MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010 Copyright © 2010 The New York Times

Supplemento al numeroodierno de la Repubblica

Sped. abb. postale art. 1legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma

LENS

California’s reputation as a place where trends are set may have been undermined when voters there decided against legalizing mari-juana for recreational use earlier this

month. ThoughGovernor ArnoldSchwarzeneggerreduced the pen-alty for possessing small amounts to the level of a traf-fic ticket in earlyOctober, it ap-pears Californiaresidents were not

ready to be the first state in America to put cannabis on par with alcohol or tobacco, and tax an industry some estimate is worth billions.

Of course, medical marijuana

dispensaries have proliferated inCalifornia, as they have in states likeMontana and Colorado where use of the drug is legal for health purposes. There are some unanticipated ben-efits from the growing market, The Times reported.

American newspapers — particu-larly alternative weeklies — are gain-ing a new stream of revenue from ads for medical marijuana providers and the businesses that have sproutedup to service them — tax lawyers,real estate agents, security special-ists. The ads are filling up papers inlarge metropolitan news markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver, and are a welcome boost inan industry that has seen nothing but declining advertising and circulation

revenue for the better part of the last decade.

“Medical marijuana has been a rev-enue blessing over and above what weanticipated,” John Weiss, the founder and publisher of The Independent, a free weekly in Colorado Springs, toldThe Times.

“This wasn’t in our marketing plana year ago, and now it is about 10 per-cent of our paper’s revenue.”

The news is darker in the Nether-lands, where its longtime tolerance toward the sale of so-called soft drugs is attracting a less benign element.

Maastricht, near the German andBelgian borders, sees thousands of “drug tourists” every day — as manyas two million a year, city officials say.Their sole purpose is to visit the city’s

13 “coffee shops,” where they can buy pot legally, The Times reported.

It is an attraction Maastricht andother Dutch border cities would now gladly do without. Maastricht now has a crime rate three times that of similar-size Dutch cities farther from the border.

“They come with their cars and they make a lot of noise and so on,”Gerd Leers, who was mayor of Maas-tricht for eight years, told The Times.“But the worst part is that this group,this enormous group, is such an at-tractive target for criminals whowant to sell their own stuff, hard stuff, and they are here too now.’’

The city is pushing to make its legalized use of recreational drugs a Dutch-only policy, banning sales

to foreigners who visit just to get high, though it faces a challenge inthe European Union court. Polls show most Dutch still believe that the coffee shops should exist. But the Netherlands once had 1,500 of them; now, there are about 700, reportedThe Times.

But in places like Nederland, Colo-rado, about 20 kilometers west of the liberal college town of Boulder, some folks feel like they are finally able to cash in on a trade that has long lived underground.

“It’s been here, probably in an il-legal capacity, for a long time, but now there’s an opportunity for industry,”said Nederland’s mayor, SumayaAbu-Haidar.

“There’s an opportunity for freeenterprise, an opportunity for people to make a living in a way that wasn’tavailable before.”

TOM BRADY

With Marijuana, Spreading the Wealth

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — Thiscountry is in the throes of an immi-gration puzzle. While large num-bers of the middle class head forthe exits, hundreds of thousands of foreign merchants and laborers have put down stakes here in re-cent years.

The influx may seem surprising.On this booming continent, oil-richVenezuela is South America’s onlyshrinking economy this year. Offi-cials are rationing hard currency.Government takeovers of privatebusinesses are increasing. Oneprominent financial analyst re-cently had just two words of advicefor investors here: “Run away.”

But in the bazaar in this city’sold center, merchants murmur inArabic, Urdu and Hindi. Haitians pushing ice cream carts chatterin Creole. Street vendors sellingDVDs call out in Colombian-ac-cented Spanish. Sip coffee in NajiHammoud’s clothing shop, andthe outlook is optimistic.

“There’s money in the street,whether the price of oil is $8 a bar-rel or $80,” said Mr. Hammoud,36, who came here from Lebanon a decade ago. “I could have movedto Europe, Germany, someplace,and done fine, but I would havebeen someone’s employee. Here,I’m my own boss.”

The opposing tides reflect thecountry’s increasingly polarizednature. The government of Presi-dent Hugo Chávez, who recentlydeclared an “economic war”against the “bourgeoisie,” has ex-propriated 207 private businessesthis year, prompting many to seek safer havens elsewhere.

“I feel like I can finally breatheagain,” said Ivor Heyer, 48, theowner of a boat manufacturingcompany, who recently movedhis entire operation to Colombia, creating more than 100 jobs there.“I’ve gone from a country wherefear is constant over crime and

Venezuela,

A Magnet

To Migrants

Con tin ued on Page IV

III V VIIIWORLD TRENDS

Bushmen, homeless

on their own land.

MONEY & BUSINESS

High cotton prices

give synthetics an in.

ARTS & STYLES

Taylor Swift crosses

over, and moves up.

By ASHLEE VANCE

LA FAMILIA MICHOACANA, the brutal

Mexican crime cartel, has expanded

into software.

Mexican police on a house raid last year

found rooms crammed with about 50 machines

used to copy CDs and make counterfeit ver-

sions of software like Microsoft Office and

Xbox video games. Some discs were even

stamped with the initials FMM, which stands

for Familia Morelia Michoacana.

The cartel evidently sees software piracy as

a low-risk, high-profit complement to drugs,

bribery and kidnapping. And it is not alone

in this among the world’s crime syndicates,

escalating worries at companies like Micro-

soft, Symantec and Adobe.

Groups in China, South America and East-

ern Europe appear to have supply chains and

sales networks rivaling those of legitimate

businesses, says David Finn, Microsoft’s

anti-piracy chief.

Microsoft has adopted a hard-line stance

against counterfeiting. It has set up a sophisti-

cated anti-piracy operation that dwarfs those

of other software makers; the staff includes

dozens of former government intelligence agents from the United States, Europe and

Asia, who use a host of forensic technology

tools for finding and convicting criminals.

But the hunt for pirates carries with it a

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HAZEL THOMPSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

In its complex battle against the increasing size and sophistication of software counterfeiting operations across the world, Microsoft checks for fake holograms and replicated discs, top left and right. It also compares certificates of authenticity, left, and stores its evidence.

Con tin ued on Page IV

Global War Over Software As Piracy Grows More Sophisticated, Microsoft Fights Back

INTELLIGENCE: For Obama, a time for politics, Page II.

For comments, write tonytweekly@nytimes.com.

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ChinaBlusters On

NEW DELHI

The Hindustan Times carried asmall news item the other day that isgood news or a sign of the apocalypse.It reported that a Nepali telecom-munications firm had just startedproviding third-generation mobilenetwork service, or 3G, at the summitof Mount Everest, the world’s tall-est mountain, to “allow thousandsof climbers and trekkers who throng the region every year access to high-speed Internet and video calls using their mobile phones.”

I can hear it already: “Hi, mom!You’ll never guess where I’m calling from …”

This is just one small node in whatis the single most important trend un-folding in the world today: globaliza-tion — the distribution of cheap tools of communication and innovationthat are wiring together the world’scitizens, governments, businesses,terrorists and now mountaintops —is going to a whole new level. In India alone, some 15 million new cellphoneusers are added monthly.

Having traveled to China and India in the last few weeks, here’s a scary thought: What if — for all the hypeabout China, India and globaliza-tion — they’re actually underhyped? What if these sleeping giants are just finishing a 20-year process of getting the basic technological and educa-tional infrastructure to become inno-vation hubs and that we haven’t seen anything yet?

It’s a typical Indian start-up I visit-ed in a garage in South Delhi, EKO In-dia Financial Services. Its founders,

Abhishek Sinha and his brother Abhi-nav, began with a small insight — thatlow-wage Indian migrant workersflocking to Delhi from poorer stateslike Bihar had no place to put theirsavings and no secure way to sendmoney home to their families. India has relatively few bank branches for a country its size, so many migrantsstuff money in their mattresses orsend cash home through traditional

“hawala,” or hand-to-hand networks.The brothers had an idea. In ev-

ery Indian neighborhood or villagethere’s usually a mom-and-pop kiosk that sells drinks, cigarettes, candyand groceries. Why not turn eachone into a virtual bank? So they cre-ated a software program wherebya migrant worker in Delhi using hiscellphone could open a bank accountregistered on his cellphone text sys-tem. Mom-and-pop shopkeeperswould act as the friendly neighbor-

hood local banker and do the same.Then the worker in New Delhi could

give a kiosk owner in his slum 1,000rupees (about $20), the shopkeeperwould record it on his phone and textreceipt of the deposit to the system’smother bank, the State Bank of In-dia. Then the worker’s wife back inBihar could just go to the mom-and-pop kiosk in her village and make awithdrawal using her cellphone. The shopkeeper there would give her the 1,000 rupees sent by her husband.Each shopkeeper would earn a small fee from each transaction. Besidesmoney transfers, workers could alsouse the system to bank their savings.

Since opening 18 months ago, their virtual bank now has 180,000 usersdoing more than 7,000 transactions a day through 500 mom-and-pop kiosksin Delhi and 200 more in Bihar andJharkhand, the hometowns of manymaids and migrants. EKO gets a tiny commission from the Bank of Indiafor each transaction and two months ago started to turn a small profit. Ab-hishek, who was inspired by a simi-lar program in Brazil, said the kiosk owners “are already trusted peoplein each community” and are already in the habit of extending credit: “Sowe said, ‘Why not leverage them?’We are the agents of the bank, andthese retailers are our subagents.”The cheapest cellphone today has

enough computing power to become a digital “mattress” and digital bankfor the poor.

