MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008 Copyright © 2008 The New York Times

Supplemento al numero

odierno de la RepubblicaSped. abb. postale art. 1

legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

P U B B L I C I T Á

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

LYON, France — Strolling the streets of Lyon with his wife last October, Buti Saeed al-Ghandi was suddenly overcome by a double wave of love, for the city and for his spouse. So Mr. Ghandi, a 40-

year-old entrepreneur, decided to capture the magic of the moment by building a little Lyon — back home in Dubai. “I travel all around

the world, and Lyon is one of those places that make you feel differ-ent,’’ Mr. Ghandi said. “The people do not live at a fast pace of life. There is an intimacy with visitors. There is so much history and culture, the small streets, the small shops, the old houses. I also fell in love againwithmywife there, and that’salso why I love Lyon.’’Certainly Lyon — with its two rivers,

its Gallic-Roman ruins, its 300 Renais-sance merchant houses and its gastro-nomic reputation — is special, even in France. In January Mr. Ghandi, chairman of

Emirates Investment andDevelopment,signedadealwithLyon’smayorandsev-eral local entities to embark on a grandarchitecturaladventure forDubai,oneofthe sevenprincipalities thatmakeup the

UnitedArabEmirates.The project, temporarily called Lyon-

DubaiCity,will includeauniversity;mu-seums; housing, hotel and office space; cafes, restaurants, pedestrian malls, town squares, courtyards, a film center, maybe even a church, all inspired by Lyon, France’s third-largest city with a population of about 450,000. As of now, little Lyon will cover 300 to 400 hect-ares. The Paul Bocuse Institute is hoping to

set up a branch to train young chefs and restaurantandhotelmanagers.TheMu-seum of Textiles is poised to open a silk museum and lend select treasures from

its vast silk collection. Research is under way to cool outdoor spaces naturally to make strolling bearable dur-ing dust storms and 40-degree heat.Whattheprojectmust

not do, its participants insist, is clone Lyon. “This will not be Dis-

neyland orLasVegas,’’said Jean-Paul Lebas,the project’s planner,who helped rebuildBeirut after Lebanon’scivil war. “We have tomake people feel thatthey are there withoutcopying the architec-ture of Lyon — that isthe challenge. The so-cialwill bemore impor-

tant than the physical. The smiles seenon the faces of others will come first.I know it’s a bit virtual, but if one suc-ceeds. ...’’ Mayor Gérard Collomb wasmore direct. “We will give Dubai thesoul of Lyon,’’ he said.Then there is the issue of alcohol and

pork, both forbidden under Islam. Pork-based charcuterie is a staple of Lyon’s traditional gastronomy, while wine is crucial to French dining.For Mr. Ghandi, there should be no

gastronomic or alcoholic censure. “It’s not an issue,’’ he said. “We are an inter-national city in Dubai. You give people the freedom to do what they like to do.’’

ED ALCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

An entrepreneur from Dubai hopes to replicate scenes from Lyon

in his homeland. A view of Lyon from the bank of the Saône River.

Planting the Soul of Lyon in the Dubai Desert Political AnimalsBrainy species campaign in

sophisticated social networks.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY VI

This Election Season, a Darker Mood

By KEVIN SACK

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Whatever their ideological differences this election year, Americans seem able to agree on one thing: the political landscape being criss-crossedbythe2008candidates isbarelyrec-ognizable as the one traveled by George W. Bush and Al Gore a mere eight years ago. Obviously, September 11 and its after-

mathhavechangedthecountry incountless and irretrievableways.Butevenbeyondthe emergence of war and national security as pre-eminentconcerns, therehasbeenapro-found reordering of domestic priorities, a darkening of the country’s mood and, in the eyes of many, a fraying of America’s very sense of itself. While not universal, that tone pervaded

dozens of interviews conducted recently withAmericans in8of the24states thathold primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, when 41 percent of Republican delegates and 52 per-centofDemocraticdelegateswillbechosen, a process that may determine the frontrun-ners for both parties’ nominations. The candidates in these states are con-

frontinganelectoratethatisdeeplyunsettledabout the United States’ place in the worldand itsability tocontrol itsowndestiny.Since World War II, American hegemony

has gradually taken shape. That it is now in doubt, at least for some people, has given this campaign a sense of urgency that was not always felt in 2000.Several writers and historians remarked

on thepsychological impact of the endof theAmericansupremacy.Now,Americansfeelalossofautonomy, intheirownlivesandinthenation. Their politics are driven by the pow-erlessness they feel tocontrol their financialwell-being, their safety, their environment,theirhealthandthecountry’sborders.Theyquestion whether each generation will con-tinue toascendtheeconomic ladder.As she considers this campaign, Susan

C. Powell, a 47-year-old training consultant who lives in a Kansas City suburb, said that what she feels is not so much hopelessness as doom. “I know plenty of people who are doing

U.S. Power Begins to Fray, Rattling Voters

By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON—The race for the Democraticpresidential nominationmayhave its divisivemo-ments, but it is generating intense interest andenthusiasm among the party’s members: signifi-cantly greater, by several measures, than the Re-publicancontest, political experts say.In the first four contests in which both parties

have competed, theDemocrats have set records forturnout andsubstantially exceeded theRepublicanshowing, according to state parties and state elec-

tion tallies. In South Carolina on January 26, for example, more than 530,000 Democrats voted, nearly twice the Democratic turnout of 2004, and nearly20percenthigher than theRepublicanvote the week before.Other indicators of an enthusiasm gap show up

in polls, with more Democrats than Republicansreporting excitement about voting this year and astrong commitment to their candidate, accordingtorecentNewYorkTimes/CBSNewspolls.Demo-cratic presidential candidates have also regularly

raisedmoremoney than theRepublicans.“The Democrats are having an extraordinary

year in terms of raising money,’’ said Anthony J.Corrado Jr., a professor of government at ColbyCollege in Waterville, Maine, and an expert oncampaign finance.The meaning of all this for the November elec-

tion, however, is amatterofdispute.Democratic leadersarguethat itpoints toaunit-

Democrats’ Fervor Leaves Some Republicans Unfazed

Continued on Page IV

YANA PASKOVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Americans face a dramatically different political landscape from 2000. Voters awaited the outcome of the South Carolina primary on January 19.

Continued on Page IV

Magical at First SightAt the Cloisters, a vision of the

Middle Ages on American soil.

NEW YORK VII

Repubblica NewYork

OP I N I O N & COMMENTARY

II MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008

Direttore responsabile: EzioMauroVicedirettori:MauroBene,

Gregorio Botta, Dario Cresto-DinaMassimoGiannini, AngeloRinaldi

Caporedattore centrale: AngeloAquaroCaporedattore vicario: FabioBogoGruppoEditoriale l’Espresso S.p.A.

•

Presidente onorario: Carlo CaraccioloPresidente: CarloDeBenedetti

Consigliere delegato:MarcoBenedettoDivisione laRepubblica

via Cristoforo Colombo 90 - 00147RomaDirettore generale: CarloOttino

Responsabile trattamento dati (d. lgs.30/6/2003 n. 196): EzioMauroReg. Trib. di Roman. 16064 del

13/10/1975Tipografia: Rotocolor,v. C. Colombo 90RM

Stampa: Rotocolor, v. C. Cavallari186/192 Roma; Sage, v. N. Sauro15 - PadernoDugnanoMI ; FinegilEditoriale c/o CitemSoc. Coop. arl,

v. G.F. Lucchini -MantovaPubblicità: A.Manzoni &C.,

viaNervesa 21 -Milano - 02.57494801•

Supplemento a cura di: AlixVanBuren,FrancescoMalgaroli

The Boomerang EffectFor more than a decade, Pakistan’s

powerful and secretive intelligence service has fueled a treacherous dy-namic in South Asia by supporting Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now comes the distressing, but not surprising, news that the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence, has lost control of some of these Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked networks. The militants have turned on their former patrons and helped carry out a record number of suicide attacks inside Pakistan in 2007, including possibly the one that killed Benazir Bhutto.A January 15 report in The New York

Times is one more alarming sign of instability in the nuclear-armed state that is supposed to be America’s lead-ing ally in the war on terrorism. It fur-ther confirms the failings of President Pervez Musharraf’s government in fighting extremists, despite $10 billion in American aid since 9/11.It apparently seemed likeagood idea

in the 1990s for the ISI to back militants as a proxy force to compete with India in Kashmir and to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan. (The United States contributed to the problem in the 1980s when it also funneled funds through ISI to militants fighting Soviet forces inAfghanistan.)Nowit isagrave threat to Pakistan. The insurgency re-cently has begun spilling out of the law-less tribal areas along the Afghan bor-der and into the city of Peshawar.Mr. Musharraf has rejected the

idea of unilateral moves by the UnitedStates to chaseTalibanandQaedamil-itants on Pakistani soil. But Admiral

William J. Fallon, the American com-mander of the Central Command, saidthat Pakistani officials are receptiveto having American troops train andadvise their forces in counterinsur-gency. He said the assistance will be“more robust.”The United States, already bogged

down in Iraq and Afghanistan, must be extremely careful about further mili-tary entanglement in Pakistan. As a long-term solution, it must encourage political and legal reforms in the tribal areas and spend as quickly as pos-sible a new $750 million allocation by Congress that could improve the lives of Pakistanis and deprive militants of new converts. Other aid must be heav-ily focused on building democratic in-stitutions.The Times also reported that the ISI

manipulated Pakistan’s last national election. Many Pakistanis already sus-pected as much and fear it could be re-peated in theFebruary 18parliamenta-ryvote.TheonlywayforMr.Musharraf to regain any credibility is by ensuring that the election is free and fair.Jailed activists must be released.

Ousted judges must be restored. Jour-nalists must be able to report freely. International monitors must have maximum access to assess the voting. And Mr. Musharraf must work cooper-atively with whatever leaders the elec-tion produces. The signs aren’t encour-aging. Instead, ever more paranoid, he directed his staff to develop a strategy for countering “Western propaganda.” He’s his own worst enemy and increas-ingly Pakistan’s as well.

Unkept Promises in Darfur

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S

The new United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur is not off to an encouraging start. The five-year-long genocide has already killed some 200,000 people and driven

two and a half million more from their homes.What isurgentlyneededtosave thosewhoremainaremorepeacekeep-ers, better equipment and a lot less ob-struction from Sudan.The joint force took over last month

from an earlier African Union force of 7,000 that was too small and too poorly equipped.Thenewonewassupposedto be the largest internationalpeacekeep-ing force ever authorized, with nearly 20,000moresoldiersandpoliceofficers, modernhelicoptersandotheradvanced equipment.By the start of this year, barely a

tenth of those additional forces were in place, and much of the needed new equipment had not arrived. When the peacekeeperswerequicklyattackedby Sudanese forces, they had to withdraw without returning fire.While claiming that it will cooperate,

Khartoumhasrepeatedlytriedtohobblethe force.Sudan’spresident,OmarHas-sanal-Bashir,recenltychoseanotoriousleaderof the janjaweed, themilitias thathavecarriedoutmostof thekilling, tobeaseniorgovernmentadviser.The world’s leaders say they care

desperately about Darfur’s suffer-ing. But caring is not enough. What isneeded is troops, equipment and a lotmore diplomatic pressure on Sudan.The word of the United Nations is onthe line, andsoare the livesofDarfur’speople.

