SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2008

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Tides of Change

In Obama’s First Act, He Wrote His Own Story By JANNY SCOTT

Barack Obama understands as well as any politician the power of a well-told tale. He has risen in politics less on his track record than on his telling of his life story — a tale he has packaged into two hugely successful books that have helped make him a mega-best-selling, millionaire, likely Democratic presidential nominee at age 46. According to his publisher, there are more than three million copies of his books in print. The story of Mr. Obama’s life as an author tells as much about him as some of the stories he has recounted in his books. It possesses at times the same charmed quality sometimes ascribed to his political ascent, an impression of ease, if not exactly effortlessness, that obscures a more complex amalgam of drive, ambition, timing and the ability to recognize an opportunity and to do what it takes to seize it. When his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention sent his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” soaring out of obscurity and straight onto the best-seller list, he untethered himself

from his longtime literary agent in favor of Robert B. Barnett, the Washington lawyer who had gotten Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton an $8 million book advance and then landed Mr. Obama a $1.9 million, three-book deal. He finished his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” 18 months into his first term in the Senate, took time out for a 12-city book tour, appeared on television programs like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Charlie Rose,” then announced four months later that he was running for president. The books have defined Mr. Obama’s public image in a way that few books by politicians have done. Out of his story, he has drawn the central promise of his campaign: if a biracial son of a Kenyan and a Kansan could reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable in himself, a divided country could do the same. In a telephone interview, Mr. Obama said he would not be surprised if some people had gotten involved in his campaign “because they feel they know me through my books.” But he said he was not even

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The Gender Issue Lives On By JODI KANTOR

JASON REED/REUTERS

In two books, Senator Barack Obama used his life story to shape a public persona and political agenda.

With each passing day, it seems a little less likely that the next president of the United States will wear a skirt — or a cheerful, no-nonsense pantsuit. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now in what most agree are the waning days of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. To use her own phrase, she has been running “to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling” in American life, and now the presidency, or even a nomination that once seemed to be hers to claim, seems out of reach. Mrs. Clinton’s all-but-certain defeat, likely to be finalized in the next week or so, brings with it a reckoning about what her run represents for women: a historic if incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few pursue high office in the first place. The answers have immediate political implications. If many of Mrs. Clinton’s legions of female supporters believe she was undone even in part by gender discrimination, how eagerly will they embrace Senator Barack Obama, the man who beat her? “Women felt this was their time, and this has been stolen from them,” said Marilu Sochor, 48, a real estate agent in Columbus, Ohio, and a Clinton supporter. “Sexism has played a really big role in the race.’’ Not everyone agrees. “When people

TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at a campaign event in Ohio in February. look at the arc of the campaign, it will be seen that being a woman, in the end, was not a detriment and if anything it was a help to her,” the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is faltering, she added, because of “strategic, tactical things that have nothing to do with her being a woman.” As a former first lady whose political ca-

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As Library Opens Doors, Flirting and Phoning Follow By SARAH LYALL

LONDON — In its old, mustily glorious quarters in the British Museum, the British Library’s main reading room was as exclusive as it was glamorous, a club rich with tradition whose distinguished alumni included Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw. But in 1998 the library moved to a modern red-brick building, and four years ago it liberalized its admission policy. It opened its new reading rooms not only to writers and academics, but also to “anyone who has a relevant research need,” a spokeswoman said. Which is all fine. But “anyone” includes college undergraduates, and the problem with them, at least in the eyes of the older researchers, is that they tend to behave like the teenagers that many of them are. They hog the seats. They gather into clumps of chattering hormonal aimlessness. They flirt.

“The worst is that they actually answer their phones,’’ Tristram Hunt, a historian, professor and television personality, said. “The phone vibrates and they go, ‘Hold on a minute, Nigel,’ and then they run out of the reading room and take the call.’’ “The library has changed and evolved, and people use it in different ways,’’ said a library spokeswoman, who asked that, in accordance with library policy, her name not be used. “They have a different way of doing their research. They are using their computers and checking things on the Web, not just taking notes on notepads.’’ With 127,000 readers’ passes in circulation and a total of 1,480 dedicated studying seats, the library is doing its best to manage the situation, including dispatching monitors to remind members of things “like not talking in reading rooms and not leaving your books on the desk and going off for lunch,” the spokeswoman said. The library has also installed plasma screens announcing which reading rooms

are full, in the manner of municipal parking lots. But that has failed to placate the older members. “There’s loads of people dressing like they’re in an episode of ‘Skins’ and highfiving each other,’’ said Matt Taunton, a 28-year-old postdoctoral research assistant, referring to a television series about the wild lives of teenagers in Bristol. He said he had recently asked a group of students to be quiet. “They looked at me like I wasn’t cool,’’ he said. “I thought, ‘This is a library — we’re not supposed to be cool.’ ’’ Flora Fraser, 49, a biographer who was using the library recently, said that at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, readers reserve seats in advance on the Internet. That way, no one turns up at the library only to find that all the spots are taken, a common problem at the British Library. “Actually, I really recommend it,’’ she said. “Maybe the answer is to get on the Eurostar and go to Paris.’’

Research Lags, Prices Soar

A Fragrance Foothold in Asia

Crop by crop and country by country, agricultural WORLD TRENDS 5 science is falling behind.

As perfume sales decline, the industry hopes for growth in China. MONEY & BUSINESS 6

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SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2008 O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA RY

EDITORIALS OF THE TIMES

Politics Is Shifting On Climate Change John McCain has been engaged in the fight against global warming for years, even at the expense of breaking with Republican orthodoxy and with President Bush on the issue. But it was still an important moment on May 13 when Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, decided to raise the profile of climate change in the 2008 campaign. We have clearly entered the post-Bush era of policy and politics on climate change. However this election turns out, the United States will have a president who supports mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases. It is possible to begin to believe in the prospect of serious Congressional action. Politically, of course, Mr. McCain could also be helping himself. Endorsing an aggressive and potentially expensive effort to reduce carbon emissions will not win him friends on the right wing. But it allows him to make the case (at little cost given his well-known record on the issue) that he is not a Bush clone, even as he embraces the president’s views on taxes, the federal judiciary and the war in Iraq. Like the two Democratic candidates, Mr. McCain proposes a market-based “cap and trade” system in which power plants and other polluters could meet steadily stricter limits on gases like carbon dioxide — either by reducing emissions on their own or by buying credits from more efficient producers. His plan seeks to stabilize emissions in several years and then cut them by 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Some Democrats and environ-

mentalists pounced quickly on the fact that Mr. McCain’s goals are less ambitious than the 70 percent target contained in a bill sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Warner that is expected to reach the Senate floor next month, or the 80 percent target proposed by Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. His plan differs in other respects, too. He decided at the last minute to delete from his speech a proposed tariff on countries like India and China that defy international agreements on emissions, partly because the tariff could be misconstrued as hostile to free trade, which Mr. McCain supports. The Senate bill contains such a provision. Meanwhile, Mr. McCain is much more enthusiastic, and in our view rightly so, about nuclear energy as a cleaner power source than the Senate sponsors or the two Democratic presidential candidates are. At this stage, it would be a mistake to make too much of these differences, including the overall targets. With emissions continuing to rise, and the demand for energy expected to grow, any plan that calls for a big downward wrench in emissions will demand huge investments in cleaner ways of producing energy and far more fuel-efficient vehicles. Above all, it will require determined and courageous leadership from a president capable of conveying hard truths and asking a lot of the country. Assuming that Mr. McCain and the two Democratic candidates mean what they say, on this issue at least, we seem assured of such a president.

