We train female children to be manipulative and to exploit their sex. From the time she is tiny, a girl in our society is taught to flirt. She is usually dressed like a mini-whore in pink and tinsel, short skirt, matching knickers, baby-doll pyjamas, long hair falling over her face. She learns to court attention and, when successful, to hide her face. If she's lucky enough to get to be a big sister she might get over this sleazy conditioning, but very few daughters these days get to grow out of being "daddy's girl". When the time comes she is likely to reject approaching womanhood, desperate to keep her thighs skinny, and nearly as desperate to acquire hard, high breasts. The idea of growing into her own body is charmless, frightening. One thing we know about the Leibovitz photograph is that Cyrus saw nothing amiss in clutching a satin sheet to her apparently naked bosom, and looking at the camera over her shoulder. Girls are taught to look at the world in that sidelong fashion from the time they come to consciousness.

For her photograph of the teenage celebrity, Leibovitz chose a palette strongly redolent of the dirty postcards of yesteryear, sepia embittered with black, a suggestion of eye-blue and lip-red, as if retouched by hand, with never - thank our stars - a hint of pink. The light is centred on the child's sallow, unformed cheek. Her eyes are shadowed and puffy, her lips slightly set, as if she is waiting out the slow shutter-click of an obsolete camera. Nobody has run a comb through her disordered mass of dark hair, which seems greasy and damp, as if with sweat. As one of her now ex-fans shrieked in his blog, "She looked like she is freshly f**ked in these photos!" The subject of Leibovitz's photo could be a child prostitute from Casablanca, vintage 1900, the camera in the hands of a sex tourist who is about to toss a few coins to the doorkeeper. It is Disney, after all, that is merchandising this child, and the suggestion of pimping will cling to it. Leibovitz may be cynical, is obviously cynical. She is also, as usual, justified.

Now Disney accuses Vanity Fair of drumming up controversy and deliberately manipulating a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines, as if its own motives were not identical. The photo shoot for Vanity Fair was probably carried out weeks ago but the brouhaha has been timed for the very day the magazine appeared on the newsstands. Disney could have refused to make its star available for a shoot with Vanity Fair, or, if what it wanted was to protect its brand image, it could have demanded the right to vet the pictures. Cyrus was not undefended in the clutches of Leibovitz; her parents and minders were present and apparently saw nothing amiss in the offending photograph, which, in its original state, probably looked less like a dirty postcard than it does on the pages of Vanity Fair.

Before Leibovitz, Cyrus was regularly photographed on red carpets dressed as a 35-year-old in sequins and chiffon with heavy makeup, hair extensions, fuck-me shoes, and occasionally a segment of baby breast escaping at an ill-cut armhole. Otherwise she dresses as a schoolgirl in long socks, very short skirts and the same hanks of rather gluey-looking hair. These publicity shots are far cheaper and far nastier in implication than the Leibovitz image, which has class. Meanwhile, in a series of candid snapshots apparently of Cyrus that have found their way on to the internet, Cyrus the professional virgin is apparently happy to show herself nipples akimbo in jersey underwear, pulling down a vest to display a green bra, and disporting a bare belly on a bed with a boyfriend. All tacky, all in circulation, and all displaying the usual knowingness.

Cyrus said that Leibovitz didn't photograph her "in a skanky way". That she can be relied on to do for herself. Prostitution is the paradigm of service industry. It is the tragedy of Cyrus's life that she has nothing to sell but herself and she is fast approaching her sell-by date. From this time forward.

Branded for life
How the tweens became an advertiser's dream

With their unbeatable combination of "pester power" and burgeoning brand awareness, tweens are the advertiser's dream. Aged between six and 12, American tweens spend $51bn of their own pocket money annually - mainly on never-ending TV spin-off products, collectables, so-called multi-platform opportunities (video games, live shows, downloads, clothing). And, as if that wasn't enough tacky plastic stuff, an additional $170bn is spent on them by friends and family. It is thanks to these tween spenders that Miley Cyrus, star of Hannah Montana - up there with High School Musical as one of Disney's biggest money-spinners - is set to be worth $1bn by the time she's 18.

Part of the phenomenon is so-called "age compression" - kids getting older younger - and rejecting traditional toys as unsophisticated. The falling birth rate is significant, too, along with the rise in parental working hours: a lot of the tween market is guilt money.

The company that appears to have the best understanding of the tween market is Disney. In 2006, High School Musical, the soundtrack to the Disney Channel film of the same name, became the biggest-selling album of the year in the US, with 3.7m copies sold. High School Musical has since become one of the biggest brands in Disney's history. In 2007, the sequel became the most watched cable broadcast ever, with 179m global viewers. High School Musical 3 is out this October.

Hannah Montana first aired on the Disney Channel in March 2006 and it, too, has grown into a massive brand. It starts its third season in the US later this year. It has made Miley Cyrus, who plays Hannah, a schoolgirl who leads a "secret life" as a pop star by night, into the US's highest-paid teen entertainer. Cyrus's concert movie took $65m at the US box office, and she is paid in $1m a week on tour, with millions more coming from her TV show, CDs and endorsements. Disney has just signed up her autobiography for an undisclosed billion-dollar figure.

The Hannah Montana merchandise is extraordinary: pink frilly T-shirts emblazoned with Hannah's face, Capri pants, camouflage mini-skirts, sparkly handbags, skin-on nail sets, necklaces, earrings, Nintendo games, plus a range of novels and collectable dolls. Arguably, it's oversexualised, but it's also a boring feminine stereotyping: the message is that sparkly makeup, manicures and "killer" mini-skirts are what it means to be a girl. This is bling and glam for the under-10s. And little girls lap it up.

"Tweens heavily influence buying way out of proportion to their numbers," says Ken Hertz, an entertainment lawyer and branding expert whose firm represents Will Smith, Beyoncé Knowles and Gwen Stefani. "By the time someone has reached their late teens, they're much more difficult to influence." Tween consumers can get happily sucked in for life. "If you can get a fan at tween age, you have a good chance of keeping them for a long time. It's not a new thing. That is what allowed the Spice Girls to sell out Madison Square Gardens in 10 seconds. And that is why New Kids on the Block have a reunion coming up."

Not surprising, then, that big players in the music industry - Sony, Warner, EMI - are now homing in on this lucrative market. The tween client base is seen as crucial in a climate where sales to teenagers and adults have dropped by 21.2% annually since 1999.

British children are less consumerist than American kids, says Louise Barfield, London-based branding specialist and mother of a nine-year-old daughter, but the pressure is on. "I don't allow my daughter to watch commercial TV," she says. "It's useless products that are not going to enhance her life - clothing, tattoos, cosmetics." Sleepovers are a big thing with girls from the age of six and seven, she says, where girls may want to swap makeup and clothes. "The way they communicate via brands, products and characters can be worrying: it's the sharing of it all they are fascinated with. You want them to enjoy themselves, but you have to ask: is this what I want my little girl to be focused on?"
Viv Groskop

Caught up in the moment
Why stars love to pose for Annie Leibovitz

Five hours before John Lennon was shot dead in 1980, Annie Leibovitz photographed him naked. His arms and legs were wrapped lovingly, needily, around the fully clothed body of his wife Yoko Ono. His lips pressed to her cheek, his eyes shut in bliss. But that wasn't Leibovitz's original idea for the Rolling Stone cover. She had wanted him on his own, but Lennon insisted that his wife appear too. So Leibovitz suggested that the two pose together nude. Lennon obligingly began to strip, but Ono refused to take off her trousers. Without thinking about it much, Leibovitz recalled, she told Ono to keep all her clothes on.

"Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. We took one Polaroid," said Leibovitz, "and the three of us knew it was profound right away." Lennon reportedly told her: "You've captured our relationship exactly. Promise me it'll be on the cover." It was, but not as planned: it appeared on the memorial issue for the murdered Beatle. But what had Leibovitz captured? "You couldn't help but feel that she was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her." Which seems unfair: I can see Lennon's clinginess, but not Ono's chilliness.

The story of Lennon's last photoshoot undoes some of the mystique of how Leibovitz gets her subjects to disport themselves in daft, degrading, mildly titillating or otherwise compelling poses: sometimes at least, she has responded on the hoof to her celebrity subjects' annoying demands. She doesn't create a moment but is responsive to it, realising that the thing she's after is right there. But most professional snappers would say they could realise that too if they only had the same access to exhibitionist celebs as Leibovitz has had in the past 40 years. They, too, could have got the Queen to look wistful in a crown.

To be fair, Leibovitz can do jaunty, contrived composition, too. Her picture of Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk subverts the glumly pious Riefenstahl-Mapplethorpe black-meets-white aesthetic by sheer dint of Goldberg's joyfully cheeky open-mouthed pose. What Leibovitz often does is capture a striking image that flatters the sitter into thinking it discloses something profound, when it doesn't. Maybe that's what her lover Susan Sontag meant when she told Leibovitz: "You're good but you could be better."

But how did Leibovitz get Sting to stand in a bracingly ridiculous naked pose in the desert, covered in mud with hands coyly covering his tantrically accomplished genitals? How did she get Demi Moore to pose heavily pregnant, one hand cradling the heft of her bump, the other protecting readers' eyes from the sight of her nipple? How did she lure Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong to pose high and naked in the saddle of his racing bike? Or the voluptuous Scarlett Johansson and non-voluptuous Keira Knightley to lounge nudely in a double portrait, their daft rhyming pouts making the photo's wannabe sexy allure unintentionally hilarious? Because Leibovitz will get them on the cover of the glossies. Because, in the narcissistic cesspool of modern celebrity, she is Echo. Because she gives her subjects what they want and the rest of us, well, we get what we are given and some of us like it.

Leibovitz said that when Sontag came into her life, "I wanted to do better things, take photographs that matter." Has she? Leibovitz has taken some fine photographs of her family, children and Sontag. They are intimate, convincing and unflashy, everything her more recent celebrity work has not been. But she has become something of a hack, an obliging furnisher of kitsch. It happens, particularly when you've been doing something too long.