In the wake of George W. Bush, even a miracle might not be enough for the Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008. But what about two miracles? The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at lastgive theRepublicanPartyahighly plausible route to victory.Amazingly, neither party seems

to fully recognize the contours of theroad map. In the Democrats’ case,the full-throttle emergence of Bil-lary, the joint Clinton candidacy, ismeasured mainly within the narrowconfines of the short-termhorse race:Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptionsand fact-challenged rants enhance ordiminish his wife as a woman and acandidate?Absent from this debate is any so-

ber recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens,will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ron-ald Reagan.What has gone unspoken is this: Up

until this moment, Hillary has suc-cessfully deflected rough questions about Bill by saying, “I’m running on my own” or, as she snapped at Barack Obama in the last debate, “Well, I’m here; he’s not.” This sleight of hand becameofficially inoperativeonceher husband became a co-candidate, even to the point of taking over entirely when she vacated South Carolina re-cently. With “two for the price of one” backas theunabashedmodusoperan-di, both Clintons are in play.For the Republicans, that means

not just a double dose of the one ste-roid, Clinton hatred, that might yet restore their party’s unity but also two fat targets. Mrs. Clinton repeat-edly talks of how she’s been “vetted” and that “there are no surprises” left to be mined by her opponents. On the amorningnewsprogramrecently, she joked that theRepublicanattacks“are just so old.” So far. Now that Mr. Clin-ton is ubiquitous, not only is his past back on the table but his post-presi-dency must be checked out as well. To get a taste of what surprises may be in store, you need merely revisit the Bill Clinton questions that Hillary Clinton has avoided to date.Asked by Tim Russert at a Septem-

ber debate whether the Clinton presi-dential library and foundation would disclose the identitiesof itsdonorsdur-ing the campaign, Mrs. Clinton said it wasn’t up to her. “What’s your recom-mendation?” Mr. Russert countered. Mrs. Clinton replied: “Well, I don’t talk about my private conversations with my husband, but I’m sure he’d be happy to consider that.”Not so happy, as it turns out. The

names still have not been made pub-lic.Just before the holidays at the end

of last year, investigative reporters at both The Washington Post and The New York Times tried to find out why, with no help from the Clintons. The Post uncovered a plethora of foreign contributors, led by Saudi Arabia. The Times found an overlap between library benefactors and Hillary Clin-ton campaign donors, some of whom might have an agenda with a new Clinton administration. (Much as one early library supporter, Denise Rich, the ex-wife of Marc Rich, pardoned late in the Clinton presidency, had an agenda.) “The vast scale of these se-cret fund-raising operations presents enormous opportunities for abuse,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat whose legis-lation to force disclosure passed over-whelmingly in the House but remains stalled in the Senate.The Post and Times reporters

couldn’t unlock all the secrets. Theunanswered questions could keepthemand their competitors busyuntilNovember 4. Mr. Clinton’s increasedcentrality to the campaign will alsogive The Wall Street Journal morereasons to continue its reportorialforays into the unraveling financialpartnership betweenMr. Clinton andthe swashbuckling billionaire RonBurkle.At “Little Rock’s Fort Knox,” as the

Clinton library has been nicknamed by frustrated researchers, it’s not merely the heavy-hitting contributors whose identitiesarebeingkept secret. Even by the incredibly ponderous

processing standards of the National Archives, the Clintons’ White House papers have emerged slowly, in part because Bill Clinton exercised his right to insist that all communications between him and his wife be “consid-ered for withholding” until 2012.WhenMrs.ClintonwasaskedbyMr.

Russert at an October debate if she would lift that restriction, she again escaped by passing the responsibility to her husband: “Well, that’s not my decision to make.” Well, if her candi-dacy is to be as completely checked out as she guarantees, the time for the other half of Billary to make that deci-sion is here.The credibility of a major Clinton

campaignplank,healthcare, depends on it. In that same debate, Mrs. Clin-ton told Mr. Russert that “all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care” are “already available.”AsMichael Isikoff ofNews-week reported weeks later, this is a bit off;he found that 3,022,030healthcare documentswerestillheldhostage.The gatekeeper charged with approving each document’s release is the long-time Clinton loyalist Bruce Lindsey.People don’t change. Bill Clinton,

having always lived on the edge, isback on the precipice. When he re-peatedly complains that thepresshas

givenMr.Obamaa free ride andover-investigated the Clintons, he seemsto be tempting the fates, given all thereporting still to be done on his post-presidential business. When he says,as he did on January 21, that “what-ever I do should be totally transpar-ent,” it’s almost as if he’s setting him-self up for trouble. There’s little moretransparency at “Little Rock’s FortKnox” than there is at Giuliani Part-ners, the consulting firm formed bythe formermayor of NewYorkwhosepresidential campaign has gone donein flames .“The Republicans are not going to

have any compunctions about ask-ing anybody anything,” Mrs. Clinton lectured Mr. Obama. Maybe so, but Republicans are smart enough not to start asking until after she has se-cured the nomination.Not all Republicans are smart

enough,however, to recognize theval-ueofJohnMcCainshouldMrs.Clinton emergeasthenominee.Heisaweapon aimed at most every rationale she has offered for her candidacy.In a McCain vs. Billary race, the

Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the en-tire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s talk about being “test-ed” by her “35 years of experience” will not work either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. McCain will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, in 1973. It was that spring when he emerged from

five-plus years of incarceration at the Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law School. And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell her-selfasbestequippedtobecommander in chief “on Day One” when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I don’t think so.Foreignpolicy issueNo.1,withdraw-

al from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for any Democrat. Even the audience the Republican debate in Boca Raton, Florida, cheered Ron Paul’s antiwar sentiments. But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002 and was still defending it in Feb-ruary 2005, when she announced from the Green Zone that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well.” Only in No-vember 2005 did she express the seri-ous misgivings long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. McCain accuses herofnowadvocating“surrender”out of political expediency, her flip-flop-ping will back him up.Billary can’t even run against the

vast right-wing conspiracy if Mr. Mc-Cain is the opponent. the conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and former Republican Senator Tom DeLay hate Mr. McCain as much as they hate the Clintons. And they hate him for the same

reasons Mr. McCain wins over inde-pendents and occasionalDemocrats:his sporadic (and often mild) depar-tures from conservative orthodoxyon immigration and campaign fi-nance reform, torture, tax cuts, cli-mate change and the godliness of thetelevangelist Pat Robertson. SinceMr. McCain doesn’t kick reporterslike dogs, as the Clintons do, he willno doubt continue to enjoy an advan-tage, however unfair, with the presspack on his campaign bus, which car-ries the samename it had in 2000: theStraight TalkExpress.Evenso,Mr.McCainhasnotyetwon

a clear majority of Republican voters in any G.O.P. contest. He’s depended on thekindnessof independentvoters. But in Tuesday’s Florida primary, he passed a crucial test. He defeated Mitt Romney by a solid margin in a hard-foughtrace,andhehas themomentum going into this Tuesday, when more than20stateswillhold theirprimaries and about 40 percent of the delegates needed to secure the nomination are decided.Mr. Obama won the South Carolina

primary on January 26, and now the partyneedshimtostopwhiningabout the Clintons’ attacks, regain his wit and return to playing offense. Unlike Mrs.Clinton,hewouldunambiguously represent change in a race with any Republican. If he vanquishes Billary, he will have an even stronger argu-ment to take into battle against a war-rior like Mr. McCain.If Mr. Obama doesn’t fight, no one

else will. Few national Democratic leaders have the courage to stand up to the Clintons. Even in defeat, Mr. Obama may at least help wake up a party slipping into denial. Any Demo-crat who seriously thinks that Bill will fade away if Hillary wins the nomina-tion — let alone that the Clintons will escapebeing fullyvetted—isaDemo-crat who, as the man said, believes in fairy tales.

FRANK RICH

The Billary Road to Republican Victory

Mrs. Clinton says ‘there are no surprises’ left on her. Some aren’t so sure.

Whales in the Navy’s WayAccording to a federal judge in

California, the Navy’s own research predicted that its sonar training exer-cises off the California coast will cause widespread harm — and possibly per-manent injury or death — to nearly 30 species of marine mammals, including fivespeciesofendangeredwhales.That still did not stop the Bush administra-tion from rejecting the judge’s plan to protect these animals from avoidable harm.There is little doubt that the Navy’s

mid-frequency active sonar is an ef-fective tool for locating quiet-running submarinesandthat training isneeded in shallow waters where sound propa-gatesdifferentlythanintheopenocean. The problem is that the sonar, which generates intense underwater sound, is harmful to marine mammals that depend on their own sensitive acous-tical systems to feed, communicate

and navigate. The waters off Southern Californiaare teemingwithvulnerable species.JudgeFlorence-MarieCooper issued

a tough set of mitigation measures that the Navy must take to avoid a ban on its trainingactivities.Thatseemedrea-sonable, especially given the Navy’s own analysis of the potential harm. President Bush attempted to override the court order by granting the Navy waivers, on national security grounds, from two environmental laws on which the decision was based. Now the fight will resume in court

over whether the White House over-stepped its authority in granting the waivers. From our perspective this looks less likeamatterofnational secu-rity than of convenience for the Navy, which resists efforts to constrain its ac-tivities no matter the harm to marine life.

BARRY BLITT

Repubblica NewYork

WOR LD TR ENDS

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008 III

SWITZERLAND

GERMANY

AUST.

