Danity Kane's "Welcome to the Dollhouse" bows atop the chart, selling 236,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's on par with the 234,000 first-week figure for the act's 2006 debut, which went on to sell about 922,000 copies.

Entering at a distant No. 4 is Flo Rida, whose "Mail on Sunday" follows his Top-30 singles "Low," featuring T-Pain, and "Elevator," featuring Timbaland. "Mail on Sunday" sold 86,000 copies, but the release feels a bit anti-climactic after the digital sales posted by his singles.

"Low," for instance, has sold 3.4 million digital downloads to date, which, according to Billboard, makes it the top-selling digital track of all time. "Elevator" is no slouch, either, having sold 373,000 digital downloads.

Gnarls Barkley's rush-released "The Odd Couple" arrives at No. 18. It sold 31,000 copies after being released to digital retailers on March 18. The CD had originally been pegged for an April 8 release, but was bumped up after leaking online.

Of the 31,000 copies sold, 26,000 were from digital retailers. No surprise, as physical retailers began selling the album as it arrived throughout the week.

Grammy watch: Gnarls Barkley's debut, "St. Elsewhere," scored an album of the year nod, but its success was driven largely by the runaway hit "Crazy." Thus far, "Run (I'm A Natural Disaster)," the first single off of "The Odd Couple," hasn't taken hold, despite "The Odd Couple" being a fascinatingly weird listen. Reviews on "The Odd Couple" have been positive, but if the album doesn't spawn a breakaway single, it'll be curious if Recording Academy voters are just as kind to the electro-soul duo a second time around. For what it's worth, they should be, as it's an album worthy of being added to the below list.

2009 Grammy album of the year contenders:

Gnarls Barkley, "The Odd Couple"
Radiohead, "In Rainbows"
Lupe Fiasco,"The Cool"
Sheryl Crow,"Detours"
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, "Raising Sand"
Mary J. Blige, "Growing Pains"

Todd Martens, The Los Angeles Times, 31.03.08

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/extendedplay/2008/03/gnarls-flo-rida.html

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/cruel/justicia/narco/brasileno/elpepuintlat/20080331elpepuint_3/Tes

Those results had been compiled by adding the vote counts posted at thousands of individual polling stations, and were not formally released by the government. Indeed, the nation’s chief election officer warned that the opposition’s boasts were premature and asked people to wait for official totals.

People did just that, anxiously watching the government television station on Sunday for announcements about the election the day before. But instead of news they were shown irrelevant fare like a program about biodegradable Chinese plastic and a documentary about the Netherlands’ 1974 soccer team.

Near midnight, the election commissioner, George Chiweshe, finally announced that the official results would begin coming out at 6 a.m. Monday. At the appointed hour no results were forthcoming. “It is of absolute necessity that at each stage the result be meticulously analyzed, witnessed and confirmed,” he said. Soon after the designated time, an election official began laboriously reading results, but only of six parliamentary races.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s future has seemed to rest in a state of suspended animation, with people awaiting the first official results, wondering if the numbers were being carefully tabulated or craftily concocted.

“We’ve won this election,” declared Tendai Biti, the M.D.C.’s general secretary, in something like a pre-emptive strike. “The trend is irreversible.”

“The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds, we are massacring them,” he said. “In Mugabe’s traditional strongholds, they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory except through fraud. He has lost this election.”

If Mr. Mugabe, 84, is defeated, it may mean a new chance for a once prosperous country that now has one of the world’s sorriest economies. It would surely be a signal event for Africa itself, with another of its enduring autocrats beaten against long odds by the will of the electorate.

The M.D.C.’s presidential candidate is Morgan Tsvangirai, a former labor leader. In 2002, the early count also showed him well ahead of Mr. Mugabe. Then the broadcast of results suddenly stopped. When they resumed, hours later, the president had thundered ahead based on late returns.

Outcries about fraud were among the reasons for rule changes this time. It was agreed that results would be counted at each polling station and then publicly posted to prevent any trickery with the numbers.

Late Saturday, many of those posted numbers began traveling across the country as text messages on cellphones, passed along not just between party activists but between journalists and independent election watchdogs. “It’s a tsunami for M.D.C.,” was a phrase frequently repeated.

The party had not only swept most of the big cities like Harare and Bulawayo, where it was previously strong, the opposition said, but it had also won in Masvingo and Bindura and dozens of places it had never won before.

Seven of Mr. Mugabe’s cabinet members were defeated in races for Parliament, according to reports phoned in by journalists. It appeared that Mr. Mugabe was being thoroughly repudiated.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an independent civic group, employed an elaborate plan to gather the posted returns. By Sunday afternoon, Noel Kututwa, its chief, said the organization had collected 88 percent of the urban vote and 40 percent of the rural vote. He criticized the government for not releasing the totals sooner. “The delay in announcing the votes has fueled the speculation that something is going on,” he said.

Mr. Kututwa refused to say which candidate was winning in the results he had in hand. But another independent observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Mugabe was well behind with 37 percent of the vote compared with 58 percent for Mr. Tsvangirai and 5 percent for the independent candidate Simba Makoni.

Still, even by the support network’s math, there were a lot of polling stations whose vote totals were unknown, including many in the rural areas of Mashonaland where the president has always reaped sizable margins.

Even while declaring victory, Mr. Biti of the M.D.C. worried aloud about a reversal of fortune. “In some areas where we thought the results were final, some ballot boxes are actually missing,” he said.

There were other worrisome signs. Prior to the election, Zimbabwe’s security chiefs each said they would support no one but Mr. Mugabe, a hero of the country’s struggle against colonialism. In a joint announcement, they also warned opposition candidates from making victory proclamations based on unofficial totals and “thereby fomenting disorder and mayhem.”

Helmeted riot police patrolled many of Harare’s streets late Sunday.

Come Monday, the followers of one candidate or the other were expected to feel deeply aggrieved. President Mugabe has cast the opposition as puppets of Zimbabwe’s colonial masters, the British. If he loses, some will feel their national sovereignty has been put at risk. On the other hand, if Mr. Mugabe wins, the M.D.C. will undoubtedly allege that the vote was stolen.

Mr. Mugabe has presided over an economic freefall that began in 2000 when the government seized agricultural land owned by whites. About a quarter of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people have fled the country; 80 percent to 90 percent of those left are unemployed.

The inflation rate is more than 100,000 percent.

But Mr. Mugabe’s government controls the news media here and has doled out food and other favors that critics see as attempts to buy votes. And the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, a body dominated by Mr. Mugabe’s appointees, has been commonly accused by the M.D.C. of rigging elections.

Still, there was hope here that this election might be more transparent than the last. Last March, Mr. Tsvangirai was badly beaten by the police at a prayer rally, but he has campaigned largely without interference, speaking to huge crowds.

The posting of results by precinct has contributed to the optimism.

“The key has always been to get the results posted at the polling stations,” said Mike Davies, a longtime community activist with the Combined Harare Residents Association. “If the results are posted, it becomes so much harder for Mugabe to cheat.”

But he too was cautious. “It’s hard for me to believe that Mugabe will go peacefully,” he said. “When autocrats fall, that’s the most dangerous time.”

The New York Times, 31.03.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/world/africa/31zimbabwe.html?ref=world

¿Qué decir de Robert Redford? La fotografía en su juventud es todo un ejemplo de los beefcake (pastel de carne), el equivalente masculino a las pin-up o cheesecake (pastel de queso): el colmo de la belleza de los cincuenta que tuvo en el dibujante Vargas a su adalid. Tupé, mirada en lontananza, camisa de gondolero: no le falta detalle. Después vendría su conciencia ecológica, la demostración de su indudable talento como actor y realizador (aquel inolvidable El río de la vida), y, probablemente, el promotor más importante del cine independiente desde su Festival de Sundance. Comenzó a trabajar en 1960 en varias series de televisión. Su padre, contable de oficio, vistos los inicios de su carrera, le preguntó: ?¿Por qué no te buscas un trabajo de verdad??. Cuestión de apoyo y sensibilidad.

Ahí está también un juvenil Jack Nicholson con un sitar entre las manos. No se sabe bien a qué es debido, pero todo lo que toca Nicholson parece estar al borde de lo prohibido. Incluso un instrumento musical tan identificado con el Swinging London, Ravi Shankar, Georges Harrison, la psicodelia, la música hipnótica y el chocolate afgano, en sus manos parece un objeto inquietante, amenazador. Nicholson comenzó a finales de los años cincuenta en la factoría de Roger Corman, donde por otra parte empezó gente tan extraordinaria como Francis Ford Copola, Scorsese, Monte Hellman, Bogdanovich o Jonathan Demme. Su lanzamiento mundial vino de la mano de Hopper y su Easy Rider. Impagable en su papel de abogado borracho con casco de fútbol americano, traje blanco y padre cacique fascinado por el nuevo estilo de vida de los motoristas. Después llegó todo lo demás: desde escándalos en Hollywood con sus amigos Michael Douglas, Polanski y Robert Evans hasta ser el actor que más veces ha sido nominado a los Oscar (12 en total), haber ganado tres estatuillas y siete Globos de Oro. Es uno de los intocables.

