SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

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In Motherhood, A Political Message

In just a few months, Sarah Palin’s baby has been transformed from a closely held secret to a central part of her appeal.

Continued on Page 4

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WORLD TRENDS

Russia’s ambitions worry the West.

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Some debtors get a visit from the lender.

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Using Hands to Create, Not Click ticed routinely. Much of the material world we inhabit Stanford University in California intoday was born in computer simulation. troduced such hands-on learning when From an idea to a design to a manufacturprofessors of engineering, architecture ing process to a shipping order, it all exists and design realized their best students in a software world before it is real. had never taken apart a bicycle But before the software, there LENS or built a model airplane. was hardware. And before hard“A lot of people get lost in the ware there were tinkerers. world of computer simulation,” The pioneers of the computer said Bill Burnett, Stanford’s revolution were fabled for the executive director of the product prototypes they built by hand in design. “All your intelligence Silicon Valley garages. isn’t in your brain. You learn Now there are signs of that through your hands.” more tactile world’s return. Designers at Adobe, the softPeople are making things. With ware company in San Jose, California, their hands. attend workshops where they use plastic Designers and engineers who rely on beads, tiny sensors and electronic displays computers to do much of their work are to create motion games. “Some people rebelling against their disconnection from thought we were crazy,” Michael Gough, a the physical world, G. Pascal Zachary vice president for design at Adobe, told Mr. writes in an article on this week’s Gadgets Zachary. “But for others, the experience page. (Page 6.) has started to inform how they work.” “The hands-on part is for me a critical Technology is not the only field where aspect of understanding how to design,” people are feeling a need for the hands-on Michael Kuniavsky, a consultant in San approach. Francisco, told Mr. Zachary. For the last Faythe Levine was described as the “pathree years, Mr. Kuniavsky has organized tron saint” of the handmade nation by Pea conference of designers called “Sketchnelope Green in The Times on September ing in Hardware.” Participants build 4. Ms. Levine, who has had success selling devices, and in the process learn the lost stuffed toys on the Internet, has a store skills that electronics hobbyists once prac-

and gallery in her home city, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and next year will be showing a documentary film at festivals and museums. She traveled across America to tell the stories of people, mostly women, who are keeping alive lost arts of sewing, knitting, needlepoint and beadwork (www. handmadenationmovie.com). It’s a veritable movement. As Lawrence Downes suggested in an opinion article in The Times on August 25, the trend may reflect a need for people to assert some control over lives filled with cellphones, computers and appliances. A handful of journals, like ReadyMade, Make and Craft, and an array of blogs and events called Maker Faires, attract people who want to share ideas about nifty tools, toys and tricks of the trades. Mister Jalopy (real first name: Peter), who lives in Los Angeles and runs a store that sells antiques, hardware and rebuilt bicycles, told Mr. Downes that companies should start selling products that consumers could maintain, repair or reinvent. That, he argues, is where collector’s items and legendary brands come from. “I really want companies to start thinking about shared innovation,” he said. “To realize that they’re not selling to customers, but to collaborators.”

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008 o p i n i o n & c o M M e n Ta ry intelligence/roger cohen

editorials of the times

Turning Cosmopolitan Into a Slur

Arctic in Retreat Climate change is changing all the rules in the Arctic. The polar ice cap is smaller by some 1.8 million square kilometers than it was in the two decades before 2000. The annual melting of northern ice this year may well surpass last year’s — the furthest retreat of Arctic ice in a single year since it was first measured. The Northwest Passage — the route through the Arctic Ocean at the northern edge of the American continent — is likely to be open and navigable again before summer’s end for the second time in two years. And, according to new satellite images, the eastern sea ice blocking a northeastern passage above Siberia has melted too, turning the Arctic into an island surrounded by open water for the first time ever. What was once solidly frozen is now, increasingly, accessible, leading to fierce disputes over territory and natural resources. Perhaps the biggest of these disputes is whom do the waters in the Northwest Passage belong to: Canada, or are they international? Canada has already staked its claim, requiring foreign ships to report when entering waters within 320 kilometers of its northern

shores. The previous limit was 160 kilometers. Canada is also backing a new search to find the Erebus and Terror — Sir John Franklin’s ships, which were lost during a 19th-century British expedition to the Arctic — in order to “take ownership of the history of this place,” as one historian put it. Meanwhile, the United States, Canada and Russia are all busily mapping the underwater continental shelf in order to bolster claims to what are believed to be vast mineral deposits, including oil and gas. The two poles of this planet could hardly be more different. In the Antarctic, a scientific truce of sorts remains in effect. But the Arctic is increasingly a scene of commercial and territorial conflict. The only tolerable way to shape the future of the Arctic is through international cooperation, not a sovereignty battle. There is more to protect than access to valuable resources and shortened shipping routes. There is a desperately endangered and fragile ecosystem as well, which is threatened both by global warming and by the commercial development warming allows.

New York Cosmopolitan is a loaded word with a heavy history and never more so, it seems, than when it falls from the lips of Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. “I’m sorry that Barack Obama feels that her hometown isn’t cosmopolitan enough,” he declared the other day with sneering relish, in an attempt to contrast the worldliness of the Democratic candidate, who has taken his campaign to far-flung Berlin, with the apple-pie virtues of Sarah Palin’s Alaskan refuge of Wasilla (population 9,780). In his zeal for Palinism, Giuliani has apparently forgotten the cosmopolitanism of the great city he ran for eight years. To the Big Apple’s international sophistication he now prefers the Republican vice-presidential candidate’s parochialism. She even had to get herself a passport last year for a rare overseas trip! Sure, politics is about winning. After eight years of the Bush administration, the economy is down, inequality is growing and many people feel poorer. So what’s left to Republicans but to portray Democrats as arty, snobby, fancy, brie-loving types who are proto-Europeans? Still, I balk at Giuliani’s cosmopolitan jibe. He’s a free-world cheerleader, and New Yorker, so he should be careful about adopting the lexicon of the Soviets, who used “cosmopolitans” (kosmopolity) as a code word Send comments to nytweekly@nytimes. com.

CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York, spoke negatively of urban sophistication at the Republican convention. in anti-Semitic campaigns. Enemies of Stalin were labeled “rootless cosmopolitans”: everyone knew what that meant and the hideous fate it portended. No such fate awaits modern-day “cosmopolitans” in the United States, but the connotation of un-American and untrustworthy is there, at least in Republican parlance. The word’s political revival reflects painful economic realities that have made a new American nationalism the refuge of globalization’s many losers. The central post-cold-war transforma-

An Even Poorer World There is a lot more poverty in the world than previously thought. The World Bank reported in August that in 2005, there were 1.4 billion people living below the poverty line — that is, living on less than $1.25 a day. That is more than a quarter of the developing world’s population and 430 million more people living in extreme poverty than previously estimated. The World Bank warned that the number is unlikely to drop below one billion before 2015. The poverty estimate soared after a careful study of the prices people in developing countries pay for goods and services revealed that the World Bank had been grossly underestimating the cost of living in the poorest nations for decades. As a result, it was grossly overestimating the ability of people to buy things. And the new research doesn’t account for the soaring prices of energy and food in the past two years. The poverty expressed in the World Bank’s measure is so abject that it is hard for citizens of the industrial world to comprehend. The new count underscores how much more the developed world needs to do to help the world’s most vulnerable people. It should also serve as a jarring reminder to the leaders of the

world’s much-touted new economic powers — India and China — about the inequities growing amid their growing wealth. Forty-two percent of India’s people live below the World Bank’s poverty line, as do 16 percent of China’s. The new data confirm the primary role that economic growth must play in lifting millions out of poverty. Fast growth slashed the number of Chinese living in extreme poverty by three-fourths in less than 25 years. Achieving broad-based growth will not be easy. India, which has more people in extreme poverty than it did 25 years ago, must reform its farm sector to increase dismal productivity and broaden its narrow economic expansion. Sub-Saharan Africa — where 50 percent of the people live below the poverty line — requires stability, above all, to encourage investment. All developing countries must invest more in education. There’s still a big supporting role for rich countries. Last year, development aid from the Group of 8 industrialized nations amounted to $62 billion — far below the $92 billion that was promised to be delivered by 2010. We hope the World Bank’s new poverty count finally shames the Group of 8 into keeping that promise.

