HOT TICKET
by Ben McGrath

Third week in September: back to school at the United Nations. No sooner had the Fashion Week tents come down in Bryant Park than gravitas (of a sort) returned to the city, ushered in by motorcades ferrying visiting dignitaries between the U.N. and various East Side cocktail parties. For foreign-policy buffs—and who, these days, doesn’t have a world view to propound?—the concentration of big shots and big speeches occasioned a rush of invitation anxiety and panel overload. John Kerry made sure to see and be seen, last Monday, just before the opening of the fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly; he squeezed in a lecture on Iraq (at N.Y.U.), an awards-ceremony keynote address (at Lincoln Center), and a fund-raising gala (at the Hilton). The fund-raiser brought Kerry within blocks of President Bush, who was over at the Sheraton raising money, before he set up shop in the Presidential suite at the Waldorf.



But many of the week’s hot tickets were nominally nonpartisan. A sizable line forming alongside a Park Avenue town house, late Thursday morning, commanded special attention. So many well-cut suits, so much well-kept gray hair, a police barricade: “Who is this for?” a passerby asked.

“The President of Pakistan.”

“Oh!” she replied, turning to a friend. “It’s the President of Pakistan.”

Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Chief Executive, was the scheduled guest speaker at the Council on Foreign Relations that afternoon—the headliner, in a sense, of a weeklong wonkfest at the council’s Sixty-eighth Street clubhouse. Among the warmup acts were the Emir of Qatar, for dinner on Monday, and President Mikhail Saakashvili, of Georgia, for Wednesday lunch. But it was Musharraf whose talk—his fourth in as many years—brought out the greatest array of armchair diplomats and the special pleading for last-minute seats. By Tuesday, the waiting list among council members ran about a hundred deep. Two overflow rooms, with closed-circuit television, had been set up to accommodate the audience. “It’s a little bit like a restaurant or an airplane: you overbook,” Richard Haass, the council president, said.

Security was tight—Musharraf has been the target of several assassination attempts—and the line outside inched slowly forward. Two tanned elderly men chatted near the front, sounding not unlike Deadheads discussing the fall tour.

“Is this the first Musharraf appearance you’ve been to?” one asked.

“Yes, it is,” replied his friend, who was wearing tweed.

“Well, I think he’s very interesting. I find him to be straightforward and candid.”

“It’s a miracle he’s still alive.”

“Oh, I know,” the first man said. “This’ll be the third time I’ve seen him.”

Once inside, the council members traded stories about memorable performances past. Who could forget Hamid Karzai, in 2002, shortly after he became the President of Afghanistan? That was standing-room only, and of course there’d been a lot of buzz about his emerald-green shawl.

“He was just extraordinary—so candid,” one member, a hedge-fund manager in his early thirties, said.

“I call that the ‘Better Him Than Me’ speech,” another, a management consultant, added. “When it was over, everyone just exhaled: ‘Better him than me.’”

Not all council events are rated equal (next week’s breakfast with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French finance minister, has been called only a “moderately hot” ticket), and neither are its members. In the conference room, people took their seats and scanned the attendance list—“That’s your Sunday Styles section,” the management consultant explained—for V.I.P.s.

“I see Ted Sorensen’s on here,” he added. “There’s living history right there.”

“Look, there’s David Rockefeller in the front row,” a woman sitting toward the back exclaimed. “He’s, like, ninety.”

There was no sign of Henry Kissinger, however, and no George Soros. “You know, I think an Eastern European accent is worth an automatic fifty I.Q. points,” the hedge-fund manager said.

“Actually, I think an Oxbridge accent is worth at least twenty,” the consultant said.

And then it was one o’clock—showtime—and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the event’s moderator, took the stage to introduce Musharraf. There he was, the General, dressed conservatively, his hair parted down the middle. It would, presumably, not be a violation of the council’s off-the-record mandate to report that he spoke candidly and displayed a winning sense of humor. Holbrooke certainly seemed pleased. Haass said that he thought Musharraf had “hit a home run.”

“‘A tough man for a tough job’—that’s my one-line summary,” the consultant said. “Before, I’d have estimated the chance of nuclear mishap in Pakistan at thirty per cent. Now I’d say it’s twenty per cent.” He added, “I feel more secure having seen him speak in person.”

RATHER KNOT

This time, CBS really broke the news

by NANCY FRANKLIN

A discussion about the value, relevance, and long-term viability of network news shows has been going on for a while, and naturally it accelerated in the past couple of weeks, after CBS’s unsinkable “60 Minutes” plowed into an iceberg. The sorry episode, in which the authenticity of documents used to buttress a story about the President’s National Guard service three decades ago was called into question, enjoyed only a brief life as a flap—when it looked as though CBS had the goods to back its story and the attacks were anti-big-media gun spray from the trigger-happy right—before becoming a scandal when, last week, it came to light that CBS could not authenticate the documents after all. When Tom Brokaw announced, in 2002, that he would retire after this year’s Presidential election, the Internet heated up on the subject “Whither the network news?” With cable news rocking around the clock, and with the Internet providing instant news—or corrections of the news—often faster than even cable could broadcast it, was there a place anymore for a late-in-the-day, twenty-two-minute news show? This time, the Internet—blogs in particular, many of which are part-time enterprises, written and compiled by guys sitting at home waiting to pounce on the mainstream (excuse me, élite) media—played a more important and more active role in the story, by immediately questioning the validity of the memos that Dan Rather, the correspondent of the “60 Minutes” piece, used to support the well-established claim that Bush received preferential treatment during his now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t service in the Texas Air National Guard.

CBS, in its rush to air the story, which was reported in large part by the producer, Mary Mapes, and overseen by Andrew Heyward, the head of the CBS News division, failed in its basic journalistic duties, and then took its time apologizing. Shortly after the “60 Minutes” broadcast, when conservative bloggers went into “C.S.I.” mode and raised doubts about the memos, CBS and Rather dug in their heels, even as the ground was crumbling under them, and put out a bizarrely defensive statement saying, “Contrary to some rumors, no internal investigation is underway at CBS News nor is one planned.” By then, the questions about those at CBS who were responsible for the broadcast—what didn’t they know, and when didn’t they know it?—called for full and honest answers. To twist one of Rather’s favorite Texasisms, that dog should have hunted. Finally, twelve days after the story aired, CBS and Rather apologized for not having sufficiently investigated the provenance of the documents. The next day, it was reported that Mapes had put in a call to Joe Lockhart, a Kerry campaign adviser (and a former press secretary of President Clinton’s), asking him to call Bill Burkett, a retired Texas National Guard lieutenant colonel and Democratic activist who had provided the documents in the first place, and who wanted to get in touch with the campaign. Ouch.

At this point, the discussion of the episode became less a referendum on the viability of network news and more a dissection of CBS News specifically and of the chain of approval for its stories. CBS News and Rather are often accused of “liberal bias” (there is, of course, a Web site, ratherbiased.com, devoted to Rather’s sins), and Mapes’s gigantic errors in judgment—and, more seriously, those of Heyward—won’t help the network’s case. Needless to say, CBS also took a spanking at the hands of the late-night talk shows, including one of its own: David Letterman ran a fake intro to the CBS Evening News, with an announcer saying, “Tonight on the CBS Evening News, we report nine real stories and one fake one. Can you guess which is which?”

Still, Rather’s mistake probably had more to do with competitiveness and scoopaholism than with any political bias. That’s the way people in the news business are made. One of Rather’s famous bits of behavior involved his walking away from the anchor’s chair, in 1987, to protest the intrusion of a U.S. Open tennis match into the evening-news slot, a huff that resulted in six minutes of blackness going out over the airwaves. Rather wanted the network, if it was going to stick with the tennis, to start the news at seven, at the beginning of the next half-hour interval; but when the match ended only two minutes after six-thirty, efforts had to be made to find Rather and get him back in his seat. In an interview for Ken Auletta’s book “Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way,” Howard Stringer, who was the president of CBS News at the time of Rather’s walkout, said that “the difference between a reporter and an anchor is like the difference between a D.A. and a judge,” and that this was an instance of Rather, whom he called “an outstanding, aggressive reporter,” being the D.A. (It could also be viewed as a case of Rather acting as though he himself were the law.) Rather was defending the primacy of the news, with the intensity and the hardheadedness that he has become known for.

Aggressiveness and determination are necessary attributes in reporters, obviously, and any high-profile figure in network news needs them in double supply, partly so that he can do his job and partly so that he can be seen to be doing his job by his bosses—careful, unshowy reporting may earn plaudits from other journalists, but it is invisible to both the networks themselves, which are primarily concerned with the business of entertainment, and the corporations that own the networks (ditto). Memorable evidence of this was provided in 2002 by Disney-owned ABC, when it pulled the Mickey Mouse move of trying to replace Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” with Letterman. The networks have a laserlike focus on the bottom line, and the money that they spend on their news divisions has decreased over the years, as have the ratings for all three network newscasts; they still have more viewers by far than the cable news shows, but those numbers are going down, and CBS has been in third place for about a decade. Although the Iraq war, global terrorism, and the Presidential campaign have juiced those who work in network news, it isn’t a rewarding time to be an anchor. (Except financially, that is—all three anchors are doing quite well, thank you.) Rather, Brokaw, and Peter Jennings are tops in their field; they go to the best parties and know everybody who’s anybody; and they know a lot about the world. Still, they have to wake up every day and prove that they are not—to use the word that invariably crops up when the traditional network-news format is batted around—dinosaurs. Polls and ratings figures show that young people are not developing the warm, fuzzy feelings toward anchors that their elders supposedly have, and the networks have no idea whether what loyalty does exist will carry into the coming years once all three of the current anchors are gone. At the moment, CBS needs Rather. He is the face of the network, and if his face were suddenly to be absent—if his face were fired, that is—the CBS eye would look like a black hole, and you’d hear the wind whistling through the void. And then you’d turn the channel.