Earlier this month, for instance, her photo of US basketball star LeBron James and Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen caused a fuss. James had become the first African-American to figure on Vogue's cover, but some critics suggested it espoused racist stereotypes: he looked, they said, like the King Kong to her Fay Wray. James, it is worth pointing out, said he enjoyed the picture. We needn't: it brings two ho-hum stars together in a collision of cliches.

Or take her fascinatingly hideous, 2006 shot of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes en famille à l'herbe, dandling Suri Cruise. In this frame, the couple close their eyes in Hollywood's vapid simulacrum of conjugal felicity (the opposite of the real thing that John and Yoko gave Leibovitz). Even now, it makes me want to Photoshop in a payload of manure falling on to them from a swooping helicopter. Leibovitz held up a mirror to their smug narcissism and it refused to crack, damn it. No wonder she can get her subjects to do what she wants.

Stuart Jeffries

The Guardian, 30.04.08

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/photography/story/0,,2276876,00.html

Blindness, du Brésilien Fernando Mereilles, sera projeté en ouverture du festival, le 14 mai. Le long métrage met à l'affiche notamment Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover et Gael Garc¡a Bernal. Il s'agit du quatrième film d'inspiration latino-américaine à être en compétition pour l'édition 2008.

Two Lovers, le dernier long métrage de l'Américain James Gray, déjà présent l'an passé en compétition avec We Own the Night, sera lui aussi en lice pour la Palme d'or. Joachim Phoenix et Gwyneth Paltrow en sont les principaux acteurs.

Enfin, le troisième film annoncé, troisième film français en compétition, sera Entre les murs, de Laurent Cantet, avec l'acteur François Begaudeau.

En film de clôture, sera présenté, hors compétition, What Just Happened, de l'Américain Barry Levinson, avec Robert de Niro, Bruce Willis, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro et Sean Penn. Robert de Niro sera également présent sur la Croisette pour remettre la Palme d'or, le dimanche 25 mai.

Enfin, le jury, présidé cette année par l'acteur et réalisateur américain Sean Penn, a été complété par deux nouveaux membres, l'actrice française Jeanne Balibar et l'auteure-réalisatrice iranienne Marjane Satrapi, en compétition l'an passé avec le dessin animé Persepolis.

Le Monde, 30.04.08

http://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2008/04/30/vingt-deux-films-seront-finalement-en-competition-a-cannes_1040027_3476.html#ens_id=995481

Lennon regaló la letra y los otros objetos a la escritora de comedias televisivas Gail Renard en 1969, durante una de sus famosas 'Bed-In' (protesta en la cama) junto a su mujer Yoko Ono. Con sólo 16 años, Gail estudiaba en Montreal en el momento en que los Lennon, recientemente casados, decidieron celebrar su 'Bed-In' en el hotel Queen Elizabeth de la ciudad, dos meses después de la de Amsterdam y después de que les hubieran denegado el acceso a EE.UU. para llevarla a cabo en Nueva York, como tenían previsto.

La joven y un amigo consiguieron colarse en el hotel por la salida de incendios y esperaron el momento en el que los guardias de seguridad cambiaban de turno: entonces llamaron a la puerta de la Suite 1742, donde se llevaba a cabo la protesta, y pidieron una entrevista para su revista universitaria.

Los jóvenes llegaron antes que la prensa invitada y les echaron una mano a los Lennon en asuntos de diferente índole, desde hacer recados hasta jugar con Kyoko, la hija de Yoko Ono.

Con un sentido de humor similar, Lennon y Gail hicieron buenas migas y la joven pasó el resto de la semana junto a la pareja en la 'Bed-In', que se desarrolló entre el 26 de mayo y el 2 de junio de 1969 y a la que también se unieron el poeta de la generación beat Allen Ginsberg y el "padre" de las drogas psicodélicas, Timothy Leary.

Gail y Lennon acabaron desarrollando una gran amistad y, de hecho, fue el músico quien lanzó su carrera como escritora al llamar al editor de la revista "The Beatles Monthly" y pedirle que publicara la crítica de la "Bed-In" escrita por la joven, destacó la firma Christie'. El músico regaló algunos recuerdos a Gail, incluida la letra de 'Dale una oportunidad a la paz', y ella los ha conservado desde entonces.

Al entregárselos, el músico le dijo a la joven: "Algún día valdrán algo". Treinta y nueve años después habrá oportunidad de comprobarlo en la subasta dedicada a pertenencias de famosos del rock y el pop, que se celebrará el próximo 10 de julio.

La Vanguardia, 30.04.08

http://www.lavanguardia.es/lv24h/20080430/53460131732.html

Vivid Entertainment Group describes itself as the world's leading adult film company. It is selling Jimi Hendrix the Sex Tape for $39.95 as a digital download or DVD. Billed as a "sexual documentary", the film has an 11-minute segment said to be 8mm footage from the late 1960s; the rock legend died of an overdose in 1970.

Former friends of Hendrix question the authenticity of the film, which shows a man resembling the guitarist in scenes with two women in a darkly-lit hotel room. Kathy Etchingham had a relationship with Hendrix, and told the New York Times: "He would never have allowed anyone to see that. In private he was very shy and would cover up."

The dispute revives debate over the degree to which celebrity private lives are fair game, even when in the grave. The Hendrix tape follows an incident this month in which a New York businessman paid $1.5m for a 15-minute film of Marilyn Monroe supposedly having sex with an unidentified man.

A memorabilia collector, Keya Morgan, said the footage had been found in FBI archives. But the fact the businessman remains anonymous, and has refused to allow his purchase to be seen (in order, it is said, to protect the Hollywood star's memory), inflames suspicion by blogs and websites that it is all an elaborate hoax.

Vivid insists it went to great lengths to confirm the authenticity of its Hendrix film, bought from a sex-film distributor called Howie Klein. In turn, Klein says he bought it from a collector who found it at a London auction a few years ago.

A private detective was brought in to check out the story, Vivid says, and experts were also consulted.

One is a former 1960s groupie known as Cynthia Plaster Caster, a reference to the casts she used to make of the sexual organs of stars. "No doubt about it - that's Jimi Hendrix, and I should know," she is recorded saying on the video.

Ed Pilkinton, The Guardian, 30.04.08

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/usa.retail

Les renaissances culturelles successives y puisent leur inspiration et elles ne seraient guère envisageables sans la mobilisation du savoir grec. Les clercs carolingiens, désireux d'avoir des textes précis pour réglementer la foi et l'Eglise, s'efforcèrent de mieux maîtriser le latin et sa grammaire, c'est-à-dire les principes de la logique, et Aristote fut ici d'un grand secours. Quant à la renaissance scientifique du XIIIe siècle, c'est la mobilisation du savoir antique qui la rendit possible.

Du côté du monde musulman, le tableau est bien différent. Sylvain Gouguenheim insiste sur le rôle plutôt passif des lettrés par rapport au savoir grec. La plupart d'entre eux ne connaissaient d’ailleurs pas le grec et ils furent initiés à ces auteurs grâce aux Syriaques (chrétiens orientaux) qui les traduisirent dans leur langue dès le IVe siècle, puis en arabe à partir du VIIe siècle et de l'occupation musulmane. La médecine arabe doit ainsi beaucoup à la médecine syriaque qui lui a donné, via les traductions, l'essentiel de son vocabulaire. Un personnage comme Hunayn ibn Ishaq, le "prince des traducteurs", illustre bien le multiculturalisme assez fascinant de ce milieu syriaque : arabe nestorien (donc chrétien), maîtrisant parfaitement l'arabe, le syriaque et le grec, il traduisit avec beaucoup d'intelligence la quasi-totalité de l'oeuvre d'Aristote.

Arrivé à ce point, Sylvain Gouguenheim élargit beaucoup sa problématique en s'interrogeant sur le lien entre islam et savoir grec. Son idée principale est que la Grèce était un monde radicalement étranger à l'islam, pour des raisons politiques (antagonisme avec l'Empire byzantin) et surtout culturelles. L’islam ne s'intéressa au savoir grec que dans la mesure où il était en accord avec les principes énoncés dans le Coran. Nul problème pour l'optique ou les mathématiques, domaines dans lesquels excellèrent les savants musulmans arabes et perses, mais pour le droit ou la philosophie, l'héritage grec dut passer au crible des principes religieux. L’analyse du mu'tazilisme est un bon exemple de la façon dont argumente notre auteur. Ce courant religieux du IXe siècle, défenseur de l'idée du libre arbitre de l'individu, est souvent présenté comme une réaction rationaliste contre certaines formes primitives de l'islam. Pour l'auteur, il ne s'agit en fait aucunement d'un thomisme avant la lettre mais plutôt du souci de mettre au service de la foi les ressources de la raison car, du fait de l'absolue rationalité du Coran, la philosophie peut aider à en comprendre le sens caché. Les mêmes raisons expliquent la très faible influence de la pensé politique d'Aristote. Le contraste est net avec la situation de l'Occident latin où les légistes des souverains ont au contraire mobilisé la Politique pour se soustraire au pouvoir temporel d'une papauté alors envahissante.

A travers la question de l’héritage grec, Sylvain Gouguenheim non sans raison met au cœur de sa réflexion les processus différents d’autonomisation des activités intellectuelles par rapport au religieux. D’évidence les deux mondes chrétien et musulman sous cet angle s’opposent. Mais cette grille de lecture n’est pas sans ambiguïté. S’il est en effet bien certain que la longue histoire culturelle de l’Europe est marquée par une lecture sans cesse remaniée de l’héritage de l’antiquité gréco-romaine, il est tout aussi certain que la pensée grecque a beaucoup moins fécondé la civilisation arabo-musulmane, elle-même influencée de son côté par des traditions orientales que l’occident n’a jamais connu. Constater cette différence ne doit pas conduire à opposer de façon caricaturale un orient islamique limité dès ses débuts aux principes coraniques et un occident chrétien très tôt tourné vers la rationalité. C’est finalement l’ultime paradoxe de cet ouvrage que de procéder à un jugement comparatif sur deux civilisations en usant du critère de l’hellénisation du savoir, procédé que l’auteur lui-même dénonce avec justesse dans les dernières pages comme une dérive ethnocentrique qui « dénature la civilisation musulmane ».

