2009.1.24纽约时报

Une sélection hebdomadaire offerte par SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times LENSA global slowdown, a credit crunch, rising unemployment, falling markets: “It’s a wonder- ful time,” said the Reverend A. R. Bernard. As Mr. Bernard, the founder and senior pastor of the Chris- tian Cultural Center in Brook- lyn, New York, explained to Paul Vitello of The Times, bad economies can be good for churches. Calling the current turmoil “a great evangelistic opportunity for us,” he said congregations grow in times of anxiety. “When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors.” Ministers are not alone in seeing opportunity, spiritual or otherwise, in the midst of distress. In France, for example, some leading intellectuals are celebrating the recession- ary struggles of the nation’s luxury-goods industry, which they say has perverted the culture’s values. “They represent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth,” Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written several books about consumer- ism, told Elaine Sciolino of The Times. “They have no need to exist.” Many people, Ms. Sciolino wrote, now see “the potential for a restora- tion of the classic French virtues of restraint and modesty.” Similarly, Michael Cannell wrote an obituary in The Times for the inflated design world of recent years, with its lavish parties and Campana Brothers chairs selling for nearly $9,000. In its wake, there may emerge a more utilitar- ian emphasis on serving the needs of the masses, as happened during the 1930s. “American designers took the De- pression as a call to arms,” Kristina Wilson, an author and art historian, told Mr. Cannell. “It was a chance to make good on the Modernist promise to make affordable, intelligent design for a broad audience.” And if a recession can be good for design, it might be even better for the United States Department of Defense. The anemic job market has made mili- tary careers suddenly look attractive again. As Lizette Alvarez reported in The Times, last year all active-duty and reserve forces met or exceeded their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004. But perhaps nobody is enjoying the downturn as much as the skateboard- ers of California. As housing develop- ments have stalled and foreclosures have skyrocketed across the state, skaters are finding an abundance of abandoned swimming pools that, when emptied, make perfect skating arenas. A skateboarder in Fresno, California, who calls himself Josh Peacock told Jesse McKinley and Malia Wollan of The Times, “We have more pools than we know what to do with. I can’t even keep track of them any more.” Skaters are flocking to the state from as far away as Australia and Germany. And they know whom to thank. In a Web posting referring to the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose policies some blame for the housing bubble, one skater wrote, “God bless Greenspan, patron saint of pool skatin’.” It may not be the legacy Alan Green- span had in mind. But these days, maybe he would settle for it. Washington ThE WoRLD LooKED very different on the frigid Saturday in February 2007 when Barack obama stood in front of the old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, and declared himself a candidate for president of the United States. The “surge” in Iraq was in its first weeks, and it seemed hard to imagine that by the time the next president took office, in 710 days, there would be a consensus about the pace of an American withdrawal. The two Palestinian factions, hamas and Fatah, were talking about a peace- ful power-sharing agreement. The Dow was at 12,580, on the way to 14,000 that sum- mer. General Motors was making money selling cars even while reporting some concerns about “nonprime mortgages” held by its financing division. And the greatest worries about China and India were that their economies were growing so fast they could overheat. The challenges that Mr. obama will begin to confront now, in short, bear little resemblance to those from two years ago when he conceded that “there is a certain presumptuousness in this — a certain audacity — to this announcement.” The agenda he is setting out to enact now is signifi- cantly altered from what he had in mind then, partly by choice but mostly by circumstance. over the past two years, and especially in the two and a half months since his election, he has spoken less and less about Iraq and more and more about stabilizing the world economy. Be- hind the scenes, his national staff has raced to reassess strategies for Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran and Pakistan, even before logging on to their secure computers in the West Wing. “he’s facing the classic problem of having to handle a number of crises before he’s really got time to set out a long-term architecture,” said G. John Ikenberry, a DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES On his