The networks have been active agents of their own diminishment: all of them cut foreign coverage way back in the decade or so before September 11, 2001, and this year, with the country at war and with the first Presidential campaign following a historic and disputed Presidential election, they chose to carry only one hour of the Democratic and Republican Conventions each night. Even if the network news shows still see themselves as a kind of public trust, the public is increasingly looking elsewhere for a credible and ordered reflection of the world; the authority that used to belong to the networks is now scattered across the multimedia universe. Rather was enlisted to appear on Letterman’s first show after September 11th, as a reassuring presence, but it was Letterman’s soulful monologue that provided sense and solace that night. (A transcript of the monologue is available on—where else?—a blog.) We’ve all become empowered by the choices at our fingertips, but we—bloggers, TV viewers—don’t necessarily have the skill and depth of experience that news organizations draw upon. Speed isn’t everything—as Rather himself painfully found out. But the fact that a respected newsman has proved to be a flawed captain of his ship doesn’t mean that anyone else would be any better at steering the thing.

Jeanne

Todas as minhas reportagens sobre o furacão Jeanne estão aquí.

You Say Yusuf, I Say Youssouf...

The Cat Stevens incident has its origins in a spelling mistake

By SALLY B. DONNELLY - TIME

The Yusuf Islam incident earlier this week, in which the former Cat Stevens was denied entry into the U.S. when federal officials determined he was on the government's "no-fly" antiterror list, started with a simple spelling error. According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a "Youssouf Islam." The incorrect name was added to the register this summer, but because Islam's name is spelled "Yusuf" on his British passport, he was allowed to board a plane in London bound for the U.S. The Transportation Safety Administration alleges that Islam has links to terrorist groups, which he has denied; British foreign minister Jack Straw said the TSA action "should never have been taken."


Cat Stevens, surrounded by reporters at London's Heathrow Airport, says he will initiate legal proceedings against the U.S. government for placing him on a watch list and deporting him out of the country.

The incident points up some of the real problems facing security personnel as they try to enforce the "no-fly" list. One issue is spelling; many foreign names have several different transliterations into English. And the sheer size of the list is daunting; thousands of names have been added in the last couple months, says one government official, bringing the total up to more than 19,000 names to look out for. That makes it difficult for airlines and government agencies to check all passengers. Within the past six months, several people on the no fly list have been mistakenly allowed to fly.

Still, the TSA is learning. It recently acknowledged that a Federal Air Marshall, unable to fly for weeks when his name was mistakenly put on the "no-fly" list, was in fact not a threat, and removed his name from the list.

Sagan, l'art d'être SOI

La romancière, malade depuis plusieurs mois, est morte vendredi 24 septembre à l'hôpital d'Honfleur des suites d'une embolie pulmonaire.

Sous la frange platine, rappelez-vous le regard, comme il mangeait le triangle du visage ! Au repos, on aurait dit la gravité du chien ; et, soudain, le temps d'un bredouillis, c'était la malice même, sans la méchanceté que l'époque attend des beaux esprits. En quarante ans de gloire, donc de questions idiotes, elle n'a pas dit une sottise ni une perfidie ; même quand on la tannait avec sa légende (voitures, alcool et compagnie), faute de percer son secret. Au fait, quel secret ? Le talent, dans ce qu'il a d'inexplicable, et le culot de s'y abandonner, le courage du premier jet à peine relu, du caprice touche-à-tout, du plaisir qu'on s'invente, de la phrase laissée en plan. Le mystère Sagan ? Tout simplement l'art d'être SOI, sur la page blanche, dans la vie. Un art dont l'exemple va cruellement manquer.

S'appartenir, en 1954, vous n'y pensez pas ! La morale n'étouffait pas les politiques, empêtrés entre deux guerres coloniales, mais les familles, elles, se cramponnaient au code ancien : pas d'amour sans mariage ni enfantement. La pilule restait à inventer. L'avortement était réservé aux grands bourgeois couverts en francs suisses. Les autres étaient réduits à flirter entre deux boogie-woogies. Jouir, le Maréchal était contre ; bientôt le Général aussi. Vaincre la vertu des filles exigeait plus de ruses et de camps de base que l'Annapurna.

Le scandale de Bonjour tristesse ne s'explique pas sans cet environnement maussade. Le roman n'a pas de quoi choquer. Une gamine y décrète son goût de l'alcool et des hommes argentés. La Garçonne faisait pire, et Delly n'est pas loin. Mais c'est un petit bout de lycéenne qui réclame, comme pour elle-même, la nue-propriété de son corps. Auvergnate du 17e arrondissement, Françoise Quoirez n'a pas 19 ans. Et elle n'a pas que les mœurs de délurées. La façon de dire les choses l'est aussi. C'est même elle qui fait le plus sensation. En une phrase, la première du livre, un ton têtu s'impose. Il y est question d'une sensation "énervante et douce", comme celle de l'ongle sur la soie. Pas de doute : il faut avoir fauté pour parler ainsi ; fauté avec la littérature. L'éditeur René Julliard ne s'y trompe pas. Les vieux écrivains enrichis dans l'adultère retors ajustent leurs bésicles : hé, hé ! si un petit diable nous était né ?

Une vocation bien classique, au contraire. Comme à peu près toute la génération tombée pubère après la Libération, Sagan a pressenti la joie de s'appartenir, à 13 ans, dans les hymnes symbolards des Nourritures terrestres. Juste après Gide vint Camus. L'ancienne pensionnaire des Oiseaux venait de perdre la foi. C'était à Lourdes, devant le brancard d'une petite infirme à vie. Un Dieu qui permettait cela n'avait pas droit à ses oraisons. L'Homme révolté allait remplir le vide du ciel de son humanisme sympa. Enfin, ce fut Rimbaud, dévoré sous une tente à rayures, vers Hendaye, tôt le matin. Dès lors, les livres seraient tout pour elle, et les écrivains, même poussifs, seraient sauvés à ses yeux par la folie qu'il y a à se jeter dans la fournaise des mots, afin d'éteindre on ne sait quel incendie...

Donc, Bonjour tristesse fait l'effet d'une danse nue dans le dortoir des grandes. La presse à ragots ne quitte pas l'auteur d'une semelle. Cette manière de claquer ses droits d'auteur en voitures de sport, en nuits chez Régine et en escapades à Saint-Tropez, c'est exactement ce qu'il faut pour exciter le mélange dont vit cette presse, de fascination et d'opprobre.

La vitesse sur route passe encore pour un plaisir rare, étant peu partagé. Après Morand, Nimier et Sagan en font le signe d'une familiarité prestigieuse avec la mort. Qui ne pratique pas le vertige des dérapages contrôlés est suspect d'aimer la vie en bourgeois, c'est-à-dire mal, de ne pas savoir aimer. Un romantisme suicidaire réunit les plus doués de ces "enfants tristes". En temps de guerre froide, le choix est entre ce désenchantement trépidant et l'overdose politique, guère plus maligne.

Pour Sagan, le jeu s'apparente à la vitesse. On ne prend pas goût aux casinos, on naît mordu ou pas. Au bord d'un tapis vert ou d'une pelouse, le gain compte moins que la sensation, si la main est heureuse, d'être chéri des dieux. Rien ne ressemble au talent comme la chance, qui n'est elle-même qu'une forme supérieure du culot.

On sait comment Sagan est devenue propriétaire de sa maison d'Equemauville, au-dessus de Honfleur. Elle l'avait d'abord louée, par dépit que la classe moyenne d'Europe du Nord ait envahi et défiguré Saint-Tropez. Le matin où elle devait en rendre les clés, elle remontait de Deauville avec une différence positive de 80 000 francs. Tout à trac, le propriétaire lui offrit les lieux, pour cette somme précise. Certaines coïncidences ressemblent si fort à des signes du ciel que d'y résister tiendrait de la bouderie.

Corollaire de ce code d'élégance envers la veine : la poisse, elle aussi, serait méritée. La narratrice de Bonjour tristesse trouve "bien fait", comme disent les enfants, que sa rivale bronze mal. Dans Château en Suède, les châtelains moqueront assez cruellement le bel intrus d'ignorer les règles de la tribu. La joie d'être soi inclut celle d'être entre-moi, en bande, à l'abri des habitudes, des plaisanteries et des rengaines dont se fortifie l'amitié. Les mots "rosse" et "féroce" font partie du vocabulaire saganien, étant clair qu'ils ne tirent pas à conséquence.

J'ai personnellement constaté ce penchant clanique pour le bizutage. Nouveau venu à Equemauville, je faillis être pris pour tête de Turc par l'hôtesse et ses habitués. Le hasard, qui était là-bas chez lui, fit surgir un chanteur du genre chic type rasoir pour feu de camp. C'est lui qui fut la risée.

La scène se passait vers 1960. Le mythe Sagan battait son plein. Une Aston Martin l'entretenait, de ses feulements. Au moindre fléchissement de l'actualité, les magazines revenaient à la romancière fêtarde aux pieds nus, à ses bolides et ses gueules de bois. Sagan saluait d'un pouffement les curiosités vraiment trop nulles, mais elle répondait. Et ses avis sur l'époque, comme sur elle-même, sonnaient toujours juste, parce que sans triche. Cette vie de noctambule, ces romans un peu bâclés, allait-elle s'en contenter longtemps encore ? On verrait bien.

"Bâclés", les livres ? Mieux vaudrait dire "jetés", et insolemment gracieux d'obéir au premier mouvement. Les femmes y sont merveilleusement ceci, excessivement cela, les hommes ont des mains rassurantes de commandants de bord à la KLM, les glaçons tintent dans les verres, les jeunes gens paient en moqueries l'avantage agaçant de leur peau trop lisse, etc., bref, le lieu commun coule avec la prodigalité du whisky, et quelque chose dit au lecteur qu'une fille astucieuse et cultivée comme elle se montre dans les interviews, lectrice de Proust et de Virginia Woolf, pourrait peut-être s'appliquer un peu plus dans ses livres.

