Rock ’n’ roll and photography need each other — or, at least, rock musicians need photographers. You can’t be a star if you don’t have an image. But what makes a good rock photograph is something to ponder, and “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present” at the Brooklyn Museum offers an excellent opportunity to do so.

Organized by the photography historian Gail Buckland, the exhibition presents more than 175 images by 105 photographers, and includes album cover art, candid snapshots, publicity portraits and pictures of live performances.

Leaving aside aesthetic issues, it is hard to say what makes a high-quality rock photograph. So much depends on what you bring to it. For many viewers Richard Avedon’s pellucid black-and-white portraits of the Beatles in 1967 will resonate differently from David LaChappelle’s garishly colorful 1999 picture of the white hip-hop star Eminem sitting naked but holding a strategically placed stick of dynamite with a sparkling fuse.

It is not gratuitous to mention that Eminem is white, by the way, because most of the performers depicted are too. There are some pictures of black performers, but all have achieved crossover recognition, from Chuck Berry and Aretha Franklin to Tina Turner, Grace Jones and L L Cool J. This is an exhibition about what the white middle class has been listening to over the last 60 years: classic rock, as they call it on the radio. It could have been culled from past issues of People, and its impact is lessened because so many of these performers are already overexposed.

In the coffee table book that accompanies the show, Ms. Buckland argues that rock photography should be viewed like fashion photography, which has received considerable respect in recent decades. But fashion photography is more immediately visual; you don’t have to know who the model is or who designed the clothes to be interested. With rock photographs it matters who the subject is. Knowing that the bearded young man smiling genially at the camera in a 1972 photograph by Lynn Goldsmith is Bruce Springsteen greatly enhances the experience of an otherwise nondescript picture, for fans of the Boss, anyway.

One way to make rock photographs more interesting would be to analyze them as sociological or anthropological documents. Examining them according to some quasi-scientific system could bring to light meanings and metaphors that we have come to take for granted in the cult of rock. Hero worship, sexual aggression, gender role-playing, youthful rebellion and the triumph of neo-primitivism in a consumerist age of unprecedented scientific, technological and industrial progress: these are topics worth examining.

A chapter could be devoted to the motif of the rock star who destroys his guitar during a performance, as in Ed Caraeff’s sequence of four pictures of Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 or Pennie Smith’s grainy image of Paul Simonon of the Clash swinging his bass by the neck in a blur of Dionysian catharsis. What do such sacrificial actions mean beyond the obvious theatrical expression of pent-up fury? Focused mainly on the fame, charisma and notoriety of its subjects, this exhibition offers few illuminating perspectives.

That said, it is an entertaining and sometimes absorbing show. Particularly for baby boomers, the demographic whose taste it most clearly represents, it is powerfully nostalgic. Perceptions of youth and age have a lot to do with it. To study images of Elvis Presley, Madonna and others when they were starting out is to marvel at the youth of those who created the huge global industry of today’s pop music.

For viewers who lived through the British Invasion of the early 1960s, going from Philip Townsend’s 1963 portrait of the smooth-faced Rolling Stones before they ever recorded an album to Mark Seliger’s 2005 image of a craggy, sinewy sexagenarian Mick Jagger leaning against a brick wall is truly affecting. However distant the lives of rock stars may be from ours, somehow we grow up with them and sooner or later find ourselves old like them.

Of course, some did not get old. Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Tupac Shakur will remain forever young, and pictures of them evoke thoughts of what might have been.

Especially poignant is Judy Linn’s black-and-white photograph of a young Patti Smith relaxing on a sofa bed in the messy apartment she shared with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the early 1970s, before either became famous. It is breathtaking to think of how much has transpired since then. Ms. Smith became the godmother of punk; Mr. Mapplethorpe’s fearlessly homoerotic photography made him a lightning rod for the family-values set in the 1980s. A big segment of a creative generation, including Mr. Mapplethorpe, was lost to AIDS.

A few of the show’s photographers have more ambitious artistic aims. Andreas Gursky’s huge 2001 photograph made by digitally piecing together views of several Madonna concerts surveys the spectacle of modern rock from an Olympian distance. Ryan McGinley’s blurry, blue-toned image of a crowd watching a Morrissey concert from 2005 or 2006 tries to say something about the nature of mass fandom. In this context there is an over-intellectualized lifelessness to such efforts.

In the midst of so much motionless and silent imagery, it is exciting to encounter one of the handful of film and video clips in the exhibition. One showing Bjork singing and dancing with infectious abandon on the back of a truck borders on the transcendental. Photographs of deities can have totemic value, but nothing captures the spirit of rock ’n’ roll like video.

Ken Johnson, The New York Times, 30.10.09

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/arts/design/30rock.html?ref=music

 

 

Cet accord porte sur "la possibilité du rétablissement dans ses fonctions" de M. Zelaya après approbation du Congrès d'une proposition d'abord soumise à la Cour suprême, ce qui permettrait le "retour de l'ensemble du pouvoir exécutif antérieur au 28 juin 2009". L'accord prévoit aussi la formation d'un gouvernement de réconciliation et la tenue d'un scrutin présidentiel le 29 novembre. M. Micheletti demande ainsi à la communauté internationale, qui avait condamné son gouvernement, de lever les sanctions prises contre le Honduras depuis le coup d'Etat.

Par cet accord, le gouvernement putschiste accepterait enfin, après quatre mois de résistance aux pressions internationales, le plan de sortie de crise proposé en juillet par le médiateur, le président costaricien, Oscar Arias. A une différence près : l'amnistie politique qu'avait demandée M. Aria, rejetée jeudi par Roberto Micheletti. Une commission devrait être chargée d'enquêter sur ce qui s'est passé avant, pendant et après le coup d'Etat, a-t-il expliqué.

MANIFESTATION PRO-ZELAYA DISPERSÉE

C'est la pression du délégué américain pour l'Amérique latine, Thomas Shannon, envoyé à Tegucigalpa par Hillary Clinton, qui a notamment permis de relancer les pourparlers avec l'équipe de M. Zelaya. La secrétaire d'Etat américaine a immédiatement félicité les deux camps de cet "accord historique". "Je ne vois aucun autre exemple de pays en Amérique latine qui, après une interruption de son fonctionnement démocratique, ait réussi à surmonter une telle crise par la négociation et le dialogue", a-t-elle ajouté depuis le Pakistan, où elle est en visite officielle. Hillary Clinton a également présenté ses félicitations au président du Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, au Brésil et au Mexique, tout en soulignant le rôle de la diplomatie américaine.

Jeudi, après plusieurs jours de calme dans les rues de Tegucigalpa, la police a dispersé à coups de matraque et à grand renfort de gaz lacrymogène plusieurs centaines de manifestants pro-Zelaya regroupés à proximité de l'hôtel du centre de la capitale où se déroulaient les pourparlers entre les deux camps rivaux. Plusieurs manifestants ont été légèrement blessés.

Le Monde, 30.10.09

http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2009/10/30/au-honduras-les-putschistes-ouvrent-la-voie-au-retour-du-president-dechu_1260456_3222.html

 

 

Peñafuerte es un tipo de principios. Un artista de esos a los que les gusta husmear sobre las injusticias pestilentes. Mezcla de asturiano y sevillana, engendrado en la diáspora, nació en Bruselas hace 36 años. Allí fue a parar gran parte del exilio y 5.000 niños despojados de sus familias que le sirvieron para hacer su primer documental. "Se titulaba Niños, y es de 2001; aún me piden que vaya a dar charlas por toda Europa con él".

Cuando lo terminó, creyó que había cumplido con la deuda con su parte española. No era suficiente. Con el proceso de desenterramiento de fosas comunes -en las que yacen, según los que saben del asunto, 130.000 muertos de la posguerra fascista- algo se le removió dentro. "Algo que iba acompañado de una necesidad. Se acababan los testimonios directos de aquellos años. Había que contarlo todo de viva voz. Era una cuestión de urgencia biológica. Se mueren", comenta Peñafuerte. Así, fue hablando con gentes que lo sufrieron en propia carne. Desde Jorge Semprún a Marcos Ana u otros presos políticos. Con ellos ha compuesto este sutil y certero fresco de la memoria rota por la guerra y la represión, el más ambicioso de los que se han rodado hasta la fecha con ese telón de fondo. En la digna estela de otros anteriores como Santa Cruz, por ejemplo, de Günter Schwaiger, La mala muerte, de Fidel Cordero y José Manuel Martín, o Las fosas del silencio, de Montse Armengou y Ricard Belis.

También le ayudaron quienes se colocan a pie de campo. Como el forense Francisco Echeverría, uno de los personajes claves en el documental y en todo el proceso de recuperación de las víctimas. O Emilio Silva, presidente de la Asociación para la Recuperación de Memoria Histórica. "Éste es el trabajo en el que más tiempo y recursos se han empleado hasta el momento. Parte de las fosas, pero lo proyecta de una forma intergeneracional. Va de los abuelos a los bisnietos que lo estudian ahora en los institutos, aunque no como debería hacerse. Es un horror lo que se hace con este asunto en la educación", comenta.

Entre todos han tratado de hacer un ejercicio de, define el director del documental, "reequilibrio de la memoria". Es algo que comenta Semprún en el filme: "La balanza está todavía en el lado de los vencedores". Lo asegura después de contemplar la verja de Buchenwald, donde el escritor español estuvo encerrado. El desnivel entre los bandos a la hora de resolver las cuentas es claro. Más si se tiene en cuenta que hay cientos de miles de muertos sin identificar en las cunetas. Los vencedores nunca han tenido que apartar las telarañas del miedo, ni esconderse, ni reivindicarse. Incluso en la España democrática, como muestra el documental cuando acude a actos de exaltación franquista en el Valle de los Caídos o en la plaza de Oriente. "Allí se hace la apología del terror que en otros países europeos está prohibida por ley", denucia Peñafuerte. "No es de recibo".