The whole system is being run out of a little house with a dozen employ-ees, a bunch of laptops, servers andthe Internet. The idea, says Abhishek,is “to close the last mile — the gapwhere government services end and the consumer begins.” There is a hugebusiness in bridging that last mile formillions of poor Indians — who, with-out it, can’t get proper health care,education or insurance.

What is striking about the smallEKO team is that it includes gradu-ates from India’s most prestigiousinstitutes of technology who wereworking in America but decided tocome home for the action, while thechief operating officer — MatteoChiampo — is an Italian technologist who left a job in Boston to work here “where the excitement is.”

India today is this unusual combi-nation of a country with millions ofpeople making $2 and $3 a day, butwith a growing economy, an increas-ing amount of cheap connectivity and a rising number of skilled technolo-gists looking to make their fortune byinventing low-cost solutions to everyproblem you can imagine. In the nextdecade we will see some really dis-ruptive business models coming out of here — to a neighborhood near you.If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the ga-rages of Delhi, Mumbai and Banga-lore get fully up to speed. I sure hopewe’re ready.

In India, moving thebank from the mattressto the cellphone.

E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S

There’s apparently no limit to Chi-na’s arrogance, not to mention its tone-deafness. According to The Times’sMichael Wines, earlier this month Chi-na formally asked European nationsto boycott the Oslo ceremony wherethe Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded — in absentia — to the imprisoned Chi-nese democracy activist, Liu Xiaobo.

All governments should make it apoint next month to send representa-tives.

The Chinese government is hungryfor clout and respect. But bullying its own people and other governments(halting shipments of rare earth min-erals to Japan in a territorial dispute)are unacceptable and won’t produceeither. China first tried to bully theNobel committee, warning that theaward could harm relations with Nor-way, where the committee is based.The committee, rightly, was not in-timidated.

China had dispiriting success, how-ever, with the United Nations secre-tary general, Ban Ki-moon. In a recentmeeting with President Hu Jintao ofChina, Mr. Ban shamefully failed toraise Mr. Liu’s imprisonment.

French officials said the issue of hu-man rights came up when PresidentNicolas Sarkozy of France met Mr.Hu this month in Paris. It was unclearwhether Mr. Liu’s case was addressed.

China’s ruling Communist Party de-nounced the Peace Prize as a “politicalcard played by the United States and some European countries” that, it said,“fear the rise of China,” and seek tosubvert its system. Cui Tiankai, a viceforeign minister, warned that countriesattending the award ceremony would “have to bear the consequences.”

Mr. Liu, a 54-year-old scholar, writ-er, poet and social commentator, is the first Chinese to win the Nobel PeacePrize. His courage and his peacemak-ing credentials are beyond reproach. During the 1989 pro-democracy pro-test in Tiananmen Square, he stageda hunger strike, then negotiated apeaceful retreat of student demonstra-tors as thousands of soldiers stood bywith rifles drawn.

Since then, he has refused to besilenced despite being repeatedlydetained. His current 11-year jail sen-tence on spurious subversion charges is punishment for helping write Char-ter 08, an Internet manifesto callingfor democratic reforms and an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly onpower.

China’s blustering is one more re-minder of how out of touch Beijing’sautocrats really are.

And of why China needs more free-dom.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Do Believe The Hype

LONDON

It’s nice that President BarackObama has called for India to gain a permanent seat on the United NationsSecurity Council, just as it’s nice thathe has made speeches calling for rec-onciliation between the West and the Muslim world and a halt to Israeli set-tlement building in the West Bank.

But nice is not enough, as Obama’s first two years in office have shown.There’s little reason to believe India will gain that permanent U.N. seatany more than Japan did with the sup-port of the Bush administration. The hesitations of the five veto-wieldingpermanent Security Council mem-bers, and the regional rivalries of the various aspirants, ensure paralysis.China does not want to see India pro-moted, just as Argentina looks withsuspicion on Brazil’s claims, and Ni-geria on South Africa’s.

The result is a Security Council thatdoes not reflect the changing map of 21st-century power. Such disconnects are not confined to the United Na-tions. Obama’s fine rhetoric has had only sporadic impact on his actions.Innovative aspirations have givenway to conventional policy.

One reason is that Obama hasproved an ineffective politician, ifpolitics is understood as translatingwords into action through cajoling,charming, deal-making and the like. Does the president even like politics? The question is there and if Obamacan’t prove he does, he will not come back as Reagan and Clinton did after mid-term mauling.

The flesh in need of presidentialpressing on Capitol Hill is now more hostile, and nowhere more so thanon foreign policy. Prepare for wardrums on Iran, a crescendo of China bashing, hesitancy on Russian armsaccords, and unequivocal endorse-ment of Israel’s every step from thenew Congress.

Obama’s dilemma is that his own

convictions about how an intercon-nected world forces the United States to rely more on soft power, dialogue and alliances are not shared by Re-publicans whose victory reflects anangry, anxious America. Nostalgiafor United States dominance out-weighs acknowledgement of reduced American power. In some ways, theTea Party is a reflection of that.

Even before the midterm elections,the president had proved weak in de-livering foreign policy change, relaps-ing into the old carrots-and-sticks ap-proach to Iran, failing to stop the ex-pansion of Israeli settlements, takingup a halfway-house on Afghanistan,alienating European leaders with hisaloofness, and bringing no improve-ment to a tense China relationship.Only with Russia has “reset” meant much.

Now, Obama will have to deal withIleana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican ofFlorida, as House Foreign Affairs

Chairwoman — a hawk on both Iranand Cuba whose vocabulary does not seem to include the word “dialogue.”Pressure from the House for a militarystrike against Iran is going to be re-lentless by the end of 2011 if sanctionsdon’t force an Iranian course change(unlikely). War with Iran would makeObama’s Muslim outreach seem littlemore than a sad joke.

His room for maneuver on Israel-Palestine will also be more limited.Already, Republican CongressmanEric Cantor has called for a decou-pling of Israeli aid from the rest ofthe foreign aid budget, a sign thatRepublicans want to defund nations perceived as hostile while show-ing unwavering support for Israel.Obama’s attempted middle course — more honest broker than Israel’s law-yer — will be tested. A war of words with Israeli president Benjamin Ne-tanyahu over construction in EastJerusalem suggests the president’s

patience may be running out.The new Strategic Arms Reduction

Treaty with Russia is also at risk fromRepublicans who want more empha-sis (and money) to go toward modern-ization of America’s nuclear arsenal.If START dies in the Senate, so willRussian support for Obama’s Iranpolicy. Similarly, if Congressionalanger over China’s undervalued cur-rency proves uncontainable, China’salready limited cooperation on Iranwill evaporate.

Yes, it is an interconnected world.One area Obama might acknowledge that and get Republican support is bypressing for long-stalled free-tradeagreements with Colombia, Panamaand South Korea to be approved atlast. That would be a very good thing and would win him credit he couldcash in to negotiate on the hard is-sues.

It’s time for politics. Things are in-terconnected in Washington too.

Send comments tointelligence@nytimes.com.

INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN

Nice Is Not Enough

JASON REED/REUTERS

Few believe India will gain a Security Council seat. Preparing for President Obama in Mumbai.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010 III

New Xade

Xade

Kaudwane

Gaborone

Central Kalahari

Game Reserve

Indian OceanCapetown

SOUTH AFRICA

BOTSWANAZIMBABWE

ZAMBIAANGOLA

480 KMS

By BARRY BEARAK

CENTR AL K ALAHARIGAME RESERVE, Botswana —They were on the move beneathan unyielding sun, and seemedjust another part of the desert, their tattered clothes bleachedlike the thorny scrub aroundthem. These weary Bushmen —four men, three women and aninfant — were nearing the end of a two-day journey, walking their way toward water.

The leader was Gana Taox-aga. He was a tenacious oldman, one of the few who hadwithstood the government’sefforts to move his people from this Botswanan game reserve,their ancestral land.

Mr. Taoxaga was thirsty,and it angered him that he had to walk so far. Closer by was a borehole, but the governmenthad sealed it up.

“The government says weare bad for the animals, but Iwas born here and the animals were born here, and we havelived together very well,” hesaid.

‘I Once Was a Free Man’

Since the 1980s, Botswana,a nation of two million people,has both coaxed and houndedthe Bushmen to leave the game reserve, a home they had occu-pied for millennia. Withholdingwater is one tactic.

These days, only a few hun-dred Bushmen live within thereserve, and a few, like Mr.Taoxaga, still survive largelythrough their inherited knowl-edge, tapping into the waterconcealed in buried plants.

Most of the Bushmen havemoved to dreary resettlementareas on the outskirts, wherethey wait in line for water, waiton benches at the clinic, waitaround for something to do,wait for the taverns to open sothey can douse their troubles.

“If there was only some mag-ic to free me into the past, that’swhere I would go,” said Pihelo Phetlhadipuo, an elderly Bush-man living in a resettlementarea called Kaudwane. “I oncewas a free man, and now I amnot.”

In Southern Africa, there are perhaps 100,000 Bushmen, alsoknown as San. About half are inBotswana, and the 3,000 or sowho have historically lived inthis grassy part of the desertare mostly of the Gwi and Gana subgroups. They are hardly un-touched by civilization.

The “myth of the last Bush-men” has been untrue for a cen-tury or more, said Dr. Jeffress Ramsay, a historian and a gov-

ernment spokesman. “Outside myths don’t help those of us in-side to solve problems.”

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was established by theBritish colonial administrationin 1961. The intention was notonly to protect wildlife, but the viability of the people livingthere.

But after Botswana becameindependent in 1966, the gov-ernment took the view that theBushmen were an impover-ished minority living in ruggedterrain that made them hard tohelp.