Mais non : la seule notion d'effort lui va comme une 2 CV en côte. Son charme veut la désinvolture de l'esquisse. Le culte de l'instant réussi ne se divise pas. Et on aurait tort de croire qu'il vieillit mal. Relisez Un certain sourire, Dans un mois dans un an, Aimez-vous Brahms..., Les Merveilleux Nuages, La Chamade, Des bleus à l'âme : on oublie la futilité du milieu jet-set, toujours le même, un peu comme on oublie les princesses de Racine et les duchesses de Proust, pour ne retenir que le je-ne-sais-quoi d'une notation, un assemblage d'odeurs ou d'adjectifs, qui font que les sensations de l'auteur deviennent les nôtres. N'est-ce pas cela, la littérature ?

Le théâtre aussi bien. Un talent tellement joueur, et à partir de petits riens, ne pouvait qu'être attiré par la scène. Sagan en était à son troisième roman. Elle publia des bribes de dialogues dans une revue. Barsacq les lut. Ce fut Château en Suède, à l'Atelier, en 1959. Claude Rich était le frère complice, personnage-clé de la mythologie saganienne, et Philippe Noiret le mari tonitruant et débonnaire, autre figure de la famille. Les répliques gagées sur un solide sens du farniente faisaient écho à la petite musique des romans, cette musique à laquelle se raccrochent les critiques en peine d'expliquer pourquoi un auteur sait se faire écouter, et dont on parlait déjà à propos d'un certain Musset.

Parfois, le succès ne fut pas au rendez-vous. On a beau y penser très fort, le bon numéro ne sort pas forcément. Sagan prenait les échecs d'auteur dramatique comme les revers de casino, avec respect pour les caprices de la banque et du ciel. Il faut bien perdre un peu, pour mieux savourer la gagne du lendemain. Qui ne l'a pas vue "récupérer" en quelques quarts d'heure les pertes de toute une nuit ne peut comprendre comme c'est joyeux de narguer le sort.

Le risque l'attirait plus que tout. Et qu'il fût partagé par une équipe d'amis renforçait son excitation. Le don de soi et la folie des comédiens avaient tout pour la séduire. Peu d'écrivains ont peint avec autant d'estime attendrie cette autre pièce maîtresse du petit monde saganien qu'est l'actrice mûrissante : Marie Bell, Juliette Gréco (dans Bonheur impair et passe), Danielle Darrieux (dans La Robe mauve de Valentine). C'est encore d'une théâtreuse qu'elle fera le portrait dans un de ses derniers romans, Le Miroir égaré (Plon, 1996).

Avec les années 1980, qui étaient aussi, pour elle, celles de la cinquantaine, Sagan a voulu, dirait-on, donner tort à ceux qui la croyaient enfermée dans un milieu, une époque, et une distance courte. Des romans un peu plus longs se sont succédé (La Femme fardée), sur fond d'années 1940 (De guerre lasse). Mais elle ne pouvait empêcher que l'attention s'attache à ce qu'elle savait le mieux faire, une couleur d'aube, une subtilité de perception, un dégradé de sentiment, toujours une "espèce de" ceci ou de cela. Il existe une grande tradition de moralistes français pour qui écrire consiste à redéfinir les paysages, et d'abord ceux de l'âme, à partir d'infimes nuances chantantes. Sagan va s'y inscrire peu à peu, avec plus de force que ne le suggérait, à chaque essai nouveau, sa confondante facilité.

Poussé parfois jusqu'au défi, son art d'être soi ne lui a pas valu que des gracieusetés. Les moraleux, à ne pas confondre avec les moralistes, commencèrent à froncer le sourcil quand la petite prodige de Bonjour tristesse passa l'âge des grosses bêtises. L'accident routier de 1957 fut durement commenté. Plus encore, en octobre 1985, un certain rapatriement de Colombie par les soins de l'Elysée. Les "anti" ne savaient pas au juste ce qui les hérissait le plus, que la romancière passe pour s'adonner à quelque drogue, ou qu'elle s'affiche pour Mitterrand. Les mêmes lecteurs (lectrices) qui avaient puisé dans ses premiers romans des leçons d'émancipation sans trop de conséquences lui en voulaient d'avoir rejoint résolument l'ennemi en choisissant la gauche et son champion. Ses opinions et sa façon de ne pas en démordre alors que les intellectuels ne s'étaient jamais autant reniés lui auront été comptées plus qu'à aucun autre artiste par la presse modérée, qui, quoi qu'on prétende, a toujours dominé le marché du goût.

Le mini-lynchage consécutif à son engagement et à certains démêlés judiciaires n'était pas sans rappeler celui que subit, depuis sa mort, Jean-Paul Sartre, accusé d'avoir terrorisé les lettres durant trente ans, quand il ne fit, fort d'une revue confidentielle, que régner par le talent et la générosité de ses questionnements.

Il est assez symbolique que Sagan ait égayé les derniers mois de la vie de Sartre. Trente années les séparaient, mais ils étaient jumeaux Gémeaux, tous deux nés un 21 juin. L'un avait labouré le concept, l'autre froissé de la soie. L'ancienne pilote de Jaguar passait prendre le philosophe aveugle dans sa mini-Austin cabossée. Ensemble, ils dînaient et blaguaient. Elle s'était crue frivole jusqu'à l'apolitisme ; lui se demandait s'il n'aurait pas dû l'être davantage. Il fallait les voir, gais comme des collégiens ayant fait une bonne niche à Dieu sait qui.

Avec tout le sérieux qu'elle savait mettre dans les rites amicaux, Sagan a raconté (Avec mon meilleur souvenir) cette connivence de deux monstres sacrés du XXe siècle, aussi peu vaniteux que possible, simplement réjouis devant leurs respectifs empires de papier, de mots dansants.

Les voilà ensemble, et si peu eux-mêmes, puisque muets. La barbe !

Bertrand Poirot-Delpech / LE MONDE

LIFE is back... today!

El francés y la alemana

por Alejandro Armengol

Hay otra fotografía de Ernesto Guevara. No tan conocida como la famosa foto del Che, aunque la tiró un fotógrafo más célebre. Al contemplarlas unidas, las diferencias hacen evidente que lo importante no es el sujeto que aparece retratado, sino la fecha en que son publicadas. La primera estuvo guardada en un archivo por varios años y la posterior fue divulgada de inmediato. El hombre y el mito.

La distancia entre ambas encierra la historia de la revolución cubana. La foto menos famosa nos muestra a un Che jovial y joven -pese a las arrugas prematuras del rostro. El llamativo reloj en el brazo izquierdo, las dos copas y la taza de café al frente contribuyen a humanizar el retrato. Pero es la sonrisa del guerrillero la que nos devuelve a la época en que aún era posible la duda: nada más alejado de las intrigas por el poder, los combates sin escapatoria en la aridez del campo latinoamericano y el empecinamiento en una lucha a muerte que ese argentino -porque la instantánea permite otorgarle una nacionalidad y no perderlo en un símbolo - que mira confiado y risueño a sus supuestos interlocutores. Una logra acaparar una eternidad que ahora se resume en camisetas y carteles para turistas y manifestantes tras una ilusión perdida. La segunda es apenas un documento histórico. La primera y famosa se identifica con un período convulso, que afectó a todos los países. La otra nos devuelve a una época de ilusión en sólo una isla; permite una mirada triste pero no un rechazo en blanco y negro.

Henry Cartier-Bresson llegó a La Habana en 1963, para captar el momento aún sostenido de una esperanza que se perdía irremediable en los excesos. Vino a mirar el despertar cubano -del que sólo sobreviven documentos como su fotografía del Che-, pero especialmente a transmitir al mundo sus imágenes, como una forma de entender lo que ocurría en un país enfrentado a una gran potencia y cada vez más aliado a otra. Viajó enviado por la revista Life, para realizar un reportaje gráfico de la isla, gracias a su condición de fotógrafo de primera y ciudadano francés. Lo hizo con el entusiasmo que lo caracterizaba -siempre estar en la primera línea en cualquier lugar del mundo en que surgiera una noticia-, pero también con la prudencia del que sabe los peligros que acechan al que marcha en busca de la historia.

Antes de viajar a Cuba, se comunica con Nicolás Guillén -al que conocía desde 1934- e indaga las posibilidades que tiene de poder moverse sin problemas: "lo que más me gustaría es no estar con las delegaciones y hospedarme en el viejo hotel Inglaterra -que probablemente esté muy destartalado-, donde se hospedó Caruso". El Poeta Nacional apoya la idea: "De acuerdo. Qué más". "Quiero que me asignen un intérprete", añade el fotógrafo. "¡Pero si tú hablas español!", replica asombrado Guillén. "¡Sí, pero de este modo sabré donde me meto!", responde previsor. No por gusto "el ojo del siglo XX" había estado en la guerra civil española, participado en la lucha de liberación de Francia de la ocupación nazi y presenciado el triunfo de Mao, el "deshielo" en la Unión Soviética, el asesinato de Gandhi y la construcción del Muro de Berlín.

A la muerte de Cartier-Bresson -el 2 de agosto de este año-, en Cuba no faltaron los elogios al hombre que había fotografiado el proceso revolucionario en sus inicios, pero tendiendo un "manto piadoso" de silencio sobre el texto que acompañó a las imágenes. Porque el reportaje gráfico aparecido en el número 54 de la revista Life (del 15 de marzo de 1963) no sólo contiene las fotos de HCB -las siglas con las que era conocido Cartier-Bresson, como si se tratara de la marca de una impresora-, sino también el testimonio de su visita. Palabras e imágenes que no pueden ser separadas, porque ambas responden a una visión desprejuiciada -por momentos aguda, en ocasiones ingenua- de lo que ocurría en la isla.

HCB llega con los ojos del europeo que ha visto mucho y busca lo diferente. Lo resalta en todo momento: encuentra que hay un proceso en gestación que se diferencia del soviético y chino. No por la falta de intención de quienes gobiernan, sino por la idiosincrasia del cubano. El francés nos ve dicharacheros, indisciplinados y astutos: incapaces de ser sometidos a la disciplina regia del totalitarismo.