Jean Yves Grenier, Libération, 29.04.08

http://www.liberation.fr/culture/livre/323869.FR.php

Esta vez, a Benítez no le valdrá administrar el primer asalto como hizo en anteriores ocasiones frente al Chelsea, al que tumbó dos veces en las últimas temporadas, en la vuelta de las semifinales, ambas en Anfield. Una con un gol que no entró de Luis García y otra con Reina como héroe en los penaltis. Ahora, su equipo no tendrá más remedio que marcar ante un equipo en racha, por mucho que su historia reciente le haya condenado en cuatro semifinales en los últimos cinco años. Lo cierto es que, con el discreto israelí Avram Grant en el banquillo, el equipo londinense está igualado en la cabeza de la Premier con el United y le queda un paso para alcanzar una final europea, el gran trauma del hiperbólico José Mourinho, su predecesor en la dirección del club que apadrina el multimillonario Roman Abramovich. Desde que ingresó en el Chelsea, primero como jefe técnico, Grant no ha perdido en casa en 66 partidos.

En tiempos de Mourinho, Benítez mantuvo más de un combate dialéctico con el entrenador portugués. Sin Mou, el español asumió ayer su papel y atizó el duelo. "Es curioso, en seis partidos que ha dirigido el árbitro italiano Roberto Rossetti, los equipos locales ganaron cinco y la única vez que triunfó un visitante fue precisamente el Chelsea, en Valencia", espetó el míster del Liverpool al más puro estilo Mourinho. El colegiado no fue su única diana. "Drogba se resbala mucho", deslizó sobre el goleador del Chelsea, su mayor pesadilla. Grant, tan medido como siempre, se contuvo: "Es nuestra gran oportunidad".

José Sámano, El Pais, 30.04.08

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/deportes/pies/Fernando/Torres/elpepudep/20080430elpepidep_6/Tes

The bodies were exhumed and reburied with respect, though with nary a pause in the banging of hammers and plastering of walls to accommodate a forensic study of the basement.

And that, human rights workers say, is nothing unusual in a city more or less at peace now, but with many grim basements and much rebuilding under way.

“People died there, and now they just build a school,” Natalia Estemirova, a researcher with Memorial, a human rights group, said in an interview. Her group documented the discovery of the bodies last summer at the Zvyozdochka, or Starlet, kindergarten.

She added: “We know people disappeared. We know that most of them were killed. And we know we need to look for them with a shovel.”

Any systematic forensic work, though, could revive prickly questions for the departing Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, about the prosecution of the war that, along with Russia’s economic revival, will serve as his legacy of the past eight years.

As a result, Russia’s general policy toward mass graves in Chechnya is to leave them undisturbed. There are 57 known but unopened mass graves in the republic of Chechnya, which is about the size of Connecticut. Countless smaller grave sites lie beneath the capital’s parks, courtyards and basements.

In Grozny, bulldozers, cranes and men with jackhammers work around and sometimes over graves from two wars, the first from 1994 to 1996 and the second that began in 1999. (The fighting now is sporadic and small in scale.) The city, besieged, bombarded and depopulated by war, has now become the scene of a frantic, oil-financed rebuilding effort. And the authorities point proudly to gleaming new buildings as symbols of the peace.

In the past year, after Russia installed the leader of one of its proxy militias, Ramzan Kadyrov, as president, 969 refugees have received new housing. A mosque that will accommodate 10,000 worshipers is rising on the central square, and scores of schools have been rebuilt.

Yet, the graves in Grozny remain a vexing problem. At least a half dozen have been moved to make room for the rebuilding.

In perhaps the most striking case, in April 2006, workers exhumed 57 bodies in Kirov Park to clear ground for a youth entertainment complex. During bombardments in 1999 and 2000, human rights workers say, residents buried relatives and unidentified victims in the park. Six bodies from that site were never identified, and were reburied in numbered graves in a cemetery.

“Many, many bodies are found,” Ms. Estemirova said.

The graves of Grozny grimly symbolize the peace that Russia has settled for here, one emphasizing physical reconstruction while leaving unaddressed the human scars of the war. There has been no systematic prosecution of war crimes or identification of the dead.

Just how many disappeared remains an open and contentious question. A human rights ombudsman for the Chechen government, Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, has identified 3,018 unsolved disappearances from the two wars. The remains of some of the missing surely are buried under construction sites.

The regional prosecutor has offered a lower figure, saying that 2,747 Chechen civilians have filed missing persons reports, and that 574 of those have been resolved. Memorial, Ms. Estemirova’s group, put the number of people who disappeared at 3,000 to 5,000.

The mass graves have raised tensions between Russia and Europe. The Council of Europe, the human rights monitor, has made a major issue of the exhuming of mass graves and the identification of victims and their killers.

“There are a great number of families who have lost members to abductions,” Thomas Hammarberg, the council’s human rights commissioner, said during a visit to Chechnya this month. “So many people were affected by this it cannot simply be swept under the carpet.”

But, of course, that is what is happening, as construction destroys evidence at the sites of war crimes. The building of the School for the Deaf on Minutka Square, for example, served as a temporary headquarters for Interior Ministry troops who became the focus of a rare, Russian war crimes investigation.

The basement, witnesses said, was used for torture. One Russian officer was convicted of murder. Yet in 2006, the basement was filled with debris, ostensibly to stabilize the site for rebuilding the school, Ms. Estemirova said.

And as building continues, even the question of how to link the names of the missing with the unidentified bodies in Grozny is contentious.

The Council of Europe is encouraging Russia to embrace systematic forensic work in the graves, before too many are disturbed by the building.

Mr. Kadyrov’s government has endorsed a proposal to provide information about the disappeared anonymously on the Internet, separating the question of identification from the politically charged issue of culpability.

Yet disappearances in Chechnya continue. As the Russian policy of “Chechenization” of the conflict has gained traction and, even critics grudgingly say, success in tamping down the violence, abuse by Russian soldiers has waned. Increasingly, the disappearances bear the hallmarks of Chechen-on-Chechen violence.

Many Grozny residents still live in ruins, with yawning gaps in the walls. The city, though, is largely peaceful. Merchants sell cigarettes, stuffed animals and Red Bull energy drinks on the streets. Young men in police uniforms loiter on the sidewalks, spitting out sesame seed husks, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. And the construction boom continues unabated.

But the building provides little solace to Adeni Idalova, a Grozny resident missing two sons. “Our children will never walk on these sidewalks of gold,” she said. “What do we need them for?”

Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, 30.04.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/europe/30grozny.html?ref=world

Deux raisons expliquent sa perplexité. D'abord, Milner revient des Etats-Unis, où il a été impressionné par les mobilisations contre la guerre du Vietnam, et il est rentré en France avec la certitude que plus rien d'intéressant ne pouvait s'y passer. Ensuite, ce militant maoïste croit si fort à la révolution prolétarienne qu'il est incapable de prendre au sérieux la rébellion des étudiants, leurs revendications libertaires, féministes, bref "petites-bourgeoises", voire réactionnaires... "Je raisonnais de la façon marxiste-léniniste la plus sotte, et j'ai vécu Mai 68 comme une contradiction directe avec tout ce que je pensais", constate Milner aujourd'hui.

Certes, dans la Sorbonne occupée, le jeune normalien peut encore s'en remettre à ses auteurs préférés : "Le premier soir, je regarde, je me dis : "Bon, raccroche-toi à la Révolution française, à Jules Michelet..."" Mais quand, à deux pas de l'université, il arrive enfin au Théâtre de l'Odéon, haut lieu de la Commune estudiantine, les grands classiques ne lui sont plus d'aucun secours. "Les loges bondées, la parole qui circule... là, vraiment, ça n'a plus rien à voir avec ce que je peux intégrer. Je me souviens de la phrase prononcée par le comédien américain Julian Beck (animateur du Living Theater) : "Ce que je vois ce soir, c'est la plus belle chose que j'aie jamais vue dans un théâtre." Aujourd'hui encore, je cherche à comprendre ce qu'il voulait dire", murmure le linguiste.

Comme Milner, la plupart des jeunes maos qui s'apprêtent à fonder la Gauche prolétarienne, à l'automne, ont loupé le coche de Mai. Eux qui finiront par incarner, dans l'imaginaire collectif, la "Génération 68", sont en fait passés à côté. Or ce qui est en cause dans un tel fiasco, c'est une certaine relation au monde, à la fois érudite et abstraite. Et qui veut comprendre ce rapport au réel doit faire halte rue d'Ulm, dans le microcosme normalien où naît le maoïsme à la française : "C'est un moment très particulier de l'Ecole normale, explique le philosophe Bernard-Henri Lévy. Avant, c'était l'abbaye de Thélème. Plus tard, ça deviendra un lieu de bachotage. Mais là, pendant cinq ou six années, c'est un laboratoire de la révolution, qui va faire l'expérience de son impossibilité."

Depuis le milieu des années 1960, en effet, le philosophe Louis Althusser règne sur Normale-Sup. Il y enseigne une théorie communiste rajeunie par la doctrine chinoise, qu'il juge plus riche que le dogme soviétique, et moins conciliante que le marxisme italien. A ses disciples, il transmet un violent complexe de supériorité. Et surtout cette double conviction qui ne facilite guère la vie : d'une part, les concepts peuvent renverser des montagnes ; d'autre part, le monde est hors de portée. "La grande idée qui irrigue cette génération est liée au pessimisme historique d'Althusser, précise Bernard-Henri Lévy. On pourrait la formuler ainsi : aussi ardemment qu'une âme tente de sortir d'elle-même, elle ne rencontre jamais le réel."