ThoMaS l. friedMan

Two Georgias on My Mind The New York Times on the Web flashed a headline recently that caught my eye: “U.S. to Unveil $1 Billion Aid Package to Repair Georgia.” Wow, I thought. That’s great: $1 billion to fix Georgia’s roads and schools. But as I read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia. We’re going to spend $1 billion to fix the Georgia between Russia and Turkey, not the one between South Carolina and Florida. T he thought of us spending $1 billion to repair a country whose president, though a democrat, recklessly provoked a war with Russia, which was itching to bash its neighbor, makes no sense to me. Yes, we should diplomatically squeeze Russia until it withdraws its troops; no one should be invading neighbors. But where are our priorities? How many wars can we fight at once without finishing even one? Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Georgia. Which is the priority? Americans are struggling to meet their mortgages, and we’re sending $1 billion to a country whose president behaved irresponsibly, just to spite Vladimir Putin. Couldn’t we spite Putin with $100 million? And shouldn’t we be fostering a dialogue with Georgia and with Putin? Otherwise, where is this going? A new cold war? Over what? And that brings me to our election.

: 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. lexique Dans l’article “Governing Alaska Presents Unusual Challenges,” page 7: To conTend: affirmer, soutenir To upend: écraser, vaincre MorTgage: prêt immobilier To trump: outrepasser Dans l’article “With Water Comes Hope for Better Health,” page 7: all buT: Presque parched: desséché lure: piège, appât STaple: produit de base Trickle: filet (d’eau) Dans l’article “A Town Where the Teachers Carry Guns as Well as Books,” page 7: haMleT: hameau

tion has been the shift from a national to a global division of labor. Because capital can go anywhere to recruit cheap workers, the rich have thrived. Unskilled Americans have not because hundreds of millions of workers in places like Vietnam now compete for their jobs. These trends do not a happy country make. The divide between the collegeeducated, digitally literate able to exploit the possibilities of globalization and those unversed in Internet culture is stark. Resentment grows; “cosmopolitan” becomes an easy slur to slap on the highly qualified. Today, all but one of America’s 10 least-educated states is solidly Republican. And who better to attack as cosmopolitan than Obama, the first black nominee, a man with some education in a Muslim country and the nerve to declare, in Berlin, that he’s a “citizen of the world”? As George Will, a conservative columnist wrote, “Obama wanted Berliners to know that he is proudly cosmopolitan.” Talk of global citizenship has attracted the youth of America to Obama. It’s drawn many others convinced of the world’s interconnectedness. But the backlash is now evident in a tight, Palinized race. Jihadism is another reaction to borderhopping cosmopolitanism. Before his next jingoistic pitch, Giuliani should recall that the 9/11 attack was directed at towering symbols of the cosmopolitan. The dust and debris in which he stood contained the vestiges of New York’s many-faceted humanity.

To Ward off: éviter To raTTle: faire perdre son sang-froid, démonter gleeful: plein de joie To STun: assommer

Dans l’article “Spencers Married Well, but Failed to Find Love,” page 8: unWiTTingly: sans le vouloir Sanguine: optimiste To MiniSTer To: subvenir aux besoins de To beWilder: abasourdir

expreSSionS Dans l’article “Emerging Powers No Longer Want U.S. as the Center of Cyberspace,” page 5: hoMe-field advanTage: terme de sport: il

What I found missing in both conventions was a sense of priorities. Both Barack Obama and John McCain offered a list of good things they plan to do as president, but, since you can’t do everything, where’s the focus going to be? That focus needs to be on strengthening our capacity for innovation — our most important competitive advantage. If we can’t remain the most innovative country in the world, we are not going to have $1 billion to toss at either the country Georgia or the state of Georgia. Innovative energy in America is not being supported and nurtured as needed in today’s supercompetitive world. Right now, we feel like a country in a very slow decline — in infrastructure, basic research and education — just slow enough to lull us into thinking that we have all the time and money to play around in Tbilisi, Georgia, more than Atlanta, Georgia. As Chuck Vest, the former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said to me: “Both candidates have spoken a lot about ‘change,’ but in most areas of need, innovation is the only mechanism that can actually change things in substantive ways. Innovation is where creative thinking and practical know-how meet to do new things in new ways, and old things in new ways.” A developed country’s competitiveness

qualifie l’avantage qu’a une équipe qui reçoit à domicile “home team” par rapport à celle qui joue à l’extérieur “away team”. Dans l’article “Taking Out Loans in Comfort of Home,” page 5: WriTe-doWn: dépréciation; à ne pas confondre avec “write-off”, qui signifie échec, annulation: to be a write-off: être perdu à jamais Dans l’article “Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands,” page 6: handS-on: signifie pratique, littéralement: que l’on fait avec les mains; peut aussi vouloir dire sur le tas; alors que “hands-off” signifie qui n’intervient pas, ou bien qui est indépendant.

rÉfÉrenceS Dans l’article “Emerging Powers No Longer Want U.S. as the Center of Cyberspace,” page 5: naTional SecuriTy agency (nSa): créée en 1952, sous la présidence de Harry Truman, cette agence fédérale est spécialisée dans le renseignement à l’étranger, et en particulier

now comes primarily from its capacity to innovate — the ability to create the new products and services that people want, adds Curtis Carlson, chief executive of SRI International, a Silicon Valley research company. As such, “innovation is now the only path to growth, prosperity, environmental sustainability and national security for America,” Carlson said. “But it is also an incredibly competitive world. Many information industries require that products be improved by 100 percent every 12 to 36 months, just for the company to stay in business.” Our competitiveness, though, he added, is based on having a broadly educated work force, superb research universities, innovation-supportive taxes, immigration and regulatory policies, a productive physical and virtual infrastructure, and a culture that embraces hard work and the creation of new opportunities. But at the Republican convention, abortion got vastly more attention than innovation, calls to buttress Tbilisi, Georgia, swamped any for Atlanta, Georgia, and “drill, baby, drill” was chanted instead of “innovate, baby, innovate.” If we were serious about weakening Putinism, we would be investing $1 billion in Georgia Tech to invent alternatives to oil — the high price of which is the only reason the Kremlin is strong enough today to bully its neighbors and its own people.

dans les communications, et le déchiffrage de code. Elle est une émanation du Ministère de la Défense (DoD), et a une double fonction: d’abord décrypter les communications des services secrets étrangers, mais aussi protéger les moyens de communications américains: c’est ainsi que tous les ordinateurs fédéraux sont sous le contrôle de la NSA, pour éviter les piratages. Cette agence s’est trouvée dans l’œil du cyclone, en 2005, lors du scandale des écoutes téléphoniques, quand il est apparu que des millions de citoyens avaient été, à leur insu, mis sur écoute, au prétexte du Patriot Act, loi votée dans le sillage du 11 septembre 2001, très contestée par certains qui la considèrent comme liberticide, alors que d’autres affirment qu’elle est le prix à payer pour lutter contre le terrorisme. A la suite de ce scandale, et du procès qui s’en est suivi, le jugement initial a considéré ces écoutes comme illégales et anticonstitutionnelles, en s’appuyant sur le 4ème amendement, qui interdit les interventions de fouille et de perquisition dans la sphère privée sans mandat: le procès en appel, en 2007, a cependant inversé ce jugement.