Es una cuestión de higiene democrática, cree Silva. "Más cuando muchas de esas defensas y muchos monumentos se mantienen con nuestros impuestos", asegura el presidente de la Asociación de Memoria Histórica.No es pesimista Peñafuerte en cambio con los últimos avances de reparación histórica que se están consiguiendo en España. En cierto modo, pese a que estos procesos de dignificación de las víctimas se han bordado en algunos países latinoamericanos, en Europa hay mucho por andar. "En el fondo, dado que yo creo que estos procesos se deben llevar desde la sociedad civil, España está resultando pionera en muchos casos. En Italia, el fascismo renace ahora porque nunca se ha abordado como debía, en Francia tampoco se ha entrado a fondo y no hay más que ver lo organizados que están, y en Alemania, la condena del nazismo se hizo por obligación", comenta.

Y añade: "Es fundamental atravesar estos procesos para consolidar el sistema de libertades. España vive la edad de su madurez democrática. Ya ha cumplido más de 30 años en libertad. Es un buen momento para afrontarlo", comenta. Se trata de una cuestión de valores. Valores primordiales, irrenunciables, esos que descansan en las declaraciones de derechos universales. "Por eso me interesaban especialmente los discursos de Marcos Ana o Semprún, porque no hablan de revancha, sino de principios. De alerta para que no se repita la historia", asegura Peñafuerte.

A pesar de las trabas, frente a los malos tragos y a las injusticias palpitantes. Que se lo pregunten al juez Garzón. El magistrado se atrevió a pisar una línea dentro de uno de los poderes del Estado no elegidos democráticamente y se lo quieren hacer pagar. "No hay nadie en los ámbitos judiciales europeos e internacionales que entienda la persecución que sufre Garzón". A no ser que se les hable de una perversa lógica de manos negras... "Si no es por eso, no entra en la cabeza".

Jesús Ruiz Mantilla, El Pais, 30.10.09

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/barrancos/memoria/elpepucul/20091030elpepicul_1/Tes

 

 

“All the attention has gone to more glamorous diseases, but this basic thing has been left behind,” said Mickey Chopra, chief of health at Unicef, which is trying to put diarrhea back on the global health agenda. “It’s a forgotten disease.”

His observation lies at the heart of a wider debate over whether the United States and other rich nations spend too much on AIDS, which requires lifelong medications, compared with diarrhea and the other leading killer of children, pneumonia, both of which can be treated inexpensively.

The debate is flaring at a time of great opportunity and risk. Recent data has documented remarkable progress in reducing child mortality and treating people with AIDS. Foreign assistance, which has often delivered disappointing results, is helping save millions of lives, the new figures show.

But as the United States and other rich nations hit by the global financial crisis face their own daunting challenges, there is heightened competition for foreign assistance. President Obama has proposed a 2 percent increase in spending on H.I.V. and AIDS for 2010 and a 6 percent rise for maternal and child health, according to the Global Health Council, but the disparity in American spending on AIDS and the big child killers remains stark.

In Africa’s two most populous nations, Nigeria and Ethiopia, the number of people who died of AIDS in 2007 — 237,000 — was less than half the 540,000 children under 5 who died of pneumonia and diarrhea. But this year, the $750 million the United States is spending on H.I.V. and AIDS in the two countries not only dwarfs the $35 million it is spending there on maternal and child health, but is also more than the $646 million it is spending on maternal and child health in all the world’s countries combined.

“AIDS is still underfunded, no question,” said Jeremy Shiffman, a political scientist at Syracuse University who has documented global health spending patterns. “But maternal, newborn and child mortality is a tremendous tragedy and gets peanuts.”

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel — a bioethicist, White House official and brother of Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff — has contended that international aid for health is limited and would save more lives if increases focused on maternal health and the “mundane but deadly diseases” that kill young children. Such choices are necessary, he and a co-author wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April, “if the United States is going to shoulder the burden of choosing which lives to save in the developing world.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Columbia University economist, countered that wealthy donors still spent far too little on global health and rejected what he called the wrong-headed idea that “we need to make a terrible and tragic choice between AIDS or pneumonia.” The United States has invested heavily in the fight against AIDS, and other wealthy nations should pick up more of the cost of other global health priorities, he says.

“Rather than tearing down what’s working, we should continue to invest in what’s needed,” he said.

Mr. Obama has promised to put greater focus on child and maternal health and proposed a 53 percent increase next year in money to fight malaria, a major killer of African children, the Global Health Council estimated. But he has also committed to major increases in money to fight AIDS in coming years that, if enacted, would ensure that AIDS remained America’s global health priority, constituting over 70 percent of its global health spending, he said.

International commitments to combat HIV and AIDS rose at an average annual rate of 48 percent from 1998 to 2007, reaching $7.4 billion and making up almost half of donor financing for global health, according to Professor Shiffman’s analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Still, more than half the people with the disease who need drug treatment still are not getting it. Two million died in 2007, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

The toll of women and children who die of easily preventable or curable conditions is even higher. Pneumonia alone killed 2 million children under age 5, and diarrhea 1.5 million more, out of the almost 9 million young children who died last year.

Dr. Olivier Fontaine, who described himself as the only person at the World Health Organization working full time on childhood diarrheal diseases, said health ministry managers in poor countries knew diarrhea was a crucial cause of child mortality, but focused on other diseases that have gotten more attention and financing from abroad.

Two days after her month-old son’s bout of diarrhea began, Marcia Mankense, 23, took him to a hospital here in Johannesburg where a doctor administered fluids through an intravenous line threaded into his scalp.

Before his birth, she said, no one told her she should give him oral rehydration salts — known as O.R.S. — as soon as he got diarrhea, though she was counseled on the need to get tested for H.I.V. Nor did anyone give her a packet of the salts to take home.

“He’s my firstborn and I know nothing about kids,” she said, exhausted next to his crib after days of vigil. “I just feel like I need to be here for him. What if he’s crying?”

Public health experts agree there is tremendous potential to lower child deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia substantially. New methods of distributing rehydration salts and cheap zinc tablets, also recommended for diarrhea, are being tested, including giving them away during national campaigns to hand out antimalarial bed nets and to vaccinate children against measles.

“Everyone should have O.R.S. at home like we have Band-Aids,” Dr. Fontaine said.

For an extra $3 billion to $4 billion in coming years, children in poor countries could be inoculated against pneumonia and the rotavirus that causes about a third of diarrhea deaths, according to the GAVI Alliance, a broad group of donors.

On the diarrhea ward at the hospital here, most of the babies and young children had mothers patiently sitting next to their cribs, comforting them. But one little boy, just 2 months old, was alone. His mother, a 10th grader, was at school. He had come in dehydrated, with sunken eyes, too enervated to even cry. But after being given fluids intravenously, life flowed back into him.

When he howled, a nurse or one of the mothers would look into his eyes. He would fall quiet, his cries muting to soft mewling, his eyes widening curiously.

“He wasn’t even crying when he got here,” Mrs. Mankense said happily. “Now we can hear his voice. He’s naughty!”

Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 30.10.09

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/world/30child.html?ref=africa

 

L'auteur roumain le plus traduit au monde a connu la dictature fasciste puis communiste. Son œuvre est de première importance pour comprendre la tragédie roumaine du XXè siècle.

LE FIGARO. - Vous avez quitté la Roumanie en 1986 ; était-ce à cause de l'acharnement de la censure qui venait de massacrer votre roman L'Enveloppe noire, aujourd'hui traduit en français ?

Norman MANEA. - La Roumanie à l'époque était politiquement plus fasciste que communiste. Durant les dernières années du règne de Ceausescu, le pouvoir étudiait le nationalisme et les préceptes de la Garde de fer car le communisme était mort. Et le fascisme roumain d'hier, c'était une xénophobie extrême, un militarisme infantile et très dangereux qui sacralisait la mort. La situation était devenue à ce point irrespirable que des amis m'ont dit : « Tu es une sorte de démocrate anglais. Tu n'es plus à ta place ici. » Et pourtant, je ne voulais pas quitter la Roumanie et ma région natale, la Bucovine, qui est aussi celle de Celan, de Rezzori, d'Appelfeld. J'avais trouvé un équilibre avec les livres, une sorte de refuge dans l'intériorité. Quand l'extérieur est devenu trop agressif, notamment via la censure, c'est devenu impossible de continuer.

Après quelque temps à Berlin, où vous parliez allemand, comment avez-vous pu gagner New York sans parler un mot d'anglais ?

J'avais plus de 50 ans et j'ai pensé à la phrase de Cioran disant que changer de langue pour un écrivain est plus violent qu'un désastre mondial. Longtemps après, quand on me demandait en quelle langue j'écrivais, je répondais : en anglais tsigane. C'était comme une fissure interne pour moi. Heureusement, Philip Roth m'a aidé. Il m'a dit qu'à New York je serais à l'abri. Et c'est vrai que New York est une capitale dada de l'exil. On y trouve toutes les races, les dialectes, les folies.

Comment avez-vous réagi le 11 septembre 2001 ?

J'ai pensé à ma mort. J'ai pensé qu'aucun endroit n'était assez éloigné du désastre. Où aller ? Je me sentais new-yorkais quand même et j'ai voulu rester. Le 11 Septembre était aussi ma catastrophe. Ce jour-là, j'ai été convaincu que le danger m'accompagnait partout.

À lire Les Clowns, votre recueil d'essais, on ne sait plus s'il faut rire ou pleurer face au spectacle de l'ère Ceausescu ...

La Roumanie est une étrange combinaison de burlesque et de byzantinisme. Toute vérité est sous la table et le peuple porte des masques qui ressemblent parfois comme deux gouttes d'eau aux visages qu'ils cachent. Vingt ans après la chute des tyrans, on découvre, avec l'ouverture des dossiers, que nombre de gens qu'on respectait étaient malhonnêtes. On découvre que 80 % des prêtres à qui les gens venaient se confesser étaient des informateurs des services secrets. Aujourd'hui, la Roumanie est une démocratie kafkaïenne où se mélangent rhétorique, démagogie et populisme vulgaire.