FRANCE

ITALY

Visperterminen

Andermatt

Geneva

Zurich

Klosters

TICINOErnen

Kms. 80

By DINA KRAFT

TEL AVIV — They are in their 80snow, the last living linkstoJanuszKor-czak, the visionary champion of chil-dren’s rights who refused to part withhis young charges even as they wereherdedto thegaschambers.When they speak of him, the old

men are young again: transported to their days in his orphanage, a place they remember as a magical republic for children as the Nazi threat grew closer. “It was a utopia,’’ said Shlomo

Nadel, 85, one of the surviving or-phanswhomanagedto fleePolandbe-fore theJewishorphanagewas forced into the ghetto. Mr. Nadel and the others were wit-

ness to lifeon92KrochmalnaStreet in Warsaw, the orphanage that became a laboratory for Korczak’s democratic educational theories, boasting a court and parliament run by the children. “A child is a person at ev-

erystageofhisorherdevel-opment and has rights, the samerightsasanadult,and needs to be treated accord-ingly,’’ said Yitzhak Belfer, 85, who can still recite the system of points and pun-ishment meted out by the children’s court. “That’s how it was with us.’’Korczak’s ideas foradec-

laration of children’s rights were posthumously adopt-ed by the United Nations, and dozens of Korczak as-sociations exist worldwide. Last year, a compilation of his advice for parents was published under the title “Loving Every Child.’’ Its message: listen to children at their level,celebratetheir quirks and dreams. His work at the orphan-

age was interrupted in 1940 when the Nazis forced him and his orphans into the Warsaw Ghetto. Apediatrician,educatorandwriter,

hewasbornHenrykGoldszmit (Korc-zak was a pen name) to a Jewish fam-ily in 1878. He was beloved in Poland for his children’s stories and the radio show on which he counseled parents. Friends offered to smuggle him out

of the ghetto, but he refused to aban-don the children. When it came time to be deported to the Treblinka death campin1942,he led them,eachclutch-ing a favorite toy or game, in a silent march of protest to the train that would carry them to their deaths. It is Korczak’s tragic end as a Ho-

locaust martyr that is perhaps most widely known, and immortalized in “Korczak,” the 1990 film by Andrzej

Wajda.But tothosewhoknewhim, it is what he passed on to them in life that still makes him such a present force. Mr. Belfer and the others remem-

ber Korczak as the only father figure they knew, a man who would read to them from the books he was writing, changingplot linesandcharactersac-cording to their input. He encouraged collecting treasures like feathers,but-tons, pebbles and shells. YizakSkalka, 85, also fromTelAviv,

pulledoutacopyof thepostcardgiven to him by Korczak in 1935 when he left for Palestine at the age of 13. “I wish you joy and many rare stamps,’’ it said. “He knew everything about us and

what we did,’’ Mr. Skalka said.Mr. Nadel said one of his favorite

memories was from Passover in 1933

or 1934.Thefestivemealwouldbeheld inthediningroom.Butwithmorethan 100 children, Korczak had to find an innovative way to have them search for the “afikoman,’’ the hidden piece of matzo redeemed for a prize by the child who finds it. His creativesolution:make it awal-

nut hidden in one of the matzo balls served in the chicken soup. “Everyone’s spoons were digging

into the matzo balls, and I saw I had something hard inside mine,’’ Mr. Nadel said. “Everyone rushed to see.’’ As he spoke, he reached into his left

pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. He unfolded it to reveal a dark leather pouchheld togetherwith frayingtape. Inside were shards of that walnut.

By UTA HARNISCHFEGER

ERNEN, Switzerland — Bruno Prior, a British entrepreneur, saw the ad from the Ernen ski-lift company one day as he was looking through the newspaper in London.Several months later — after paying

the token sum of one Swiss franc, or about 90 cents — he is the proud owner of four ski lifts, two trail groomers and a restaurant on 19 kilometers of ski slopes.Effectively giving the ski operation

away was an act of desperation on the part of Ernen, which, like hundreds of other small Alpine ski stations at me-dium altitudes, faces dire times. Most customers these days prefer the larger resorts with hundreds of kilometers of ski runs, after-ski activities and luxury shopping. As global warming brings less snow, lower-altitude stations rely more on costly snow machines. “Mr. Prior is our lucky charm,’’

said Heinz Seiler, who runs the Ernen ski-lift company, Sportbahnen Erner Galen, now owned by Mr. Prior. “He spared our 560-soul village from a ca-tastrophe.’’ Mr. Seiler’s tiny office looks out on

the village square, with its 16th-cen-tury wooden houses. Mr Seiler said: “Smaller ski stations

like ours have it much harder. Tourism is the only proposition here. There is nothing else.’’Last ski season, the ski-lift company

lost more than $180,000. In March, the need for $1.4 million more to renew its operating license — required every couple of decades — was the limit.

With rising losses and temperatures, and the snowfall becoming less de-pendable, the village, the majority owner of the company, decided to shut down the lifts.“We braced ourselves to lose two-

thirds of our winter guests,’’ Mr. Seiler said.Since theboomdaysof theearly

1990s, thenumberofannualovernightstays inErnenhasdecreasedbyalmosthalf, to90,000 lastwinter.“Inanact ofdesperation,’’Mr.Seiler

said, thecompanydecided togiveawaytheski lifts to thepersonwhose idea forresuscitating the resortwouldprovidethemostbenefit for thevillage.The telephone rang for weeks. The

village chose Mr. Prior over competing investors from Asia, the United States and the Netherlands because resi-

dents liked his concept for restoring the ski business instead of just selling off the property for vacation homes. Afterspendingmore than$450,000

on thecurrentski seasonanda feasibil-itystudy,Mr.Priorplans to investasmuchas$45million tobuild twonewliftsandhotels, initiallywith300beds.Hehopes thathotelsandmodern liftswill drawskiers, and thatnew,higher-altituderunswill guaranteesnow.“The important thing is getting

warm beds,’’ said Rolf Gruber, who runs a restaurant along the road to Ernen, meaning those with people in them. More commonly, investors build chalets to sell as second homes. While they generate quick returns for build-ers, they often end up as cold beds, rarely used by their owners. Lesssnow, fewerskiersand few

guestshavemeant lesswork for localresidents.Mostyoungpeople leaveErnen,and ifpast trendscontinue, it isonlyamatterof timeuntil theprimaryschool,withoneclassroomserving13children in first through fourthgrades,shutsdown.“Mr. Prior will bring new life and

work for those who want to live here, and maybe also new children,’’ says Ruedi Schweizer, whose family is part of a commune that works a small farm, runs a small organic-food store and of-fers mule trekking for tourists. Mr. Gruber, the chef, hopes to wel-

come English guests by next season. “That gives me enough time to trans-late my menu into English,’’ he said. “But believe me, I will definitely not offer bread pudding.’’

RINA CASTELNUOVO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Shlomo Nadel, 85, holds fond memories of Janusz Korczak’s orphanage in Poland, which sheltered children from the Nazis.

ERNEN JOURNAL

Where Snow Is Scarce, Ski Resort Sells for $1

Orphans Recall a UtopiaAmid the Nazi Tyranny

URS FLUEELER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

While skiers find plenty of snow at spots like Gurschen Glacier, at 3,000 meters, lower-altitude ski stations, like Ernen, are being deprived of their normal snowfall, causing a lost of tourists and income.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By MARC LACEY

HAVANA — Virtually every squaremeterof this capital city isownedby thesocialiststate,whichwouldseemsuretoput a damper on the buying and sellingofproperty.But thepeopleofHavana, it turnsout,

are as obsessed with real estate as any major world capital with pricey hous-ing, and have similar dreams of more space, not to mention the desire for hot water, their own toilets and roofs that keep the rain out. Andalthoughtherearenoofficial real

estate agencies here, there is a bustlingunderground market in homes andapartments, which has given rise toagents (illegal ones), speculators (theyare illegal, too)andscams(whichrangefrompraisingaruinasadreamhousetobacking out of a deal at the closing andpocketing thecash).The whole enterprise is quintessen-

tially Cuban, socialist on its face but really a black market involving equal parts drama and dinero, sometimes as much as $50,000 or more. These days, insiders say, prices are

on the rise as people try to obtain his-toric homes in anticipation of a time when private property may return to Cuba. Exiles in Miami are also getting into theact,Cubanssay,sendingmoney

to relatives on the island to help them upgrade their homes. Officially, buying or selling property

is forbidden. But the island has a dire housingshortage,despitegovernment-sponsored new construction. And that has ledmanyCubans tosubdivide their often decaying dwellings or to upgrade their surroundings through a decades-old bartering scheme known in Cuban slang as permuta. Some of those housing transactions

are simple swaps. Those the govern-ment permits, tracking each one to keep an up-to-date record of the loca-tion of every last Cuban. Many moves, however,are illegaland involve trading up or down, with one party compensat-ing, with money, another party giving up better property.A 1983 film, “Se Permuta,” portrays

how complex the system can get: Amother scheming to get her daughter

away from a boyfriend she dislikes or-ganizes amultipronged property swap.Of course, the deal, which would haveinvolvedaboutadozenpeopleandtakenmother and daughter froma tiny apart-ment intoaspaciouscolonial-erahouse,ends up in amess, as does themother’smeddling inherdaughter’s love life.“It’s very Cuban,” Juan Carlos Tabío,

who wrote and directed the film, said of his country’s real estate bartering process. “There aren’t enough houses, and families can’t buy them. So they trade.” Mr. Tabío has no experience with

changing homes, having lived in the same spacious third-floor apartment in the upscale Vedado neighborhood since 1957. Many Cubans live in the same dwellings their families owned before therevolution;othershavebeen assigned units by the state.ButalmosteveryCuban iseitherplot-

ting to upgrade residences or knows someone in the midst of the labyrin-thine process. Here is how it works. Imagine a mar-

ried Cuban couple with two children and a baby on the way who find their two-bedroomapartment in thehistoric OldHavananeighborhoodtoocramped. What are they to do? Well, with the help of an agent known

asarunner theymightstartby locating abachelor fromthecountryside looking to come to the capital. They could ar-range for the newcomer to move into a tinyapartment inChinatownandmove its residents — who also have a house in Miramar where their elderly grand-mother lives — to a first-floor unit they sought in Central Havana. The Central Havana flat is available because the residents have divorced; so the former wife would go to the bachelor’s coun-try house, near where her parents live, while her former husband would go to Old Havana. The Old Havana fam-ily that started the process would then head to their dream house in spacious and quiet Miramar. Sound complicated? It is. All trades

have to be endorsed by the govern-ment, but Cubans say slipping money to bureaucrats increases the chances that deals of unequal properties — as in those that involve money and carry the taint of capitalist yearning — will be approved.“Under the table, thereareall sortsof

things going on,” Mr. Tabío said.The Cuban authorities occasionally

make arrests, but find the trades dif-ficult to control. “It’s something peopleshouldn’t do, but theydoandweknow itgoeson,”saidJoséLuisToledoSantand-er,aprofessorof lawandamemberoftheNationalAssembly. “It’s likesayingyouhavetostopattheredlightandyoucan’tgountil it’s green.Youought to do it, butnoteverybodydoes.”

Where real estate is state-owned, finding creative ways to trade up.

Black Market for Housing Is Thriving in Cuba

JOSE GOITIA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A shortage forces Cubans work out complex trades to find appropriate housing. Money often changes hands.

Repubblica NewYork

WOR LD TR ENDS

IV MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008

Iowa N.H. S.C. Iowa N.H. S.C. Iowa N.H. S.C.

Dem.

Number of participants, in thousands

Rep.