Cette philosophie, la jeunesse rebelle qui peuple les khâgnes l'envisage pourtant comme la vraie pensée révolutionnaire. Et dans leur esprit, le seul nom d'Althusser suffit à déterminer une vocation : "Intégrer la rue d'Ulm nous était un devoir, car le "caïman" (préparateur à l'agrégation) s'appelait Althusser, confie le philosophe Guy Lardreau, alors élève au lycée Louis-le-Grand (Paris). Personnellement, la vie telle qu'elle va me paraissait dégoûtante. Qu'il y ait de la différence, de l'injustice, m'était insupportable. Alors, la voie naturelle d'un jeune comme moi, c'était d'entrer à l'Ecole normale et d'être payé pendant quatre ans pour apprendre le marxisme-léninisme."

Aux élèves d'Althusser, deux voies s'ouvrent alors, représentées par deux revues : le chemin proprement maoïste est celui des Cahiers marxistes-léninistes ; une piste encore plus théorique s'offre du côté des Cahiers pour l'analyse, tournés vers le psychanalyste Jacques Lacan, dont le séminaire se tient rue d'Ulm de 1964 à 1969. Qu'allaient donc y chercher ces révoltés ? "Au fond, ils pensaient que Mao était à Lénine ce que Lacan était à Freud, répond le philosophe Alain Badiou, qui appartenait au comité de rédaction de la revue. Sous l'impulsion de Mai 68, ils se sont projetés dans le maoïsme via cette puissante analogie : de même qu'il y avait une psychanalyse américaine sclérosée, que Lacan était venu dénoncer, de même il existait un léninisme soviétique ossifié, dont Mao avait interrompu le cours."

De Lacan, les maos héritent également un goût pour les formules lapidaires : "La femme n'existe pas", "il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel", tranche le psychanalyste en de mémorables sentences. "Rejetez vos illusions, préparez-vous à la lutte !", "On demande où est la bourgeoisie ? La bourgeoisie est dans le Parti communiste !", martèlent ses émules de la rue d'Ulm.

Las ! Ni la psychanalyse lacanienne ni le marxisme althussérien ne fournissent aux jeunes "gardes rouges" les outils propres à saisir la nouveauté du "moment" 68. Au contraire, cet appareillage théorique les rend aveugles à l'inédit de l'époque. "En Mai 68, j'ai 24 ans, témoigne le psychanalyste Jacques-Alain Miller, ex-mao et gendre de Lacan. Le monde tel qu'il est, la duperie des pauvres par les riches, tout cela me révolte. Mais sur le moment, je ne comprends rien à ce qui se passe. Jean-Claude Milner et moi sommes perdus dans la préparation d'un numéro des Cahiers pour l'analyse consacré à la "formalisation logique". Quand on sort de chez moi, on traverse la rue de Buci, un mouchoir sur le nez, sans vraiment prêter attention au gaz lacrymogène."

Lorsqu'ils prennent enfin la mesure des événements, après coup, les jeunes maos basculent soudain de l'indifférence à la ferveur, et du doute à la foi. Leur chef, Benny Lévy, ira plus tard jusqu'à parler de Mai 68 comme d'une "divine surprise", dans un curieux clin d'oeil à un mot célèbre du royaliste Charles Maurras, saluant en 1940 l'accession au pouvoir du maréchal Pétain.

Et au début des années 1970, la Gauche prolétarienne a d'autant plus à coeur de prolonger le "miracle" de Mai que ses fondateurs ont traversé l'événement en n'y voyant que du feu. Cette vaste opération de rattrapage, ils la mènent résolument, avec la radicalité systématique sans laquelle il n'y a pas, en France, d'intellectuels dignes de ce nom. Ici, bien sûr, c'est Sartre qui donne le ton : "La France sartrienne, c'est un pays où la question politique est liée à l'engagement des intellectuels, observe Alain Badiou. Dès lors que vous mélangez le maoïsme à l'existentialisme sartrien, vous produisez une position militante qui ne se rencontre nulle part ailleurs : le maoïsme français avec sa forme hypertendue, qui en fait ressortir la subjectivité en partie aberrante et la dimension religieuse."

Voici donc une figure insolite et typiquement française : le normalien "lacano-maoïste". Si ce militant se lance dans un activisme effréné et très concret, qui le mènera parfois jusqu'en prison, son rapport au quotidien n'en demeure pas moins filtré par un enthousiasme ultra-spéculatif. Pour lui, il s'agit toujours de court-circuiter le réel, de passer outre : "Lacan nous avait appris que le désir est irréparable, résume Guy Lardreau. "Il y a un au-delà de la demande", telle était sa thèse de fond. Nous la rapprochions de celle d'Althusser : "Il y a un au-delà de l'opinion." Nous avons essayé de tenir ensemble ces deux "au-delà"."

Pour la petite troupe, voici donc l'horizon : un certain "au-delà". Au-delà du monde présent, de ses inégalités, de sa division. Dans la rue, sur les marchés et à la porte des usines, les maoïstes vont donc jeter toutes leurs forces dans un effort désespéré pour perpétuer le "prodige" de Mai. Pour maintenir vivante, surtout, ce qu'ils considèrent comme sa véritable signification : "Mai 68 n'est pas réductible à l'épisode des barricades au Quartier latin, assure l'éditeur Jean-Pierre Barou, ex-mao lui aussi, aujourd'hui captivé par le bouddhisme tibétain. C'est un instant de communion, dont la vérité se joue dans les années 1970. Qu'on appelle cela "unité des consciences", selon la formule de Sartre, ou "karma", comme disent les bouddhistes, peu importe. L'essentiel est là, dans l'ordre de l'invisible, dans cet "au-delà" de la lutte des classes et de l'histoire."

Emballement idéologique, fureur conceptuelle, extase métaphysique : chez les maos de Normale-Sup, tout est réuni pour que la politique finisse très vite en mystique. Le regard tendu vers un grand soleil chinois dont ils ignorent à peu près tout, sauf ce que leur en dit le bulletin de propagande Pékin-Information, ces brillants esprits agitent la bonne parole de Mao comme d'autres brandissent les textes saints. "Certains d'entre eux étaient intégristes, assure l'intellectuel égyptien Baghat Elnadi, alter ego d'Adel Rifaat, frère de Benny Lévy et converti à l'islam. Je me souviens d'une discussion sur Lin Biao (symbole de la "Révolution culturelle" chinoise) qui avait dit un jour : "Même si on ne la comprend pas, il faut appliquer la pensée de Mao." A la Gauche prolétarienne, certains étaient d'accord avec ça. Le Petit livre rouge, pour eux, c'était un peu le Coran."

Jean Birnbaum, Le Monde, 30.04.08

http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2008/04/29/une-divine-surprise_1039709_3224.html

La policía encontró a Dourdan, de 41 años, casi por casualidad, cuando dormía en el interior de un coche mal aparcado y con una de las luces encendidas. El actor estaba en el asiento del conductor y, al despertar, parecía desorientado y "posiblemente bajo los efectos de las drogas o el alcohol", según informaron. En el coche había éxtasis, heroína, cocaína y otras sustancias.

Warrick fue arrestado por posesión de drogas y estuvo 5 horas encarcelado, hasta que pagó una fianza de 5.000 dólares.

La productora tenía previsto, en mayo, la salida de Dourdan de la serie, cuando terminara la octava temporada. Un portavoz de la CBS, canal que emite C.S.I en Estados Unidos, ha declarado que la cadena no tiene ningún comentario acerca de cómo afectará a la serie esta detención.

Gary Dourdan, antes de ser parte de la policía ciéntifica de CSI, actuó en Un mundo diferente, un spinoff del Show de Bill Cosby, entre 1987 y 1993. También formó parte del reparto de la película Alien: Resurrection en 1997.

El Pais, 30.04.08

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/gente/Warrick/C/S/I/arrestado/posesion/drogas/elpepugen/20080430elpepuage_1/Tes

“There are a number of delegations that don’t believe the Council should be engaged on this, which is regrettable,” said the official, Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy American ambassador.

The briefing, delivered to a closed session of the Council by B. Lynn Pascoe, the under secretary general for political affairs, prompted calls from the United States and its European allies for sending a fact-finding mission or special envoy to the country.

Karen Pierce, Britain’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said Mr. Pascoe had spoken of “a level of political intimidation and violence that I think many Council members found quite chilling.”

But diplomats said the proposals ran into opposition led by South Africa, this month’s president of the Council. “It’s their country; we don’t need a special envoy,” said Dumisani Kumalo, the South African ambassador.

Arguing that the electoral impasse did not constitute the kind of threat to international peace and security that demands the Council’s involvement, Mr. Kumalo said: “Different countries hold elections; some do it very well, some do it not so well. That is the only way you can look at elections around the world.”

The final results of the March 29 election in Zimbabwe have still not been released, and the delay has led to accusations that the nation’s autocratic president, Robert Mugabe, is trying to ward off what appears to have been a defeat for him and his ruling party, ZANU-PF.

Tendai Biti, the general secretary of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., called the outcome of the Council consultations “tragic as it is disappointing.” He added that some countries “have decided to play Ping-Pong with our people.”

Mr. Pascoe said that the United Nations had “a great deal of concern” about the unrest in Zimbabwe and that it was working through the African Union and the Southern African Development Community. “At the moment, I think they have the lead on this issue, so let’s see what the government and the opposition want us to do,” he said.

In Zimbabwe, most of the people who were rounded up Friday at M.D.C. headquarters in Harare, the capital, were freed Tuesday by order of the country’s High Court, without being officially charged.

Alec Muchadehama, the lawyer representing them, said 182 people, who had been scattered to police stations across the capital, were released. Among them were people wounded in the postelection violence, some with broken arms and legs.

Mr. Muchadehama said their detention since Friday in Harare jails would probably deter others from coming forward to lodge complaints with the police about attacks by the ruling party’s youth militias and supporters.

The Herald, the state-owned newspaper, reported Tuesday that on Monday the police had released 29 of those taken into custody Friday, primarily women, babies and the elderly.