Leaving Ancestral Land

The Bushmen were pragma-tists. Liberated from the stren-uous pursuit of water, peoplebegan keeping goats andchickens while also scratchingaway at the sandy soil to growgardens. The government pro-vided a mobile health clinic,food rations, a school.

Later on, these activitieswere commonly mentioned asreasons for removing the Bush-men. They “were abandoningtheir traditional hunter-gath-erer lifestyle,” and even hunt-ing with guns and horses, thegovernment argued in a writ-ten explanation.

Besides, officials said, Bo-tswana wanted to be a modernnation. The discovery of gem-quality diamonds had made itone of the wealthiest countries in Africa. It was unfair to leave the Bushmen suffering in un-derdeveloped conditions, theofficials said.

By 2002, all but a few dozenBushmen had left the ancestral land, many of them lured by a small compensation of cashand cattle, others insistingthey were threatened into sub-mission.

A group of Bushmen suedthe government in 2002, asking that they be allowed to returnto the game reserve. A HighCourt ruled that the Bushmen could go back to their homeswhile also concluding that Bo-tswana was under no obligationto provide them services.

Dr. Ramsay, the governmentspokesman, said negotiationswere going on to allow Bush-men back on the reserve, butwith strict conditions: no hunt-ing wildlife or raising animals.

Meanwhile, the governmentis stinging from the reproachof interloping foreigners , espe-cially Survival International,an advocacy group based inBritain, which claim the Bush-men were rousted to make way for diamond prospecting and

tourism.Diamond exploration has be-

gun in the reserve, though nomine is presently functioning.There is one small, high-endtourist camp with a swimming pool and 10 en-suite canvasunits.

Its Web site mentions the frill of “an interpretive ‘Bushmanwalk’ ” where “guests gainlife-changing insights into theunique culture of this fascinat-ing people.”

Destitute, Dependent

In the resettlement areas,the “unique culture” of theBushmen mingles with thefamiliar culture of the dis-placed.

The destitute rarely huntor gather, instead awaiting a monthly parcel of cornmeal,beans, sorghum, sugar, teaand cooking oil. People areangry that they are depen-dent; people are angry theycannot depend on gettingmore.

“We have been dumpedhere, and when we try togo back, they stop us at thegate,” complained MoscowGalatshipe, a 43-year-oldman in Kaudwane. “Thereare no jobs. We will all end upin prison for stealing goats.”

Few people blame dia-monds or tourism for theirtroubles. Rather, they saytheir countrymen, the domi-nating Tswana, have alwaystreated them as inferiors.“You can say it is something like racism,” said Galomph-ete Gakelekgolele, a college-educated 26-year-old and an

example of a younger genera-tion trying to find equilibrium between their heritage andambitions.

Families have come apart.Gana Taoxaga, the old mancompleting his two-day walk,has six children and sevengrandchildren in Kaudwane. “Imiss them and they miss me,”he said.

With him on the journey, ayounger man, Matsipane Mo-sethlanyane, led some donkeys with empty water jugs strapped

across their backs. He said hewas proud to be a Bushmanand, boasting of his resource-fulness, he described how hehad sometimes squeezed themoisture from animal dung toslake his thirst. Animals eatthe flowers off the small trees,he said. The moisture from the dung was nutritious.

“But I don’t want to drink the dirty water any more,” he said. “That’s why we are walking to-day. I am used now to the new water, the modern water.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOÃO SILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Displaced BushmenLong for a Return

Alcohol abuse is common in Botswana where Bushmen have been resettled.

Gana Taoxaga led a group of Bushmen on a two-day walk to find water that issometimes hidden beneath plants. Diamond mines may drive Bushmen from their land.

Repubblica NewYork

W O R L D T R E N D S

IV MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010

state takeovers to a place that actu-ally welcomes companies involved insomething other than oil.”

Many immigrants continue to ar-rive on tourist visas and overstaytheir visits, drawn by incomes that are still higher than those in some ofVenezuela’s neighbors and by a broadarray of social welfare programs forthe poor.

“One can live with a little bit of dig-nity here, at least enough to send mon-ey home now and again,” said EtienneDieu-Seul, 35, a Haitian street vendor,who moved here a month before Janu-ary’s devastating earthquake inHaiti.

As many as four million immi-grants have come here from Colom-bia, according to Juan Carlos Tanus,director of the Association of Colom-bians in Venezuela. And some contin-ue to arrive, despite the protractedrecession here and the recent strides Colombia has made in growing itseconomy and fighting rebel groups.

“There’s work in Venezuela forthose who want it,” said Arturo Var-gas, 39, a Colombian laborer whomoved to Caracas last year, finding jobs as a watchman and at a chicken-processing plant. “This place isn’tperfect, but it’s better than what I leftbehind.”

The influx is driven in part by Ven-ezuela’s long tradition of lenient im-migration policies — dating at least from the years after World War II — and by the importance of oil.

Even during times of fluctuatingoil prices and institutional disarray, revenues from petroleum exportsgive Venezuela a cushion againstthe wrenching crises that have joltedits neighbors in the past. Oil moneyalso allows for a broad assortment of imports, creating a large consumersociety and opportunities for peopleto sell things in it.

More than 50,000 Chinese havesettled in the country, workinglargely as shopkeepers. Thousands of merchants and their families from

Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have alsoarrived in recent years, extending a tradition that dates back more thana century.

The Middle Eastern communityhere is big enough to support one of South America’s largest mosques,across from a sprawling mission for Lebanese Maronite Christians.

While economic reasons are para-mount for immigrants, ideology alsoplays a small role. Some from theMiddle East find affinities with Ven-ezuela’s contentious policies toward Israel.

Those same policies, combinedwith fears over violence and eco-nomic shifts, have factored into thedecisions of thousands of Jews here to emigrate.

As with Venezuela’s immigrants,precise figures on Venezuela’s emi-

grants are unavailable, but Iván dela Vega, a sociologist here, puts their number in the hundreds of thou-sands .

In a twist, many of the emigrantsare the children or grandchildren of immigrants who came to Venezuela during its long postwar boom. Spain and Portugal, which offer citizen-ship to descendants of immigrants,have absorbed many Venezuelans.Panama and Colombia, seeking tolure Venezuelan business owners,are welcoming others.

“It was not an easy decision, but itwas necessary,” said Esther Bermú-dez, who recently moved to Montre-al. She owns Mequieroir.com, a Web site that offers services for Venezu-elans planning to emigrate (its namemeans “I want to leave”), and shesaid visits to the site climbed nearly 50 percent this year, to an average of 80,000 a day.

The new arrivals are not immune to Venezuela’s problems, confront-ing issues like restrictions on sendingmoney abroad and rampant crime.(According to the United States StateDepartment, Venezuela is in the top five for per capita murder rates in theworld.)

Still, that has not deterred themany new arrivals. “This is a crazy place, not for families but fine for asingle man like me,” said SubashChand, 25, who moved here a yearago from the northern state of Hary-ana, in India, to manage a shop indowntown Caracas.

“There’s danger and excitementhere every day,” Mr. Chand said.“Within that mixture,” he added,“there’s money.”

cost to Microsoft’s reputation.The company’s profit from Win-

dows and Office remains the envy ofthe technology industry, and criticscontend that Microsoft simply charg-es too much for them. In countries like India, where Microsoft encourageslocal police officers to conduct raids,the company can come off as a bullywilling to go after its own businesspartners if they occasionally peddlecounterfeit software to people whostruggle to afford the real thing.

But Mr. Finn plays down the accusa-tion that Microsoft would face less of a piracy threat if it just lowered prices. “We have seen no connection betweenpiracy rates and price,” he says. “Ithink it’s a canard.”

He argues that Microsoft has nochoice but to be aggressive in its fight,saying its immense network of resell-ers and partners can’t make a living inareas flush with counterfeit software. He says consumers and businessesare being coaxed into buying counter-feit products that either don’t work ordo serious harm by clearing the wayfor various types of electronic fraud.

And, crucially, the counterfeit soft-ware cuts into Microsoft’s profit. A

software industry trade group esti-mated the value of unlicensed soft-ware for all companies at $51.4 billion last year.

Microsoft has demonstrated a rare ability to elicit the cooperation of law enforcement officials — not only in In-dia and Mexico, but also in China, Bra-zil, Colombia, Belize, Malaysia, Chile,Peru and Russia.

But Microsoft’s pursuit of software counterfeiters begins in Dublin, at one of the company’s 10 crime labs. Donal Keating, a physicist who leads Micro-soft’s forensics work, has turned thelab into an anti-piracy playpen fullof microscopes and other equipmentused to analyze software disks.

The undercover operative of thisgroup is Peter Anaman, a lawyer who was born in Ghana; he taught hand-to-hand combat to soldiers in the Frencharmy and then taught himself how to write software.

Through three online personas, Mr. Anaman befriends hackers who usestolen credit card numbers to set upWeb sites for pirated products. “It ispart of gathering human intelligenceand tracking relationships,” Mr. Ana-man says.

Using an artificial intelligence sys-tem, Microsoft scans the Web for sus-picious, popular links and then sends takedown requests to Web service

providers. “The Web sites look profes-sional,” he says. “And some of themeven offer customer support through call centers in India.”

He describes the groups behindthese sites as “part of the dark Web,” saying they have links to huge spam, virus and fraud networks. About 75other people, including former agentsof the F.B.I., Secret Service and Inter-pol, work under Mr. Finn. A formerassistant United States attorney inNew York, Mr. Finn directs this squad from a Paris office. He says Microsoft spends “north of $10 million” a year onits intelligence-gathering operationsand about $200 million on developing anti-piracy technology.

The software thieves monitored byMicrosoft come in various shapes and sizes. They include college studentsand grandmothers.