N.H. - New Hampshire S.C. - South Carolina

200820042000

Sources: Secretaries of state; The Green PapersSources: Secretaries of state; The Green Papers

500

400

300

200

100

Crowds on Voting DayTurnout in the early Democratic primaries and caucuses has set records. Democrats have outdrawn Republicans when both haveprimaries in the same state. The last time both parties had no incumbents running, in 2000, Republicans drew more participants.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — It is now a part of the Republican ideology to regularly invoke the name of Ronald Reagan and to ritually wrap oneself in his cloak. This year’s Republican candidates (and even one Democrat, Barack Obama), have all called down the spirit of St. Ronald of Dixon, Illinois, to bless their candidacies.But for reasons of policy and polity

and personality, none of the current crop of G.O.P. contenders can be an-other Ronald Reagan.The first three major contests in the

Republican nominating battle were won by three different candidates: Mike Huckabee took Iowa; John Mc-Cain won New Hampshire; and Mitt Romney in Michigan. Mr. McCain beat Mr. Romney in the Florida primary on Tuesday, while Mr. Huckabee faded to a fourth-place finish, turning it into a two-man race heading into primaries this Tuesday, when more than 20 states will hold their votes. In the first threeprimaryvictories,

eachof thewinnerspickedupapieceofthe tripartite coalition thatpropelledMr.Reagan to theWhiteHouse in 1980:social conservatives, plusnationalsecurityhawks,pluspro-business/an-titaxadvocates.With theexceptionofMr.McCain inNewHampshire, nonehasattractedsignificantnumbersofworking-classmenandwomen, theso-calledReaganDemocrats.They have all failed to assemble the

entire package that made Mr. Reagan a two-term president and, earlier, a popular two-term governor of Califor-nia.

Those who have studied or worked on those Reagan campaigns think it unlikely that any of the current Repub-licans can succeed at it. Despite their valiant and transpar-

ent efforts, the 2008 G.O.P. candidates have been unable to recreate the al-chemy that transformed Ronald Rea-gan from a 1940s movie actor into an icon of the Republican Party. It is not just that Messrs. Huckabee, McCain and Romney lack Mr. Reagan’s charm. None has applied himself as long and as assiduously to marshaling ideas and developing a political base as Mr. Reagan did.Of the main Republican contenders,

none has built a national movement. Only Mr. McCain has run for president before. They are forced to try to as-semble a coalition from the disparate groups that make up the Republican primary electorate, in many cases by glossing over their records in office, al-tering their positions to be acceptable to G.O.P. primary voters and rewriting their personal histories.Mr.Reagan’s ideasabout the free

marketwere formulatedwhenhewasthespokesmanforGeneralElectric inthe1950sandearly ’60’s;hisviewsonCommunismwererooted inhisexperi-enceas leaderof theScreenActorsGuildstarting in the1940s;andhissenseof so-cial ordergrewfromwatchingdisorderspreadonCaliforniacampusesand inCaliforniacities in the1960s.By 1980, he was a disciplined and

experienced political leader and per-haps the nation’s most polished public speaker, which enabled him to attract different constituencies, from evan-

gelicals to the emerging neoconserva-tives.In contrast to the early careers of the

current G.O.P. candidates, by the time Mr. Reagan entered and won his first political contest, the 1966 California gubernatorial race, he already was a nationwide celebrity and a compelling communicator. “Instead of talking about Commu-

nism, which is not really a platform for a governor’s office, he began talking about law and order, social decline, moral decay,” said Matthew Dallek, author of “The Right Moment: Ron-ald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics.’’ “His three key issues were the student protesters at Berkeley, the

Watts riots and the anti-Vietnam dem-onstrations. So Reagan very adroitly begins to tap into a real seething anger that especially white middle- and working-class Californians feel.’’He had a set of core principles, but he

had a certain suppleness on practical politics, with evolving views on abor-tion, federal deficits, taxes, immigra-tion and the size of government. Mr. Reagan’s first presidential foray was a now largely forgotten race against Richard Nixon in 1968 that forced Mr. Nixon to tack rightward to protect his flank. He followed with a formidable challenge to President Ford in 1976. “That was a donnybrook,’’ said

Stuart Spencer, the California politi-cal savant who ran Mr. Reagan’s two

gubernatorial campaigns, Mr. Ford’s 1976 race and then Mr. Reagan’s two White House runs in 1980 and 1984.“Ford had the delegates in ’76, but

Reagan had the hearts and minds of the people,’’ Mr. Spencer said. “He went into 1980 with a tremendous base — it was the beginning of the ‘religious right.’ He had the basic Republican constituency of economic conserva-tives and he picked up a bunch of disaf-fected Democrats.’’The current Republican candidates,

Mr. Spencer said, are looking for any way to identify with Mr. Reagan. “Any link to Reagan, they’re going to use it,’’ Mr. Spencer said with a chuckle. “If he were watching, knowing him, he’d be smiling.’’

NEWS ANALYSIS

Search for Reagan ReflectsThe Plight of the G.O.P.

Reporting was contributed by Randal C. Archibold in Los Angeles, Abby Goodnough in Boston, Kirk Johnson in Denver and Sam Roberts and Megan Thee in New York.

As U.S. Dominance Frays, Voters Are Getting Rattled

Democrats Are Propelled By New Fervor

worse than they were,’’ Ms. Powellsaid, “and nobody’s helping them out.People’s incomes are not keeping pacewith inflation. People can’t afford theirhomes. People in their 30s and 40s,mid-dle-income,andtheydon’thavejobstheycan count on or access to health care.How canwe say that we’re the greatestcountry on earth and essentially havethewalkingwounded?’’The change in tone came through

in interviews in coffee bars and shop-ping malls as people complained aboutunaffordable health premiums, porousinternational borders, strangeweather,government eavesdropping, Chineseimportsandcustomerservicecalls thatareanswered inIndia.Robert W. Jennings, a 45-year-old

Kansas City landlord who considers himself politically independent, said he thought the stakes were higher than in 2000. Two years ago, after the adjust-able-rate mortgage on his apartment building kicked in, Mr. Jennings had to take an hourly job for the first time in a decade, at the Home Depot. It also providedhimwithhisonlyhealth insur-ance since college. “I used to be master of my universe,’’

hesaid fromabarstoolatMcCoy’sPub-licHouse. “NowIwork for this soul-less corporation. I used to make the rules. Now I have to follow them.’’Mr.Jenningsalsodoesnotlikethewar

in Iraq, or its impacton thecountry’s in-ternationalstanding.“Mostof thetimesI go overseas I say I’m Canadian,’’ hesaid. “I justgetabetter response.’’Public opinion polling is also detect-

ing an erosion of the country’s self- im-age.ACBSNews/NewYorkTimespoll taken in January found that 75 percent of respondents thought the country had “pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,’’ up from 44 percent in May 2000.The issues have also shifted. In the 2000 campaign, it was possible

for Mr. Bush to deride Mr. Gore’s envi-ronmentalism to considerable effect.

Eight years later, Mr. Gore is a Nobel laureate, and coiled light bulbs and hy-brid cars are status symbols. “Before, Ididn’t feelpersonallyguilty

if I left a light on,’’ said Meg Campbell, director of a charter high school in Dorchester, a working-class neighbor-hood in Boston. “It just wasn’t in the drinking water back then. Now it’s al-most a religion.’’ TheproportionofAmericanswithout

health insurance, which was declining atdecade’send,hasgrownby2percent-agepoints.Boththeunemploymentand poverty rates are a percentage point higher. War spending has helped con-vert a $236 billion federal budget sur-plus into a $163 billion deficit.Certainly, some Americans remain

optimistic despite the mounting prob-lems. Charles K. Spencer, a 71-year-old investment adviser who lives in the Kansas City suburbs, said he was “un-

abashedly optimistic’’ about the future facing his four grandchildren. Technol-ogy and the free market will provide them with unlimited opportunity, Mr. Spencer said, so long as they are will-ing to relocate and retrain. But the more common theme, that of

innocence lost, was voiced by Erwin L. Epple, 54, and his wife, Fumiyo, 64, who were in Washington on Septem-ber 11, 2001, and saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon. “We said that day that our grandchildren will grow up in a different world, assuming the worst about people instead of the best,’’ said Mr. Epple, who owns a pizza franchise in Knoxville, Tennessee.Mr. Epple boiled with frustration as

he vowed to vote for the candidate who convinces him that he or she is most able to solve problems. “I’m sick and tired of the party line and the plati-tudes,’’ he said. “I’m hearing hope. I’m hearing trust.But I’mnothearingsolu-tions.’’

ed, enthusiasticparty thatcanexpandthemapofDemocratic victories. ScottBrennan, chairmanof the IowaDemo-cratic Party, said that three times asmanyIowansshiftedtheirregistrationto theDemocraticPartyoncaucusdayasshifted to theRepublicans.“ItsayspeopleareverytiredofBush

administrationpolicies,’’Mr.Brennansaid. “And theDemocratic candidatesreallyenergizepeople.Peoplewereex-cited toget out to thecaucuses.’’Some Republicans dismiss that

Democratic energy as typical for aparty out of power for eight years, andargue that it augurs little for the gen-eral election.Richard N. Bond, former chairman

of theRepublicanNationalCommitteeandalobbyist,saidtherewasnoreasonfor his party to “hit the panic button.’’Anomineewillemergeinhisparty,Mr.Bond said, and present a clear enoughcontrast to the Democratic nomineethat “itwill reinvigorate the entireRe-publicanoperation.’’Alluding to thepossibilityofSenator

HillaryRodhamClinton as theDemo-cratic nominee, Mr. Bond added, “Noone has the capacity to put the bandback together again as much as shehas.’’RepublicanPartyanalystsalsonote

that both Ronald Reagan and the se-nior George Bush were elected afterRepublican primaries in which turn-out was lower than in the Democraticprimaries.“Democrats seem to frequently ig-

nore the lessonsofhistory, and theydoso in2008at theirownperil,’’ saidAlexConant, a spokesman for the Republi-canNationalCommittee.The sheer intensity of the Demo-

cratic primary battle could be prob-lematic over the long haul. Outsideanalysts say that the sharp disputesanddeepeningdivisionsbetweenSen-ator Barack Obama and Mrs. Clintoncould, if not resolved, leave some vot-ersdisenchanted if their candidatedidnotprevail.“That’s a real question: Will the

Democrats come away with a more

divided, lessupbeatsetof constituentsfollowingthestrugglebetweenObamaandHillaryClinton?’’saidAndrewKo-hut, headof thePewResearchCenter.Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic poll-

ster, said, “There’s obviously a heatedbattle going on in theDemocratic Par-ty, but this is not a party at war withitself. It’snot justaslogantosaythere’sa lotmore that unites Democrats thandivides them,and that’snot clearatallwith theRepublicans.’’Analysts offer a variety of explana-

tions for the Democratic excitement.Bothofthefront-runnersofferthepros-pectofahistoric first,breakingthe lineof either color or sex. Disenchantmentwith President Bush and the direc-tion of the country remains high, andchange is a priority with Democratsandmany independents, polls show.Whatever the reason, a recent Pew

survey found that 4 in 10 AmericanssaidtheyfoundtheDemocraticcontest“very interesting,’’ nearly double thepercentage(21percent)whodescribedthe Republican race as “very interest-ing.’’Young people were unusually inter-

ested, the poll found. Within the par-ties, 57 percent of the Democrats saidthe Democratic campaign was “veryinteresting,’’ while only 32 percent ofthe Republicans found their party’scontest that engaging.“I think it’s real,’’ said Gary C. Ja-

cobson, a political scientist at theUniversity of California, SanDiego, ofthe energy gap. “Turnout and variouspoll data suggestDemocrats aremoreeager to vote and happier with theirchoice set than Republicans. I think itreflects an eagerness to get the Bushadministrationbehind them.’’In fact, the biggest applause line at

Obama and Clinton events is often areminder thatMr.Bush’sdays inofficearedwindling.

