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conulyA lives article on twins, one of whom is schizophrenic
We Both Live Here
By PAMELA SPIRO WAGNER and DR. CAROLYN S. SPIRO
PAMELA: On Nov. 17, 1952, I slid into the world with barely a whimper. Five minutes later, kicking and squalling, my identical twin sister tumbled out after me. We were as alike as two spoons. We answered in one voice, spoke each other's thoughts, completed each other's sentences. We were bound to each other as firmly as any conjoined set of twins.
But in other senses we were polar opposites. I was the steady, stoic one; I soothed my needy twin whenever she went on a weeping jag or temper tantrum, which seemed to be all the time. I shone at school; Lynnie didn't read until fourth grade. I was capable; Lynnie worked on being pretty.
Then, when J.F.K. was assassinated, the voices started, and though I told no one, I knew I was to blame for the president's death. Voices and paranoia took over. In high school, I had a car accident because the hallucinated voice of my headmistress told me to hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. I withdrew from extracurricular activities and refused to talk unless it was absolutely necessary. Nothing got through to me. They called me the Zombie. But my parents couldn't see that I was in trouble. They thought it was an adolescent phase.
In college, my roommate couldn't wear her red sweater without my thinking she was going to kill me. I was sure the local pharmacist was X-raying my brains. I ended up overdosing on sleeping pills and spending five months in the hospital. They put me on antipsychotic medication. And it worked. But when I left the hospital feeling better, I stopped taking it.
CAROLYN: I was the cute twin, too shy for my own good. I didn't even try to compete with Pammy, who seemed incapable of failure. But in junior high she changed: she didn't shower or wear clean clothes unless I reminded her; in school corridors she clung to the walls and hid from people. I was horrified when I found out that some kids thought I was Pammy.
Somehow, when Pammy fell apart in college and was hospitalized, I came into my own. I challenged myself for the first time. I went to medical school. Still, I saw Pammy as a threat to my accomplishments, even to my separateness. She was the talented one. I had no right to succeed.
In our 20's, she told me about the Japanese living inside her apartment walls, about Brother Luke, the spirit who guided her, and about her role in the Kennedy assassination. It was incredibly difficult for me to watch her change from looking like me to being someone I didn't recognize.
When I became a psychiatrist, I finally realized that Pammy's oddness in high school, her hospitalizations and her bizarre adult behavior were symptoms of chronic schizophrenia. Gradually, I told my family, and in the 1990's Mom started to help me take care of Pammy. Dad had never dealt with her. Feeling disowned, Pammy had even gone so far as to change her last name.
Pammy became dangerously suicidal and violent. She was hospitalized for months, restrained frequently and forced to take medication that caused a huge weight gain. My visits only highlighted the startling change in her appearance: no one believed we were twins. She had hallucinations 24 hours a day that commanded her to kill herself.
Finally, last year, I did one of the hardest things I have ever had to do: I authorized electroconvulsive therapy -- shock treatments -- against my sister's will. I thought she would never talk to me again. I felt like a traitor. But she got better, and she thanked me later. And for the first time, the whole family rallied to support her.
Pammy isn't cured. Once she stops taking her pills, for any reason, there's no halting the inexorable decline until once more she is hospitalized and I lose any control I ever had to help her change her situation. Thus goes her life, our lives. It's a life lived in and out of hospitals, a trade-off between symptom and side effect, an endless revolving door between hell and hope. My sister's road may be more painful, but mine is not without pain as I watch her descend again and again into madness. I don't want to be Pammy's doctor, I want to be her sister. I want my twin sister back.
PAMELA: Now that I'm on regular medication, I am finally recovering. For the first time in my life, I feel well and healthy. But it has been only six months. Things are still fragile. I know how easily I could still crumble, psychosis exploding my world. As I learn to dress like a normal person and fix my hair and take regular showers and shampoos, all things I have never done before, I realize that I look more and more like Lynnie again. I hope one day to have people see us on the street and smile the way they used to at the happy sight: twins.
On the remembrance of Hiroshima
It has a slideshow
Where First A-Bomb Fell, Prayers Ask 'Never Again'
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug. 6 - At 8:15 a.m. Saturday, as tens of thousands of Japanese bowed their heads here to mark the instant when an atomic bomb fell 60 years ago, only the loud, telltale buzz of the summer cicadas broke the respectful silence.
In an hourlong ceremony at the Peace Memorial Park, participants, as in previous years, laid wreaths, burned incense, prayed for the souls of the dead, and gave impassioned pleas for world peace and the abolition of nuclear arms. Few in Hiroshima can remember an Aug. 6 that was not oppressively hot, and Saturday morning's blazing sun matched expectation and memory.
Still, on the 60th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack, some members of the aging and dwindling population of survivors expressed worries that Japan was shedding its postwar pacifism. The survivors, whose suffering had long made them Japan's most eloquent advocates for pacifism, said recent policy changes inside Japan had made them deeply pessimistic.
"The dispatch of our Self-Defense Forces to Iraq is completely out of line with pacifism," said Akihiro Takahashi, an A-bomb survivor and former director of the Peace Memorial Museum here. "In the future, the peace Constitution will no doubt be revised, and that will lead to conscription and, eventually, the possession of nuclear arms."
Since early 2004 Japan has had about 500 troops in southern Iraq, deployed on a humanitarian aid, noncombat mission.
A decade ago, on the last major anniversary of the dropping of the bomb, the possibility of Japan acquiring nuclear arms or revising its official renunciation of war was unthinkable. Today, North Korea's possible possession of nuclear weapons has led many here to worry about an arms race, and Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has begun the process of revising the American-imposed postwar Constitution.
"Things have changed," said Dr. Hiroshi Maruya, 80, a physician and survivor of the nuclear blast.
"Ten years ago, few could question Article 9 of the Constitution," he said of the war-renouncing clause. "But people talk about it openly now."
With government thinking no longer matching the survivors' message of pacifism, the general attitude toward them has changed, survivors and experts say.
Osamu Fujiwara, associate professor of peace studies at Tokyo Keizai University, said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did not follow his predecessors' practice of speaking to A-bomb survivors after the annual Aug. 6 ceremony.
"There is no political debate over this cancellation," Professor Fujiwara said. "The ceremony itself has become history, and the A-bomb itself has become a thing of the past."
Dr. Maruya described the government's attitude toward the survivors as "very cold."
"It's as if the government is saying, 'It is no use listening to you,' " he said. "Power politics is the theory of the new world."
In keeping with his city's idealistic pacifism, Hiroshima's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, has proposed working through the United Nations to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide by 2020. But an editorial in Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, reflected the new prevailing mood toward this kind of pacifism by bluntly calling it "empty." The editorial added that the antinuclear campaign "should reflect reality."
Making the same kind of universal appeal for pacifism that the nation's leaders used to make, Mayor Akiba said of the anniversary on Saturday, "It is also a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the A-bomb survivors to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization of genuine world peace, awaken to our individual responsibilities, and recommit ourselves to take action."
To that end, a couple of hours after the ceremony, Miyoko Watanabe, 75, told the story she had told countless times. Exactly 60 years ago she walked out of her house when the strong sun made her return for a parasol. At 8:15 a.m., as she stepped out of her house again, she saw a flash of light in the distance. As the fire blew toward her, she crouched to protect herself, according to the drills that she had been taught at school. The bomb left her relatively unharmed, but it seriously injured her mother and killed her father.
Her father was one of 140,000 people killed instantly or who died soon after the bomb was dropped by the Enola Gay. The population of Hiroshima, a city with many military sites at the time, was 350,000. Three days later, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 80,000. Days later, Japan surrendered.
Her story, Ms. Watanabe said, was her testament to the future. But given the proliferation of nuclear arms, she said that the A-bomb survivors' message "hadn't gotten across."
"It may be empty," she said of the proposal to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020. "But you can't move forward unless you advocate. We can't keep silent because we are uncertain about the results. We have to keep trying, one step at a time."
Mr. Koizumi, who called Hiroshima a world symbol for peace, spoke quickly and in a soft voice, receiving polite applause. "I offer deep prayers from my heart to those who were killed," Mr. Koizumi said, adding that Japan would not produce or possess nuclear weapons on its soil.
A passionate speech by Yohei Kono, the speaker of the lower house of Parliament and a famous pacifist, received the loudest applause. He said the use of the word "mistake" in the famous phrase engraved on a memorial here - "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake" - referred to the use of the bomb, as well as Japan's militarism in Asia.
Recently, a right-wing vandal tried to scrape off the word "mistake" from the memorial, and the damage was still visible.
Last week, in another attempt to play down Japan's wartime aggressions in Asia, the lower house of Parliament restated a resolution passed a decade ago for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, but it removed the words "invasion" and "colonial rule." But declaring that Japan was the only country to have ever suffered an atomic bomb, the resolution again committed Japan to working for peace.
The resolution left some atomic-bomb survivors skeptical.
"The Japanese government says, 'the only country to have ever suffered from an atomic bomb,' when it's convenient for it," Mr. Takahashi said. "If the government believes that, it should act accordingly at the United Nations and elsewhere."
On Korean food in New York
Kimchi Chic
By SAKI KNAFO
KOREAN TEMPLE CUISINE is a sliver of an East Village restaurant appointed with colorful abstract photographs, art-quality shots of the New York skyline and jewel-toned cushions. The narrow space is filled with an endless array of items designed to catch the eye - garlands strung with mirrored tiles, table lamps suspended upside down from the ceiling - and yet on a recent Tuesday evening, several patrons gazed perplexedly at their plates.
These customers had been presented with an order of bibimbop, sliced mountain vegetables and a fried egg heaped atop a mound of rice and served in a stone bowl. As they contemplated the steaming dish, the restaurant's 23-year-old owner, Jennifer Maeng, hurried over to reassure them. "Bibimbop basically means mix it all together," she informed them, demonstrating with chopsticks. She then launched into a disquisition on the finer points of Korean cooking.