But investigators spend much oftheir time on large-scale counterfeit-ers, examining how they produce and distribute their wares. The biggestcounterfeit software bust in history oc-curred in July 2007 in southern China.Authorities found a warehouse where workers assembled disks, authenti-cation materials and manuals andprepared them for shipping. All told,investigators found $2 billion worthof counterfeit Microsoft software.Software produced by this syndicate

turned up in 36 countries.Microsoft has found that operations

of this scale tend to include all the trap-pings of legitimate businesses. Work-ers spend years building up contactsat software resellers around the globe,offering them discounted versions ofsoftware. Many Microsoft productsmake users enter an activation code toregister the software and have it workproperly. The syndicates trade in sto-len versions of these codes as well, and sometimes set up their own online au-thentication systems.

About a decade ago, only a few com-panies had the expertise or the $10 mil-lion needed to buy machines that couldpress CDs and DVDs. Today, someone can spend about $100,000 to buy sec-ond-hand pressing gear. Crucially for

Mr. Keating, each press leaves distinctidentifying markers on the disks.

But Microsoft’s anti-piracy effortscan have a public relations fallout. The company recently altered its policies in Russia after a spate of incidents inwhich local security services seizedcomputers of advocacy groups and op-position newspapers, using the pursuitof stolen software as a justification.

Mr. Finn argues that Microsoft’santi-piracy efforts are a benefit tocountries that want to build out their tech sectors and show they value intel-lectual property.

“Intellectual property is a criticalengine of economic growth,” Mr. Finnsays. “That’s not just for large compa-nies, but also for small businesses and entire countries. ”

By ALAN COWELL

PARIS — Just two years ago, the election of President Obama reso-nated far beyond American shores, inspiring euphoric assessments inEurope in particular that Americanpolitics had embarked on new and en-during change after years of the Bush administration. It took the midterm elections on November 2 to finally persuade some among Mr. Obama’s global fan club to think otherwise.

The Democrats’ loss of control of the House of Representatives and re-duced majority in the Senate have leftmany outsiders pondering whether what will follow is an introspectiveand distracted White House, prone to protectionism while maneuvering with Republicans .

A s much as American leadersweakened at home traditionallyseek compensatory triumph abroad,analysts in several countries seemedunsure of Mr. Obama’s prospects ofredeeming promises in Iraq and Af-ghanistan .

“Europeans hopeful of cooperation with the United States on Afghani-stan, arms control, the global econ-omy and climate change will noticethat Washington is about to becomean even more frustrating partner,” wrote Bruce Stokes of the GermanMarshall Fund in Washington.

The response to the midterm ballot has been nuanced and uneven, sug-gesting that many of America’s part-ners would prefer to see themselves confronting not so much a cataclysm as shifting ground rules whose im-port cannot yet be reliably computed.

Some fear progress on two issues in particular is in peril: arms controlwith Russia and a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

A first sign of alarm came when, soon after the midterm results emerged in the United States, the international committee of the State Duma in Russia withdrew its recom-mendation to ratify a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Wash-ington. That is because many inRussia fear that Republicans, someof whom have opposed the treaty be-cause they believe it may limit Ameri-can antimissile defense deployments,

now have greater clout to block action in the Senate and deny Mr. Obama what had been seen as a significant foreign policy achievement.

The worries extend beyond Rus-sia. Even while expressing his faith in the continuity of American foreignpolicy, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, urged the newly chosen lawmakers to support nuclear nonproliferation and to oppose what he called “American unilateralism asit was in the previous administration of President Bush.”

Many forecast an equally profound turn in the Middle East, enabling Israel’s right-wing government tocontinue to resist pressure to freezethe expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

“The huge influx of newly elected representatives and senators to Washington includes dozens ofstrong friends of Israel who will put the brakes on the consistently dubi-ous, sometimes dangerous policiesof President Obama regarding these past two years,” said Danny Danon,a legislator from the right wing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netan-yahu’s Likud Party.

Like most forecasts of radical change in Washington, that argu-ment had its opponents. “Any expec-tation that Obama will be too weakand too scarred to pursue an activist policy vis-à-vis the Israel-Palestinian conflict is likely to be confounded,”said Mark Heller of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

But the proof will be on the ground, quite literally. “The real game begins now, and the name of the game is Pal-estine,” said Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.Only the creation of a “viable” Pales-tinian state within a year “can lift the spirit of Obama’s self-defined liberalcamp.”

Of course, Washington’s relation-ship with Israel has much wider re-gional repercussions, particularly indealing with Iran, where some com-mentators believe that the impact of a more hawkish Congress will erode the frail trans-Atlantic consensus on diplomacy and sanctions.

A World War on Software Piracy

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Top, Yoselyn Moy, 19, speaksfluent Spanish and is one ofabout 50,000 Chinese living in Venezuela. Etienne Dieu-Seul immigrated from Haiti and works as a street vendor.

HAZEL THOMPSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

NEWS ANALYSIS

A Rumble Is Heard As Washington Shifts

In Venezuela,An ExodusAnd an Influx

Con tin ued from Page I

Con tin ued from Page I

Miguel Helft contributed reporting.

María Eugenia Díaz and Sandra LaFuente P. contributed reporting.

Microsoft isconcentratingon large counterfeiters.Donal Keating,its forensics expert, displayedimagesof forgedcertificates ofauthenticity.

Repubblica NewYork

M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010 V

By ISABEL KERSHNER

NABLUS, West Bank — A mass wed-ding that took place here one recentbalmy evening was the latest step to-ward the rebranding of this Palestiniancity from a focus of chaos and violenceto a model of stability and commerce inthe West Bank.

The 47 couples were strangers tomost of the 10,000 or so Palestinian rev-elers crowded into the amphitheater inthe municipal park. Yet the event, oneof the most exuberant here in recentyears, was a joyful affair, bringing to-gether Palestinians from Nablus andits villages and refugee camps. “We are a dispersed people,” said HassanAssayes, 53, a sculptor and the oldest ofthe grooms. “This is a sign of unity.”

The communal wedding was paidfor by the Palestinian Authority and held with the blessing of its president,Mahmoud Abbas. But the ceremonyalso reflected something of the spirit

of entrepreneurship now reawakeningin Nablus, a city of about 150,000 peoplethat was once considered the commer-cial center of the West Bank.

The wedding was the idea of Mu-hannad Rabi, 37, the manager of a realestate development and investmentcompany in the city, the fourth publicevent he has arranged.

Struggling to make himself heardabove the singer belting out Arabicwedding favorites, Mr. Rabi said hestarted a year ago with a festival at which residents baked what he saidwas the world’s biggest knafeh, a sweetlocal pastry. A marathon was next, thena soccer match.

Mr. Rabi said he wanted to “convey amessage to the world that we in Nablus,and Palestine in general, can live as hu-man beings, enjoy life and achieve ourpolitical goals.”

For years after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, Nablus was

ruled by rival militias and criminalgangs. Nablus, a city of about 150,000people, was once considered the com-mercial center of the West Bank.

Hamas won municipal elections inthe city and parliamentary elections across the West Bank and Gaza in2006. But in June 2007, after the Islamicgroup seized full control of Gaza, mi-litiamen associated with Mr. Abbas’srival Fatah party rampaged through Nablus, looting and burning offices andinstitutions affiliated with Hamas.

Later that year, the Palestinian Au-thority made Nablus the pilot for its law-and-order program, deployinghundreds of Palestinian police officersin the city. Palestinian officials said atthe time that they wanted to deal firstwith the “head of the snake.”

The city is open to visitors from all over the West Bank, as well as to Arabsfrom Israel. In the streets, new carspoint to growing prosperity.

The buoyant mood is personifiedby people like Atallah and Khamis al-Sairafi, 49, identical twins who were born to refugees from Jaffa, now in Is-rael, and grew up in the Askar refugeecamp on the edge of Nablus.

They started out in the scrap metal business. But before the second intifa-da, they bought a Boeing 707 passengerjet and parked it in an amusement parkthey had built east of the city. They hadplanned to turn it into a restaurant.

After the violence broke out, theamusement park became a makeshiftIsraeli Army camp. Now the Sairafi brothers say they are negotiating withthe Nablus municipality to move theplane to a new park in the city, on the peak of Mount Ebal. They envisiontables inside for more than a hundreddiners, and singers performing onthe wings. In the meantime they haveopened a garbage recycling plant thatthey say is the “first in Palestine.”

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Unusually high cotton prices haveapparel makers scrambling to keepdown costs, but consumers be warned: cotton clothing will be getting moreexpensive.

“It’s really a no-choice situation,”said Wesley R. Card, president andchief executive of the Jones Group,the company behind Anne Klein, NineWest and other brands. “Prices haveto come up.”

The Bon-Ton chain is raising prices on its private-label fashion items byas much as a dollar this spring, andprices will go up further next fall. Andit is switching from 100 percent cotton in items like sweaters to more acrylicblends.

Levi’s says it has already increased prices and may push them furthernorth next year. And Hanesbrands,the maker of Champion, Hanes andPlaytex, says price increases will bein place by February, and prices could go up further if cotton prices remainwhere they are.

Other apparel makers say theyhave held the line on prices this year, but next year will be different. TheV. F. Corporation, the maker of 7 for All Mankind and The North Face, saysmost brands will probably cost morenext year, and its cotton-heavy jeans lines are particularly susceptible to in-creases. Jones says its increases couldbe in the high single digits or more.

The problem is a classic supply and demand imbalance, with the price of cotton rising almost 80 percent since July and prices expected to remainhigh. “World cotton production is un-likely to catch up with consumption forat least two years,” said Sharon John-son, senior cotton analyst with theFirst Capital Group, in an e-mail.