ERIC THAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

In early voting contests, Democrats

have set records for turnouts.

PAUL HOSEFROS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ronald Reagan, at the Republican convention in 1980, captured the presidential nomination on his third try.

From Page 1

From Page 1

With U.S. hegemony in doubt, a sense of urgency infuses a campaign.

Repubblica NewYork

MONEY & B U S I N E S S

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008 V

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sources: Thomson Financial (announced mergers and acquisitions total,by country and companies); OCO Monitor (U.S. divisions of foreign companies spending)

A Flood of Investment

Foreign investment in the United States soared last year, with entities in developing countries like Saudi Arabia and China playing big roles.

Foreign direct investment

ANNOUNCED MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

ANNOUNCED MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS, IN BILLIONS

U.S. DIVISIONS OFFOREIGN COMPANIES

100

200

300

400

$500 billion

U.S. buyingabroad

Foreign buyingin the U.S.

’07’05’03’01

Top spenders by country

10

20

30

40

$50 billion

’04 ’05 ’06 ’07

Mostly spending byforeign companies on their U.S. operations.

1. Canada $65.6 $28.6

2. Britain 45.8 77.1

3. Australia 30.1 13.1

4. Spain 24.2 6.5

5. Germany 24.2 47.0

6. United Arab Emirates 17.7 0

7. Saudi Arabia 12.7 0

8. Sweden 11.8 2.2

9. Switzerland 11.2 13.8

10. The Netherlands 10.8 34.7

11. France 10.5 28.3

12. South Korea 10.4 0

13. Singapore 9.9 1.4

14. China 9.8 0

15. Kuwait 9.6 0

2007 2000

By PETER S. GOODMANand LOUISE STORY

Last May, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate bought a Massachusetts plastics maker. In November, a French company established a new factory in Adrian, Michigan, adding 189 automotive jobs to an area accustomed to layoffs. In December, a British company bought a New Jersey maker of cough syrup.For much of the world, the United States

is nowon sale at discount prices.With credittight, unemployment growing and worriesabout a recession, American business andgovernment leaders are courting foreignmoneytokeeptheeconomygrowing.Foreigninvestorsarebuyingaggressively, takingad-vantage ofAmericanduress andaweakdol-lar tobuywhatmanyseeasbargains.Lastyear,foreigninvestorspouredarecord

$414 billion into securing stakes in Ameri-can companies, factories and other proper-ties through private deals and purchases ofpublicly traded stock, according toThomsonFinancial, a research firm. That was up 90percent from the previous year and morethandouble theaveragefor the lastdecade. Itamounted to more than one-fourth of all an-nounceddeals for theyear,Thomsonsaid.The surge of foreign money has injected

fresh tension into a running debate about America’splace in theglobaleconomy. Ithas suppliedstategovernorswithanewdevelop-ment strategy — attracting foreign money. With a growing share of investment com-

ing from so-called sovereign wealth funds — vast pools of money controlled by gov-ernments from China to the Middle East — lawmakers and regulators are calling for greaterscrutiny toensure that foreigncoun-tries do not gain influence over the financial system or military-related technology.A tentative agreement was reached Janu-

ary 24 on an economic stimulus package of

roughly $150 billion to encourage spending. Despite divided opinion about the merits, foreign investmentmaybepreventingdeep-er troubles.The most conspicuous beneficiaries are

Wall Street banks like Merrill Lynch, Citi-group and Morgan Stanley, which have sold stakes to government-controlled funds in Asia and the Middle East to compensate for calamitous lossesonmortgagemarkets.Be-neath the headlines, a more profound shift is under way: Foreign entities last year cap-turedstakes inAmericancompanies inbusi-nesses as diverse as real estate, steel-mak-ing, energy and baby food. As theGermancompany

ThyssenKrupp Stainless began work in November on what is to be a $3.7 bil-lion stainless steel plant in Calvert, Alabama, its executives spoke about the low cost of production in the United States and the chance to reach millions of customers — particularly because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows goods to flow into Mexico and Canada free of duty.“TheNaftastainlesssteelmarkethasgreat

potential, and we’re committed to signifi-cantlyexpandingourbusiness inthisgrowthregion,’’ said the company’s chairman, Jür-genH.Fechter, according toastatement.Internationalgiants likeToyotaMotorand

Sony have been putting capital into Ameri-canplants. Investment in theAmericansub-sidiaries of foreign companies grew to $43.3 billion last year from $39.2 billion the previ-ousyear,accordingto theresearch firmOCO Monitor.Some labor unions see the acceleration

of foreign takeovers as the latest indignity

wrought by globalization.“It’s the culmination of a series of fool’s

errands,’’ said Leo W. Gerard, international presidentof theUnitedSteelworkers.“We’ve hollowed out our industrial base and run up thismassive tradedeficit, andnowthecoun-tries that have built the deficits are coming back to buy up our assets. It’s like spitting in your face.’’Other laborgroups takeamorepragmatic

view. “We need investment and we need to create good jobs,’’ said Thea Lee, policy di-rector for the A.F.L.-C.I.O in Washington, the largest federationofunionsmadeupof54 national and international unions, together

representing more than 10millionworkers.“We’re not inthepositiontobetoo choosy about where that investment comes from.’’Canada still spends

the most money buying stakes in American com-panies — more than $65 billion in 2007, according to Thomson. But other

countries’ purchases are growing rapidly. South Korea’s investments swelled to more than $10.4 billion last year from just $5.4 mil-lion in2000.Russiawent to$572million from $60 million in that span. But even if political tension increases, so

will the flowof foreignmoney, someanalysts say, for the simple reason that businesses need it. “Theforcessuckinginthiscapitalaremuch

bigger than thepolitical forces,’’ saidJeffreyE.Garten,a tradeexpertat theYaleSchoolofManagement.“If there isabigcontroversy, itwill bebetweenWashingtonon theonehandand corporate America on the other. In thatcontest, the financiers and the businessmenaregoing towin, as theyalwaysdo.’’

Overseas Investors Are the Saviors of a Struggling U.S. Economy

Worries about who might influence U.S. financial system.

In Ireland, the New ClimateFor Business Is Quite Friendly

Were the Good Times Nothing but a Mirage?So, how bad can the economic problems

get? Until a few months ago, it was accepted wisdom that the American economy func-tioned far more smoothly than in the past. Economic expansions lasted longer, and

recessions were both shorter and milder. Inflation had been tamed. The spreading of financial risk had reduced the odds of a crisis. Back in 2004, Ben Bernan-

ke, then a Federal Reserve governor, borrowed a phrase

from an academic research paper to give these happy developments a name: “the great moderation.’’ Thesedays, though, thegreatmoderation

isn’t lookingquitesogreat—orsomoderate.The recent financial turmoil has many

causes, but they are tied to a basic fear that some of the economic successes of the last generation may yet turn out to be a mirage. That helps explain why problems in the American subprime mortgage market could have spread so quickly through the world’s financial system. On January 22, Mr. Bernanke, who is now the Fed chair-man, presided over the steepest one-day interest rate cut in the bank’s history. The great moderation now seems to have

depended — in part — on a huge speculative bubble, first in stocks and then real estate, that hid the economy’s problems. Everyone

from first-time home buyers to Wall Street chief executives made bets they did not fully understand, and then spent money as if those bets couldn’t go bad. For the past 16 years, Americans have increased their overall spending every single quarter, which is almost twice as long as any previ-ous streak. Now, some worry, comes the payback.

Martin Feldstein, the Republican econo-mist, says he is concerned that the economy “could slip into a recession and that the re-cession could be a long, deep, severe one.’’ The bigger question is how severe the

recession will be if it does come to pass. The last two, in 1990-1 and 2001, have been mild, which is a crucial part of the great modera-tion mystique. There are three reasons, though, to think the next recession may not be.First, Wall Street hasn’t yet revealed all

its damages. Financial service firms have still probably gone public with less than half of their mortgage-related losses, according to Moody’sEconomy.com. They’re not be-ing dishonest; they just haven’t untangled all of their complex investments. “Part of the big uncertainty,’’ Raghuram

G. Rajan, former chief economist at the In-ternational Monetary Fund, said, “is where the bodies are buried.’’ The second problem is that real estate

and stocks remain fairly expensive. This

shows just how big the bubbles were: stock prices and home values have still not re-turned to historical norms. David Rosenberg, a Merrill Lynch econo-

mist, says that the stock market is over-valued by 10 percent relative to corporate earnings and interest rates. Stocks usually fall more than they should during a bear market, much as they rise more than they should during a bull market.The situation with house prices looks

worse. For prices to return to the old norm, they would still need to fall 20 to 30 percent in different parts of the United States. Cheaper stocks and houses will benefit

many people. But the price declines will also lead directly to the third big problem.Consumer spending kept on rising for

the last 16 years largely because families tapped into their newfound wealth, often taking out loans to supplement their in-come. This increase in debt — as a recent study co-written by the vice chairman of the Fed put it — “is not likely to be repeat-ed.’’ So just as rising asset values cushioned the last two downturns, falling values could aggravate the next one. It’s likely the economy will pay a price

for the speculative binge of the last two decades, either by going through a tough recession or an extended period of disap-pointing growth. Welcome to the new moderation.

")$C GA-/A**(C$A+"D P)"**

+oyota &otor is among the companies pouring money

into the United *tates. +oyota’s president, %atsuaki

,atanabe, at a +exas plant in 2006.

By JAMES FLANIGAN

DUBLIN — Ireland is now alive with enthusiasm for entrepreneurs, who seemingly rank justbelowrockstars in popularity. For evidence, consider the Ernst &

Youngaccountingfirm’sawardforIrish Entrepreneur of the Year. The award show was prime-time television fare in October.(Thewinner,LiamCasey,runs a business, now based in China, that ar-ranges forproducts tobemanufactured andshipped fromChinatocustomers in Europe and the United States.) Thenthereare thegovernment-spon-

sored studies proclaiming that Ireland ranks third in the European Union in early-stage entrepreneurial activity. And Enterprise Ireland, an agency of the Irish government that gives fledg-ling small companies a helping hand, haseven leasedspace inanofficebuild-ing in Midtown Manhattan to serve as

an incubator for businesses hoping to expand into the American market.Therelativelynewemphasisonentre-

preneurs in Ireland is the culmination of nearly four decades of government policies that have lifted the economy from centuries of poverty to modern prosperity. The change began when Ireland

entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract for-eign investment, made all education free through the university level and changed taxratesanduseddirectequi-ty investment toencourageIrishpeople to set up their own businesses. “The change came in the 1990s,’’ said

James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. “Taxes and interest ratescamedown,andall of

a sudden we believed in ourselves.’’ The new environment also encour-

aged Ray Nolan, who founded RavenComputing in 1989 to provide soft-ware for lawyers to keep track of bill-able hours. He sold that company andfoundedanother that created softwarefor companies to manage billing andreceipts. And in 1999, he founded WebReservations International to providebookingandpropertymanagement for

hostels that cater to backpackers andeconomy travelers.As the business grew — its 100 em-

ployees and banks of computers now handle reservations for some 50,000 hostels in 166 countries —Web Reser-vations was offered an equity invest-ment by Enterprise Ireland. “But we said this is our baby, we didn’t want to give up equity,’’ said Feargal Mooney, the company’s chief operating officer.