Dennis Hopper fue siempre uno de los chicos malos de la industria. Comenzó muy joven participando en producciones televisivas tan clásicas como En los límites de la realidad y Wagon train. En 1954, con 19 años de edad, Nicholas Ray le ofreció un pequeño papel en Johnny Guitar y un año después le llamó para Rebelde sin causa. Allí conoció a James Dean. Fue el comienzo de una gran y corta amistad. Dean moriría unos meses más tarde, no sin antes volver a coincidir los dos en Gigante. El rebelde Hopper siguió su carrera, probablemente añorando a su amigo Dean, pero sin desaprovechar ninguna ocasión de reafirmar su oficio, o, dicho de otra manera, con la convicción de que actuar y dirigir es un trabajo que le permite vivir bien y, si es el caso, pagar las deudas, al margen de la calidad del proyecto. Hopper, como Huston, Fernán Gómez o De Sica, entre otros muchos, ha hecho trabajos impecables al lado de bodrios impresentables.

Jane Fonda posa en la fotografía antes de Barbarella, y Vadim, antes de Hanoi, antes de Klute, antes de El síndrome de China, antes de Ted Turner, antes del aerobic... Eran los tiempos de Descalzos por el parque (1967). Se le puede discutir todo menos el que la peluquera de turno se había ganado sobradamente el sueldo. Michelle Pfeiffer, por su parte, es la demostración de cómo se puede envejecer y ganar en el intento. Esta pepona que posa con traje de novia para Harper?s Bazaar debía de estar casada en aquel tiempo con el rubio Peter Horton, un actor de la serie televisiva Treinta y tantos? Años más tarde nos deslumbraría en aquella bajada de ascensor transparente en Scarface, a todos en general y al macarra Al Pacino con sus cadenas de oro en particular. Ella, él y un Cadillac amarillo con asientos forrados con piel de tigre formaron un trío espectacular. Después cantaría tumbada en un piano de cola, sería Lady Halcón, y, probablemente, nadie podrá mejorar su interpretación de la condesa Olenska en la espléndida La edad de la inocencia. Pfeiffer, como Sean Connery, por ejemplo, ganó con la edad. Algo que también le pasó a Nicole Kidman hasta que se le fue la mano con el Botox, si bien hay que decir en su descargo que convivir colateralmente durante una larga etapa con la cienciología puede desembocar en cualquier disparate.

Probablemente nadie retrató de forma tan bella a la muy atractiva Susan Sarandon como el realizador francés Louis Malle. En 1978 debuta en Estados Unidos con Pretty baby. Allí estaban la Sarandon y su hija de 12 años en la ficción, Brooke Shields, deambulando lánguidamente por un burdel de principios de siglo en Nueva Orleans. Dos años más tarde, en 1980, Malle firmaría su segunda película en Estados Unidos, la espléndida Atlantic City, con una arrebatadora Sarandon observada desde la distancia por un maduro Burt Lancaster. En una de sus secuencias todos envidiamos a un simple limón. Años después sería estandarte de la conciencia política progresista de Hollywood. El Harvey Keitel de ¿Quién golpea a mi puerta? o Malas calles, las dos de Scorsese, ha mantenido el tipo desde hace 40 años. Es, probablemente, el actor con el currículo de ?duro? más amplio y brillante desde Bogart. Inolvidable en sus interpretaciones de Bad lieutenant, Reservoir dogs o el extraordinario señor Lobo de Pulp Fiction. En su larga carrera, y con su constante apoyo a los realizadores jóvenes e independientes, Keitel es el equivalente a Redford. Uno, ecológico y biempensante; el otro, callejero y desgarrado, pero en todo caso, indispensables.

Ángel S. Harguindey, El Pais, 30.03.08

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/eramos/triunfar/elpepucul/20080330elpepspor_3/Tes

“We couldn’t believe our government was being so weak and cowardly,” said Ms. Meng, 52, an office worker, who was appalled that the authorities had failed to initially douse the violence. “The Dalai Lama is trying to separate China, and it is not acceptable at all. We must crack down on the rioters.”

For two weeks, as Chinese security forces have tried to extinguish continuing Tibetan protests, Chinese officials and state news media have tried to demonstrate the party’s resolve to people like Ms. Meng. They have blasted the foreign news media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist “jackal” and called for a “people’s war” to fight separatism in Tibet.

If the tough tactics have startled the outside world, the Communist Party for now seems more concerned with rallying domestic opinion — both by responding to the deep strains of nationalism in Chinese society and by stoking it. Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland, and at the same time to block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.

But the heavy emphasis on nationalism is not without risks. With less than five months before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the sharp criticism of the foreign news media comes precisely when it wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Instead, Chinese citizens, including many overseas, are posting thousands of angry messages on Web sites and making crank calls to some foreign news media offices in Beijing.

The Chinese state news media also have inundated the public with so many reports from Lhasa about the suffering of Han Chinese merchants and the brutal deaths of Chinese victims — but with no coverage of Tibetan grievances — that critics have accused the government of fanning racial hatred. In the recent past, nationalist surges have focused on outsiders, especially the Japanese, but Tibet is part of China, so the effect is to sharpen domestic ethnic tensions.

“When a big crisis happens here, they show their true nature,” said Liu Xiaobo, a liberal dissident and government critic. “I am really shocked by the language they used concerning the Dalai Lama. They are talking about a ‘people’s war.’ That is a phrase from the Cultural Revolution.”

Analysts have long debated how often the Communist Party steers and inflames nationalism, versus how often nationalist public attitudes are beyond its control. As the Olympic Games approach, the steady criticism of China on issues like Darfur, global warming, air pollution and human rights abuses has increasingly been interpreted by many Chinese, including those overseas, as an unfair attempt to undermine China’s Olympic moment.

But the Tibet crisis has touched directly on the raw nerve of separatism at the core of Chinese nationalism. Tibet is usually a low-profile issue within China, especially compared with Taiwan. But most Chinese, influenced by the government, are interpreting the Tibetan crisis as an attempt to split China.

For now, public anger about the Tibetan protests is mostly confined to the Internet, but the enormous domestic media attention on Tibet has also focused the public on how the issue is being treated abroad.

“If Bush meets the Dalai Lama right now, or if the Congress does anything, the Chinese people might do something,” said Tong Zeng, who is not active on the Tibet issue but who helped organize anti-Japanese protests in the last major nationalism campaign in 2005. Mr. Tong said the Internet was filled with angry comments about the recent meeting between the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Dalai Lama.

“My thinking is that if there is anything passed in the House, the Chinese people will take to the streets,” Mr. Tong predicted.

The French news media have noted an anti-French sentiment on Chinese Web sites, including calls for boycotts of French goods as well, in the days since President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic Games.

Communist Party leaders have hoped the Olympics would showcase China as a modern, confident and nonthreatening emerging world power, while also validating the party’s hold on power. President Hu Jintao has advocated a “harmonious society” to signal a new government effort to address inequality. At the same time, China’s soft power abroad is rising, with its bulging foreign exchange reserves and its increasingly active diplomatic role on issues like the North Korea nuclear problem.

But the Tibet crisis has shown a leadership that has seemingly stepped back into the party’s harsher past. Buddhist monks in Tibet are being subjected to punitive “patriotic education” campaigns. The paramilitary police and soldiers have swept across huge areas of western China as part of a broad crackdown. Party leaders, including Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, have vilified the Dalai Lama and accused the “Dalai clique” of trying to sabotage China’s Olympic moment.

“The language they are using about everything has been Cultural Revolution hyperbole,” said Susan Shirk, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and author of “China: Fragile Superpower.” “This does not look like the reaction of a strong, confident leadership.”

Last week, a group of prominent Chinese intellectuals offered a rare contrary voice by issuing a petition that called on the government to allow Tibetans to express their grievances and to respect freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Mr. Liu, who helped draft the petition, said the government’s attacks on the Dalai Lama and its censorship of state news media coverage is the same strategy it used during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 when it jailed pro-democracy leaders as “black hands” and did not televise video of soldiers firing on students.

“You can see the propaganda machine operating in full gear,” Mr. Liu said. “That shows the true nature of the government. It hasn’t changed at all.”

Scholars often describe nationalism as China’s state religion, now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country’s priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism could be traced to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country’s main ethnic groups — the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples — as the “five fingers” of China.

Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population, but without one of those five fingers, China’s leaders do not consider the country whole.

“The Communist Party has used nationalism as an ideology to keep China together,” said Mr. Anand, a reader in international relations at Westminster University in London. He said many Chinese regarded the Tibetan protests “as an attack on their core identity.

“It’s not only an attack on the state,” he continued, “but an attack on what it means to be Chinese. Even if minorities don’t feel like part of China, they are part of China’s nationality.”

This logic helps explain why Chinese nationalist sentiment has been inflamed by perceived Western sympathy for the Tibetan protests — an anger that has mostly focused on the foreign news media.

Chinese media commentators have accused foreign news coverage of being more sympathetic to Tibetans in Lhasa than to Chinese who lost their lives and property in the riots. Meanwhile, Chinese from around the world were infuriated when several Western news organizations mislabeled photographs of police officers beating pro-Tibet protesters in Nepal as being from China.

Last week, Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, described the foreign coverage of Tibet as a “textbook of bad examples” — even as the government refused to allow journalists free access to Tibet or other restive regions in western China to investigate the crackdown.