Cotton inventories had been low

because of weak demand during therecession. This summer, new cottoncrops were also depleted because offlooding in Pakistan and bad weather in China and India, all major cottonproducers.

But demand from China, in particu-lar, was rising. And as the economicrecovery in the United States began,apparel makers and retailers placedorders for more inventory, spurringeven more demand. As prices rose,speculators entered the market, driv-ing prices even higher.

“So far, it has shocked even the most veteran traders,” said Mike Stevens,an independent cotton analyst inMandeville, Louisiana, in an e-mail.“It has resulted in panic buying bymills worldwide in order to ensure thatthey can keep their doors open.”

In early November, the price of cot-ton (measured by cotton futures forDecember delivery) had hit a recordhigh on worries that cold weatherin China might have damaged somecrops.

Cotton’s swooping increase hassome apparel companies switchingproduction to countries with lower la-bor costs or milder customs charges.Lululemon Athletica, the sportswearcompany, is moving some manufac-turing from China to Vietnam, Cambo-dia and Bangladesh, where wages are lower, and Bon-Ton is benefiting from reduced-duty production in Egypt andNicaragua.

Manufacturers are also thinkingsmaller, examining whether a but-ton or a thread can be replaced witha cheaper one, or whether the overall material mix can be changed so it isnot so cotton heavy.

“They are taking purchase ordersfrom the retailer and having this con-versation with them, saying, ‘Look, I

can’t deliver this garment for a dollarthis year when it cost me a dollar twen-ty-five to make it up,’ ” said AndrewTananbaum, the chief executive ofCapital Business Credit, which financ-es apparel makers and other import-ers. “ ‘So would you take this garment if it had not cotton but acrylic?’ ”

Mr. Card, of the Jones Group, saidthe company had “whole teams” look-ing for more cost-effective materialsthat did not reduce quality. “That’s all they do,” Mr. Card said.

Liz Claiborne, which makes brands like Juicy Couture and Kate Spade,said it is also playing with some of thematerials it uses. One example, saidJane Randel, a spokeswoman, wouldbe shifting from some imported Ital-ian fabrics to “suppliers who produce their own raw materials or yarns.”The company may also reassess itscontracts for so-called component ma-terials — like buttons and trims — she said in an e-mail.

Of course, as apparel makers in-crease the price of cotton goods andalso try to reduce their reliance on cot-ton, there are some risks.

For starters, neither the apparelmakers nor the retailers are certainthat shoppers will be willing to paymore for cotton goods. “It’s an unan-swered question at this point,” saidRobert K. Shearer, chief financial of-ficer of the V. F. Corporation.

And — to the disfavor of many fash-ion purists — with prices unlikely tofall for some time, there could be wid-er popular acceptance of fabrics likepolyester.

“We may be training a new genera-tion to be far more accepting of syn-thetic fibers, which is likely to hurtcotton’s market share in the long run,” said Ms. Johnson, the analyst with the First Capital Group.

The continuing arrival of im-migrants to American shores isencouraging business activity and producing more jobs, according to a new study.

Its authors argue that the easier it isto find cheap immi-grant labor at home, the less likely thatproduction will relo-cate offshore.

The study, “Immigration, Off-shoring and American Jobs,” was written by two economics profes-sors — Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano of Bocconi University in Italy and Giovanni Peri of the Universityof California, Davis — along withGreg C. Wright, a Ph.D. candidate at Davis.

The study notes that when com-panies move production offshore,they pull away not only low-wage jobs but also many related jobs, which can include high-skilledmanagers, tech repairmen and oth-ers. But hiring immigrants evenfor low-wage jobs helps keep manykinds of jobs in the United States, the authors say. In fact, when im-migration is rising as a share of

employment in an economic sector, offshoring tends to be falling, and vice versa, the study found.

American economic sectors with much exposure to immigra-tion fared better in employmentthan more insulated sectors, even for low-skilled labor, the authors found. It’s hard to prove causeand effect in these studies, or to measure all relevant variables precisely, but, at the very least, theevidence in this study doesn’t offermuch support for the popular biasagainst immigration, and global-ization .

As other papers by ProfessorPeri have shown, low-skilled im-migrants usually fill gaps in Ameri-can labor markets and generally enhance domestic business pros-pects rather than destroy jobs; thisoccurs because of an importantphenomenon, the presence of what are known as “complementary” workers, namely those who add value to the work of others. An im-migrant will often take a job as a construction worker, a drywall in-staller or a taxi driver, for example,

while a native-born worker may end up being promoted to supervi-sor. And as immigrants succeedhere, they help the United Statesdevelop strong business and socialnetworks with the rest of the world,making it easier for us to do busi-ness with India, Brazil and mostother countries.

We’re all worried about unem-ployment, but the problem is usual-ly rooted in macroeconomic condi-tions, not in immigration or offshor-ing. (According to a Pew study, the number of illegal immigrants fromthe Caribbean and Latin America fell 22 percent from 2007 to 2009;their departure has not had much effect on the weak United States jobmarket.) Remember, too, that eachimmigrant consumes products soldhere, therefore also helping to cre-ate jobs.

When it comes to immigration,positive-sum thinking is too oftenabsent in public discourse. Debates on immigration and labor markets reflect some common human cogni-tive failings — namely, that we arequicker to vilify groups of different“others” than we are to blame im-personal forces.

Consider the fears that foreign competition, offshoring and immi-gration have destroyed large num-bers of American jobs. In reality,more workers have probably been displaced by machines — as hap-pens every time computer software eliminates a task formerly per-formed by a clerical worker. Yet weknow that machines and computersdo the economy far more good thanharm and that they create morejobs than they destroy.

Americans spend far too much time and energy worrying about foreigners. We also end up withmore combative international rela-tions with our economic partners, than reason can justify. In turn,they are more economically suspi-cious of us than they ought to be.

The current skepticism has deadlocked prospects for immigra-tion reform, even though no one isparticularly happy with the statusquo. Against that trend, we shouldbe looking to immigration as a cre-ative force in our economic favor.Allowing in more immigrants, skilled and unskilled, wouldn’t justcreate jobs. It could increase tax revenue, help finance Social Secu-rity, bring new home buyers and improve the business environment.

The world economy will most likely grow more open, and weshould be prepared to compete.That means recognizing the ben-efits — including the employmentbenefits — that immigrants bringto America.

RINA CASTELNUOVO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A wedding of 47 couples in Nablus was part of an effort tochange the city’s image.

JEFF ZELEVANSKY/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Weather, along with rising demand in China and the rest of the world, has driven cotton prices up.

TYLER

COWEN

ESSAY

A study offers littlesupport for biasagainst migrants.

How ImmigrantsCreate More Jobs

Clothiers Contend With Cotton Crisis

In a City on the West Bank, Chaos Gives Way to Stability

Repubblica NewYork

S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY

VI MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Bargaining Power of the Brain Everyone knows someone who bargains ex-

traordinarily well.According to a new study in The Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences, skilled ne-gotiators are using extra brainpower to do so.

Researchers created a game in which players were given the true value of an object on a scale of 1 to 10. The players used this information to make a bid to the seller of the object, who did not know the true value.

The buyers fell into three groups. One group consisted of players who were honest in their price suggestions, making low bids directly related to the true value. A second group, called“conservatives,” made bids only weakly relat-ed to the true price. The last and most interest-ing group, known as “strategic deceivers,” bid higher when the true price was low, and then when the true price was high, they bid low, and

Neanderthals Made Own ToolsNeanderthals living in southern Italy 42,000

years ago developed bone and stone tools, deco-rative ornaments and pigments on their own,not through interactions with Homo sapiens,according to Julien Riel-Salvatore, an anthro-pologist at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Until now, tools and ornaments used by Ne-anderthals were thought to have come aboutbecause of contact with the species that re-placed them.

But Dr. Riel-Salvatore said his paper in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory“counters the persistent idea about Neander-thals and shows that they were really able to innovate.”

Dr. Riel-Salvatore spent several years study-

F I N D I N G S

By KENNETH CHANG

For $150 billion, the National Aero-nautics and Space Administration couldhave sent astronauts back to the Moon.The Obama administration judged thattoo expensive, and in September, Con-gress agreed to cancel the program.

For a fraction of that — less than $200million, along with about $250 millionfor a rocket — NASA engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston say they can send a humanoid robot to the Moon. And they say they could accom-plish that in a thousand days.

The idea, known as Project M, is al-most a guerrilla effort within NASA,begun a year ago by Stephen J. Alte-mus, the chief engineer at Johnson.He tapped into discretionary money,pulled in engineers to work on it parttime, and bargained with private com-panies and other NASA units to under-take preliminary tests.

“We’re doing impossible things withreally very little, if any, money what-soever,” he said.

A humanoid dextrous robot — atleast the top half — already exists:Robonaut 2, developed by NASA and General Motors, is on the shuttle Dis-covery, which was delayed from ascheduled liftoff last week. Bound for the International Space Station, it willbe the first humanoid robot in space.It is to help with housekeeping choresas NASA learns how astronauts androbots can work together. Eventually,an upgraded Robonaut is to take partin spacewalks.

Project M also draws on other NASAprojects that were under way, includ-ing rocket engines that burn liquidoxygen and methane — a cheap andnontoxic fuel combination — and anautomated landing system that could avoid rocks, cliffs and other hazards.

Integrating the technologies intoworking prototypes sped up develop-ment. “That’s the magic,” Mr. Altemussaid. “A lot of times technologies end up in the lab cooking, and then there’s this valley of death where they never get to maturation or to flight.”