Señala en favor de su tesis ciertas características que luego serían abolidas: noticias sobre religión publicadas en el periódico El Mundo, la persistencia de una prostitución permitida y la lotería. Pero destaca sobre todo la existencia de una doble moral, que lleva a que un importante funcionario del régimen le haga chistes contrarrevolucionarios y que un poeta lo lleve a un culto afrocubano, para confersarle luego que: "Somos marxistas-leninistas durante la semana, pero el domingo lo reservamos para nosotros". Al mismo tiempo, alerta sobre el peligro que representa una institución como los Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, que considera "perniciosa, una invasión de la privacidad, en el mejor de los casos, y el comienzo del control del pensamiento y la cacería de brujas, en el peor".

Donde se hace más patente esta visón -donde la comprensión de lo nuevo marcha pareja con un deslumbramiento superficial- es en su percepción sobre el Che Guevara y Fidel Castro. Al Che no le ve como "un hombre violento pero realista", para agregar: "Un hombre persuasivo y un verdadero anarquista, pero no es un mártir. Uno siente que si la revolución en Cuba resultara aniquilada, el Che reaparecería en otro lugar de Latinoamérica, vivo y arrojando bombas". De Castro afirma que es "un verdadero Mesías y al mismo tiempo un mártir. A diferencia del Che, creo que preferiría morir que ver desaparecer a la revolución". Es el fotógrafo en plan de apoderarse de la realidad con la mirada de su cámara, pero también el francés que ve a las mujeres -por delante y por detrás- con la codicia del mirón: las prostitutas redimidas, "la compañera" que de pronto abre la puerta de una habitación -en el corredor de un hotel-, a la que devora con la vista y compara ventajosamente con Brigitte Bardot, para encontrar una respuesta cómplice de su acompañante cuando inquiere por ella: "Trabaja en el Ministerio de Industria". Quien luego agrega: "Todas las noches estudia libros rusos de planificación industrial". Por eso, al describir un discurso de Castro, se permite un comentario irónico "Tras hablar durante tres horas, las mujeres en su presencia aún temblaban de éxtasis, pero había puesto a dormir a los hombres". Se entiende la renuencia actual en Cuba a detenerse en sus palabras.

La foto del Che de Cartier-Bresson -publicada en la revista Life- responde a esta visión humana, demasiado humana. La de Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, "Korda", llega a la leyenda por un camino distinto: es la representación perfecta del mito; se convirtió en un icono el pasado siglo y mantiene aún su vigencia en las protestas actuales contra la globalización y el libre comercio. Pero a diferencia de la del fotógrafo francés, en sus orígenes no fue reconocida como un "instante decisivo" -la estética que hizo famoso a HCB-, sino que tuvo que esperar a ser descubierta por el editor italiano Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, tras la muerte del "Guerrillero Heroico".

En vida, Korda repitió a todo oído atento y entusiasta la historia de aquel momento: fue durante el entierro de las víctimas de la explosión del vapor La Coubre, en 1960. Era fotógrafo del periódico Revolución y fotografiaba a quienes estaban en la tribuna del acto. Descubre el rostro del Che, lo encuadra y oprime el obturador dos veces.

Fotograma completo de la foto de Korda

Hay otra versión de lo ocurrido. Guillermo Cabrera Infante dice en un artículo -publicado en El País el 9 de septiembre de 2001- que el original es una fotografía de grupo, donde no sólo aparecen Fidel Castro, Oswaldo Dorticos y otros miembros del gobierno -además del Che-, sino también Jean-Paul Sartre y Simone de Beauvoir. De acuerdo a Cabrera Infante, fueron Giangiacomo Feltrinelli y Valerio Riva quienes en Milán, Italia, extrajeron del conjunto el rostro del Che que se convertiría en icono mundial.

Más allá de una polémica donde los protagonistas -Korda, Feltrinelli, Riva- están muertos, cabe destacar la influencia del fotógrafo francés sobre los cubanos. Por vocación o oportunismo, Korda dijo en más de una entrevista que consideraba a HCB una fuente de inspiración, y que de acuerdo al postulado de la importancia del "instante decisivo" -aunque desconociendo entonces lo dicho por Cartier-Bresson- había tomado la foto del Che. Si se puede dudar de la sinceridad de las palabras de Korda -dichas años después de los hechos-, es porque su actividad fotográfica, hasta los primeros años de la revolución, se desarrolló por otras vías: fue un fotógrafo de modelos con más o menos ropas y su ideal era Richard Avedon.

No hay tampoco que restarle valores fotográficos a la obra de Korda, quien si bien fue famoso en todo el mundo por su imagen del Che, hay en su carpeta muchas otras de gran mérito, como la del campesino trepado a un farol durante una concentración en La Habana y la de la entrada de Camilo Cienfuegos en la capital, con una caballería rebelde, para citar dos ejemplo bien conocidos.

Por los contrastes que crean las asimetrías, hay otras dos imágenes que permiten más de una comparación. Una es de HCB y es su foto más famosa: un hombre corre sobre un suelo mojado en la estación Saint-Lazare de París. En la otra Fidel Castro -cubierto con un enorme abrigo de pieles, gruesas botas y una carabina en la mano- camina pausadamente por un paisaje nevado, durante una cacería en Rusia, en la época de Kruschef. Esta última es de Korda. No hay un mejor paralelo entre la indefensión cotidiana del ciudadano y el poder tropical absoluto trasladado de pronto a la estepa rusa.

Hay más en común entre la foto del Che de Korda y la de HCB, y es la máquina fotográfica -un término que pretende mecanizar un oficio nada mecánico, y mucho menos objetivo, que depende de la inspiración tanto como lo hacen la música y la pintura. Ambas fueron tomadas con una Leica. La cámara alemana que Cartier-Bresson impuso al mundo de los reporteros gráficos, por ser de gran calidad y al mismo tiempo portátil. Tres Leicas -la tercera en las manos de Jesse Fernández- se emplearon en la mayoría de los mejores retratos hechos en Cuba durante la segunda mitad del pasado siglo.

La fotografía de Cartier-Bresson que ha alcanzado el mayor precio en una subasta es de Cuba, pero no tiene nada que ver con la revolución, ya que fue hecha durante una visita anterior a la isla. Se vendió el 16 de noviembre de 1999 por $24,030. Titulada Cuba, 1934 era su preferida. La eligió para abrir la exposición de homenaje por sus 95 años -que sabía era también su despedida del mundo que recorrió de arriba a abajo, una y otra vez.

Catalogada como una de las más importantes de Europa el año pasado -con 350 fotografías, tres documentales y horarios de visita ampliados- a la muestra se la considera la mayor representación antológica jamás montada. Miles desfilaron entonces ante esa fotografía cubana en blanco y negro -de tonos oscuros-, que impresiona por su aridez: un tiovivo abandonado con unas paredes casi derruidas al fondo y una figura que se pierde en ese paisaje de ruinas. A quien había retratado los campos de concentración nazi, le bastó en esta ocasión con unos caballitos de madera sin cola, que aparentan saltar por los escombros, para escapar de la desolación.


HCB

Korda

(C) AA2004

Doubts aired on how all Iraqis can vote, and who will protect them

WASHINGTON — Top U.S. officials differed Friday over key details of planned Iraqi elections in January, including the unresolved issue of whether all Iraqis will be able to vote and who will protect them from their country's worsening violence.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Congress the elections must be held throughout the country, including areas gripped by violence. That contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said Thursday and again Friday that if insurgents prevent Iraqis from voting in some areas, a partial vote would be better than none at all.

Asked about Rumsfeld's comment, Armitage told a House Appropriations panel, "We're going to have an election that is free and open, and that has to be open to all citizens." Asked after the hearing if partial elections were being considered, he said: "No. Not now. Not that I know of."

Among areas of increasing bloodshed in Iraq are some where U.S.-led coalition forces don't go because they are partly or wholly controlled by insurgents.

Defense officials have put off trying to rout insurgents from those places, including the city of Fallujah, until Iraqi forces now in training are strong enough to hold any area once it is retaken, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said recently.

The interim Iraqi government, meanwhile, has been talking with tribal elders to negotiate a deal to end the insurgents' hold in some places.

Some lawmakers, meanwhile, fear more American troops may have to go to Iraq to help in elections. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of troops in the region, said this week he couldn't discount the possibility, though he said believes Iraqi and possibly international troops could handle the job.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., told Armitage that a plan relying on having sufficient Iraqis trained in time was "astoundingly optimistic." If Americans are to bear the extra burden — as they have been forced to stay in Iraq on extended deployments — then the American people should be told now, and not given the news "on the installment plan," Obey said.

But Army officials said Friday it is likely that during the elections, the U.S. military will have extra troops in the country anyway. The Army is rotating fresh troops into Iraq this fall and winter to replace those whose one-year tours are ending, and it expects to have an overlap of 10,000 to 15,000 extra U.S. soldiers in January when the 3rd Infantry Division's four brigades arrive to replace the 1st Cavalry Division, the officials said.

Obey was among lawmakers worried about a Bush administration request to shift to security some money budgeted for Iraq electricity, water and other reconstruction.

"Reducing supplies of potable water and increasing sewage will adversely affect the health and well-being of millions of Iraqis, but I see no alternative," said Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee that held the hearing.

The State Department recommended the shift after taking over in July as the lead U.S. agency in Iraq, rejecting spending priorities the Pentagon laid out when it led the 15-month military occupation.

Slowing what Kolbe called the already "lamentably slow" progress on promised reconstruction projects will hurt the effort to win Iraqi "hearts and minds" — a key to defeating the insurgents, officials and lawmakers alike fear.

Speaking of the promise to hold free and fair elections in Iraq, Armitage said: "It's got to be our best effort to get it into troubled areas as well. ... I wouldn't want to leave California out of an election in the United States, or Wisconsin, or anybody."

Before Armitage spoke, Rumsfeld reiterated in a Friday meeting with reporters that he believes the elections should go ahead even a he acknowledged some areas may be inaccessible to voting.

"Every Iraqi deserves the right to vote," Rumsfeld said. "We and the government of Iraq intend to see that the elections are held ... that they're held on time" and "do everything possible to see that that happens, and to see that every Iraqi has the right to vote."