As she spoke in her polite, lightly accented voice, her customers watched intently, unaware that by being so attentive, Ms. Maeng had essentially bucked more than two decades of Korean dining tradition.
"We want people to understand what they are eating," she explained afterward, contrasting her style of service with that found in more traditional Korean restaurants, which she characterized as embodying the philosophy: " 'Let's put it on the table, and let them figure it out.' " By adopting new approaches like doting service, chic décor and creative food presentation, Ms. Maeng thinks, New York's Korean restaurants can do much to take their cuisine to the next level and perhaps help it become as popular as Japanese food, which has so powerfully captivated the New York palate in recent years.
"Right now there are many Japanese restaurants, almost as much as Italian food," Ms. Maeng said. "But as soon as people get friendly with Korean food, it's going to spread as much."
Ms. Maeng is part of a new wave of Korean-American restaurateurs whose goal is to put a modern spin on their traditional cuisine. Korean Temple Cuisine, on St. Marks Place near First Avenue, is one of at least 10 Korean restaurants that have opened in Manhattan in the past five years outside Koreatown, the group of old-style restaurants and other Korean businesses clustered on and near a single block of West 32nd Street. Another new-wave place is set to open in Midtown this month. Along with a handful of pioneering arrivals on 32nd Street, these new-wavers have combined to dispense with all manner of Koreatown traditions, from free side dishes and scorching spices to emergency room-style ambience.
A look at the success of Japanese food shows what is motivating many of these Korean restaurateurs. One of the city's highest-priced restaurant meals can be had at Masa, the extravagant sushi palace in the Time Warner Center, for more than $300 a person. In the 2005 online Zagat Survey, 20 Asian restaurants received an elite food ranking of 26 or above. One was Indian; one was Thai, another buzzworthy Asian cuisine; all the others were Japanese. And while a completely accurate count of the city's Japanese restaurants is hard to come by, the printed Zagat Survey listed 84 places, compared with 15 Korean.
The Koreans have an ambitious goal, and even among their ranks, there are skeptics. One is Kori Kim, the owner and chef of Kori, a six-year-old establishment in TriBeCa. Though Ms. Kim describes herself as a Korean homemaker, and at 53 is a generation older than most new-wave Korean restaurateurs, she offers new-wave essentials like subdued lighting and artfully arranged plates of food.
Still, she said she was not convinced that Korean food could rival Japanese cuisine in popularity anytime soon.
"Americans, especially New Yorkers, they can eat Japanese food twice, three times a week," she said. "But Korean food is a little bit too spicy. I think it will not be so easy."
The Old Style: Brisk and Brusque
Outside the small group of newer Korean restaurateurs, the basic Korean food scene has remained fairly static over the years, though the overall number of establishments has grown. According to The Korea Times New York Business Directory, which claims to include listings for 80 to 90 percent of Korean restaurants in the city, there are 51 Korean restaurants in Manhattan, an increase of more than 50 percent from just five years ago.
As in years past, most of these restaurants remain concentrated in Koreatown and offer a standard bill of fare: barbecue dishes like kalbi (short rib) and bulgogi (sirloin), cooked over grills embedded in the tables. A flotilla of side dishes known as panchan arrives with every meal, a selection that invariably includes at least one type of kimchi: a pungent and fiery concoction of fermented vegetables seasoned with garlic and chili. The restaurants can afford to offer such freebies in part by employing a serving style that encourages table turnover.
At a typical place on 32nd Street, the interiors are bright and noisy, and service is generally brisk, if not downright brusque. Servers shout orders, tool around with clanking bus pans at breakneck speed, and seldom take time to explain items on the menu.
Some customers, of course, see this revved-up approach as a virtue.
"They come out in a timely manner," Jenny Kim of Floral Park, Queens, said of the waiters at Won Jo on 32nd Street, whose mustard shirts and blue striped ties complement their businesslike demeanor. Nor does she think that waiters at such places should be judged by the same standards as waiters elsewhere.
"There are so many side dishes," she added, "it's like when one dish runs out, it needs to be refilled."
Side dishes are indeed perpetually being replenished at New York Kom Tang Kal Bi House, a three-story grill house with butcher-block tables and floral-patterned wallpaper that is open around the clock and is one of the city's oldest Korean establishments. "The Korean community calls me 'the lighthouse of 32nd Street,' " said Yu Bong Kim, the owner, referring to his reputation as a beacon of barbecue success.
Mr. Kim came to New York during the immigration boom of the 1970's and washed dishes at a Korean restaurant in Midtown before setting up his own two-table soup hut on West 27th Street. In 1982, he moved to West 32nd Street in the hope of attracting business from the string of Korean wholesale merchants who worked nearby.
His venture prospered, paving the way for other restaurants, which in turn attracted Korean-run spas and karaoke bars. The area became known as Koreatown, often called K-Town, although unlike its Los Angeles namesake, the little district can by no stretch be considered a town, even a small town. Centered on a single block bordered by Broadway and Fifth Avenue, it is home to most of Manhattan's Korean restaurants.
The city's Korean population, which the 2000 Census put at 86,473, is concentrated in Queens, which has 134 Korean restaurants, according to the Korea Times directory. Perhaps the most well-known Korean place in Queens is Kum Gang San in Flushing, a barbecue restaurant whose attractions include a waterfall and live music played on a harplike instrument, the kayakum. A satellite Kum Gang San is on 32nd Street in K-Town, which remains a major dining destination for both Korean immigrants and Korean-Americans.
Breaking the K-Town Mold
Paradoxically, even as newer restaurateurs experiment with innovative strategies and recipes to attract non-Koreans, K-Town itself, like many other of the city's ethnic food districts, is becoming more of a draw for New Yorkers seeking a novel dining experience. Mr. Kim, for one, estimates that his clientele is 65 percent non-Korean, up from only 5 percent in the early 80's.
Still, most new-wavers want to break the K-Town mold. "When you want to go on a date," said Ms. Maeng, of Korean Temple Cuisine, "and you want to eat Korean food, the 32nd Street atmosphere is not very romantic." For this reason, she makes sure her restaurant is always adorned with votive candles and fresh flowers, and the music streaming out of the speakers is an eclectic mix that includes Brazilian jazz and esoteric house.
Along with other more recent arrivals to the scene, like WaWa Canteen in Greenwich Village, Korean Temple has abandoned traditional at-the-table grills but retained homestyle staples like bibimbop and pajeon (scallion pancakes) that non-Koreans find pleasantly exotic without being too pungent.
Another place where bibimbop and innovation comfortably coexist is at SuRa (The King's Meal), a wainscoted hideaway that opened nine months ago on a quiet stretch of East Ninth Street between Third and Fourth Avenues and is owned by Jung Jin Kim, an unassuming interior designer. The name helps explain the nature of the cuisine.
"If our dynasty had survived until now," Ms. Kim said, "what would a 21-year-old princess want to eat?" Envisioning Korean haute cuisine as the answer, she hired Suk Yong Chung, the former chef of Hangawi, a well-regarded oasis of nouveau vegetarianism on carnivorous 32nd Street, and as the manager, his 21-year-old daughter, Ji Hye Chung.
Although Mr. Chung whips up Western-influenced dishes like Korean pear salad with pine nut dressing, his cooking is also informed by age-old Korean wisdom. Freshwater eel, renowned among Koreans as an aphrodisiac, adorns his menu as a true fusion dish: it is served not only with miso sauce but with cream cheese, a nouveau Korean take on a New York classic.
At Hangawi, Mr. Chung's cooking won praise from food critics, but his daughter suggests that the evolution of Korean restaurants owed more to members of her own generation. "We grew up here learning the American culture and American language," she explained, "so we have more opportunities to mingle with American people."
SuRa is not the only restaurant to pair a first-generation chef with a next-generation manager. Two others are Dok Suni, in the East Village, and Do Hwa, in the West Village, run by Jenny Kwak and her mother, Myung Ja. Along with the celebrity hot spot Woo Lae Oak in SoHo, Dok Suni, at 13 years old, is a venerable downtown Korean establishment, frequented by music and film industry personalities like Quentin Tarantino (a Do Hwa investor) and his occasional collaborator, the hip-hop artist RZA.
Despite the coolness quotient of her customers, Ms. Kwak describes her restaurants as bastions of tradition, adding that all the cooks are "Korean moms." Yet she and her mother are unafraid to break new ground. They serve green salad with wasabi dressing, for example, and use soju, the Korean national liquor, as a base for martinis. And one of the restaurants' most popular items, deep-fried shrimp, comes not from Korea but from Brooklyn, a holdover from the days when Ms. Kwak and her mother worked the deep-fryer at a family-owned fish market in Bushwick.
The mother-daughter team has also defied Korean tradition by promoting a sense of hominess, as Sophia Chang of the East Village attested to when she and her husband ate one recent evening at her favorite Korean place, Dok Suni, a publike nook wallpapered with pages from an old Korean history book.
"They make you feel welcome," Ms. Chang said of the servers as she sipped ginger cinnamon tea while the couple's two young children raced around the dining room. "When you go to Koreatown, the stereotype is that they cut to the chase. There's not much customer service, so to speak."
Ms. Chang, a Korean-Canadian by birth, is a fan of both Dok Suni's standard Korean fare and its Westernized dishes. Her opinion of most other new-wave Korean restaurants, though, is decidedly less positive. She recalled one place that charges extra for kimchi and rice. "I want to strangle them," she said.
Her grievance is a common one among Korean customers; they tend to expect an unlimited supply of free side dishes, especially rice and kimchi. Some of the newer restaurants charge for those items; others don't offer refills. As a result, new-wave restaurateurs sometimes find themselves in the awkward position of alienating Koreans even as they seek to retool their image. This may explain why the recent string of openings has coincided with a number of closings: Emo's on the Upper East Side, Clay in NoLIta, Muzy in the East Village, and 36 Bar and Barbecue on 36th Street.
If the Japanese Can Do It ...
