SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times

Une sélection hebdomadaire offerte par

Some Spies Feel Loyalty To Two Lands

Brainwashing: The Lessons Not Learned By TIM WEINER

WASHINGTON — Ideology and money used to be the primary motives for spies, but now there is a historic shift in the nature of spying against the United States. Divided loyalty, usually on the part of naturalized Americans with roots in a foreign land, has become a driving force. From 1947 to 1990, a United States Defense ESSAY Department study found, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans charged with spying were acting solely or primarily out of patriotic, as opposed to ideological, loyalty to a foreign country. Since 1990, according to the study’s author, Katherine L. Herbig, divided loyalty has been the sole or primary motive in about half of all cases. “Dual loyalty is a problem we haven’t seen on such a scale since the Revolution,’’ when many colonists swore allegiance to the British king, said Joel F. Brenner, the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence in the United States. Chi Mak’s case represents the new shift in spying. One day in February 2005, F.B.I. agents fished a pile of paper scraps from the trash of Mr. Mak, an engineer for a California defense contractor. Painstakingly reconstructed, the tornup notes turned out to be what the bureau believed were instructions for Mr. Mak on what technical information to steal and deliver ASSOCIATED PRESS to China. Chi Mak was Mr. Mak, who convicted of emigrated from China three deconspiring to pass cades ago and American secrets. became a United States citizen in 1985, was sentenced in March to 24 years in prison for illegally exporting controlled information and lying about it. Addressing the judge who said he had betrayed the United States, Mr. Mak, 67, protested: “I never intended to hurt this country. I love this country.’’ The trend has come to light at an awkward time for American intelligence agencies. Admitting that they can hardly hope to penetrate Al Qaeda without greater expertise in Arabic or fend off Chinese espionage without more fluent speakers of Chinese, the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency in the United States are dropping old security policies that excluded many Americans

It was a time of secrecy and fear. Fear of a strange enemy driven by an alien ideology, killing Americans abroad, threatening Americans at home. And it created a new terror. In the early 1950s, American troops were being killed and captured by the thousands in Korea. Panic spread that China’s Communists had learned how to penetrate and control the minds of American prisoners of war. The technique was called “brainwashing.’’ And suddenly it’s worth recalling what brainwashing was about. Because now we know, from a recent article in The New York Times, that in a new time of anxiety America’s own interrogators drew lessons from China’s treatment of American prisoners of war for their treatment of prisoners in the war on terror. The concept of brainwashing was the brainchild of Edward Hunter, a newspaperman born in 1902, who had covered the rise of fascism in Europe before joining the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. The Korean War had just begun in 1950 when The Miami News published his article, “ ‘Brain-Washing’ Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party.’’ He determined that “the Reds have specialists available on their brainwashing panels,’’ experts in the use of “drugs and hypnotism,’’ as he later told the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Their ultimate goal was conquering America. “The United States is the main battlefield,’’ he testified, “the people and the soil and the resources of the United States.’’ He warned that brainwashing would make Americans “subjects of a ‘new world order’ for the benefit of a mad little knot of despots in the Kremlin.’’ The idea that a totalitarian state could control people like Pavlov’s dogs had appeared in 1940s novels, notably Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon’’ and George Orwell’s “1984.’’ It took Mao’s China — and the forced “confessions’’ of some American prisoners of war during the Korean conflict — to make brainwashing a centerpiece of 1950s culture. After the war, thousands of American prisoners of war returned under suspicion of having collaborated with the enemy while in captivity. A handful, on orders from their captors, had, in fact, falsely accused the United States of conducting germ warfare against North Korea. Congress was transfixed by “the fear that the soldiers could have been brainwashed by the Chinese and still be spying for them,’’ Colonel Elspeth Cameron Ritchie wrote in the journal Military Medicine. Dread that the Chinese Com-

SCOTT SHANE

MIND GAMES The Inexact Art Of Intelligence

Continued on Page 4

Continued on Page 4 TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

ADVERTISEMENT

A Bias for Creature Comforts By ERICA GOODE

Humans are an overrated species, or so Leona Helmsley apparently believed. The New York real estate tycoon and hotelier briefly considered giving some of her billions to humans — indigent people, to be specific — but later changed her mind, leaving instead up to $8 billion in a charitable trust for the care and welfare of dogs. She favored her Maltese, Trouble, over her family, providing $12 million for the dog in her will, a lot more than she left her grandchildren. Mrs. Helmsley, who died last August, was hardly the first person to deem the companionship of pets more gratifying than that of people, raising the question of whether they represent a reasonable choice in a world of unpredictable two-legged creatures, or evidence of some psychological disturbance. The field of psychotherapy has traditionally viewed those whose closest relationships are with animals as somehow lacking.

But researchers have begun to take far more seriously the bonds between humans and animals. “There are whole segments of the population that prefer being in the company of dogs than people, and I’m not sure that’s such a negative thing,” said Joel Gavriele-Gold, a psychoanalyst in New York City. “Humans tend to be very disappointing — notice our divorce rate,” Dr. GavrieleGold said. “Dogs are not hurtful and humans are. People are inconsistent and dogs are fairly consistent.” Bennett Roth, also a psychoanalyst in New York City, treated a woman who viewed her life through the lens of what pet she owned at the time. “The cats were essentially more reliable to her than her family had been, ” Dr. Roth said In other cases, a pet can be an outlet for

Some people prefer their pets to humans. Leona Helmsley, a hotelier, left $12 million to her dog. unpleasant traits, like the need to control others. Dr. Gavriele-Gold described one patient as “a total control ASSOCIATED PRESS freak” who became a dog trainer. “It worked out really well for him,” he said. “He was able to marry a woman who was totally laid-back, and he had no desire to control her because he was able to do it with the dogs.” A Web site in England, www.marryyourpet.com, features testimonials from pet owners who claim that their relationships with their pets are primary. Marc Bekoff, an animal researcher in Colorado, said he was startled recently at a meeting when a woman kept talking about her “significant other.” It turned out, he wrote in an e-mail message, that she was talking about a beagle.

OYSTER PERPETUAL DATEJUST

Ping Goes Beijing, Pong Goes Taipei

Buddhist Cave Art Imperiled

China versus Taiwan at Olympic table tennis will be more than just a game. WORLD TRENDS 5

Pollution and tourism are causing the erosion of ancient ARTS & STYLES 8 wall paintings in China. CAHIER DU « MONDE » DATÉ SAMEDI 12 JUILLET 2008, NO 19738. NE PEUT ÊTRE VENDU SÉPARÉMENT

ROLEX.COM

2

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008 O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA RY

EDITORIALS OF THE TIMES

PAUL KRUGMAN

Not Winning The War on Drugs According to the White House, the United States is scoring big wins in the war on drugs, especially against the cocaine cartels. Officials celebrate that cocaine seizures are up — leading to higher prices on American streets. Cocaine use by teenagers is down, and, officials say, workplace tests suggest adult use is falling. John Walters, the White House drug czar, declared earlier this year that “courageous and effective’’ counternarcotics efforts in Colombia and Mexico “are disrupting the production and flow of cocaine.’’ This enthusiasm rests on a very selective reading of the data. Another look suggests that despite the billions of dollars the United States has spent battling the cartels, it has hardly made a dent in the cocaine trade. While seizures are up, so are shipments. According to United States government figures, 1,421 metric tons of cocaine were shipped through Latin America to the United States and Europe last year — 39 percent more than in 2006. And despite massive efforts at eradication, the United Nations estimates that the area devoted to growing coca leaf in the Andes expanded 16 percent last year. The administration disputes that number. The drug cartels are not running for safety. Mexico and parts of Central

America are being swept up in drugrelated violence. Latin Americans are becoming heavy consumers of cocaine, and traffickers are opening new routes to Europe through fragile West African countries. Some experts argue that the rising price of cocaine on American streets is mostly the result of a strong euro and fast-growing demand in Europe. Workplace drug tests notwithstanding, cocaine use in the United States is not falling. About 2.5 percent of Americans used cocaine at least once in 2006, the same percentage as in 2002, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. All this suggests serious problems with a strategy that focuses overwhelmingly on disrupting the supply of drugs while doing far too little to curb domestic demand. The next administration should continue to help Latin American governments take on the traffickers. But it must learn from the current strategy’s shortcomings. Eradication efforts are most likely to have more success if more money is spent on programs to wean coca growers from the business and improve the lives of their families and communities. Above all, the next administration must put much more effort into curbing demand — spending more on treating drug addicts and less on putting them in jail.