Blackwater’s Impunity After guards from Blackwater Worldwide protecting a State Department convoy killed at least 17 Iraqis in a hail of bullets last September, we hoped the Bush administration would rethink the folly of relying on mercenaries, who have no accountability to Iraqi or American law. The ever-stubborn administration decided it couldn’t stay at war without its gunslingers. More than eight months after the event, not a single charge has been brought against the guards. Last month, the State Department — which is supposed to be sensitive to local politics and perception — renewed Blackwater’s contract in Iraq for another year. Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, told The New York Times, “If the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq.” That the United States is so dependent on 30,000 or so private guards to plug the holes in the understaffed military force underscores, once again, how badly this administration has mismanaged the occupation of Iraq — and why the United States must be-

gin an orderly withdrawal as soon as possible. The F.B.I. has still not concluded its investigation into the shooting. Some Blackwater guards might be indicted, butthecompanyisnotexpectedtoface criminal charges. And while the Bush administration might have moved on, Iraqis — who see this as one more instance of American callousness and hypocrisy — have not. Last October, the House passed a bill that would ensure that contractors working for the American government in conflict zones were liable for prosecution under American criminal law. It would also deploy special F.B.I. units to combat zones to investigate contractor crimes regularly. The bill, opposed by the White House, is stalled in the Senate. This month a Senate panel unanimously passed a bill that would bar private contractors from performing what are essentially government tasks in combat zones, which could bar the use of Blackwater guards. These bills should become law. American credibility cannot afford anything less.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

The Terrified Monks X IAHE , China This is historical Tibet, a land of jutting mountains and serene monks in red robes spinning golden prayer wheels in ancient monasteries. In the last two months, this greater Tibet has also become a land of arsonist monks, armed troops and bloodied protesters. It’s not formally under martial law, but that’s what it amounts to, and foreigners have been mostly kept away. I sneaked through these Tibetan areas in Gansu and Qinghai Provinces, eluding the troops by taking a local car with curtains pulled over the windows, and it became clear that the anti-Chinese protests spread across a larger area in traditional Tibet than is sometimes realized. This was, in effect, a popular uprising against Chinese rule throughout Tibetan areas, and the region is still seething. Chinese citizens have been understandably outraged by anti-Chinese rioting by Tibetans in Lhasa in March. Tibetans burned 1,000 Chinese-owned shops (a few with people inside them) and savagely attacked or stoned ordinary Chinese citizens, even a child of about 10. The Dalai Lama and pro-Tibetan Westerners were far too leisurely about condemning Tibetan brutality, and America came across as hypocritical for apparent indifference when the victims in Tibet were Chinese. Yet few will ever hear about the harsh crackdown unfolding here in the ancient Tibetan region of Amdo. Although there was some rioting here in Xiahe, and

Dans l’article “Food Fight Has India Criticizing American Diets,” page 6 : MISCHIEVOUSLY: méchamment COMMODITY: denrée, produit TO FUNNEL: canaliser TO UNDERCUT: saper, miner Dans l’article “Saving Imperiled Species by Eating Them,” page 7:

of injuries. Some monks are hiding in the mountains, and they are all terrified. “I was beaten for two hours with sticks, and kicked all over,” said a monk who was released after one night. Last month, the Chinese authorities ushered a group of journalists here on a tightly scripted tour to show that Labrang was calm — and then 15 monks rushed up to the group. One was crying, and all said that their human rights were being systematically violated. After the reporters left, those who joined that peaceful protest were imprisoned, beaten and in some cases subjected to electric shock torture, the monks

Obama Admires Bush (the Elder) Hezbollah is one of the world’s most radical terrorist organizations. Recently it has staged an armed assault on the democratic government of Lebanon. Barack Obama issued a statement in response. He called on “all those who have influence with Hezbollah” to “press them to stand down.” Then he declared, “It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.” That sentence has the whiff of what President Bush described May 15 as appeasement. Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform? Does he really believe that Hezbollah is a normal social welfare agency seeking more government services for its followers? Does Obama believe that even the most intractable enemies can be pacified with diplomacy? What “Lebanese consensus” can Hezbollah possibly be a part of? I spoke with Obama May 13 to ask him what he meant by all this. Right away he reaffirmed that Hezbollah is “not a legitimate political party.” Instead, “It’s a destabilizing organization by any common-sense standard. This wouldn’t happen without the sup-

: AIDE A LA LECTURE 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.

Dans l’article “When Workers Are Sickened By the Office,” page 6: ITCHY: qui démange TO SWELL: enfler OCCUPATIONAL: lié au travail TRIGGER : déclencheur RASH : éruption de boutons RAGWEED : ambroisie (botanique)

A clandestine journey through Tibet reveals a populace angry at China.

here say. That is impossible to confirm, and Tibetan versions of events are sometimes exaggerated. Communist Party rule has been good for Tibetans in a material sense. Herdsmen now use motorcycles to round up yaks, electricity and satellite television are common, and education is spreading. Tibetans are manifestly better off than in my previous visits, yet unhappiness is growing along with incomes. One herdsman in the hills served me yak butter tea in front of a television and DVD player in his new home. His wife never went to school, but his daughter is attending high school. “Living standards have improved,” the herdsman conceded, yet he had joined the demonstrations against Chinese rule. His priority, he said, wasn’t wealth but freedom to worship the Dalai Lama. When President Bush visits China for the Olympics — and he’s right to go, rather than boycott the Games, inflame Chinese nationalism and bolster hardliners — he should strongly encourage serious negotiations between Beijing and the Dalai Lama. Mr. Bush should also, in interviews with Chinese news media, note that allowing protests is not a sign of weakness but of national selfconfidence. China is emerging as a great power, and it is famously concerned with saving face. But it loses far more face from its own repression of Tibetans than from anything the Dalai Lama has ever done.

DAVID BROOKS

Lexique

LEXIQUE

some attacks on the police and burning of police vehicles elsewhere, most of the demonstrators were peaceful. But even where protests were entirely peaceful, the repression has been merciless. At Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, almost 3,000 meters high in the mountains, more than 220 Buddhist monks were arrested and beaten, local Tibetans said. The great majority have been released, but some are still hospitalized because

TO KEEL OVER: s’effondrer, tomber dans les

pommes STARTLED: très surprise, saisi EEL: anguille HOMINY CORN: maïs concassé et bouilli BRINK: bord ACORN: gland

Dans l’article “Hard Times? Lipstick Gives a Little Lift,” page 8: TO GAUGE: jauger, évaluer TO SPLURGE: dépenser sans compter TO MATCH: être assorti QUALM: scrupule POISED: plein d’assurance, d’aisance.