In what could be interpreted as a clear warning to those who claim to have been attacked by state-sponsored thugs, the newspaper quoted the chief police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, as having said, “We have profiled everyone we rounded up, so that if need arises, we will always make a follow-up.”

Zimbabwean election officials had raised hopes over the weekend that Mr. Mugabe and his leading challenger for president, Morgan Tsvangirai of the M.D.C., might be called in as early as Monday to begin verifying the outcome of the presidential election, a process expected to take about a week. But Utoile Silaigwana, the deputy chief election officer, said Tuesday that the verification would not begin until Thursday, representing yet another delay in satisfying a growing clamor for Zimbabwe to finally say who won the presidential contest.

Election officials say a recount of 23 of the 210 parliamentary seats is completed, but they have yet to officially announce the results for all 23. There has been no change in the outcome of races in which they have announced recount results.

It is now widely expected that the M.D.C. and a faction that splintered from it will together have a majority in Parliament, the first time the governing party led by Mr. Mugabe has lost control of the legislative branch since Zimbabwe gained independence from white rule in 1980.

Warren Hoge and Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 30.04.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/africa/30zimbabwe.html?ref=africa

La censure de la figure du dalaï-lama et du drapeau tibétain dans les médias chinois a des conséquences ironiques. Il a fallu que quelques ouvriers chinois aperçoivent des images des manifestations émaillant le relais olympique pour qu'ils découvrent qu'ils fabriquaient chaque jour… des drapeaux indépendantistes.

Ces employés d'une manufacture de la province du Guangdong (sud de la Chine) produisaient en effet des drapeaux frappés du soleil et du lion des neiges sans connaître sa signification hautement sensible en Chine, où il est interdit (voir la page dédiée à ce drapeau sur le site du gouvernement tibétain en exil).

Selon le Ming Pao, quotidien de Hong-Kong qui rapporte l'histoire, le propriétaire de l'atelier a assuré aux autorités qu'il se contentait d'assurer une commande passée depuis l'étranger, et que lui non plus ne connaissait pas la signification de l'emblème.

Des milliers de drapeaux ont déjà été fabriqués et emballés, et la police chinoise pensent que plusieurs lots ont déjà été envoyés au commanditaire.

L.S., Le Figaro, 29.04.08

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2008/04/29/01003-20080429ARTFIG00385-des-drapeaux-du-tibet-made-in-china.php

El LSD es una droga de poderosos efectos alucinógenos ante la que sucumbieron artistas e intelectuales, y que influyó significativamente en la música, el arte, la moda, los estudios sobre la consciencia y las terapias psiquiátricas durante los últimos sesenta años.

Hofmann (Baden, 1906) trabajó en los laboratorios Sandoz entre 1929 y 1971, periodo en el que realizó investigaciones que le condujeron al desarrollo de exitosos medicamentos.

Pero su entrada en la historia se debió al descubrimiento del LSD, que ocurrió por accidente el 16 de abril de 1943, cuando se encontraba estudiando los alcaloides del tizón del centeno con el fin de crear un estimulante de la circulación y la respiración.

Cuando había encontrado el vigesimoquinto compuesto de la sustancia que investigaba, hizo caer por descuido una gota sobre la mano, lo que provocó su aturdimiento a causa de sensaciones inesperadas, como angustia, vértigo, visiones sobrenaturales, objetos en movimiento en el espacio, así como sentimientos de felicidad y gratitud. Una prueba que realizó tres días después le produjo los mismos efectos, según relató en sus obras.

Hace dos años, la comunidad científica de Suiza le rindió un homenaje por su centenario bajo la forma de un seminario internacional, en el que se analizó la trascendencia de su descubrimiento.

En esa ocasión, Hofmann dijo que el LSD es "a pesar de todo, algo especial", que actúa sobre la consciencia, "el elemento que distingue al hombre del animal".

Durante años, el LSD fue utilizado como una sustancia médica en psiquiatría y neurología, y producida industrialmente bajo la forma de comprimidos y ampollas por Sandoz entre 1947 y 1966, aunque su acceso estaba limitado al cuerpo médico.

Sin embargo, los abusos en su utilización, particularmente en Estados Unidos, provocaron su prohibición y la farmacéutica dejó de producirla.

En su larga vida, la curiosidad científica de Hofmann no se redujo al estudio de sustancias sintéticas, pues investigó también toda una serie de plantas originarias de Sudamérica y México causantes de efectos similares al LSD y utilizadas en ceremonias mágico-religiosas. Entre ellas, la ayahuasca, el san pedro, la iboga, el peyote y toda una serie de hongos alucinógenos.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s cool perfection propelled her into the A-list. Then she left it all behind to become the ultimate yummy mummy. She talks about family, virtual trainers and daring to eat camembert

The last to go in, I listen to the verdicts of my Continental colleagues with growing dismay. The German emerges patting her leather jacket pockets for her fags. “Babies,” she shrugs. “She talks about nothing else.” The writer from a Madrid glossy, who conducted his interview in Spanish, rates Paltrow’s Castilian “nine out of ten” (she spent many teenage summers as an exchange student), but sighs: “Sooo boring.” Most worryingly, the French journalist warns me to have a long list of questions: “She hasn’t very much to say.”

It doesn’t seem a good start that, when I finally enter the inner sanctum, instead of greeting me with a handshake, Paltrow offers both her elbows. Some oddball germ-aversion? No, Paltrow explains she has slightly damp hands after visiting the bathroom. In the flesh she is eerily perfect: a model’s height and frame, a teeny head with that straight fall of expertly brindled blonde hair, a look only found in nature on sun-kissed children. Her skin is poreless, her face absolutely symmetrical, the only sign that she is 35 is the sheerest crumple when she frowns between her steady blue eyes. She sits with legs curled beneath her bendy, languid body, wearing a long, soft cardigan over a cross-over ballerina top, yoga-ish trousers, strapped ballet flats and, on her wedding finger, a major rock. She looks, in fact, airbrushed, computer-generated, more avatar than real woman.

Which probably explains her casting in Iron Man, a movie based on the Marvel comic, in which she has a minor part as the hero’s assistant, Virginia “Pepper” Potts. The real question is why an actress, once dubbed the first lady of Miramax, star of classy but accessible movies such as Emma and The Talented Mr Ripley, besides more “difficult” indie flicks such as Sylvia (in which she played Plath) and Proof (a tortured maths genius), an actress prone to banging on about her “body of work”, should choose this multiplex-pleaser, described by its star, Robert Downey Jnr, as “the ultimate nerdgasm”.

Of course, it could be money. Iron Man, with its computer game and mega-merchandising, will have landed her a mighty pay cheque. But the reason appears to be even simpler: Paltrow has, at this moment in her life, little interest in being a movie star, her ranking in the Hollywood pantheon or what anyone beyond her immediate family thinks about her. She chose Iron Man because it was being shot 15 minutes from her house.

“When I had my daughter, I fell so madly in love with her that the thought of being away from her for even a day made me sick,” she says in her rather bored monotone. Her dippy locution – many “likes” and “totally amazings” – which is born of living her first 11 years in LA, combines with the nasal drawl of her teenage years in Manhattan. “It’s probably quite obsessive. But I couldn’t bear the idea. Also I had worked such a lot in my twenties, I think I had burn-out a bit. Then I had this amazing new thing come into my life and I just had no interest. It was, like, the fire was out. I had no desire. And then I basically didn’t work. I did Proof when I was pregnant with Apple and stopped when I was about four months and then I just cooked and did yoga...”

In the run-up to turning 30, Paltrow made 21 films in nine years, living the necessarily self-promoting Hollywood life, complete with tabloid-fodder failed relationships to Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck. She was a diligent red-carpet attendee and fashion show front-rower, her impeccable glamour and poise winning her praise as a throwback to old Hollywood, in particular Grace Kelly, whose cool yet strong-jawed looks she shares, along with a beautiful blankness that allows directors to project their specific vision upon her.

But it was a life of 5am calls, hair and make-up trailers, 14-hour working days, pressure and tumult. And Paltrow says, since the birth of Apple, four, and Moses, two, she has just not been able to figure out how to square this old life – one she had wearied of anyway – with motherhood. “It was very hard for me to get my head around the idea of how one is supposed to do this. I mean, I’m a woman and a mother, but also an actor. And how will I not feel terrible if I go to work? So I said I’ll wait until Moses is a year.”

Apart from a minor role in her brother Jake’s directorial debut, The Good Night, and a few cameos, she has barely acted for three years (although she has earned gazillions as head spokesmodel for Estée Lauder). “So my agent got this call about a movie,” she gushes. “It’s Iron Man and it’s a comic and I said, ‘Okaaaay…’ and then he told me who was in it. And I’d always wanted to work with Robert. Oh, my God, he is sooo great! You have no idea! It’s insane! And Jeff Bridges! Oh, I love him so much! I thought I can’t be prejudiced because it’s a big-budget movie with a dream cast. Like, if it was a tiny movie, I’d be doing it. Then Robert called me and said, ‘Don’t you want to be in a movie that people might actually see?’ I thought, [she giggles] ‘What would that be like?’”

And then it turned out the studio was close to her home in LA. “So our nanny, who we love, would bring the kids for lunch, and I didn’t work five days a week. And a lot of time I would work from noon to midnight so I could be there all morning. But that is not the norm.”

Paltrow’s bodyguard-driver enters bearing a cup of herbal tea – “Oh, thank you, Terry!” – and removes a similar empty one.

It sounds irritatingly precious, the notion that a powerful, rich movie star married to an equally wealthy rock star – Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay – might have trouble figuring out her childcare. But the point is Paltrow doesn’t need to work, and, with winning an Oscar at age 26 (for Shakespeare in Love), has nothing left to prove. But more than that, motherhood, after her turbulent A-list decade, restored the stability and wholeness she herself enjoyed as a child.