En 1992, en exil, vous publiez Felix culpa, un texte sur le passé fascisant de Mircea Eliade, grande figure des lettres roumaines, qui provoque un énorme scandale en Roumanie.

Felix culpa n'a pas été un scandale Eliade, mais un scandale Manea ! Les nationalistes au pouvoir ont dénoncé une conspiration étrangère qui cherchait à détruire une gloire nationale. Dans la presse, on a publié des dessins de Jésus crucifié, une façon très claire de souligner une fois encore le rôle du complot juif.

En 1996, autre séisme, avec la publication du Journal de Mihail Sebastian (1907-1945) qui dépeint la Roumanie fasciste

Son Journal est lucide, honnête. Sa publication a été très mal vécue par le pouvoir en place, qui a été jusqu'à dire qu'il s'agissait d'un faux. Ce sont ses filles qui ont confié le manuscrit à un comité d'écrivains roumains en exil, dont je faisais partie. Je peux donc assurer que le manuscrit est authentique ! Aujourd'hui paraît un essai sur Sebastian qui apporte quelques nuances sur le personnage et montre, par exemple, qu'à l'époque où il était journaliste il a flirté de près avec la droite extrême. En fait, il était faible et admirait les gens forts. Il voulait faire partie de l'élite intellectuelle du pays et se sentait défavorisé parce que juif. Il avait une sorte de candeur, il croyait en l'amitié, notamment celle d'Eliade.

Vous brocardez vos compatriotes comme de fieffés opportunistes : à peine mille communistes en 1945 et quatre millions sous Ceausescu

Le folklore roumain est formidable, la politique est un désastre. Songez qu'un jour seulement après la mort de Ceausescu, quatre millions de membres du PC sont devenus anticommunistes hystériques, obsessionnels, habités d'une rage extraordinaire. Ils se sentaient coupables et voulaient prouver au monde qu'ils chérissaient la liberté.

L'attribution du Nobel à Herta Muller, née en Roumanie, mais écrivain de langue allemande a dû vous surprendre ?

Ça a été une surprise aussi pour elle ! Ce qui est amusant, c'est qu'elle n'a appris le roumain qu'à l'âge de quinze ans et qu'elle reconnaît n'avoir pas de connexion avec la littérature roumaine. Pourtant, ses romans parlent tous de la Roumanie et de la dictature, comme les miens. Vous savez, le Nobel, est une obsession hystérique nationale. La Roumanie est un pays frustré. Mais si je le recevais, elle serait bien embarrassée ! Pensez que dans une revue littéraire, un journaliste démocrate a écrit que le choix d'une Roumaine d'origine allemande était un malheur relatif à côté de ce qu'aurait été un Nobel roumain d'origine hongroise ou juive.

Propos recueillis par Bruno Corty, Le Figaro, 29.10.09

http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2009/10/29/03005-20091029ARTFIG00474-la-roumanie-est-une-democratie-kafkaienne-.php

 

 

Ambas naciones se convirtieron en socios estratégicos al firmar una declaración que prevé un estrechamiento de las relaciones en múltiples campos, desde la economía a la cultura, pasando por la lucha contra el terrorismo y el narcotráfico. Los delegaciones de los dos países firmaron siete documentos -entre ellos, un acuerdo para colaborar en el desarrollo pacífico de la energía atómica- en una ceremonia en el Kremlin a la que asistieron el presidente ruso, Dmitri Medvédev, y su homólogo ecuatoriano. Los helicópteros que Moscú venderá a Quito son dos Mi-17, en una operación valorada en 22 millones de dólares, según el ministro de Defensa ecuatoriano, Javier Ponce. Refiriéndose a ese contrato, el presidente Medvédev dijo ayer que "esto, de momento, no es mucho, pero en cualquier caso es el comienzo de nuestra colaboración en este campo y creo que nuestras relaciones tienen aquí una perspectiva". Ecuador ha abolido el visado para los ciudadanos rusos y ambos países se disponen a firmar un acuerdo para que esta medida sea común.

El volumen comercial entre Ecuador y Rusia fue de casi 1.000 millones de dólares en 2008; las exportaciones ecuatorianas más importantes son los plátanos y las flores.

Moscú practica una activa política en Latinoamérica. Medvédev tuvo ocasión de conocer a Correa en noviembre de 2008 en Caracas. Según el diario en los últimos tiempos Rusia ha acuñado una fórmula de relación con los miembros de la Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba), en la que la venta de armas a crédito tiene como contrapartida el acceso a los recursos y el reconocimiento de Osetia del Sur y Abjazia. En relación a estos dos territorios del Cáucaso, que para la ONU son parte de Georgia, Ecuador no siguió ayer el ejemplo de Nicaragua y Venezuela, que complacieron al Kremlin y los reconocieron como Estados.

El crédito para comprar armas se estima en 200 millones de dólares y fue negociado a finales de septiembre, durante la visita del ministro de Finanzas de Ecuador a Moscú, según Kommersant. Rusia está también dispuesta a dar créditos para proyectos energéticos.

Ecuador está interesado en el suministro de transporte aéreo, camiones y autobuses, así como en la compra de seis aviones estratégicos y aparatos de vuelo no tripulados. Los ecuatorianos, según Kommersant, tienen interés también en complejos de misiles antiaéreos Igla, pero Moscú es reticente por los riesgos que ello supondría, ya que Colombia acusa a Ecuador y Venezuela de venta de armas a las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). La empresa InterRao, que comercia con energía eléctrica, y el banco Roseksimbank, por una parte, y la empresa ecuatoriana Idrotoapi, por otra, confirmaron ayer el protocolo de intenciones para realizar proyectos hidroeléctricos.

Medvédev calificó a Ecuador como uno de "nuestros socios importantes" en América Latina y señaló que Rusia mira con gran interés las actividades de las organizaciones regionales en Suramérica y está presente como observador en los foros de varias de ellas. El secretario del Consejo de Seguridad de Rusia, Nikolái Pátrushev, asistió recientemente a la cumbre de Alba en Bolivia.

Pilar Bonet, El Pais, 30.10.09

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Rusia/Ecuador/sellan/alianza/estrategica/elpepuint/20091030elpepuint_2/Tes

 

Movie-Land, Chicago, the cab crawling through the rusted beltway, crossing Racine (where Sean Connery's "Irish" policeman lived in The Untouchables) and making a left on West Addison (the false address, you'll recall, that Elwood Blues gives to the police in The Blues Brothers) with the crowds growing thicker and noisier, fluorescent-jacketed police directing traffic at intersections, Klieg lights splitting the night sky, a sense of excitement crackling in the cold air too as showtime draws near and then suddenly there it is – Wrigley Field Stadium (where, you'll also recall, Ferris enjoyed part of that fine day off) lit up like an ice castle.

Wrigley Field, however, is strictly baseball tonight. The Manic Street Preachers are playing at the Metro Theatre a few blocks along the street – capacity, 900.

For a band who have filled the arenas and stadiums of the UK and who headline festivals across Europe, Japan and Australia, you wonder if this US tour might be a depressing reminder of the kind of cultural gulf the grey tub of the Atlantic can engender. Then you remember – it is the first time that they've set foot in America for 10 years.

The faces packed along the front of the stage tonight are peaked with excitement as the band walk on – many in the crowd would have been in elementary school the last time the Manics played town and a few look like they can't quite believe they're really here. A crackle of static, a strobing of camera flash, and they're straight into "Motorcycle Emptiness", the first real anthem they wrote, in a living room in Blackwood, South Wales, more than half a lifetime ago.

There are two lights on the front of the singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield's amplifier: a forest-green one for bright and clean and a Def-Con-Four red one for raw, full-crank overload. The green light is not much employed, and yet there is more space and daylight in the arrangements than ever before. With the addition in the last couple of years of Sean Read on keyboards and Wayne Murray on rhythm guitar, Bradfield can do less; and when his Les Paul does growl back in, it fairly sets your fillings thrumming.

Somewhere along the line, Nicky Wire has become a very slinky, nimble bass player, his plectrum-less right hand pumping fluidly in and out of Sean Moore's drums. As they hurtle through the songs – "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough", "La Tristesse Durera", "Faster", "You Stole the Sun from My Heart", "Motown Junk", "Little Baby Nothing" – you are reminded that this would be a greatest-hits set back home.

Over here, of course, none of these songs much troubled the charts or the airwaves. Which is exactly why, you realise, it means so much for this small crowd to be hearing these songs live. During the climactic "Design for Life", I realise that the girl in front of me is crying softly.

Behind The Wire

The potted history for those unfamiliar with it: back in the mid-1980s, four childhood friends from a small Welsh town formed a rock'n'roll band. Inspired by the Clash, Guns n' Roses, Public Enemy and a raft of existential literature they begin to break through at the beginning of the 1990s, when they are so hideously out of step with Madchester culture that they are assumed by many to simply be a joke: the Darkness of their day by way of Camus or Colin Wilson. They proclaim that their debut album will sell 20 million copies, at which point they will split up.

Neither happens.

Their third album, 1994's The Holy Bible, is one of the most harrowing, desolate and extreme records of its era. Lyrically largely the work of their deeply troubled guitarist/lyricist, Richey Edwards, it in part details his anorexia and mental breakdown. It transpires that, as anyone with the slightest interest in the band could have told you, the record is no pose: Edwards goes missing on the eve of the band's first major American tour. The tour is cancelled. (Tragically, Richey is never found and was officially pronounced dead last year. He has since come to occupy the same iconic ground inhabited by Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain.) In the years that follow, the band go on to conquer the rest of the world, scoring massive international hits with the albums Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours. They play huge gigs in Japan, Australia and Europe and sell records everywhere.

Everywhere bar America, of course...

Why, in the nicest possible way, come back and put yourself through it all?

"Well, I mean, I doubt we've done more than 25 gigs in America in 20 years!" Nicky Wire says. "It's appalling, really. We've probably done more in Finland! And I am regretful that we never put the hours in here... we've really got a sense on this trip of how much, how long, some people have been waiting to see us here."