Champions of Korean food might take heart from the fact that even Japanese food didn't achieve star status overnight. In 1985, only 16 Japanese restaurants were listed in the New York Zagat Survey. Two decades later the number stands at 84, a fact that surprised even the guide's founder, Tim Zagat. "When I was growing up in New York," said Mr. Zagat, who is 65, "if you told me that I was going to eat raw fish, I would have told you that that was a fraternity prank. Now, there's hardly anybody who doesn't appreciate good sushi."
Some Korean food experts were equally surprised. "I never thought Americans would eat sushi," said In Soo Lee, the director of the Korean government organization Korea Agro-Trade Center of New York. "But it made me think that Korean food could be global." In 2002, he helped to found Korean Night at Shea Stadium, an annual event at which packets of kimchi and noodles are distributed. The event, he said, may have been a factor behind a recent 25 percent boost in sales for Nong Shim, a participating ramen company.
In general, however, rather than promoting the special attributes of their own food, K-Town restaurateurs capitalized on the sushi craze; as early as the 80's, they began serving maki rolls and sashimi, and more recently, they opened restaurants devoted to Japanese cuisine.
Ms. Kim of SuRa suggests that when it came to promoting Korean culture, her parents' generation was held back by a lack of self-confidence caused by a legacy of foreign domination. "We've always been colonized by other cultures," she said, referring to Japanese rule that lasted from 1910 through World War II.
"They had a block over their heads, that they can only grow as much as this," she said of her ancestors. Younger Koreans, she thinks, have no such inhibitions, one reason they are doing more to celebrate and advance Korean cuisine.
As for why Japanese restaurants are so much more popular than Korean ones, there are several theories.
"With Korean food, the flavors are very strong and pungent," suggested Ms. Kwak, of Dok Suni and Do Hwa. "Whereas sushi - once you get past the idea of eating raw fish - is more delicate." As a result, some restaurateurs have opted to use less spice, though Ms. Kwak doesn't stint on garlic, a favorite flavor enhancer among Koreans.
Another theory is that Americans have embraced sushi because they see it as healthy. In response, many Korean restaurateurs talk up the health benefits of their cuisine. Ms. Chung of SuRa, for example, points out that Korean food encompasses a wide variety of vegetables and grilled meat, and says that kimchi is loaded with healthful bacterial culture.
To better address this issue, Ms. Chung has trained her staff to underscore the merits of individual dishes. "We explain, 'This is kimchi,' " she said. "Have you ever had it? It has lots of folic acid and vitamin C."
She and her staff are also quick to explain the trail of golden calligraphy painted on the restaurant's dark oak floorboards. The words, excerpted from an ancient health guide, translate roughly into an unqualified endorsement of the Korean way of eating: "Eat five different types of meats, vegetables, fruits, and grains each day, and you will live healthily for eternity."
On the pullout from the Gaza Strip
Gaza Pullout: Cooperation or Resistance?
By ARCHIE TSE
On Aug. 15, the Israeli government plans to begin an operation to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, a territory about twice the size of Washington, D.C. In addition to moving an estimated 1,500 families out of the Gaza Strip, another 200 families will be re-moved from four settle-ments in the West Bank.
For two days, evacuation teams are to go door to door asking settlers to leave. The government plans to use force for any settlers who remain.
More than half of the affected families have applied for compensation from the government and some are already moving to new communities, according to Haim Altman, a spokesman for the government agency handling the relocation of settlers. Under the compensation program, many families will receive from $200,000 to $400,000.
Officials have expressed concern that some settlers have not come to grips with the withdrawal. And protesters from oustide the settlement areas continue to sneak in, in hopes of complicating and possibly derailing the withdrawal.
The Plan
The government is mobilizing a force of 55,000 soldiers and police for the operation. About 40,000 to 50,000 will be working inside the Gaza Strip and West Bank evacuating the settlers and defending against attackers and protesters. Forces will be used in seven ways, says Capt. Yael Hartmann, an army spokeswoman.
1. HANDLING THE SETTLERS
The actual evacuation of a home will be handled by a team of 17 unarmed soldiers and police. Each team will have both males and females. Because this part of the operation is likely to require more sensitivity than the other tasks, only those with more experience or maturity have been selected. Each team is to handle a small number of houses.
2. GUARDING THE INSIDE
Within the boundary of each settlement, armed soldiers will be on guard to prevent outside protesters from sneaking in.
3. GUARDING THE OUTSIDE
Soldiers will be on guard outside the settlement boundaries, as well as along the roads leading to the settlements.
4. PATROLLING THE BUFFER ZONES
Military units will be stationed in the buffer zones between Palestinian areas and the settlements to guard against Palestinian attacks.
5. WATCHING THE BORDER
Police and soldiers will guard the border between Gaza and Israel, primarily to prevent protesters from getting in.
6. PATROLLING THE REGION
Police will be stationed along the roads leading out of the Gaza Strip and in the surrounding areas.
7. PATROLLING ISRAELI CITIES
Police will be stationed in major cities in Israel to clear streets and prevent disruption from protesters.
Claims of finding King David's palace
King David's Palace Is Found, Archaeologist Says
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 - An Israeli archaeologist says she has uncovered in East Jerusalem what may be the fabled palace of the biblical King David. Her work has been sponsored by a conservative Israeli research institute and financed by an American Jewish investment banker who would like to prove that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of the Jewish kingdom described in the Bible.
Other scholars are skeptical that the foundation walls discovered by the archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, are David's palace. But they acknowledge that what she has uncovered is rare and important: a major public building from around the 10th century B.C., with pottery shards that date to the time of David and Solomon and a government seal of an official mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.
The discovery is likely to be a new salvo in a major dispute in biblical archaeology: whether the kingdom of David was of some historical magnitude, or whether the kings were more like small tribal chieftains, reigning over another dusty hilltop.
The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.
Hani Nur el-Din, a Palestinian professor of archaeology at Al Quds University, said he and his colleagues considered biblical archaeology an effort by Israelis "to fit historical evidence into a biblical context." He added: "The link between the historical evidence and the biblical narration, written much later, is largely missing. There's a kind of fiction about the 10th century. They try to link whatever they find to the biblical narration. They have a button, and they want to make a suit out of it."
Even Israeli archaeologists are not so sure that Ms. Mazar has found the palace - the house that Hiram, king of Tyre, built for the victorious king, at least as Samuel 2:5 describes it. It may also be the Fortress of Zion that David conquered from the Jebusites, who ruled Jerusalem before him, or some other structure about which the Bible is silent.
Either way, they are impressed by its likely importance. "This is a very significant discovery, given that Jerusalem as the capital of the united kingdom is very much unknown," said Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist from Bar-Ilan University. "This is one of the first greetings we have from the Jerusalem of David and Solomon, a period which has played a kind of hide-and-seek with archaeologists for the last century."
Based on the Bible and a century of archaeology in this spot, Ms. Mazar, 48, speculated that a famous stepped-stone structure excavated previously was part of the fortress David conquered, and that his palace would have been built just outside the original walls of the cramped city, on the way to what his son, Solomon, built as the Temple Mount.
"When the Philistines came to fight, the Bible said that David went down from his house to the fortress," she said, her eyes bright. "I wondered, down from where? Presumably from where he lived, his palace."
"So I said, maybe there's something here," she added, referring to East Jerusalem.
David's palace was the topic of a last conversation Ms. Mazar had with her grandfather, Benjamin Mazar, a famous archaeologist who helped to train her and who died 10 years ago. Five months ago, with money and permission from the Ir David Foundation, which controls the site (and supports Jews moving into East Jerusalem), she finally began to dig.
Amihai Mazar, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University, calls the find "something of a miracle." He says he believes that the building may be the Fortress of Zion that David is said to have conquered, which he renamed the City of David. "What she found is fascinating, whatever it is," he said.
Mr. Mazar is Ms. Mazar's second cousin, but he has his own reputation to protect.
Archaeologists debate "to what extent Jerusalem was an important city or even a city in the time of David and Samuel," he said. "Some believe it was tiny and the kingdom unimportant." The site of ancient Jerusalem, stuck between two valleys on a ridge south of the Temple Mount, is very small, less than 10 acres.
Israel Finkelstein, another renowned archaeologist, has suggested that without significant evidence, Jerusalem in this period was "perhaps not more than a typical hill-country village."
In his book, "The Bible Unearthed," Mr. Finkelstein writes with Neil Silberman, "Not only was any sign of monumental architecture missing, but so were even simple pottery shards."
Ms. Mazar believes she has found a riposte: a large public building, with at least some pottery of the time, and a bulla, or governmental seal, of an official - Jehucal (or Jucal), son of Shelemiah, son of Shevi - who is mentioned at least twice in the Book of Jeremiah.
The building can be reasonably dated by the pottery found above and below it. Ms. Mazar found on the bedrock a large floor of crushed limestone, indicating a large public space. The floor and fill above it contain pottery from Iron Age I of the 12th to 11th centuries B.C., just before David conquered Jerusalem.
Above that, Ms. Mazar found the foundations for this monumental building, with large boulders for walls that are about 2 yards thick and extend at least 30 yards. In one corner was pottery of Iron Age II, the 10th to 9th centuries, roughly the time of the united kingdom.
Unfortunately, Mr. Mazar said, she found no floor. It is clear the building was constructed after the pottery underneath it, but less clear exactly how much later.
The archaeological debate is also partly a debate over the roots of Zionism and the effort to find Jewish origins deep in the land. Ms. Mazar's latest dig, which has cost about $500,000, has been sponsored by Roger Hertog, a New York financier who is vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management. Mr. Hertog, who owns a piece of The New York Sun and The New Republic, is also chairman of the board of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, where Ms. Mazar is a senior fellow.
The Shalem Center was founded as Israel's first "neoconservative think-tank," said William Kristol, who is also on the board, in an effort to give the Israeli right a better foundation in history, economics, archaeology and other topics.