Was there ever a more beloved daughter than Gwyneth, whose father Bruce Paltrow took her to Paris aged ten, “because I want you to see it first with a man who will love you for ever, no matter what”? Certainly, having adoring parents with a life-long marriage, besides the wherewithal as industry insiders – her father was a producer-director, her mother, Blythe Danner, is an actress – to guide her career, makes her that rarest of actresses: one not lacking self-esteem.

“I was raised in privilege, which was very fortunate as I was able to have a great education,” she says. “But my parents were smart. My father made it very clear that the day I left university [she dropped out of the University of California in her first year studying art history] I was on my own. He didn’t give me any money and I really struggled and I waitressed and bought cigarettes out of tips and tried to get to auditions with no gas.

“But the worst thing you can do is give a child a trust fund. They know they’ll get it when they’re 18 or 21. And it just kills passion.” I ask if she can imagine sending a penniless Apple out to waitress when she leaves college and Paltrow looks at me as if I’m insane. “But she’s only three!” she cries.

When Bruce Paltrow died a few days after his daughter’s 30th birthday it ended what she calls “the defining relationship of my life”. It was then, broken with mourning, she met Martin, whose background echoes her own: solid, middle-class parents, high if at times preachy values and disdain for the Dionysian side of fame. In just over a year, they were married, with a daughter: it gives her great solace that although her father never met Apple, a quarter of her is him.

Does she worry that during this career break her place will quickly be filled with younger stars? “I don’t care,” she says. “I’m lucky because somewhere along the line my identity stopped being racked up with, ‘What’s my position, what do people think?’ I realised, ‘Oh my God, I’m so lucky ever to do this job and if it’s there for me when I come back, great. And if it’s not, I’ve had an amazing life, one that barely anyone gets to have.’

“It helps spending time in London, because you’re not surrounded by showbiz people. When you’re in LA, people make you feel you’re not where you once were. And you leave and think, ‘What do I care, it is nothing to do with my essence at all.’”

And so Paltrow, realising her luck, is getting on with being the grand empress of yummy mummies. She loves nothing more than flicking through books of fabric swatches and cooking. “I’m a real homebody and that is something I have to work against, to engage more in my professional life.” Does she drop Apple off at school? “Yes.” Does she bake for the school fair? “Yes, once.” Does she hang out with other mothers? At this she gets snippy. “I have a lot to do,” she says indignantly. “I have a son. I have to do my exercise and e-mails and my books and scripts.”

She works out two hours a day with a sort of virtual trainer who watches her performance online in whichever of her three homes – London, New York, Long Island – she is living. After children, her figure has gone up from a UK 8 to a size 10. I ask if the descriptions of her strict diet are exaggerated, and receive a short lecture on the principles of macrobiotics. She is advised by what she calls her “nutrition people”. No processed foods or refined sugar... eat locally and seasonally... whole grains and vegetables... blah de blah. But, she says, she’s so relaxed now that if a baguette and camembert are put before her, she might eat the lot. With a glass of red wine. I don’t say that earlier, bored, I snooped downstairs to the kitchen where it appeared – while we journos ate white bread – bowls of noodles and vegetables, brown rice and walnuts were served up, presumably, for Gwynnie.

But when I enquire if domestic arrangements are tricky when both her career and Martin’s are governed by international industries, a curtain of distrust descends. “There’s nothing fixed,” she says politely but finally. “He doesn’t like me to talk about him. Forgive me if I can’t answer. He’s very strict about it.” Paltrow has said the couple’s decision never to appear in public was to downscale their profile, to assert that their relationship was in the private domain. “I have been out with someone very famous before,” she has said, recalling Brad.

Yet perversely, this only fuels speculation that their marriage is in trouble and heightens public irritation with the couple. It feels they have dishonoured the celebrity quid pro quo: we give you the wealth and acclaim in exchange for a glimpse inside your dreamy lives.

Certainly Paltrow, for all her beauty, class and talent, lacks a warmly loyal female fanbase. Perhaps because, unlike Renée Zellweger, say, she does not appear to need us. She seems too superior, too perfect... or at least is unwilling to reveal her flaws. Women admire her only as an upscale fashion plate. Moreover she gives the impression of entitlement, as if her golden career is something she was born to, but maybe it was. Certainly when she refers to herself as “an artist” I muse that few British actors would use that lofty term. And when I ask if she dreams up her own projects, sees characters in books or history she’d love to play, she says, with supreme confidence that the world will offer up its prizes: “You know, I always believe that the right thing finds me.”

And for all her years in Britain, she still has that uptown Manhattan preciousness that leaves you not knowing whether to laugh or scream. Wrapping up, she asks me the ages of my children (11 and 9), then says with feeling: “You see, mine will die without me there. It makes sense from a Darwinian standpoint to have you there. Because by the time they’re 9 and 11 they won’t die if you’re not there. But mine will literally die, you know what I mean!” I follow her from the room, expecting her to turn to say goodbye but, instead without a word, she just keeps walking. Terry the bodyguard, her American publicist, her two British publicists and a couple of other nameless attendants bustle in her wake, out to a smoke-windowed, black people carrier which sweeps away, leaving me in Dalí’s bordello alone.

Janice Turner, The Times, 26.04.08

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3789171.ece?token=null&offset=0

Le look hippie ? Il faudra attendre Woodstock et le mouvement Flower power, soit un an. Les minijupes et la bombe Courrèges – chaussures plates, robes courtes, effacement de la taille et des hanches, le tout dans un blanc lumineux ? Raté, c’était en 1965. Françoise Hardy enveloppée dans une robe tunique de métal et un maillot en rhodoïd signés Paco Rabanne ? Pas de chance, c’était l’année précédente. Alors quoi, où sont les images de 1968 ? Comment s’habillait-on pour faire la révolution ?
Certainement pas dans les salons des couturiers. L’un d’eux, Cristobal Balenciaga, décide d’ailleurs de fermer sa maison cette année-là. « La légende veut qu’il ait pris cette décision au regard des événements de mai 68, mais il l’avait prise avant, confie Pamela Golbin, conservatrice en chef des collections modernes et contemporaines mode et textile aux Arts Décoratifs. En fait, 1968 marquait les 50 ans de carrière de Balenciaga. À 72 ans, le couturier s’est rendu compte que c’était la fin d’une époque, d’un style de vie et que les choses allaient changer. Personne n’était au courant et même son personnel ne l’a su qu’après la fermeture de la maison : à cause des grèves, les courriers de licenciement ne sont pas arrivés à temps. »

Le style se démocratise

Le baisser de rideau de Balenciaga est certes représentatif de la fin de la suprématie de la couture. Mais l’amorce d’un changement dans les modes de consommation, et le rapport à la mode en général s’était fait sentir dès le début de la décennie. Dès 1962, Cardin enchante la presse avec sa silhouette « cosmonaute » et met en place le système de diffusion sous licences qui allait faire sa fortune. La démocratisation de la mode est en marche.

« Au printemps 1965, Courrèges lance de son côté une mode inédite et inattendue, reprend Pamela Golbin. C’est une vraie rupture avec le passé qui coïncide avec l’arrivée d’une nouvelle génération incarnée par Emanuel Ungaro ou Paco Rabanne. Tous vont lancer des lignes de prêt-à-porter. Mais surtout, cette année-là, l’arrivée massive du pantalon va tout changer. » Parallèlement, la génération des baby-boomers arrive à l’âge adulte et veut autre chose : une nouvelle culture, de nouvelles musiques, de nouveaux looks.

Et 1968, en France, se place sous une vague bleue : celle du denim made in USA. Apparu dans les années 50, il devient alors véritablement unisexe et symbolise un moyen efficace de gommer les différences entre les classes sociales : l’égalité à travers la mode, l’uniforme au-dehors des usines, on n’avait jamais vu ça !

Les créateurs entrent en scène

Si le catalogue de La Redoute fêtait déjà ses 40 ans d’existence, seuls les grands magasins permettaient un accès simple à la mode : à l’époque, la plupart des femmes faisaient réaliser des modèles vus dans les magazines par les couturières de leur quartier. Autour de 68, les choses se précipitent : Sonia Rykiel, déjà installée dans la diffusion au travers de la boutique Laura, va industrialiser son style et sa maille. Elle fonde sa marque et s’installe à Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Rive droite, la très dynamique Françoise Chassagnac ouvre Victoire, la première boutique multimarques : « Tous les jeunes créateurs débarquaient chez moi pour me proposer leurs modèles, se souvient-elle, l’œil toujours aussi pétillant. Cacharel y avait installé ses chemisiers en crépon et en Liberty, lancés en 1967. Et pour la première fois, les femmes n’exigeaient pas que telle jupe soit assortie à tel manteau : elles commençaient à prendre de la liberté avec la mode. Mieux, elles venaient essayer un vêtement et repartaient immédiatement avec, sans avoir à attendre qu’il soit coupé, une révolution ! »

Emmanuelle Khanh, Chloé, Christiane Bailly et Michèle Rosier via sa marque V de V (abréviation de Vêtements de Vacances) deviennent les premières vraies stylistes de prêt-à-porter. Une certaine Chantal Thomass, à peine âgée de 18 ans, signe ses premiers modèles sous son label Ter et Bantine, lequel, dès l’année suivante, importera en France tout l’esprit de la culture hippie américaine.

Tous les styles se téléscopent

Alors que le mouvement des jeunes créateurs s’organise (il sera définitivement mis en place en 1971 sous l’appellation Créateurs Industriels), la mode multiplie les contradictions. Ainsi, quand les femmes du Womens Lib’ appellent à jeter au bûcher les soutiens-gorge, l’Américain Playtex n’hésite pas à lancer son Cœur-Croisé. En France, consciente que les jeunes femmes assument une certaine liberté sexuelle tout en affichant un style vestimentaire asexué, la marque Huit apparaît sur le marché avec un soutien-gorge triangle poids plume. Chez Dim, on découvre les Collants Tels Quels, pour répondre à la minijupe. Quant à la créatrice de dessous Sabbia Rosa, elle ruse pour vendre ses strings au nez et à la barbe des féministes, dont la librairie est installée juste en face de sa boutique. Tous les styles se télescopent : tuniques et pantalons androgynes contre minirobes sexy. Saharienne au décolleté plongeant griffée Saint Laurent contre veste à col Mao. Long contre court, avec, quelques mois plus tard, l’écrasante victoire des grands jupons hippie.