There are a few signs that party leaders are becoming concerned about the effect of their harsh statements. Last week, China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, switched tone and ran a front-page article highlighting that some Tibetans had also died at the hands of rioters in Lhasa. And Sunday, Mr. Wen, the prime minister, made a more conciliatory comment toward the Dalai Lama, according to reports in Hong Kong.

Party leaders know the volatility of nationalism from 2005. The government tried to control — some would say manipulate — the anti-Japanese protests that escalated during a tense diplomatic tussle between China and Japan. But the protests became violent and grew so rapidly that the government finally forced them to end.

Mr. Tong, the organizer, said the anti-Japanese movement is continuing today, if modestly at a time when the government is trying to improve relations with Japan. But he said the nationalism that infused the anti-Japanese movement was deeply rooted and transcended divisions that could separate people in China.

“In our group, we have the right, we have the middle and we have the left,” Mr. Tong said. “It is similar to the Tibet issue. For most Chinese people, the bottom line is, ‘You should never divide China.’ ”

Many Chinese people know little about Tibet’s different interpretation of its history, partly because China’s textbooks reflect only its version of events. They also regard Tibetans as having been granted special subsidies and benefits from the government because of their ethnic status. For many Chinese, the protests come across as ingratitude after years in which China has built roads, a high-altitude railroad and other infrastructure for Tibet.

“Our country is very tolerant to all kinds of religions,” said Ms. Meng, the office worker. “And the Tibetans are taking advantage of this.”

Ms. Meng said she got her information about Tibet from state media and various postings on the Internet. After the Lhasa riots, she was infuriated when she saw a photograph of policemen cowering behind riot shields without fighting back. But she said her attitude toward the government’s response began to change when she saw Mr. Qin, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, take a tough line on Tibet and also accuse the foreign news media of distorted coverage.

She said she was also pleased to see that Mr. Hu had rejected a request from President Bush to open a new dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Still, she said she wanted even tougher action.

“I want the killers to be executed,” she said. “Well, I know it is just my wish because the government will not go that far because of the ethnic issue.”

Jim Yardley, The New York Times, 31.03.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/world/asia/31china.html?pagewanted=1&ref=asia

Silence d'église dans la vieille poste qui est devenue le Centre de la photographie à Berlin (1). À l'angle de Oranienburger Straße et d'Ecke Tucholskystraße, le hall de C/O est grand ouvert au vent du nord, mais la fièvre monte vite à l'intérieur. Chauffage facultatif, malgré toute cette chair déshabillée jusqu'au grain de la peau, toute ­cette féminité scrutée par l'objectif d'une femme, tous ces grands formats glacés et parfois glaçants. Les créatures mises à nu par la ­Française Bettina Rheims apportent le piquant subversif de Sex and the City aux Berlinois en tenue de randonneurs, couples écolos, sportifs et sages, presque studieux devant cet érotisme sans fard « made in Paris ».

« La Môme Oscar » interdite

Cinq ans avant Casino de ­Scorsese, Sharon Stone croque les diamants à pleines dents dans une pose sans équivoque qui laisse présager d'autres proies. Bébé star en 1989 à Deauville, Vanessa Paradis essuie avec ennui sa bouche trop rouge comme une Lolita maquillée par Nabokov. Encore toute jeune Mexicaine à la conquête de ­Hollywood en 1996, Salma Hayek pleure comme une morveuse en retroussant sa petite robe d'été. Sosie de la pin-up blonde ­d'American Beauty, la top model suisse Julie Ordon pose, bouche rouge et draps blancs, pour Chanel en 2006. Maîtresse de son image glacée comme Churchill de ses discours, Kristin Scott Thomas ôte la perruque ­blonde qui couvre ses cheveux bruns strictement tirés, juste métaphore des artifices du glamour.

Il faut aller jusqu'à Berlin, avant l'ouverture de la Biennale (2), pour voir Marion Cotillard incarner « la sublime joueuse de billard », bottes de motarde en cuir noir et lingerie soyeuse, dont la main experte se tord pour retenir une boule vert poison. Ce portrait inhabituel de la « Môme Oscar » est interdit de reproduction dans la presse et ne sort qu'accompagné des autres 95 portraits de l'exposition (dans le catalogue ­Schirmer Mosel). Voilà pour les plus sages ! Les autres créa­tures de Bettina Rheims, photographe qui commença par être elle-même modèle, jouent de leurs corps avec l'impudeur naturelle et la force sauvage des panthères. «  C'est ce réalisme singulier, cette chair photographiée jusque dans ses recoins, ses défauts, ses abandons, cette audace aussi dans les thèmes et le traitement sculptural des formes, qui ont fait le succès de Bettina en Allemagne  », explique son galeriste parisien, ­Jérôme de Noirmont. Il est à l'origine de la rétrospective qui a parcouru en deux ans neuf villes d'Europe, de Moscou à Helsinki, de Rotterdam à Vienne et Lyon. Les musées allemands ­(Berlin, DG Bank et Musée d'art moderne à Francfort), les collectionneurs privés et leurs fondations (Olbricht à Essen, Hovermann à Lippstadt) abritent déjà l'œuvre de cette Française à deux doigts du blasphème (série I.N.R.I. vue à Paris à la MEP). Le public berlinois croit parfois allemande à cause de son nom celle qui réalisa le portrait officiel de Jacques Chirac en 1995.

(1) «Can you find happiness?», jusqu'au 11 mai au C/O Berlin, www.co-berlin.com. «Just like a woman», du 30 mai au 16 juillet à Paris, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.
(2) Du 5 avril au 15 juin. www.berlinbiennale.de

Valérie Duponchelle, Le Figaro, 31.03.08

http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/2008/03/31/03004-20080331ARTFIG00299-bettina-rheims-la-femme-sans-fard.php

La OTAN está dividida sobre la conveniencia de ofrecer a Ucrania un plan de acción hacia el ingreso (MAP o Membership Action Plan). El presidente de Estados Unidos, George W. Bush, que esta noche llega a Kiev, y los nuevos socios de la Alianza apoyan la petición conjunta del líder Víktor Yúshenko, la primera ministra Yulia Timoshenko y el jefe de la Rada (Parlamento). Alemania y Francia se oponen y otros Estados, como España, no se han pronunciado. Alegan los proatlantistas que la falta de una señal positiva en Bucarest será vista como un "triunfo" de Moscú, donde el presidente saliente Vladímir Putin y el entrante Dmitri Medvédev, ven los pasos del vecino eslavo hacia la OTAN como una amenaza para la seguridad rusa.

Las encuestas del Centro Razumkov de Kiev son inequívocas. Desde 2002, cuando comenzaron a medir la opinión pública ucrania sobre la OTAN, los adversarios del ingreso han aventajado siempre a los partidarios y además han ganado posiciones. En junio de 2002, los adversarios eran el 32,2% y los partidarios, el 32%. En febrero de 2008, fecha del último sondeo, la relación es de 53,1% en contra y 20,9% a favor.

Ante estas cifras, responsables e implicados en la política exterior de Kiev aseguran al unísono que los ánimos cambiarán con una campaña de información a fondo sobre la OTAN. Como ejemplo, citan a Eslovaquia, donde hubo gran resistencia al ingreso. Pero Ucrania, con sus regiones orientales profundamente vinculadas a Rusia, no es Eslovaquia. "No podemos ignorar que la mitad de la población considera el ruso como lengua materna, y que otra parte de Ucrania quiere sofocar los derechos de los rusohablantes. Estos problemas se irán resolviendo con los años, pero hay quien desea forzar el tiempo", afirma el diputado Leonid Kozhara, uno de los artífices de la política exterior de Regiones, el partido de la oposición.

Kozhara distingue entre "colaborar" con la OTAN e "ingresar" en ella. "Queremos la máxima colaboración con la Alianza", subraya. Según él, los dirigentes se concentran en el ingreso y omiten las implicaciones de la "relación estratégica con Rusia", fijadas en el tratado bilateral de 1997. La "seguridad europea" del siglo XXI -a diferencia del concepto de seguridad euroatlántica del siglo XX, heredado de la guerra fría- da especial importancia a la energía, afirma. "Es absurdo hablar de seguridad en Europa sin incluir a Rusia, en calidad de suministrador energético clave, y sin incluir el sistema de transporte energético", señala.

Tras el revuelo provocado por la carta de los dirigentes ucranios al secretario general de la OTAN pidiendo la concesión del MAP en Bucarest, las fuerzas políticas llegaron a un consenso para someter el ingreso en la Alianza a referéndum. Pero la coalición liberal en el Gobierno y la oposición de Regiones discrepan sobre la fecha y el carácter del plebiscito.

Los proatlantistas prefieren una consulta no vinculante, aunque aseguran que la ganarán si ésta se celebra tras cumplir el MAP. "La élite tiene la responsabilidad de guiar el país", afirma Borís Tarasiuk, jefe del comité de integración europea del Parlamento. "Los intereses nacionales no los forman los funcionarios, sino la sociedad, y no se puede hacer política en contra de la mayoría", discrepa Kozhara.