Nicky – variously referred to as Nick, Wire and The Wire – is a physically imposing presence. Approaching six-and-a-half-feet tall, and still thin as a credit card at 40, his eyes are usually obscured by huge sunglasses or a daub of Kohl. He's well known for his love of domesticity (married for 16 years, two kids), vacuuming (multiple Dyson owner) and Sky Sports (he will pretty much watch anything with a competitive element), so you imagine touring must be a hardship for him.

"No, not at all. I'm addicted to routine and on tour, within a day, you form a routine: get on the bus, do your make-up, chat, coffee, alone time. Funnily enough, Richey was the opposite way, so I think when we were at our absolute peak, lyrically anyway, was when you had both elements. Maybe that's why things like "La Tristesse" and "Motorcycle Emptiness" were so good."

What did Richey make of America?

"It was so long ago. Maybe '92 we were here together? He sent that brilliant postcard to Stuart Baillie that was in the NME: 'Van Gogh's perfect circle, Mickey and Disney', all that kind of stuff. It was just one short tour – maybe eight gigs? When we played LA, the record company had turned the urinals into the LP cover, so you were literally pissing on yourself."

As opposed to metaphorically?

"Exactly!" he says. "I mean, it's just bizarre looking back to think we ever had a chance out here. Grunge was breaking everywhere, everyone looked like a sack of shit, and then we turned up looking like the New York Dolls."

He sighs melodically. "It was never gonna happen."

Motor City emptiness

Early the next morning, I join Al, the bus driver, up front, drinking tea while Detroit emerges hulking out of the dawn drizzle ahead. Al is a gem: 60-ish and laconic, with a Southern drawl straight out of Tennessee Williams, he does not drink alcohol or caffeine and gets through the monster drives demanded by US tours (Joe Strummer memorably said that America gigs all seemed to involve driving from London to Glasgow 10 times) fuelled solely by dried fruit and Junior Mints. It turns out that one of his first jobs back in the day involved driving NWA at the height of "Fuck tha Police" mania. "Oh," Al drawls, "that was a treat."

Detroit has been harder hit by the recession than most American cities, and this was a city that wasn't much in shape for being hit at all. Great turn-of-the-century buildings lie empty and abandoned and swathes of the cityscape are just weed-strewn lots behind rusting chainlink fencing. In a familiar attempt at regeneration, money has been poured into building casinos and the first thing we see as the bus pulls off the freeway and into downtown are eight valet parkers huddled in the rain in front of a casino. But there are no longer cars to park in the Motor City. "Finished," Al says sadly. "I had an aunt and uncle back here, in the '50s and '60s? Different town then..."

The Majestic Theatre is Detroit in miniature: a cavernous, once beautiful Edwardian ballroom, its ornate ceiling is cracked and peeling. It also turns out that this was the very theatre where Houdini received the punch in the stomach that killed him. As though this were an omen, it turns out that ticket sales here are the worst of the tour so far – just a few hundred in a hall that would hold several times more. It is easily the smallest crowd I have ever seen the band play to. I flashback briefly to almost exactly a decade ago – Bradfield spinning across the stage of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in front of 70,000 fans on New Year's Eve 1999 – and wonder how difficult a gig like this must be for a band once they achieve a certain level of success.

But, as they tear into the second song, "No Surface, All Feeling" – James changing the lyric and staccato- spitting the line, "Feel. The. Cold. Of. The. Motor. City. Winter" – to cheers and punched air, the hall contracts and the audience swells and the empty space doesn't seem to matter to the kids down the front who have been, literally, waiting half of their lives to see this band.

Later, on the bus, after the band have spent more than an hour chatting with fans and signing records, T-shirts and guitars, I ask James if his heart sinks when he walks onstage and sees all that space in the hall. "Yeah, well, it does a bit. You want the crowd just to be a liquid mass. The best thing about a gig is when people lose self-consciousness, and with a small crowd in a place that big it's just not gonna happen. But, having said that, when you've been in a band as long as we have, it's a bit like the end of Groundhog Day sometimes – anything different is good! When you get to 40 and something can still feel new and scary... that's pretty amazing. Also, from the people I spoke to afterwards, you know it really meant something to them. Sometimes these days, I think everything's so surface: 'Oh, I won't go to the gig, I'll catch them at a festival.' Or, 'I won't buy the record, I'll just download it.' To actually feel that greater level of commitment and connection we've felt here, it's good to know that exists. And, I mean, commercially, for us, this is the weakest territory in the world!"

Is it important to you to make some kind of mark here?

"Since I was 15 years old I've been obsessed with Gibson guitars. If you buy into rock music you buy into America. As soon as you come out here for the first time you understand why writers and musicians are obsessed with American life. It's all the records and books and the movies you've consumed. You buy into it and you rail against it too. You come to realise in America that you're not touring a country; you're touring different territories. Yeah, tonight was tough, but I'm so glad we went there. Nothing is handed to you on a plate because nothing is handed to anyone on a plate in Detroit. To see all those factories empty, those grand hotels all derelict. You imagine the old, dignified concierge who used to work there, and it was a position of power and respect... and none of that stuff is there anymore. People have had all of that taken away from them. You can't complain if enough of them don't come to see your rock'n'roll show."

Detroit disappears behind us into the night, Canada waits ahead.

Longevity's reward

The last few years have seen the band hitting something of a purple patch. Having arguably reached a creative and commercial nadir with 2004's Lifeblood – an oddly cold, disaffected and uncharacteristic record that produced one of the UK's strangest radio hits in the single "The Love of Richard Nixon" – the band splintered for two years while Bradfield and Wire released solo records. They returned in 2007 with the single "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough". The track – a controlled, whipcracking burst of melody – went in at No 2, going on to become an airplay smash all over Europe and an MTV staple, while its parent album, Send Away the Tigers, was critically lauded as their best record in more than a decade.

How best to follow this renewed commercial standing?

With an album of songs written by Richey Edwards at the height of his mental breakdown, featuring choruses such as "Riderless horses on Chomsky's Camelot" and with no singles whatsoever, of course. Journal for Plague Lovers was one of the truly unexpected delights of 2009, and absolute confirmation of a band operating where all real artists sometimes must – far upriver, beyond the reaches of convention, in a Colonel Kurtz playground entirely of their own manufacture. All the more remarkable given that it was the work of a band now into their 20th year.

The renewed sense of vigour, of creative purpose, was brought home powerfully when I scanned the walls of the Chicago Metro for forthcoming attractions: Bob Mould (late of Sugar and Hüsker Dü) and Echo and the Bunnymen; fine names with some unarguably great records between them to be sure, but acts whose creative high-water marks are almost certainly long behind them, names that feel, well, a little tired. One does not get this feeling around the Manics.

"Yeah," Nicky says, "I do think there's a real sense of purpose again. You can tell with us when we don't feel like that, say around Lifeblood, when our arses were completely on the floor and you do get that tired feeling. But I think now... your 10th album is pretty much a landmark for any band."

In terms of longevity, you're now mapping your career against the likes of the Who, or the Stones. You're probably somewhere around the point of Tattoo You now...

"I know! I was doing exactly that the other day and it blew my mind! When we signed our new deal a few weeks ago someone said that we're now the longest-signed act to Sony UK! Apart from Sade, who's made like three albums in 20 years! I feel good about that! The whole reformation thing – Blur, the Verve – they can say what they like about those bands 'doing it for the love' but we all know that..." Wire pauses and reconsiders whatever track he's on. "Look, the great thing about a marriage is trudging through the shit times sometimes. And then you realise your wife's still there! The misery makes the good times so much better."

Sweet revenge

We have a day off in Toronto, where I catch up with the drummer Sean Moore – a man for whom, initially, you imagine the word "taciturn" was surely coined. Neat and trim, he radiates a quiet, steady sense of purpose, of not suffering fools gladly, but talking to him you quickly get a sense of a quick, dark humour, and how very seriously he takes the business of making music.

He is also a hotel manager's wet dream: his room at the Toronto Park Hyatt is, without doubt, the tidiest rock star's bedroom I have ever been in. Forget empty Jack Daniel's bottles and underwear strewn around, it doesn't even look like the TV remote has been moved from its original position. Does he ever feel a sense of wonder that, 20 years on, he's still doing this with two of his childhood friends?

"No. Never. We never contemplated the odds, or failure. It might have been blind idiocy or whatever you wanna call it but... no. Never. I do feel fortunate in certain ways but then I think, well, we steered our own destiny. We all went to school together, dreamt up this band together and here we are... 20 years later. I mean you do sometimes think, 'How did that happen?' But I couldn't be in any other band. When the guys (Nicky and James) were doing their side projects I never ever felt comfortable with that. I mean, it's up to them. I just don't feel the need to do that and they did. Even when we did the Kylie thing, me and James (Sean and James wrote several tracks together for Kylie Minogue's Impossible Princess album in the mid-Nineties) I just felt like a hired hand. I mean, I still believe that if we'd sold 20 million copies of Generation Terrorists then we would have split up. Even now, if we made a record that sold that many I think that'd be it! We'd split up then. That was what we set out to achieve and, 20 years on, we still haven't done it!"

But, I have to ask, what would you do then?

Sean thinks for a moment before replying, "Bask in the glory!"

And the show that night turns out to be glorious indeed. The motherload: all 1,200 tickets totally sold out, a kid faints and is helped out, and the crowd are screaming from the word go, drowning out Bradfield on nearly every song. Business as usual back home, but especially sweet here considering that the last time they set foot on a Canadian stage the shine was not yet off New Labour. "God," Wire says as the last notes of "Motorcycle Emptiness" are drowned in a roar of approval, "I don't know why it's taken us 10 years to come back." Bradfield elicits a huge cheer by teasing out the intro to "Spirit of Radio" by hometown heroes Rush, and then "La Tristesse" has the whole hall jumping as one. "Marlon JD", from Journal, is heartstopping, savage, crazed. It is quite something during "Me and Stephen Hawking", one of the more outré Richey lyrics from Journal, to see the entire front row – mostly girls in their late teens and early twenties – singing "Herman the Bull and Tracy the sheep, transgenic milk containing human protein, bacteria cheaper than baby food... today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you!" And singing it word perfectly too, I tell James later.