But thecompany,which isexpanding in the United States and in China, has takenadvantageof theagency’shelp to open operations in Shanghai and New York.“They’vehelpeduswith introduc-tions to government officials in China, and we’re in the office space on Park Avenue, expanding our systems in the States,’’ Mr. Mooney said.Government help for Irish entrepre-

neurs grew out of an overall economic policy devised in 1987 that reduced per-sonal taxes, said Kevin Sherry, a direc-tor of Enterprise Ireland who special-izes in start-up companies. “We have helped over 300 people or

groups in the last dozen years or so,’’ Mr. Sherry said. Hesaid thepassionbehindtheefforts

to support entrepreneurs comes from a desire to make Ireland a better place. “We’re old enough to remember when timesweren’tgood.Wedon’twant togo back there.’’

D")"% *P"$)* F() +#" '", -()% +$&"*

DAVID

LEONHARDT

ECONOMIC

ANALYSIS

$reland has worked to promote

entrepreneurship. )ay 'olan,

left, runs ,eb )eservations with

Feargal &ooney.

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E NC E & T ECHNO LOGY

VI MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008

" #'&%(&* $+),&

Researchers at Envirofit aredesigning clean-burningstoves that reduce smoke and use less wood. Although the designs have not been finalized, the stoves are likely to use principles known to work in other stoves. At right, an artist’s conception of a compact clean- burning stove.

Sources: Envirofit; Aprovecho Research Center THE NEW YORK TIMES

POT SUPPORT

OUTER SHELL

ELEVATED GRATE

provides space

for efficient air

flow under

the wood.

INSULATION

reduces energy

loss and

maintains high

temperatures

for efficient

combustion with

less smoke.

By NATALIE ANGIER

As the candidates have shown us in the 2008 American presidential race, there are many ways to fight for po-litical power. And just as there are nu-merous strategies open to the human political animal, so thereareanumber of nonhuman animals that behave like politicians.Researchers who study highly gre-

garious and relatively brainy spe-cies like rhesus monkeys, baboons, dolphins, sperm whales, elephants and wolves have lately uncovered evidence that the creatures engage in extraordinarily sophisticated forms of politicking, often across large social networks. Male dolphins, for example, orga-

nize themselves into at least three tiers of friends and accomplices, said Richard C. Connor of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, rather like the way human societies are con-structed of small kin groups allied into larger tribes allied into still larger na-tion-states. The dolphins maintain their alliances through elaborately synchronized twists, leaps and spins. Among elephants, it is the females

who are the born politicians, culti-vating robust and lifelong social ties with at least 100 other elephants, a task made easier by their power to

communicate infrasonically across kilometers of savanna floor. Wolves, it seems, moderate their otherwise strongly hierarchical society with oc-casional displaysof populist umbrage, and ifapack leaderproves too tyranni-cal, subordinate wolves will collude to overthrow him.Animals pool their talents and num-

bers into cohesive social groups, sci-entists say, to better protect againstpredators, defend or enlarge their ter-ritory or to acquire mates. When thishappens, thestage isset for theappear-ance of political skills. These includethe ability to please and placate, ma-nipulate and intimidate, trade favorsand scratch backs or, better yet, pluckthosebacks freeofbotfliesand ticks.With life spans rivaling ours, el-

ephants are proving to possess some of the most elaborate social networks yet observed. Elephant society is or-ganized as a matriarchy, said George Wittemyer, an elephant expert at the

University of California, Berkeley, with a given core group of maybe 10 elephants led by the eldest resident fe-male. That core group is together vir-tually all the time. “They’re constantly making deci-

sions,debatingamongthemselves,overfood,waterandsecurity,”Dr.Wittemy-er said. “You can see it in the field. Youcanhear themvocally disagree.”Typi-cally, the matriarch has the final say,andtheothersabidebyherdecision.Ifafaction disagrees strongly enough andwants to try a different approach, “thegroupwill split upandmeetbackagainlater,” saidDr.Wittemyer.Over time, the demands of an ani-

mal’s social life may come to swamp all other selective pressures in the environment, possibly serving as the dominant spur for the evolution of ev-er-biggerbrains tokeep trackofall the relationships. And though we humans may vaguely disapprove of our politi-cal impulses and harbor fantasies of pulling free in solitary glory from the tribe, in fact for us and other highly so-cial species there is no turning back. A lone wolf is a weak wolf, a failure, with no chance it will thrive. Dario Maestripieri, a primatologist

at the University of Chicago, has ob-served a similar dilemma in humans and the rhesus monkeys he studies.

“The paradox of a highly social spe-cies like rhesus monkeys and humans is that our complex sociality is the reason for our success, but it’s also the source of our greatest troubles,” he said. “Throughout human history, you see that the worst problems for people almostalwayscomefromotherpeople, and it’s the same for the monkeys. You canput themanywhere,but theirmain problem is always going to be other rhesus monkeys.”“Individuals don’t fight for food,

space or resources,” Dr. Maestripieri explained.“Theyfight forpower.”With power and status, he added, “they’ll have control over everything else.”Monkeys cultivate relationships by

sitting close to their friends, groom-ing themateverypossibleopportunityand going to their aid— at least, whenit is advantageous. “Rhesus malesare quintessential opportunists,”Dr. Maestripieri said. “They pretendthey’re helping others, but they onlyhelp adults, not infants. They only helpthosewhoarehigher in rank than theyare, not lower. They intervene in fightswhere they know they’re going to winanywayandwhere the risk of being in-jured is small.”In sum, he said, “they try to gain

maximalbenefitsatminimal cost, and that’s a strategy that seems to work.”

Clever Animals Show Mastery of the Art of Politics

&V"%%A F"D#$#VA

Richard A. Friedman is a psychiatry professor at Weill Cornell Medical Col-lege in New York.

Instead of kissing babies, these politicians can pluck ticks.

By AMANDA LEIGH HAAG

When Kurt Hoffman visited Tanza-nia in the 1970s as a young product-de-velopment researcher,hecouldhardly bear to enter village huts to ask ques-tions. “I couldn’t stand thesmoke, thepain

in my eyes and the coughing,” he said. “Andyet thewomenandchildrenwere sitting there the whole time,” envel-oped in smoke from traditional open pit fires or poorly functioning stoves.Some 30 years later, when Mr. Hoff-

manreturnedto the field inhisposition as director of the Shell Foundation, a charity in Britain established by the Shell Group, not much had changed. “To find that it still exists,” he said,

“I was appalled by it. I said to myself, ‘There has to be a better way.’ ”And there may be. The foundation

has partnered with Envirofit Inter-national at Colorado State Universityin Fort Collins to introduce the firstmarket-based model for clean-burn-ing wood stove technology to the de-velopingworld.This year, the team plans to begin

distributing 10million stoves, focusingfirst on India,Brazil, KenyaandUgan-daatavarietyofpricesover fiveyears.Mr. Hoffman played a leading role in

the development of the Shell Foun-dation’s Breathing Space program,founded in2002, oneof the first to focuson theproblemof indoorairpollution.Half of the world population and 80

percentof ruralhouseholds indevelop-ing countries cook with solid fuels like wood, coal, crop residues and dung. In many instances, women cook around open fires.Indoor air pollution, including

smoke and other products of incom-plete combustion like carbon mon-oxide, is a major environmental riskfactor, usually ranking behind lackof clean water, poor sanitation andmalnutrition. The problem does notonly afflict the poorest populations.Manyaffluenthouseholds cookon tra-ditional biomass stoves or open firesby choice or because they live in ruralareas without electricity or access tomodern fuels.TheWorldHealthOrganizationesti-

mates that 1.6millionpeopleayeardie of health effects resulting from toxic indoor air. The problem dispropor-tionately falls on women and children who spend hours each day around the hearth. Envirofit was formed in 2003 as a

result of two senior undergraduate

research projects at the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory of Col-orado State. TheShellFoundationestimates that

ithas invested$10million inEnvirofit’s effort to produce 300,000 stoves as an initial test and plans to invest $25 mil-lion more to sponsor the stove effort. Kirk R. Smith, an environmental

health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his col-leagueshaverecentlycompletedafive-yearstudyofGuatemalanscookingon open fires versus improved stoves, the first such randomized trial, they say. The research, the team says, sug-gests additional health problems from

indoor air pollution, including higher frequency of cataracts, partial blind-ness, tuberculosis, low birth weights and high blood pressure. Envirofit will offer a variety of sleek

ceramic stoves from single to multipot that it says will significantly improve air quality and require less wood fuel. Thecost is to startat $10 to$20andrun to $150 to $200.Harish Hande, managing director

of Selco India, a solar lighting com-pany that plans to work on marketing and financing the stoves, said: “Let the women who have been using it for two or three months talk about it, and people will accept it.”