Project M’s planners say that a roboton the Moon would capture the imagi-nation of students, just as the ApolloMoon landings inspired a generationof scientists and engineers 40 years

ago. One of the main tasks envisionedfor the robot would be to simply pick upa rock and drop it, as part of an educa-tion program broadcast to schools.

“I think that’s going to light a fewcandles,” said Neil Milburn, vice pres-ident of Armadillo Aerospace, a tinyTexas company working on ProjectM.

But as NASA’s attention turns awayfrom the Moon, the prospects forsending a robot there are at best un-certain.

And the quandary over Project Mencapsulates many of the continuing debates over the future of the spaceagency: What should NASA be told todo when there is not enough money to do everything? What is the best way tospur advances in space technologies? And given the costs and dangers, how important is it to send people intospace at all?

Last year, a special panel was re-viewing NASA’s human spaceflightprogram, in particular an ambitiousproject called Constellation to send as-tronauts back to the Moon. AlthoughNASA has spent $10 billion on Con-stellation, most of the program is tobe canceled when Congress finisheswork on the 2011 budget.

Sending a robot to the Moon is fareasier than sending a person. For one,a robot does not need air or food. And there is no return trip. The thousand-day deadline was arbitrary, said R.Matthew Ondler, Project M’s man-ager.

“It creates this sense of urgency,” he explained. “NASA is at its best when it has a short time to figure out things. You give us six or seven years to think about something, and we’re not sogood. Administrations change andpriorities of the country change, andso it’s hard to sustain things for thatlong.”

The project sparked interest among the International Space Station man-agers, which is why a Robonaut isheading there.

“I’m excited to see how we canevolve the technology in space and ac-tually have a pair of hands and a work-ing humanoid dextrous robot on thespace station,” Mr. Altemus said. “It’s a big move forward for the agency.”

By SEAN B. CARROLL

Agile and alert, the king cobra isthe largest venomous snake in theworld and an icon to all snake en-thusiasts. Its half-inch fangs deliver a huge dose, up to seven millilitersof venom that can kill a human in 15minutes and a full-grown elephant ina few hours.

What makes these cobras kings isnot just their size, or their deadliness,it is that they eat other snakes. Even deadly snakes like kraits or other co-bras are prey. So how does the kingcobra maintain such an apparentlyhigh-risk lifestyle?

Krait and cobra venoms, including that of the king cobra, act very quick-ly by crippling the nervous system. Among the arsenal of weapons in the snakes’ venom is one especially po-tent neurotoxin that works by bind-ing to receptors on muscle cells. The toxin blocks the ability of acetylcho-line, one of the body’s chemical neu-rotransmitters, to control musclecontraction. The blocking of thesereceptors causes paralysis, respira-tory failure and death.

But the king cobra is not fazed bybites from its victims. Biochemistshave mapped exactly how neurotox-

ins block the acetylcholine receptorof many species, and they have dis-covered that the toxins do not bind to the cobra’s receptor. Mutations havealtered the snake’s receptor in such a way that, because the toxin cannot bind to the receptor, the acetylcholinefunction is undisturbed.

But how does the mongoose defeat the king cobra?

The mongoose’s quick reflexes helpit dodge the cobra’s defensive bite,and its powerful jaws can dispatch a snake in one blow. But there are alsogenetic grounds for the mongoose’scourage. Its acetylcholine receptorhas also evolved so that the cobraneurotoxin cannot bind to it. A set of changes in the mongoose’s receptor makes it resemble the cobra’s ownresistant receptor.

The mongoose’s evolutionary ad-aptation is not unique. Other small,humble creatures have evolved waysto endure what for most animalswould be lethal snakebites, and some of these resistant animals conquerand consume their venomous foes.

Sea snakes generally possess verytoxic venoms. They prey on smallmarine animals, and the powerfultoxins in the venom quickly immobi-

lize the prey before it can swim off.Eels are a favorite food of the bandedsea krait.

Some eels, however, have been ob-served to be remarkably resistant tothe sea krait’s venom.

Harold Heatwole and Judy Powellof North Carolina State Universityshowed that undulated moray eelsand liver-colored moray eels found inthe waters around New Guinea cantolerate several hundred times thevenom dose that kills spotted moray eels from the Bahamas.

In the Pacific, where sea snakesare abundant, selection has been sointense that some eel species haveevolved resistance.

One family of completely harmlesssnakes, the kingsnake, has evolvedserum that neutralizes rattlesnakevenom. Kingsnakes are a group ofbeautiful constrictors found in manyparts of the United States. As theirname indicates, kingsnakes eat othersnakes — they do not hesitate to at-tack, kill and consume rattlesnakes.

These stories of evolution are a bit like Shakespearean dramas, wherethe one best able to carry out or tothwart poisonous schemes winds upbecoming king.

ALEX BOWIE/GETTY IMAGES

JULIEN RIEL-SALVATORE

Neanderthals in Italy 42,000 years ago developed tools without human aid.CHRIS GASH

The King in a Snake-Eat-Snake World

‘Robonauts’ Envisioned As Next on the Moon

collected large gains.“They are making sure they even it out so

they stay believable, and they make the most money because of it,” said Read Montague, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medi-cine in Houston and one of the study’s authors.Dr. Montague and his colleagues ran functionalM.R.I.’s on the subjects as they played andfound that the strategic deceivers had unique brain activity in regions connected to complex decision-making, goal maintenance and un-derstanding another person’s belief system. Though the game was abstract, there are real-life advantages to being a strategic deceiver.

“It’s used to bargain in a marketplace or in a store but also to recruit someone for a job, or to negotiate a higher salary,” Dr. Montague said.

SINDYA N. BHANOO ing artifacts from Neanderthal communities in southern and central Italy as well as human artifacts from the same time period in northernItaly.

Humans in northern Italy developed a di-verse set of tools unique from those found in the Neanderthal community of southern Italy.

Meanwhile, Neanderthals in central Italyused the same large, primitive stone tools for 100,000 years, taking no inspiration from theirneighbors to the north or south, Dr. Riel-Salva-tore said

“If humans introduced tools to southernItaly, you would have found these new tools incentral Italy first; that would be the natural geographic progression,” he said.

Because Neanderthals in central Italy were so primitive, it is likely that the innovations inthe north and south occurred independently,he said.

Until recently, it was also unclear whether Neanderthals and humans interbred, but ear-

Smokers More Prone to DementiaMiddle-aged smokers are far more likely

than nonsmokers to develop dementia later in life, and heavy smokers — those who go through more than two packs a day — are at more than double the risk, a new study reports.

Researchers analyzed the data of 23,123health plan members who participated in a vol-untary exam and health behavior survey from1978 to 1985, when they were 50 to 60 years old.

Twenty-three years later, about one-quarter of the group, or 5,367, had dementia, including 1,136 with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 withvascular dementia.

After adjusting for other factors, the re-searchers concluded that pack-a-day smokers were 37 percent more likely than nonsmokersto develop dementia, and the risks went upsharply with increased smoking; 44 percent for one to two packs a day; and twice the risk for more than two packs.

Former smokers and those who smoked less than half a pack a day were no more likely todevelop dementia than nonsmokers. The study was published online on Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine.

To its lead author, Dr. Rachel A. Whitmer, anepidemiologist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California,the study offered a silver lining: unlike age and family history, she said, “this is one risk factor for dementia that can be changed.”

RONI CARYN RABIN

lier this year, researchers determined that Ne-anderthals mated with some modern humans.

SINDYA N. BHANOO

The mongooseis superblyadapted to

fighting the cobra. These

battled at a snake

restaurantoutside

Bangkok.

Repubblica NewYork

T H E WAY W E E AT

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010 VII

By MAÏA de LA BAUME

LIMOGES, France — While theFrench may be renowned for theirrefined culinary tastes, they have an-other side. It was on full display thisautumn in this city in central Franceknown for its expensive porcelain butwith another side of its own.

Limoges is also a city of butchers, and their annual festival, La Frairie des Petits Ventres, or The Brother-hood of Small Bellies, is a celebrationof what Christine Travers delicately terms “products that we could never find in supermarkets.”

The festival, held on the third Fri-day of October, was created with the idea of building interest in the meat products consumed by peasants inmuch older days. One local favoriteis the Amourettes — literally, “thefling” — a dish of sheep testiclescooked in garlic, parsley and port.

Mrs. Travers had just finished ablood sausage sandwich and a piece of chestnut pie, and after washingit down with some cider, confided aclosely held secret: it is the sheep tes-ticles that draw her most of all.

“It melts in your mouth, and tastes like lamb sweetbread,” she said, asshe made her way though a crowd of ecstatic seekers after delicacies pre-pared from tripe, lamb testicles, andthe organs of lamb, veal and pigs.

The one-day festival starts in themorning with an open-air market,and closes in the evening with a reli-gious procession.

It is the excellence of the tripe that attracts hundreds of food lovers tothe narrow Rue de la Boucherie, orbutcher’s street, a picturesque me-dieval lane lined with half-timbered houses.

Lured by the powerful smell ofgrilled pig, visitors strolled alongthe butchers’ stalls in search of “gril-lons,” grilled pig fat, or an “andouil-lette” sandwich made of a cookedsausage with veal or pork intestinesand onions.

In the street, butchers fried theofferings in deep, heavy pans, often under the visitors’ expectant gaze;many, like François Brun, proudlyshowed off their original tripe-based creations.

Mr. Brun’s “nez d’amour,” or “nose

of love,” is an elaborate assemblageof boned and cooked pig snout stuffedwith pig tongue and vegetables.

“There aren’t any kebabs here!”said Michel Toulet, the director ofRenaissance du Vieux Limoges,the group that organizes the event.“Here, we have cider, we have beerfrom the Limousin region. It’s onlylocal products, and we care about it.”