● ● ● ● The neW york TiMeS iS publiShed Weekly in The folloWing neWSpaperS: clarín, argenTina der STandard, auSTria la Segunda, chile el eSpecTador, coloMbia liSTin diario, doMinican republic ● el univerSo, ecuador ● le Monde, france ● SÜddeuTSche zeiTung, gerMany ● prenSa libre, guaTeMala ● The aSian age, india ● la repubblica, iTaly ● aSahi ShiMbun, ● ● ● ● ● ● ● japan Sunday naTion, kenya koha diTore, koSovo reforMa group, Mexico vijeSTi, MonTenegro la prenSa, panaMa Manila bulleTin, philippineS rzeczpoSpoliTa, poland ● ● ● ● ● ● poliTika, Serbia el paíS, Spain The TiMeS, SouTh africa uniTed daily neWS, TaiWan The obServer, uniTed kingdoM The korea TiMeS, uniTed STaTeS el nacional, venezuela

le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

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world trends

Russia claims “privileged interests” in regions like South Ossetia, where Russian troops assembled recently near an image of Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s New Nerve Unsettles the West We all must think anew about Russia. But this process will prove harder for some of us than for others. When I grew up in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Soviet Union had already begun to look like the Ottoman Empire on its last legs; essay the face of Soviet Communism belonged to Leonid Brezhnev, with his drooping cheeks and beetle brows and thick, square glasses. What was there to fear from this pitiful giant? In my leftwing, antiwar, social democratic hothouse world, anti-Communism seemed almost as absurd as Communism. We were, unlike an older generation of “cold war liberals,” anti-anti-Communists. Fear of the spread of Communism had gotten us into Vietnam, and rationalized American support for right-wing dictators across the third world. That fear, to us, was thus a far more dangerous force in the world than the thing that we as a country were afraid of — Soviet and Chinese expansionism. The Soviet Union continued to keep a chokehold on its own extended empire, sending tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968; and it kept the pot of insurgency bubbling across Africa and Asia. Yet, drained of all of its

JAMES TRAUB

ideological attraction and much of its menace, Russia just didn’t seem to me very important, or at least very interesting. In “A New Foreign Policy for the United States,” a book written in 1969 that I read in college a few years later, Hans Morgenthau described the Soviet Union as a conservative and defensive power, driven by traditional national interests rather than ideology, and preoccupied above all with avoiding nuclear war with the United States. For all its bluster, it seemed eminently containable. Russia had, in fact, been successfully contained; this was the era of summitry, détente and arms control treaties. A new generation of hardliners, soon to be known as “neoconservatives” and championed by Ronald Reagan, denounced the rapprochement as naïve. When I visited Georgia this summer, I felt like I had entered a time warp. Everyone in Tbilisi talked about Russia the way people had in the United States in, say, 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis. Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, said to me: “The Russians talk about globalization, of course. But behind this is an absolutely black and white picture: It’s ours. It’s theirs. Everybody is enemy or

DMITRY LOVETSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

vassal.” Russia was a nation of “bandits” — predatory, insatiable, calculating. “And they are cynical about it — they know that no one will fight for us.” It all seemed hyperbolic, and possibly paranoid. But the Georgians had spent almost two centuries under the Russian boot. And then, a month later, Russia sent its tanks into Georgia, and Mr. Rondeli’s worldview looked a great deal less far-fetched. Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, had apparently decided to teach Georgia, and its flamboyantly pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili, a lesson they would not soon

forget. But what is that lesson? That is the question the West must answer. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said recently that Russia, like other countries, “has regions where it has privileged interests,” adding that Russia had friendly relations with countries in its sphere of influence. Presumably this was meant more as an assertion of right than as a statement of fact. Moscow has amicable relations with Armenia and Belarus, which comport themselves with suitable deference, but extremely turbulent relations with Ukraine and Georgia, which have openly allied themselves with the West. Perhaps President Medvedev was trying to express delicately the view that Russia could have on its borders only enemies or vassals. Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus, former officials in

the Clinton administration, compared Russia’s assault on Georgia with Hitler’s march on Czechoslovakia, airily justified by the alleged need to protect ethnic Germans. For the first time in almost 30 years — at least since the invasion of Afghanistan — Russia is seen as a threat to world order. But this view is not universal. A number of scholars and diplomats argue that Russia acted in response to a series of intolerable provocations. It was the United States, not Russia, this argument goes, that had violated the status quo. Russia is either an expansionist, belligerent power whose ambitions are insatiable, or a “normal” state seeking to restore influence and regional control along its borders, commensurate with its growing wealth and power. How you think about the nature and legitimacy of Russia’s

ambitions largely determines the response you advocate. Flynt Leverett, a former Clinton diplomat, argues that “America’s promotion of a dubious ‘democratic’ movement in Georgia — or in other ethnically divided and unstable post-Soviet states — is not as important to Western interests as working with Russia on the most significant energy, economic and international security challenges of our time.” If, on the other hand, Mr. Putin’s Russia has embarked on a drive for regional hegemony, then the policy question is: How can the West block Russia’s ambitions? Vice President Dick Cheney promised the Georgians $1 billion in reconstruction aid and vowed to redouble American support for Georgia’s campaign to join NATO — an absolute red line for Russia. On September 8, the Bush administration formally withdrew an agreement for civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia from congressional consideration. European officials, by and large, have been every bit as appalled by Russian behavior as Washington has been; but most have taken a less confrontational line. Sheer proximity made ideological anti-Communism an unaffordable luxury for Europe a generation ago; the same may be true for an anti-Russian posture today. Perhaps there’s another explanation: that there’s all the difference in the world between an enfeebled and defensive empire, and a nation emboldened by vast wealth and brimming with resentment at past humiliations. This Russia does not look so very containable.

NOTRE RESSOURCE NATURELLE LA PLUS ABONDANTE ? LA PASSION POUR LA VIE ! . PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOAO PIÑA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Chile Fights Viruses at Fish Farms By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

A bus in Chile says salmon are grown “at all costs.” Top, a boat with dead fish, victims of a virus.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said Dr. Felipe C. Cabello, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla who has studied Chile’s fishing industry. Dr. Cabello has said that Chilean salmon producers are using an estimated 70 to 300 times more antibiotics to produce one metric ton of salmon in Chile than are their counterparts in Norway. He has been the subject of repeated attacks by Chile’s salmon industry for making those claims. Alex Muñoz, vice president for South America for Océanos, a group seeking to protect marine environments, said, “Unsafe use of antibiotics in salmon pens threatens Chile’s oceans and access to the U.S. seafood market.” He argued that the misguided use of antibiotics could increase bacterial resis-

tance to them. “We are pleased to see the Chilean government act.” Chile’s salmon industry, the country’s third largest export industry, has been undergoing growing pains as it has expanded to meet a rising world demand for fish. Mr. Lavados, the economy minister, noted that the industry needed to adapt to grow in a sustainable way. In 1990, Chile produced 26,135 metric tons of salmon and trout. Last year it produced 60,292 metric tons. The crowded conditions have given rise to illness and stress among the fish, making them more susceptible to catching viruses, experts say. Concern about the I.S.A. virus caused the American supermarket chain Safeway to reduce Chilean salmon purchases in late March, soon after The New York Times published an article about the virus. The virus is affecting 2 percent of Chile’s salmon farms, according to SalmonChile, an industry group. “We need to be aware that the virus will be present in Chile for a long time,” said Rodrigo Infante, the general manager of SalmonChile.

© GEORGE KAMPER

RIO DE JANEIRO — With a deadly virus threatening its fish farms, Chile has introduced measures to improve the sanitary conditions of its salmon industry and reduce the levels of antibiotics used to treat the fish. Chile exports more salmon to the United States than to any other country besides Japan, but it has drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists and other experts in recent months as a virus has killed millions of its salmon. The illness, infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., continues to spread, underscoring how the crowded conditions of Chile’s fish farms and other sanitary concerns are giving rise to a variety of fungal and bacterial fish ailments. Environmentalists and industry officials applauded the Chilean government’s efforts to clean up the industry and reduce antibiotic use. Hugo Lavados, Chile’s economy minister, said that after almost four months of study, a government panel identified steps that would ease conditions in crowded salmon pens and provide greater protection against the introduction of high-risk illnesses in salmon eggs. The economy minister also noted that the “intensive” use of antibiotics, although legal in Chile, needed to change and that a specific plan for lowering levels would be finalized by December.