Mr. Hertog calls his investment in Ms. Mazar "venture philanthropy - you have the opportunity for intellectual speculation, to fund something that is a work of great consequence." He said he hoped to show "that the Bible reflects Jewish history."
Ms. Mazar continues to dig, but right now, three families are living in houses where she would most like to explore. One family is Muslim, one Christian and one Jewish.
On shortages in the solar energy industry
Shortages Stifle a Boom Time for the Solar Industry
By CHRIS DIXON
With a bill in California that aims to put solar power in half of new homes within 13 years, and with installation incentives in the federal energy legislation passed last week, the future of solar energy in the United States would seem all the brighter. But the future may have to wait, if only a little while.
American suppliers for the solar energy industry say that burgeoning demand both domestically and overseas, a weak dollar and shortages of raw material have created back orders of several months on electricity-generating photovoltaic, or PV, panels.
"For all the years I've been doing this," said Daryl Dejoy, owner of a solar installation company in Penobscot, Me., "I could get all the solar panels in the world and no customers. Now I have all the customers in the world and no product."
Executives of American solar manufacturers and industry groups say the global solar market has grown roughly 40 percent annually in the last five years, driven in large part by Germany. Under an incentive program championed by that country's Green Party, German businesses and individuals with solar equipment can sell power they create to utilities at above-market rates. The utilities pass the excess cost on to their customers.
"It's giving Germans a solid 15 to 20 percent return on equity," said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the trade group for the American solar industry. "You're seeing a lot of companies in Germany start venture capital units based on solar farm development. People are even putting panels up on barns."
Germany consumes 39 percent of all solar panels in the world, with Japan next at 30 percent and the United States a distant third at 9 percent.
Germany installed nearly 400 megawatts of solar power last year, Mr. Resch said, while Japan, whose government subsidizes solar energy consumption, installed nearly 300 megawatts. Americans, with far less in subsidies, installed 90 megawatts, most of it in California.
Japan had the greatest total solar power capacity by the end of 2004, at 1,100 megawatts, followed by Germany, with 790 megawatts, and the United States, with 730, said Noah Kaye, spokesman for the solar energy association. The American figure was enough to power about 300,000 homes, however, some 120,000 more than in 2000.
Now the Million Solar Roofs legislation in California, passed by the State Senate and under consideration in the Assembly, would subsidize the installation of solar equipment with a goal of putting 3,000 megawatts of solar energy to work by 2018. Assessments on electricity bills would pay for the subsidies.
California is among many states - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are others - that already provide subsidies to solar power users. But the scope envisioned by the new California bill, whose enactment appears likely, dwarfs all others.
In addition to the state efforts, the energy measure passed by Congress last week offers a tax credit of up to $2,000 for homeowners who install solar equipment.
But the shortage of solar panels has led to long waits and inconvenience for many Americans who are ready to spend $10,000 to $20,000 for residential solar power systems of 2,000 to 5,000 watts. The shortage has been made worse because photovoltaic electricity is used to power not only homes but also businesses, boats, recreational vehicles, highway signs and cellphone towers.
Mr. Dejoy, of Penobscot Solar, said that for the nation's installers, the situation was "brutal." Even orders that were paid for months ago, he said, had no guaranteed date of delivery or even final price. Recently, a customer who had agreed on an order of several thousand watts balked when Mr. Dejoy told her that a panel supplier had increased the price by a dollar a watt.
Matt Lugar, director of solar sales for the Sharp Electronics Corporation's solar division, in Huntington Beach, Calif., said the supply problems were "a natural evolution in any industry that's exploding."
"There's a lot of panic among our customers who have been in solar for a long time," Mr. Lugar said of the installers. "Prices are rising dramatically. Unfortunately, it's the natural movement of supply and demand."
Until early 2004, Mr. Lugar said, the price of solar panels was dropping as technology advanced. Since then, manufacturers' prices have risen as much as 15 percent, he said, adding that the purified silicon at the heart of solar panels and computer semiconductors alike had also been in extremely short supply.
Mr. Lugar said it was difficult to predict when the industry would be able to meet demand, given a possibility of large subsidy increases in Spain, Italy and Portugal.
But Mr. Kaye, of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that California's incentives could entice suppliers to increase production for the domestic market.
And his boss, Mr. Resch, said the shortage of customary solar resources provided an opportunity for producers of newer "thin film" solar panels. These panels, which can be rolled up for portability or installed on curved surfaces, are now produced in relatively small quantities by several Silicon Valley manufacturers.
"The solar energy industry is diverse," Mr. Resch said, "and will meet the challenges the market presents."
For now, solar installers like William Korthof of Pomona, Calif., can only lament.
"We're getting unannounced price hikes from suppliers," Mr. Korthof said, "and are seeing a complete inability to forecast when they can ship us product. Last year I had waits of two weeks for panels. This year it's two to three months."
Mr. Korthof said that his business, Energy Efficiency Solar, was installing roughly 25 kilowatts of solar power a month for customers. With a reliable supply, he said, he would be installing 50 or more.
Mike Dewalt, who lives outside Peoria, Ill., said he had waited three weeks for a shipment of solar panels for his home. Several weeks later, Mr. Dewalt said, the supplier told him that four more 120-watt panels he wanted would be at least eight weeks in arriving, and that payment would be required immediately.
Mr. Dewalt said that after calling Northern Arizona Wind and Sun, he had his panels in a week. But Eric Phillips, general manager of that business, said its waiting times had also lengthened.
"I'm probably taking 10 to 20 calls a day for modules I can't supply," Mr. Phillips said.
"Only three to four years ago, solar was a really hard sell - trying to convince people to put a system on their home," he said. "These days, we say, 'I can't get the kinds of numbers you need.' "
On graffiti
It has a slideshow
Cat-and-Mouse Game, With Spray Paint
By SHADI RAHIMI
Ray looks like a police officer. But he's a graffiti writer, with a trim goatee and graying at the temples, who wears a stolen orange New York City Transit vest when sneaking into subway tunnels. He has a stolen set of keys that he says unlock subway cars, and he boasts that he has left his graffiti tag name, PRIZ, on subway cars at least 2,000 times in the past 20 years.
At 40, he says he has no plans to quit.
But if Lt. Steve Mona and the 75 other police officers who make up New York City's new antigraffiti unit have their way, Ray and other self-described "graffiti writers" will have no choice but to stop.
If Ray resembles a police officer, Lieutenant Mona, 45, looks like a biker. A hulking man with arms covered in colorful tattoos, he commands the 10-month-old unit, the Citywide Vandals Task Force, whose sole duty is to hunt down and arrest the thousands of people like Ray who illegally scribble, scratch, spray-paint or, using acid, burn writing onto public and private property.
Unlike Ray, who finds beauty in his work, Lieutenant Mona, an 18-year veteran of the transit police whose best friend as a teenager was a graffiti writer, has an uncompromising view: "I'm not an art critic, I'm a cop. I know what a crime is."
The debate over how to best eradicate graffiti has gone on for more than three decades. In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a sweeping plan to combat graffiti by merging the antivandalism unit of the Police Department with that of the transit police. Graffiti, the mayor said in his State of the City address, is "an invitation to criminal behavior."
The new squad is equipped with infrared and digital cameras, a database with thousands of tags and profiles of those arrested, and a book that contains the 100 or so "worst of the worst" repeat offenders. The police, Lieutenant Mona said, are intensifying their efforts.
But so is Ray. And so are others like him who are adapting to the crackdown. A dozen graffiti writers, who spoke on the condition that their full names not appear because what they do is a crime, said that tagging has become more about strategy than ever before.
They map out targets and plot escape routes. Many go out exclusively at night, favoring rooftops and boarded-up buildings that aren't likely to be painted over quickly, if at all. They trade tips online, and snap photographs of, or videotape, their work, rather than returning to admire it.
But they also admit to a new sense of paranoia. Because each side in the graffiti war keeps tabs on the other, writers are painfully aware that plainclothes officers are patrolling streets and subways, taking pictures of the hardest-hit sites, surfing graffiti Web sites, and dropping in on gatherings of writers and fans.
"When the 'goon squad' first started cracking down, a lot of people went out there with the attitude, 'We're going to get over tonight,' " Ray said. "So of course, they got caught."
Graffiti arrests are up 88.9 percent citywide since January, compared with the same period last year, according to police statistics, an increase that Lieutenant Mona attributes to his unit.
Despite the increased risk of arrest, for many graffiti writers the Citywide Vandals Task Force is not a deterrent so much as a "call to arms," said Eric Felisbret, 42, the editor of the graffiti Web site @149th Street. "It's a challenge," he said. "Most of these guys wouldn't be caught dead painting in a legal context. You get more charged up, and more prestige, this way."
For a younger graffiti writer like Harley, an East Village resident whose tag name is IMUNE, the new unit means nothing more than a shift in approach - better planning and riskier escapes that include jumping across rooftops while being chased by the police, which he brags about doing eight times.
Harley, 19, is a baby-faced skateboarder with sand-colored hair who began tagging six years ago. He said he had been arrested six times in three years - including twice this year. The longest he has spent in jail is 43 hours, he said, and he has been fined $200 twice. But he and his friends keep tagging illegally.
"A lot of my friends don't really care about the squad," said Harley. "But things definitely haven't been like they used to be."
Since his last arrest, Harley has begun painting legal murals more often, on the sides of trucks. Other graffiti writers are asking business owners for permission to paint their gates or building walls.
On a recent Saturday afternoon in South Brooklyn, Ray and his writing partner, a soft-spoken 42-year-old known as Stan1, are legally spray-painting a mural on the side of a brick building owned by a city marshal when a burly officer from the antigraffiti unit stops and asks to see proof that they have received permission to paint there. He inspects a letter from the marshal, and drives off.
Poised on a metal ladder, a can of orange Krylon spray paint in hand, Ray shakes his head. "People are used to seeing graffiti as an eyesore," he said. "But a lot of the people doing murals today are artists."