"You know, it is a tiny bit of sweet revenge in finally coming out here again with Journal." He says. "There was that moment when Richey went missing and we'd just had a really good reaction from college radio and the American record company on Holy Bible, kinda like, 'Oh, maybe we do get this band!' Then Richey vanished and down the years it's been, 'Could we actually have something in America with The Holy Bible?' So it feels a bit like revenge against fate and circumstance that we've finally come back here with Journal."

It strikes me how brilliantly cavalier it is, to come and tour a country where you are at best a cult concern with a resolutely uncommercial album. Surely this tour is costing them a lot of money? "Oh yeah," Nicky says, "50 grand in the hole, easy."

After the show, and another hour of autographs and photos, JDB, the Wire, Angus the unflappable tour manager and I enjoy a round of brandies on the 18th-floor bar of the hotel, the crystal battlements of the Toronto skyline forming a billion-dollar backdrop. "It's good to make these kind of decisions at the age of 40, you know?" James says, sipping his drink, the first alcohol I have seen him touch in the four days I have been on the tour. ''What should we do now? Well, let's go and tour in the place where it's hardest for us to sell tickets in the world! But, you know, different is good."

I'm leaving the tour the next morning and Nicky gives me a going-away present, a little bundle of postcards and some William Blake stickers. On one of the postcards he has written the working title of their new LP: It's Not War – Just the End of Love. I ask him what it's going to be like. "Commercial," he says, grinning wickedly.

The Independent, 30.10.09

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/just-another-manic-street-preachers-road-trip-1811480.html

 

À sept kilomètres de Bichkek, le bazar de Dordoï est un gigantesque labyrinthe de 72 000 conteneurs superposés sur deux étages. Ceux du haut font office de réserves, ceux du bas de boutiques. Dordoï passe pour le plus grand bazar d'Asie centrale. On y parle kirghiz, russe, chinois, ouïgour, kazakh… Malgré l'activité fébrile qui y règne tout au long de l'année, l'hiver, par moins 30 degrés, on y pèle de froid. Les chalands y trouvent de tout. Des vêtements, des pneus, des fruits, d'étranges plantes médicinales, de l'opium. La quasi-totalité des produits vendus sur cet immense marché métallique vient de Chine, située à environ 500 km, par-delà la barrière montagneuse du Tian Chan. Une bonne partie des marchandises arrive par camion via le col d'Erkeshtam, à environ 4 000 mètres d'altitude. Marco Polo racontait qu'ici, l'eau ne peut plus être portée à ébullition. La route a été construite par les Chinois.

Moscou réinvestit le terrain

Les Kirghizes partagent une frontière de plus de 2 000 km avec la Chine. Pékin s'intéresse beaucoup au Kirghizstan qui fut sa marche occidentale de 1750 à 1820 avant de tomber dans l'orbite russe puis soviétique. À en croire un journaliste kirghiz, «les Chinois semblent avoir décidé de s'emparer du Kirghizstan en toute tranquillité, sans guerre, seulement par le nombre de leurs émigrants ». Les marchands chinois ont déjà conquis les bazars et Pékin vient d'inaugurer un Centre Confucius à Bichkek. L'importante minorité ouïgour du Kirghizstan préoccupe les autorités chinoises. Cet été, les Ouïgours kirghizes ont organisé une manifestation de solidarité avec leurs frères irrédentistes du Xinjiang. Ils scandaient un slogan inquiétant, «Ouïgourstan libre», avant d'être dispersés par la police.

Le Kirghizstan est un pays enclavé, très pauvre et très démuni - sa seule richesse est l'eau. Il ne peut donc se passer de l'aide étrangère. Mais il veut échapper au diktat de la Chine et de la Russie, ses deux voisins les plus influents pour des raisons historiques, géographiques et économiques.

La guerre en Afghanistan a représenté une aubaine pour le Kirghizstan. L'engagement des forces occidentales a permis à ce petit pays de sortir de l'anonymat et de tirer de substantiels dividendes en termes économiques et financiers. En décembre 2001, les États-Unis ont ouvert la base aérienne de Manas. Le déploiement américain a galvanisé la Russie qui, après avoir coopéré avec Washington dans le cadre de la lutte contre le terrorisme, a craint de se retrouver marginalisée dans ce qu'elle considère comme sa sphère d'influence. En 2003, Moscou a donc commencé à réinvestir le terrain en obtenant l'autorisation d'établir une base militaire sous les auspices de l'Organisation du traité de sécurité collective (OTSC). Fondée en 1992, l'OTSC, qui rassemble sept anciens pays soviétiques, ambitionne d'être un contrepoids à l'Otan. La base de Kant se situe elle aussi à une trentaine de kilomètres de Bichkek. Elle abrite une dizaine d'hélicoptères, des chasseurs SU-27 et plusieurs avions de transport. La Russie dispose aussi de deux unités de transmission, d'un centre d'expérimentation de torpilles près du lac d'Issik-Kuk et elle s'apprête à ouvrir prochainement une seconde base à Och, dans le sud du pays, une zone de non-droit où fleurissent les trafics en tous genres et le prosélytisme islamique. Au début de l'année, Moscou a accordé une aide de 2 milliards de dollars au président kirghiz, Kourmanbek Bakiev, pour le convaincre de fermer la base américaine de Manas.

Ces rivalités confortent le pouvoir absolu de Bakiev. Arrivé au pouvoir en 2005, à l'issue d'une révolution dite des «tulipes», le président, qui avait promis de démocratiser le Kirghizstan, est en train d'éliminer tous ses opposants. Six journalistes ont été passés à tabac depuis le début de l'année et plusieurs hommes politiques ont été assassinés dans des circonstances on ne peut plus opaques.

Arielle Thédrel, Le Figaro, 30.10.09

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2009/10/31/01003-20091031ARTFIG00092-l-asie-centrale-terrain-de-rivalites-entre-l-est-et-l-ouest-.php

 

 

Iker Casillas del Real Madrid, Fernando Torres del Liverpool y David Villa del Valencia FC también forman parte de los aspirantes por España, que es el país que más jugadores aporta en esta relación por delante de Inglaterra, que tiene entre los aspirantes a Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney y John Terry. Obviamente, figuran otros grandes favoritos, como el portugués Cristiano Ronaldo, del Real Madrid y último ganador de esta distinción. También el camerunés Samuel Eto'o, del Inter de Milán.

Brasil tiene a tres futbolistas, el juventino Diego, el madridista Kaká y el sevillista Luis Fabiano. Así mismo se encuentran en la relación los también barcelonistas Thierry Henry y Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

A principios de diciembre, la FIFA dará a conocer los nombres de cinco jugadores y cinco jugadoras que hayan recibido más votos, y se premiará a los ganadores en la decimonovena Gala del Jugador Mundial de la FIFA, que se celebrará el 21 de diciembre de 2009 en el centro de congresos Kongressshaus de Zúrich.

Los entrenadores y capitanes, encargados de efectuar la elección, no podrán votar por futbolistas de la selección nacional que entrenen o en la que jueguen.

Listas de los candidatos elaboradas por especialistas futbolísticos de la Comisión del Fútbol y la Comisión del Fútbol Femenino y de la Copa Mundial Femenina de la FIFA, es la siguiente:

Hombres
Michael Ballack (GER), Gianluigi Buffon (ITA), Iker Casillas (ESP), Cristiano Ronaldo (POR), Diego (BRA), Didier Drogba (CIV), Michael Essien (GHA), Samuel Eto'o (CMR), Steven Gerrard (ING), Thierry Henry (FRA), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (SWE), Andrés Iniesta (ESP), Kaká (BRA), Frank Lampard (ING), Luis Fabiano (BRA), Lionel Messi (ARG), Carles Puyol (ESP), Franck Ribéry (FRA), Wayne Rooney (ING), John Terry (ING), Fernando Torres (ESP), David Villa (ESP) y Xavi Hernández (ESP)

Mujeres
Nadine Angerer (GER), Sonia Bompastor (FRA), Cristiane (BRA), Inka Grings (GER), Mana Iwabuchi (JPN), Simone Laudehr (GER), Marta (BRA), Birgit Prinz (GER), Kelly Smith (ING) y Abby Wambach (USA)

La Vanguardia, 30.10.09

http://www.lavanguardia.es/deportes/noticias/20091030/53815169732/messi-iniesta-xavi-puyol-ibrahimovic-y-henry-candidatos-para-el-mejor-jugador-fifa-world-player.html

 

A United Nations torture investigator who was supposed to meet Zimbabwe’s prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, was instead detained under guard at the airport overnight and ejected from Zimbabwe on Thursday morning.

The investigator, Manfred Nowak, said his treatment by the party of Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, was “totally unheard of behavior” and illustrated Mr. Tsvangirai’s lack of power in a government he ostensibly runs with Mr. Mugabe.

Mr. Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, joined the government in an effort to end a political crisis in Zimbabwe, but he and his party say they continue to be assailed by Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, through its selective enforcement of “shadowy charges.”

Zimbabwe’s state-run media, controlled by Mr. Mugabe’s party, depicted Mr. Nowak as a “gate crasher.” He had been officially invited to conduct a mission in the country, but said he was informed en route to Zimbabwe that the government wanted him to postpone his eight-day trip because of a two-day visit from regional ministers addressing the country’s political crisis.

“It’s a serious diplomatic incident,” Mr. Nowak said in an interview, adding that he would not return even if invited. He was planning to investigate what he called “credible and serious allegations of human rights violations.”

His expulsion occurred as ministers from Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Swaziland gathered in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, to try to shore up the power-sharing government, badly shaken since Mr. Tsvangirai and his party began boycotting cabinet meetings two weeks ago, citing ZANU-PF’s bad faith.