La météo spectaculaire et la scène culturelle active de Miami insufflent à chacun le désir de se donner à fond dans son travail et de s’éclater avec autant d’énergie. Ici, les pionniers trouvent un défi à leur mesure. Leur enthousiasme est le meilleur gage de productivité. Les entreprises voient grand. Les habitants croquent la vie à pleines dents. Vacanciers et plaisanciers en escale aiment s’imprégner de cette atmosphère unique et n’attendent qu’une seule chose : leur prochain séjour. Découvrez comment Miami peut booster votre activité et donner du sang neuf à vos projets. Consultez MiamiWhereWorldsMeet.com

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008 world trends

The Media, Once Again, Are a Political Target ST. PAUL, Minnesota — The Republicans, returning to a familiar theme, have been loudly criticizing the “mainstream,” “elite,” “establishment,” “left wing,” “Washington insider” news media. Given the amount of time they’re devoting to the subject, it’s worth asking how much the exercise will really adessay vance the party’s cause. “It’s a very unifying thing in the world of the Republican base,” said Mike Murphy, the Republican media strategist and a former top aide to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. “But I doubt there’s any swing voter outside Cleveland who would think the big problem in this country these days is media bias against Republicans.” The latest to join the attack was Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and Mr. McCain’s vice-presidential choice. Her speech at the Republican National Convention was judged an unqualified success by the media elite, even though much of it was aimed at the media elite. “I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone,” Ms. Palin said to wild applause. She capped a succession of convention speakers — the unsuccessful Republican contenders Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — who took turns pummeling their favorite target, the news media, which in turn gave the news media the chance to talk about its favorite subject (the news media).

MARK LEIBOVICH

Kevin Madden, a former aide to Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign, said attacking the media was “a tactic, not a message,” and not the kind of tactic that could swing an election. It wasn’t enough to get Barry Goldwater and Bob Dole elected in 1964 and 1996 and George H. W. Bush re-elected in 1992. They were three of the noisiest in their complaints about bias. The Republican tradition of mediabashing goes back at least to the convention of 1964, when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower attacked “sensation-seeking columnists and commentators.” The sentiment was immortalized by Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, who charged that many in the press were mere “nattering nabobs of negativism” and, for good measure, “an effete corps of impudent snobs.” In other words, the bashers and bashees have been through this and know how it works. Still, despite its familiarity, the media-mashing game has changed considerably over the years, just as the media have. For starters, it would be wrong to dismiss the events of convention week — particularly the media storm around Ms. Palin and her family, justified or not — as fleeting hysteria. This was an unusual circumstance, perhaps the first real convention controversy to unfold in the age of real-time blogging, YouTube, Twittering, or whatever it is they’re calling this age nowadays. It seemed as if no detail of these proceedings was deemed too trivial for dissemination, somewhere. Nor should the current blitz against the news media from the right be dismissed as glib and tired lines from the

DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Many Republicans say the media are biased against them. Press photographers at a campaign stop in February. old Republican playbook. “The mainstream media, which has been holding endless symposia here on the future of media in the 21st century, is in danger of missing a central fact of that future,” wrote Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. “If they appear, once again, as they have in the past, to be people not reporting the battle but engaged in the battle, if they allow themselves to be tagged by that old tag, which so tarnished them in the past, they will do more to imperil their own future than the Internet has.”

news analysis

From Page 1

By PETER BAKER

Michael Cooper contributed reporting.

discomfort. Tom Brokaw of the NBC television network was in the Xcel Energy Center on September 3 when Ms. Palin was ripping the media, and the hall ignited into a chant of “NBC, NBC, NBC” that started in the Alaska delegation and spread through adjacent sections. He said he was subjected to some “good-natured ribbing, friendly fist-shaking,” in the convention hall, but “nothing out of the ordinary.” “If the number of people who wanted their picture taken with me was any indication, it wasn’t a big deal,” Mr. Brokaw said.

Palin’s Political Message Tied to Her Motherhood

The Powerful Reforming The Powerful ST. PAUL, Minnesota — The nominee’s friend described him as a “restless reformer who will clean up Washington.” His defeated rival described him going to the capital to “drain that swamp.” His running mate described their mission as “change, the goal we share.” And that was at the incumbent party’s convention. After watching two political conclaves recently, it would be easy to be confused about which was really the gathering of the opposition. As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment. This was, of course, part Mr. McCain’s nature and part political calculation. It was also part history. For the first time since 1952, the party holding the White House has nominated someone other than the sitting president or vice president, someone without a vested interest in running on continuity, and at a moment when the party finds it difficult to defend its record from the last eight years. The effort to position Mr. McCain and the Republicans as the true agents of change benefited from his selection of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. Known for taking on her own state party over corruption and wasteful spending, Ms. Palin projects the image of the ultimate Washington outsider, literally from more than 4,500 kilometers outside the Capital Beltway. And she would be the first woman to serve as vice president. But as a matter of history, it is easier to run as the opposition party if you actually are the opposition party. “When the president of the United States is from your own party, to present yourself as a change agent is not the easiest thing to pull off,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist. Referring to Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, Mr. Trippi added, “All Obama has to do is say,

Senator McCain provides an interesting test case. He has benefited greatly over the years from friendly relations with — and coverage from — the press. This year, however, he presided over the most media-hostile convention in recent memory (though he did not join in himself in his acceptance speech). His campaign seems to be running against “media bias” to burnish the reformer credentials of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin. Despite the hot words from the convention podium, it was hard to find a journalist who felt any unusual sense of

CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Senator John McCain, left, has been a close ally of President Bush’s, but he is positioning himself as an opponent of the political establishment. ‘Bush-McCain, Bush-McCain.’ ” That was certainly a chant never heard during the Republican convention in the Xcel Energy Center here. President Bush canceled his trip here to supervise the response to Hurricane Gustav and addressed delegates only by video, before the broadcast networks began their coverage for the night. Once his image faded from the screen, none of the marquee speakers for the rest of the convention mentioned his name during the nightly prime hour. Republicans said Mr. McCain had little choice. For “every candidate, regardless of whether they’re an incumbent or a challenger,” said Sara Taylor, a former White House political director under Mr. Bush, “one of the fundamental missions is how to set themselves up as the change agent, and John McCain is well equipped based on a long record as a maverick to do that.” And it is true that even vice presidents running as popular presidents leave office have labored to establish their own identities. “Conventions

are always about the next four years, not the last four or eight years,” said Ron Kaufman, who was a top aide to the first President Bush. “In the end, whether your party is in power or not, it’s about, ‘What are you going to do for me for the next four years?’ ” Still, even though the elder Mr. Bush wanted to slip out of Ronald Reagan’s shadow in 1988 and Al Gore tried to distance himself from the scandals of Bill Clinton in 2000, they both used their acceptance speeches to boast of their administrations’ records. By the time the convention here was about to begin, Mr. McCain almost sounded like a speaker at an Obama rally. “I promise you, if you’re sick and tired of the way Washington operates, you only need to be patient for a couple of more months,” he told supporters in O’Fallon, Missouri. “Change is coming! Change is coming! Change is coming!” Mr. McCain has been a strong supporter of Mr. Bush’s. And the Obama campaign signaled it would not cede the change argument, airing another advertisement showing him with Mr. Bush and concluding: “We can’t afford four more years of the same.”

party to celebrate the baby in May, Ms. Palin rocked her newborn as her closest friends, sisters, even her obstetrician presented her with a presents and cake. Most had learned that Ms. Palin was pregnant only a few weeks before. Struggling to accept that her child would be born with Down syndrome and fearful of public criticism of a governor’s pregnancy, Ms. Palin had concealed the news that she was expecting even from her parents and children until her third trimester. But as the governor introduced her son that day, according to a friend, Kristan Cole, she said she had come to regard him as a blessing from God. “Who of us in this room has the perfect child?” said Ms. Palin, who declined to be interviewed for this article. After an amniocentesis, a prenatal test to identify genetic defects, Ms. Palin had learned the results. As her older sister, Heather Bruce, said, Ms. Palin “likes to be prepared.” With her husband, Todd, away at his job in the oil fields of the North Slope, Ms. Palin told no one for three days, she later said. Once they reunited, the Palins struggled to understand what they would face. Children with Down syndrome experience varying degrees of cognitive disability and a higher-than-average risk of hearing loss, hypothyroidism and seizure disorders. About half are born with heart defects, which often require surgery. The couple decided to keep quiet about the pregnancy so they could absorb the news, they told people later. And there were political factors to consider. “I didn’t want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties,” Ms. Palin told People magazine recently. The governor began an elaborate game of fashion-assisted camouflage. “All of a sudden she had this penchant for really beautiful scarves,” recalled Angelina Burney, who works across the hallway from the governor in Anchorage. Eventually, she told several aides that she was pregnant, and a week or so later, her parents and her children. On March 5, she shared the news with three reporters. She assured them she would not take much time off: she had returned to work the day after giving birth to Piper, the youngest of the Palin brood. “To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the Kitty Bennett contributed research.