"El rechazo a la OTAN en Ucrania no se basa en la falta de información, porque ni la misma Alianza tiene claro su papel hoy", dice el diputado Kozhara, y recuerda que todos los líderes de su país, al margen de su color político, han colaborado con la OTAN y que los pacificadores y especialistas ucranios están hoy en Kosovo y en Afganistán.

Pilar Bonet, El Pais, 31.03.08

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/mitad/habitantes/Ucrania/opone/ingreso/OTAN/elpepuint/20080331elpepiint_8/Tes

On Monday, the prime ministers of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam will officially inaugurate the former opium smuggling route as the final link of what they call the “north-south economic corridor,” a 1,150-mile network of roads linking the southern Chinese city of Kunming to Bangkok.

The network, several sections of which were still unpaved as late as December, is a major milestone for China and its southern neighbors. The low-lying mountains here, the foothills of the Himalayas, served for centuries as a natural defensive boundary between Southeast Asian civilizations and the giant empire to the north. The road rarely follows a straight line as it meanders through terraced rice fields and tea plantations.

Today, those same Southeast Asian civilizations alternately crave closer integration with that empire and fear its sway as an emerging economic giant. China, in turn, covets the land, markets and natural resources of one of Asia’s least developed and most pristine regions.

With trade across these borders increasing by double digits every year, China has helped construct a series of roads inside the territory of its southern neighbors. The Chinese government is paying half the cost of a bridge over the Mekong River between Laos and Thailand, due for completion in 2011.

It financed parts of Route 3 in Laos and refurbished roads in northern Myanmar, including the storied Burma Road used by the Allies in World War II to supply troops fighting the Japanese. China is also building an oil and gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal through Myanmar to Kunming.

Taken together, these roads are breaking the isolation of the thinly inhabited upper reaches of Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, areas that in recent decades languished because of wars, ethnic rivalries and heroin trafficking. The roads run through the heart of the Golden Triangle, the region that once produced 70 percent of the world’s opium crop.

The new roads, as well as upgraded ports along the Mekong River, are changing the diets and spending habits of people on both sides of the border. China is selling fruit and green vegetables that favor temperate climates to its southern neighbors, and is buying tropical fruit, rubber, sugar cane, palm oil and seafood.

“You never used to see apples in the traditional markets,” said Ruth Banomyong, an expert in logistics who teaches at Thammasat University in Bangkok.

China has blasted shallow sections of the Mekong to make it more easily navigable for cargo barges, allowing traders to ship apples, pears and lettuce downriver. The price of apples in Thailand has fallen to the equivalent of about 20 cents apiece from more than a dollar a decade ago. Roses and other cut flowers from China have displaced flowers flown in from the Netherlands, making Valentine’s Day easier on the wallet for Thais. Traders now have the choice of shipping by barge, truck or both.

Overall, even before the completion of the road, trade between China and the upland Southeast Asian countries Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam had risen impressively, to $53 billion in 2007 from just over $1 billion a decade ago.

People are on the move as well. Wang Suqin, the director of express services at the Kunming bus terminal, says Chinese tourists are eager to travel overland to Thailand.

“Every day we receive calls about this,” Ms. Wang said.

Bus service to Bangkok, which has not yet started, will take at least 24 hours, but that is not a deterrent, Ms. Wang says; it is part of the fun. “We don’t want to miss the scenery along the way,” she said.

During a weeklong journey through the cities and villages along the route from Kunming to Bangkok, rice farmers, tea pickers, businessmen, traders and government officials expressed satisfaction and some excitement that a project decades in the making was nearly completed.

Chen Jinqiang, a Chinese government official from Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province, said the road would help ensure that farmers get their vegetables and flowers to market, avoiding a problem he witnessed in the 1980s, when poor transportation left watermelons rotting in the fields. “Even the pigs refused to eat them,” he said.

But the road also excites old fears of the monolith to the north. Preecha Kamolbutr, the governor of Chiang Rai Province, in northern Thailand, said it might exacerbate what he calls a “Chinese invasion.” He is particularly concerned for Laos, he said, an impoverished country the size of Britain but with a population of just 6.5 million.

“Chinese businessmen come in with their own capital, their own workers and their own construction materials,” the governor said. “I fear that in the future the Lao people might feel that they’ve been exploited. They will feel they’ve been invaded.”

For now, those fears do not appear to be shared by many Laotians. Residents of the sparsely populated Luang Namtha Province said they welcomed visitors and were counting on an influx of Chinese, Thais and others to help raise their incomes.

Alinda Phengsawat, the head of tourism planning in the province, said the road would bring visitors to what has been a very remote part of the country.

“Maybe they will stay overnight,” she said. “That would be better than just driving through.”

Since paving was completed late last year, people who live deep in the jungle have come to the edge of Route 3 to sell vegetables and forest products, residents say.

“You have a huge hinterland that’s pretty badly served at the moment, from Kunming down through Laos and northern Thailand,” said John Cooney, director of the Southeast Asia infrastructure division at the Asian Development Bank, which financed one section of the road in Laos. “That suddenly is becoming a market.”

Cash-strapped Laos is encouraging Chinese investment by handing out what it has plenty of: land. Deputy Prime Minister Somsavat Lengsavad has said the government will trade “land for capital.”

The government recently gave a Chinese company a 50-year renewable lease for a large swath of prime land outside the capital, Vientiane, in exchange for the building of a sports stadium. Here in Luang Namtha, a Chinese company has been given 30-year rights to build and operate what is being called, perhaps euphemistically, the Bo Ten Economic Development Zone.

The main draw so far is not the factories or warehouses typically associated with these zones but a casino, which is off limits to Laotian gamblers, according to Ms. Alinda.

“I went up there and everyone was speaking Chinese,” said Pansak Gardhan, a Thai engineer who is helping rebuild the small airport in Luang Namtha. “All the signs were in Chinese.”

Chinese coming here to gamble will drive through what is probably the most beautiful section of the Kunming-Bangkok road, a four-lane highway that soars over valleys and clings to hillsides striated with rubber-tree and tea plantations.

Li Hui, an official in the foreign affairs office of Yunnan Province, which borders Laos, says one segment of the journey from Kunming to the border used to take three days. “Half of the people were throwing up,” Mr. Li said. On the new highway the same segment takes only a few hours.

The Chinese spent $4 billion building the highway from Kunming to the border. One particularly difficult stretch of road required the construction of 430 bridges and 15 tunnels. That portion of the road is also monitored by 168 cameras centrally controlled by highway department officials who watch for elephants — there are an estimated 275 in the area — and other stray animals. The cameras also assist the police in catching suspected criminals.

“We’ve helped solve 130 cases of drug smuggling, robberies and murder,” boasted Zhang Zhulin, director of the Chinese segment of the expressway, which opened in April 2006.

In a large room with a “Keep Out!” sign posted at the entrance, Mr. Zhang toggled a joystick to show how he could scan different segments of the road as well as zoom in on the faces of passengers as cars passed through toll booths.

The Kunming-Bangkok road is not a seamless experience. There are sections on the Chinese side that have yet to be upgraded. With the bridge over the Mekong still in planning stages, passengers must take ferries across the Thailand-Laos border. And formalities at border checkpoints, especially for freight, can sometimes take hours.

But the road is an obvious improvement from the one Ms. On knew as a child. Her son drives her around in his Toyota pickup truck, but she is not interested in going very far. “I get carsick,” she said.

Thomas Fuller, The New York Times, 31.03.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/world/asia/31laos.html?pagewanted=1&ref=asia

Regresan a la carretera con fuerza, y este verano además los tendremos cerca, en el festival Doctor Loft, que se celebra en Castelló d´Empúries el 6 de julio.

Hace cuatro años, la banda liderada por Michael Stipe se encontraba en una situación de parón. Stipe hacía campaña a favor del candidato demócrata en Estados Unidos, John Kerry; se involucró hasta el tuétano en la cuestión y prácticamente sigue en ello, o sea, que el grupo es una referencia ineludible a la hora de buscar voces críticas acerca del operativo iraquí, de la política interior a raíz del 11-S o del cada vez más exiguo garantismo legal en una de las mecas de la democracia.

Pero Accelerate también es un disco de once canciones repletas, básicamente, de guitarras eléctricas, algunas acústicas, algún detalle de teclado, y la voz rabiosa de Michael Stipe en su mejor punto de cocción, de ese momento en que Athens apareció en el mapamundi musical, es decir, desde que la gente supo que existía una Atenas en Georgia, Estados Unidos, porque cuatro universitarios inventaron allí el indie norteamericano. Afortunadamente para el rock, el aficionado ha reencontrado al incisivo cantante de Murmur,incluso al de Document,y al literato de breves y contundentes proclamas que honrarían a los émulos de Rosa Luxemburgo, Engels y tantos centroeuropeos de gloriosa memoria.

La idea del disco era, quizás, olvidar la flacidez de una obra tan innecesaria comoAroundthe sound,su última pieza oficial, un paso en falso confesado por el propio grupo. La tarea, cuentan, fue ímproba, pues se llevaron buena parte de la materia prima, a punto de hornear, a una serie de conciertos en Dublín. Allí, siguen asegurando, reajustaron las canciones al tocarlas en directo y percibir el feed-back de la audiencia.

Esteban Linés, La Vanguardia, 31.03.08

http://www.lavanguardia.es/lv24h/20080331/53449034657.html

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.