Ray, in fact, is a city employee, with a degree in fine arts. For him, graffiti is an "itch" that, he says, he will abandon only "when the passion is gone." He is mocked by taggers half his age; a few call him a "dinosaur." And as graffiti moves more into the mainstream, more of his peers are displaying their work in galleries or in advertising. Some even discourage illegal tagging.
Lee Quinones, 45, for instance, is now a legal graffiti muralist. Still idolized by fans for painting 10 cars one night in 1977 with his graffiti crew, the Fabulous 5ive, Mr. Quinones said that despite taunts of "sellout" from writers who shun the commercial market, he encourages teenagers to seize any opportunity to "go legitimate."
"It's time to move on, to move forward," he said.
Lieutenant Mona has never liked graffiti, even though one of his best friends tagged. "I was always kind of disturbed by it," he said. "It did make you feel unsafe. The theory was the best you could hope for with a graffiti-covered subway car was that people would feel like nobody was in control. At worst, they felt that the criminals were."
A mock street sign that reads "Graffiti Free Blvd." hangs in his office, inside the Citywide Vandals Task Force headquarters, a brick building in a Brooklyn trainyard, where the silence is interrupted often by the roar of the F train, which runs through the nearby Avenue X subway station. Plainclothes officers from the unit go out on patrol on foot, on bikes and in cars, and document subway tunnels and neighborhoods.
The unit is among the most expansive antigraffiti efforts in the country, says Lieutenant Mona. Police lieutenants from each of the city's precincts, housing projects and transit districts are now assigned to report their monthly progress in combating graffiti.
Lieutenant Mona's goal is for the streets of the city to be scrubbed nearly as clean as its subway trains - and, he hopes, to stay that way. "Success would be just that people can say, 'I remember when,' about the streets, like they do now with the subways," he said.
Pulling graffiti-soaked trains from service until they are cleaned is a practice that began in 1989, under Mayor Edward I. Koch. Cleaning the trains was made even easier with the introduction of stainless steel models. Frustrated by the temporary nature of their canvas, more graffiti writers moved aboveground - where the antigraffiti squad now awaits.
"The risk is greater; it's more sketchy now," said Stan1, who paints illegally on trains and in the streets. "But to me, it's about the challenge. I'm competitive, so I'm going to keep doing what I do. And, I guess, they will too."
And an editorial involving Afghanistan
Afghanistan's Forgotten War
Afghanistan is out of the headlines, but its war against the Taliban goes on. These days, it is not going well. One of the most important reasons for that is the ambivalence of Pakistan, the nation that originally helped create, nurture and train the Taliban. Even now, Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seems to invest far more energy in explaining his government's tolerance of Taliban activities than he does in trying to shut them down.
General Musharraf has provided logistical help to Pentagon operations and cooperation to American law enforcement agencies trying to track down Al Qaeda leaders. But his aid has been frustratingly selective. He has been an intermittent collaborator in the fight against international terrorism rather than a fully committed ally. Washington has been understandably reluctant to push him for more consistency, not wanting to risk losing the help he does offer.
Pakistan's passive enabling of the Taliban, however, is too important and dangerous for Washington to overlook. The current Taliban offensive is killing American soldiers - at least 38 have died in action so far this year, as well as hundreds of Afghans. It also endangers next month's parliamentary elections.
Successful elections are crucial to extending the geographical reach of Afghanistan's new national institutions. And they can provide needed political accountability for President Hamid Karzai, who now rules without an elected Parliament. Afghanistan will be a functioning democracy only when citizens can take their grievances against the central government to elected local representatives instead of to armed local warlords. Those grievances are real. Some governors and police chiefs Mr. Karzai has appointed are thuggish and corrupt. Antidrug efforts go after poor farmers while traffickers thrive. Alternative development lags. A lack of judges stymies the rule of law.
Earlier this year, there were reasons to be hopeful about Afghanistan's future. The presidential election had gone off remarkably smoothly, and the absence of major attacks on polling places suggested that Pakistan was at last responding to Washington's pleas to rein in the Taliban. Mr. Karzai had begun easing notorious warlords out of cabinet ministries and provincial governorships. More money was being directed at antinarcotics efforts.
But once the snows began to melt this March, Taliban fighters started showing up in greater numbers and with suspiciously sophisticated gear in regions of Afghanistan that border Pakistan. Afghan military and intelligence officers are convinced that they are coming from Pakistani training camps.
General Musharraf says that he has sent tens of thousands of troops to police border areas. Yet well-supplied Taliban fighters keep showing up to battle American troops in Afghanistan. He insists that the training camps are still shut down and that he is committed to thwarting the Taliban, but says he must proceed cautiously so he doesn't inflame militant groups in Pakistan. That would be more persuasive had the general not spent close to six years marginalizing mainstream parties and cutting deals with Islamic extremists to reinforce his rule.
When questioned about why he has repeatedly violated his promises to restore civilian democracy, General Musharraf argues that he must retain power because Pakistan needs his strong and effective hand. Washington needs to ask him why that strong hand seems so helpless against the Taliban.
We Both Live Here
By PAMELA SPIRO WAGNER and DR. CAROLYN S. SPIRO
PAMELA: On Nov. 17, 1952, I slid into the world with barely a whimper. Five minutes later, kicking and squalling, my identical twin sister tumbled out after me. We were as alike as two spoons. We answered in one voice, spoke each other's thoughts, completed each other's sentences. We were bound to each other as firmly as any conjoined set of twins.
But in other senses we were polar opposites. I was the steady, stoic one; I soothed my needy twin whenever she went on a weeping jag or temper tantrum, which seemed to be all the time. I shone at school; Lynnie didn't read until fourth grade. I was capable; Lynnie worked on being pretty.
Then, when J.F.K. was assassinated, the voices started, and though I told no one, I knew I was to blame for the president's death. Voices and paranoia took over. In high school, I had a car accident because the hallucinated voice of my headmistress told me to hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. I withdrew from extracurricular activities and refused to talk unless it was absolutely necessary. Nothing got through to me. They called me the Zombie. But my parents couldn't see that I was in trouble. They thought it was an adolescent phase.
In college, my roommate couldn't wear her red sweater without my thinking she was going to kill me. I was sure the local pharmacist was X-raying my brains. I ended up overdosing on sleeping pills and spending five months in the hospital. They put me on antipsychotic medication. And it worked. But when I left the hospital feeling better, I stopped taking it.
CAROLYN: I was the cute twin, too shy for my own good. I didn't even try to compete with Pammy, who seemed incapable of failure. But in junior high she changed: she didn't shower or wear clean clothes unless I reminded her; in school corridors she clung to the walls and hid from people. I was horrified when I found out that some kids thought I was Pammy.
Somehow, when Pammy fell apart in college and was hospitalized, I came into my own. I challenged myself for the first time. I went to medical school. Still, I saw Pammy as a threat to my accomplishments, even to my separateness. She was the talented one. I had no right to succeed.
In our 20's, she told me about the Japanese living inside her apartment walls, about Brother Luke, the spirit who guided her, and about her role in the Kennedy assassination. It was incredibly difficult for me to watch her change from looking like me to being someone I didn't recognize.
When I became a psychiatrist, I finally realized that Pammy's oddness in high school, her hospitalizations and her bizarre adult behavior were symptoms of chronic schizophrenia. Gradually, I told my family, and in the 1990's Mom started to help me take care of Pammy. Dad had never dealt with her. Feeling disowned, Pammy had even gone so far as to change her last name.
Pammy became dangerously suicidal and violent. She was hospitalized for months, restrained frequently and forced to take medication that caused a huge weight gain. My visits only highlighted the startling change in her appearance: no one believed we were twins. She had hallucinations 24 hours a day that commanded her to kill herself.
Finally, last year, I did one of the hardest things I have ever had to do: I authorized electroconvulsive therapy -- shock treatments -- against my sister's will. I thought she would never talk to me again. I felt like a traitor. But she got better, and she thanked me later. And for the first time, the whole family rallied to support her.
Pammy isn't cured. Once she stops taking her pills, for any reason, there's no halting the inexorable decline until once more she is hospitalized and I lose any control I ever had to help her change her situation. Thus goes her life, our lives. It's a life lived in and out of hospitals, a trade-off between symptom and side effect, an endless revolving door between hell and hope. My sister's road may be more painful, but mine is not without pain as I watch her descend again and again into madness. I don't want to be Pammy's doctor, I want to be her sister. I want my twin sister back.
PAMELA: Now that I'm on regular medication, I am finally recovering. For the first time in my life, I feel well and healthy. But it has been only six months. Things are still fragile. I know how easily I could still crumble, psychosis exploding my world. As I learn to dress like a normal person and fix my hair and take regular showers and shampoos, all things I have never done before, I realize that I look more and more like Lynnie again. I hope one day to have people see us on the street and smile the way they used to at the happy sight: twins.
On the remembrance of Hiroshima
It has a slideshow
Where First A-Bomb Fell, Prayers Ask 'Never Again'
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug. 6 - At 8:15 a.m. Saturday, as tens of thousands of Japanese bowed their heads here to mark the instant when an atomic bomb fell 60 years ago, only the loud, telltale buzz of the summer cicadas broke the respectful silence.
In an hourlong ceremony at the Peace Memorial Park, participants, as in previous years, laid wreaths, burned incense, prayed for the souls of the dead, and gave impassioned pleas for world peace and the abolition of nuclear arms. Few in Hiroshima can remember an Aug. 6 that was not oppressively hot, and Saturday morning's blazing sun matched expectation and memory.
Still, on the 60th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack, some members of the aging and dwindling population of survivors expressed worries that Japan was shedding its postwar pacifism. The survivors, whose suffering had long made them Japan's most eloquent advocates for pacifism, said recent policy changes inside Japan had made them deeply pessimistic.