Liliane Guédon, 69, a retired teach-er and adventurous food lover, comes here every year to buy girot, a sau-sage of dried lamb’s blood sold only for the occasion.

“It’s very special,” she said. “Some say it’s tasteless, but I find it veryfine.”

The Frairie des Petits Ventreswas created in 1973 by Renaissance

du Vieux Limoges, an association of preservationists and butchers whoblocked plans to demolish the old citycenter.

The butchers showed their commit-ment, they said, by putting up stallsoutside their shops to sell cooked in-nards and local specialties. The Frai-rie des Petits Ventres quickly becamea local institution.

Even shop owners along Rue de laBoucherie, including a notions store,a beauty salon and an antiques store,turned into butcher shops for theday .

“Our neighborhood is unique,” saidGeneviève Mausset-Cibot, the seniorbutcher from an ancient butchers’family. “So we had to revive the oldtrade and show another way to sellour products.”

Butchers have a long and impor-tant history here, often overshadow-ing the local nobility in power andprestige. They established a medi-eval guild, and legend has it that theygrew so wealthy that they lent moneyto the kings. When King Henry IVvisited in the 17th century, he wasgreeted by a delegation of butchers, as was President François Mitter-rand in 1982.

The Frairie des Petits Ventres aimsto bring butchers and tripe-sellersback into fashion, at a time when in-dustrialization of meat products andoccurrences of mad cow disease havedeprived them of regular customers.

“We work on a magnificent prod-uct,” said Jean-Pierre Ribière, thelast tripe maker of Limoges and one of the last in France, speaking in thiscase of the heart.

“But for the man in the street, it’sonly an organ meat.”

By PAOLA SINGER

In Palermo, a neighborhood of Bue-nos Aires, a specialty store calledPersicco doles out a confection calledchocuquinna. It has a sweet dulcede leche base balanced with hints ofcream cheese and laced with chocolatechunks of a cross between a crunchy cookie and a spongy cake.

The chocuquinna is one of manynew ice creams that incorporate thetraditional South American ingredi-ent dulce de leche, a creamy jam made by simmering milk and sugar. Whilethis jam turns up in almost every kind of dessert, it’s especially versatile as afrozen treat.

In the last few years, Buenos Aires’s heladerías, or ice cream parlors, haveintroduced a heap of varieties thatinclude some form of dulce de leche.

Many of the city’s more than 2,000creameries now carry up to 10 options in this category.

“The gourmet ice cream trend hasreached a peak,” said Horacio Spin-etto, whose book “Heladerías de Bue-nos Aires” was released in March.“The flavor that sells the most, by far,is dulce de leche. It represents the icecream of Argentina.”

Dulce de leche scoops are nothingnew. But lately, this flavor has been theobject of much experimentation. SincePersicco opened in 2001, it has useddulce de leche in several new recipes. “We are leaders in development; theothers come and look at us,” said JuanMartín Guarracino, one of Persicco’sfounders.

Fellow ice cream makers disagree. “Different creameries create different

ice creams,” said Ariel Davalli, a co-owner of a chain called Chungo. “Ourclients want novelty, and we have to beingenious. Every season we come upwith new flavors.”

Chungo has a dulce de leche andcream cheese helado, or ice cream.Marbled with dulce de leche and cook-ie crumbs, it is named cucuruccino.

Although the precise origins of dulcede leche are unknown, Argentina likes to think of it as homegrown. In fact, thegovernment recently declared it partof the nation’s cultural patrimony,to the irritation of some neighbors.What’s indisputable is the Argen-tines’ adoration of this treat. “We wereraised on dulce de leche,” said Francis Mallmann, a chef.

To unaccustomed palates, dulce de leche on its own can taste overly sweet.

But as an ice cream, it has a global ap-peal. Häagen-Dazs introduced it inthe United States in the late ’90s withgreat success .

To hear the heladeros, or ice cream makers, in Buenos Aires tell it, theirversions may be hard to beat. “Argen-tine ice cream is known throughoutthe world because it’s still done theold-fashioned way,” said Mr. Davalliof Chungo, noting that natural ingre-dients like fresh eggs and fruits areoften used.

This year, the Argentine milk indus-try created a contest for best dulce de leche ice cream, and awarded the top prize to Chungo.

“When Argentines move to another country, one of the things they miss,aside from their family, is dulce deleche,” said Jorge Davalli, a co-owner.

By CORIE BROWN

KOSHU, Japan — The Japanesehave made wine for years, it is justthat no one outside Japan wanted todrink it, particularly if it was sweetswill made from a native table grapecalled koshu.

But Ernest Singer thinks koshu de-serves a place among the world’s fine white-wine grapes. Mr. Singer, a wine importer based in Tokyo, said koshucaptured his imagination nearly adecade ago when he tasted an experi-mental dry white wine made from the grape. Light and crisp with subtle cit-rus flavors, it was a match for Japan’s cuisine, he said, and could become the first Asian wine to draw international recognition.

With grapes from local growersand expertise from France, he began making his own wine, seeking to helpkoshu reach its potential. Now he and a clutch of family-owned Japanesewineries working under the bannerKoshu of Japan, are racing to be thefirst to produce koshu good enough to succeed in the world market.

“We have shown you can make realwine in Japan,” Mr. Singer said. Thequestion remains, he said, whetherestablished vintners will change their winemaking practices or “continue tosell their schlock.”

Even his chief rival, Shigekazu Mi-sawa, the owner of Grace Wine anda leader of Koshu of Japan, said thatwithout Mr. Singer, it was unlikelyanyone would think of exporting ko-shu. “It was Ernie’s idea to raise qual-ity to improve the position of koshu inthe world market,” he said. “He knewthat koshu could become a wine thatrepresents Japan to the world.”

Found almost exclusively in Yama-nashi Prefecture at the base of Mount Fuji, koshu is a tart, gray grape. Grow-ers would dispose of damaged and rot-ten fruit by making wine with heavydoses of sugar. Mr. Misawa was oneof the first Japanese vintners to rejectthe idea of sugary koshu.

“Koshu is two-thirds of all of thewine we make,” he said. “And we need-ed to make it better.”

After his first taste of dry koshu, Mr.Singer gambled big on it, flying in DenisDubourdieu, professor of enology at theUniversity of Bordeaux, to work on hisfirst four vintages (2004 to 2007), whichwere made at Mr. Misawa’s winerywith grapes he helped provide.

Mr. Singer’s confidence in koshu isdue in no small part to the wine criticRobert M. Parker Jr. The two men haveworked together since 1998 when Mr. Parker hired Mr. Singer to be his rep-resentative in Asia. Mr. Parker tastedMr. Singer’s 2004 koshu at the Gracewinery in December 2004 and gave it ascore of 87/88 on a scale of 100.

In setting up the winemaking proto-col for Mr. Singer’s koshu, Mr. Dubour-dieu eliminated what was once theonly thing that made koshu drinkable:sugar. The wine is bone dry with a verylow alcohol content. He accomplishedthis by getting rid of the grape’s bitter skin early in the process.

“I tried to extract nothing from the skin,” he said. “The bitterness of the koshu skin is extreme.”

The Bordeaux producer BernardMagrez is distributing a small amountof the Katsunuma Jyozo winery’s ko-shu in Europe and the United States. Bottles sell for $20 and up. But the ex-ecutive director of the winery, YoukiHirayama, said that beyond that, hiscompany is focusing on Asia.

“This is Asian wine for Asian food,”he said, noting that the subtle flavors do not overwhelm delicate dishes.

Mr. Parker remains upbeat aboutkoshu. “Up until this year, it was thebest one I’ve tasted,” he wrote in ane-mail response to questions aboutMr. Singer’s wine. “Now BernardMagrez has one that is dry, crisp and very tasty, and much in the style of the Dubourdieu koshu. I think the wine, ifmade in these styles, has a quasi-Mus-cadet character — light-bodied andvery refreshing.”

OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A festival in Limoges, France, celebrates the butcher. A tripe butcher cuts a sausage of dried lamb’s blood.

KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

HORACIO PAONE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A cone of chocolate ice cream with dulce de leche sauce at Persicco in Buenos Aires.

Feast of Innards Feeds French Nostalgia

Winemakers in Japan,Refining a Bitter Grape

In Argentina, New Ways of Putting a National Treasure on a Cone

Where butchers had more prestige thanthe nobility.

Japanesewinemakersareincreasinglyusing the koshu grape to produce dry, white vintagesinstead ofthe sugarywines of the past.

Repubblica NewYork

A R T S & S T Y L E S

VIII MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — On the eve of the presentation of an honorary Oscar, theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was still coming to termswith that most deeply confounding of European filmmakers, Jean-Luc Go-dard.

No one had yet signed on to present the Oscar to Mr. Godard, who has saidhe will not attend the awards banquet in Hollywood on November 13. Andthere was also the touchy question of how to deal with claims that Mr. Go-dard, a master of modern film, haslong harbored anti-Jewish views that threaten to widen his distance fromHollywood, even as the film industry’sleading institution is trying to closethe gap.

Over the last month, articles in the Jewish press — including a coverstory titled “Is Jean-Luc Godard anAnti-Semite?” in The Jewish Journal — have revived a simmering debateover whether Mr. Godard, an avowedanti-Zionist and advocate for Pales-tinian rights, is also anti-Jewish. And this close examination of his posture toward Jews has put a shadow overplans by the academy to honor him.

The academy is doing its best to side-step the issue. For one thing, don’t lookfor the touchier aspects of Mr. Godard’swork in the five-minute tribute reel be-ing assembled around his French NewWave masterpieces such as “Breath-less” and “Band of Outsiders.”