“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.

“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”

Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.

“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”

The old categories are weakening, however, as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population.

Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent, researchers say, sometimes because of strong identification with one racial group, and occasionally because of a conscious effort not to dilute the numbers of the group they most identify with.

In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity.

James McBride, 50, who described growing up in a Brooklyn housing project with his white mother in a memoir, “The Color of Water,” said that, like Mr. Obama, he identified himself primarily as a black man of mixed race. As a child whose father was black, he said: “I really wanted to be like all the other black kids. It was the larger group around me.” And through life, because of his brown skin, society has imposed its own label. “If cops see me, they see a black man sitting in a car,” he said.

But being proud to call himself African-American, Mr. McBride said, does not negate his connection to his “Jewish part,” his mother’s heritage. Asked which part of him was dominant, he said, “It’s like grabbing Jell-O.”

“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”

Mr. McBride and other mixed-race Americans said they took pride that Mr. Obama was presenting his biracial identity as an asset for the presidency. Even if he calls himself black, and has made a central element of his campaign biography the quest to claim that identity after his father left him, Mr. Obama is seen as giving equal weight in his story to his white mother and grandparents.

“He’s really having to play the field and know his audience really well,” said Phillip Handy, 21, a junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., whose mother is white and father is black. “In the end, when I hear his message, I don’t think he’s bailing out on any of us.”

While many mixed-race people say they see their heritage as a plus, they also say they often face pressure from others who want to pigeonhole them. Mr. McBride said his books invariably were shelved in the African-American sections of bookstores. “Why can’t I be a white author?” he said. “I’m half white.”

Shafia Zaloom, 36, a teacher in San Francisco who is Asian and white, said she was often asked if her two children, who look like her white husband, were adopted. “Sometimes, when I’m at the playground, people think I’m the nanny,” she said.

Ms. Zaloom, who gets her looks from her Chinese mother, said she had been on the receiving end of insensitive racial remarks and gestures about Asians. But she fully identifies as mixed race.

“It’s really unfair to expect people to choose,” she said. “It’s like asking to be loyal to one parent or the other.”

Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today.

“When you’re multiracial, you can be several things at the same time,” said Ms. Van Kerckhove, 30, who is white and Asian and has endorsed Mr. Obama on her blog for moving the race debate away from “who’s black and who’s white, or who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Van Kerckhove added, suspicions persist about the motivation of people who identify themselves as mixed race. Many people, she said, wonder, “Are multiracial people trying to be multiracial as a way to escape racism?”

The mixed-race terrain is full of such bumps and tricky balances. But at least, many multiracial Americans say, they are no longer seen as oddities. Ms. Zaloom expects that her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son will experience a different journey to self-identity than she did. At times while growing up, Ms. Zaloom recalled, she struggled with questions about whether she was white enough or attractive. She rebelled against Chinese language lessons, her mother’s Chinese food and eating with chopsticks.

But when her daughter was born, she named her Mei Lan, like her maternal grandmother, to honor her Chinese roots. Then she named her son Kyle in deference to her paternal Irish side. Her wish for her children, she said, is that they realize that the benefits of a mixed identity outweigh any challenges.

“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.”

Mireya Navarro, The New York Times, 31.03.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/us/politics/31race.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Reste à savoir quelle responsabilité attribuer au PSG dans cette bien triste affaire. Le président lensois Gervais Martel en met cause les responsables du Stade de France. «Comment peut-on rentrer une banderole de 25 mètres dans un stade sans se faire contrôler ?», s'indignait-il hier dans l'émission France 2 Foot : «C'est une banderole dégueulasse pour cette région qui a apporté beaucoup à la France. Des gens ont laissé leur vie dans les mines. C'est un viol. Il faut prendre des sanctions extraordinaires pour les supporteurs qui ont rentré une telle banderole», poursuivait le président artésien. Jean-Pierre Papin samedi soir dans les travées du Stade de France voulait voir le club parisien sanctionné : «On a jugé Metz très durement, je pense qu'il faudrait juger Paris très durement aussi.»

Jean-Paul Delevoye , médiateur de la République et maire UMP de Bapaume (Pas de Calais) a , pour sa part, appelé le président du PSG à «faire rejouer la finale».

R.S., Le Figaro, 31.03.08

http://www.lefigaro.fr/sport/2008/03/31/02001-20080331ARTFIG00269-la-banderole-insultante-unanimement-denoncee.php

Dany Boon : «Je suis révolté»

L'auteur du film «Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis» trouve «lamentable» cette banderole insultante pour les gens du nord.

Le sang de Dany Boon n'a fait qu'un tour. «Je suis révolté», tonne l'auteur du film «Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis» après le déploiement d'une banderole insultante pour les gens du nord par des supporteurs parisiens durant le match PSG-Lens en finale de la Coupe de la Ligue, samedi soir au Stade de France.

On pouvait y lire : «Pédophiles, chômeurs, consanguins : bienvenue chez les Ch'tis» - en référence à son film qui est en train de battre tous les records de fréquentation. «C'est honteux, c'est lamentable», estime l'humoriste dans les colonnes du Parisien, en espérant que «les gens qui ont fait cette banderole vont être punis, poursuivis et condamnés. C'est pas les Ch'tis qui mettraient une banderole aussi agressive, voire raciste».Plainte du maire de Lens

De son côté, le Mrap a exprimé dans un communiqué «son dégout et sa colère devant la provocation perpétrée par des supporters du Paris Saint-Germain (...) qui ont déployé une banderole au message xénophobe, méprisant et insultant». Le Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples estime qu'il y a «une urgence absolue et immédiate à nettoyer le sport de la haine, de l'intolérance, de la violence et du racisme, ce qui exige, au delà des discours, de casser les logiques d'impunité relatives à l'absence de sanctions effectives à la hauteur des forfaits proférés».

Le secrétaire d'Etat aux Sports Bernard Laporte a, lui, condamné «les agissements inadmissibles de quelques supporteurs» qui ont déployé une banderole «dont la stupidité a gâché le spectacle d'une belle finale». Laporte demande dans un communiqué à ce que «l'ensemble des moyens disciplinaires, administratifs et juridiques soient mis en œuvre avec la plus grande fermeté».

Le député-maire de Lens, Guy Delcourt, a d'ailleurs annoncé d'ailleurs qu'il portait plainte et qu'il demandait à citer comme témoins le président de la République, la ministre de la Justice et le secrétaire d'Etat au sport.

Le Figaro, 31.03.08

http://www.lefigaro.fr/sport/2008/03/31/02001-20080331ARTFIG00306-dany-boon-je-suis-revolte.php

El argumento es simple: un día, persiguiendo a sus perros por los jardines de Buckingham Palace, la monarca descubre, junto a las cocinas, la furgoneta de la biblioteca móvil municipal y decide llevarse un libro prestado. A partir de ahí se le despertará una fiebre por la lectura que irá cambiando sus intereses y conversaciones, provocando el estupor de sus colaboradores o de los jefes de Estado que la visitan. Tras leer a Bennett, Isabel II es, más que nunca, Su Graciosa Majestad.

El título de su libro es un guiño a 'El lector común' de Virginia Woolf, ¿no?
- Ah, sí, mi relación con Virginia es bien conocida. Me gustan sus cartas, era muy buena escritora epistolar y de diarios, mejor que cuando se ponía a escribir novelas.

¿Cómo se le ocurrió usar a la reina como personaje?
- No sé bien. Quise preguntarme qué sucedería si, de repente, la reina empezara a leer. Normalmente soy un escritor lento, pero una vez tuve esa noción de la reina como lectora, la historia se escribió por sí misma. No soy muy bueno con las tramas, pero aquí surgió de modo extraño, como si el personaje la llevara dentro de sí y se fuera desplegando automáticamente.

¿Existe alguna constancia de los gustos literarios de la reina?
- No lo sé, nadie lo sabe. No existe constancia de que lea ni, por supuesto, de los títulos. Es una pena que no se sepa, ¿verdad? Seguramente he sido injusto con ella, y lee más de lo que creemos.

El lector siente una gran simpatía por la reina, ¿es ese un sentimiento común?
- Es algo bastante genuino. Yo siento que ella vive una vida demasiado circunscrita. Su relación con el resto de la gente se limita demasiado a lo que marca el protocolo, y se relaciona con gente que la trata con guante blanquísimo. Eso no la hace interesarse por otras cosas. Su entorno la aleja de la cultura. Es distinto de lo que sucede con su reina, Sofía, que es más intelectual, le gusta leer y las exposiciones de arte.

En el college de Oxford donde yo estuve, Sofía tuvo un encuentro con intelectuales y pensadores y se interesó vivamente por sus opiniones y conocimientos. Pero la realeza en Inglaterra ha creído, a lo largo de los tiempos, que mostrar cualquier preferencia por una sección de la comunidad por encima de otra es dividir al pueblo. Cuando uno lleva a cabo este planteamiento, se convierte en una pantalla en blanco porque no debe mostrar preferencias ni gustos, pierde su personalidad, ¿sabe?, no puede decir ni siquiera si le gustan o no las carreras de caballos. Los reyes británicos no tienen hobbies ni aficiones. Su trabajo se lo impide.