S’il n’a pas laissé une empreinte folle dans les archives des musées de mode, ce capharnaüm aura marqué par l’explosion d’une contre-culture. « Woodstock et les beatniks ont tout changé, explique Pamela Golbin. Ils vont revenir aux sources du vêtement grâce au fait main. Leur trip écolo ressemble finalement un peu à ce que nous vivons en ce moment avec toute cette mode verte et bio car, comme à cette époque, notre monde explose lui aussi d’un peu partout ».

Car il n’y a pas que la mode qui soit un éternel recommencement.

Claire Mabrut, Le Figaro, 30.04.08

http://madame.lefigaro.fr/mode/enquetes/260-sous-les-paves-la-mode/1

Varios elementos están poniendo viento en las velas de South Stream. El primer ministro griego, Costas Karamanlis, y el presidente ruso en funciones, Vladímir Putin, firmaron ayer en Moscú un acuerdo concerniente al paso por el territorio griego del gasoducto. Bulgaria ya lo hizo en enero. La victoria electoral de Silvio Berlusconi, que mantiene desde hace años una estrecha relación con Putin, consolida el compromiso con el proyecto de Italia, que tiene un interés estratégico claro en South Stream, en razón de su elevadísimo grado de dependencia energética y del trayecto planificado para Nabucco, que corre, de Bulgaria a Austria, lejos de la península. La colaboración entre ENI y Gazprom, además, se extiende a otros proyectos.

Mientras South Stream, cuyo coste estimado es de unos 10.000 millones de euros, allana su terreno hacia la fase de construcción, Nabucco permanece estancado. "El proyecto ruso-italiano parece ganar velocidad, mientras Nabucco tiene un problema irresuelto con el paso a través de Turquía", observa en conversación telefónica desde París William Ramsay, vicedirector ejecutivo de la Agencia Internacional de la Energía.

La negociación con Ankara del consorcio de Nabucco -compuesto por seis compañías y bendecido por Bruselas- tiene como trasfondo la dialéctica sobre la adhesión de Turquía a la UE. Ankara, según muchos analistas, trata de utilizar Nabucco para obtener activos en otras mesas y la negociación no avanza.

"Los progresos de South Stream podrían determinar un giro en la actitud de Ankara", especula Ramsay. Nabucco fue lanzado ya en 2002, cinco años antes de su rival, y adquirió un rango de proyecto prioritario para la UE tras la crisis de abastecimiento generada por un conflicto ruso-ucranio en 2006. Pero hasta que no se alcance un acuerdo con Turquía, Nabucco no puede despegar. La fecha de inicio de los trabajos de ambos proyectos depende totalmente de los acuerdos políticos, y está previsto culminarlos en torno a 2013.

"Nabucco tiene otro problema, que es garantizar abastecimiento suficiente para una obra de semejante tamaño", comenta en una entrevista telefónica Oksana Antonenko, analista del Instituto Internacional de Estudios Estratégicos de Londres. "A no ser que Turkmenistán se comprometa más firmemente, o la situación política cambie en Irán, de momento creo que no hay masa crítica para rentabilizar Nabucco", dice. El coste estimado del proyecto, que iría del sur de Cáucaso a Viena, es de 5.000 millones de euros.

La diferencia en el coste de los dos proyectos es en buena parte debida a la complicación técnica de hacer pasar gran parte de South Stream debajo del lecho del mar Negro. La capacidad prevista de los ambos gasoductos es similar, alrededor de los 30.000 millones de metros cúbicos al año. Juntos cubrirían el 10% de la demanda europea prevista para 2020. Actualmente, Rusia cubre el 40% de las importaciones de gas de la UE, cuya demanda crece a un ritmo del 3% anual.

Las autoridades rusas tratan de tranquilizar el escenario repitiendo que los dos proyectos no están en competición. Ramsay discrepa. "Hay una clara competición en la planificación", dice.

La ventaja estratégica que está adquiriendo South Stream no significa que el proyecto esté exento de nudos irresueltos. "Al igual que Nabucco, el proyecto Gazprom-ENI tiene incógnitas en la vertiente del abastecimiento. La capacidad de producción rusa tendrá un declive en el futuro, porque Gazprom no ha invertido suficientemente para expandirla. No hay actualmente gas extra para llenar South Stream, a no ser que se reduzca el flujo a través de la vía ucrania". Pero, en perspectiva, Rusia cuenta con grandes reservas de gas: representa más de un cuarto del total mundial.

"Está claro que se trata de un juego puramente estratégico", concluye la analista Antonenko. "Ambos proyectos se enfrentan a problemas comerciales más o menos relevantes. La clave es la presión, el uso estratégico que se puede hacer de ellos. Si South Stream va más rápido, es por el fracaso de la UE en concertar una política energética común".

Andrea Rizzi, El Pais, 30.04.08

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Rusia/gana/UE/carrera/gas/elpepiint/20080430elpepiint_2/Tes

“My lip gloss is poppin’

My lip gloss is cool

All the boys keep jockin’

They chase me after school.”

“I wear lip gloss all the time,” said Pearlie Morrison, 17, who came decked out in the same shade of purple that Lil Mama wears in the picture painted on the tour bus.

Ms. Smellie, 16, added, “She’s swaggerific.”

That swagger was nearly not displayed: for murky reasons the show was canceled at the last minute, leaving her fans milling about, and Lil Mama, who has a li’l temper, hiding out in the bus, upset. But eventually she rallied, 5-foot-3 in hot-pink patent leather Doc Martens, to arrange group photos on a deserted street corner. She led her fans in a chant, “4-29-08!” — the release date for her debut album, “VYP: Voice of the Young People” (Jive Records).

A long-delayed follow-up to “Lip Gloss,” “Voice of the Young People” is a curious mix of schoolyard froth — the second single, “G-Slide (Tour Bus)” is built around a sample from the children’s song “The Wheels on the Bus” — and adult advice. When “G-Slide,” released last fall, was met with indifference, her label held the album, repositioning the rapper as more of a multifaceted artist — she also sings — and pairing her with hit-makers like the producer Scott Storch, the singer-rapper T-Pain and the young R&B star Chris Brown. The collaboration with those performers resulted in the Top 10 single “Shawty Get Loose,” which was also used on “Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew,” the MTV show on which Lil Mama was a judge, dispensing mostly supportive, if occasionally nonsensical, commentary.

Now Lil Mama, 18, is in a rare position in hip-hop: a female M.C. aiming to jump from dance-floor hotness to inspiration.

“Growing up in a neighborhood like mine, I always had to be a positive influence on the youth,” she said. “I’m the outlet of the things that we want the world to know about us.”

Her determination to be viewed as more than a novelty act — as chronicled in the album’s second track, “One Hit Wonder” — was bolstered by the death of her mother, Tara Kirkland, in December after a four-year battle with cancer. At an interview at a house her father, Allen Brunner, known as True, owns in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, where she shared a cherry Popsicle with her 3-year-old sister, Jasmine; spun around on an office chair; and sang along to an old episode of “Yo! MTV Raps,” Lil Mama explained how Lil Mama grew up.

For starters, the name: born Niatia Kirkland, the oldest girl of eight siblings, she was nicknamed Lil Mama early on by her mother and aunt. “As the years went on, everybody said, ‘She lives up to her name, she’s too grown,’ ” Lil Mama said. She and her brothers and sisters and various cousins bounced between living with her mother in Harlem and her father in and around East New York.

“We grew up kind of poor, on welfare and stuff like that,” she said. “It was a crazy lifestyle, moving around, from apartment to apartment, shelter to apartment. It was kind of hard.”

Lil Mama still lives with her family in Brooklyn; they appear on the album and in her videos. “I can’t be on my own yet,” she said, especially so soon after her mother’s death.

“My mother taught me ev-er-y-thing there is to know,” she emphasized. “As I get older, I just learn how to put it into place better. It’s like product placement. Lesson placement.” Her album has a song called “College” in which she raps about visiting a campus with her mother. Would she ever consider enrolling?

Pause for a high five.

For sure, Lil Mama said, she would like to take some courses — online, to accommodate her touring schedule, perhaps in psychology. Teachers have also had a tremendous impact on her life, she said, helping her focus on her goals as a performer.

She started dancing as a child; her father ran an independent record imprint, Familiar Faces, and released her songs on mix tapes. Through a management company “Lip Gloss” was eventually propelled to radio.

And for contemporary hip-hop, Lil Mama is especially radio-friendly. Though her mother, she said, “would curse, she was raw, her mouth was ridiculous,” she doesn’t use profanity. “That takes away from who you have potential to be,” she said. “The best, the greatest, smart, innovative, creative. That’s what I am.”

“When was the last time a new female M.C. on the scene — from Harlem, from Brooklyn — put out an album that people actually care about?” she asked. “Lil’ Kim? Foxy Brown? It’s been years. Lil Mama’s a big deal.” Another high five.

She even compared herself to Christopher Wallace, a k a Notorious B.I.G., a k a Biggie Smalls. “Big Poppa, Lil Mama. It’s not a coincidence, is it?” she said.

On Monday night Lil Mama had her release party at Room Service, a club in Manhattan. Meant to celebrate the birth of “hip pop,” it had a vague baby shower theme, with balloons, enormous blocks spelling out “VYP,” banners announcing “It’s a girl!” and baby bottles blinged out with rhinestones. Lil Mama wore a baby bonnet and sucked a pacifier at the MTV Video Music Awards last fall, but she took the stage wearing a leather jacket, tutu and knee-high Converse sneakers. (Shades of Avril Lavigne, with whom she collaborated on “Girlfriend,” the album’s bonus “hip-pop” track.)