For Developing World, a StoveThat Cuts Indoor Air Pollution

The Myth Of the Male Midlife CrisisThere is nomore convenient excuse

for humanmisbehavior than themidlife crisis. Popularly viewed asa unique developmental birthrightof the human species, it supposedly

strikeswhenmostof us have finallyfigured ourselvesout—only to dis-cover thatwehavelost our youth and

mortality is on the horizon.Life in themiddleagescanbechal-

lenging.Whatwith the first signsofphysicaldeclineandthequestionsanddoubtsaboutone’saccomplishments, itisawonder thatmostofussurvive.Noteveryone is so lucky; some find

themselves seizedbyaseemingly ir-resistible impulse todosomethingdra-matic, even foolish.Everything, it ap-pears, is fairgame foramidlife crisis:one’s job, spouse, lover—youname it.I recently heard about a severe

case from a patient whose husband of nearly 30 years abruptly told her that he “felt stalled and not self-actualized’’ and began his search for self-knowl-edge in the arms of another woman.It was not that her husband no longer

loved her, she said he told her; he just did not find the relationship exciting. “Maybe it’s a midlife crisis,’’ she said, then added derisively, “Whatever that is.’’Outraged and curious, she followed

him one afternoon and was shocked to discover that her husband’s girlfriend was a younger clone of herself.This was a typical case of a middle-

aged narcissist grappling with the biggest insult he had ever faced: get-ting older. But you have to admit that “I’m having a midlife crisis’’ sounds a lot better than “I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.’’Another patient, a 49-year-old man,

started an affair with an office col-league. “I love my wife,’’ he said, “and I don’t know what possessed me.’’It didn’t take long to find out. The

first five years of his marriage were exciting. But once they had a child, he felt an unwelcome sense of drudgery and responsibility creep into his life.Being middle-aged had nothing to do

with his predicament; it was just that it took him 49 years to reach a situation where he had to seriously take account of someone else’s needs, namely those of his baby son.But surely someone has had a

genuine midlife crisis. Of course. But it turns out that only a distinct minor-ity think it constitutes a crisis. In 1999, the MacArthur Foundation study on midlife development surveyed 8,000 Americans ages 25 to 74. While ev-eryone recognized the term “midlife crisis,’’ only 23 percent of subjects re-ported having one. And only 8 percent viewed their crisis as something tied to the realization that they were aging; the remaining 15 percent felt the cri-sis resulted from specific life events. Strikingly, most people also reported an increased sense of well-being and contentment in middle age. So what keeps the myth of the

midlife crisis alive?The main culprit, I think, are youth-

obsessed cultures that make a virtue of the relentless pursuit of self-re-newal. The news media abound with stories of people who seek to recapture their youth simply by shedding their spouses, quitting their jobs or leaving their families. Who can resist?Most middle-aged people, it turns

out, if we are to believe the definitive survey.Except, of course, for the few

— mainly men, it seems — who find the midlife crisis a socially acceptable shorthand for what you do when you wake up and discover that you’re not 20 anymore.

ESSAY

RICHARD A.FRIEDMAN, M.D.

When a narcissist reaches middle age, he may act like a fool.

Repubblica NewYork

The first thing I see every morn-ing is the Cloisters tower, gray and severe, perfectly framed by the living room window of my apartment. The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum’s

medieval outpost over-looking the Hudson River, is almost half a kilometer to the south, near the tip of northern Manhattan.My first visit to the

Cloisters was on a pre-Christmas trip to New York City with my family in the early 1960s. This was one of the most romantic places I’d ever seen.TheCloistersprobably lookedpretty

unsightly frommywindowin the late1930sas itwasbeingbuilt.Adecadeearliera turretedmansionhadstoodonthespot, thehomeofC.K.G.Billings,aself-described“capitalistat large.” In1916hesold theplace toJohnD.Rocke-fellerJr.,whooffered todonate the landto thecityasapark.No, thanks, saidthecity, toomuchupkeep.Rockefellerrentedout thehouse; itburneddown10years later.Before that, though, an American

sculptor named George Grey Barnard (1863-1938) had used a stable on the property as a studio. Barnard had spent time in France, where he had supported himself largely as a dealer in medieval art. In 1913 the French gov-ernment passed a law restricting the export of “cultural heritage.” Two days before the law took effect, Barnard sent a shipload of Romanesque and Gothic material to New York, where he built his own public museum in Upper Manhattan, calling it the Cloisters. Rockefeller bought the entire collec-tion for the Met and building for the new museum began in 1935. Three years later the Cloisters opened.

The Cloisters offers an imaginary Middle Ages, but one with real medi-eval art in it. Some of the most exqui-site objects in any part of the Met’s vast collection are on permanent view here, many of them since 1938. These include monumental ensembles like the cloisters themselves; the unicorn tapestries, a 1937 Rockefeller gift; and the alabaster altar carved by Francí Gomar in 15th-century Spain. What Icomeback for, though,are

individual images.One is theVirginfromBurgundy,withherheavy,gravefaceandherbodyhunched forwardprotectivelyover the figureofherchild.Aspiderystoneangelhoveringenpointenearby is, incontrast, seem-inglyweightless.So isanalmost life-sizestandingVirgin fromStrasbourg

Cathedral.Downstairsthepink-cheekedheadofaVirgin—ararefragmentofBohemianGothic terracotta—hasacomparablebuoyancy,asdo the tiny ivoryre-liefs in theCloisters’treasuryroom.One ivory is based on

a fanciful secular liter-ary theme, the assault on the Castle of Love. Cupid is firing darts at the charging knights, while the castle’s fe-male defenders do their part by tossing roses and kisses down from the walls. This is the ro-mantic, nostalgia-laced Middle Ages that C. S. Lewis wrote about in “The Allegory of Love,” a world in which the codes and courtesies of

courtly devotion regulated all, and the profane and spiritual were one. Then there was reality. For all their

thousands of flowers and Christian im-agery, the unicorn tapestries are about hunting, about using spears, dogs and noise to drive an animal into a pen. This is the other side of the medieval picture: base cruelty, the anguish of loss, the hope for renewal.I didn’t see any of this in 1960. My

mind was on the tomb figures of ar-mored knights. You grow into art; or it grows in you. This takes immersion and time. The Cloisters, while barely changing at all, has changed a lot for me, becoming a more complicated and contemplative experience — about art history, American history, pseudo-his-tory, my history.

By JENNIFER BLEYER

Helen Uffner, the owner of a theat-rical costume company, has a vast in-ventory of vintage items dating from the 1970s back to the 1860s, among them 8,300 dresses, 3,200 women’s hats and 800 cartons of accessories. Items from her collection have made appearances in movies, television shows and Broadway plays.Adecadeago,Ms.Uffnermovedher

business toa650-square-meter lofton West 37th Street near Ninth Avenue, in Manhattan’s garment district. The location proved a perfect fit. “We needed button people, trim people, fabric resources, millinery shops,” Ms. Uffner said. “In a business where time is money, it was nice to have ev-erything within that grid.” But Ms. Uffner’s business was in

a small piece of the garment district that was included in the rezoning of the farWestSideofMidtownManhat-tan three years ago. In the garment district, the center of the fashion in-dustrysincethe1920s, thecitydecided toallowsomeresidentialdevelopment and different kinds of businesses, including the many, like hotels, that generallyreturnmorerent thanagar-ment firm. Ms. Uffner soon received a letter from her landlord saying her lease would not be renewed, and she embarked on an exhaustive search for a new space. No luck.“I was shown buildings where

maybe eight spaces were available, and they would innocently say, ‘Sor-ry, nothing’s available,’ ” Ms. Uffner recalled. “Other agents and owners were honest with me. They said: ‘Lis-ten, we’re waiting for the zoning laws to change again. We would rather cut up our spaces into small offices than have garment firms.’ ”Unable to find new quarters, Ms.

Uffnermoved lastMaytoLongIsland City in Queens, across the East River from Manhattan and a long way from the neighborhood of her choice. The garment district, of course, is

vastlydiminished fromitspeak in the 1950s. But over the last decade, as the city has grown more prosperous and seemingly every piece of Manhattan real estate is in high demand, a sec-ondwaveof troublehasbeenwashing over the district. A growing number of embroiderers, fabric suppliers and sewingfactorieshave lost their leases, making designers afraid that these businesseswill becomesoscarce that they too will have to pack up. For nearly a year, the city’s Eco-

nomic Development Corporation hasbeen meeting with garment makersand their landlords, discussing waysto solve these troubles. It is clear whythe city deems the issue urgent: Thedistrictmaybe less robust than it oncewas, but it is still home to about 1,800garmentfirmsemploying25,000work-ers.Thosenumberscouldshrink fast.“A year ago, it was a factory here

and a factory there,” said Magda Aboulfadl, a project manager at the Garment Industry Development Cor-poration, anadvocacygroup. “Even if you could see the writing on the wall,

you could be in denial. Now you can’t be in denial.”The garment district, bounded

roughly by 34th and 42nd Streets and Fifth and Ninth Avenues, was once an industrial behemoth. In the 1950s, New York was home to 334,000 ap-parel workers.In the 1970s, garment jobs began to

migrate to factories overseas, where labor was significantly cheaper. In 1987, to protect what remained of the local apparel trade, the city instituted special zoning regulations that re-servedmuchof thearea’scommercial space for garment firms.But starting in the mid-’90s, as the

city’s economy boomed and com-mercial rents skyrocketed, landlords began getting restless. Many of them want to loosenthedistrict’sprotective zoning, saying that it handicaps them unfairly because while there is great demandforspace, too littleof it is from garment companies.“To insist on a use that by and large

doesn’t exist anymore does not stem

the tide of jobs leaving,” said Barbara Randall, executive director of the Fashion Center Business Improve-ment District, whose board includes more than a dozen real estate execu-tives.Although there is no timetable for

reaching an agreement, Patrick Mur-phy, vice president for fashion and re-tailgrowth initiativesat theEconomic DevelopmentCorporation,hopes that the city, the garment makers and the property owners will come up with a proposal this year. There is also a sense that the reper-

cussions will extend far beyond this small slice of Midtown Manhattan. “We have to ensure that there’s a

place for them here when they’re not makingasmuchasahedge fundman-ager,” Ms. Randall said of garment workers. “A city full of Wall Street guys is just not an interesting place to be.”

By COREY KILGANNON

Anewbikergangofmostly teenagers is roaming thestreetsofRichmondHill in the Queens section of New York. The bikes roar, but the booming sound has nothing to do with engines — because therearenoengines.Theyareordinary bicycles, not motorcycles, although thesecontraptions lookandsoundmore like rolling D.J. booths. They are bicy-cles with elaborate stereo systems. “This one puts out 5,000 watts and

costabout$4,000,” saidNickRagbir, 18, tinkering with his two-wheeled sound system,with itspowerfulamplifier, two 38-centimeter bass woofers and four midrangespeakers. Itplaysmusic from his iPodand ispoweredbycarbatteries mounted on a sturdy motocross bike.TheridersareofGuyaneseandTrini-

dadianbackground. In thosecountries, turning bicycles into rolling outdoor sound systems is a popular hobby.“It’s really big where I come from in

Trinidad,” Mr. Ragbir said. “When I first came to New York, I started with

two littlespeakers.Peoplehere thought I was crazy because no one here has re-allyeverseen it, exceptmaybe forsome Spanish dudes with a radio strapped to their handlebars.”He added: “People say, ‘It’s the next

best thing to having a system in a car.’ But it’s better because you don’t even have to roll down the windows.’’ Mr. Ragbir and his brother, Elvis

Ragbir, 22, and their friends say they fi-nance their hobby by installing car ste-reos and doing other such work. They ride on warmer days and spend other days in the garage tinkering with their bikes. Inside, one can hear the whir-ring of power tools and conversation in heavy Caribbean accents. They make custom cabinets of wood or plastic to house the systems. Most of the bikes havedecorative lightingandsomehave DVD screens for viewing while riding.Nick Ragbir showed off his new bike,

equippedwithasleek1,500-wattsystem with the stereo and speakers encased in clear plastic custom boxes. The car

batteryandtheconsolearemountedon the handlebars, and the four midrange speakers are mounted in the center of the bike frame.“It’s not as powerful but it’s easier to

ride around,” Mr. Ragbir said.The bikers said they had heard no

complaints about the noise they makefromresidents or people theypass. Andalthough there is a city law that says asummonsmaybeissuedifapersonoper-atesapersonalaudiodevice, likearadio,heard fromup to 8meters away, thebik-ers’ mobile stereos are less likely to at-

tract attention because the noise doesnotpersist inoneplacevery long.Mohan Samaroo, 19, has a system

mounted on his sturdy Mongoose, with four 30-centimeter speakers that can handle the 5,000 watts. There are ex-tra braces resting on training wheels, which can support the heavy system and also an extra rider standing on the back. When the bike cruises down the street with Mr. Samaroo standing, he said, he looks like a D.J. at a nightclub.“We measured it at a car show,” he

said. “It’s 150 decibels.”Thegrouprides inpacks, each taking

turns playing his sound system. “People lookatus likewe’recrazybe-

cause no one’s really seen it here,” said Nick Ragbir, who with Mr. Samaroo formed a business called Legal Inten-tionz to install stereos on bikes.“Some guy hired me to build them for

his kids,” he said. “Now a lot of people want them.”