¿Cuánto tiempo estuvo usted en Oxford?
- Unos cuatro o cinco años, enseñando. Yo empecé como historiador de la edad media, y realicé un buen número de investigaciones académicas sobre diversos temas medievales, que al final no condujeron a nada, a pesar de lo cual notaba que mi estatus de miembro de la comunidad de Oxford era cada vez más valorado socialmente. Pero me aburría. Un día, en clase, después de una exposición especialmente plomiza, dije a los alumnos: "¿Alguien tiene una pregunta?". Siempre se producía un gran silencio, pero ese día se levantó un chico, normalmente tímido, que siempre se sentaba en los bancos de atrás, y me dijo: "¿Dónde ha comprado sus zapatos, señor?". Fue como una señal: ahí acabó mi carrera académica. Empecé a participar en grupos teatrales…

El final de su novela es inesperado. ¿Sabía que iba a ser ese desde el principio?
- Yo pretendía que el lector no supiera lo que iba a suceder hasta que ella pronunciara la última frase.

Le gusta escribir sobre viejas damas, ya lo hizo en 'The Lady in the Van', sobre una excéntrica que vivía en una furgoneta en el barrio de Camdem…
- Me gusta escribir sobre gente que está como fuera de sus propias vidas. La reina es alguien muy distante de la vida que le ha tocado vivir. Es alguien muy convencional que, simplemente, hace bien su trabajo y que, en mi libro, poco a poco va adoptando un comportamiento más excéntrico o inusual al atreverse a tomar decisiones propias, dejarse guiar por su propio criterio. Me interesa mucho el tema del destino que nos marca para siempre o que podemos romper si nos decidimos a ello.

Yo creo que esto me viene de mis padres, ellos eran obreros y creían que el trabajo que hacían les determinaba de por vida, que les condenaba a vivir de una determinada forma en un determinado lugar, donde nacieron. Me interesa la idea de que la gente puede escaparse. La huida… es una idea bella, ¿verdad?

Siempre habla de sus padres…
- Hay gente que cree que los exploto pero es que los padres son la única fuente realmente auténtica de la experiencia de un escritor. Mi admirada Flannery O"Connor dijo que cualquiera que haya sobrevivido a su infancia y conseguido llegar a los 18 años tiene ya suficiente material para escribir durante el resto de su vida, y es verdad.

El suyo es, en el fondo, un libro sobre el poder de la lectura para cambiar y enriquecer nuestra vida.
- Correcto. Puede que no en todos los casos se dé de un modo tan dramático, pero creo que leer transforma tu vida, abre puertas insospechadas, particularmente en las situaciones opresivas, ya sean personales o políticas, individuales o colectivas. Genera dudas, despierta preguntas…

Son 119 páginas. ¿Por qué escribe tan corto?
- Si lo he hecho mal, no sería buena cosa mantener un error durante demasiado tiempo y, si está bien, pues la gente se queda con un gran sabor de boca y quiere más. Me gusta más escribir cuentos que novelas. Procedo del mundo del teatro y tengo costumbre de estar siempre contando el tiempo, pensando que cada acto no puede extenderse más de una hora. Mi oficio es narrar una historia en un tiempo limitado.

¿Vio usted el filme 'La reina', con Helen Mirren como Isabel II?
- Sí, lo vi, pero no mientras escribía el libro para que no me influenciara demasiado. Creo que Helen Mirren es demasiado glamourosa para hacer de reina, la reina es menos estirada. ¿Conoce a la actriz Prunella Scales? Salía en 'Hotel Fawtly' junto a John Cleese, y es más apropiada, hizo de reina brillantemente en una película basada en una obra mía sobre la relación que Isabel II tuvo con Anthony Blunt, su consejero artístico, que era en realidad un espía soviético. Helen Mirren se come a la reina.

Insisto en la enorme empatía que genera su reina en el lector, que se identifica con ella, entre otras cosas porque ambos son la misma cosa: lectores.
- Mi libro no es crítico con la reina, en todo caso con sus consejeros. La mejor sátira proviene del afecto. Siempre cae simpática la gente que es capaz de sobrevolar por encima de la corte, y a la vez estar por encima de la vida del público. Sabe poner distancia muy bien. En el libro, por ejemplo, aprende a leer en la carroza mientras saluda con la mano al mismo tiempo, empieza a darse cuenta de lo mal que le escriben sus discursos, realiza comentarios inoportunos a otros jefes de Estado… ¿La familia real española resulta también simpática?

Sí, pero es otro estilo.
- ¿Son también amados por la gente?

No de la misma manera. El protocolo no es tan estricto.
- El protocolo es básico para generar una relación de amor con el pueblo.

Hemos leído que los niños en la escuela británica tendrán que hacer un juramento de fidelidad a Gran Bretaña y sus valores…
- Me parece algo francamente estúpido. Tú no puedes formalizar algo como el amor a un país, convertirlo en un ritual. El juramento de bandera en las escuelas es una cosa muy norteamericana, no europea, aquí las cosas funcionan de otra manera. Son ganas de tocar las narices, un paso atrás.

¿Hay muchas librerías móviles en su país?
- Sí, sobre todo en zonas rurales, en Londres no demasiadas. Yo conocí una que solía venir una vez por semana, era una comunidad de lectores muy estrecha, y el mismo bibliotecario era el conductor de la furgoneta, como en el libro.

¿Son los libros que hace leer a la reina una especie de canon de Alan Bennett?
- Son todos libros que he leído. La primera novela que leí fue 'A la caza del amor' de Nancy Mitford, y esa es la que ella lee y le despierta una explosión de emociones. Tenemos en común cómo un título le leva a otro y su recorrido lector me resulta familiar. Pero no he incluido obras que he leído y que no encajaban en la historia, como todo lo que leí en la universidad, o algunos clásicos que me encantaron.

¿No cree que alguien puede malinterpretar que los perros de la reina destruyan a mordiscos una novela de Ian McEwan?
- No, en Inglaterra no. Porque los perros de la reina nos caen mal a todos. Y la reina lo sabe. Ninguno de sus asesores ni familiares despierta tanta antipatía como los perros.

Su prosa es conversacional, apropiada para la ironía...
- Sí, me gustan los diálogos. Encuentro en ellos una manera de decir las cosas que no es artificiosa, me permite crear una cierta oposición entre el tema que se trata y el ritmo de la narración, como si el narrador tomara su distancia ante lo que pasa y eso se notara en el modo en que habla.

¿Es usted monárquico?
- Oh, sí, lo soy, creo que debo de ser el último que queda. Por la sencilla razón de que cualquier cosa que reemplazara a la monarquía sería peor. ¿Cómo escogerían a la persona que la reemplazara? ¿Qué tipo de persona sería? Sería un error situar a un político en la más alta jefatura del Estado, con todo su poder simbólico y de unidad. ¿Se imagina? ¡Hubiéramos tenido a Tony Blair de presidente de la república! Eso hubiera sido terrible… Sí, soy monárquico, creo en ese discurso que hay hacia la mitad del libro.

Todo ese montón de deberes y obligaciones que asume la reina son una carga enormemente pesada para cualquier otra cabeza, no podríamos encontrar a nadie que lo hiciera de esa forma, que fuera capaz de no mostrar a la gente lo que realmente piensa para tener legitimada su autoridad. Un político pretendería imponernos groseramente su manera de pensar, no se esforzaría por captar la nuestra. Bush es un ejemplo de esto. Un presidente de la república británica acabaría como Ceaucescu, con la gente invadiendo su palacio... Si uno toma decisiones y manifiesta opiniones que pueden ser objeto de protestas, entonces ya es otra cosa, no es la misma función que realiza un rey.

El de monarca es un trabajo muy duro, algo que proviene de otra época y que resulta de interés conservar. Es un trabajo tremendamente aburrido par alguien que haya sido educado normalmente, todos esos actos, paseos, besamanos, saludos…

Otro gancho del libro son los personajes secundarios…
- Están mucho más definidos en mi mente que en lo que aparece en el libro. Por ejemplo, físicamente, Norman, el joven pinche de cocina que se convierte en el asesor literario de la reina, es exactamente un camarero que vi un día en un restaurante. Y el secretario privado de la reina se inspira en alguien que tuvo la reina a su servicio realmente.

Es interesante cuando usted dice que a la reina las diferencias sociales, sexuales, raciales, le parecen insignificantes…
- Para ella, todas esas distinciones carecen de importancia, porque no hay mayor diferencia que la que existe entre ella y el resto de los británicos. Eso es así. Es alguien diferente al resto del mundo, situada en otra dimensión. Se da el caso de que Margaret Thatcher, en una recepción en el palacio de Buckingham, se puso el mismo vestido que Isabel II. ¿Se imagina? Cuando la primer ministro volvió a palacio, lo primero que hizo fue disculparse enormemente ante su majestad, quien le respondió serenamente: "Su majestad nunca se da cuenta de la ropa que lleva la gente". Lo encuentro maravilloso…

¿Le gusta más Gordon Brown que Tony Blair?
- Es más honesto. Y parece que no le gustó tanto ir a la guerra de Iraq, a la que siempre me he opuesto. Blair perdió la confianza de los británicos estableciendo una relación de vasallaje con George Bush que le llevó a contarnos muchas mentiras para que aceptáramos su decisión de ir a la guerra. Eso ha dejado una herida profunda en esta sociedad. Incluso yo fui a las manifestaciones contra la guerra de Iraq, cuando hacía treinta o cuarenta años que no salía a la calle a pedir algo. Es impresionante la cantidad de gente que salió a la calle, lo cual hace todavía más extraña la historia de amor de Blair y Bush. Fue un amor loco, que le privó de sus sentidos, incluso del de supervivencia, tan básico en un político… Oh, es terrible, no me había fijado: tengo agujeros en mi chaleco y me están haciendo ustedes fotos. ¡Qué desastre!