In fact, Mr. Nowak was on the same flight from Johannesburg on Wednesday night as the ministers from across southern Africa. But upon arrival, they were whisked through to the V.I.P. lounge, while Mr. Nowak was waylaid by an immigration official who said he had orders not to let him enter the country.

The episode, combined with recent arrests of senior civic leaders and what Mr. Tsvangirai’s party described as the abduction of one of its managers, is likely to heighten fears in Zimbabwe that the relative peace that has prevailed in the country in recent months is threatened.

The leaders of Zimbabwe’s National Association of Nongovernmental Organizations, which represents more than 1,000 civic groups, were arrested Sunday in Victoria Falls after a three-day conference at which five plainclothes security agents sat taking notes in the audience, said the group’s spokesman, Fambai Ngiranda. They were charged with convening a political meeting without police clearance, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported.

Dadirai Chikwengo, chairman of the association’s board, and Cephas Zinhumwe, its chief executive, spent two nights in cells with no light, sleeping on the floor, Mr. Ngiranda said. “We still live in an undemocratic, autocratic situation,” he said. “Repressive legislation is still being applied to intimidate and harass human right defenders, civil society leaders and elements deemed inimical to ZANU-PF.”

Mr. Nowak, the United Nations torture investigator, said he intended to look into these accusations, as well as reports that state-sponsored agents beat and tortured thousands of opposition supporters before last year’s discredited runoff election between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai.

Mr. Nowak said he was assured only last week by Zimbabwe’s deputy head of mission to the United Nations that the mission was still on. But when Mr. Nowak arrived in Johannesburg on Wednesday from Vienna to meet his team, he learned that the government had decided he must postpone his work.

Mr. Nowak said the gathering of regional ministers was not a valid reason to send him and his team home. He said he offered to delay some appointments or shorten the trip, but to no avail. He was detained in Harare and put on the first plane to Johannesburg on Thursday morning.

“It’s coming at a time when I am getting worrying allegations about an increase of violence in the country,” he said.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Webster Shamu, a ZANU-PF member, said he was in the middle of a meeting and could not talk when reached Thursday on his cellphone. Jonathan Moyo, a former information minister and ZANU-PF member, said it was wrong of Mr. Nowak to come after his host, Zimbabwe, had asked him to delay his trip.

Asked why Mr. Nowak had been held overnight, Mr. Moyo said: “If you decide to take matters into your own hands, do not expect normal courtesies. We are talking about a normal visitor, not Jesus. The moment you behave outside the norms of civilized conduct, you open yourself to all sorts of conduct.”

Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 30.10.09

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/world/africa/30zimbabwe.html?_r=1&ref=world

 

La 37e édition du Festival de bande dessinée d'Angoulême est menacée, alors qu'il est considéré comme l'un des cinq grands festivals français, après Cannes, Avignon, La Rochelle et Bourges. La raison ? L'argent, bien sûr. Depuis septembre dernier, compte tenu du désengagement de l'État en matière de dotations budgétaires des municipalités, la Ville d'Angoulême redoute d'avoir à financer l'intégralité des prestations techniques de l'événement.

Le délégué général du festival, Franck Bondoux, a la désagréable impression d'être placé au pied du mur. «J'ai appris dans le quotidien Charente libre, puis dans Sud-Ouest, que le maire, Philippe Lavaud, envisageait de remettre à la charge du festival les prestations techniques, soit environ 400 000 €. La question que je pose est simple : est-ce qu'une ville comme Angoulême veut continuer à se donner les moyens d'accueillir une telle manifestation ? Le festival est l'un des événements fondateur de cette ville. Il a généré depuis toutes ces années des apports incalculables. Remettre en question tout cela à dix semaines de l'ouverture est inadmissible. On n'organise pas les Jeux olympiques dans un stade de banlieue, que diable ! Voilà trente-sept ans que nous sommes le grand rendez-vous de la BD dans le monde. Nous dégageons des bénéfices. Je ne veux pas le faire au rabais.»

À la mairie, on tempère. Le maire se trouvant en vacances, c'est l'adjoint à la culture et aux loisirs, Gérard Desaphy, qui répond calmement : «Dans le cadre d'un accord triennal, la Ville octroie une subvention de fonctionnement d'un million d'euros, mais elle a décidé de ne plus prendre en charge l'intégralité des prestations techniques. Celles-ci comprennent notamment le montage des stands commerciaux abritant les éditeurs ou l'installation des barrières de sécurité.» Dans Sud-Ouest, Philippe Lavaud avait justement déclaré qu'il s'agissait «d'une question de moralisation de l'argent public». «Est-ce que l'argent public a vocation à financer le montage des stands accueillant des activités commerciales ? Je ne le pense pas.»

Piste de réflexion

Même si Gérard Desaphy affirme avec vigueur qu'«Angoulême ne veut pas tuer la poule aux œufs d'or et ne devienne pas un festival au rabais», il suggère une piste de réflexion : «Pourquoi les éditeurs de BD ne paieraient-ils pas cette facture relative aux prestations techniques ?»

La question a immédiatement fait réagir Claude de Saint-Vincent, directeur des Éditions Dargaud et membre du syndicat des éditeurs de BD. «C'est totalement baroque, dit-il. Depuis plus de trente ans, les éditeurs financent le festival. Cela prouve que les gens de la mairie ne connaissent rien à la manifestation. Les auteurs, les dessinateurs remplissent les hôtels, les restaurants. Tout cela a un coût. Compte tenu des tensions du marché en 2009, si les conditions d'accession au festival changent, si même elles augmentent, j'ai bien peur que les éditeurs ne puissent plus investir dans la manifestation. Cela pourrait même donner le coup de grâce à Angoulême. Qui plus est, il est incroyablement étonnant qu'un maire PS s'attaque à un tel symbole de la culture populaire : la BD, art populaire s'il en est.»

Olivier Delcroix, Le Figaro, 30.10.09

http://www.lefigaro.fr/bd/2009/10/30/03014-20091030ARTFIG00023-angouleme-menaces-sur-le-festival-de-bd-.php

 

 

En Caracas, el presidente Lula da Silva respiró aliviado. Hubiese sido un papelón que en plena visita a su homólogo venezolano, Hugo Chávez, el Senado brasileño hubiese dado un portazo a Caracas en su afán por entrar en Mercosur. Ahora sólo resta que la decisión del Comité sea ratificada por el pleno de las dos Cámaras brasileñas, trámite que no presenta problemas porque el Gobierno tiene los votos necesarios para hacerlo.

Los Parlamentos de Uruguay y Argentina ya han dado su visto bueno y sólo queda Paraguay, cuyos legisladores aún no han debatido el tema. Asunción no es un obstáculo menor, puesto que el presidente Fernando Lugo está en minoría en ambas Cámaras. Además, la cuestión de la legitimidad democrática de Chávez, que fue el punto caliente en el debate brasileño, tiene un significado aún mayor para los paraguayos. La claúsula democrática que aparece en los estatutos de Mercosur fue introducida tras el fallido golpe de Estado del general Lino Oviedo contra el ex presidente Juan Carlos Wasmosy en 1996.

Justamente las credenciales democráticas de Chávez es lo que más se cuestionó en el debate de los senadores brasileños. El senador socialdemócrata Tasso Jereissati, que encabezó el grupo opuesto al ingreso de Venezuela en Mercosur arguyó que Chávez comete en su país "una serie de actos que hieren la democracia". No es el único senador que tanto hoy como en los últimos meses ha criticado algunas medidas del presidente venezolano como la no renovación de la licencia del canal de televisión RCTV o la apertura de una investigación a Globovisión, aparte de la injerencia del Gobierno en la economía y en las restricciones a las libertades. Hubo incluso un rifirrafe a raíz de la invitación del alcalde de Caracas, Antonio Ledezma -opositor a Chávez-, a visitar el país antes de votar. Los senadores afines al Gobierno se apresuraron a decir que su función no era la de "entrometerse" en los asuntos venezolanos.

El senador Antonio Valadares, del Partido Socialista Brasileño (PSB), dijo que la entrada de Venezuela en Mercosur servirá para vigilar más de cerca las políticas de Chávez, ya que las decisiones en el bloque son colegiadas y ningún país, por sí solo, puede imponer su voluntad. Valadares recordó también que será beneficioso para la oposición venezolana, que podrá acudir a los mecanismos del bloque para prefiere que Venezuela esté dentro del bloque, ya que en éste su voz tendrá más fuerza. Lamentablemente, si Mercosur ya falla bastante en su objetivo de garantizar el libre comercio, en el tema de asegurar la democracia aún tiene mucho que probar.

Juan Arias, El Pais, 29.10.09

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Senado/Brasil/da/luz/verde/ingreso/Venezuela/Mercosur/elpepuint/20091029elpepuint_31/Tes

 

 

 

La conversación comienza con una reflexión: el impacto de la política en su relación como pareja. Aunque el presidente cree que ambos aspectos están bien diferenciados ("aparte de todas las tonterías de Washington, porque Michelle no forma parte de esas tonterías"), lo cierto es que cada una de sus actividades, conjuntas o por separado, públicas o privadas, se convierte en un acto político. Como ejemplo, recuerdan la polémica generada cuando el matrimonio utilizó el avión presidencial para cenar y asistir a un musical en Nueva York. "Si no fuera presidente, me encantaría tomar un vuelo comercial con mi esposa para llevarla a una representación en Broadway, como le prometí durante la campaña, así no habría jaleo, ni murmuraciones, ni fotógrafos", explica él.

No parece, en todo caso, que estos inconvenientes derivados del cargo afecten a su relación. Al contrario, Michelle reconoce que el hecho de vivir en la Casa Blanca ha supuesto un "alivio" para ellos. "Es la primera vez en mucho tiempo en nuestro matrimonio que hemos vivido siete días a la semana bajo el mismo techo con el mismo horario y los mismos ritos", asegura la primera dama.