A CourtyardConjuresEpiphanies

TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Garment DistrictFights for Survival

Bike Riders Who Carry the Beat

NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mohan Samaroo, 19, and his friends outfit bicycles with elaborate stereo systems, a practice common in Trinidad.

TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

In the 1950s, 334,000 worked inthe apparel industry in New York.

HOLLAND

COTTER

ESSAY

Coats of arms ofthe Hapsburgs loomover a courtyard atthe Cloisters, above;a 14th-centurywork depictingSt. Clare, left.

N EW YORK

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008 VII

Repubblica NewYork

By DENNIS LIM

“BeKind,Rewind,”MichelGondry’slatest film, appears to take place in aparalleluniversewithoutdigitalvideorecorders or iTunes. When the entireVHS inventory of a video store is de-magnetized and ruined, the clerks re-spondtothedisasternotbyupgradingtoDVD,butbyenlistingthecustomersto remake the films with a VHS cam-corder.Not farbeneath thehumorandcommunitarian spirit ofMr.Gondry’smovie liesastrongnostalgia foratech-nologythatrevolutionizedhomeview-ing but now seems destined for thedustbinofhistory.Introduced in 1976, VHS, short for

Video Home System, faced the threatof extinction from the start. In its in-fancy ithadtocompetewithBetamax,a format rival that it eventually van-quished. Its dominance was tested

in the ’80s by the laserdisc, the firstconsumer medium to use optical re-cording technology and not magnetictape.But itwas the arrival of theDVDin 1997 that heralded the beginning oftheend forVHS.By 2002 sales of DVDs outstripped

those of VHS tapes. Rentals followedthe next year. VHS and video playershave since gone from ubiquitous toarchaic. Manufacturers have discon-tinued or curtailed production of vid-eocassette recorders. Studios no lon-ger release titles on VHS. In the rushtoward digital gadgets, the passingof the last great analog invention hasgonealmostunnoticed.

VHS still seemslesseasytoroman-ticize than manyother old-mediacastoffs. Plenty ofaudiophiles attestto the rich sound ofvinyl records, justas experimentalfilmmakers andhome-movieenthu-

siasts appreciate the coarse grain ofSuper8 film.ButVHSusually triggersnegative connotations: fees chargedfor failing to rewind, chewed-up tapeand accidental erasure. Mr. Gondryrecently recalled his dismay whensomeone inadvertently recorded overa beloved home video that he and hisfriendshadmadeas teenagers. “May-be that’s where I got the idea to eraseall the tapes,” he said in a telephoneinterview.DVDs are plainly superior to video-

cassettes. Still, VHS tapes changedthe economics of the film industryand shaped the viewing patterns thatwe take for granted today. Swaths

of film history became available forhome consumption; a movie could bewatched repeatedly or at the viewer’schosen pace. The ownership and con-trol we now assume over our mediadietoriginatedwithVHSandVCRs.The generation that came of age in

the ’80s, as the VCR was establish-ing itself, is especially prone to VHSnostalgia. There is also the rarer andgeekier phenomenon of VCR nostal-gia.AndyHain,asoftwareengineer inBrighton,England,maintainstheWebsite and “virtual museum” Total Re-wind (totalrewind.org), which chartsthe evolution ofVCRs fromprehistorytoobsolescence.“It was mainly the technology that

appealed tome,”hewrote inane-mailmessage. “Themore I discovered, themore strangeandunlikelymachines Icameacross.”Future generations will have no

shortage of newmedia to be nostalgicabout.“Really,VHSlasted longerthancould have been expected,” Mr. Hainsaid. “Very fewmedia formats canex-pect tomatch that today.”

By JORI FINKEL

SANTA FE, New Mexico — From a distance they looked like any other tourists at the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, trudging through a slushy landscape with cameras and video cameras. But from the snatches of conversation you could tell they were artists of one sort or another.Passingbysomeadobehomes,Wael

Shawky from Alexandria, Egypt, re-flected on the importance of mud inbuildingsinruralEgyptandinhisownlarge-scale installations.NadineRob-inson from New York and Scott Lyallfrom Toronto discussed the shape ofthedwellings,debatingwhetherFrankLloydWright ever achieved such har-monywithnature. AndtheAustralianartist Nick Mangan asked around tosee howmuch the mud bricks used tomake an adobe oven cost, and wherehemightbuythem.Then someone zoomed in for a

close-up of a crumpled beer can in the snow,aphotographthatmayendup in a work of art.These touristshadnot cometoNew

Mexico onvacationbut on somethingof a creativemission: to develop site-specific projects for the 2008 SiteSanta Fe Biennial, works that willbe installed either in the exhibition’smain gallery or around town thissummer. Although the exhibition

doesnot openuntil June, the creativeprocess began in January, as 22 art-ists from almost as many countriesconverged on Santa Fe for a week ofreconnaissance.Thecuratorialprocessbeganayear

ago, when Laura Heon, the director of thenonprofitartsgroupSiteSantaFe, selected Lance Fung as the guest cu-rator of its seventh biennial. She was

familiar with his work on “The Snow Show,” exhibitions in Finland and Italy that paired architects and art-ists to create ephemeral works made of snow or ice. Collaborationwasalsocrucial toMr.

Fung’s Site proposal, which involved asking curators at other nonprofit arts organizations across the globe, from the Power Plant in Toronto to

Ssamzie Space in Seoul, to nominate a handful of emerging artists, from which he made his choices.It’sanunusualmodel,with thecura-

torrelinquishingagooddealofcontrol,first to the nominating curators andultimately to the artists themselves.While many curators choose particu-larartworkstomakeapoint,Mr.Fungwill not know until closer to openingday, June 22, exactly what the artistswill make. And he has no theme, justa collection of artists who are open toworking inaprocess-orientedway.There are a few parameters. Each

artist gets $7,500 to make his or her contribution. All the artists must return to Santa Fe for at least three weeks before the biennial in June to help make their works by hand. And in a challenge to the commer-

cialism of the art world, all the work willbedestroyedorrecycledwhenthe exhibition closes in October. But even this seeming constraint — the imper-manence of the works —could add to the brinkmanship of it all. Mr. Fung said the impermance was meant to foster a greater sense of experimen-tation. “If someone does a bad painting, it

haunts you for the rest of your life,” he said. “This idea is to take pressure off youngerartists so theycan takegreat risks.”

Reports about the diminishing rel-evance of classical music to new genera-tions of Americans addled by pop culture keep coming. Yet in my experience clas-sical music seems in the midst of an un-

mistakable rebound. Most of the concerts and operas I attended last year drew large, eager and apprecia-tive audiences.But classical music al-

ways was and always will be of interest to relatively modest num-bers of people. Inrecentyearsaspateofarticlesand

bookshave lamentedclassicalmusic’stenuousholdonthepopular imaginationanddefended its richness, complexityandcommunicativepower. I’mthinkingespeciallyof thebook“WhyClassicalMu-sicStillMatters”byLawrenceKramer,aprofessorofEnglishandmusicatFordhamUniversity inNewYork.To Professor Kramer, as he recently

told The New York Times, classical music by definition “is addressed to someone who has a certain independence of mind.” Classical music invites listeners to

focus, to take in, to follow what is almost a narrative that unfolds over a relatively long period of time. Length itself is one of the genre’s defining elements. Once you accept this element of classi-

cal music, the reasons for other aspects of the art form — the complexity of its musi-cal language, the protocols of concertgo-ing — become self-evident.Taking in a concert involves a time com-

mitment. You sit in silence for extended periods and pay attention to live perfor-mances that are visually unremarkable.In an essay in The New York Times,

Professor Kramer called for classical music presenters to follow the lead of en-terprising art museums, which have had success in presenting new and old art in interactive, stimulating and demystify-ing ways. But you cannot set your own pace while listening to a Schubert string

quartet. A concert can offer pre-perfor-mance talks, interactive video displays in the lobby and spoken comments by the performers onstage. But at some point the performance begins and the audience is expected to be quiet and pay attention. Evenso, theact of communal listen-

ingneednotbe reverential.Mostyoungpeople in today’s interactive, amplified,high-techworldmaynotbeenticedby theideaof sittingquietlyandcontemplatinga longmusicalwork.Yet I’ve takenyoungfriendsandother classicalmusicneo-phytes to concertsover theyearsandbeenroutinely struckbyhowabsorbed theybecomeduring, say, ablazingaccountofStravinsky’s “Firebird.’’Creatinganatmosphereconducive to

listeningdoesnotmeanthatconcerthallshave tobe formal.Dresscodesofanykindshoulddisappear.Much lessdrastic in-novationshaveprovedeffective.LincolnCenter’sseriesALittleNightMusic, at theKaplanPenthouse inNewYork, forexam-ple,presents60-minuteprograms.Onlyabout 160peoplecanbeaccommodated.Patronssharecocktail tablesandhavefreeglassesofwine.But to claim a listener’s attention, a

substantial classical piece must entice the dimension of human perception that responds to large structures and long metaphorical narratives.For the most part, rock and pop songs

are relatively short lyrical statements. The classical genre that has most in com-mon with the pop concert is the song recit-al. It makes no difference that the revered classical song repertory, from Schubert to Mahler, is rich with musically complex, often dark works. Because songs tend to be short, we perceive them as more ap-proachable. Instilling audiences of all ages with the

ability — and patience — to listen to some-thing long is crucial to an appreciation of classical music.

Classical Music Thrives In Old and New Settings

From All Over, Artists Scout Santa Fe for Inspiration

Nostalgia For Videos Of the Past

Melonie Diaz, Jack Black and Mos Def

play video clerks in “Be Kind, Rewind.”

JORI FINKEL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Site-specific projects will be created by artists from around the world

for the Santa Fe Biennial. The graveyard at the Taos Pueblo.

Shorter programs, free wine and less formal dress can lure a crowd.

ANTHONY

TOMMASINI

ESSAY

ABBOT GENSER/NEW LINE CINEMA

AR T S & S T Y L E S

VIII MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008

Repubblica NewYork