UnUsUal CHallenGes

Governing Alaska, the biggest, wildest and coldest state, is just different. PAGE 7

same time,” she said, “I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave.” There was no mention of the baby’s condition. The next day, her office issued a press release, conveying the news in three curt sentences. In private, the Palins slowly started to share the Down syndrome diagnosis. In mid-April, Ms. Palin and her husband flew to Texas for an energy conference. Days before, Ms. Palin was asked to speak to her peers. Around 4 a.m. on the day of her presentation, Ms. Palin felt an unusual sensation. According to The Anchorage Daily News, she was leaking amniotic fluid. She called her doctor back home. Go ahead and give the speech, said the doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, who declined to comment for this article. Ms. Palin was not in labor, and her doctor thought she had time. “She wanted to get back to Alaska to have that baby,” said a friend, Curtis Menard. “Man, that is one tough lady.” Trig was born early the next morning, weighing just over 2.7 kilograms. Ms. Palin’s three-day maternity leave has now become legend among mothers. But aides say she eased back into work. Many high-powered parents separate work and children; Ms. Palin takes a wholly different approach. “She’s the mom and the governor, and they’re not separate,” said Kristan Cole, a friend. Around the governor’s offices, it was not uncommon to get on the elevator and discover the Palin’s youngest daughter, Piper, 6. “She’ll be with Piper or Trig, then she’s got a press conference or negotiations about the natural gas pipeline or a bill to sign, and it’s all business,’’ said Ms. Burney. “She just says, ‘Mommy’s got to do this press conference.’ ’’ For much of the summer, she carried Trig in a sling as she signed bills and sat through hearings, even nursing him unseen during conference calls. At her baby shower, Ms. Palin joked about her months of secrecy, said Marilyn Lane, a friend. “About the seventh month I thought I’d better let people know,” Ms. Palin said. “So it was really great,” she continued. “I was only pregnant a month.”

le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

5

money & business

Emerging Powers No Longer Want U.S. as the Center of Cyberspace telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,’’ Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. “We also need to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to us.’’ Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved an advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications. Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States. For

example, the Patriot Act gives the American government Rerouting the Web broader access to private comSince the dot-com bust, more and more international munications with less overInternet pipelines are being created that do not pass sight. through the United States and Canada. “Since the passage of the Patriot Act, many companies SHARE OF INTERNET BANDWIDTH CONNECTED TO U.S. AND CANADA based outside of the United 100% States have been reluctant to store client information in the Latin America and U.S.,’’ said Marc Rotenberg, Asia and Pacific areas executive director of the Elec80 are increasingly creating tronic Privacy Information intraregional networks. Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. London, Paris, Frankfurt 60 intelligence agencies will gathand Amsterdam are the er this information without cities with the highest legal process. There is particubandwidth capacity in the lar sensitivity about access to world; most of Europe’s 40 financial information as well as traffic has always been communications and Internet routed intraregionally. traffic that goes through U.S. switches.’’ While Africa’s intraregional 20 But economics also plays networks have increased a role. Almost all nations see significantly since 2000, the majority of its data networks as essential to 0 bandwidth now goes economic development. “It’s through Europe. no different than any other ’00 ’05 ’08 infrastructure that a country Source: Telegeography THE NEW YORK TIMES needs,’’ said K C Claffy, a scientist at the Cooperative AsInternet technologists say that the global data sociation for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. “You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads network that was once a competitive advantage for the United States is now increasingly outside either.’’ The issue was driven home recently when hack- the control of American companies. They decided not to invest in lower-cost optical ers attacked and immobilized several Georgian government Web sites during the country’s fight- fiber lines, which have rapidly become a commoding with Russia. Most of Georgia’s access to the ity business. That lack of investment mirrors a pattern elseglobal network flowed through Russia and Turkey. A third route through an undersea cable linking where in the high-technology industry. The risk, Internet technologists say, is that upGeorgia to Bulgaria is scheduled for completion in starts like China and India are making larger inSeptember. Ms. Claffy said that the shift away from the vestments in next-generation Internet technology United States was not limited to developing coun- that is likely to be crucial in determining the future tries. The Japanese “are on a rampage to build out of the network, with investment, innovation and across India and China so they have alternative profits going first to overseas companies. “This is one of many dimensions on which we’ll routes and so they don’t have to route through the have to adjust to a reduction in American ability U.S.’’ Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the Universi- to dictate terms of core interests of ours,’’ said ty of Minnesota who tracks the growth of the glob- Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Cenal Internet, added, “We discovered the Internet, ter for Internet and Society at Harvard. “We are, but we couldn’t keep it a secret.’’ While the United by comparison, militarily weaker, economically States carried 70 percent of the world’s Internet poorer and technologically less unique than we traffic a decade ago, he estimates that portion has were then. We are still a very big player, but not in control.’’ fallen to about 25 percent.

Siège social : 27, avenue de Friedland - 75008 Paris - RCS 187 500 038 - Imprimeur : Contrast

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending. Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States. Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control. And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences. American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. “Because of the nature of global

PIOTR MALECKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ewa Rachwal, right, adds a personal touch while giving out loans. She visits a client, Irena Kowalczyk, at her home in Warsaw.

Taking Out Loans in Comfort of Home By JULIA WERDIGIER

WARSAW — When Ewa Rachwal visits one of her 150 customers at home, she is greeted more like a long-lost friend than someone who comes to collect a weekly interest payment for a loan. Ms. Rachwal is one of more than 28,000 self-employed agents for a British company, International Personal Finance, that serves as a lender to people of modest means in Central and Eastern Europe with little or no access to conventional banks. The company is thriving amid global credit market turmoil that has left many lenders with giant losses and write-downs. While debt may be an unwelcome concept in the United States and Western Europe these days, it looks more attractive to people in Eastern Europe and elsewhere who are just getting a foothold in the consumer economy and are aiming for a better life. International Personal Finance, or I.P.F., has figured out a means to tap that market the old-fashioned way, by extending credit face to face and then keeping a personal eye on its customers. Its agents visit people in their homes to better judge their creditworthiness before offering small cash loans that average about $500 for anything from washing machine repairs to family vacations. Interest payments of about 20 percent attracted criticism from consumer groups and regulators, but the company insists such rates are necessary to pay for the home service and cover its risk. I.P.F.’s profit increased 40 percent this year and its shares, traded on the London Stock Exchange, have risen 52 percent at a time when the values of many American and West European banks are declining. Christopher Rodrigues, the company’s executive chairman, calls I.P.F. the Avon of the financial services industry, a reference to the global direct seller of beauty products. Mr. Rodrigues acknowledged that the company was not immune to the economic woes that beset other banking institutions, but its avoidance of complex financial models and its close contact with its

1.94 million customers allowed it to minimize its risk. While its write-down charges, at 22 percent of revenue, are substantial, it monitors its loans carefully and avoids surprises from huge, unexpected losses. Balazs Pap, head of I.P.F. in Poland, said the business approach went beyond the computer-based credit checks that larger banks relied on. If “someone tells you over the phone they have one child,” he said, “and then you walk into the house and see three pairs of shoes in different sizes,” the agent knows something is wrong. Ms. Rachwal, who has been offering loans for I.P.F. for the last eight years, said that when she visited a customer for the first time, she took a close look at the apartment and tried to find out as much as she could beyond the routine questions about the level of income and whether the household had a telephone. I.P.F. also operates in the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Mexico and plans to expand into Russia, Ukraine and India. As economies grow, customers earn more and are willing and able to borrow larger amounts. Profit at I.P.F. is growing rapidly mainly because it operates in a region whose credit markets are still relatively underdeveloped. In Poland, 40 percent of the population has a bank account compared with 90 percent in Britain. Hanna Krzysiewska-Rybinska, a hospital dietician who lives with her husband and his 90-year-old mother, said she needed money quickly to help her son, a taxi driver, buy a new car. “He can’t get a loan himself because he and his wife just bought a new house and they already have a big mortgage,” Ms. Krzysiewska-Rybinska said. She borrowed 5,000 Polish zloty ($2,225) for two years. She now has to repay 95 zloty ($42) each week, which means after two years she will have repaid 9,880 zloty ($4,396). I.P.F.’s customers in Poland have an average monthly income of 2,500 zloty ($1,112). “With the bank, I have to pay on a fixed date,” she said. “Here I have the flexibility to pay later.”