journey to the White House, Barack Obama, seen here in a television camera’s viewfinder, has had to recalibrate his focus as events like the financial crisis supervened. The Upside of the Downturn 6 8 MONEY & BUSINESS China may have had its fill of dollars. ARTS & STYLES A black president, as seen in the movies. INTELLIgENcE: Leaders good and bad, Page 3. For comments, write to nytweekly@nytimes.com. DAVID E. SANGER ESSAY Continued on Page 4 A World of Challenges 3 WORLD TRENDS Boom and bust in the market for Pu’er tea. CAHIER DU SAMEDI 24 JANVIER 2009, NO 19906. NE PEUT ÊTRE VENDU SÉPARÉMENT Dans l’article “The Savior or the Devil”, page 3: Glee: joie, liesse Helm: barre (navire) To pin one’s Hopes on: placer ses espoirs en… Flip side: la face mal connue To dub: donner un surnom bumbler: gaffeur Dans l’article “Defying Terror, Afghan Girls Go to Class”, page 5: scar: cicatrice JaGGed: irrégulier To TiGHTen: resserrer noose: nœud coulant To Give in: céder ordeal: épreuve Dans l’article “Hollywood Gambles, in Three Dimensions”, page 6: To Herald: announcer akin To: apparenté à To GeT on board: monter à bord upGrade: mise à jour To laG: traîner Dans l’article “Sisterhood of Office Infighting”, page 6: To wiTHHold: retenir, réfréner To be Hard-pressed: avoir bien du mal à… GrudGe: rancune banTer: badinage Hurdle: obstacle Dans l’article “How the Movies Made a President”, page 8: To linGer: s’attarder boardroom: salle du conseil THorny: épineux subservience: soumission rovinG: ici, qui reluque les filles rollickinG: enjoué, tapageur Fodder: pâture (sens figuré) Dans l’article “The Savior or the Devil”, page 3 et “How the Movies Made a President”, page 8: To save THe day: gagner la bataille, par opposition à to lose the day : perdre la bataille ; terme militaire. Dans l’article “Sisterhood of Office Infighting”, page 6: To pull oneselF up by THe booTsTraps: se hisser à la force du poignet, se faire tout seul, se prendre en main. d.i.y: pour Do It Yourself, c’est-à-dire souvent équivalent de bricolage: DIY shop : boutique de bricolage. Dans l’article “How the Movies Made a President”, page 8: “a raisin in THe sun”: pièce de théâtre, écrite par Lorraine Hansberry, montée en 1959. C’était la première fois qu’une pièce écrite par une Noire était produite à Broadway ; c’était aussi la première fois qu’une pièce de Broadway était mise en scène par un Noir. Le rôle principal était tenu par Sidney Poitier, qui a repris le rôle au cinéma en 1961 ; une comédie musicale a été montée en 1973 ainsi qu’un téléfilm en 2008, où le rôle est repris par le rappeur P. Diddy, qui l’avait auparavant joué sur scène à Broadway dans une reprise en 2004. La pièce se situe dans le South Side de Chicago, où une famille noire doit toucher l’argent d’une prime d’assurance, et où chacun rêve à ce qu’il va en faire. La grand-mère veut acheter une grande maison. Elle effectue un premier versement. La maison en plein quartier blanc. Les voisins sont prêts à payer pour que cette famille noire ne s’installe pas là. Le fils, lui, veut acheter une boutique pour y vendre de l’alcool, il se fera escroquer par un ami. La petite- fille voudrait payer ses études de médecine. Pour finir, ils déménagent, en gardant espoir dans l’avenir. La résonance de cette pièce, à la langue riche et colorée, a été immense, surtout dans une Amérique où la ségrégation était encore légale. Bien des spectateurs, qui applaudissaient à tout rompre, étaient les mêmes qui militaient activement pour que des familles noires ne s’installent pas près de chez eux... Pour aider à la lecture de l’anglais et familiariser nos lecteurs avec certaines expressions américaines, Le Monde publie ci-dessous la traduction de quelques mots et idiomes contenus dans les articles de ce supplément. Par Dominique Chevallier, agrégée d’anglais. : aide a la lecTure expressions lexique o p i n i o n & c o m m e n Ta r y 2 le monde SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2009 THe new york Times is publisHed weeklyin THe FollowinGnewspapers: clarín, arGenTina ● dersTandard, ausTria ● FolHa, brazil ● la seGunda, cHile ● elespecTador, colombia ● lisTin diario, dominican republic ● le monde, France 24 saaTi, GeorGia ●sÜddeuTscHe zeiTunG, Germany ●prensa libre, GuaTemala ●THeasian aGe, india ●la repubblica, iTaly ●asaHi sHimbun, Japan ●sundaynaTion, kenya ●koHadiTore, kosovo●reForma Group, mexico ●viJesTi, monTeneGro ●laprensa,panama expreso, peru ● manila bulleTin, pHilippines ● romÂnia libera,romania ● el país, spain ● uniTed daily news, Taiwan ● sunday moniTor, uGanda ● THe observer, uniTed kinGdom ● THe korea Times, uniTedsTaTes ● el nacional, venezuela rÉFÉrences Energy Inefficient A Letter From the Grave From plug-in cars to carbon capture to wind farms linked to “intelligent” power grids, many of the solutions proposed to restructure the United States’ energy system and confront global warming rely on a faith in high tech: we expect, or at least hope, that an Apollo