Man-Made Hunger Thirty countries have already seen food riots this year. The ever higher cost of food could push tens of millions of people into abject poverty and starvation. To a large degree, this crisis is man-made — the result of misguided energy and farm policies. President Bush and other heads of state of the Group of 8 must accept their full share of responsibility and lay out clearly what they will do to address this crisis. To start, they must live up to their 2005 commitment to vastly increase aid to the poorest countries. And they must push other wealthy countries, like those in the Middle East, to help too. That will not be enough. They must also commit to reduce, or even better, do away with their most egregious agricultural and energy subsidies, which contribute to the spread of hunger throughout the world. In the last year, the price of corn has risen 70 percent; wheat 55 percent; rice 160 percent. The World Bank estimates that for a group of 41 poor countries the combined shock of rising prices of food, oil and other raw materials over the past 18 months will cost them between 3 and 10 percent of their annual economic output.

Some of the causes are out of governments’ control, including the rising cost of energy and fertilizer, and drought in food exporters like Australia. Higher consumption of animal protein in China and India has also driven demand for feed grains. But wrongheaded policies among rich and poor nations are also playing a big role. Of those, perhaps the most wrongheaded are the tangle of subsidies, mandates and tariffs to encourage the production of biofuels from crops in the United States and the European Union. (Britain announced last week it would slow the introduction of biofuels.) Long-standing farm subsidies in the rich world have also contributed to the crisis, ruining farmers in poor countries and depressing agricultural investment. Rich countries are not the only culprits. At least 30 developing countries have imposed restrictions or bans on the export of foodstuffs. Importing countries are now stockpiling supplies, which takes more food from global markets. Export barriers also reduce farmers’ profits and discourage them from investing in more production. So far there is no sign that the leaders of the developed countries are ready to do what is needed.

Behind the Bush Bust By huge margins, Americans think the economy is in lousy shape — and they blame President Bush. This fact, more than anything else, makes it hard to see how the Democrats can lose the election this November. But is the public right to be so disgusted with Mr. Bush’s economic leadership? Not exactly. We really do have a lousy economy, a fact of which Mr. Bush seems spectacularly unaware. But that’s not the same thing as saying that the bad economy is Mr. Bush’s fault. Ontheotherhand,there’sacertainrough justice in the public’s attitude. Other politicians besides Mr. Bush share the blame for the mess we’re in — but most of them are Republicans. First things first: pay no attention to apologists who try to defend the Bush economic record. Since 2001, economic conditions have alternated between so-so and outright bad: a recession, followed by one of the weakest expansions since World War II, and then by a renewed job slump that isn’t officially a recession yet, but certainly feels like one. Over all, Mr. Bush will be lucky to leave office with a net gain of five million jobs, far short of the number needed to keep up with population growth. For comparison, Bill Clinton presided over an economy that added 22 million jobs. And what does Mr. Bush have to say about this dismal record? “I think when people take a look back at this moment in our economic history, they’ll recognize tax cuts work.’’ Clueless to the end. Yet even liberal economists have a hard

auto makers in the United States spend more on health care than they do on steel. One of the underemphasized keys to the Clinton boom, I’d argue, was the way the cost disease of health care went into remission between 1993 and 2000. For a while, the spread of managed care put a lid on premiums, encouraging companies to expand their work forces. But premiums surged again after 2000, imposing huge new burdens on business. It’s a good bet that this played an important role in weak job creation.

The Luckiest Girl This year’s college graduates owe their success to many factors, from hectoring parents to cherished remedies for hangovers. But one of the most remarkable of the new graduates, Beatrice Biira, credits something utterly improbable: a goat. “I am one of the luckiest girls in the world,’’ Beatrice declared at her graduation party after earning her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College. Indeed, and it’s appropriate that the goat that changed her life was named Luck. Beatrice’s story helps address two of the most commonly asked questions about foreign assistance: “Does aid work?’’ and “What can I do?’’ The tale begins in the rolling hills of western Uganda, where Beatrice was born and raised. As a girl, she desperately yearned for an education, but it seemed hopeless: Her parents were peasants who couldn’t afford to send her to school. The years passed and Beatrice stayed home to help with the chores. She was on track to become one more illiterate African woman, another of the continent’s squandered human resources. In the meantime, in Niantic, Connecticut, the children of the Niantic Community Church wanted to donate money for a good cause. They decided to buy goats for African villagers through Heifer International, a venerable aid group based in Arkansas that helps impoverished farming families. A dairy goat in Heifer’s online gift catalog costs $120; a flock of chicks or ducklings costs just $20.

One of the goats bought by the Niantic church went to Beatrice’s parents and soon produced twins. When the kid goats were weaned, the children drank the goat’s milk for a nutritional boost and sold the surplus milk for extra money. The cash from the milk accumulated, and Beatrice’s parents decided that they could now afford to send their daughter to school. She was much older than the other first graders, but she was so overjoyed that she studied diligently and rose to be the best

The tale of a girl from Uganda and the goat that paid for her school. student in the school. An American visiting the school was impressed and wrote a children’s book, “Beatrice’s Goat,’’ about how the gift of a goat had enabled a bright girl to go to school. The book was published in 2000 and became a children’s best seller. Beatrice was such an outstanding student that she won a scholarship, not only to Uganda’s best girls’ high school, but also to a prep school in Massachusetts and then to Connecticut College. A group of 20 donors to Heifer International — coordinated by a retired staff member named Rosalee Sinn, who fell in love with Beatrice

RÉFÉRENCES

Pour aider à la lecture de l’anglais et familiariser nos lecteurs avec certaines expressions américaines, Le Monde publie ci-dessous la traduction de quelques mots et idiomes contenus dans les articles de ce supplément. Par Dominique Chevallier, agrégée d’anglais.

LEXIQUE

Dans l’article “In Buddha’s Caves, an Imperiled Vision of China’s Past,” page 8: TO SCOUR: ici, éroder DRAW: attraction PEERLESS: sans pareil CLAY: argile TO OVERSEE: superviser SANDSTONE: grès SWASHBUCKLING: haut en couleur

Other Republicans share the blame for America’s economic problems.

What about raw materials prices? During the Clinton years basic commodities stayed cheap by historical standards. Since then, however, food and energy prices have exploded, directly lopping about 5 percent off the typical American family’s real income, and raising business costs throughout the economy. Much of this pain could have been avoided. If Bill Clinton’s attempt to reform health care had succeeded, the economy would be in much better shape today. But the attempt failed — and let’s remember why. Yes, the Clinton administration botched the politics. But it was Republicans in Congress who blocked reform. As for high food and fuel prices, they’re mainly the result of growing demand from China and other emerging economies. But oil prices wouldn’t be as high as they are, and the United States would have been much less vulnerable to the price spike, if we had taken steps in the past to limit our oil consumption. Mr. Bush certainly deserves some blame for the poor performance of the economy on his watch, but much of the blame lies with other, earlier political figures, who squandered chances for reform. As it happens, however, most though not all of the politicians responsible for our current economic difficulties were Republicans. And bear in mind that John McCain has gone to great lengths to affirm his support for Republican economic orthodoxy. So he’ll have no reason to complain if, as seems likely, the economy costs him the election.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

: AIDE A LA LECTURE

Dans l’article “Recipes That Ruin the Joy of Cooking,” page 7: WHISK: fouet de cuisine TO BYPASS: éviter, contourner TO CHAR: faire brûler TO BROIL: faire cuire au gril LEST: de peur que BOAR: sanglier

time arguing that Mr. Bush’s cluelessness actually caused the poor economic performance on his watch. Tax cuts didn’t work, but they didn’t create the Bush bust. So what did? At the top of my list of causes for the lousy economy are three factors: the housing bubble and its aftermath, rising health care costs and soaring raw materials prices. I’ve written a lot about housing, so today let’s talk about the others. Most public discussion of health care focuses on the problems of the uninsured and underinsured. But insurance premiums are also a major business expense:

EXPRESSIONS Dans l’article “In Buddha’s Caves, an Imperiled Vision of China’s Past,” page 8: GATEWAY: le mot signifie barrière, mais aussi porte d’entrée, dans un sens figuré: à Saint Louis du Missouri, une grande arche, nommée« the Gateway to the West : “a été construite en hommage aux pionniers de l’Ouest.” Dans l’article “First Comes Inspiration, Then the Prize,” page 5: MAVERICK: à la fois animal qui ne porte pas de marque de propriétaire, et homme non conformiste et indépendant d’esprit, électron libre; vient de Samuel Maverick, propriétaire terrien texan qui refusait de marquer ses bêtes.