On Thursday, he told a Senate committee that if the election could be held in three-fourths or four-fifths of the country, but violence was too great for a vote in the rest of the country, "So be it. Nothing's perfect in life."

Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Thursday that January elections "may not be 100% safe."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested last week that there could not be "credible elections" if violence doesn't abate.

The United States has been pressing the United Nations to send more people to Iraq to help with elections, but U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said this week that any such increase "is critically dependent on the overall security environment."

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

Igreja medieval escocesa leiloada no eBay

O site de leilões online eBay vai pôr à venda uma igreja medieval escocesa e o cemitério adjacente. O edifício já tem um projecto aprovado para ser transformado numa cada de três quartos. O site de leilões online eBay vai pôr à venda uma igreja medieval escocesa e o cemitério adjacente. O edifício já tem um projecto aprovado para ser transformado numa cada de três quartos.

A igreja de St. Michael, na pequena cidade de Covington vai ser leiloada com uma base de licitação de 75 mil libras – mais de 110 mil euros. De acordo com oa imprensa escocesa, entre os atractivos do edifício estão a torre do sino, e uma vitral.

O actual proprietário, Gavin Wilson, viu-se obrigado a colocar a propriedade a venda no eBay porque todos os agentes imobiliários ficaram assustados com o cemitério que faz parte do lote. No entanto, uns 30 construtores civis já pediram informações.

Wilson comprou a igreja há cerca de cinco anos, contanto transformá-la na sua residência permanente. O projecto foi abandonado depois do nascimento dos dois filhos do casal. A igreja ficará em leilão durante a próxima semana.

A new batch of federal documents showed that salsa queen Celia Cruz received permission to stay in the United States because she publicly crusaded against communism.

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
The Miami Herald

The U.S. government took famed salsa singer Celia Cruz off its blacklist of suspected communists in 1965 because, while in exile, she performed and raised money for anti-Fidel Castro causes, according to newly released records obtained by The Herald.

Cruz had kept her decade-plus struggle with J. Edgar Hoover-era suspicions a secret, which the Cuban-American icon took to her grave at age 77 a year ago.

The documents show that she was finally granted permission to stay in the United States in 1965, ending a string of visa rejections in U.S. consulates from Mexico City to Montreal to Havana that started in 1952.''The record indicates that in July 1960 she fled as a defector from the Communist regime of Cuba,'' according to an Oct. 28, 1965, immigration service memorandum recently obtained by The Herald. ``Since that time she has actively cooperated with anti-Communist, anti-Castro organizations through artistic performances and by campaigning for funds for those organizations.''

Cruz even got anti-communists to vouch for her in the bid to win permanent residence in the United States. The same memo said, ``She has presented statements from a number of responsible persons attesting to her active opposition to Communism for at least the past five years.''

They are not named in documents.

The Herald discovered Cruz's secret U.S. government blacklisting this summer after receiving her FBI counterintelligence file through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents reflect a time when U.S. agents and Congress were hunting communists in U.S. society and were particularly interested in the entertainment industry.

Now, 11 more declassified documents received from the immigration division of the Department of Homeland Security describe Cruz's effort to stay permanently in the United States after she fled Castro's revolution for Mexico City in 1960 with the Sonora Matancera band.

ACTION AND REACTION

They reflect internal U.S. government debate each time she sought to play a concert -- sometimes in Puerto Rico, at times in Hollywood, Miami and New York -- over whether she should be granted a waiver and allowed to perform. U.S. bureaucrats branded her a communist for her 1940s work at a pre-Castro Cuban communist radio station, and membership in the Popular Socialist Party.

Cruz's last manager, Omer Pardillo, said in an interview that he did not know what proof she provided.

But he dug through her personal papers recently and found three certificates from an anti-Castro guerrilla group.

Each one represented a receipt for $92, and declared that she donated the money to the Junta Revolucionaria Cubana to buy three rifles in January 1964, a year before she was finally cleared.

The group was formed after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the receipt declared the donation of a rifle ``for the war against communist tyranny.''

Reached by telephone in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the man who led the movement at the time, Manuel Ray, said he did not recall Cruz telling him of her communist blacklisting.

But ''at that time, the CIA was very discriminatory,'' he said. ``I would've helped her in any way possible. I had a high regard for her.''

The latest batch of documents also reveals an interesting twist: In the first year of Castro's revolution, Cruz was among some entertainers who sought to play in Miami and New York to raise money for an island rebuilding project in the aftermath of the guerrilla fight that toppled former Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista.

FBI EVALUATION

''Subject is inadmissible to the United States because of her affiliation with the Cuban Communist youth organization and the Communist Party of Cuba,'' said an FBI memo, dated Sept. 3, 1959.

``She is a popular Cuban singer, and was seeking to enter the U.S. for about two days as a member of a group sponsored by the Cuban Tourist Commission, to make appearances at Miami and New York to raise funds for the restoration of a Cuban city devastated during the recent hostilities there.''

Cruz's husband, Pedro Knight, said in an interview this summer that he was unaware of his late wife's U.S. visa troubles. The couple wed in Connecticut in 1962, while Cruz was splitting her time between New York and Mexico, where she had sought U.S. waivers to perform in the United States.

(C) 2004 The Miami Herald

An untold chapter in the life of Celia Cruz

Read the documents

WEB WAR: Even Near Home, a New Front Is Opening in the Terror Battle

By ERIC LIPTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times

LIFTON, N.J. - The flags that sprouted after the Sept. 11 attacks still flap on lawns and flutter on poles outside well-tended homes here, about 15 miles from Manhattan. Looming above them is a concrete tower that houses a real-estate firm, an office supplies company - and, until recently, investigators fear, an outpost of Al Qaeda.

On the second floor, an Internet company called Fortress ITX unwittingly played host to an Arabic-language Web site where postings in recent weeks urged attacks against American and Israeli targets. "The Art of Kidnapping" was explained in electronic pamphlets, along with "Military Instructions to the Mujahedeen," and "War Inside the Cities." Visitors could read instructions on using a cellphone to remotely detonate a bomb, and one even asked for help in manufacturing small missiles.

"How can this be?" asked Cathy Vasilenko, who lives a few doors away from the Fortress ITX office. "How can this be going on in my neighborhood?"

Federal investigators, with the help of a small army of private contractors monitoring sites around the clock and across the world, are trying to find out. Ever since the United States-led coalition smashed Al Qaeda's training grounds in Afghanistan, cyber substitutes, which recruit terrorists and raise money, have proliferated.

While Qaeda operatives have employed an arsenal of technical tools to communicate - from e-mail encryption and computer war games to grisly videotapes like the recent ones showing beheadings believed to have been carried out by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - investigators say they worry most about the Internet because extremists can reach a broad audience with relatively little chance of detection.

By examining sites like those stored inside the electronic walls of the Clifton business, investigators are hoping to identify who is behind them, what links they might have to terror groups, and what threat, if any, they might pose. And in a step that has raised alarms among civil libertarians and others and so far proven unpersuasive in the courtroom, prosecutors are charging that those administering these sites should be held criminally responsible for what is posted.

Attempting to apply broad new powers established by the Patriot Act, the federal government wants to punish those who it claims provide "expert advice or assistance" and therefore play an integral part of a global terror campaign that increasingly relies on the Internet. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee recently, called such Web sites "cyber sanctuaries."

"These networks are wonderful things that enable all kinds of good things in the world," Mr. Wolfowitz said of the Internet. "But they're also a tool that the terrorists use to conceal their identities, to move money, to encrypt messages, even to plan and conduct operations remotely."

Many question the government's strategy of trying to combat terrorism by prosecuting Web site operators. "I think it is an impossible task," said Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, an agency that monitors the use of the Internet by Al Qaeda. "You can maybe catch some people. But you will never ever be able to stem the flow of radical Islamic propaganda."

He pointed out that it is difficult to distinguish between a real terrorist and a make-believe one online. "You would end up prosecuting a lot of angry young people who do this because it is exciting, not because they want to actually participate in terrorist attacks," he said. "I don't think it helps you fight Al Qaeda."

The government faces many hurdles in pursuing virtual terrorists. While many militant Islamic message boards and Web pages reside on computer servers owned by North American Internet companies, outfits like Fortress ITX say it would be impractical - and unethical, given that the company sells server space to clients who then resell it - for them to keep track of all of the content stored within their equipment.

"It is hideous, loathsome," said Robert Ellis, executive vice president of Fortress, after viewing postings from the Abu al-Bukhary Web site his company hosted. "It is the part of this business that is deeply disturbing." His company shut down the site within the last month after learning of it from a reporter. The intense focus on Muslim-related sites like Abu al-Bukhary, in an era when domestically produced anarchist manuals are commonly available on the Web, has provoked charges that the anti-cyber sanctuary effort is really a misguided anti-Muslim campaign that is compromising important First Amendment rights.

This effort "opens the floodgates to really marginalizing a lot of the free speech that has been a hallmark of the American legal and political system," said Arsalan Iftikhar, legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Globally it really does nothing but worsen the image of America in the rest of the world."

Tracking Cyber-Terror

The detective work begins in a northeast city in a compact office set up by a self-proclaimed terrorist hunter. This is the headquarters of Rita Katz, an Iraqi-born Jew whose father was executed in Baghdad in 1969, shortly after Saddam Hussein's Baath Party came to power.

Finding terrorists has become a crusade for Ms. Katz, who began going to pro-Palestinian rallies and fund-raisers disguised as a Muslim woman in the late 1990's, then presented information to the federal government in an effort to prove there were ties between Islamic fundamentalist groups in the United States and terror organizations like Hamas or Al Qaeda.

Federal agencies, including the National Security Agency, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, monitor suspected terror sites on the Internet and sometimes track users. Private groups like Ms. Katz's Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute and The Middle East Media Research Institute are also keeping track of the ever-changing content of these sites. Ms. Katz's institute, which relies on government contracts and corporate clients, may be the most influential of those groups, and she is among the most controversial of the cyberspace monitors. While some experts praise her research as solid, some of her targets view her as a vigilante. Several Islamic groups and charities, for example, sued for defamation after she claimed they were terrorist fronts, even though they were not charged with a crime.