EXPRESSIONS Dans l’article “Saving Imperiled Species by Eating Them,” page 7:

port of Iran and Syria.” I asked him what he meant with all this emphasis on electoral and patronage reform. He said the United States should help the Lebanese government deliver better services to the Shiites “to peel support away from Hezbollah” and encourage the local populace to “view them as an oppressive force.” The United States should “find a mechanism whereby the disaffected have an effective outlet for

Viewing foreign policy in the realist manner of the first George Bush. their grievances, which assures them they are getting social services.” America needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.” He knows these movements aren’t going away anytime soon (“Those missiles aren’t going to dissolve”), but “if they decide to shift, we’re going to recognize

NOOKS AND CRANNIES: ou bien nooks and corners: les coins et les recoins; in every nook and cranny: partout, dans tous les coins.

Dans l’article “Hard Times? Lipstick Gives a Little Lift,” page 8: TO BE DOWN IN THE MOUTH: être déprimé; de même que “to feel down”; ne pas confondre avec “down to the ground”qui signifie sur le bout des doigts, à fond.

RÉFÉRENCES Dans l’article “Rauschenberg and Dance, Partners for Life”, page 8: RAUSCHENBERG: Robert Rauschenberg (192512 mai 2008) est un artiste plasticien américain majeur. On le classe dans les expressionnistes abstraits, néo-dadas, et précurseurs du Pop Art. Il travaille la peinture, la sculpture, les collages, mais aussi la sérigraphie, la photographie, la gravure, la chorégraphie et les happenings. Ses œuvres les plus fameuses sont les “Combine Paintings” où les objets les plus insolites (chèvre empaillée, couvre-lit de l’artiste, mais aussi objets trouvés dans les poubelles, dans les rues de New

that. That’s an evolution that should be recognized.” Obama understood the broader reason I was asking about Lebanon. Everybody knows that Obama is smart (and he was well informed). The question is whether he’s seasoned and tough enough to deal with implacable enemies. “The debate we’re going to be having with John McCain is how do we understand the blend of military action to diplomatic action that we are going to undertake,” he said. “I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism. Those are the terms of debate that have led to blunder after blunder.” Obama said he found that the military brass thinks the way he does: “The generals are light-years ahead of the civilians. They are trying to get the job done rather than look tough.” In the early 1990s, the Democrats and the first Bush administration had a series of arguments — about humanitarian interventions, whether to get involved in the former Yugoslavia, and so on. In his heart, Obama talks like the Democrats of that era, viewing foreign policy from the ground up. But in his head, he aligns himself with the realist dealmaking of the first Bush. Apparently, he’s part Harry Hopkins and part James Baker.

York) sont collés sur un fond coloré. Le Centre Pompidou lui a consacré une exposition en 1981, le musée Guggenheim en 1997, et le Metropolitan Museum en 2005. Dans l’article “Hard Times? Lipstick Gives a Little Lift,” page 8: BLOOMINGDALE’S: grand magasin haut de gamme, situés sur Lexington Avenue à Manhattan. En 1861, les deux frères Bloomingdale ouvrent un magasin de crinolines, fort à la mode. Très vite, ils innovent en se diversifiant, et en 1886 déménagent pour leur adresse actuelle. A nouveau, ils innovent, en créant de très grandes vitrines où peu de marchandise est montrée, mais dans un cadre très théâtralisé. En 1913, l’arrêt de métro 58th Street se fait dans le sous-sol de Bloomingdale’s, ce qui amène un nouvel afflux de clientèle. En 1931, l’ensemble du pâté de maison étant investi par Bloomingdale’s, il est entièrement reconstruit en style Art-déco. La visite de la reine Elizabeth II d’Angleterre, en 1976 ajoute au prestige du grand magasin, qui aujourd’hui existe dans 12 Etats, et 40 boutiques.

SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2008

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WORLD TRENDS

The Costs of Food Rise, As Crop Research Lags

Dozens of Kenya’s Olympic contenders had their regimens interrupted during civil strife earlier this year. A training group ran outside the city of Eldoret in late April.

By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN

SARAH ELLIOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Kenyan Runners Hope to Leave Violence Behind By JERÉ LONGMAN

ELDORET, Kenya — When Luke Kibet won the world marathon championship last August, he became a favorite to achieve what no Kenyan has despite this country’s distance-running brilliance — an Olympic gold medal in the 26.2mile race. With the Summer Games in Beijing approaching in August, though, Mr. Kibet’s Olympic hopes have grown remote. He and many of Kenya’s majestic runners — including dozens of Olympic contenders — had their lives disrupted by the ethnic violence that followed a disputed presidential election last December. About 1,200 people were killed, and several hundred thousand fled their homes. Among those killed were Lucas Sang, a quarter-miler who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics, and Wesley Ngetich, an elite marathon runner. On December 31, during rioting here in the Rift Valley, Mr. Kibet was hit in the head with a stone and knocked unconscious. He sustained a concussion and stopped training for two weeks. In February, he pulled out a pistol to extricate himself from another potential attack. “I saw many things,” Mr. Kibet said. “I was afraid to train. I was afraid for my life.” Then he pulled a hamstring, the direct result, he says, of interrupted training. In April, Mr. Kibet finished a disappointing 11th at the London Marathon. He has been named an alternate to the Kenyan

Olympic marathon team, but his chance of competing in Beijing will now depend on whether another runner drops out. “When you see people die, it stays in your mind,” Mr. Kibet, 25, said at his home. The workout regimens of many of Kenya’s elite runners were disrupted in January and February. Some runners received death threats. Meanwhile, the reputation of the country’s runners as peaceful ambassadors was also dealt a blow. An international monitoring

‘I saw many things,’ a marathoner says. ‘I was afraid to train.’ agency reported in February that some Ken-yan runners, many with military backgrounds, might have participated in the violence, and could have lent financial aid and transportation assistance to tribal militias. The chaos has since abated. In midApril, the government formed a national unity cabinet. Yet it is too soon to know whether the ethnic strife and training disruptions will affect Kenya’s medal chances at the Beijing Olympics. Most of Kenya’s elite runners belong to