Dans l’article “Recipes That Ruin the Joy of Cooking,” page 7: PORTLAND, OREGON: 3ème plus grosse ville du Nord Ouest Pacifique (après Vancouver et Seattle), Portland est considérée, juste après Reykjavik comme la 2ème ville la plus verte au monde, et a pour surnom “City of Roses”, car du fait de son climat, les roses y abondent. Les premiers propriétaires du site ont joué son nom à pile ou face (chacun voulait nommer la ville d’après sa propre ville de naissance); elle est donc ainsi nommée d’après Portland dans le Maine. La pièce qui servit au pari (le Portland Penny) est aujourd’hui exposée dans une vitrine de la Oregon Historical Society. Située au confluent de la Willamette et de la Columbia, la ville occupait une position stratégique entre une vallée agricole et l’accès au Pacifique; jusqu’au début du 20ème siècle, c’était le port le plus important du Nord Ouest. Aujourd’hui, des entreprises telles que Nike et Intel s’y sont implantées et la ville présente un grand attrait touristiques: les terrasses des petits cafés le long de la Willamette, l’importance de la planification

when she saw her at age 10 — financed the girl’s living expenses. Foreign assistance doesn’t always work and is much harder than it looks. “I won’t lie to you. Corruption is high in Uganda,’’ Beatrice acknowledges. Millions of things could go wrong. But when there’s a good model in place, they often go right. That’s why villagers in western Uganda recently held a special Mass and a feast to celebrate the first local person to earn a college degree in America. Moreover, Africa will soon have a new asset: a well-trained professional to improve governance. Beatrice plans to earn a master’s degree at the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas and then return to Africa to work for an aid group. She dreams of working on projects to help women earn and manage money more effectively. When people ask how they can help in the fight against poverty, there are a thousand good answers, from sponsoring a child to supporting a grass-roots organization through globalgiving.com. (I’ve listed specific suggestions on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and on facebook. com/kristof.) The challenges of global poverty are vast and complex, far beyond anyone’s power to resolve, and buying a farm animal for a poor family won’t solve them. But Beatrice’s giddy happiness these days is still a reminder that each of us does have the power to make a difference — to transform a girl’s life with something as simple and cheap as a little goat.

urbaine, et les nombreux parcs en font une ville de l’Ouest originale puisqu’on s’y déplace à pieds. Dans l’article “First Comes Inspiration, Then the Prize,” page 5: ROBERT A. HEINLEIN: (1907-1988) considéré comme un des Trois Grands de la Science Fiction (avec Asimov et Arthur C. Clarke), il a été le premier à faire quitter à la science fiction les magazines spécialisés et à être publié au Saturday Evening Post. Auteur prolifique (32 romans, 59 nouvelles) il a été si influent sur la génération des astronomes d’Apollo qu’un cratère sur Mars porte son nom. Il a aussi inventé des expressions passées dans le langage courant, telles que TANSTAAFL (“there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” c’est-à-dire “on n’a rien sans rien ”). Ses romans les plus importants sont Etoiles, Garde à vous (1959) et En Terre Etrangère (1961). La plupart de ses nouvelles sont publiées en 4 séries: Histoires du Futur I,II, III et IV. Il a à la fois discuté des thèmes de la religion, la sexualité, la liberté, l’armée, les tendances répressives de la société dans ses romans et contribué à rehausser la qualité littéraire du genre.

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008

LE MONDE

the open championship royal birkdale golf club southport, england july 17 th to 20 th, 2008

More than any other victory, a win at The Open Championship is a player’s best chance to make his indelible mark on the history of golf. This year’s setting of Royal Birkdale only adds to the timelessness of the oldest of the four Majors. One of Europe’s most historic links courses, its fairways, deep bunkers and naturally sloping greens have perplexed the world’s best for more than a century. For this year’s winner, and over a hundred past, the pursuit of the Claret Jug is one that never tarnishes with age.

rolex. acrownfor every achievement.

arnold palmer royal birkdale, 1961

OYSTER PERPETUAL DAY-DATE IN PLATINUM

3

4

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008 WORLD TRENDS

Free Speech In the U.S. Is a Crime Elsewhere

America Fails to Learn Lessons of Brainwashing From Page 1

By ADAM LIPTAK

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — In the United States, the debate over what constitutes free speech or hate speech has been settled. Under the First Amendment of the Constitution, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence. This is not the case in much of the world. Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France. In 2006, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. Things are different in Canada. The magazine went on trial. Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self-respect.” The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here in early June, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law. On June 28, the Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed a separate complaint against the magazine filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress. The Maclean’s article, “Why the Future Belongs to Islam,” was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called “America Alone.” The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path. “In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.” “But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.” Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech. “It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York

Most nations limit what people can say or write, unlike the right to free speech in the United States. Excerpts of Mark Steyn’s book about Muslims in a Canadian magazine drew accusations that he violated a hate speech law.

RICK COLLINS

Review of Books in May, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.” Professor Waldron was reviewing “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment” by Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist. Mr. Lewis has been critical of efforts to use the law to limit hate speech. But even Mr. Lewis, a liberal, wrote in his book that he was inclined to relax some of the most stringent First Amendment protections “in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism.” In particular, he called for a re-examination of the Supreme Court’s insistence that there is only one justification for making incitement a criminal offense: the likelihood of imminent violence. The imminence requirement sets a high hurdle. Mere advocacy of violence, terrorism or the overthrow of the government is not enough; the words must be meant to and be likely to produce violence or lawlessness right away.

Mr. Lewis wrote that there was “genuinely dangerous” speech that did not meet the imminence requirement, but that it should be punished. Harvey A. Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, disagreed. “When times are tough,” he said, “there seems to be a tendency to say there is too much freedom. “Free speech matters because it works,” Mr. Silverglate continued. Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-September 11 era. “The world didn’t suffer because too many people read ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” Mr. Silverglate said. “Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.” The First Amendment is not, of course, absolute. The Supreme Court has said that the government may ban fighting words or threats. Punishments may be enhanced for violent crimes prompted by racial hatred. Mr. Steyn said in an interview that the Canadian proceedings had illustrated some important distinctions. “What we’re learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins,” Mr. Steyn added. “Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world.”

munists had created zombie sleeper agents spread quickly and ran deep. A Dutch psychologist, Joost A. M. Meerloo, caught the apocalyptic tone in a New York Times Magazine article in 1954: “The totalitarians have misused the knowledge of how the mind works for their own purposes. They have applied the Pavlovian technique — in a far more complex and subtle way, of course — to produce the reflex of mental and political submission of the humans in their power.’’ Finding out what others are thinking was (and is) the job of spies. The Korean experience spurred the C.I.A.’s search for mind-control techniques to grill suspected double agents. The agency took on a task described in its documents as “overseas interrogations.’’ Clandestine prisons were created in occupied Germany, occupied Japan and the Panama Canal Zone. “Like Guantánamo,’’ said a charter member of the C.I.A., Thomas Polgar. “It was anything goes.’’ In these cells, the agency conducted experiments in drug-induced brainwashing and other “special techniques’’ for interrogations. These continued inside and outside the United States, sometimes on unsuspecting human guinea pigs, long after the Korean War ended in 1953. “There was deep concern over the issue of brainwashing,’’ Richard Helms, the former director of central intelligence, told the journalist David Frost 25 years later. “We felt that it was our responsibility not to lag behind the Russians or the Chinese in this field, and the only way to find out what the risks were was to test things such as L.S.D. and other drugs that could be used to control human behavior. These experiments went on for many years.’’ While the government chased after truth serum, fiction raced behind reality. The theory of a robot-like Manchurian Candidate was posited by the C.I.A. in 1953, six years before Richard Condon published the novel of that name, nine years before the book became a movie. William Burroughs, in “Naked Lunch’’ (1959), created a drugTim Weiner is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: A History of the C.I.A.’’

addled mad scientist, Dr. Benway, “an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control.’’ In the 1960s, brainwashing began to fade as a nightmare, though it was revived when captured soldiers and pilots released by North Vietnam made antiwar statements. In 1967, a Republican presidential contender, Governor George Romney of Michigan, was ridiculed when he said he had been brainwashed by American generals about how well the war in Vietnam was going. Flash forward to 2002. American military and intelligence officers, looking for better ways to interrogate prisoners in the war on terror, went combing through government files. They found that the best institutional memory lay in the interrogation experiences of American prisoners of war in Korea. They reprinted a 1957 chart describing death threats, degradation, sleep deprivation — and worse — inflicted by Chinese captors. And they made it part of a new handbook for interrogators at Guantánamo. The original author of that chart, Albert D. Biderman, a social scientist who had distilled interviews with 235 Air Force prisoners of war, wrote that the Communists’ techniques mainly served to “extort false confessions.’’ And they were the same methods that “inquisitors had employed for centuries.’’ They had done nothing that “was not common practice to police and intelligence interrogators of other times and nations.’’ Brainwashing was bunk: no secret weapon to control the human mind existed, America’s best experts concluded in the 1960s. Yes, the Communists used time-honored and terrifying interrogation tactics during the cold war. Some, like waterboarding, had been perfected during the Spanish Inquisition. But Mr. Biderman concluded that “inflicting physical pain is not a necessary nor particularly effective method’’ to persuade prisoners of war. Alberto J. Mora, the Navy’s general counsel from 2001 to 2006, told a recent Congressional hearing, where the Biderman chart resurfaced: “Our nation’s policy decision to use so-called ‘harsh’ interrogation techniques during the war on terror was a mistake of massive proportions.’’