Sitting under wall maps of Europe, the Middle East and the United States - including one pinpointing locations of suspected terror cells or possible supporters - Ms. Katz and her team of computer technicians and researchers spend their days searching the Internet for any new messages from militant groups and new addresses for terror sites. Her institute, based in a city she does not disclose, also has a small crew in Israel, which allows the organization to monitor sites around the clock.

"We are trying to think the way terrorist organizations think," said Ms. Katz, "The Internet today has become a front in the war itself."

Keeping tabs on these jihadist sites - several hundred exist - requires vigilance, as videos and statements uploaded by different groups often appear only briefly. A recent Tuesday was a particularly busy day. The Islambouli Brigade, a militant Islamic group, turned to one popular message board site called islamic-minbar.com, operated out of the Netherlands, to release the names of two women it said were responsible for the Aug. 24 explosions of two Russian planes and to claim responsibility for an attack at a Moscow subway station. "When we pledge to avenge our Chechen brothers, we do not break our promise," the Aug. 31 posting said.

Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, a group that has surfaced in Iraq, posted a video on its Internet site showing the bodies of 12 Nepali contractor workers who it had taken hostage and killed. The site was taken down that same day, but then reappeared on a computer server of a Utah-based Web hosting company.

While staffers at Ms. Katz's office rushed to translate these postings, others were busy snooping by using a special software program to electronically suck up more than 15,000 computer files from a Web site, or referring to a custom-made database to identify sites with common administrators, an assignment initiated by a government request. This week, they watched postings on the Web site Ansarnet.ws/vb alerting followers that a hostage had been killed, then directing them to a video showing the beheading of an American engineer held hostage in Iraq.

A crucial question, of course, is whether a site is simply offering inspirational rhetoric or is genuinely linked to terror strikes. Often, Web site exhortations are followed by acts of violence, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are connected.

In late May, for example, shortly after a kidnapping guide appeared on an online magazine called Al Battar, a wave of kidnappings and beheadings started in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Last December, a 42-page essay published on a Web site called Global Islamic Media observed that "the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three blows, after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure" from Iraq. Three months later, bombs tore apart trains in Madrid, resulting in the eventual departure of Spanish troops from Iraq.

In Clifton, the digital images and terrorist manuals from Abu al-Bukhary's site resided, like data from thousands of other Internet pages hosted at Fortress ITX, inside a sprawling computer room. Pointing to the wall of boxes with blinking lights, Fortress executives said they did not know who controlled most of the Web sites on their servers, as they sell space to clients who then resell it to countless others. "It is like an orange you buy at the supermarket," Mr. Ellis said. "Try figuring out what farm that came from."

Strategy of Prosecution

Knocking militant groups off the Internet for a day or two by urging individual Web hosting companies to shut down the sites didn't accomplish much, Ms. Katz believed. So the government, in an unusual alliance with Ms. Katz, has been testing a different strategy in the last year.

Sami Omar al-Hussayen would be their first target. The 35-year-old father of three had arrived at the University of Idaho in 1999 to pursue a doctorate in computer science. In his spare time, Mr. Hussayen, who lived in Moscow, Idaho, established a series of Internet sites with names like liveislam.net or alasr.ws ("the generation") and served as a regional leader of the Islamic Assembly of North America, a group that described itself as a charitable organization, but which prosecutors said recruited members and instigated "acts of violence and terrorism."

Along with news from the Middle East and interviews with scholars, the sites included more disturbing information. Videos displayed the bodies of dead suicide attackers as a narrator declared "we had brethren who achieved what they sought, and that is martyrdom in the cause of Allah." Requests were posted for donations to Chechen groups that were trying to "show the truth about Russian terrorism." Clerical edicts appeared on topics including "suicide operations against the Jews."

The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, did not claim that Mr. Hussayen had authored the most militant items. Instead, by registering the Web sites, paying for them and posting the material, he was charged with providing material support to a banned terrorist group.

But Mr. Hussayen's lawyers said their client was expressing his free-speech rights. The Internet is the modern equivalent of the soap box, said David Z. Nevin, one of the lawyers. "They were wildly too zealous," Mr. Nevin said about Ms. Katz and the Justice Department. "This was not within a country mile of the kind of behavior that this nation has any business trying to criminalize."

The jury was unconvinced by the government's case, and acquitted Mr. Hussayen in June after a monthlong trial. "We went through files and files and files of evidence - transcripts of telephone calls, bank statements, all the e-mails, information from the Internet - and we could not substantiate that he was directly involved with a terrorist organization," said Claribel Ingraham, one of the jurors. "It just wasn't there."

The setback in Idaho has not stopped the government from pursuing similar cases. In late July, a warrant was issued in Connecticut for Babar Ahmad, resulting in his arrest in London Aug. 5. The 30-year-old computer technician at a London college is accused of setting up Internet sites from 1997 to 2003, most prominently azzam.com, to recruit terrorists and raise money for them. "If you're going to use cyberspace, we're there and we're paying attention," said Kevin J. O'Connor, the United States Attorney from Connecticut, after Mr. Ahmad's arrest.

The trial has not started - the United States is trying to persuade British authorities to extradite him - but already Muslim groups and civil libertarians in Britain are assailing the case. In a letter from his prison cell that was posted on the Internet, Mr. Ahmad asserted that he was imprisoned "to strike terror and fear into the hearts of the docile, sleeping Muslim community."

Ms. Katz said she was not discouraged by the criticism of the prosecutions. "When you call for the death of people and then it results in actions - that is beyond the First Amendment," she said. "You are organizing a crime."

(C) 2004 The New York Times

Memórias do PREC (*)

Alguém ainda se lembra como se chamavam os Trovante em plena Festa do Avante de 1976 (a primeira, na FIL)? Claro que não! Nem eles querem. Eram:

"Os Soviets do Areeiro"

(*) Proceso Revolucionário em Curso

O Padrinho

Faz hoje 25 anos que em Luanda o José Eduardo dos Santos está à frente dos mafiosi angolanos. Tudo em nome da democracia, das boas relações com o estado português e o beneplácito dos Estados Unidos.

Entretanto, o resto do pessoal que se foda!

Porter Goss, director de la CIA

La CIA tiene un nuevo jefe.
Lo que piensa uno de sus adversarios.

The Zen Of Zapatero

from

Spain's new Prime Minister says he leads by following the people. will that work when things get hard?

BY JAMES GRAFF - MADRID

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's office in Madrid's Moncloa Palace has an almost Zen-like atmosphere — bright and spare, with cool grey walls and stainless-steel furniture. And there's something Zen-like about Zapatero himself. The Spanish Prime Minister with the beatific smile says his role is not to shape public opinion but to follow it. "I don't want to be a great leader; I want to be a good democrat," he said in an interview with TIME last week. "I accept that when an overwhelming majority of citizens says something, they are right."



Zapatero calls this "citizen's socialism;" the opposition calls it rank populism. Either way it's a far cry from the stubborn conservatism of José María Aznar, the man he replaced five months ago. Aznar brought Spain into the U.S.-led Iraq coalition against the will of his people, and voters ousted his Popular Party (PP) three days after the March 11 Madrid terrorist attacks that killed 191. Zapatero's brand of "citizen's socialism" may be just a slogan — the Tao of political expedience — or it may be a way to impart a democratic glow to a foreign and domestic policy agenda that's long been dear to his Socialist Party (PSOE). But whether it's shtick or statesmanship, it has worked surprisingly well in the early days of Zapatero's government. Often derided as a compromise candidate who wasn't expected to win, Zapatero, 44, is riding high. A poll commissioned earlier this month by the radio network Cadena SER, which is considered close to the Socialists, found his approval rating at 60%, the highest of any Spanish politician in years.

The opposition has been fuming as it watches Zapatero dismantle prize parts of Aznar's legacy. On April 18, the day after he took office, he ordered Spain's 1,300 troops out of Iraq. He set up a government that has as many women ministers as men, and alternates them down the hierarchy, causing some to dub it la cremallera (the zipper). He canned the previous government's pharaonic €4 billion plan to divert water from the Ebro River in the north to drier regions further south, proposing a more modest desalinization program instead. He increased the minimum wage, pledged to do the same for pensions, and launched an unprecedented war against the dark side of Spanish machismo, stiffening laws against domestic violence and proposing the legalization of gay marriage and rapid, no-fault divorces.

A radical democrat committed to feminism is a major departure for Spanish politics, where the most successful politicians — among them Aznar and his Socialist predecessor, Felipe González — were macho men with killer political instincts. Zapatero's bet is that he can govern effectively and retain power simply by giving the people what they want. But that's a fickle foundation for policy. The time is bound to come for Zapatero, as for all political leaders, when he's unable to deliver on that grand promise. Indeed, the season of testing is already upon him. The coming challenges in domestic, foreign and economic policy will determine whether his "citizen's socialism" will work. "Up until now he's been throwing carrots to the masses," says Guillermo de la Dehesa, a prominent Spanish banker and economist. "It's only now that he faces tough issues, and we're all waiting to see how he does."

One of Zapatero's first tasks will be to establish his credentials in foreign policy, especially the Iraq war and the strains within the European Union. Last week he capped his country's about-face on Iraq by hosting the leaders of the E.U.'s antiwar faction, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, at a mini-summit in Madrid. Zapatero called those countries "the heart of Europe" and inverted U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous jibe by saying "old Europe is like new." A week earlier, during a visit to Tunisia, he called on all other coalition countries to pull their forces out of Iraq.

Zapatero constantly stresses that his government's resolve against terrorism is as firm as ever. The Socialists have faced charges at home and abroad that they only won the election because the bomb attacks scared the country into a retreat. Zapatero told TIME he "respects the views" of those who believe "that when the Spanish people voted for me they voted out of fear," but he contends such views reveal "a lack of knowledge of the Spanish people. This is the country that has suffered most from terrorism, with 1,000 killed by the [Basque] terrorist band ETA over the past 30 years. Our people have learned to adapt and understand that we have to combat [terrorism] by being firm but also by respecting democracy."