"The dispatch of our Self-Defense Forces to Iraq is completely out of line with pacifism," said Akihiro Takahashi, an A-bomb survivor and former director of the Peace Memorial Museum here. "In the future, the peace Constitution will no doubt be revised, and that will lead to conscription and, eventually, the possession of nuclear arms."
Since early 2004 Japan has had about 500 troops in southern Iraq, deployed on a humanitarian aid, noncombat mission.
A decade ago, on the last major anniversary of the dropping of the bomb, the possibility of Japan acquiring nuclear arms or revising its official renunciation of war was unthinkable. Today, North Korea's possible possession of nuclear weapons has led many here to worry about an arms race, and Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has begun the process of revising the American-imposed postwar Constitution.
"Things have changed," said Dr. Hiroshi Maruya, 80, a physician and survivor of the nuclear blast.
"Ten years ago, few could question Article 9 of the Constitution," he said of the war-renouncing clause. "But people talk about it openly now."
With government thinking no longer matching the survivors' message of pacifism, the general attitude toward them has changed, survivors and experts say.
Osamu Fujiwara, associate professor of peace studies at Tokyo Keizai University, said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did not follow his predecessors' practice of speaking to A-bomb survivors after the annual Aug. 6 ceremony.
"There is no political debate over this cancellation," Professor Fujiwara said. "The ceremony itself has become history, and the A-bomb itself has become a thing of the past."
Dr. Maruya described the government's attitude toward the survivors as "very cold."
"It's as if the government is saying, 'It is no use listening to you,' " he said. "Power politics is the theory of the new world."
In keeping with his city's idealistic pacifism, Hiroshima's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, has proposed working through the United Nations to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide by 2020. But an editorial in Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, reflected the new prevailing mood toward this kind of pacifism by bluntly calling it "empty." The editorial added that the antinuclear campaign "should reflect reality."
Making the same kind of universal appeal for pacifism that the nation's leaders used to make, Mayor Akiba said of the anniversary on Saturday, "It is also a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the A-bomb survivors to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization of genuine world peace, awaken to our individual responsibilities, and recommit ourselves to take action."
To that end, a couple of hours after the ceremony, Miyoko Watanabe, 75, told the story she had told countless times. Exactly 60 years ago she walked out of her house when the strong sun made her return for a parasol. At 8:15 a.m., as she stepped out of her house again, she saw a flash of light in the distance. As the fire blew toward her, she crouched to protect herself, according to the drills that she had been taught at school. The bomb left her relatively unharmed, but it seriously injured her mother and killed her father.
Her father was one of 140,000 people killed instantly or who died soon after the bomb was dropped by the Enola Gay. The population of Hiroshima, a city with many military sites at the time, was 350,000. Three days later, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 80,000. Days later, Japan surrendered.
Her story, Ms. Watanabe said, was her testament to the future. But given the proliferation of nuclear arms, she said that the A-bomb survivors' message "hadn't gotten across."
"It may be empty," she said of the proposal to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020. "But you can't move forward unless you advocate. We can't keep silent because we are uncertain about the results. We have to keep trying, one step at a time."
Mr. Koizumi, who called Hiroshima a world symbol for peace, spoke quickly and in a soft voice, receiving polite applause. "I offer deep prayers from my heart to those who were killed," Mr. Koizumi said, adding that Japan would not produce or possess nuclear weapons on its soil.
A passionate speech by Yohei Kono, the speaker of the lower house of Parliament and a famous pacifist, received the loudest applause. He said the use of the word "mistake" in the famous phrase engraved on a memorial here - "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake" - referred to the use of the bomb, as well as Japan's militarism in Asia.
Recently, a right-wing vandal tried to scrape off the word "mistake" from the memorial, and the damage was still visible.
Last week, in another attempt to play down Japan's wartime aggressions in Asia, the lower house of Parliament restated a resolution passed a decade ago for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, but it removed the words "invasion" and "colonial rule." But declaring that Japan was the only country to have ever suffered an atomic bomb, the resolution again committed Japan to working for peace.
The resolution left some atomic-bomb survivors skeptical.
"The Japanese government says, 'the only country to have ever suffered from an atomic bomb,' when it's convenient for it," Mr. Takahashi said. "If the government believes that, it should act accordingly at the United Nations and elsewhere."
On Korean food in New York
Kimchi Chic
By SAKI KNAFO
KOREAN TEMPLE CUISINE is a sliver of an East Village restaurant appointed with colorful abstract photographs, art-quality shots of the New York skyline and jewel-toned cushions. The narrow space is filled with an endless array of items designed to catch the eye - garlands strung with mirrored tiles, table lamps suspended upside down from the ceiling - and yet on a recent Tuesday evening, several patrons gazed perplexedly at their plates.
These customers had been presented with an order of bibimbop, sliced mountain vegetables and a fried egg heaped atop a mound of rice and served in a stone bowl. As they contemplated the steaming dish, the restaurant's 23-year-old owner, Jennifer Maeng, hurried over to reassure them. "Bibimbop basically means mix it all together," she informed them, demonstrating with chopsticks. She then launched into a disquisition on the finer points of Korean cooking.
As she spoke in her polite, lightly accented voice, her customers watched intently, unaware that by being so attentive, Ms. Maeng had essentially bucked more than two decades of Korean dining tradition.
"We want people to understand what they are eating," she explained afterward, contrasting her style of service with that found in more traditional Korean restaurants, which she characterized as embodying the philosophy: " 'Let's put it on the table, and let them figure it out.' " By adopting new approaches like doting service, chic décor and creative food presentation, Ms. Maeng thinks, New York's Korean restaurants can do much to take their cuisine to the next level and perhaps help it become as popular as Japanese food, which has so powerfully captivated the New York palate in recent years.
"Right now there are many Japanese restaurants, almost as much as Italian food," Ms. Maeng said. "But as soon as people get friendly with Korean food, it's going to spread as much."
Ms. Maeng is part of a new wave of Korean-American restaurateurs whose goal is to put a modern spin on their traditional cuisine. Korean Temple Cuisine, on St. Marks Place near First Avenue, is one of at least 10 Korean restaurants that have opened in Manhattan in the past five years outside Koreatown, the group of old-style restaurants and other Korean businesses clustered on and near a single block of West 32nd Street. Another new-wave place is set to open in Midtown this month. Along with a handful of pioneering arrivals on 32nd Street, these new-wavers have combined to dispense with all manner of Koreatown traditions, from free side dishes and scorching spices to emergency room-style ambience.
A look at the success of Japanese food shows what is motivating many of these Korean restaurateurs. One of the city's highest-priced restaurant meals can be had at Masa, the extravagant sushi palace in the Time Warner Center, for more than $300 a person. In the 2005 online Zagat Survey, 20 Asian restaurants received an elite food ranking of 26 or above. One was Indian; one was Thai, another buzzworthy Asian cuisine; all the others were Japanese. And while a completely accurate count of the city's Japanese restaurants is hard to come by, the printed Zagat Survey listed 84 places, compared with 15 Korean.
The Koreans have an ambitious goal, and even among their ranks, there are skeptics. One is Kori Kim, the owner and chef of Kori, a six-year-old establishment in TriBeCa. Though Ms. Kim describes herself as a Korean homemaker, and at 53 is a generation older than most new-wave Korean restaurateurs, she offers new-wave essentials like subdued lighting and artfully arranged plates of food.
Still, she said she was not convinced that Korean food could rival Japanese cuisine in popularity anytime soon.
"Americans, especially New Yorkers, they can eat Japanese food twice, three times a week," she said. "But Korean food is a little bit too spicy. I think it will not be so easy."
The Old Style: Brisk and Brusque
Outside the small group of newer Korean restaurateurs, the basic Korean food scene has remained fairly static over the years, though the overall number of establishments has grown. According to The Korea Times New York Business Directory, which claims to include listings for 80 to 90 percent of Korean restaurants in the city, there are 51 Korean restaurants in Manhattan, an increase of more than 50 percent from just five years ago.
As in years past, most of these restaurants remain concentrated in Koreatown and offer a standard bill of fare: barbecue dishes like kalbi (short rib) and bulgogi (sirloin), cooked over grills embedded in the tables. A flotilla of side dishes known as panchan arrives with every meal, a selection that invariably includes at least one type of kimchi: a pungent and fiery concoction of fermented vegetables seasoned with garlic and chili. The restaurants can afford to offer such freebies in part by employing a serving style that encourages table turnover.
At a typical place on 32nd Street, the interiors are bright and noisy, and service is generally brisk, if not downright brusque. Servers shout orders, tool around with clanking bus pans at breakneck speed, and seldom take time to explain items on the menu.
Some customers, of course, see this revved-up approach as a virtue.
"They come out in a timely manner," Jenny Kim of Floral Park, Queens, said of the waiters at Won Jo on 32nd Street, whose mustard shirts and blue striped ties complement their businesslike demeanor. Nor does she think that waiters at such places should be judged by the same standards as waiters elsewhere.
"There are so many side dishes," she added, "it's like when one dish runs out, it needs to be refilled."
Side dishes are indeed perpetually being replenished at New York Kom Tang Kal Bi House, a three-story grill house with butcher-block tables and floral-patterned wallpaper that is open around the clock and is one of the city's oldest Korean establishments. "The Korean community calls me 'the lighthouse of 32nd Street,' " said Yu Bong Kim, the owner, referring to his reputation as a beacon of barbecue success.
Mr. Kim came to New York during the immigration boom of the 1970's and washed dishes at a Korean restaurant in Midtown before setting up his own two-table soup hut on West 27th Street. In 1982, he moved to West 32nd Street in the hope of attracting business from the string of Korean wholesale merchants who worked nearby.
His venture prospered, paving the way for other restaurants, which in turn attracted Korean-run spas and karaoke bars. The area became known as Koreatown, often called K-Town, although unlike its Los Angeles namesake, the little district can by no stretch be considered a town, even a small town. Centered on a single block bordered by Broadway and Fifth Avenue, it is home to most of Manhattan's Korean restaurants.