the Kalenjin tribe and live in and around this regional center in the Rift Valley, with its moderate climate and altitude of nearly 2,100 meters. This was also the site of some of the most incendiary postelection violence. Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, which has long held political and economic dominance, won re-election last December amid charges of ballot-rigging. The Kalenjins backed the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo tribe, who later became prime minister in a power-sharing agreement. When Mr. Odinga lost, this normally tranquil country exploded. Mr. Kibet said he slept outside for a week in January to protect his house while 15 women and children crowded inside, including his wife and young son and daughter. An inspector in the national prison system, Mr. Kibet said he and fellow runners who helped him guard his house were armed with two machine guns. Months later, Mr. Kibet, a Kalenjin, said he harbored no ill will toward Kikuyus. He echoed a sentiment held by many runners and officials that success in Beijing, whether he is there or not, may prove instructive to a country trying to heal itself. “If people can see Kalenjin and Kikuyus running together, talking together, they might say they can do like that, too,” Mr. Kibet said.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Whose Rain Forest Is This, Anyway? By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil has long gazed nervously at maps of the vast, mostly uninhabited territory of the Amazon rain forest. In the 1960s and ’70s, generals here saw the colonization of the Brazilian Amazon, which is half the size of Europe, as a national security priority. Ocupar para não entregar — “occupy it to avoid surrendering it’’ — was the slogan. Highways were built, and Brazilians were offered incentives to conquer the land in the Amazon and transform it in the name of development. There was reason for the nervousness. Even then, such a unique and vast repository of riches stirred imaginations worldwide. Now, with the world focusing on the promises of biodiversity and the perils of global warming, a chorus of international leaders have ever more openly declared the Amazon part of a patrimony far larger than that of the nations that share its territory. “Contrary to what Brazilians think, the Amazon is not their property, it belongs to all of us,” Al Gore, then a senator, said in 1989. Such comments have reignited old attitudes of territorial protectionism and watchfulness for undercover foreign invaders. The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is pushing a law that would restrict access to the rain forest, requiring foreigners and Brazilians alike to obtain a permit to enter it. Officials say it would separate bad nongovernmental organizations from good ones, and deter so-called “biopirates’’ — those who want to patent unique substances discovered in the forest. “The Amazon is ours,’’ Justice Secretary Romeu Tuma Jr. said in an inter-

and develop resources in the Arctic, as melting ice reveals potentially vast oil and mineral deposits. There is also a struggle over who is entitled to grant access to international scientists and environmentalists seeking to protect such areas, and to companies seeking to exploit them. It is a struggle likely only to become more difficult in coming years, in the face of two conflicting trends: rising demand for energy resources and increasing concern about climate change and pollution. Here in Brazil, which contains 60 percent of the Amazon’s terANTONIO SCORZA/AGENCE FRANCE PRESS — GETTY IMAGES ritory, this new debate is cast in terms recognizable from the past Brazil is trying to stem deforestation, in — notably the long-held suspicion part by shutting down illegal sawmills. by conservatives and the military that the real goal of foreigners is to take control of Brazil’s tropical wilderview. “We want to know who is going ness and its riches. there and what they are going to do. It’s There have been only scattered docua question of national sovereignty.’’ mented cases of what the Brazilians Many Amazon experts say the prothink of as biopiracy. The pharmaceutiposed restrictions conflict with Mr. cal company Bristol-Myers Squibb, for da Silva’s own efforts to give Brazil a example, found that the venom of the greater voice in global climate change jararaca snake could help control high talks — an implicit acknowledgment blood pressure and used it to create the that the Amazon is critical to the world drug Captopril. But by and large, said at large. His critics have seized on a Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of The report in January of a spike in deforesHeinz Center, a supporter of environtation, as proof the government has not mental research, biopiracy is not a real been safeguarding the region well. threat. Recently, Marina Silva, an advocate Advocates worry that the Amazon reof rain forest preservation, resigned as strictions will discourage science, hurt Mr. da Silva’s environmental minister ecotourism and shield Brazil from scruafter losing a series of political battles tiny. “The government is not interested to him over development programs. in more people going to the Amazon to Seen in a global context, the restricaddress the incompetence it has shown tions reflect a larger debate about in slowing deforestation,’’ said Marcelo sovereign rights versus the world’s Furtado, campaign director for Greenpatrimony. International companies, peace Brazil. for example, vie with nations to claim

ONLINE: THE FOOD CHAIN

LOS BAÑOS, Philippines — The To view a slide show and read other brown plant hopper, an insect no big- articles in this series on the world’s ger than a gnat, is multiplying by the production of food, go to: billions and chewing through rice pad- nytimes.com/foodchain dies in East Asia, threatening the diets of many poor people. Researchers at the International ods in their fields. Adjusting for inflation and exchange Rice Research Institute here say that they know how to create rice varieties rates, the wealthy countries, as a resistant to the insects but that budget group, cut such donations roughly in cuts have prevented them from doing half from 1980 to 2006, to $2.8 billion a year from $6 billion. The United States so. This is a stark example of the many cut its support for agriculture in poor problems that are emerging in the countries to $624 million from $2.3 bilworld’s agricultural system. Experts lion in that period. “Agriculture has been so productive say that during the food surpluses of recent decades, governments and de- and done so well, people have kind of velopment agencies lost focus on the lost sight of how fragile it really is,” said importance of helping poor countries Jan E. Leach, a plant pathologist at Colorado State University who works with improve their agriculture. The budgets of institutions that de- rice. “It’s as if we have lost track of the livered the world from famine in the fact that food is linked to agriculture, 1970s, including the rice institute, have which is linked to human survival.” The Green Revolution had led to crestagnated or fallen, even as the problems they were trying to solve became ation of a global network of research centers focusing on food production, harder. “People felt that the world food crisis with 14 institutes — including the Inwas solved, that food security was no ternational Rice Research Institute — longer an issue, and it really fell off the scattered across Asia, Africa and Latin agenda,” said Robert S. Zeigler, the di- America, in addition to a research office in Washington. The centers, known colrector general of the rice institute. At the rice institute, scientists have lectively as the Consultative Group on identified 14 genetic traits that could help rice plants survive the plant hopper, which sucks Rice Supplies Are Dwindling the juices out of young plants Annual demand for cereals like rice worldwide while infecting them with vihas begun to outstrip production. ruses. But the scientists have had no money to breed these RICE STOCKPILE traits into the world’s most widely used rice varieties. 150 million metric tons Similar troubles plague other centers in Asia, Africa and Latin America that work on crop 120 productivity in poor countries. World rice Agricultural experts have stocks complained about the flagging 90 efforts for years and warned of the risks. “Nobody was listening,” 60 said Thomas Lumpkin, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improve30 ment Center in Mexico. Now, a reckoning for this neglect is at hand. Growth of the global food supply has slowed ’60 ’70 ’80 ’90 ’00 ’07 even as the population has Sources: International Rice Research Institute; Food and continued to increase, and as Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, via the World Bank economic growth is giving milTHE NEW YORK TIMES lions of poor people the money International Agricultural Research, to buy more food. With demand beginning to outstrip carry much of the burden of improving supply, prices have soared, and food ri- crop yields in developing countries. As the world lost its focus on crops, ots have erupted that have undermined the budgets of some of the centers were the stability of foreign governments. But crop by crop and country by cut. At others, the budgets stayed level country, agricultural research and de- or even rose, but donors increasingly directed the money toward worthwhile velopment are lagging. The center in Mexico has created but ancillary projects like environmendrought-tolerant corn for Africa and tal research. Spending fell on the labohigher-yielding, disease-resistant rious plant-breeding programs needed wheat for South Asia. But it does not to improve crop productivity. As these trends played out, the stage have the money to get the varieties into was being set for a food emergency. the hands of poor farmers. The world began to use more grain In Africa, where yields have remained stagnant since the 1960s, ef- than it was producing, cutting into reforts to bolster them have been ham- serves, and prices started rising. Early this year, as stocks fell to perilous levpered by cuts. The biggest cutbacks have come in els, international grain prices doubled donations to agriculture in poor coun- or even tripled, threatening as many as tries from the governments of wealthy 100 million people with malnutrition. “We must stay ahead of rapidly countries and in loans from development institutions that the wealthy gov- evolving pests — and increasingly, a ernments control, like the World Bank. changing climate — to assure global Such projects include not only research food security,’’ said Mr. Zeigler. “Cuton pests and crops but also programs ting back on agricultural research toto help farmers adopt improved meth- day is pure folly.”