In the Parliamentary Commission investigating the March 11 bombings, the Socialists and the PP are battling each other. Last week all parties agreed to call Aznar before the commission. But the PP was furious when a majority refused to hear from witnesses the PP believes would bolster a theory — so far dismissed by police officials — that ETA and Moroccan intelligence were part of the March 11 conspiracy. Spanish authorities are holding 20 suspects in connection with the blasts, which they believe were masterminded by suspected al-Qaeda operative Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed. He was arrested in Italy in June and awaits extradition. The PP has also made a formal request for Zapatero to testify. It wants to probe whether he was involved in organizing apparently impromptu protests in front of PP headquarters, which they say violated the law against political demos on the day before elections. Aznar won't testify until October. Zapatero said last week he would be willing to testify if called, though he told TIME he thought the request "verges on the ridiculous" since he sees the commission's remit as probing the terrorist attack, not the election.

Chirac and Schröder don't see involvement in Iraq as a litmus test for antiterrorist resolve. But both their governments reacted with notable reserve when Zapatero called the U.S. occupation "a disaster" and "a huge mistake," then yanked his troops, just as France and Germany were seeking to lower the temperature of the transatlantic dispute. The German opposition, which is now polling stronger than Schröder's weakened Social Democrats, is withering in its criticism. "Zapatero made a grave mistake when he immediately announced he would pull Spain's troops out of Iraq, sending a single message to Osama bin Laden: Terror pays," says Friedbert Pflüger, a member of the German Bundestag and foreign policy expert for the Christian Democrats. "With Aznar we had a heavyweight in Europe. Without him we have lost an interesting voice and committed opponent of terrorism in Europe."

The PP considers Zapatero callow but calculating. "The majority of countries in Europe want a strong E.U. that doesn't compete with the U.S.," says Gustavo de Arístegui, the PP's foreign policy spokesman. "Zapatero forgets that out of sheer opportunism. He's an able politician and he saw the tendency of the man on the street. But a government has to be able to take unpopular opinions; that's why they get a four-year mandate."

In fact, Zapatero has shown a commitment to a strong E.U. Last December Aznar blocked agreement on the European Constitution at a Brussels summit, rejecting a proposal that would have reduced Spain's voting weight. Zapatero embraced a similar proposal in June, and has vowed to hold one of Europe's first national referendums on the constitution in February. Spain's strong popular sentiment for the E.U., which has contributed massively to the country's climb to prosperity over the last two decades, makes a positive result all but assured. Even the Popular Party is counselling a yes vote.

Yet Spain's relations with the Continent's two biggest states might not always be so smooth as during last week's get-together. Germany, a net payer to the E.U.'s coffers, is taking a hard line on holding down spending on regional and agricultural funds. Spain has been a net recipient of an average of €6 billion per year of E.U. aid over the last decade, and it wants to be let down easy as those funds begin to flow to new members in the east. It's a problem that a PP government would have faced, too, of course, and Zapatero's aides suggest that better relations with Germany can only help.

On the economic front, Zapatero's critics say he's still learning the ins and outs. He has an exemplary teacher in his Minister of Finance and Economy, Pedro Solbes. Holding the same position from 1993 to 1996, Solbes brought Spain's budgets into trim and got the country ready for the euro zone; then, since September 1999 as European Commissioner for monetary affairs, he was a fierce defender of E.U. budgetary rules. His presence has eased many of the fears Spain's business leaders might have had over the return of Socialists to power after the probusiness Aznar years. The government did well in appointing a seasoned and respected economic team, says Manuel Balmaseda, chief economist of BBVA, one of Spain's largest banks. "These are people who know what they are doing, not just at the national level but also at the international level, and they know what businesses want."

Many expect the Socialists to intervene in business less than the PP did. Four out of five of Spain's largest companies — Telefónica, oil company Repsol, BBVA, and utility giant Endesa — have chairmen appointed by the previous government. Some fear they will get turfed out. But while the government is said to have quietly encouraged Telefónica to invest more in broadband, for instance, few expect it to get heavy-handed. A drastic bloodletting, says José Manuel Campa, professor of finance at Madrid's Institute for Advanced Business Studies, "would send a very bad signal to the markets."

Still, Spain's business community is waiting to see Zapatero's first budget, to be presented later this week. In a speech to high-carat investors in Madrid last Friday, he said the 2005 budget would yield a slight surplus. He vowed to spend 34% more on housing, 7.4% more on education, 6.9% more on health and 6.2% more on police and justice. Some of that will further his ambitious social reforms, many aimed at turning Spain away from its machismo traditions. According to Amnesty International, more than 2 million Spanish women suffer abuse from their partners every year, and putting a stop to it is a human and political priority for Zapatero.

The rest of the new spending, he has suggested, would go to correct Spain's low labor productivity. Part of the problem, he believes, is that 30% of all workers are on temporary contracts. So Zapatero has started discussions with employers and unions to encourage a shift to permanent part-time jobs, which he says would mean more security for workers and efficiency for employers. He also wants to encourage a shift to renting, which, he says, can stabilize the boom in housing prices and promote labor mobility. The goal is to "get over the false choice between efficiency and equality, between social policies and productive policies."

Easier said than done. The government's numbers will be closely scrutinized in the Spanish Cortes in coming weeks and then in the Senate, where Zapatero needs the support of all smaller parties to push it through. While growth remains strong, there are warning signs. According to Eurostat, the country's annual inflation rate in August was 3.3%, a full percentage point above the euro-zone average. That gap has widened since the Socialists took over, a trend they attribute to the country's dependence on imported oil. By the end of the year, Solbes says, he intends to get inflation down to 3%. He has acknowledged it will be "a very difficult task."

Tougher still is unemployment, which is the highest in Western Europe at more than 11%. On that front Zapatero may have already promised more than he can deliver. Earlier this month, he told shipyard workers in Bilbao that he would save the bankrupt state-owned Izar shipyards, even as their holding company was discussing a privatization rescue plan that would mean closures and layoffs. Now striking workers in five cities are calling Zapatero a liar and dozens have been injured in clashes with police. In other words, Zapatero is just beginning to address the questions that cost real money. And already looming is another passionate issue he had hoped to put off: the reform of Spain's pasted-together 1978 constitution. Increasing demands for far-reaching power in some of Spain's 17 autonomous regions, particularly the Basque Country and Catalonia, were tamped down by the Aznar government, which feared that opening a constitutional debate could only bode ill for Spain's unity. Zapatero cannot afford to ignore the problem: his minority government not only has to keep Catalonian Socialist leader Pasqual Maragall happy, but also depends on the votes of the radical pro-independence Left Republicans of Catalonia.

Zapatero took a smart first step in July, when he invited Juan José Ibarretxe, the President of the Basque region — whom Aznar refused to meet for three years — to a formal meeting at Moncloa, with the red, green and white Basque flag fluttering at the door's entrance. But the good feeling didn't deflect Ibarretxe's pursuit of a referendum — considered unconstitutional by the Madrid government — to create a Basque state merely "associated" with Spain. Catalonia's wishes aren't any easier for Madrid to swallow, but already Zapatero has given Maragall a transfer to Barcelona of Spain's telecommunications competition authority — as well as a promise that a Catalonian representative can attend the government's foreign-policy planning sessions. "Imagine the California governor sitting in on [U.S.] National Security Council meetings," says the PP's Arístegui. "Every day Maragall shows his muscle and says, 'You owe me.'"

The constitutional question could reveal Zapatero's already vaunted talante, an aptitude for consensus, as a great strength — or a fatal weakness. Zapatero says he has a "contingency view of history," citing the famous line from Spanish poet Antonio Machado: "Traveler, there is no path, the path is made by walking." If he can finesse the constitutional debate and meet Spain's other domestic and foreign challenges, he will have set the country on a bold new course. But that will be a path the traveler will have to blaze himself, not just follow.

With reporting by Steven Adolf, Samuel Loewenberg and Jane Walker/Madrid and William Boston/Berlin

The Interview

"I Don't Want To Be A Great Leader"

In just five months, Prime Minister Zapatero has reversed many of his conservative predecessor's policies. He says he's just a good listener. TIME's James Graff and Jane Walker spoke with him before he left for New York to address this week's U.N. General Assembly

YOU'VE CALLED ON ALL COALITION GOVERNMENTS TO WITHDRAW THEIR FORCES FROM IRAQ, AS SPAIN DID IN APRIL. DOES THAT MEAN YOU'RE WILLING TO ACCEPT A FUNDAMENTALIST SHI'ITE REGIME THERE OR ETHNIC CIVIL WAR? The one question we have to ask is this: Are things any better in Iraq after one-and-a-half years of occupation? The answer is, no. There's a spiral of violence and death. We have two options: close our eyes or face that reality. Now Iraq needs to recover its freedom, stability and sovereignty as soon as possible.

HOW? IS THE COALITION'S STRATEGY THE ONLY POSSIBILITY? IS IT EVEN LEGITIMATE? WHY ARE RADICALISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM INCREASING AND RISKS SPREADING? To rebuild a country like Iraq from scratch requires the effort of many countries, including Arab countries and those of the European Union. Unfortunately, the conditions we need to do that don't exist. I know that the U.S. government and its coalition allies want freedom and sovereignty for Iraq as soon as possible, but the way to fight terrorism has to be intelligent. There are responses that serve to increase terrorism, even if that isn't their intention. The first response of free, democratic nations to terrorism should be to respect international law. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said as much [last week when he called the invasion "illegal"].

WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HAVE FOR GEORGE W. BUSH? I have three messages for him. First, that Spain is a friend of the United States. I have the greatest respect and admiration for its democratic principles and for its drive in so many fields, along with a deep solidarity for what it suffered on Sept. 11. Second, our firmness in fighting terrorism is as strong as ever. And third, that although we disagree over Iraq, a true friend is one who says what he thinks. We have more than 1,000 Spanish troops in Afghanistan, because that intervention did have the support of the international community.