La pareja no había vivido bajo el mismo techo de manera continua desde 1996, cuando Obama ganó las elecciones a senador estatal en Illinois dos años antes de que naciera su hija mayor, Malia. Después de esas elecciones, Obama, como senador de Illinois, tuvo que trasladarse a vivir a Springfield, la capital del Estado. Luego vinieron más campañas electorales que le obligaron a recorrer el país y, finalmente, en 2004, una mudanza parcial, también en solitario, para ocupar su escaño en el Senado en Washington.

Según ambos reconocen abiertamente, aquellos fueron "tiempos duros" en su vida en común, y aunque el presidente asegura que en ningún momento temió por su matrimonio, sí hubo alguno en el que tuvo miedo de que "Michelle fuera infeliz". "Todo matrimonio tiene altibajos", resuelve por su parte la primera dama, que en esa época debió compaginar su trabajo como responsable de administración de un hospital universitario en Chicago con la crianza de dos niñas pequeñas mientras su marido pasaba la mayor parte del tiempo lejos.

Ahora están más tiempo juntos que casi en cualquier otro momento de sus 17 años de matrimonio. La mayor parte de los días desayunan con sus hijas, Malia y Sasha, antes de que éstas se marchen a la escuela, hacen ejercicio juntos y no comienzan sus programas públicos hasta las nueve o las diez de la mañana, una hora tardía en un país madrugador.

Hace poco concluyeron la decoración a su gusto del área residencial de la Casa Blanca, una tarea en la que ambos colaboraron a la hora de escoger colores y objetos. Aseguran que funcionan como un equipo y se esfuerzan en que su matrimonio funcione.

El Pais, 30.10.09

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/gente/Todo/matrimonio/tiene/altibajos/elpepugen/20091030elpepuage_1/Tes

 

European leaders have granted the Czech Republic an opt-out from the EU charter of fundamental rights in a move intended to force the country's Eurosceptic leader to finally ratify the Lisbon treaty.

The Czech Republic's refusal to sign – it is the only member state yet to ratify the legislation – has held up the implementation of the treaty and the naming of an EU president.

EU leaders meeting in Brussels approved the UK style opt-out, overcoming an obstacle placed in the path of ratification by the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, earlier this month.

Klaus shocked the EU when he demanded an opt-out from the rights charter, saying he was attempting to shield the Czech Republic from property claims made by ethnic Germans expelled from the country after the second world war.

"Vaclav Klaus was content with the text [of the opt-out]. He has been informed about all modifications ... and does not have a problem with it," the Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, said.

The last legal hurdle to the treaty is a challenge by a group of Czech senators who share Klaus's Euroscepticism and argue that the treaty would infringe Czech national sovereignty.

But the Czech constitutional court is expected to throw out the objection next week and if the case is rejected, Klaus – with the opt-out in place – will have no reason not to sign.

Only then can discussions about who should fill the new treaty-created post of EU president move from the corridors into the negotiating room, probably at a special gathering of EU leaders late next month.

At the weekend, Klaus indicated that he was resigned to the treaty coming into effect, saying "it will not be possible to stop it or turn it around, however much we would wish to".

Haroon Siddique, The Guardian, 30.10.09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/30/czech-republic-lisbon-treaty

 

 

En 1972, la femme du cinéaste, Irène, se tue dans un accident de voiture. De cette catastrophe intime, il s'ensuit, dans une oeuvre qui compte alors quelques films à succès, une rupture qui produit l'un des films les plus radicaux de l'histoire du cinéma français : Ce répondeur ne prend pas de message (1978).

Le cinéaste, recouvert, telle une momie, de bandelettes, y fait progressivement disparaître toute possibilité d'image en repeignant son appartement en noir et en y mettant le feu. Cette mortification iconoclaste, ce rageur désespoir laissaient craindre qu'Alain Cavalier, le cinéaste, ne reviendrait plus jamais parmi ses semblables.

Il revint. Mais sous des formes toujours plus épurées et solitaires, non moins qu'aventureuses et originales. Thérèse (1988), l'autre nom de femme de sa filmographie, fut une étape importante.

Irène s'inscrit dans sa dernière manière, dans le sillage esthétique de La Rencontre (1996) et du Filmeur (2004) ; chronique intime du monde où la représentation de la figure humaine, à commencer par celle de l'auteur, ne s'envisage désormais qu'avec crainte et tremblement. Le reste du monde, du caillou à l'oreiller, en passant par les lieux d'aisance et les oiseaux, y reconquiert en revanche une puissance d'évocation et une grâce poétique, en vertu des ressources insoupçonnées que leur découvrent la voix et les mots du cinéaste en train de les filmer.

Ce serait sans doute trop dire qu'Irène, qui revient sur le désastre fondateur de cette conversion esthétique, est aujourd'hui à la lumière ce que le Répondeur fut à la nuit. Du moins le film nomme-t-il explicitement son objet, se confrontant aux gouffres comme aux félicités qu'il recèle. L'affliction, la colère, la haine, la culpabilité, certes. Mais aussi la joie pure, la sensualité, l'amour.

Entre ces feux dévorants, Alain Cavalier construit son film en se posant des questions de cinéma, qui disent à elles seules le mystère de sa propre survie. Se demander comment représenter l'absente, quel corps lui donner dans le film, n'est-ce pas enfin, comme cinéaste, assumer son deuil ?

Une série de substituts, de médiums sont testés. La trace écrite : lecture des carnets du cinéaste, cristallisant des scènes et des sensations de l'époque. L'évocation fantomatique : revisiter les lieux fréquentés par le couple, laisser y affleurer les souvenirs. Le dévoilement par la biographie : révéler un fragment du parcours, de la psychologie de l'aimée. Le chamanisme : produire des objets empreints de la présence d'Irène, des fragments de photographies, des avatars animaliers. La reconstitution fictionnelle : rêver que Sophie Marceau, dont l'effigie secrètement adorée est punaisée derrière la porte d'un placard, interprète le personnage sans jamais oser le lui demander. Et pourquoi pas l'autoflagellation : tomber de l'escalier mécanique du métro et filmer sans déplaisir son visage tuméfié de survivant.

Rien qui ne permette d'éviter d'en revenir toujours à l'irréparable : ne pas avoir su empêcher qu'Irène, fragile, absolue, dépressive, parte un jour seule en voiture, trop impatiente de l'attendre, pour ne plus revenir. Combien de courage, d'impudeur, de délicatesse faut-il pour filmer cela !

Irène est non seulement un film bouleversant, mais c'est aussi un moment révélateur dans l'oeuvre d'Alain Cavalier. Car il permet de comprendre à quel point la disparition programmée mise en scène dans Ce répondeur ne prend pas de message était annonciatrice du mouvement intime de cette oeuvre, qui s'est reconstruite dans le renoncement à peu près total aux codes du spectacle cinématographique. Cette ascèse aura simplement mis trente ans à avouer son nom. Comme la poésie de Francis Ponge, née d'un "drame de l'expression" relatif à une indicible douleur, elle adopte "le parti pris des choses" et donnant la parole aux morts chuchote la grande prosopopée du monde.

 

 

"Mi Gobierno ha decidido apoyar una propuesta que permite un voto en el Congreso Nacional con una previa opinión de la Corte Suprema de Justicia para retrotraer todo el Poder Ejecutivo de nuestra nación antes del 28 de junio del año 2009", ha dicho Micheletti en una declaración ante la prensa en la Casa Presidencial. "Hace unos minutos -ha agregado- he autorizado a mi equipo negociador a firmar un acuerdo que marque el inicio del final de la situación política del país".

"Exhorto al señor Zelaya y a su comisión negociadora a apoyar este acuerdo y acompañarnos a firmar; basta ya de excusas, basta ya de retórica que nos divide, basta ya de juegos políticos; el pueblo hondureño reclama un acuerdo final y esta es la oportunidad para lograrlo", ha subrayado.

Un paso hacia el fin de los desacuerdos

Micheletti emitió su declaración más de diez horas después de que se reanudara el diálogo entre ambas partes, tras casi una semana de suspensión por desacuerdos sobre la restitución de Zelaya, derrocado por los militares el 28 de junio. Zelaya -que permanece refugiado en la Embajada de Brasil en la capital hondureña- había dado por fracasado el diálogo el viernes pasado, después de que ambas partes no lograsen pactar qué órgano debía decidir sobre su restitución en el poder, si el Congreso Nacional, como exigía él, o la Corte Suprema de Justicia, como pedía Micheletti

Las delegaciones se han reunido para que los representantes de Micheletti presentaran a los de Zelaya la propuesta relacionada con trasladar al Congreso Nacional la decisión sobre el regreso del depuesto gobernante a la presidencia.

La reanudación del diálogo fue auspiciada por una delegación de Estados Unidos, encabezada por el secretario de Estado para el Hemisferio Occidental, Thomas Shannon, y por la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA).

Micheletti ha recordado que los otros puntos en negociación, como un Gobierno de reconciliación, rechazo a la amnistía política, verificación internacional, una comisión de la verdad y reconocimiento de las elecciones de noviembre, entre otros, fueron firmados por las comisiones en las etapas precedentes del diálogo.

El Pais, 30.10.09

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Micheletti/Zelaya/acuerdan/poner/fin/crisis/Honduras/elpepuint/20091030elpepuint_4/Tes

 

Paul Auster has just loped out of Sweet Melissa, an icing-sugar pink patisserie near his home in Park Slope, when the waitress who has buzzed around our table delivering bowls of soup and plates of quiche, rushes over to inquire after him. I imagine she is keen to share her views on his work - New Yorkers are fierce fans and he has a starry status in this literary square mile of Brooklyn - or admire his Gothic good looks. The most infatuated have been known to follow him across town.

Instead, she says: "Who is he? We've always thought he was just a regular guy... He comes here all the time, on his own, sits on this table..." she trails off, staring at the empty seat of this Sweet Melissa cipher-turned-Important Author. It's a case of mistaken identity not too far removed from Auster's first fiction, The New York Trilogy, inhabited by mysterious men with interchangeable names - sometimes Auster's own - who lose their identities down existential plugholes and spend the rest of the book trying to retrieve them.