No se preocupe. ¿Es verdad que el rey Jorge III, sobre el que usted escribió una obra de teatro y el guión de una oscarizada película, era un gran lector?
- Oh, sí, fue un hombre con una notable preparación intelectual, se carteaba con destacadas personalidades. Ha sido el monarca más inteligente que ha tenido este país. Tal vez por eso se volvió loco. Tenía muy buen gusto y era muy elegante.

¿Escribe con ordenador?
- No, no, a mano. Tengo una máquina de escribir Olivetti pero la uso muy poco.

Su carrera como actor, ¿ha finalizado definitivamente?
- Sí, no me gusta actuar en cine o teatro. Me gusta hacer lecturas públicas y actuar por la radio. Mi memoria ya no es muy buena y prefiero leer.

Su carrera como novelista está resultando exitosa…
- Hay pocas cosas más placenteras que eso. El lector de una novela está solo ante lo que has escrito tú también solo. Es mágico, una relación mucho más personal y profunda que la que estableces con el público de teatro.

Xavi Ayén, La Vanguardia, 30.03.08

http://www.lavanguardia.es/lv24h/20080330/53448908478.html

These tunes were devised by DeVotchKa, a band from Denver, Colorado who, as their Russian-sounding name suggests, are fond of eastern European folk music. But before you pigeonhole them as yet another jumper on the Gypsy bandwagon, you should take note of their breakthrough album How It Ends. It showcases a band with a far wider musical remit and a frontman, Nick Urata, who found an outlet for his pain in the wake of a heart-wrenching break-up.

Rather than being an indie chancer searching for a new angle, this 21st-century crooner adds new urgency to old-fashioned arrangements. Thanks to his band's film work, DeVotchKa finally secured a UK release for How It Ends last year, along with debut headline dates. Better late than never, for the album was originally released back home in 2004. I meet Urata after the soundcheck for one of their shows at an east London dive. It is full of technical mishaps, yet Urata looks ready for the task in hand, all darkly handsome looks and vintage chic.

Urata is bashful, however, about his group's late success and keen to explain the hard work that went before. The band formed in 1997 when he settled in Denver. "I had a bunch of friends in Denver and Boulder and just ended up staying with a guy that played accordion," he explains. "There's an old-school rancher thing going on, but the old West does meet the new. People from all over settle there because the climate's nice and the economy's a little bit better."

Even then, Urata had a picture in his mind of the band he wanted to form. "I didn't want to be pigeonholed into one style and make one record after another that sounded the same. I wanted exotic instruments and exotic flavourings, yet still be accessible to people who like pop or rock. I wasn't sure how to get there, but I visualised it and through trial and failure I honed it. And I found four like-minded individuals who stuck together."

Part of his inspiration came from an area of Chicago, half Mexican and half Polish. The two cultures rarely interacted, though Urata heard the parallels. "They were separate neighbourhoods. But I'd hear the cars roll by with the bass booming from a polka, then I'd hear a mariachi song and it would sound the same. I started thinking that these are such entertaining styles, how can we bring them together and not lose people?"

Urata's family background is Italian, roots that have helped him to develop an emotive vocal style. "Most of my relatives from Italy are dead now, but there was always a big emphasis on accordion music and crooners. I heard a bit when I was a child and it stayed with me, especially when I was in that neighbourhood.I tried to emulate what I heard."

Urata got together with a bunch of mates at the end of their university days, but they moved on to other careers. Violinist Tom Hagerman was in the same circle and helped the singer rope in mistress of the sousaphone Jeanie Schroder and drummer Shawn King to build a new DeVotchKa, slang for a girl in Nadsat argot (itself taken from the Russian) of A Clockwork Orange.

After two albums, though, they had made little impact. Then in 2003, DeVotchKa became the backing band for a touring burlesque revue that on occasion included as its star performer Marilyn Manson's wife, Dita Von Teese. The band went on to support Manson. Was that all thanks to Manson's now ex-missus? "I'm not sure, it was just a one-off," Urata says, squirming.

DeVotchKa learnt from the burlesque practitioners that they could include performance elements in their own shows. In the States, they regularly appear with dancers, acrobats and miscellaneous acts to add visual flair. Indeed, Urata says they were on the cabaret trip long before Dresden Dolls, whom DeVotchKa have supported in the UK, started wearing bowler hats. "We wanted to add a carnival atmosphere, because even with my favourite bands, I get bored after nine or 10 songs."

Urata's emotional upheaval following a break-up inspired How It Ends. From "We're Leaving", through "Dearly Departed" to "This Place Is Haunted", the album wears its heart on its sleeve, even though the writer had not planned to be so open. "It was written during a tumultuous period of my life," he begins carefully, "I've always gravitated towards that kind of song – high romance, broken-hearted, pleading fare – and I had plenty of experience of that."

DeVotchKa escaped to the Arizona desert to record the album, where Urata could get his head together after his break-up. "We were looking for a place to get away from our lives. As a writer, too, as soon as you step away and start travelling you leave your comfort zone and the ideas flow a little better. I'd always wanted to use the desert as an escape, you always want to visit these exotic places."

Just such a location is the Tucson studio of Tex-Mex fusionists Calexico, another group that DeVotchKa have supported. Part of its attraction is the vintage gear perfect for capturing the group's timeless sound, though the foursome were also able to feed off the area's atmosphere. "Tucson has a romantic, cactusy, John Wayne kind of vibe. It amplified the retro aesthetic we were shooting for. We went with a bunch of songs and good intentions, but it became something on its own and part of that is to do with the spirit of the place."

Urata claims he has become much more relaxed in the studio, something that is reflected in their follow-up album A Mad and Faithful Telling, a fresh piece of work only completed last autumn. It continues much of the romantic rollercoaster ride of How It Ends, while delivering a more rounded set of songs, led by engrossing immigrant tale "Along The Way" and the orchestral pizzazz of the yearning "The Clockwise Witness". How It Ends could be just the beginning.

Chris Mugan, The Independent, 31.03.08

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/devotchka-under-stormy-skies-802659.html

INVITATION LANCÉE À MAHMOUD ABBAS

Dans son entretien accordé à Skynews, Khaled Mechaal a invité le président de l'Autorité palestinienne, Mahmoud Abbas, à se rendre à Gaza pour "parler directement et sans conditions (...), pour travailler ensemble afin de trouver une solution aux problèmes à Gaza et en Cisjordanie". L'objectif de ces discussions serait de "retrouver notre unité palestinienne, trouver les raisons de nos problèmes et résoudre le problème de la sécurité", a ajouté le chef du Hamas, qui vit en exil à Damas.

Les mouvements Fatah et Hamas, en rupture totale depuis le coup de force des islamistes dans la bande de Gaza en juin dernier, ont accepté le 23 mars à Sanaa, d'engager un dialogue en vue d'une réconciliation que le Yémen s'est dit prêt à accueillir dès le mois prochain. Mais des désaccords étaient apparus au grand jour quelques heures à peine après l'annonce de cet accord. En outre, un responsable israélien avait demandé à Mahmoud Abbas de choisir entre des négociations avec Israël ou une alliance avec le Hamas.

Le Monde, 31.03.08

http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2008/03/31/le-soldat-israelien-gilad-shalit-est-en-vie-assure-le-hamas_1029048_3218.html#ens_id=891944

The arrests in Kathmandu of up to 130 people came after demonstrators, including Buddhist monks and nuns, gathered outside the Chinese embassy chanting "We want free Tibet". The demonstrators were chased by police who dragged them into waiting vans. Some were reportedly beaten with sticks.

The Nepal protests are the latest in a series of demonstrations, many in countries with large communities of Tibetan exiles, that have dogged the Olympic flame relay.

Protesters disrupted the flame-lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece, last Monday, unfurling pro-Tibet banners as the event was broadcast around the world. An attempt by a small group of activists to disrupt yesterday's event in Athens yesterday where Greece handed the flame to China was prevented by police.

"In 130 days, the 2008 Beijing Olympics begin," said Liu Qi, the Beijing Games organising chief, before receiving the flame. "We and the other nations of the world look forward to this moment."

The torch was due to arrive in Beijing today under strict security for a ceremony in Tiananmen Square before touring the world.

The protests began in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet three weeks ago, gathering a momentum not seen for at least 20 years as demonstrators called for greater autonomy or independence for the region and attacked Chinese shopkeepers and businessmen. Seizing on the publicity surrounding the countdown to this summer's Olympic Games, supporters around the globe have added their voices, seeking to put pressure on Beijing.