The city's Korean population, which the 2000 Census put at 86,473, is concentrated in Queens, which has 134 Korean restaurants, according to the Korea Times directory. Perhaps the most well-known Korean place in Queens is Kum Gang San in Flushing, a barbecue restaurant whose attractions include a waterfall and live music played on a harplike instrument, the kayakum. A satellite Kum Gang San is on 32nd Street in K-Town, which remains a major dining destination for both Korean immigrants and Korean-Americans.
Breaking the K-Town Mold
Paradoxically, even as newer restaurateurs experiment with innovative strategies and recipes to attract non-Koreans, K-Town itself, like many other of the city's ethnic food districts, is becoming more of a draw for New Yorkers seeking a novel dining experience. Mr. Kim, for one, estimates that his clientele is 65 percent non-Korean, up from only 5 percent in the early 80's.
Still, most new-wavers want to break the K-Town mold. "When you want to go on a date," said Ms. Maeng, of Korean Temple Cuisine, "and you want to eat Korean food, the 32nd Street atmosphere is not very romantic." For this reason, she makes sure her restaurant is always adorned with votive candles and fresh flowers, and the music streaming out of the speakers is an eclectic mix that includes Brazilian jazz and esoteric house.
Along with other more recent arrivals to the scene, like WaWa Canteen in Greenwich Village, Korean Temple has abandoned traditional at-the-table grills but retained homestyle staples like bibimbop and pajeon (scallion pancakes) that non-Koreans find pleasantly exotic without being too pungent.
Another place where bibimbop and innovation comfortably coexist is at SuRa (The King's Meal), a wainscoted hideaway that opened nine months ago on a quiet stretch of East Ninth Street between Third and Fourth Avenues and is owned by Jung Jin Kim, an unassuming interior designer. The name helps explain the nature of the cuisine.
"If our dynasty had survived until now," Ms. Kim said, "what would a 21-year-old princess want to eat?" Envisioning Korean haute cuisine as the answer, she hired Suk Yong Chung, the former chef of Hangawi, a well-regarded oasis of nouveau vegetarianism on carnivorous 32nd Street, and as the manager, his 21-year-old daughter, Ji Hye Chung.
Although Mr. Chung whips up Western-influenced dishes like Korean pear salad with pine nut dressing, his cooking is also informed by age-old Korean wisdom. Freshwater eel, renowned among Koreans as an aphrodisiac, adorns his menu as a true fusion dish: it is served not only with miso sauce but with cream cheese, a nouveau Korean take on a New York classic.
At Hangawi, Mr. Chung's cooking won praise from food critics, but his daughter suggests that the evolution of Korean restaurants owed more to members of her own generation. "We grew up here learning the American culture and American language," she explained, "so we have more opportunities to mingle with American people."
SuRa is not the only restaurant to pair a first-generation chef with a next-generation manager. Two others are Dok Suni, in the East Village, and Do Hwa, in the West Village, run by Jenny Kwak and her mother, Myung Ja. Along with the celebrity hot spot Woo Lae Oak in SoHo, Dok Suni, at 13 years old, is a venerable downtown Korean establishment, frequented by music and film industry personalities like Quentin Tarantino (a Do Hwa investor) and his occasional collaborator, the hip-hop artist RZA.
Despite the coolness quotient of her customers, Ms. Kwak describes her restaurants as bastions of tradition, adding that all the cooks are "Korean moms." Yet she and her mother are unafraid to break new ground. They serve green salad with wasabi dressing, for example, and use soju, the Korean national liquor, as a base for martinis. And one of the restaurants' most popular items, deep-fried shrimp, comes not from Korea but from Brooklyn, a holdover from the days when Ms. Kwak and her mother worked the deep-fryer at a family-owned fish market in Bushwick.
The mother-daughter team has also defied Korean tradition by promoting a sense of hominess, as Sophia Chang of the East Village attested to when she and her husband ate one recent evening at her favorite Korean place, Dok Suni, a publike nook wallpapered with pages from an old Korean history book.
"They make you feel welcome," Ms. Chang said of the servers as she sipped ginger cinnamon tea while the couple's two young children raced around the dining room. "When you go to Koreatown, the stereotype is that they cut to the chase. There's not much customer service, so to speak."
Ms. Chang, a Korean-Canadian by birth, is a fan of both Dok Suni's standard Korean fare and its Westernized dishes. Her opinion of most other new-wave Korean restaurants, though, is decidedly less positive. She recalled one place that charges extra for kimchi and rice. "I want to strangle them," she said.
Her grievance is a common one among Korean customers; they tend to expect an unlimited supply of free side dishes, especially rice and kimchi. Some of the newer restaurants charge for those items; others don't offer refills. As a result, new-wave restaurateurs sometimes find themselves in the awkward position of alienating Koreans even as they seek to retool their image. This may explain why the recent string of openings has coincided with a number of closings: Emo's on the Upper East Side, Clay in NoLIta, Muzy in the East Village, and 36 Bar and Barbecue on 36th Street.
If the Japanese Can Do It ...
Champions of Korean food might take heart from the fact that even Japanese food didn't achieve star status overnight. In 1985, only 16 Japanese restaurants were listed in the New York Zagat Survey. Two decades later the number stands at 84, a fact that surprised even the guide's founder, Tim Zagat. "When I was growing up in New York," said Mr. Zagat, who is 65, "if you told me that I was going to eat raw fish, I would have told you that that was a fraternity prank. Now, there's hardly anybody who doesn't appreciate good sushi."
Some Korean food experts were equally surprised. "I never thought Americans would eat sushi," said In Soo Lee, the director of the Korean government organization Korea Agro-Trade Center of New York. "But it made me think that Korean food could be global." In 2002, he helped to found Korean Night at Shea Stadium, an annual event at which packets of kimchi and noodles are distributed. The event, he said, may have been a factor behind a recent 25 percent boost in sales for Nong Shim, a participating ramen company.
In general, however, rather than promoting the special attributes of their own food, K-Town restaurateurs capitalized on the sushi craze; as early as the 80's, they began serving maki rolls and sashimi, and more recently, they opened restaurants devoted to Japanese cuisine.
Ms. Kim of SuRa suggests that when it came to promoting Korean culture, her parents' generation was held back by a lack of self-confidence caused by a legacy of foreign domination. "We've always been colonized by other cultures," she said, referring to Japanese rule that lasted from 1910 through World War II.
"They had a block over their heads, that they can only grow as much as this," she said of her ancestors. Younger Koreans, she thinks, have no such inhibitions, one reason they are doing more to celebrate and advance Korean cuisine.
As for why Japanese restaurants are so much more popular than Korean ones, there are several theories.
"With Korean food, the flavors are very strong and pungent," suggested Ms. Kwak, of Dok Suni and Do Hwa. "Whereas sushi - once you get past the idea of eating raw fish - is more delicate." As a result, some restaurateurs have opted to use less spice, though Ms. Kwak doesn't stint on garlic, a favorite flavor enhancer among Koreans.
Another theory is that Americans have embraced sushi because they see it as healthy. In response, many Korean restaurateurs talk up the health benefits of their cuisine. Ms. Chung of SuRa, for example, points out that Korean food encompasses a wide variety of vegetables and grilled meat, and says that kimchi is loaded with healthful bacterial culture.
To better address this issue, Ms. Chung has trained her staff to underscore the merits of individual dishes. "We explain, 'This is kimchi,' " she said. "Have you ever had it? It has lots of folic acid and vitamin C."
She and her staff are also quick to explain the trail of golden calligraphy painted on the restaurant's dark oak floorboards. The words, excerpted from an ancient health guide, translate roughly into an unqualified endorsement of the Korean way of eating: "Eat five different types of meats, vegetables, fruits, and grains each day, and you will live healthily for eternity."
On the pullout from the Gaza Strip
Gaza Pullout: Cooperation or Resistance?
By ARCHIE TSE
On Aug. 15, the Israeli government plans to begin an operation to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, a territory about twice the size of Washington, D.C. In addition to moving an estimated 1,500 families out of the Gaza Strip, another 200 families will be re-moved from four settle-ments in the West Bank.
For two days, evacuation teams are to go door to door asking settlers to leave. The government plans to use force for any settlers who remain.
More than half of the affected families have applied for compensation from the government and some are already moving to new communities, according to Haim Altman, a spokesman for the government agency handling the relocation of settlers. Under the compensation program, many families will receive from $200,000 to $400,000.
Officials have expressed concern that some settlers have not come to grips with the withdrawal. And protesters from oustide the settlement areas continue to sneak in, in hopes of complicating and possibly derailing the withdrawal.
The Plan
The government is mobilizing a force of 55,000 soldiers and police for the operation. About 40,000 to 50,000 will be working inside the Gaza Strip and West Bank evacuating the settlers and defending against attackers and protesters. Forces will be used in seven ways, says Capt. Yael Hartmann, an army spokeswoman.
1. HANDLING THE SETTLERS
The actual evacuation of a home will be handled by a team of 17 unarmed soldiers and police. Each team will have both males and females. Because this part of the operation is likely to require more sensitivity than the other tasks, only those with more experience or maturity have been selected. Each team is to handle a small number of houses.
2. GUARDING THE INSIDE
Within the boundary of each settlement, armed soldiers will be on guard to prevent outside protesters from sneaking in.
3. GUARDING THE OUTSIDE
Soldiers will be on guard outside the settlement boundaries, as well as along the roads leading to the settlements.
4. PATROLLING THE BUFFER ZONES
Military units will be stationed in the buffer zones between Palestinian areas and the settlements to guard against Palestinian attacks.
5. WATCHING THE BORDER
Police and soldiers will guard the border between Gaza and Israel, primarily to prevent protesters from getting in.
6. PATROLLING THE REGION
Police will be stationed along the roads leading out of the Gaza Strip and in the surrounding areas.
7. PATROLLING ISRAELI CITIES
Police will be stationed in major cities in Israel to clear streets and prevent disruption from protesters.
