” she
said. And today, she noted, painting is still only an undercurrent in Brazil’s art scene. “We have strong contemporary art,” she said, “but more in conceptualism
and installation. So I am quite isolated here.”
Despite the Brazilian feel of her work, there is nothing
else quite like it in Brazilian art, said Adriano Pedrosa,
a curator in São Paulo who has known Ms. Milhazes
for years. “She seems to have a quite close relationship
with Brazilian art history,” he said, “but that’s because
she’s appropriating things.”
He also sees her oeuvre as being related to Antropofagia, a Brazilian movement of the ’20s and ’30s whose
name means cannibalism.
Mr. Pedrosa described it as “this concept where the
Brazilian native artist appropriates foreign elements
and digests them to produce something personal and
unique.”
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Eminem, whose last album came out in 2004,
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A Rap Star Returns
Bearing a Memoir
Rather Than a Song
By JON CARAMANICA
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rappers in history, released his last album of original
material, “Encore,” then essentially disappeared. The
years since have been marked by personal struggles.
He entered rehabilitation in 2005 for a dependency on
sleep medication. In 2006 he remarried, and then redivorced, his ex-wife, Kim Scott, the subject of many
of his most vitriolic songs. That same year his closest
friend, the rapper Proof, was killed in a shooting at a
Detroit nightclub.
In his new book, “The Way I Am,” Eminem hopes to
set the record straight. “I’m really just a normal guy.
You can ask my neighbors,” he writes in the book. “I
ride a bike. I walk the dog. I mow my lawn. I’m out there
every Sunday, talking to myself, buck naked, mowing
the lawn with a chain saw.”
Well, one out of three isn’t bad. “I do ride my bike, I
don’t have a dog, I don’t mow my lawn,” Eminem, 36,
admitted in a telephone interview from a Detroit studio. But otherwise he’s been living the life of a suburban father, taking care of three girls: Hailie, his daughter with Kim; Alaina, his niece; and Whitney, Kim’s
daughter from another relationship.
And now Eminem, born Marshall Mathers, is tentatively re-entering public life with his book, published by Dutton in October. “In a way this is the end
of the first chapter of his career,” said Paul Rosenberg,
Eminem’s manager. “Em’s looking forward now. He’s
very re-energized and refocused.”
Originally meant as “a scrapbook for my fans,”
Eminem said, the book grew to include large chunks of
first-person narrative from interviews with the journalist Sacha Jenkins.
“I think Em has an appeal that’s very everyman,”
Mr. Jenkins said. “That’s his natural voice in the book.
The guy has been out of the mix and not interacting
with a lot of people, let alone a writer. But this was an
opportunity for him to get a lot of stuff off his chest, especially in the wake of the death of his best friend.”
In fact Eminem’s memories of how Proof toughened
him up as a young man are among the most vivid passages in the book. “As difficult as it was to talk about, I
had to,” he said.
He writes about other personal topics, and fatherhood gets especially lengthy treatment: “Being a dad
makes me feel powerful in a way that I hadn’t known before, and it’s the kind of power I don’t want to abuse.”
He is frank about his family and upbringing: “If you
go back and look at the abuse that I took, it’s no surprise I became who I am. Someone I don’t really want
to be.”
Repubblica NewYork