Pests like the plant hopper can be fought, but budget cuts have hampered the effort.

LUIS LIWANAG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

6

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2008 MONEY & BUSINESS

Perfumers Are Eyeing the Nascent Chinese Market By CHANDLER BURR

One of China’s hottest sellers is a nonessential Western luxury product that the Chinese have historically never bought and that has virtually no Chinese cultural roots: perfume. With perfume sales in much of the rest of the world slowing or declining, the industry, primarily based in Paris and New York, hopes for significant growth in China. The market there remains small, though sales are rising exponentially. Nobody knows the exact growth rate, but Patrick de Lambilly, the vice president for Asia for Coty, says, “You can see 20, 30, and 40 percent a year.’’ Alexandre de Chaudenay, Asia-Pacific managing director of the perfume licensee Beauté Prestige International, said, “I’d say 20 to 40 percent seems correct, but the figures are extremely difficult, and people tell you anything.’’ Still, even if the Chinese market is potentially hugely lucrative, doing business there is far from easy. The regulatory system is uncertain. The complexity of its bureaucracy is daunting. The department stores are of varying quality, and because Chinese tastes are changing rapidly, a store that attracts crowds one day can be deserted the next. To add to the uncertainty, many in the business

say the concept of perfume is so new that a lot of Chinese consumers are, in fact, not buying a perfume but rather the brand to which a bottle of perfume happens to be attached. “China is about brand, brand, brand,’’ Mr. de Chaudenay said. And the importance of brand raises the question of the market’s future stability. Although many in the industry talk about the strength of the luxury brands in China, “Are those brands’ perfumes selling well?’’ Mr. de Chaudenay asked. “I think so. Are the consumers coming back? We don’t know.’’ For that reason, Mr. de Lambilly says his perfume company and others are tempering their enthusiasm for the Chinese market with realism. “We’re learning as we go,’’ he said. “Particularly in fragrances. All of us here are doing the same thing: getting data from the marketing sources, comparing it to other sources, trying to figure it out.’’ Hans Wohmann, head of Procter & Gamble’s Asian operations for scent, said sales in China of what are known as “prestige fragrances’’ — perfumes made by designers and luxury houses like Chanel, Estée Lauder and Dior — were around $120 million versus the $9 billion European market or the $4 billion American market. Even the Japanese market, the largest in Asia, was $500 million in

FRAGRANCE MARKET, 2007

Perfume sales in China are growing rapidly, even as sales in other markets like Japan are declining. GLOBAL SALES

EUROPE

$16.4 +6.3%

$30 billion

CHANGE FROM 2006

UNITED STATES

Source: Kline & Company

$5.8 –0.2%

JAPAN

+6.1%

$0.8 –3.2%

CHINA

$0.6 +22.4% THE NEW YORK TIMES

2006. As Mr. Wohmann put it, “So 20 percent of the world’s population has only 1 percent of the global fine fragrance market.’’ Perfume is a relatively recent phenomenon in China. Mr. de Lambilly said the Chinese started using scented shower products only in the early 20th century. But they were light and simple, he said. “They were for freshening the body and also to avoid mosquitoes.’’ Western-type perfumes have been produced in China only since the mid-1980s, said Bill Jin, manager at the PearlChem Corporation in Parsippany, New Jersey, an importer and distributor of perfume raw materials. Ralf Ritter, a consultant to the scent maker Takasago, said he would be “surprised if even 50 percent of the perfume bought in China was actually used.’’ And that, he said, is largely because in China fragrances serve multiple purposes. “They’re fragrances, but they also repel mosquitoes, they have moisturizing properties, and they are used in the summer to freshen up,’’ he said. “Chinese consumers care that the product does more than just fragrance the body.’’ Inefficiencies, bureaucratic complexities and the major capital investments needed for setting up a subsidiary have made partnerships with Chinese distributors the norm. “For regulation concerns, China is still one of the most difficult countries to register your product,’’ says Sung Kim, regional director for the Asia Pacific Region for Kenzo Parfums. The question of which perfumes to offer the Chinese consumer is perhaps the trickiest one. Kenzo, with two huge successes in the Chinese market, — FlowerbyKenzo and KenzoAmour — plans to develop perfumes specifically for Chinese tastes. “The Chinese cannot accept strong fragrances,’’ Mr. Kim of Kenzo said. “They prefer the scent to be

By HEATHER TIMMONS

For Patty Mulcahy, it began with itchy eyes. They started to water two years ago when renovation began on the Manhattan office building where she was working as an assistant at a television network. By the fifth day, after new carpeting had been glued in place, the redness and swelling became unbearable. She ended up in the emergency room. Over the next three months, she developed a bad cough. When she ESSAY collapsed at her desk in October 2006, barely able to breathe, she learned she had what doctors call “occupational asthma.” In other words, she was allergic to work. This time of year there is a lot of sneezing and coughing in the workplace — spring is allergy season. But for some, the cause of the misery is not what’s outside, but what’s inside the building. While it sounds like a joke, or an excuse for avoiding the office, workplace allergy, specifically occupational asthma, accounts for about 10 percent of asthma cases in the United States, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Occupational asthma alone is estimated to be responsible for 24.5 million missed workdays in the United States annually, said Dr. Karin Pacheco, an occupational medicine specialist at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, which DANIEL HOROWITZ specializes in respiratory illness. Work-induced allergy is fairly simple to diagnose: the symptoms worsen as the workday progresses, and lessen after you leave. And you feel fine on weekends and vacations. Much more complicated is what to do about it. The only cure is to avoid the allergy trigger. That may be possible when your trigger is peanuts, but how do you earn a living when your trigger is the place you work? An allergic reaction is an overreaction of the immune system, causing everything from rashes to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. Although even immunologists use the terms allergy and sensitivity interchangeably, there is a difference. Allergic sensitivity means an allergy to a specific allergen like ragweed; sensitivity refers to a nonspecific irritant. In other words, an allergy can kill while a sensitivity just makes you miserable. Severe allergies fall under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires employers to make reasonable changes in the workplace to enable an employee to do the job. And allergies developed at work often fall under workers’ compensation laws. But both routes can be complex and capricious, and redress is often dependent on the attitude of the employer.