ARE YOU ROOTING FOR KERRY IN THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS? When I took office, I decided not to comment or interfere in support of any candidate in any country. But others have not done the same. On many occasions, I heard President Bush and members of his Administration give fervent support to [former Prime Minister José María] Aznar and the Popular Party [which Zapatero's Socialists defeated in the March 14 general election]. President Bush will never hear me give any support to candidate Kerry. I do know that polls can be misleading. It's not voting intention that matters, but people's desire for a change. If that's there, you can turn it around. Sixty percent of Spaniards wanted a change two weeks before my election, before the terrorist attacks of March 11.

WOULD A KERRY ADMINISTRATION REALLY IMPROVE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS? He says he has a plan to withdraw [from Iraq] in four years. That is at least an alternative policy. It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.

You've aligned Spain with France and Germany, but aren't you concerned that a majority of European governments don't share their position on Iraq? I wouldn't say a majority; it's more of a draw. But public opinion in Europe is totally against the war in Iraq. I think a modern democracy should be very sensitive to public opinion. That's what I call "citizen's socialism" — I accept that when an overwhelming majority of citizens says something, they are right. Today, France, Germany and Spain have less of a unitary view of the world [than the U.S.]. We have a conception that we need a world of civilizations and understanding. The clash of civilizations can't become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

WHAT SINGLE QUESTION WOULD YOU LIKE JOSE MARIA AZNAR TO ANSWER WHEN HE TESTIFIES BEFORE THE SPANISH PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION ON THE MARCH 11 ATTACKS? The one I asked him on the phone right after the attacks: Why didn't he immediately call a meeting of all political parties to share the response to such a cruel blow against all Spaniards?

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO OPPOSITION CHARGES THAT YOU ARE SQUANDERING THE STRONG ECONOMIC RECORD OF THE AZNAR YEARS? My government hasn't even presented a budget yet, so ask me in a year. But Spain's outlook is positive. We still will have growth above 2.5%, putting us at the head of [the E.U. average]. Judge me on my achievements so far: I formed a government with as many women [ministers] as men; I kept my word on withdrawing our troops from Iraq; I increased the minimum wage and education grants and scholarships; I've proposed new laws on gender-based violence, reform of divorce laws, homosexual marriage and extensions of civil rights. I want to increase our spending on research and development by 25%. That's something the U.S. does very well. That dynamism alongside a welfare state in the European community — that's the synthesis I want to achieve.

YOU'RE SAID TO HATE MACHISMO. WHY? I'm not just antimachismo, I'm a feminist. One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating the other. We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation, but the most unjust domination is that of one half of the human race over the other half. The more equality women have, the fairer, more civilized and tolerant society will be. Sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE BY OPENING UP A DEBATE ON CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM? The best destination for Spain's constitutional reform is a majority agreement of citizens on a model for all the parts of Spain to co-exist. Spain is a pluralistic and diverse country, and that diversity flourishes in political debate, too. Extremadura has different interests from Madrid or Catalonia. The central government has to integrate those interests, but it's a positive thing that people are free to express their opinions.

SO WHAT'S YOUR IDEA OF LEADERSHIP? The economic, social and cultural progress of a nation depends on citizens counting for more and having more rights. That's the essence of my policy. Democratic power is the only voice most citizens have. The corporations and the media don't need power; they already have it. I said when I came into office that I don't want to be a great leader; I want to be a good democrat.

O escandalo da CBS

A Time desta semana tem dois longos artigos sobre o escandalo da CBS e os papéis do tempo em que o Bush esteve na Guarda Nacional. A não perder. É só clikar na imagem.

Cartoon

Democracia en acción

"El jefe del Estado chino y del Partido Comunista asume el mando del Ejército"

titular de prensa

Un payaso en la Casa Blanca

El zapateado de Joaquín Cortés ante Bush obliga a una reflexión sobre el arte y su compromiso



por Juan Ramón Iborra

Por una vez, un titular como el de este artículo no se refiere a Bush, sino a uno de sus ilustres invitados. La semana pasada, en el todo vale de la carrera electoral, el presidente reclutó a las fuerzas vivas tejanas (el estado retro y petrolero, cuna de su apellido y de su fortuna personal) y de Florida (el estado pucherazo, que le abrió la Casa Blanca cuatro años atrás). El acto era uno más de los programados en el Mes de la Herencia Hispana y una ocasión pintada calva para que George W. Bush introdujese en su mansión a la flor del empresariado cubano de Miami con lo más rancio de la industria de la América profunda. El convite tuvo banda sonora en directo con aires latinos y una sorpresa. En la noticia del telediario, entre aquel cuadro festivo, junto al orador que armó el gran cisco de Irak y que ahora pedía el voto hispano, apareció el bailaor cordobés Joaquín Cortés haciendo piruetas, vestido de traje negro, corbata y zapatos blancos. Estábamos sentados a la mesa, callados ante el pasmo, hasta que alguien comentó: "¿Pero qué hace ahí ese payaso?".

LA SEMANA pasada se fue desarrollando entre actos que señalaban la relación del arte con la vida, sobre la pura creación y el compromiso del artista. El Fòrum se enredó en un debate entre celebridades, sobre la diversidad e identidad de los mensajes narrativos que, dicho en román paladino, no fue sino volver al círculo vicioso, con perdón, sobre el escritor y su compromiso. En esos debates donde nunca se le permite el debate al respetable, el Nobel José Saramago recordó que algunos escritores "el compromiso lo tienen con sus cuentas corrientes". Desde sus antípodas, el académico Arturo Pérez Reverte proclamó, entre cínico y epatante, su esencia de filibustero de las letras, sin patria ni bandera. La reflexión más erudita llegó del no menos académico Pere Gimferrer. El poeta sacó de su talento una paradoja que nos recordaba que el mismísimo Dante Alighieri fue un miserable chaquetero. Se pasó de güelfo a gibelino o viceversa, tremenda traición para la época que, para ser entendida ahora, sólo es comparable a cambiar en una espalda de atleta portugués el 7 del Barça por un 10 merengue, o como si un supernumerario del Opus se diera de alta en CCOO, o como el laico que comulga con ruedas de molino. Según Gimferrer, el transfuguismo de Dante quedó patente en los versos de su Comedia. Aunque ese dato tenga un valor inaprensible ante su lectura en nuestros días.

Joaquín Cortés podrá salir al paso de su baile con el argumento de que lo suyo es arte, y que sus tacones no entienden de política. Pero lo valiente sería reconocer que lo hizo por 15 segundos de gloria en la tele universal, por la pasta, por promocionar su recién estrenado espectáculo en el City Center de Nueva York. Pero por lo que fuese, el bailaor puso al servicio electoral de Bush no sólo su nombre, sino la cultura popular que él representa. Líbrenos el infierno dantesco de los artistas que se autodefinen apolíticos. Como aquellos muy estrellados cocineros vascos que, a principios de 2001, se salían por la tangente hipócrita de que sus fogones no tienen ideología, cuando se les pidió opinión y solidaridad con Ramón Díaz García, cocinero de la comandancia de Marina de San Sebastián asesinado por ETA.

LOS TITULARES más o menos artísticos siguieron sazonando la semana. Un quítame allá esa invitación no hecha a Gabriel García Márquez por el Congreso de la Lengua en Argentina, hizo tambalear los cimientos de la nomenklatura literaria del Planeta. Para terminar de llenar la cesta, Mario Vargas Llosa señaló en Kosmópolis el error de Zapatero con la guerra, y en uno de sus brillantes artículos arrimaba el ascua a su sardina ideológica tratando de demostrar que Miguel de Cervantes fue, como lo es él mismo, un liberal. Menos mal que en mitad de este circo en ebullición mediática en que se va demudando la cultura, la semana anunció una exposición a fuego lento sobre Picasso, en su museo. Bajo el lema Guerra y paz, se descubre la exacta comunión entre arte y compromiso.

Pero el sello de compromiso también comienza a ser rentable en la mercadotecnia. Verbigracia, la aparición de Alejandro Sanz y sus mensajes radicales, con los que ha ido salpicando la promo de su último disco y su racha de conciertos. Con su disfraz de guerrillero aseado y un eslogan: "EEUU es un estado policial". Lo dice para su ingenua clientela, que quizá ignora que el cantante vivió en el país que critica, durante los peores momentos de la guerra de Irak, con la boca callada, mientras grababa en Miami su No es lo mismo. Pero en su último concierto en Barcelona, Sanz invitó al escenario a su amigo, el flamenco Farruquito, procesado por homicidio y denegación de auxilio. Un ejemplo de cómo se transmiten al público guiños de estética sin ética. Y de cómo el público, ea, ea, se cabrea.

Que no es lo mismo ética que estética, ya lo apuntaban los clásicos. Por recordarlo a los poderosos, a alguno de ellos le tocó beber cicuta. Desde entonces, la historia del compromiso en la cultura es una verdad de Perogrullo. Por quedarnos cerca en el tiempo y en casa, recuerdo a Terenci Moix, un escritor acusado de frivolidad y desapego social por los sembradores de cizaña, que dispuso un veto político en su funeral hacia el PP y que escribió en su última novela: "Pese a la ceguera, todavía no había sentido la verdadera oscuridad. La que los humanos llaman el abismo. Dicen que va creciendo en el fondo de las almas y las va engullendo hasta que al final se las traga". ¿Se trata de un converso? No. Hace 30 años, en su primer relato, dijo: "El hombre existe por encima de todas las cosas. El dolor de un solo hombre es sagrado, y esto es lo que debería de conmover al universo".

Pobre Cortés, que será recordado por el coitus interruptus de su romance con Naomi Campbell y por su zapateado ante Bush. Por eso rescato dos recuerdos que nublen sus brincos de simio. Uno es la voz de Antonio Gades, cuando me decía que en el arte y en la vida no puede haber estética sin ética. Y otro es el de otra recepción en la Casa Blanca. John F. Kennedy llegaba al poder como una esperanza. El 13 de noviembre de 1961 Pau Casals tocó ante él su violonchelo del exilio. Al final, el músico hizo un breve regalo y en aquel lugar sonó el Cant dels ocells. La música de su compromiso. [El Periódico]