British creditor profits from small loans in developing countries.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008 science & technology

Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands

A New Road Risk: Driving While Online

By G. PASCAL ZACHARY

Gever Tulley has only one qualification for training software designers how to become more creative. He teaches children how to build objects like gravity-powered wooden roller coasters with their hands, at his Tinkering School in Montara, California, south of San Francisco. Now Mr. Tulley does the same thing for dozens of adults who are in the front ranks of software design at Adobe, the big software supplier based in San Jose, California. In daylong workshops, about 100 Adobe designers wrestle with plastic beads, small electronic displays, Ikea water glasses and tiny sensors to create wacky motion games. Usually, about the only thing these folks touch on the job is a computer mouse. “Some people thought we were crazy to do this,’’ says Michael Gough, a vice president for design at Adobe. “But for others, the experience has started to inform how they work,’’ giving them a better appreciation of how customers experience Adobe’s programs. “So we’re going to keep pushing it,’’ Mr. Gough says. Mr. Tulley’s transformation highlights a little-noticed movement in the world of professional design and engineering: a renewed appreciation for manual labor, or innovating with the aid of human hands. “A lot of people get lost in the world of computer simulation,’’ says Bill Burnett, executive director of the product design program at Stanford University in California. “You can’t simulate everything.’’ Using computers to model the physiG. Pascal Zachary writes about technology and economic development.

Anything that keeps young children pacified on long car trips, like video systems in rear seats, is an aid to automotive safety. Now, Chrysler is poised to offer in its 2009 models a new entertainment option for the children: Wi-Fi and Internet connectivity. The problem is that the entire car Randall becomes a receiver. stRoss The signals won’t be confined to the Nintendos in the rear seat; front-seat occupants will be able to stay online, too. Bad idea. As drivers, we have done poorly resisting the temptation to move our eyes away from the road to check e-mail or send text messages with our cellphones. Now add laptops. Tom Vanderbilt, the author of “Traffic,” a best-selling book about our driving habits, said: “We’ve already seen fatalities from people looking at their laptops while driving. It seems absolutely surprising that Chrysler would open the door for a full-blown distraction like Internet access.” On Chrysler’s Web site, Keefe Leung, a manager in the company’s advanced connectivity technology group, explains the rationale for the service: “People are connected in their lives everywhere today. They’re connected at home, they’re connected at the office, they’re connected at Starbucks when they go for a cup of coffee.” But, he says, “the one place that they spend a lot of time that they’re not connected is in their vehicle, and we want to bring that to them.” Clearly, for safety reasons, Mr. Leung cannot condone use of the service, called UConnect, by drivers. When he is shown in the videos demonstrating it, he always occupies a rear seat. When I asked him about possible misuse of the service by drivers, he said that it was “tailored for kids in the back

ESSAY

BOB MURATA/ADOBE

The world of computer simulation has divorced engineers and designers, like these from Adobe, from older techniques, like soldering. cal world has become increasingly common; products as diverse as cars and planes, pharmaceuticals and cellphones are almost entirely conceived, specified and designed on a computer screen. Typically, only when these creations are nearly ready for mass manufacturing are prototypes made — and often not by the people who designed them. Creative designers and engineers are rebelling against their alienation from the physical world. “The hands-on part is for me a critical aspect of understanding how to design,’’ said Michael Kuniavsky, a consultant in San Francisco who for three years has convened a summer gathering of leading designers, called “Sketching in Hardware.’’ At a recent session, at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, attendees broke into small groups, wielding soldering irons and materials their grandfathers probably knew more about. Such experiences hone instinct and intuition as opposed to logic and cognition, advocates say, and bring the designer closer to art than science. “I’m not sure employers are recog-

nizing the importance of hands-on,’’ Mr. Kuniavsky says. Mr. Gough began to appreciate the possibilities of Mr. Tulley’s “learn by making’’ idea for Adobe only after his own children attended the Tinkering School. Part of corporate resistance to experimenting with hands-on activities comes from the difficulty of measuring the value of paying employees to, say, build a go-cart or a radio set while in the office. Yet educators say the benefits, even if intangible, are clear. “All your intelligence isn’t in your brain,’’ Mr. Burnett says. “You learn through your hands.’’ At Stanford, the rediscovery of human hands arose partly from the frustration of engineering, architecture and design professors who realized that their best students had never taken apart a bicycle or built a model airplane. For much the same reason, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a class, “How to Make (Almost) Anything,’’ which emphasizes learning to use physical tools effectively. “Students are desperate for handson experience,’’ says Neil Gershenfeld, who teaches the course.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University.

seat.” Still, Chrysler is the company that came up with the “living room on wheels” concept for its minivans. It isn’t, though. At my home, the living room is stationary. But on the road, my “room” may collide with yours. The United States Transportation Department in August released the final totals for American traffic accidents last year: 2.49 million people injured and 41,059 dead. That’s just a single year’s tally. As Mr. Vanderbilt says in his book, many people have been willing to accept curtailed civil liberties as a response to terrorist threats, but many of the same people “have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll,” like curbing cellphone use while driving or lowering the speed limit. Two studies, one Canadian and reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, the other Australian and reported by the British Medical Association, examined cellphone records of people injured in automobile crashes. Both studies concluded that when drivers were talking on phones, they were four times as likely to get into serious crashes. The studies show that laws mandating the use of hands-free phones are little help: the increased risk of injury is attributable to the cognitive impairment from the phone conversation and was just as high for those using hands-free sets as for those with hand-held ones. J. R. Peter Kissinger, president of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in Washington, calls “distracted driving” one of the leading threats to “all of us who drive or walk in this country.” Will drivers exercise good sense and not use their laptops while driving? He is not sanguine. Mr. Kissinger said: “I can picture two teenagers in the front and the passenger pulls up a YouTube video. I can’t imagine the driver saying, ‘I’m going to pull over and stop so I can safely watch what you’re laughing at.’ ”

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le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

7

americana

Governing Alaska Presents Unusual Challenges By KIRK JOHNSON

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Like many other distinctions about Alaska — the biggest, wildest, coldest state not even half a century removed from its territorial days — being governor here is just different. alaa “Alaska is its own   world,” said Tony Knowles, a Democrat who served as governor from 1994 to 2002. Sarah Palin’s experience as Alaska’s governor since taking office in late 2006 has been a central argument by Republicans that she is fit to serve as vice president. At the Republican convention on September 3 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Ms. Palin and other speakers contended that her time as governor has given her more practical experience than Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee. Many Americans in other states, though, might not recognize the job she holds or the unusual challenges she has faced — from managing a $5 billion budget surplus in a time of economic distress elsewhere, to upending an entrenched political establishment within her own William Yardley contributed reporting. party that was literally around for the

state’s founding. Alaska’s economic well-being — sustained by oil and federal spending — has allowed Ms. Palin to avoid some of the tough budgetary choices vexing governors in dozens of other states. That in turn raises questions for some people about how much her experience is relevant to the rest of the nation, worried about the winter gas bills and the mortgage. At a time when most other state governments are cutting back, Alaska is now distributing $1,200-per-resident oil-bounty bonus checks. By other measures, Alaska is harder to govern than the smaller, more settled realm of other states. With vast distances (its 1.8 million square kilometers of land mass is about the same size as Libya’s), large numbers of indigenous peoples and a narrowly based extraction economy — with a handful of giant multinational oil corporations dominating the game — some economists say a country like Nigeria is a better comparison. “Alaska really is a colonial place,” said Stephen Haycox, a professor of history at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. “One third of the economic base is oil; another third is federal spending. The economy is extremely narrow and highly dependent. It’s not to say that Alaska is a beggar state, but it certainly is true that Alaska is dependent on decisions made outside it, and over which Alaskans don’t

have great control.” Alaska only became a state in 1959, which has meant two crucial things to Ms. Palin’s rise. First, the State Constitution concentrates power in the governor’s office more thoroughly than in almost any other state — a legacy of the late 1950s, historians say, when statehood and a simultaneous trend all over the country toward elevating executive authority