SFC. AL CHANG/U.S. ARMY — NATIONAL ARCHIVES — TIME & LIFE PICTURES — GETTY IMAGES

Fears that Communists could control minds reached a pitch during the Korean War when prisoners told of torture and forced confessions.

Some Spies Are Motivated by the Love for Another Country From Page 1

ROSS MACDONALD

with foreign relatives from high-level clearances. But even as the American government aggressively courts first-generation and second-generation Americans, the new statistics suggest, it must keep a wary eye out for those whose real loyalty is to their native country or to militant Islam. “The intelligence community has a particularly difficult risk to manage,’’ Mr. Brenner said. “It’s difficult to do background checks on people from outof-the-way places.’’ Why do people betray their country? Counterintelligence instructors have long offered the mnemonic MICE, for money, ideology, compromise, ego. Perhaps it’s time to update that to MINCE, adding nationalism. Or MINCES, noting the

contributions of sex, as in the case of Donald W. Keyser, a United States State Department official whose liaison with a Taiwanese intelligence officer led to a conviction last year for possession of classified documents and lying to investigators. Rarely is only one motive at play for a spy. But different periods have featured different motives in the ascendancy. The first great wave was ideology, growing from an early fascination with the Soviet experiment, which promised freedom from the grinding inequities of capitalism. Julius Rosenberg, for instance, whose parents worked in New York City sweatshops, was one of dozens of American and British Communists who fed secrets to Soviet intelligence in the first half of the 20th century. But by the 1970s, disillusionment with the crimes of Communism meant that

few took up the Soviet cause gratis. Money dominated the second wave. The third wave of spying shows much less greed. Money, the sole or primary motive for two-thirds of spies who got their start in the 1980s, was the main draw for just a quarter of spies from 1990 to date, Ms. Herbig’s new analysis concludes. No money at all was paid in the 11 most recent cases. The largest share was made up of naturalized Americans who spied out of devotion to another country: Cuba, the Philippines, South Korea, Egypt, Iraq. In a handful of cases, Muslims have been accused of ties to Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups; these include Hassan Abujihaad, an American convert to Islam convicted in March of supplying information on Navy ships to a suspected terrorist financier. Then there is the rash of Chinese

cases, notably that of Mr. Mak. And an indictment for economic espionage was unsealed in February in California against another American citizen of Chinese birth, Dongfan (Greg) Chung, a 72-year-old engineer for defense contractors. The indictment quotes a letter Mr. Chung was accused of sending to a technology institute in China in the late 1970s with an emotional offer of help. “I would like to make an effort to contribute to the Four Modernizations of China,’’ he wrote. According to the federal indictment, the Chinese were eager for his help. “We are all moved by your patriotism,’’ Professor Chen Lung Ku of the Harbin Institute of Technology wrote in September 1979. “We’d like to join our hands together with the overseas compatriots in the endeavor for the construction of our great socialist motherland.’’

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008

5

WORLD TRENDS

Toxic Sludge Lingers, Tormenting Bhopal By SOMINI SENGUPTA

BHOPAL, India — Hundreds of tons of waste still languish inside a tin-roofed warehouse on the old grounds of the Union Carbide pesticide factory, nearly a quarter-century after a poison gas leak killed thousands and turned this city into a symbol of industrial disaster. The toxic remains have yet to be carted away, and a state environmental agency found pesticide residues in the neighborhood wells far exceeding permissible levels. It was here that on December 3, 1984, a tank inside the factory released 36 metric tons of methyl isocyanate gas, killing those who inhaled it while they slept. At least 3,000 people were killed immediately. Thousands more may have died from the aftereffects, though the exact number remains unclear. Advocates for those who live near the site continue to complain to the company and their government. They insist that Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, should pay for the cleanup. “Had the toxic waste been cleaned up, the contaminated groundwater would not have happened,’’ says Mira Shiva, a doctor who heads the Voluntary Health Association, one of many groups pressing for Dow to take responsibility for the cleanup. “Dow was the first crime. The second crime was government negligence.’’ Dow, based in Michigan, says it bears no responsibility to clean up a mess it did not make. “As there was never any ownership, there is no responsibility and no liability for the Bhopal tragedy or its aftermath,’’ Scot Wheeler, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail message. The claims have divided the govern-

THE NEW YORK TIMES RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A debate over who is responsible has slowed the cleanup of hazardous waste at Bhopal. Children bathed in a “poison pond” near the former factory. ment itself. The Chemicals and Petrochemicals Ministry, entrusted with the cleanup of the site, has wanted Dow to put down a $25 million deposit toward the cost of remediation, while other senior officials warned that forcing Dow’s hand could endanger future investments in the country. The government is expected to make a final decision later this year. Beyond who will pay for the cleanup here, the question is why 385 metric tons of hazardous waste remain here 24 years after the leak? There are many answers. The company was allowed to dump the land on the government before it was cleaned up. Lawsuits by advocacy groups are still winding their way through the courts. And a network of often lethargic, seemingly apathetic government agencies do

not always coordinate with one another. The result is a wasteland in the city’s heart. The old factory grounds are an overgrown 4-hectare forest, where cattle graze and women forage for twigs to cook their evening meal. Just beyond the factory wall is a blueblack open pit. Once the repository of chemical sludge from the pesticide plant, it is now a pond where slum children and dogs dive on hot afternoons. In the rainy season, it overflows through the slum’s alleys. The slum rose up shortly after the gas leak. Poor people flocked here, seeking cheap land, and put up homes right up to the edge of the sludge pond. In the Shiv Nagar slum about a kilometer from the factory, there is a boy, Akash, who was born with an empty socket for a left eye. Now 6, he cannot see

dia’s Supreme Court, who visited here in March 2005. A government research center warned more than 10 years ago that, if left untreated, the toxic residue on the factory grounds would seep into the soil and water. Around the same time state authorities finally scooped up the toxic waste from around the factory grounds, and stored it inside the tin-roofed warehouse. The waste was supposed to be taken to an incinerator in the neighboring state of Gujarat, but the government has yet to find a contractor. Ajay Vishoni, the state gas and health minister, said he was confident that none of the waste was hazardous anymore, nor had anyone proved to his satisfaction that it had ever caused the contamination of the groundwater. “There is hype,’’ he said.

TOMSK JOURNAL

Fierce Rivalry For 2 Chinas, From Politics To Ping Pong

Reviving the Charm Of a Gingerbread Village

By EDWARD WONG

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — From six table tennis tables at the Olympic training center here comes the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of ball against paddle against tabletop. Outside, the tropical heat of southern Taiwan seems to wither even the palm trees, while inside, the players break into a sweat at the mere thought of this: trading serves with the team from mainland China in the Olympic Games next month. “No matter how good China is, we hope to get a medal from the Olympics,’’ a playernamedChangYen-shusaidafterwatching his teammates practice one morning. “They’re hosting the competition and they know everything well. They’re the best players in the world. Until now, no one has been able to beat them.’’ Mr. Chang, 29, and the other four members of Taiwan’s table tennis delegation aim to upset mainland China at its national obsession. On the Olympic competition schedule, Mr. Chang’s team is not in the same part of the draw as China, so the Taiwanese have high hopes of facing their nemesis in the finals. China has won 33 Olympic medals in table tennis, 16 of them gold; Taiwan has won only a silver and a bronze — both earned by Chen Jing, a woman who immigrated from the mainland. A medal match between China and Taiwan would be one of the great underdog stories of the Games, not only because of the dominance of China in the sport, but also because of the unique relationship between the mainland and the island. The Chinese Communist Party regards Taiwan, a thriving democracy of 23 million, as a rebel province that must be brought back into the fold, by force if necessary. Taiwanese athletes insist that the Olympics are about sports, not politics. Besides, relations between mainland China and Taiwan have been on the upswing after Ma Ying-Jeou, the conciliatory Taiwanese president, was inaugurated in May. Yet the mainland and Taiwan have a long history of political rivalry over the Olympics, so Taiwan’s participation in the first Games on Chinese soil has the potential for volatility. Taiwan’s contingent includes 76 ath-

properly or speak. His father, Shobha Ram, a maker of sweets who bought land here many years after the gas leak, said the boy’s afflictions were caused by the hand-pumped well from where his family drew water on the edge of the sludge pond for years. “We knew the gas incident took place,’’ he said. “We never thought the contaminated water would come all the way to our house.’’ In 2004, complaints from residents led the Supreme Court to order the state to supply clean drinking water to the people living around the factory. “It is a scandal that the hazardous wastes left behind by Union Carbide unattended for 20 years have now migrated below ground and contaminated the groundwater below the factory and in its neighborhood,’’ wrote Claude Alvares, a monitor for In-