project, the energy equivalent of the dot.com revolu- tion or some other burst of creative ge- nius will engineer the problem away. Obviously, game-changing technolo- gies will play a big role in cutting Amer- ica’s consumption of fossil fuels. They will also be essential to achieving the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that most scientists think will be neces- sary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. But the Obama adminis- tration cannot overlook the obvious first step — the gains to be had from making existing technologies more efficient. The plain truth is that the United States is an inefficient user of energy. For each dollar of economic product, the United States spews more carbon diox- ide into the atmosphere than 75 of 107 countries tracked in the indicators of the International Energy Agency. Those do- ing better include not only cutting-edge nations like Japan but low-tech coun- tries like Thailand and Mexico. True, energy efficiency has improved. But American drivers, households and businesses still use more energy than those in most other rich countries to do thesamething.TheUnitedStatesspends more energy to produce a ton of cement clinker than Canada, Mexico and even China. It is one of the most energy-inten- sive makers of pulp and paper, emitting more than three times as much carbon dioxide per ton as Brazil and twice as much as South Korea. Per-capita carbon dioxide emissions by households in the United States and Canada are the highest in the world — in part because of bigger homes. And the energy efficiency of electricity produc- tion from fossil fuels is lower in the Unit- ed States than in most rich countries and some poor ones, mainly because of the higher share of coal in the mix. Transportation tells the same story. The United States uses the most energy per passenger kilometer among the 18 rich economies surveyed by the energy agency. In 2006, the American auto fleet used, on average, a little less than 20 li- ters of gas to travel 160 kilometers. The Irish went the same distance with under 15 liters, the Italians with less than 11, basically because they use smaller cars that get better fuel efficiency. The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that switching from an S.U.V. that gets 6 kilometers per liter to one that gets 7 would save the same amount of fuel as swapping a 15-kilometer-a-liter car for a new generation gas-sipper that gets 22. This is not an argument for more S.U.V.’s. It simply shows that we can wring savings from modest efficiency gains in products we already use. A study by McKinsey & Company last year argued that most of the carbon abatementneededbetweennowand2030 could be achieved with existing tech- nologies, things like insulating homes, improving fuel efficiency, and switching to concentrated laundry detergents to reduce packaging and transport costs. Merely improving car transmissions would vastly increase fuel economy. A quantum jump in energy efficiency will still require political leadership. Cheap energy has kept America from making the necessary investments. Yet they must be made; neither the country nor the atmosphere can wait for high tech to ride to the rescue. e d i t o r i a l s o f t h e t i m e s Lasantha Wickramatunga, an ex- traordinarily courageous journalist, wrote his own obituary. After he was murdered on January 8, his letter from the grave appeared in papers all over the world including his own, The Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka. His farewell piece is not only a painful explanation of why another brave jour- nalist would die while trying to publish truths that most people are afraid to whisper. It is also a powerful indictment of the increasingly brutal Sri Lankan government, which runs one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. “No other profession calls on its practi- tioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism,” he wrote in his last edito- rial, to be published on his death. The Committee to Protect Journal- ists, which has reported eight journalists killed in Sri Lanka in the last two years, hascalledforanonpartisaninvestigation and diplomatic pressure on Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to inves- tigate this killing. Instead of pursuing those who killed Mr. Wickramatunga, some in the Sri Lankan government have begun suggesting the journalist’s death has benefited the Tamil rebels and others who oppose the Rajapaksa-run state. Mr. Wickramatunga’s final essay catalogs the troubles journalists have suffered in his country — bombings, kill- ings and coercion — all while trying to tell about corruption in government and civil rights abuses during an extended civil war. But in a larger sense, his fare- well helps explain why some people are willing to give up easier lives to pursue the business of truth-telling. “Why then do we do it?” Mr. Wickra- matunga’s farewell letter asked. “I often wonder that. After all, I, too, am a hus- band, and the father of three wonderful children. Is it worth the risk? Many peo- ple tell me it is not.” He then explained why he and so many other journalists take on these jobs around the world, even though more than 700 of their col- leagues have been killed since 1992. “There is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security,” Mr. Wickramatunga wrote before he died for his principles. “It is the call of conscience.” If you want to see hell on earth, go to Zimbabwe where the madman Robert Mugabe has brought the country to such a state of ruin that medical care for most of the inhabitants has all but ceased to exist. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is now the lowest in the world: 37 years for men and 34 for women. A cholera epi- demic is raging. People have become ill with anthrax after eating the decaying flesh of animals that had died from the disease. Power was lost to the morgue in the capital city of Harare, leaving the corpses to rot. Most of the world is ignoring the agony of Zimbabwe, a once prosper- ous and medically advanced nation in southern Africa that is suffering from political and economic turmoil — and the brutality of Mugabe’s long and ty- rannical reign. The decline in health services over the past year has been staggering. An international team of doctors that con- ducted an “emergency assessment” of the state of medical care last month seemed stunned by the catastrophe they witnessed. The team was spon- sored by Physicians for Human Rights. In their report, the doctors said: “The collapse of Zimbabwe’s health system in 2008 is unprecedented in scale and scope. Public-sector hospi- tals have been shuttered since Novem- ber 2008. The basic infrastructure for the maintenance of public health, par- ticularly water and sanitation services, have abruptly deteriorated in the wors- ening political and economic climate.” Doctors and nurses are trying to do what they can under the most harrow- ing of circumstances: facilities with no water, no functioning toilets and barely any medicine or supplies. The report quoted the director of a mission hospital: “A major problem is the loss of life and fetal wastage we are seeing with obstetric patients. They come so late, the fetuses are already dead. We see women with eclampsia who have been seizing for 12 hours. There is no inten- sive care unit here, and now there is no intensive care in Harare. “If we had intensive care, we know it would be immediately full of critically ill patients. As it is, they just die.” Mugabe’s corrupt, violent and pro- foundly destructive reign has left Zimbabwe in shambles. It’s a nation overwhelmed by poverty, the H.I.V./ AIDS pandemic and hyperinflation. Once considered the “breadbasket” of Africa, Zimbabwe is now a country that cannot feed its own people. The unemployment rate is higher than 80 percent. Malnutrition is widespread, as is fear. A nurse told the Physicians for Hu- man Rights team: “We are not sup- posed to have hunger in Zimbabwe. So even though we do see it, we cannot report it.” Mugabe signed a power-sharing agreement a few months ago with a political opponent, Morgan Tsvan- girai, who out-polled Mugabe in an election last March but did not win a majority of the votes. But continuing turmoil, including violent attacks by Mugabe’s supporters and allegations that Mugabe forces have engaged in torture, have prevented the agreement from taking effect. The widespread skepticism that greeted Mugabe’s alleged willingness to share power only increased when he ranted, just last month: “I will never, never, never surrender … Zimbabwe is mine.” Meanwhile, health care in Zimba- bwe has fallen into the abyss. “This emergency is so grave that some entity needs to step in there and take over the health delivery system,” said Susan- nah Sirkin, the deputy director of Phy- sicians for Human Rights. In November, the primary public re- ferral hospital in Harare, Parirenyat- wa Hospital, shut down. Its medical school closed with it. The nightmare that forced the closings was spelled out in the report: “The hospital had no running wa- ter since August of 2008. Toilets were overflowing, and patients and staff had nowhere to void — soon making the hospital uninhabitable. Parirenyatwa Hospital was closed four months into the cholera epidemic, arguably the worst of all possible times to have shut down public hospital access. Success- ful cholera care, treatment and control are impossible, however, in a facility without clean water and functioning toilets.” The hospital’s surgical wards were closed in September. A doctor de- scribed the heartbreaking dilemma of having children in his care who he knew would die without surgery. “I have no pain medication,” he said, “some antibiotics, but no nurses … If I don’t operate, the patient will die. But if I do the surgery, the child will die also.” What’s documented in the Physi- cians for Hum