Probably missing will be a much-discussed sequence in the 1976 docu-mentary “Here and There,” with itsalternating images of Golda Meir andAdolf Hitler that have suggested tosome that Mr. Godard, the narratorand a director, sets them up as equiva-lents.

Mr. Godard, 79, has inspired direc-tors as diverse as Martin Scorsese,Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantinowith his technique, sophistication andexuberant use of pop culture in 70 fea-ture films. That work, however, hadnever been recognized by the acade-my until a decision this year to presentMr. Godard with an honorary gover-nors award. The academy has fielded queries from members who questionthe propriety of an award that is draw-ing attention not just to Mr. Godard’swell-known disregard for Hollywoodbut also to positions and statementsin which he has mingled his mistrust of the movie world with a wariness of traits he associates with Jews.

In one of the more striking suchstatements, in a 1985 interview in LeMatin quoted in Richard Brody’s 2008biography, Mr. Godard spoke of thefilm industry as being bound up inJewish usury. “What I find interestingin the cinema is that, from the begin-ning, there is the idea of debt,” he isquoted as saying. “The real producer is, all the same, the image of the Cen-tral European Jew.”

Neither Mr. Godard nor his associ-

ates could be reached for comment.“If Hollywood wants to honor his

work, great, I’m fine with it,” saidMike Medavoy, a film producer andacademy member who was born inShanghai after his parents fled the Ho-locaust. But Mr. Medavoy added that he was less than charmed by what hecharacterized as Mr. Godard’s “nar-row mind” when it comes to Jews and the film business. “I’m not fine withthat,” he said.

In preparing for this year’s gover-nors awards, the second in a planned annual series separate from the mainOscar ceremony in February, Phil Al-den Robinson, an academy vice presi-dent and a governor, proposed Mr. Go-dard for recognition. “Godard speaksto a generation that’s only now gettingvoting weight in the academy,” saidMr. Robinson. “The older generationdidn’t have the same regard for him.”

Daniel S. Mariaschin, an executive vice president at B’nai B’rith Interna-tional, strongly denounced the acad-emy’s decision to honor Mr. Godard.

“They have set up standards for art,but they take a pass on standards for decency and standards for morality,”Mr. Mariaschin said. “How could one possibly derive enjoyment or pleasure from this, knowing that the individualholds these views?”

For Mr. Robinson, the art and theartist are separate. “D. W. Griffith got an honorary Oscar in 1936,” he said,“and the man was horribly racist.”

By JON CARAMANICA

For pure star-on-star revenge,“Dear John,” from the new TaylorSwift album, will be tough to beat.

Six and a half minutes long andflagrantly provocative, it’s a deeply uncomfortable song, its protagonist anguished and violated. “Don’t you think I was too young to be messedwith?” she asks. “The girl in thedress/Cried the whole way home.”

John Mayer, who tabloids reportedMs. Swift was involved with earlier this year, has brought this out in her,awakening her ire and her creativ-ity. Rather than write a song in her familiar country-pop mode, she’swritten an electric blues, a pointedreminder of Mr. Mayer, who’s a mas-ter of the style.

“I feel like in my music I can be a rebel,” Ms. Swift said at a quiet res-taurant not far from her new Nash-ville apartment. “I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life. I couldn’tput the sentence together the way I

could put the song together.”Ms. Swift, while wide-eyed and

easily awestruck, is prim and diffi-cult to ruffle. She is still sometimes treated as if she were a child star, but she’ll turn 21 in December.

“Dear John” is by far the mostscorching track on “Speak Now,”which was released last month,though plenty of the rest of the al-bum stings. It’s the most savage ofher career, and it’s excellent too, pos-sibly her best.

In the diminished world of the mu-sic business, where album sales haveplunged by more than 50 percent inthe last decade, genuine blockbust-ers are an endangered species. But in the first week of November therecording industry got a rare bit ofgood news with the unmitigated tri-umph of “Speak Now.”

The album sold 1,047,000 copies inthe United States in its first week,making it the fastest-selling new re-cord in five years.

As many in the music industrysee it, “Speak Now” proves that Ms.

Swift has transcended the limita-tions of genre and become a popmegastar. Even apparent setbacks— like Kanye West’s outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards last year, when he suggested on stage thatanother artist should have won anaward that went to Ms. Swift — haveultimately worked to expand her ce-lebrity.

After several days of uncharacter-istic silence on her Twitter feed, Ms. Swift wrote to her 4.5 million follow-ers: “I . . .Can’t . . . Believe . . . This . . . You guys have absolutely lit up myworld. Thank you.”

“Speak Now” touches on manyof the major public events in Ms.Swift’s life the last two years — her conflict with Mr. West, the sprouting criticisms of her live singing voice,a relationship with the actor TaylorLautner, rumored dalliances withMr. Mayer and others.

“I’ll watch your life in pictureslike I used to watch you sleep,” shetells an ex on “Last Kiss.” On “Bet-ter Than Revenge,” she seethesover losing someone to a predatory woman. “She’s an actress/But she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.”

While she’s articulate in song, she admits to struggling in her day-to-day life. “I can say them at a busi-ness meeting,” she said of being di-rect with words. “But for me, saying them to a person that I really careabout in whatever sense, whatever capacity, is a little tougher, becauseit doesn’t have a first verse, second verse and bridge.”

Ms. Swift still believes in the value of the last word; she’s a far bettermonologuist than dialoguist. Andyet her new adversaries are celebri-ties who want to tell their own sto-ries, and undoubtedly will.

At the 2010 Video Music Awardsin September Mr. West was able tosteal the narrative back from Ms.Swift. Midway through the showshe performed “Innocent,” which isabout the incident with him, but heclosed the show with “Runaway,”which celebrated his boorishness bypoking fun at it. His wit trumped her sobriety .

And that’s probably just the be-ginning. Certainly something loudcan be expected of the outspokenMr. Mayer, who is probably already working on a riposte to “Dear John.”Asked about the possibility, Ms.Swift appeared concerned. “Whatdo I do now?” she said, her brow fur-rowing for just a second. “I haven’t thought about this.”

By VICTORIA BURNETT

HAVANA — Hoping to bridge politicsand reconnect with Cuban ballet lov-ers, the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater performed inthe 22nd International Ballet Festivalacross Havana this month.

Their performances were the latest in a growing number of cultural visitsallowed under President Obama, de-spite the lack of progress in American-Cuban relations. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra took part in a week-long residency in Havana in October,and Cuban musicians such as SilvioRodríguez and Chucho Valdés havetoured the United States this year aftera long absence.

Ballet is enormously popular in Cuba,where dancers are well-known stars,and where Alicia Alonso, the grande dame of Cuban ballet, who turns 90this year, enjoys a stature second onlyto Fidel and Raúl Castro. Ballet ticketscan cost the equivalent of as little as 25cents, affordable even in a poor countrywhere $20 a month is a typical salary.

At the festival, ballet fans crowded around Jose Manuel Carreño, a Cubandancer with the American Ballet The-ater, begging for autographs and photo-

graphs. The audience, which includedMs. Alonso and a sprinkling of Cubanpop stars, ranged from young men injeans and T-shirts to elderly women with coiffed hair.

“They’re a hugely educated audi-ence,” said Tyler Angle, who, with his brother Jared, helped organize the CityBallet visit.

Silvia Robinson, 70-year-old Cuban widow, said she had little hope that thegoodwill created by the ballet wouldherald a thaw in relations between thetwo old foes. “I don’t really believe itgoes beyond ballet,” she said. “But nev-er mind. It was wonderful to see themdance. Absolutely divine.”

For American Ballet Theater, thevisit was a homecoming of sorts. Ms. Alonso found fame with the New Yorkcompany in the 1940s and brought sev-eral members to Havana to set up whatis now the National Ballet of Cuba. Mr.Carreño and another Cuban, XiomaraReyes, also of Ballet Theater, are alum-ni of Ms. Alonso’s rigorous method.

“It’s a homecoming that’s both per-sonal and artistic,” said Rachel S.Moore, executive director of AmericanBallet Theater, which last visited Cubaas a company in 1960. “Alicia was in our

founding company, and there’s a senseof her being part of our family.”

American Ballet Theater performedprograms that included George Bal-anchine’s “Theme and Variations,”Alexei Ratmansky’s “Seven Sonatas”and Robbins’s “Fancy Free.” Cuban balletomanes relished the festival’s dis-tinctly American flavor. An audienceof 1,500 rose to its feet as City Ballet’sMegan Fairchild and Andrew Veyettefinished a rousing performance of Bal-anchine’s “Stars and Stripes.”

During the first half of the 20th cen-tury, ballet was one area of the arts en-riched by the busy traffic between Cubaand the United States. Ms. Alonso andher former husband, Fernando, joinedBallet Theater soon after its creation in 1940, and she gained fame dancing “Giselle” in 1943, before returning to Cuba in 1948.

Kevin McKenzie, American BalletTheater’s artistic director, said that itwas “difficult to say what political im-pact” the company’s visit would have.

“It is not our purpose here to do any-thing but speak of our cultural same-ness,” he said. “I think it is that dialoguethat will expand to brighter and morepositive horizons in the future.”

Oscar Upheaval Over a French Rogue

Taylor Swift, Selling Her Music With a Vengeance

JAVIER GALEANO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Megan Fairchild, left, and Andrew Veyette, of the New York City Ballet, perform at a festival in Havana.

Lyrics inspired bythe tabloid events in a singer’s life.

CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Taylor Swift’s ‘‘Speak Now’’ is acclaimed as her best work yet and is the fastest-selling record of the last five years.

In Cuba, a Cultural LeapAcross a Political Divide

Ben Sisario contributed reporting.

Repubblica NewYork