CHRISTIE JOHNSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Taiwanese players have hopes of winning medals next month in table tennis, a sport that has long been dominated by its rival China. The Taiwanese Olympic table tennis team practiced at Kaohsiung. letes competing in 14 sports, with medal favorites in tae kwon do, archery and weight lifting. Olympic pride has been growing in Taiwan ever since two tae kwon do athletes, a man and a woman, each brought back a gold medal from the 2004 Games in Athens — the first gold for Taiwan. (The island’s athletes have won six silvers and seven bronzes.) But some Taiwanese officials fear that Beijing could mar next month’s Games by trying to fuse sports and politics by identifying the Taiwanese delegation in

Called a rebel province by the mainland, Taiwan dreams of Olympic gold. ways that suggest that the island belongs to the mainland. At the heart of the anxiety is a political disagreement over the Chinese words for the name of the Olympic delegation from Taiwan, known in English as Chinese Taipei. The Chinese word for the first part of the name is Zhonghua. That comes from Zhonghua Minguo, or Republic of China, the name that the dominant political group here, the Kuomintang, prefers for Taiwan. Mainland China signed an agreement with Taiwan in 1989 recognizing Zhonghua Taipei — Chinese Taipei — as the name for Taiwan’s delegation.

But sports officials on the mainland often call the Taiwanese delegation Zhongguo Taipei. Zhongguo, which means Middle Kingdom, is the Chinese name for China. Referring to the Taiwanese delegation as Zhongguo Taipei implies that the athletes and the island they represent are part of China. As early as last year, political tensions between China and Taiwan made their mark on the coming Games. The Taiwanese government led by Chen Shui-bian, then the president, who tried to move Taiwan closer to formal independence, decided in April 2007 not to allow the torch to pass through the island because the flame would then go on to Hong Kong, signifying that Taiwan was part of China. That canceled an agreement Tsai Chenwei, president of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, had signed in Beijing in December 2006 allowing the torch to come through Taiwan. Mr. Tsai said that he was disappointed with the decision. “Finally, after more than 40 years, we would have had the torch relay pass through Taiwan,’’ he said. “The torch hasn’t come here since the Summer Games were held in Tokyo in 1964.’’ In recent years, Taiwanese athletes going to the mainland for various competitions have generally been welcomed, Mr. Tsai said. “We want to win gold medals so people in the world know about Taiwan,’’ said one athlete, Yang Shu-chun, 22. “Taiwan is very close to China, but it’s just a small island. I worry people don’t know where Taiwan is. But if I win a gold medal, people will ask, ‘Where’s Taiwan?’ and try to get to know us.’’

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Mr. Zakotnov is hoping that a third TOMSK, Russia — The building at of the wooden buildings can be saved 32 Kartashov Street had had enough. and restored, creating a historic disIt once served as home to a 19th-centrict that might even lure tourists to tury merchant, a little log masterpiece Tomsk, which is four hours away from with ornate doors and shutters carved Moscow by plane. like doilies and a structural swagger For decades, the wooden houses that said, “Look at me!’’ were taken for granted or even But after the Soviet years, it was snubbed as musty hovels. But people nearly dead. An engineer might have have begun to embrace them not only noted that its roof had wilted and for their beauty, but also because they that rot was spreading. The neglect, seem a link to Siberia’s rustic past, a though, seemed to go deeper, as if the time before the region became synbuilding had all but given up after realonymous with gulags and oil. izing that no one in this Siberian city Mr. Zakotnov is spending $3 million could even be bothered. this year from the city treasury to fix A city official named Nikolai Zakotnov came by 32 Kartashov one day and vowed to rescue it. Here would stand an example of how Tomsk could defend an architectural heritage that is as charming as it is unexpected. On side streets all over this riverfront city are wooden buildings erected before Communism and now in various states of decay. As Tomsk prospers from the trade in the region’s natural resources, pressure is growing for new real estate projects, especially in the commercial center. What to do about the gingerbread houses? JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Some are already gone, demolished and Craftsmen once flocked to Tomsk and other replaced by the usual Siberian cities and carved elaborate wooden high-rise apartments buildings. Their beauty is now being restored. and supermarkets and offices. Yet 1,800 or so up a dozen buildings under a program remain, and their fate is emblematic of that began a few years ago. the struggle across Russia to balance The city is also seeking to revive the the preservation of architectural treacarvers’ trade. sures with the demands for developMikhail Aleshkov, 70, decided to do ment now that the economy is surging. the work on his house himself. “This is the problem: preserving a With his own money and a little city unique layer of Russian culture that is disappearing, that is being pushed aid, he brought the place back, carving out by reinforced concrete and stone,’’ animal figures into the shutters and Mr. Zakotnov said. “Actually, this is a painting them a cheery green. problem for all Russian cities, having “I will leave this for my daughter a downtown area that is being covered and my grandchildren,’’ he said. “This by modern structures.’’ will be my legacy.’’

6

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008 MONEY & BUSINESS

First Comes Inspiration, Then The Prize Prizes and contests have often played a role in scientific advances. Unlike massive government research projects, prizes can lure talented mavericks who would otherwise be rebuffed by bureaucracy. An often-cited case is the cash ESSAY prize offered by Britain in 1714 for determining a ship’s longitude at sea. Had there been an 18th-century version of the National Science Foundation, grants would probably have gone to astronomers looking to the sky for a solution. (Latitude was measured that way, so why not longitude?) But the winner, after half a century, was a clockmaker, John Harrison, who took an entirely different approach: devising an extremely accurate chronometer. Similarly, last month the likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that he wanted to break the United States’ oil dependency by encouraging “heroic efforts in engineering.” He called for the government to offer a prize — $300 million to the inventor of a battery so compact, powerful and inexpensive that it would supplement or even supplant the need for fossil fuels. Barack Obama, his Democratic opponent, quickly derided the proposal as a gimmick and a distraction. But the debate raises deeper questions, like how best can the government finance and direct basic research without stifling the spirit of invention. Even though the latest pictures from Mars are stunning, NASA’s problems have overshadowed its successes. The most exciting thing to happen recently in manned space flight came in 2004 when Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately backed suborbital excursion. Winning the contest, which was named for its benefactors, the Ansari family, and administered by the nonprofit X Prize Foundation, cost more than the award was worth. (Mr. Rutan was backed by a Microsoft billionaire, Paul Allen.) But greater

A Shortage of Skilled Workers May Undermine Brazil’s Growth By ANDREW DOWNIE

GEORGE JOHNSON

Economic incentives may prod scientific breakthroughs. spoils may await, with Virgin Galactic licensing the technology for a space tourism industry. The X Prize Foundation took as its model the 1919 Orteig Prize — $25,000 for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris offered by a hotelier who figured it would be good for business. The purse was claimed eight years later by Charles Lindbergh, and the publicity helped start American aviation. Lindbergh’s grandson is a member of the foundation’s board, which is offering other prizes including the Google Lunar X Prize for the winner of an unmanned race to the moon; the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize, endowed by the family of the science fiction writer, “for practical accomplishments in the field of commercial space activities”; and the Archon X Prize for Genomics for the developer of a faster, cheaper way to sequence DNA. But no prize will ever match the thrill of discovery — Marie Curie isolating a shimmering gram of radium from tons of uranium ore. And for the less inspired, there will always be the rewards of the marketplace.

URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES

Reuters is testing a service in India that allows farmers to compare crop prices at different markets and to take advantage of the disparities.