LISA BELKIN

A president’s remarks about food are met with scorn in New Delhi.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

more floral for women and more fresh for men.’’ He said the Chinese also preferred the less concentrated eaux de toilette. Mr. de Chaudenay says companies are not only investing huge sums in getting into the Chinese market, they have also accepted huge losses. “Your store is good, and the next day a new store opens next door and you lose all your traffic,’’ Mr. de Chaudenay said. “You’ve invested in your counter, and now your counter is dead. You have to be aware where the market is moving, and it’s moving fast. Very few brands are making money in China, and I mean in all categories.’’ But, he added: “We are buying market share. We will get the profits tomorrow.”

When Workers Are Sickened By the Office

Food Fight Has India Criticizing American Diets NEW DELHI — Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet. That has been the response of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in India, who are angry at statements by top United States officials that India’s rising prosperity is to blame for food inflation. The debate has sometimes devolved into what sounded like petty arguments over who are the real gluttons devouring the world’s resources. For instance, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International, an independent research institute based here, said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.’’ He added, mischievously, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims. Mr. Mehta’s comments reflect genuine outrage — and ballooning criticism — toward the United States in particular, over recent remarks by President Bush. After a news conference in Missouri on May 2, he was quoted as saying of India’s burgeoning middle class, “When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.’’ The comments, widely reported in the developing world, followed a statement on the subject by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had upset many Indians. In response to the president’s remarks, a ranking official in the commerce ministry, Jairam Ramesh, told the Press Trust of India, “George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,’’ and the remarks proved again how “comprehensively wrong’’ he is. The developing nations, and in particular China and India, are being blamed for global problems, including the rising cost of commodities and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, because they are consuming more goods and fuel than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister’s office on down frequently point out that per capita, India uses far lower quantities of commodities and pollutes far less than nations in the West, particularly the United States. Explaining the food price increases, Indian politicians and academics cite consumption in the

ALAN CHIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Western-type perfumes have been sold in China only since the mid-1980s. An Anna Sui perfume counter in Beijing.

LISA POOLE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

After India’s increasing prosperity was linked by President Bush to a rise in food costs, Indians pointed out that American consumption levels are among the world’s highest. United States; the West’s diversion of arable land into the production of ethanol and other biofuels; agricultural subsidies and trade barriers from Washington and the European Union; and finally the decline in the exchange rate of the dollar. There may be some foundation to Indians’ accusations of hypocrisy by the West. The United States uses — or throws away — 3,770 calories a person each day, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization collected in 2001-3, compared with 2,440 calories per person in India. Americans are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of the most energyintensive common food source, beef, the Agriculture Department says. And the United States and Canada lead the world

in oil consumption per person, according to the Energy Information Administration, an Energy Department agency. When it comes to trade, Western farming subsidies undercut agricultural production in fertile areas of Africa, India’s commerce minister, Kamal Nath, said in a telephone interview, repeating the point that Americans waste more food than people in many other countries. Mr. Mehta of the research institute said that attitudes like those expressed by President Bush needed to be challenged. Rather than blaming India, Mr. Mehta said, the West should be adjusting to a changing world. “If the developing world is going to develop, demand is going to go up and there are going to be new political paradigms,’’ he said.

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2008

7

T H E W AY W E E AT

Are Wine’s Pleasures All in Your Head? In recent months American wine drinkers have taken their turn as pop culture’s objects of ridicule. In press accounts of two studies on wine psychology, consumers have been portrayed as dupes, subject to the manipulations of marketers, critics and charlatan producers who have cloaked wine in mystique and sham sophistication in hopes of better separating the public from its money. ESSAY One of the studies was devised by Robin Goldstein, a food writer, to try to isolate consumers from outside influence so they could simply judge wine by what’s in the glass. He had 500 volunteers sample and rate 540 unidentified wines priced from $1.50 to $150 a bottle. The results are described in a new book, “The Wine Trials.” A brief article in the April 7 issue of Newsweek magazine seized on the book’s populist triumphs: a $10 bottle of bubbly from Washington state outscored Dom Pérignon, which sells for $150 a bottle, while Two-Buck Chuck, the cheap Charles Shaw California cabernet sauvignon, topped a $55 bottle of Napa Valley cabernet. “Their results might rattle a few wine snobs, but the average oenophile can rejoice: 100 wines under $15 consistently outperformed their upscale cousins,” the article said. Two caveats are needed here. First, it turns out that the results of the tastings are more nuanced than the Newsweek article suggested. In fact, the book shows that what appeals to novice wine drinkers is significantly different from what appeals to wine experts, which the book defines as those who have had some sort of training or professional experience with wine. The experts preferred the Dom Pérignon. In a second experiment, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Business School demonstrated that the more expensive consumers think a wine is, the more pleasure they are apt to take in it. The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive. This is not a big surprise. Sommeliers all over

In one blind test, people invariably preferred the wine they were told was more expensive.

ERIC ASIMOV

LARS KLOVE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

know that the hardest wine to sell in a restaurant is the cheapest bottle on the list. The fact is, the correlation between price and quality is so powerful that it affects not just our perception of wine but of all consumer goods. “It’s not just about wine, it’s about everything!” said Professor Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions,” which examines how people make all sorts of real life decisions. Regardless of the situation, Professor Ariely found, suggestion has a powerful effect on perception and belief. “If you expect not to get something as good, lo and behold, it’s not as good,” Professor Ariely said. “We think of it as an objective reality. We don’t see how much is created by our mind.” Meanwhile, wine consumers face an impenetrable swamp of wine jargon: Wine Spectator recently evaluated one Argentine red as, “Dark and

How much wine costs and what’s on the label influences many, but not the experts. rich, with lots of fig bread, mocha, ganache, prune and loam notes. Stays fine-grained on the finish, with lingering sage and toast hints.” To hack through it all, consumers embrace scores, an easy shorthand that unfortunately requires that every wine be judged on the same seemingly objective scale, regardless of the subjective nature of taste. Anybody can understand that a wine rated 90 beats an 89, right? Yet the rating system has bred an attitude toward wine that ignores context, which is perhaps

more important a consideration to the enjoyment of wine than anything else. The little red wine that is so delicious in a Tuscan village never tastes the same back home in New Jersey. And ultimately, context may be the most underrated aspect of enjoying wine. Tyler Colman, a wine writer and blogger (drvino.com), has a book coming out this fall, “A Year of Wine,” that focuses on context. “The mood and the food and the context really matters,” he said. “It’s the neglected pairing.” Just as understanding how to dress for certain occasions is intuitive for many people, so, too, does it become instinctive over time for wine lovers to know which is the proper bottle to open. But that requires experience of many different wines. Eventually the novelty of great wines, or expensive wines, can wear off. If only we all could achieve that sense of freedom and zen-like serenity, where we’ve had our fill of all else and can simply choose the right wine because it’s the right wine.