Ever since that critical breakthrough in 1987, Auster has inserted aspects of himself, and those around him, in his work. A Paul Auster appears, fountain pen in hand, in a scene in City of Glass from The New York Trilogy; Sunset Park, his as yet unpublished novel, features Willa Parks, a woman who wrote to Auster when he was collecting real life stories for radio in 2001; Leviathan's Maria borrows from the life of the artist Sophie Calle; more confusingly, Auster once claimed the main character from the same novel was married to the heroine of his wife, Siri Hustvedt's novel, The Blindfold, in a transfictional romance; the instances of fiction-imitating-life-imitiating-fiction are numerous. These porous worlds have enthralled fans but left critics equivocating, with the meanest charging him of solipsistic game-playing.

Auster who is dark, towering - part matinee idol, part silver-screen villain - waves the criticism away. He has stopped reading reviews - "no good can come of it, I spare my fragile soul" - even the good ones, because they miss the point. He has reasons to be disgruntled. They call his work 'Beckettian' for its absurdist qualities. He disagrees. "I think my work is nothing to do with Beckett."

They say he's a postmodern master of meta-narratives, with his spools of stories within stories, but he cites the likes of Emily Brontë over Baudrillard as a source of inspiration.

Auster's literary career began haltingly, first as translator, then poet (he met Hustvedt at one fortuitous poetry reading) until he hit a wall in his mid-30s. He switched to prose and publishing a memoir, The Invention of Solitude, before fiction. He makes no secret of using aspects of his biography to cross-fertilise his 15th novel, Invisible (Faber & Faber, 16.99). The year is 1967 and his protagonist, Adam Walker, is a 20-year-old Columbia student and opponent of the Vietnam War who goes to Paris for a "Junior Abroad Program" before coming back, disheartened, to work at New York's Butler Library.

To anyone who has read Auster's 1997 memoir, Hand to Mouth, Adam's life appears to replicate Auster's own year of '67, complete with the abortive year abroad and fear of the draft. Yes, he concedes, his early life gives Invisible its geographical signposting, especially the Paris of his youth, to which he has always retained an affinity. "I stayed in that hotel (in Saint Germain) with the U-shaped mattress that dipped in at the middle. It would be silly to deny that the book does not use parts of my life, but I was using it only as a springboard. Walker's story is not my story. "I draw on a year of my life when I was 20, in 1967 and '68. It's hard to explain the chaos of that time. The devastation of the Vietnam war in American Society. There was suddenly the prospect of the draft facing us... the race riots, the assassinations, the war, the war, the war. It was tumultuous, to be so young, but old enough to have a mind, and to take stock of what's going on."

War lies at its fringes, however, not its centre. As a story which delves into the "erotic cravings" of Adam's youth, it is a coming-of-age novel with an unexpected tale of brother-sister incest at its heart. Adam and his teenage sister, Gwyn, embark on a "grand experiment" a passionate relationship begun in adolescence which carries through into later years that is devoid of the guilt and dark perversion normally seen in incest narratives. Their love, ardent but ultimately doomed, is described in the tender, beguiling language of romance. "It was one of the most intense pieces I have ever written," he says. "It moved me to write it. I have no idea what other people will say about it."

But he may already have an inkling from one early reading. "Siri and I went to Brown University back in the Spring. I read the passage on the 'grand experiment' to a roomful of students. I heard a couple of nervous titters from the audience. After the reading was over, no-one mentioned it, they just said it sounded like a nice book, there wasn't a single comment about what I had read."

With this ordinary-world incest, Auster captures well the dangerously free-floating, experimental nature of early adolescent sexuality. "Very young people, either in early adolescence or a bit older, know so little about sex yet they are so horny. All kinds of things happen that nobody talks about."

Just as the reader is settling into the story Adam's reflections on his early romances, a cold-blooded murder he partly witnesses, his friendship with the older, urbane couple, Margot and Rudolf Born, the fiction is intercepted by the storytelling process, a classic pulling-of-the-rug from under the reader's feet that Auster fans should have come to expect by now. Adam's unfinished, abruptly halted autobiography, not unlike (dare I say it) Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, written by him feverishly as an old man on the verge of death and sent in serial form to a school-friend, is not all it seems. Queue the entry of an "unreliable narrator"; it is blind alleys and puffs of smoke from thereon in. Auster's insists the answer to this trickery is not postmodern, but dates back to the 19th century.

"There were certain kinds of books I was attracted to as a young person, two jump to mind. Wuthering Heights and The Scarlet Letter. These fascinated me. You know full well these are fictions within fictions. The act of telling becomes part of the story. [Invisible] is an examination of how books get written, what a book is. I went where my nose was leading me. "

In spite of the games, there is an undeniable romance to Auster's fictional world, where serendipity and chance leads to blazing romances and intense mysteries; anonymous phone-calls are made and manila envelopes pushed under doors that lead ordinary, flawed men out of the shadow of anonymity to centre stage, if only to express their sense of failure.

In an interview with the Paris Review in 2003, Auster spoke about a project he undertook with National Public Radio, when 4,000 people wrote to him with "true stories that sounded like fiction", which could serve as a mission statement: "I wanted to prove that there's no such thing as an ordinary person. We all have intense inner lives, we all burn with ferocious passions, we've all lived through memorable experiences at one time or another."

His writing methods appear to have a charming, otherworldly romance, too. Ever since 1974, he has written with ink on paper before typing out the results on an old Olympia typewriter, paragraph by paragraph, correcting as he goes along. He eschews the Internet age Google, email and Skype ("what is that?", he puzzles). "I can't conjure up figures with my fingers poised on a keyboard. I need a pen. It's the physical gesture that unleashes the words."

He bills himself not unlike the waitress in the patisserie as a regular guy with simple requirements for a good life. "I don't want to do anything else except write, watch baseball games and be with my wife." It was baseball that led him to write in the first place, according to an account in The Red Notebook, when he is taken to a Giants game as a child and fails to secure an autograph of a player because he doesn't have a pencil. "If nothing else, the years have taught me this: if there's a pencil in your pocket, there's a good chance that one day you'll feel tempted to start using it. As I like to tell my children, that's how I became a writer."

His novels in recent years have focused on elderly, ailing characters - from The Brooklyn Follies, which begins with the words, "I was looking for a quiet place to die", to those who mourn the accumulation of losses as loved ones die around them in The Book of Ilusions and Man in the Dark. Perhaps it is a preoccupation with his own mortality? He has struggled with ill health and was in a car crash a few years ago. But, now, at the age of 62, he appears robust, itching to produce as much as time will allow, with thoughts that are back on a youthful trajectory. Another book Sunset Park is already written and waiting to be published after Invisible. "I think my old man cycle is over. Invisible is about the innocence of youth."

Sunset Park appears to be so too, featuring four penniless twenty-somethings and situated in the post credit-crunch era of the here and now. "It is set in a down at heel neighbourhood in Brooklyn...They take over an abandoned house to become squatters."

The pause between books is never a pleasant state, he reflects. " Each time I think it's the end. Right now, I have no idea what to do next." With that, he melts back into Brooklyn's streets, the Sweet Melissa cipher with a Pied Piper trail of admirers never far behind.

Arifa Akbar, The Independent, 30.10.09

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/innocence-of-youth-how-paul-auster-excavated-his-own-past-for-his-latest-novel-1811322.html

 

 

"Le Parti socialiste européen a une détermination claire qui est d'obtenir le poste de haut représentant et vice-président de la Commission européenne", a déclaré le premier ministre espagnol, en marge du Conseil européen à Bruxelles. Il a ajouté qu'il préférerait, à titre personnel, un président à l'engagement européen irréprochable et à même de défendre l'acquis communautaire.

À LA RECHERCHE DU PROFIL "IDÉAL"

Quelques heures plus tard, un proche de Nicolas Sarkozy affirmait que la France n'avait "pas de candidat", malgré l'estime portée par le président français à Tony Blair. Ce conseiller a estimé que le fait que la Grande-Bretagne n'appartienne ni à la zone euro ni à l'espace Schengen et bénéficie de dérogations à de nombreux textes communautaires, n'est "pas forcément un atout dans la recherche du candidat idéal". Des handicaps également mis en avant par José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

La désormais probable ratification du traité de Lisbonne par la République tchèque ouvre la voie à la nomination des deux principaux postes prévus par les nouvelles institutions de l'UE. Si elle n'est pas encore officielle, la candidature de Tony Blair à la présidence de l'UE est soutenue par plusieurs pays, dont la Grande-Bretagne. Mais les plus petits pays de l'UE sont plus enclins à choisir Jean-Claude Juncker, le premier ministre luxembourgeois, qui s'est déclaré disponible pour le poste dans un entretien au Monde. Un autre groupe de pays, comme l'Allemagne, la Suède et la Pologne, maintiennent l'ambiguïté sur leur soutien.

UNE CAMPAGNE POUR 27 VOTANTS

"C'est peu dire que les couloirs bruissent de noms, de rumeurs, de spéculations", souligne la délégation française. L'un des derniers noms est celui de John Bruton, ambassadeur de l'UE aux Etats-Unis et ex-premier ministre irlandais, auquel la France n'accorde aucune chance. Le nom du premier ministre néerlandais Jan Peter Balkenende, que l'on a vu discuter ostensiblement avec Nicolas Sarkozy et la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel jeudi, revient avec insistance. Les diplomates européens le présentent comme le "candidat par défaut parfait".

L'Elysée recommande à la présidence suédoise de l'UE de consulter désormais "dans la discrétion", tout en jugeant intéressant que la désignation du futur président donne lieu à une "vraie campagne électorale"… dont l'électorat serait toutefois réduit à 27 chefs d'Etats et de gouvernement.

Le Monde, 30.10.09

http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2009/10/30/pour-tony-blair-les-chances-de-presider-le-futur-conseil-europeen-s-amenuisent_1260511_3214.html