Market Information For Faraway Markets By TIM ARANGO

Reuters, the financial reporting service, is reaching out to a new clientele: farmers in the developing world, where price information is stubbornly hard to compare. If successful, the program could become a model for economists and international agencies that have long proselytized for the use of technology — in particular, the mobile phone — to burnish growth in places like India and sub-Saharan Africa. (Reuters is now part of Thomson Reuters.) To that end, the company has been testing a program called Reuters Market Light for several months in Maharashtra, India’s third-largest state, about the size of Italy. The state is one of India’s prominent agricultural centers, with farmers growing onions, oranges, corn, soybeans, wheat and bananas. But the farmers’ business suffers from the difficulty of comparing prices from one market to another. “We kind of saw that there was a clear market inefficiency,” said Mans Olof-Ors, a Reuters employee who had the idea for Market Light three years ago. “The farmer would decide which market to travel to, then would just sell to that market. So there was no competition between markets.” Reuters has dispatched about 60 market reporters to the region to report on the going price for, say, oranges or onions, and to package the data into a text message that is sent to subscribers. The service is signing up about 220 subscribers a day at a price of 175 rupees, or about $4.10, for three months at post offices throughout Maharashtra. (The average monthly income of a farm household is about $50, according to the Indian government.) The service has about 40,000 customers so far — a tiny portion of India’s farm population, which is in the hundreds of millions, but it proves that many farmers are hungry for more information. Reuters has collected anecdotal evidence from farmers about how the service has influenced their decisions about crop sales. One farmer, according to Reuters, held back the sale of 30 quintals

of soybeans (1 quintal equals 100 kilograms) for 15 days after noticing that prices had been rising for several days. He was able to get 400 extra rupees per quintal. Amit Mehra, managing director of Market Light, says early data show that most subscribers are making more money. “We’ve seen that about 70 percent have benefited and changed their behavior about when to sell and when to harvest and where to sell,” he said. Some academic research has shown that mobile phones can have a stark effect on growth in rural areas. Robert Jensen, an economist at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University in Rhode Island, has studied the impact of putting mobile phones in the hands of fishermen in Kerala, a southern region of India. His study found that both fishermen and consumers benefited: profits rose 8 percent while prices of fish fell 4 percent. “We find that the addition of mobile phones reduced price dispersion and waste and increased fishermen’s profits and consumer welfare,” Mr. Jensen wrote last year in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. According to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, India has a long way to go before cellphone use catches up with that of the developed world. Last year, the agency says, there were almost 20 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 citizens. In some European countries, by contrast, there are more cellphones in use than there are people. Among farmers in India, one of the biggest challenges is illiteracy. In some cases, farmers rely on their children to read the text messages. “About 80 percent to 90 percent of farmers don’t have mobile phones,” Mr. Mehra said. He wants to bring the service to other emerging markets, and says it has the potential to be “transformational.” “The market is not there yet because mobile phone penetration is just taking off,” he said. “We need about 18 to 24 months to prove some of the biggest assumptions behind the business model.”

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — For almost any nation other than China or India, achieving more than 5 percent growth a year is hard. Doing it without skilled labor is even harder. But that is the challenge facing Brazil, the B in the BRIC economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China. After years of boom and bust, the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is projecting a period of sustained growth, with the gross domestic product increasing 5 percent a year, from now to 2010, and about 3 and 4 percent annually for the decade after. But many companies and economists, including some inside the government, say the dearth of highly skilled labor, particularly engineers and tradesmen, will jeopardize those goals, and Brazil’s economic and political rise. “The lack of availability of technical ability may be a constraint on growth, no doubt about it,’’ said José Sergio Gabrielli, president of Petrobras, the state-run oil company. “It is a big challenge for the country.’’ The engineering shortage here is spreading across industries. The lack of civil and construction engineers threatens infrastructure projects; areas like banking, aircraft manufacture, petrochemicals and metals are all competing for the same top graduates. In the oil and gas industries, companies are turning to foreign labor because there are not enough qualified Brazilians. “Some of our big clients in the Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting.

oil and gas sector have 40 to 50 job openings and they can’t fill them,’’ said Paulo Pontes, managing director of Michael Page International, a leading headhunting firm. “When we asked companies what the careers of the future were, seven out of 10 of them were in engineering. That shows the reality of what is happening today.’’ That reality is leading thousands of Brazilian companies into the education business. Some teach basic literacy and arithmetic to janitors and manual workers. And major companies are increasing the amount of onthe-job training they give to engi-

Educating and training Brazilians is a growing business. neers and professionals. “We are planning to invest $11 billion this year and $60 billion over the next five years just in organic growth projects,’’ said Maria Gurgel, director of human resources planning and compensation at Vale, one of the world’s largest mining companies. Today, companies like Vale, Petrobras and the petrochemical firm Ultrapar spend millions of dollars on their own training programs. A typical program is like the one at Embraer, one of the largest manufacturers of aircraft. Embraer builds jets that seat from six to 122 people. The company created a program that

selects the country’s best engineering graduates and puts them through an 18-month specialization course. They already have a base in disciplines like electronics, mechanics or design. Júlio Franco, executive vice president for organizational development and personnel, said the company spends $45,000 training each student. “I have no doubt it pays off,’’ he said. “It gives us enormous peace of mind.’’ The Brazilian government is less serene. One official said he believed that shortages were limited to certain sectors and could be overcome in the short term by hiring retirees and foreign workers. But the medium- and longterm prognosis is more problematic, said Nelson Barbosa, the secretary of economic monitoring at the finance ministry. “As growth increases, those solutions will run out and it will be crucial to increase and invest in education,” Mr. Barbosa said. The problem is that Brazil’s educational system is in disarray. The average Brazilian worker has six years of schooling, compared with 10 years in South Korea, 11 in Japan and 12 in the United States and Europe, according to the National Confederation of Industry study. The graduates who succeed are in demand. Big companies have the money to hire or train them. Midlevel firms are not as lucky. “We had to reduce the size of our company,’’ said Marcos Coelho, president of the administrative council at Esteio, an engineering firm that conducts topographic studies. “If we had more people we’d be growing much quicker.”

www.HybridSynergyDrive.com

Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive. Une technologie hybride qui pense à la planète. La technologie Hybride Toyota a été créée il y a dix ans déjà. A cette époque, l'environnement n'était pas un sujet à la mode. La Toyota Prius hybride a déjà séduit plus d'un million d'automobilistes, et a permis d'éviter le rejet de plusieurs millions de tonnes de CO2. Un bon début pour l'environnement. Consommations L/100 km (Normes CE) : cycle urbain/extra-urbain/mixte : 5,0/4,2/4,3. Emissions de CO2 (en cycle mixte) : 104g/km (B)

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008

LE MONDE

7

T H E W AY W E E AT

The Vineyards of India Coming to Prominence By FLORENCE FABRICANT

JAMES STEINBERG

Recipes That Ruin the Joy of Cooking I was reading a recipe for apple strudel when I came to a sentence that stopped me cold: “If you don’t have a helper,’’ it began. If a dish needs a helper, I need to move on. Although I didn’t end up with a strudel, I did end up on a quest. I began asking good cooks I ESSAY know about recipe deal breakers — those ingredients or instructions that make them throw down the whisk and walk away. Whether for reasons practical or psychological, even the most experienced cooks have an ingredient, technique or phrase that will make them bypass a recipe. Some deal breakers are simply a function of place. People in small New York apartments don’t execute recipes that require well-ventilated spaces. They rarely char peppers or broil salmon, lest the apartment stink for days. They rarely deep-fry. Recipes that involve absurdly local or obscure ingredients are also problematic. Paula Wolfert, in one recipe, requires 48 tender young grapevine leaves, freshly picked. Diana Kennedy, in her recipe for the Mexican sausage moronga, calls for two liters of pig’s blood. “If you do not kill your own pig,’’ she advises, “order it through your butcher.’’ Melissa Steineger, a good cook I know in Portland, Oregon, was long a slave to such recipe tyranny. It started with the Coyote Cafe cookbook from the Southwestern chef Mark Miller. She recalls recipes that required ingredients like “wild boar from the hills surrounding Santa Fe.’’ They went unmade until her

KIM SEVERSON

cooking skills improved and she had an epiphany: she could substitute. “That freed me,’’ she said. Beyond place, general fussiness is a common deal breaker: stuffing an olive, for example, or cutting vegetables into precise shapes like matchsticks. The chef Thomas Keller is the modern king of the fussy recipes. His books are stacked with one deal breaker after another. To make his cornets filled with salmon tartare and crème fraîche, one must first figure out how to make “a 4inch hollow circular stencil.’’ Then the cook must balance a baking sheet on the

One writer’s advice begins, ‘If you do not kill your own pig …’ open door of a hot oven and set the tips of cornet molds on par-baked circles of batter at the 7 o’clock position before rolling. These are the kinds of instructions that make people close the recipe book and open a box of premade brownie mix. Other deal breakers are techniques. “I won’t truss,’’ one friend said, “and I won’t lard.’’ Anything that requires long sessions pounding food in a mortar or forcing something through a sieve stops Fran Gage, the San Francisco pastry chef and author. “Not that I won’t try the recipe,’’ she said, “but I’ll read it carefully to see if I can use a machine instead.’’ Others avoid recipes that require

wearing rubber gloves, handling something carefully with tongs or removing all jewelry before proceeding. “Serves 18’’ gives some pause. Others won’t make anything that varies with the weather, like a meringue recipe that cautions against trying it on a humid or rainy day. The recipe within a recipe can be a deal breaker, especially if the minor player needs to be made days ahead of time. Unusual equipment is a common deal breaker, too. How many times has a couscous recipe been cast aside because there is no couscousière in the house? Then there are certain phrases or techniques some fear. “Working quickly’’ may be simply too anxiety-producing, especially when combined with “before it hardens.’’ Others do not like recipes involving a candy thermometer or ones that take food to the brink of burning, like caramel or a roux. People shy away from recipes that require split-second timing to assure culinary success with expensive ingredients. The word “just’’ is often involved, as in “cook the scallop just until it turns opaque.’’ And then there are the specific foods that have scarred a cook for life. One friend’s most humiliating culinary failures have involved sheet gelatin, so she shuns recipes with gelatin. Barbara Fairchild, the editor in chief of Bon Appétit magazine, avoids pie recipes. Years ago, as a new bride, she was to make the Thanksgiving pies for her mother-in-law’s dinner. She botched the crust completely. “It’s really hard to sit down and make a pie because I flash back to 25 years ago,’’ she said. “It’s a total phobia.’’