A frontier spirit, but an economy controlled by outside forces. coincided. Second, this recent history has meant that the early leaders of statehood are not mere names in history books but are in many cases still around and even still in power, like Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, both Republicans with decades in Washington. That old guard is still revered by some Alaskans, but it is disdained by others who have been on the lookout for fresh Republican faces. It is in that densely layered Alaskan

mix that Ms. Palin rose, governed and must be understood, academics and people in both parties say — not as merely a governor, or a woman, but as an Alaskan. “The frontier mentality, whether myth or not, is still alive,” said Donald Linky, director of the Program on the Governor, at the Eagleton Institute of MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Flush with petro dollars, Alaska is the rare Perhaps the biggest difstate with a budget surplus. ference between Alaska and other states comes down to money. Alaska, at the opposite eral crucial bills, and was not above usend of the energy equation from the ing her personal popularity in the state one most Americans know, is booming to suggest that anyone in the Legislature as never before from the rise in energy who disagreed with her was under the sway of Big Oil. prices in the last year. “People were afraid to vote ‘no’ But if Ms. Palin’s arrival in power just in time for a new boom was good luck, against her,” said Lyda Green, a state what she did in pushing her agenda — senator and Republican. In the oil indusincluding a tax increase on the oil in- try tax overhaul, for example, Ms. Green dustry, building from a process begun said the pressure became intense. “Her extraordinary popularity and by her predecessor — was more about how Alaskan politics is played. In the this intense dislike of the industry that process, people here say that a steely many Alaskans have — you put those populist emerged from behind the sweet two together and it’s tough,” she said. smile. She worked with Democrats, who “People would go to town meetings and are in the minority in the Legislature, to come back feeling compelled to support trump members of her own party on sev- her.”

A Town Where the Teachers Carry Guns as Well as Books By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Mr. Thweatt maintains that having teachers carry guns is a rational response to a real threat. The county sheriff’s office is 27 kilometers away, he argues, and the district cannot afford to hire police officers, as urban schools in Dallas and Houston do. Teachers have received training from a private security consultant and will use special ammunition designed to prevent ricocheting, Mr. Thweatt said. Harrold is about 290 kilometers northwest of Dallas, far from the giant districts in major Texas cities. Barely 100 students of all ages attend classes here in two brick buildings built more than 60 years ago. There are two dozen teachers. Yet the town is not isolated in rustic peace, supporters of the plan point out. A four-lane highway runs through town, bringing with it a river of humanity, including criminals, they say. The police recently shut down a drug-producing laboratory in a ramshackle house near school property. Drifters sometimes sleep under the overpass. “I’m not exactly paranoid,” Mr. Thweatt said. “I like to consider myself prepared.” Some residents and parents, however, think Mr. Thweatt may be overstating the threat. Many say they rarely lock their doors, much less worry about random drifters with pistols attacking the school. Longtime residents were unable to recall a single violent incident there. “I don’t think there is a place in the school whatsoever for a gun unless you have a police officer in there,” said Bobby G. Brown, a farmer and former school board REX CURRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES chairman whose two sons were educated at the school. “I don’t care David Thweatt says teachers with how much training they have.” firearms could prevent a massacre. Mr. Thweatt declined to say how many teachers were armed, tendent and driving force behind the or who they were, on the theory that it policy. “Country people are take-care- would tip off the bad guys. Most critics question whether teachof-yourself people. They are not under the illusion that the police are there to ers, even with extra training, are as qualified as police officers to deal with protect them.” Even in Texas, with its tradition of le- an armed attacker. “We are trained to teach and to edunient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers’ taking guns to class cate,” said Zeph Capo, the legislative has rattled some people and sparked a director for the Houston Association of Teachers. “We are not trained to tame fiery debate. Gun-control advocates are upset, the Wild West.” Traci McKay, a 34-year-old restauwhile pro-gun groups are gleeful. Leaders of the state’s major teachers unions rant employee, sends three children to have expressed stunned outrage, while the school, yet said she had not heard the conservative Republican governor, about the pistol-carrying teachers until two weeks before the start of the seRick Perry, has endorsed the idea. In the center of the storm is Mr. mester. She was stunned. “I should have been informed,” Ms. Thweatt, a man who describes himself as “a contingency planner,” who be- McKay said. “If something happens, do lieves Americans should be less afraid we really want all these people shooting at each other?” of protecting themselves. HARROLD, Texas — Students in this tiny town of grain silos and ranch-style houses spent much of the first couple of days in school last month trying to guess which of their teach
ea ers were carrying pistols
 under their clothes. “We made fun of them,” said Eric Howard, a 16-yearold high school junior. “Everybody knows everybody here. We will find out.” The school board in this impoverished rural hamlet in North Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre like the one that happened at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. “Our people just don’t want their children to be fish in a bowl,” said David Thweatt, the schools superin-

MONICA ALMEIDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ed Mendoza says the return of farming to the Gila River reservation could help restore traditional Indian diets.

With Water Comes Hope for Better Health By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY, Arizona — More than a hundred years ago, the Gila River, siphoned off by farmers upstream, all but dried up here in the parched flats south of Phoenix, plunging an Indian community that had ariona

    depended on it for  centuries of farming into starvation and poverty. If that were not bad enough, food rations sent by the federal government — white flour, lard, canned meats and other sugary, processed foods — conspired with the genetic anomalies of the Indians to create an obesity epidemic that has left the reservation with among the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Now, after decades of litigation that produced the largest water-rights settlement ever with Indian tribes, the Indians here are getting some of their water back. And with it has come the question: Can a healthier lifestyle lost generations ago be restored? Reviving the farming tradition will prove difficult, many tribal members say, because the tribes, who number 20,000, including about 12,000 on the reservation, have not farmed on a big scale for generations. Fast food is a powerful lure, particularly for the young, and the trend lately has been to move off the reservation, to work or live. “Nobody wants to get out and get dirt

under their fingernails,” said Pancratious Harvey, one of a handful of tribal members who began a community garden a couple of years ago. Still, the garden, which is filled with vegetables that were once staples in the tribe’s diet, is a sign of enthusiasm for farming that members believe could spread as the water arrives. Most of the water was diverted in the late 19th century, slowing the Gila River to a trickle. It was a startling turn of events for a tribe whose ancestors had

A revival of traditional agriculture offers an alternative to fast food. thrived on the river for generations through an elaborate system of ditches and laterals, some of them still visible today. The construction of the Coolidge Dam, completed in 1928 by the federal government, was intended to restore some of the lost water, but the reservation never received enough to bring back farming in any significant way. Now, the sound of earthmovers fills the air as workers repair dilapidated and abandoned irrigation canals and ditches and dig new ones to distribute billions of liters of water that the community will

soon be receiving. The water settlement, involving the two principal tribes on the Gila River reservation — the Pima, who call themselves Akimel O’otham, or “river people,” and the Maricopa — as well as a related band, the Tohono O’odham Nation on the Mexican border, took effect this year, after being approved by Congress in 2004. When completed it will allow the community to double the amount of farming, both an economic and cultural boon. The reservation has discussed farming some 60,000 hectares, 40 percent of its 150,000 hectares, once the water begins flowing again. Scientists have found the genetic makeup of the tribe leaves it predisposed to weight gain from sugary foods. That, coupled with the decline in activity from farming and the drop in the consumption of natural foods, probably explains the high rate of the disease, said Leonard Sanders, a diabetes specialist on the reservation. For the time being, the community garden, with squash, beans and other vegetables, is just under one hectare. “We’re relearning how to grow them,” said Ed Mendoza, one of the founders of the garden, the Vah-Ki Cooperative Garden. “People get sick with diabetes, they’re obese, and there are heart attacks and stress because we eat an American diet now. Beans regulate the highs and lows of sugar. Okra makes you healthy. You can eat this food and feel the spirit immediately.”