China has reacted with force, dispatching thousands of additional troops to the affected areas within its borders. Beijing claims that 22 people have been killed in Lhasa, but Tibetan exiles say the number is closer to 140.

Chinese state media continued their attacks yesterday on the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and political leader, accusing him of refusing to enter talks about Tibet's future.

The Dalai Lama, 72, who has lived in exile in Dharamsala, India, for almost 50 years, has said he is prepared to travel to Beijing to meet President Hu Jintao for talks. He has also repeatedly condemned the violence committed by both sides and called for a peaceful resolution. He has said he believes China should host the Olympic Games, prompting criticism from some Tibetans. But in a lengthy article yesterday, the Xinhua news agency cited previous actions and statements attributed to the Nobel laureate that it claimed contradicted his purported willingness to talk. "It was the Dalai Lama clique that closed the door of dialogue," it said.

Meanwhile, a group of international Tibet experts has written an open letter to the Chinese authorities calling for an immediate end to the violence. The 330 academics said Tibet was one of the world's great cultural legacies.

"We call for an immediate end to the use of force against Tibetans within China," they wrote. "We call for an end to the suppression of Tibetan opinion, whatever form that suppression takes.

"And we call for the clear recognition that Tibetans, together with all citizens of China, are entitled to the full rights to free speech and expression."

Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, 31.03.08

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/violence-in-nepal-as-tibetans-protest-olympics-802732.html

Des voitures ont brûlé au Slotervaart, il y a quelques mois. Après la mort suspecte d'un jeune Marocain, des affrontements avec la police ont animé plusieurs nuits. Mais si le quartier focalise aussi l'attention depuis 2004, c'est parce qu'il était celui de Mohamed Bouyeri, l'assassin du cinéaste Theo Van Gogh. Sous l'influence d'une mosquée radicale, le jeune homme, né aux Pays-Bas, avait sombré dans le fondamentalisme religieux et assassiné en pleine rue l'arrière-petit-neveu du peintre, auteur d'un film critique de l'islam. Et aujourd'hui, avec le court métrage de Geert Wilders, les Pays-Bas ont l'impression de revivre, sous une autre forme, les préludes de cet acte qui les a tellement marqués.

A l'autre bout d'Amsterdam, dans son vaste bureau blanc, le sociologue Paul Scheffer ne cache pas son inquiétude quant à "la grande confusion" qui règne dans son pays. Pour lui, les médias traitent mal la question de l'islam, souvent vue comme purement conflictuelle. "Pour résoudre les problèmes, il faut peut-être en passer par le conflit", dit-il avec espoir. Mais il déplore que les Pays-Bas mélangent religion, immigration, délinquance, terrorisme et balancent entre le radicalisme de Wilders et l'attitude ambiguë du gouvernement chrétien-démocrate de Jan Peter Balkenende, qui a envisagé de faire interdire Fitna pour éviter une nouvelle affaire des caricatures danoises de Mahomet. "Wilders ne serait rien sans les menaces des radicaux et les radicaux ont besoin de Wilders", déplore Paul Scheffer. Quant à M. Balkenende, "il a dit que la liberté religieuse est indispensable mais oublié d'affirmer qu'elle est inséparable de la liberté d'expression", poursuit le sociologue.

Dès 2000, le sociologue, proche de la gauche travailliste, avait remis en question le fonctionnement d'une société qui avait favorisé une sorte de "développement séparé". Les quelque 850 000 musulmans (environ 6 % de la population) étaient censés trouver "naturellement" leur place dans le système des "piliers" politico-religieux. Encadrés par les imams, aidés par des subventions qui leur garantissaient des écoles, des lieux de culte et des droits sociaux, les musulmans étaient invités à trouver leur voie sans interférer dans la vie publique. Tandis que le libéral Frits Bolkestein avait invité à prendre en compte "le degré de haine" des Néerlandais à l'égard des Turcs et des Marocains, Paul Scheffer fustigeait un système de "vaste tolérance et de faible intégration, accroissant les inégalités et l'aliénation, menaçant la paix sociale".

D'abord taxé de "raciste", le sociologue est devenu la référence de nombreux responsables de tous bords, convaincus que leur société a eu tort de se croire invulnérable. L'idée - mise en évidence par diverses enquêtes - qu'une frange de la communauté musulmane se radicalise a fait son chemin : le pays, où le courant sunnite reste très majoritaire, compterait quelques milliers d'éléments radicaux et de 20 000 à 30 000 personnes "favorables aux courants", selon le professeur Afshin Ellian. Ce juriste né à Téhéran, professeur à l'université de Leyde, est constamment protégé : il a dénoncé les radicaux musulmans qui refusent les lois néerlandaises.

A en croire un récent rapport du Conseil de l'Europe - contesté à La Haye -, les Pays-Bas sont devenus le pays le plus islamophobe d'Europe. Le mouvement de bascule s'est produit avec le geste de Mohamed Bouyeri et la colère d'Ayaan Hirsi Ali. L'assassin de Theo Van Gogh avait planté dans le coeur de sa victime un poignard et un message adressé à la coscénariste du film, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, réfugiée d'origine somalienne devenue députée. La jeune femme s'était vu reprocher d'avoir "polarisé" le débat néerlandais en jugeant l'islam, religion monolithique selon elle, incompatible avec une société laïque. Elle a dû quitter les Pays-Bas après que la ministre de l'immigration, Rita Verdonk, a tenté de la priver de sa nationalité néerlandaise. Menacée de mort, elle vit aujourd'hui à Washington.

"Les deux grands partis, chrétien-démocrate et travailliste, ont, en fait, été très heureux de la voir s'en aller, en 2006", affirme Afshin Ellian. Pour l'écrivain Ian Buruma, né aux Pays-Bas et auteur de On a tué Theo Van Gogh (Flammarion, 2006), "personne n'a, ces derniers siècles, remué autant de choses aux Pays-Bas" qu'Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Le débat lancé par cette affaire n'est en tout cas pas achevé. Il a entraîné une focalisation sur l'islam, mais aussi sur les mariages forcés, les crimes d'honneur ou les agressions contre les homosexuels, des réalités tues jusque-là. Il y a quelques jours, les polices d'Amsterdam et de Nimègue ont lancé un plan contre ce qu'elles appellent les "crimes de haine" : les attaques (nombreuses) de gays par des jeunes Maghrébins et les violences contre des étrangers en raison de leur religion.

A Slotervaart, Hussein, 19 ans, futur mécanicien, n'a connu ni "Mo" Bouyeri ni sa victime. Mais ce jeune homme d'origine marocaine a en revanche une opinion sur Geert Wilders : "Un cafard." Quant au sort à lui réserver ? "Le mépris, ou alors..." Et Hussein de mimer, en riant, la lame qui court d'une oreille à l'autre.

Dans son quartier, les immeubles, couleur marron, sont à taille humaine et les espaces verts ont été sauvegardés. Mais on est très loin des canaux romantiques et des maisons patriciennes du centre-ville. Dans un néerlandais rocailleux, Hussein résume les contradictions et les frustrations d'une génération : comme 71 % des jeunes d'origine marocaine interrogés pour une vaste enquête publique sur les rapports entre les étrangers - les "allochtones", comme on le dit ici - et les "autochtones", il se dit "plutôt heureux". Il aime "plutôt bien" son quartier. Mais il dénonce l'école qui "ennuie", la "condescendance" des services sociaux, l'"hypocrisie" des patrons qui traînent à l'embaucher ou l'attention soutenue de la police depuis les incidents des derniers mois.

Ces violences, rares dans le pays, ont beaucoup impressionné les médias. Elles ont poussé les autorités à agir : 200 familles, presque toutes étrangères, devront bientôt quitter leur logement social. On leur reproche de créer "de la gêne", selon la formule très politiquement correcte en vigueur. Soit "du bruit, de la saleté, des destructions", détaillent les services municipaux.

"Prudence", rétorque Sadik Harchaoui. Ce trentenaire né au Maroc préside Forum, un "institut pour le développement multiculturel" à Utrecht. Parcourant le pays, il est surtout frappé, dit-il, de la modération dont fait preuve "le musulman moyen", alors que le débat lancé par Geert Wilders empoisonne la vie publique : "L'attitude de la majorité des musulmans est relax, patriotique, loyale."

Paul Scheffer, lui, dit rechercher "le modus vivendi auquel aspire la majorité de tous ceux qui vivent ici". De tous les débats auxquels il a participé depuis huit ans, il a retenu deux temps forts : ce jour où une Néerlandaise pleurait parce qu'elle ne reconnaissait plus son quartier, qui abrite désormais une mosquée. Et celui où une Marocaine se disait angoissée à l'idée de voir son enfant "se perdre dans une société tellement étrange". Il aimerait rapprocher, un jour, ces deux femmes.

A l'opposé, Geert Wilders réclame l'arrêt total de l'immigration, la fin de la construction des mosquées (il en existe environ 500 dans le pays) et la suspension des subventions accordées aux écoles coraniques (42 à l'heure actuelle). Il veut aussi priver les délinquants musulmans de leur nationalité néerlandaise. "Trop fou", dit Hussein.

Jean-Pierre Stroobants, Le Monde, 30.03.08

http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2008/03/29/pays-bas-la-tentation-de-l-intolerance_1028765_3214.html#ens_id=1019769