NASIK, India — When Ranjit Dhuru, the owner of the Chateau d’Ori winery, walked through his gently sloping vineyards here in February, the harvest was in full swing. “Already sweet,’’ he said, nibbling from tight, healthy bunches of cabernet sauvignon grapes. “These will be ready to pick soon, in another week.’’ Eight years ago, Mr. Dhuru, who made his fortune in the software business, bought land outside Nasik, a city about 160 kilometers northeast of Mumbai that has become the center of India’s expanding wine industry. This year, with the help of a consulting oenologist from Bordeaux, Mr. Dhuru expects to produce about 300,000 bottles of white and red wines. By next year, he estimates that a million bottles will bear the Chateau d’Ori label. The aggressive optimism of entrepreneurs like Mr. Dhuru is easy to understand. In Maharashtra state in central and western India, where Nasik is, more than 40 wineries are in varying stages of development. Government officials say that investment in wine increased by 74 percent over the last year. “In the next 10 years there will be 300 million upwardly mobile Indians who can afford wine and for whom it will be a lifestyle choice,’’ Mr. Dhuru said. “A lot of them will be drinking Indian wines.’’ Aman Sharma, the food and beverage director for the India-based Taj hotel chain, agreed. “There is already a large population eager for wine,’’ he said. In 2006, the annual per-capita consumption of wine in India was estimated at about a tablespoon, but that represents a fourfold increase since 2000. Most wine made in India is consumed there. And as wine publications, wine clubs, competitions and tasting dinners have taken hold, gradually, Indian wines with notable finesse are becoming available and appreciated. Grover Vineyards La Réserve, a cabernet sauvignon-shiraz blend from one of India’s top wineries, in another wine region near Bangalore to the south, is among the country’s most sought-after wines. The 2005 is rich and smoky, with hints of roasted peppers. Its alcohol is listed at only 12 percent on a label that proudly states: “Made in collaboration with Mr. Michel Rolland, Bordeaux, France.’’ Mr. Rolland is one of the bestknown wine consultants in the world. Indus wines, which is the name the Terroir India company uses on its labels, are made in a boutique winery atop a hillside overlooking Lake Mukni, south of Nasik. The two-yearold winery has just started planting a vineyard, and buys its grapes from local farmers who, until recently, grew table grapes. The fruit and alcohol of Indus’s fresh-tasting sauvignon blanc are well integrated, and the 2007 shiraz exhibits restrained richness. Indian wineries have to cope with challenges that do not exist in wine regions elsewhere. For starters, the calendar is turned upside down. Even though the region is north of the equator, grapes are pruned in September and picked in February and March

Hamburgers and Spaghetti, Served With a Japanese Twist By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TOKYO — Even outside Japan, fans of the country’s cuisine can order uni and o-toro with confidence, or urbanely express a preference for soba over udon. But what about “Napolitan,” cooked spaghetti that is rinsed in cold water, then stir-fried with vegetables in ketchup? Or “menchi katsu,” hamburger covered in bread crumbs and deep-fried? Or “omu rice,” an omelet lying over a mound of ketchup-flavored rice? All are standards of a style of Japanese cuisine known as yoshoku, or “Western food,” in which European or American dishes were imported and, in true Japanese fashion, shaped and reshaped to fit local tastes. Today yoshoku is thoroughly Japanese. It is regularly featured on television cooking shows and mainstream magazines. The lines outside upscale yo-

shoku restaurants here in Tokyo are as long as ever, mostly with older Japanese for whom yoshoku provided a first taste of a Western world they had not seen. Yoshoku restaurants are also a requisite of the trendiest new shopping districts, like Midtown and Roppongi Hills, where they cater to younger Japanese whose mothers made the food at home. And yet it is virtually unknown to foreigners. The first Michelin guide to Tokyo, published in the fall of 2007, listed 150 restaurants; not one was a yoshoku establishment. Indeed, visitors to Japan seldom enter the places where yoshoku is served: homes, chain diners, family-owned neighborhood restaurants or upscale yoshoku establishments of long standing. Yoshoku was born during Japan’s Meiji Restoration, the period that followed this isolationist country’s forced

to avoid stifling heat and the summer monsoon season. On the plus side, the vintners can plan to harvest according to the ripeness of their grapes, without having to worry about unseasonal cold snaps and rain. The grapes are usually gathered by migrant workers under floodlights, from 3 a.m. to around 9, before it gets too hot. “Labor is not an issue in India,’’ Mr. Dhuru said. At his winery, justpicked grapes are kept in refrigerated trucks until they are crushed. Mr. Dhuru poured several of his wines for visitors in his sparsely furnished four-bedroom guest house, which overlooks the vineyards. His 2007 chenin blanc was smooth and nutty, not sweet, with good acidity, but too alcoholic at 14.7 percent, Mr. Dhuru said. “We’re in a hot country, and next year we’ll have to keep the alcohol in check,’’ he said. His sauvignon blanc, in a slightly oaky California fumé blanc style, was another big wine. Fresh-tasting sauvignon blancs, and chenin blancs, sometimes with a slightly sweet finish, are typical of India’s whites. They are good complements for seafood and for vegetarian dishes like bhindi masala, which is braised spiced okra, or saag paneer, which is a kind of dense fresh cheese in spinach sauce. Chateau d’Ori’s red wines, like the

Oenologists from France help growers cater to upwardly mobile Indians. 2007 cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend, offered lush fruit and hints of bell pepper, and turned out to be a suitable partner for meats and breads seared in the tandoor clay oven. The 2007 merlot was soft and elegant, but a simpler wine. Many of India’s wineries produce shiraz and shiraz-cabernet blends. These often exhibit earthy, vegetal aromas and flavors along with bold fruit. When young, which is the way most of them are sold, they can hold their own against dishes seasoned with cumin, mustard seed, fenugreek and other musky flavors. Sula Vineyards, established in 1996 on the outskirts of Nasik, is the brand most often on wine lists. Although Nasik has a reputation as the Napa of India, Sula is one of just a handful of wineries designed to receive visitors with a tasting room, tours and a guest house. Chateau Indage, near Pune, another city in Maharashtra, is 25 years old and, with production at 1 million cases, is said to be the biggest winery in the country. It was the first to make a sparkling wine. And if there is a fast-track wine industry, can olive oil be far behind? “Actually, the guy who fabricates my stainless steel tanks in Nasik is looking into that,’’ Mr. Dhuru said. “He has some land and is planning to import Italian seedlings.’’

Taimeiken, a Tokyo restaurant, is famous for its yoshoku cuisine, based on Western food. Popular dishes include an omelet with ketchup.

KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

opening by America’s so-called Black Ships in 1854. Japanese were dispatched to Europe and America to learn about Western laws, weapons and industry. They also brought back the cuisine. Shocked to discover how much shorter they were than Westerners, Japanese

determined that they would catch up not only economically and militarily but also physically, by eating their food. All yoshoku dishes have their roots in Western counterparts, but a key ingredient or a step in the cooking has been altered, or violated outright, with surpris-

ingly delicious results. Instead of being served as soon as it is cooked, Napolitan spaghetti is allowed to sit, then reheated and stir-fried with vegetables. Yoshoku’s popularity reached its peak in the decades following World War II. For mothers, it was easier to prepare than traditional Japanese food. In the decades before most Japanese could afford to fly overseas, upscale yoshoku restaurants grew into symbols of the glamorous Western world. Until the economic boom of the 1970s and 1980s, yoshoku was the only version of Western food known to many Japanese. The yoshoku menu has changed little over the decades, said Hiroshi Modegi, 40, whose grandfather founded Taimeiken, a famous yoshoku restaurant in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, in 1931. “Our customers want the old favorites,” said Mr. Modegi.