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le monde

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008 arts & styles

Spencers Married Well, But Failed to Find Love By BARBARA KANTROWITZ

Born to one of the richest families in England, she married into a clan that was even wealthier and more eminent. Her husband was nearly a decade older and never pretended to feel anything close to the romantic love she yearned for. Instead he took a mistress. But if he didn’t want his wife, just about everyone else did. She was a huge celebrity with a unique sense of style that was widely copied. Above all, she was devoted to her children. Does the story line sound familiar? Diana, Princess of Wales, was not the first member of the aristocratic Spencer family to win the heart of her country but not her husband. In 1774 her ancestor Lady Georgiana Spencer married

A period film reveals eerie parallels to the life of Princess Diana. the Duke of Devonshire, who had been considered the most eligible bachelor in England. Their sad union is the focus of “The Duchess,” which opened September 5 in England before its release in other countries. Based on Amanda Foreman’s 1998 best-selling biography, “Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire,” the film concentrates on only about 10 years in Georgiana’s life, starting with her arranged marriage at 17. It’s a compelling story, but period films like “The Duchess” are a hard sell to mass audiences, even when they have big names like Keira Knightley in the title role and Ralph Fiennes as her husband. With so many uncanny parallels in the two women’s lives, pushing the Diana connection is an obvious market-

ing tactic. Like Diana, Georgiana, whom friends called G, was thrust into public life with little preparation through marriage to a famous man. Her every move was chronicled in the tabloids of the day. Diana took up causes like AIDS and landmine victims; Georgiana was passionate about politics, even though women could not vote. She campaigned, raised money and recruited for the Whig Party until the day she died in 1806 at 48, Ms. Foreman said. Both Diana and Georgiana had to contend with other women in their marriages. With Diana, it was Camilla Parker Bowles, whose relationship with Prince Charles began many years before Diana entered the picture. Lonely and dissatisfied, Georgiana unwittingly created her own ménage à trois when she invited Lady Elizabeth Foster (known as Bess) to live with her as a companion. Bess became her closest friend, but before long the duke was equally entranced. He and Bess became lovers, and three years after Georgiana died, he married her. Poor Charles had to wait nearly eight years after Diana’s death to wed Camilla. Like Diana, Georgiana also sought affection elsewhere. The love of her life was Charles Grey, a prominent Whig who was eventually elected prime minister. (Earl Grey tea is named after him.) They had an affair, and Georgiana became pregnant with his child. Her husband threatened to keep their three children away from her if she lived with Grey, so she went to France to have the child and surrendered the little girl, named Eliza Courtney, to Grey’s family. Perhaps the most eerie parallel is that both Diana and Georgiana had the eating disorder bulimia, apparently brought on by the emotional insecurity of a loveless marriage. Despite the particular pressures of their lives, both Diana and Georgiana were devoted to their children. Georgiana had three with the duke, two girls and,

PETER MOUNTAIN/PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Hayley Atwell, left, and Keira Knightley in “The Duchess,’’ a film about Georgiana Spencer. finally, the long-awaited male heir. Of all these parallels, Ms. Foreman said, the one that resonates the most with her is the way the two women used their celebrity. Like Diana, Georgiana “literally couldn’t walk outside her house without being besieged,” Ms. Foreman said. “She absolutely struggled to find a way to be herself when everyone was trying to define her.” Politics gave her life meaning. Ms. Foreman is less sanguine about comparing the two marriages: “It’s as Tolstoy says, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Both Georgiana and the duke were exceptionally needy people, Ms. Foreman said. “That meant that each one was looking to the other” for attention that neither was able to give. When Bess Foster entered the household, she min-

istered to both husband and wife. The duke, in turn, supplied the political clout Bess needed to see her children from her first marriage after her ex-husband denied contact. “She was able to channel her needs into making herself indispensable to both of them,” Ms. Foreman said. Georgiana’s celebrity was bewildering and even alarming to the duke. “It was horrifying to him to go to a theater and become the object of mass admiration and hilarity and excitement,” Ms. Foreman said. “That wasn’t him. He couldn’t understand why anybody would like that.” But doesn’t that sound a little like news-media accounts of Charles’s reaction to Diana’s celebrity? Ms. Foreman isn’t convinced. “Until I get to read Prince Charles’s personal letters, there is nothing that I am going to believe,” she said. “Unless it came from his mouth,

who knows?” The filmmakers say comparisons to Diana aren’t the only draw. The director, Saul Dibb, said he thought that women would relate to Georgiana’s struggles: “This terribly bright and talented woman is constantly fighting to try and find a kind of freedom for herself. And is constantly thwarted in the process.” Getting a movie made about such a complex historical personality took almost a decade, said the producer Gabrielle Tana, who bought the rights in 1998. The Diana parallels may draw some into theaters, but Mr. Dibb said he hoped that the story would be the lure. “It’s really about what it is like to live the life of a rebellious woman in the public eye,” he said. So take your choice: Britney? Lindsay? Hillary? They could all pick up a few pointers from the duchess.

Persian Fiddler, Cultural Ambassador By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

In “Silent City,” a hypnotic work commemorating Halabjah, a Kurdish village annihilated by Saddam Hussein, the kamancheh, an upright four-stringed Persian fiddle, breaks out in a lamenting wail based on a traditional Turkish melody. “Silent City” is included on a new disc of the same name on the World Village label, which Kayhan Kalhor, a virtuoso kamancheh player, recorded with the young string quartet Brooklyn Rider. The work opens with a desolate murmuring improvised by the strings, eerily evoking the swirling dust of barren ruins, with a Kurdish melody heralding the rebuilding of the destroyed village. It has a particular resonance for Mr. Kalhor, 45, who was born in Tehran to a family of Kurdish descent. The sound of the kamancheh is “warm and very close to the human voice,” he said by phone from Tehran, where he now lives. He began studying the kamancheh at 7 and playing with Iran’s National Orchestra of Radio and Television at 13. He left the country after the Islamic Revolution (when universities were closed for several years) and lived in several Western countries, including Canada, where he studied music composition at Carleton University in Ottawa. His main motivation for leaving Iran was not political, he said; it was to further his musical studies. Mr. Kalhor met members of Brooklyn Rider in 2000 at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts, where they took part in the cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. The quartet’s members are Colin Jacobsen and Jonathan Gandelsman, violinists; Nicholas Cords, violist; and Eric Jacobsen, cellist. “Silent City” is the result of eight years of learning and experimentation, Mr. Cords said. “We enjoyed each other on first meeting and were fascinated with his world, but at the beginning wouldn’t have dreamed of making this recording together.” Mr. Kalhor is well versed in cross-cultural partnerships. His many successful musical collaborations include Ghazal, a duo with the Indian sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan. The sitar and kamancheh work well together, Mr. Kalhor said, largely because of the “affinity of the two cultures” and their many historical connections. He has also performed with the New York Philharmonic and at the Mostly Mozart Festival. On October 18, he will appear at Carnegie Hall. He said he rarely performed in Iran because of the bureaucracy involved in organizing a concert. Mr. Kalhor insists on a deep understanding of the musical cultures he works with. “Nowadays with a lot of musical collaborations and fusion music, it’s obvious that the performers really don’t know each other’s culture,” he said. As an Iranian musician who frequently performs

TODD ROSENBERG

Kayhan Kalhor, a master of the kamancheh, was born in Tehran of Kurdish descent. He frequently performs for Western audiences. onlIne: aUdIo

An excerpt from the title track of Kayhan Kalhor’s album “Silent City,’’ recorded with the group Brooklyn Rider. nytimes.com/music

for Western audiences, Mr. Kalhor, who has lived in New York (he returned to Tehran in 2003), said that he inevitably faced political questions. But he stressed that he was a cultural ambassador, not a politician. “We are always in the middle of politics,” he said, laughing. “We go to a concert and boom, a political question about the government, about the president, etc.” For that reason, his ensemble with the celebrated Iranian singer Muhammad Reza Shajarian, the singer Homayoun Shajarian and the lute player Hussein Alizadeh is called the Masters of Persian Music, not Iranian Music. “For political reasons, I think we didn’t want people to think it has anything to do with today’s politics of Iran or the U.S. or any culture for that matter,” Mr. Kalhor explained, adding that the culture of Persia (which was renamed Iran in 1935) goes back much further. “When we say Persian we don’t mean today’s Iranian borders.”