Saving Imperiled Species by Eating Them By KIM SEVERSON

Some people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga. To them, the creamy Hutterite soup bean is too obscure and the Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled, sounds more like a circus act than the centerpiece of a barbecue. But not Gary Paul Nabhan. He has spent most of the past four years compiling a list of plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to save them, which often involves urging people to eat them. Mr. Nabhan’s list, 1,080 items and growing, forms the basis of his new book, an engaging journey through the nooks and crannies of American culinary history titled “Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most

SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE

Plants like the moon and stars watermelon are being rediscovered by groups that want to preserve traditional American foods. Endangered Foods.” The book tells the stories of 93 ingredients both obscure (Ny’pa, a type of salt grass) and beloved (the Black Sphinx date), along with recipes that range from the accessible (Centennial pecan pie) to the challenging (whole pit-roasted Plains pronghorn antelope). To make the list, an animal or plant — whether American eels, pre-Civil War peanuts or Seneca hominy flint corn — has to be more than simply edible. It must meet a set of criteria that define it as a part of American culture. The book is part of a larger effort to bring foods back from the brink by engaging nursery owners, farmers, breeders and chefs to grow and use them.

“If we save a vegetable but we don’t save the recipes and the farmers don’t benefit because no one eats it, then we haven’t done our work,” said Mr. Nabhan, an ethnobotanist and an expert on Native American foods who raises Navajo churro sheep and heritage crops in Arizona. He organized his list into 13 culinary regions that he calls nations, borrowing from Native American and other groups. The Pacific Coast from California to northern Mexico is acorn nation. Its counterpart on the mid-Atlantic coast is crab cake nation. Moose nation covers most of Canada. New Yorkers live in clambake nation. His work is based on trips around the country, where he listened to recollections about hard-tofind plants and animals, and catalogued hundreds of them, like the Datil chili pepper (originally from Cuba), the Bronx grape and the long-stemmed Harrison cider apple from New Jersey. “The daunting thing is that so much about American traditional foods comes out of people’s heads and isn’t in any book,” he said. Mr. Nabhan engaged seven culinary, environmental and conservation groups to help him identify items for the list. He acted like a broker for the groups, some of which had been trying to save traditional food for decades. Organizations including the Seed Savers Exchange and the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy contributed suggestions for the list. Then he recruited hundreds of chefs, farmers and curious eaters to grow and cook some of the lost breeds and varieties. Among the revivals are the moon and stars watermelon and the tepary bean. The Makah ozette potato, a nutty fingerling with such a rich, creamy texture that it needs only a whisper of oil, is another success story. It is named after the Makah Indians, who live at the northwest tip of Washington state and have been growing the potatoes for 200 years. Slow Food U.S.A., part of the international movement to preserve food traditions, passed out seed potatoes to farmers and gardeners, and chefs like Seth Caswell at the Stumbling Goat Bistro in Seattle put them on the menu. Mr. Caswell says they are delicious roasted with a little hazelnut oil for salads or cut into wedges to go with burgers made with wagyu beef and Washington state black truffle oil. But Mr. Nabhan doesn’t want people to eat everything on his list. For some species, like the Carolina flying squirrel, a harvest would create too much pressure on a tiny population. Because the squirrel was once so important to the diets of North Carolina and east Tennessee, he included it on his list, along with a recipe for the thick vegetable stew called Kentucky burgoo. It calls for corn, lima beans, spring water and about a kilogram of cubed and fried squirrel meat. Just don’t use flying squirrel. At least not yet.

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8

LE MONDE

SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2008 ARTS & STYLES

A Musical Feast of Africa, Packaged for Western Ears By ROBERT CHRISTGAU

GETTY IMAGES

Hard Times? Lipstick Gives A Little Lift By KAYLEEN SCHAEFER

Last month, Betsy Stein made a trip to the upscale department store Bloomingdale’s to buy a shirt, but the Nanette Lepore top she found was $280. Ms. Stein, 33, a business manager for a classical music composer in Manhattan, told herself that in the current economic climate, she shouldn’t charge it. But the next day at the cosmetics store Sephora, she made a substitute purchase. “I could buy one or two lipsticks for about $40,” she said. “That’s far less than $280.” Ms. Stein’s rationale for buying lipstick echoes a theory once proposed by Leonard Lauder, the chairman of Estée Lauder Companies. After the terrorist attacks of 2001 deflated the American economy, Mr. Lauder noticed that his company was selling more lipstick than usual. He hypothesized that lipstick purchases are a way to gauge the economy. When it’s shaky, he said, sales increase as women boost their mood with inexpensive lipstick purchases instead of $500 shoes. Beauty brands remain true believers in the theory, even though in the last few years the lipstick market has fallen on hard times as its glistening cousin, lip gloss, has had robust sales. With the specter of another recession, brands like Clinique and DuWop Cosmetics are preparing for a big year in lip color, for two reasons. First, they would like to see a return to lipstick, which usually costs slightly more than gloss. Second, the companies believe that in down times women will continue to splurge on lip lacquer even as they make do with last season’s dress. Lipsticks are small indulgences. They can also be morale boosters, like Charlie Chaplin films were during the Depression. A warm shade that perfectly matches your skin tone might make you forget how far your stock portfolio has fallen. This spring, for the first time, Marissa Shipman, the chief executive of the Balm, a lip gloss brand, included lipsticks in her line. For their initial order, retailers like Sephora have ordered twice the amount of the lipstick as they did the glosses she started selling in 2003, Ms. Shipman said. She said she doesn’t have qualms about profiting in an economic downturn, because she’s glad she can provide something for $16 that makes women feel good. “I would feel more guilty if I were taking $400 from someone,” she said. April Lane Benson, a psychologist in Manhattan who works with compulsive spenders, said there are two reasons that women prefer lip color to other affordable pleasures. Lipstick can be applied as many times a day as you’d like. “It’s very primal,” Dr. Benson said. “The mouth is an organ of so much pleasure. Kissing is what you do with your lips.” Lipstick also helps a woman look poised, even when her bank account is low. “When women use lipstick in times of stress,” Dr. Benson said, “they’re doing it to put forward an image that they are more alive and more vibrant, and not as down in the mouth. It’s part of the uniform of desirability and attractiveness.”