8

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2008 ARTS & STYLES

SUN ZHIJUN/DUNHUANG ACADEMY

The cave art at Dunhuang, in far western China, is threatened by nature and a sharp rise in tourism. A sixth-century illustration, on two levels, of a caravan at an oasis.

In Buddha’s Caves, an Imperiled Vision of China’s Past DUNHUANG, China — Sand is implacable here in far western China. It blows and shifts and eats away at everything, erasing boundaries, scouring graves, leaving farmers in despair. It’s one of many threats to the major tourist draw of this oasis city on the edge of the Gobi desert: the hundreds of ESSAY rock-cut Buddhist grottoes that pepper a cliff face outside town. Known as Mogaoku — “peerless caves” — and filled with paradisiacal frescos and hand-molded clay sculptures of savior-gods and saints, they are, in size and historical breadth, like nothing else in the Chinese Buddhist world. And Mogaoku is in trouble. Opened to visitors in recent years, the site has been overwhelmed by tourists. The caves now suffer from high levels of carbon dioxide and humidity, which are severely undermining conservation efforts. Plans are under way to recast the entire Dunhuang experience. Digital technology will give visitors a kind of total immersion encounter with the caves impossible before now, but that immersion will take place 24 kilometers from the site. The question of access versus preservation is a poignant one and is by no means confined to Mogaoku. It applies to many fragile monuments. What are we willing to give up to keep what we have? If you’re a Buddhist — I am not — you know that the material world is a phantom or a dream, “a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp,” as the Buddha puts it in the Diamond Sutra. As part of that world Mogaoku is a phantom too, but one that I had always wanted to see. And finally I was here. With the permission of the Dunhuang Academy, the Chinese conservation and research body that oversees the caves, I stayed in quarters at the site rather than in Dunhuang itself, a city that doesn’t look like much now but certainly must have once. Set between Mongolia and Tibet, it was a vital, cosmopolitan juncture on

HOLLAND COTTER

SUN ZHIJUN/DUNHUANG ACADEMY; LEFT, WU JIAN/DUNHUANG ACADEMY

In scenes from the High Tang era (eighth century), flying apsaras, a type of celestial chorus dancer, left, and tilling in the rain. the Silk Road. And because of its gateway position, it was where Buddhism spilled out of India and Central Asia into China, leaving a residue of spectacular art. The first cave at Mogaoku was carved in A.D. 366 by an itinerant monk named Yuezun who said that one night he saw flamelike lights pulsing across the cliff face and took them as a sign: Here you must stay. So he cut a hole in the sandstone wall and moved in. The earliest caves, small and plain, were used for shelter and meditation, occasionally for burials. Larger and larger grottoes were excavated as temples and monastic lecture halls. Of the 800 or so caves created here from the 5th to 14th centuries, nearly half had some form of decoration. What survives adds up to a developmental timeline of Buddhist art in China. But of course much of it has not survived. By the 11th century Dunhuang’s fortunes were in decline. Monks, possibly panicked by rumors of an Islamic

invasion, sealed up tens of thousands of manuscript scrolls in a small cave. Nature went to work. Sand from the dunes swept into the grottoes. Rock facades gave way, leaving interiors exposed. When people finally reappeared, the damage only increased. In the late 19th century a wandering Taoist priest named Wang Yuanlu settled down and started a ruinous program of “conservation,” discovering the bricked-up library cave with its precious scrolls in the process. He didn’t know it, but he had made of one of the most important archaeological finds of modern times. Other people soon knew. In 1907 the British explorer Aurel Stein arrived. For a pittance he bought around 5,000 silk and paper scrolls from Wang and sent them to England. Of all Stein’s books the prize was a ninth-century woodblock copy of the Diamond Sutra, or the “Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom of the Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion.” This mar-

Weaving Grave Tales of Africa’s Young By CHARLES McGRATH

In 2004, when the Reverend Uwem Akpan applied to the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan, his folder attracted a lot of attention. He was both a Nigerian and a Jesuit priest, and the program was unused to applicants from either category. And though Father Akpan’s talent was abundantly evident, if a little raw, Eileen Pollack, the director of the program, recalled recently, there was some hesitation on the part of the admissions committee. “There were discussions about having a priest be part of workshops where students would be writing about sex and drugs,’’ Ms. Pollack said. But in the end Father Akpan was admitted, and he endeared himself, Ms. Pollack recalled, by showing up on the first day of class wearing a University of

Michigan sweatshirt. “Everyone loved him,’’ she said. “It turned out he had had more experience of the dark side of the world than all the other students put together.’’ Much of that experience is on display in “Say You’re One of Them,’’ Father Akpan’s debut collection of stories, just published by Little, Brown & Company and already attracting attention among critics and booksellers. Each of the book’s five stories is set in a different African country, and each is told from the point of view of a child subjected to poverty, dislocation or worse. One story is about a Kenyan street family in which the breadwinner is a 12-year-old prostitute and the parents give their children glue to sniff because it’s cheaper than food and dulls their hunger. In another story a young Rwandan

girl watches her father, a Hutu, kill her mother because she’s a Tutsi. The collection’s title comes from this story. “Say you’re one of them” is the mother’s final advice to her daughter. Over lunch recently at Merkato 55, an African restaurant in New York, Father Akpan, 37, was already thinking ahead to his imminent return to Africa and to his main job these days, teaching at a seminary in Zimbabwe. Father Akpan is from the southern Nigerian village of Ikot Akpan Eda. His mother insisted that he and his three brothers speak English as well as their native language, Annang. He entered the Jesuit order at 19, and

velous scroll is the earliest known dated example of a printed book, six centuries older than the Gutenberg Bible. After Stein came the French linguist and Sinologist Paul Pelliot. Then a Japanese expedition arrived to claim a share, followed by a Russian one. In the 1920s the swashbuckling American art historian Langdon Warner sliced 26 murals from Mogaoku cave walls and gave them to Harvard University, along with a pilfered sculpture. “There was nothing to do but gasp,” Warner wrote of his first glimpse of decorated caves. This is still a natural reaction. It was my reaction. Accompanied by a Dunhuang Academy researcher and guide, Liu Qin, I visited two dozen caves in a single day. First there is darkness, intensified because of the blazing desert sun. When your eyes adjust to the dusky light filtering in, you see that you’re being observed by other eyes, those of a larger-than-life fifth century Northern Wei Buddha.

Further inside, the only illumination is Mr. Liu’s flashlight. Visions come and go. Calligraphic figures, blue against white, tumble across the wall like swallows in a wind. Then they are gone, replaced by court musicians with banjos and flutes. Soon these are gone. Then a drama in several scenes about bandits being blinded for their crimes and rejoicing as the Buddha restores their sight. Gone. The total effect is riotous, hallucinatory, of another realm. Although no one is saying so, it is possible that without major change, all the caves will eventually have to be closed to the public. Plans for drastic action are in place. The academy will build by 2011 a new visitor center several kilometers from the caves. All Mogaoku-bound travelers will be required to go to the center first, where they will be given digital tours of interiors. They will then be shuttled to the site itself, where they will see the insides of one or two caves before returning to where they started. For Westerners addicted to the concept of authenticity, the idea of a primarily digital experience of Mogaoku is hard, if not impossible to accept. The art experience depends on being there. Yet conservators know that often the only way to protect the “real thing” is by restricting access to it, by forcing an audience to accept a condition of not being there, by substituting virtual auras for actual ones. And so the contradictions pile up, and change inexorably goes on.

Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian priest, wrote “Say You’re One of Them,” five stories of children with desperate lives. began writing about 10 years later, while he was still a seminarian. His original goal was to publish nonfiction and possibly get a column in The Guardian, a Nigerian newspaper. When his submissions were turned down, he began writing for the paper’s Saturday fiction page. By the time he arrived at Michigan, Father Akpan had several hundred pages’ worth of fiction stored in his laptop, thanks in part to his habit of working on several stories at once and revising them over and over. Even after this first book, he has hundreds more pages that he’s working on. From the beginning Father Akpan had an ear for African speech in all its variety

— pidgin and patois and local dialects. His story “Luxurious Hearses” has people from all over Nigeria debating on a bus, and the result is an immensely pleasing cacophony in which people are characterized not so much by what they say as how they say it. “Listen,’’ one character says, “dis foreign TV channels dey spoil de image of our country. ... We no bad like dis. O.K., why dem no dey show corpses of deir people during crisis for TV? Abi, people no dey kill for America or Europe?” And another character shouts back, “You dey speak grammar!’’ “I try to listen,’’ Father Akpan said, shrugging, “and I try to really get into my characters. But a big part of this is mysterious to me when I get into the writing process. There are people who know their culture through and through and still can’t write about it.’’