She bossed the audience into submission — “Yo yo yo, y’all getting disrespectful!” she lectured — and gave the first copies of her album to her grandmother and her father as her older brothers crowded around her. Then Lil Mama launched into “L.I.F.E.,” one of her most serious songs.

“L is for the liars that have surrounded me

I, insecurity, my head down in the streets

F, my future, there isn’t one

E, eternal hope.”

She only got a few lines in, though, before she began to cry. “I just remember everything that we went through,” she said, addressing her family. “We been through some of the worst life experiences.”

Tears streaming, Lil Mama struggled to finish the song. Afterward, she turned away from the crowd, pulled a tube out of her pocket and carefully reapplied her lip gloss.

Melena Ryzik, The New York Times, 30.04.08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/arts/music/30mama.html?ref=music

El cautiverio de los hijos de Fritzl y el de Natascha Kampusch no han sido casos aislados. También se recuerda que en febrero de 2007 se descubrió en la ciudad de Linz que una madre había mantenido encerradas a sus hijas en condiciones miserables durante siete años, sin que nadie reaccionara. Y vuelve a la memoria de los austriacos el drama de Maria K, una joven de 23 años que padecía trastornos mentales y era maltratada y obligada por sus padres adoptivos a dormir en un sarcófago de madera en el jardín.

Echaba Friedrich mano del vocabulario psicoanalítico para exponer cómo "Sigmund Freud desarrolló con su hija la teoría de la represión, que muestra cómo los individuos son capaces de no ver lo que no quieren". "Que esta teoría venga de un austriaco no es ninguna casualidad; somos expertos", subraya el psiquiatra.

La historia reciente del país ha agravado esta tendencia según Friedrich, que recuerda la "Austria de los nazis, en la que todos eran espías y se denunciaban unos a otros, con el resultado de que en la sociedad de hoy, la denuncia y el espionaje son asuntos muy mal vistos". Tanto, que ni siquiera un crimen de este calibre captó la atención de los vecinos y las autoridades.

Del viejo Fritzl considera el psiquiatra que es "probablemente un hombre superdotado en lo intelectual", con una "descomunal vena narcisista: era el dios de abajo, ya que no podía serlo de arriba; como Lucifer, se hizo señor del infierno".

Otros expertos buscan explicaciones distintas, pero no muy lejanas. "Lo típico austriaco es el asunto de la autoridad, que viene de la época del imperio", comenta Leonardo Shey, un psicoanalista austro-argentino, que ejerce en Viena. "Fritzl representaba la autoridad en la familia y también para el vecindario era un tipo respetable y querido. Mucha gente aquí cierra los ojos a la realidad. Mientras una autoridad no intervenga todo está supuestamente bien. No hay rebelión, no hay coraje civil", afirma este especialista. "Lo que acaba de ocurrir en Amstetten es una oportunidad para repensar las cosas en Austria, si se tiene la valentía de reconocer que esta atrocidad no sólo es casualidad y mala suerte. Entonces habrá que pensar cómo cambiar para prevenir".

Armin Thurnher, director del atrevido semanario vienés Falter, describe esta sensación: "Otra vez está aquí. El mal con el que uno nunca cuenta. El mal incomprensible en un idilio con jardín y sótanos de cemento, que sólo después parece fantasmal". Aunque el ensayista aborda con cautela su propia tentación de interpretar lo incomprensible, admite que le llama la atención la profesión de Josef Fritzl, el autor del crimen. "La posguerra austriaca es una historia de técnicos. El técnico representa alguien muy trabajador, inocente y hábil". Recuerda que el secuestrador de Natascha Kampusch había estudiado ingeniería de comunicación, y también era ingeniero Franz Fuchs, el hombre que, de 1993 a 1997, aterrorizó Austria enviando cartas-bomba que construía en su dormitorio sin que se enteraran nunca sus padres, que miraban la tele en la sala contigua. El balance de las obsesiones de este ingeniero fueron cuatro muertos y 15 heridos.

Anoche, unas 200 personas se congregaron en la plaza principal de Amstetten, con velas encendidas para expresar, con un "mar de luces", su consternación por el caso de los Fritzl, informa Efe. El párroco Peter Bösendorfer dijo en el acto: "La tristeza, la ira, quizás también el odio, nos han acompañado en los últimos días. Tuvimos que tomar nota de que en nuestra ciudad había algo que no podíamos comprender".

J. Gómez/J. Rudich, El Pais, 30.04.08

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/pais/sentado/divan/elpepusoc/20080430elpepisoc_5/Tes

This sci-fi scenery is peculiar to southern China and concentrated in Yongding County. The bizarre edifices, which the Chinese say foreign surveillance has, over the years, mistaken for missile silos and U.F.O.’s, are decades- and centuries-old and made of rammed earth. They are still homes to the Hakka, a Han Chinese nomadic group.

Getting there is an effort — from the closest airport, in Xiamen, a driver will take you to Yongding in three to four hours for about 1,500 yuan round trip, around $210 at 7.13 yuan to the dollar. The reward, however, is a tour of unvarnished rural China, one-of-a-kind grass-roots architecture and an ancient culture’s fading traditions.

The Hakka communal homes-cum-fortresses have lured foreign architects and anthropologists for the last 20 years and, more recently, a trickle of tourists seeking obscure corners of China and overseas Hakka seeking their roots. Noting this interest, China, more often known for demolishing historic structures than protecting them, has begun restoring the earthen houses and last year nominated them for World Heritage Site status. Unesco will consider the nomination this summer.

In the meantime, many Hakka residents are upgrading to modern housing and to jobs in the cities. They are less interested in the cultural value of their dwellings, which adds to the sense of urgency among those wishing to preserve, or see, remnants of China’s past.

The houses, mostly built between the 1300s and 1960s, were designed to deter outsiders and wild animals. Starting around A.D. 300, wars, famine and persecution drove Chinese in north and central China to flee southward. These migrants became known as “ke jia” or Hakka, meaning “the guest people,” by unwelcoming natives. Many Hakka prospered, including Deng Xiaoping, the engineer of present-day China’s market economy, and Singapore’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew.

In southern Fujian, the Hakka settled in the mountains and created insular homesteads like the covered-wagon circles of America’s pioneers, with rooms facing an open-air common space.

Feng shui correct, the compounds have withstood bullets, fires, quakes and typhoons. They’re at least three stories tall, and their outer walls are three to five feet thick. The entrance is a wooden slab sheathed in iron. Windows are tiny and only on the upper floors. A well is inside; outhouses are outside. Most ingenious are the walls — a mixture of soil, lime, pebbles and wood chips held together by soupy glutinous rice and brown sugar, pounded into impregnability, giving the structures their name, “tulou,” or “earthen building.”

The Zhengchang tulou spans 260 feet and has two concentric circles of different heights that contain 250 rooms. In its center is a white and pink ancestral-worship hall. Red lanterns wave from the eaves, and several rooms have become souvenir shops. Livelier and more down-to-earth is Wenchang Lou, set amid terraced rice paddies. The cobblestone courtyard is a huge playpen for youngsters, hens and puppies. On a visit last August, I peeked into the living areas; one contained gray-haired players clattering mah-jongg tiles. A wobbly wooden staircase led to storage rooms on the second floor; on the third floor were bedrooms and hanging laundry. Wenchang’s 30 families each owns a stack of rooms. They and the families in four tulou nearby all share one ancestor and surname, Huang.

Customs that have disappeared elsewhere in China linger here. The tulou have auspicious names (Wenchang means flourishing culture), and pasted on the doors are wishes for prosperity, health and harmony written in traditional characters on red paper. Several clans use current wall calendars with the anachronistic image of a rosy-cheeked Mao as “the red sun.”

For the most part, the Hakka welcome visitors. Hospitality is a tradition, and at several tulou, I was invited to have tea.

Around 8 a.m., loudspeakers reminded the Huangs to clean up for an inspection by Unesco advisers. The government also ordered residents to shoo out their chickens and ducks, according to 60-year-old Huang Shungeng. World Heritage Site status is important, he said, but won’t really affect him. (If it means the poultry are permanent exiles, though, he’d like the government to help pay for new coops.)

SOME locals are realizing the payoff of attracting visitors to Yongding. Li Shuyang, who was 18 when she married a Huang, lives in a concrete building near the Huang tulou cluster. The couple rents rooms to travelers for 30 yuan per person and proudly emphasizes the shower and squat flush toilet.

Ms. Li, now 40, cooked a dinner of wild greens and mushrooms, and ladled a broth whose coconut-cream scent came from a local root. She hated tulou living: “It’s not sanitary enough,” she said.

The nationwide migration from the countryside to urban areas has taken its toll. In the Wenchang tulou, I met Huang Yangcan, who had left home in his 20s and was visiting his brother, a farmer, and widowed mother. He runs a clothing business in Kunming, a city of four million. “Of course I’d rather live in the tulou,” said Mr. Huang, 36. “It’s less pressure; everyone’s a friend; we all know each other. The environment is nicer, but you can’t make money.”

Lin Yunchang, 80, belongs to his clan’s 23rd generation. “At 15, 16, people leave to seek work,” he said. The three-centuries-old square tulou that he’s never left has 30 residents, mainly grandparents raising their grandchildren. It has 100 at Chinese New Year, when many people visit their ancestral villages. “No one’s yet returned to retire,” though, Mr. Lin added.

Most Hakka view the buildings merely as shelter and their location and functions as outdated, noted Ping Yip, a recent master’s degree graduate in Hong Kong who researched and lived in the tulou. Yet, she said, “if all the residents move out, the tulou loses its cultural significance as a human settlement.”

The government and conservationists, meanwhile, see cultural heritage as the tulou’s raison d’être. If Unesco rewards their legacy with a place on the World Heritage list, the resulting tourism and investment might help resuscitate the local economy and offset the city-bound stampede.

Barbara Koh, The New York Times, 27.04.08

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/travel/27heads.html