Because he grew up in Ghana, Ken Braun is well positioned as one of the few hundred Europeans and Americans who have made it their business to provide an international platform for the wealth of music Africa has generated since World War II. “Americans tend to think of Africa as a huge, monolithic place full of nothing but troubles,” Mr. Braun said. “One way to correct that false impression is to expose Americans to AfriMICHAEL NAGLE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ; LEFT, STERNS MUSIC can music.” Mr. Braun’s father, a doctor, Ken Braun, right, compiles and sells African music, including an anthology of the Congolese singer Tabu Ley Rochereau. had been so moved by Albert Schweitzer’s autobiography that in 1957 he and his wife, a public- painstakingly sorting out the 29 best. Rochereau, who remained a legend on his And whether singing in three European In this time of slowing CD sales, the home turf even as the economic policies languages, hiring a full-time trap drumhealth nurse, moved to Ghana, where they spent 22 years in rural areas with Rochereau set assumes that a market of President Mobutu Sese Seko destroyed mer or adopting James Brown’s trick of a Methodist relief organization. Their still exists for well-produced collections the country’s music business. In the Unit- stretching a single over two sides of a 45, young son heard a lot of highlife, Africa’s of historically durable, readily enjoy- ed States, however, most African-music he always conceived himself as an innomajor Anglophone pop style, along with able music: in this instance, two CDs in fans knew Mr. Rochereau largely from vative internationalizer. “I wanted to show how he employed a the Beatles records popular at his mostly a slipcase with a handsomely illustrated their reading. His few American albums wide range of influences — traditional 48-page booklet, featuring a comprehen- only hinted at his achievement. British boarding school in Accra. Now 68, Mr. Rochereau, whose real Congolese, Cuban, French pop, rock ’n’ Mr. Braun went on to manage the sive essay by Mr. Braun (in English and American branch of the London label French) and personnel listings for the six name is Pascal Emmanuel Sinamoyi Ta- roll and funk — in subtle, sophisticated bou, emerged from a working-class fam- ways,” Mr. Braun said. Sterns, since the 1980s one of the world’s featured bands. Mr. Rochereau’s early records are comTo break even Sterns needed to sell ily in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (now finest disseminators of African music. The greatest achievement of his career 6,000 physical copies of the package. Kinshasa, Congo). While still a student pact because the “idea was being able to so far is “The Voice of Lightness” (2007), Sales are now around 9,000, with money he wrote a hit song for the pioneering say a lot in a brief period without so much a 29-track double-CD package that care- from downloads also trickling in. For a la- guitarist Joseph Kabasele, whose band repetition,” Mr. Braun added. The songs fully selects music from the Congolese bel like Sterns, “The Voice of Lightness” he joined in 1959. He sang lead on that from the ’70s on Disc 2 of “The Voice of group’s 1959 hit “Kelya,” which opens Lightness” average about seven minutes singer-bandleader Tabu Ley Rochere- is a hit. After college Mr. Braun had publishing “The Voice of Lightness” in a fuller ver- each, but he said the same values apply. au’s career from 1961 to 1977, when he was “Tabu Ley was such an arranger he jobs in Manhattan, but he soon went back sion recorded three years later. Africa’s premier singer. Soon leading bands of his own, Mr. Ro- knew how much time he would give to For 15 years Sterns’s American opera- to Africa. A three-year stint with Habitat tion was based in Lower Manhattan. But for Humanity in the north of Zaire (now chereau recorded constantly and hired the verses and how much to the sebene for the last two years Mr. Braun has run Congo) introduced him to the Lingala lan- superb local sidemen. He is known for section,” he said. “It wasn’t jamming in it out of a small storage unit in Belleville, guage and his wife, who is now a nurse. expanding the sebene, the instrumental the rock sense. Musicians would improNew Jersey. The space holds Sterns’s After he returned to the United States, break in which a lead instrument impro- vise, and they’d be expected to perform stock, now sold wholesale to a shrinking Mr. Braun took over Sterns’s American vises off the backup guitarists’ repeated on the spot, but there wasn’t the same unison phrases; the typical effect is a sense of ‘let’s see where this would take network of record stores and retail via the operation in 1993. Internet. The office is where Mr. Braun Mr. Braun’s time in Zaire had inten- gently prolonged climax that subsides us’ because they knew damn well where evaluated 600 songs by Mr. Rochereau, sified his interest in soukous and in Mr. into Mr. Rochereau’s vocal embrace. it would take them.”

Rauschenberg and Dance, Partners for Life Something inherently theatrical about the artist Robert Rauschenberg’s talent — always evident in his radical feeling for color, light, composition and new ingredients and juxtapositions — prompted him to his boldest and freshest conceptions when he worked onstage. Mr. Rauschenberg, who DANCE died May 12, designed for dance from the early 1950s until 2007. And in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when he first came to fame, he was recurrently (at times constantly) occupied in dance theater. When he won the international grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, he said he regarded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as his biggest canvas. Although the remark offended some in Cunningham circles (primarily the composer John Cage, who seems to have felt it sounded too proprietorial), it was completely justified. At that time there was no better place to see the range of Mr. Rauschenberg’s inventiveness than the Cunningham repertory. Mr. Rauschenberg wasn’t just the designer of most pieces Mr. Cunningham had choreographed in the previous 10 years; he was also a permanent colleague. He toured America and, in 1964, the world as stage manager to the company. In 1954 he was the first stage designer to follow the principle of artistic independence already established by Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Cage. All he needed to know was which dancer to design costumes for, and if Mr. Cunningham had any further specifications. When Mr. Cunningham was experimenting with new definitions of stage space in “Summerspace” (1958), suggesting both that the stage was just a section of a vaster landscape and that the mood was that of a summer idyll, Mr. Rauschenberg responded with impressionistic pointillism. The costumes of the dancers matched the backdrop view in near camouflage, and the work evoked scenes by Monet and Seurat while also suggesting a wildlife documentary. Mr. Rauschenberg’s full-time connection to the Cunningham company ended with its 1964 world tour. Though he and Mr. Cage had stimulated each other profoundly and were in many ways like-

ALASTAIR MACAULAY

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Robert Rauschenberg, far left, collaborated with Merce Cunningham and created elaborate backdrops for theater works like “Interscape” (2000).

ANDREA MEROLA/ANSA

minded, their egos had clashed; Mr. Rauschenberg’s “my biggest canvas” remark sounded like colonization in a dance theater where the point was independence. But others led him back to dance theater, nobody more beautifully than Trisha Brown. Her “Set and Reset” (1983) was an instant masterpiece, largely thanks to Mr. Rauschenberg’s astonishingly imaginative designs. Three screens simultaneously broad-

cast separate video collages in black and white (more than 20 years before a video component became the norm in new choreography), while the dancers rippled around the stage in part-translucent costumes marked with gray and black figures that resembled newsprint. Mr. Rauschenberg and Mr. Cunningham did collaborate again on several pieces over the decades. The last of these was only last October, “XOVER” (pronounced “Crossover”). The white costumes against a largely white backdrop recall Mr. Rauschenberg’s all-white paintings of 50 years before; the nonwhite parts of the backdrop, combining silk-screen photography and painting, connect isolated images (a bicycle, a fence, an industrial view) with beautiful color and details of light. More glorious yet — the most marvelous Rauschenberg stage designs I have seen, and supremely theatrical — were

what he made for Mr. Cunningham’s “Interscape” (2000). This work begins with a black-and-white curtain that is a classic Rauschenberg collage of eclectic images: it proves translucent, and lighting allows the dancers to be seen warming up onstage. When that curtain lifts, however, the backdrop is a full-color version of the same collage, so that we seem to have gone from a shadow realm to a new plane of more intense being, in which the main choreography occurs. Impresarios have occasionally assembled programs that illustrate “Picasso and the Dance,” but Mr. Rauschenberg’s work for dance was far more prolific than Picasso’s, as a whole season could be presented to demonstrate. If only that could happen, its range of designs would easily establish his place in the forefront of architects of theater.