Claims of finding King David's palace
King David's Palace Is Found, Archaeologist Says
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 - An Israeli archaeologist says she has uncovered in East Jerusalem what may be the fabled palace of the biblical King David. Her work has been sponsored by a conservative Israeli research institute and financed by an American Jewish investment banker who would like to prove that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of the Jewish kingdom described in the Bible.
Other scholars are skeptical that the foundation walls discovered by the archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, are David's palace. But they acknowledge that what she has uncovered is rare and important: a major public building from around the 10th century B.C., with pottery shards that date to the time of David and Solomon and a government seal of an official mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.
The discovery is likely to be a new salvo in a major dispute in biblical archaeology: whether the kingdom of David was of some historical magnitude, or whether the kings were more like small tribal chieftains, reigning over another dusty hilltop.
The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.
Hani Nur el-Din, a Palestinian professor of archaeology at Al Quds University, said he and his colleagues considered biblical archaeology an effort by Israelis "to fit historical evidence into a biblical context." He added: "The link between the historical evidence and the biblical narration, written much later, is largely missing. There's a kind of fiction about the 10th century. They try to link whatever they find to the biblical narration. They have a button, and they want to make a suit out of it."
Even Israeli archaeologists are not so sure that Ms. Mazar has found the palace - the house that Hiram, king of Tyre, built for the victorious king, at least as Samuel 2:5 describes it. It may also be the Fortress of Zion that David conquered from the Jebusites, who ruled Jerusalem before him, or some other structure about which the Bible is silent.
Either way, they are impressed by its likely importance. "This is a very significant discovery, given that Jerusalem as the capital of the united kingdom is very much unknown," said Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist from Bar-Ilan University. "This is one of the first greetings we have from the Jerusalem of David and Solomon, a period which has played a kind of hide-and-seek with archaeologists for the last century."
Based on the Bible and a century of archaeology in this spot, Ms. Mazar, 48, speculated that a famous stepped-stone structure excavated previously was part of the fortress David conquered, and that his palace would have been built just outside the original walls of the cramped city, on the way to what his son, Solomon, built as the Temple Mount.
"When the Philistines came to fight, the Bible said that David went down from his house to the fortress," she said, her eyes bright. "I wondered, down from where? Presumably from where he lived, his palace."
"So I said, maybe there's something here," she added, referring to East Jerusalem.
David's palace was the topic of a last conversation Ms. Mazar had with her grandfather, Benjamin Mazar, a famous archaeologist who helped to train her and who died 10 years ago. Five months ago, with money and permission from the Ir David Foundation, which controls the site (and supports Jews moving into East Jerusalem), she finally began to dig.
Amihai Mazar, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University, calls the find "something of a miracle." He says he believes that the building may be the Fortress of Zion that David is said to have conquered, which he renamed the City of David. "What she found is fascinating, whatever it is," he said.
Mr. Mazar is Ms. Mazar's second cousin, but he has his own reputation to protect.
Archaeologists debate "to what extent Jerusalem was an important city or even a city in the time of David and Samuel," he said. "Some believe it was tiny and the kingdom unimportant." The site of ancient Jerusalem, stuck between two valleys on a ridge south of the Temple Mount, is very small, less than 10 acres.
Israel Finkelstein, another renowned archaeologist, has suggested that without significant evidence, Jerusalem in this period was "perhaps not more than a typical hill-country village."
In his book, "The Bible Unearthed," Mr. Finkelstein writes with Neil Silberman, "Not only was any sign of monumental architecture missing, but so were even simple pottery shards."
Ms. Mazar believes she has found a riposte: a large public building, with at least some pottery of the time, and a bulla, or governmental seal, of an official - Jehucal (or Jucal), son of Shelemiah, son of Shevi - who is mentioned at least twice in the Book of Jeremiah.
The building can be reasonably dated by the pottery found above and below it. Ms. Mazar found on the bedrock a large floor of crushed limestone, indicating a large public space. The floor and fill above it contain pottery from Iron Age I of the 12th to 11th centuries B.C., just before David conquered Jerusalem.
Above that, Ms. Mazar found the foundations for this monumental building, with large boulders for walls that are about 2 yards thick and extend at least 30 yards. In one corner was pottery of Iron Age II, the 10th to 9th centuries, roughly the time of the united kingdom.
Unfortunately, Mr. Mazar said, she found no floor. It is clear the building was constructed after the pottery underneath it, but less clear exactly how much later.
The archaeological debate is also partly a debate over the roots of Zionism and the effort to find Jewish origins deep in the land. Ms. Mazar's latest dig, which has cost about $500,000, has been sponsored by Roger Hertog, a New York financier who is vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management. Mr. Hertog, who owns a piece of The New York Sun and The New Republic, is also chairman of the board of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, where Ms. Mazar is a senior fellow.
The Shalem Center was founded as Israel's first "neoconservative think-tank," said William Kristol, who is also on the board, in an effort to give the Israeli right a better foundation in history, economics, archaeology and other topics.
Mr. Hertog calls his investment in Ms. Mazar "venture philanthropy - you have the opportunity for intellectual speculation, to fund something that is a work of great consequence." He said he hoped to show "that the Bible reflects Jewish history."
Ms. Mazar continues to dig, but right now, three families are living in houses where she would most like to explore. One family is Muslim, one Christian and one Jewish.
On shortages in the solar energy industry
Shortages Stifle a Boom Time for the Solar Industry
By CHRIS DIXON
With a bill in California that aims to put solar power in half of new homes within 13 years, and with installation incentives in the federal energy legislation passed last week, the future of solar energy in the United States would seem all the brighter. But the future may have to wait, if only a little while.
American suppliers for the solar energy industry say that burgeoning demand both domestically and overseas, a weak dollar and shortages of raw material have created back orders of several months on electricity-generating photovoltaic, or PV, panels.
"For all the years I've been doing this," said Daryl Dejoy, owner of a solar installation company in Penobscot, Me., "I could get all the solar panels in the world and no customers. Now I have all the customers in the world and no product."
Executives of American solar manufacturers and industry groups say the global solar market has grown roughly 40 percent annually in the last five years, driven in large part by Germany. Under an incentive program championed by that country's Green Party, German businesses and individuals with solar equipment can sell power they create to utilities at above-market rates. The utilities pass the excess cost on to their customers.
"It's giving Germans a solid 15 to 20 percent return on equity," said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the trade group for the American solar industry. "You're seeing a lot of companies in Germany start venture capital units based on solar farm development. People are even putting panels up on barns."
Germany consumes 39 percent of all solar panels in the world, with Japan next at 30 percent and the United States a distant third at 9 percent.
Germany installed nearly 400 megawatts of solar power last year, Mr. Resch said, while Japan, whose government subsidizes solar energy consumption, installed nearly 300 megawatts. Americans, with far less in subsidies, installed 90 megawatts, most of it in California.
Japan had the greatest total solar power capacity by the end of 2004, at 1,100 megawatts, followed by Germany, with 790 megawatts, and the United States, with 730, said Noah Kaye, spokesman for the solar energy association. The American figure was enough to power about 300,000 homes, however, some 120,000 more than in 2000.
Now the Million Solar Roofs legislation in California, passed by the State Senate and under consideration in the Assembly, would subsidize the installation of solar equipment with a goal of putting 3,000 megawatts of solar energy to work by 2018. Assessments on electricity bills would pay for the subsidies.
California is among many states - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are others - that already provide subsidies to solar power users. But the scope envisioned by the new California bill, whose enactment appears likely, dwarfs all others.
In addition to the state efforts, the energy measure passed by Congress last week offers a tax credit of up to $2,000 for homeowners who install solar equipment.
But the shortage of solar panels has led to long waits and inconvenience for many Americans who are ready to spend $10,000 to $20,000 for residential solar power systems of 2,000 to 5,000 watts. The shortage has been made worse because photovoltaic electricity is used to power not only homes but also businesses, boats, recreational vehicles, highway signs and cellphone towers.
Mr. Dejoy, of Penobscot Solar, said that for the nation's installers, the situation was "brutal." Even orders that were paid for months ago, he said, had no guaranteed date of delivery or even final price. Recently, a customer who had agreed on an order of several thousand watts balked when Mr. Dejoy told her that a panel supplier had increased the price by a dollar a watt.
Matt Lugar, director of solar sales for the Sharp Electronics Corporation's solar division, in Huntington Beach, Calif., said the supply problems were "a natural evolution in any industry that's exploding."
"There's a lot of panic among our customers who have been in solar for a long time," Mr. Lugar said of the installers. "Prices are rising dramatically. Unfortunately, it's the natural movement of supply and demand."
Until early 2004, Mr. Lugar said, the price of solar panels was dropping as technology advanced. Since then, manufacturers' prices have risen as much as 15 percent, he said, adding that the purified silicon at the heart of solar panels and computer semiconductors alike had also been in extremely short supply.
Mr. Lugar said it was difficult to predict when the industry would be able to meet demand, given a possibility of large subsidy increases in Spain, Italy and Portugal.
But Mr. Kaye, of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that California's incentives could entice suppliers to increase production for the domestic market.
And his boss, Mr. Resch, said the shortage of customary solar resources provided an opportunity for producers of newer "thin film" solar panels. These panels, which can be rolled up for portability or installed on curved surfaces, are now produced in relatively small quantities by several Silicon Valley manufacturers.
"The solar energy industry is diverse," Mr. Resch said, "and will meet the challenges the market presents."
For now, solar installers like William Korthof of Pomona, Calif., can only lament.
"We're getting unannounced price hikes from suppliers," Mr. Korthof said, "and are seeing a complete inability to forecast when they can ship us product. Last year I had waits of two weeks for panels. This year it's two to three months."
Mr. Korthof said that his business, Energy Efficiency Solar, was installing roughly 25 kilowatts of solar power a month for customers. With a reliable supply, he said, he would be installing 50 or more.
Mike Dewalt, who lives outside Peoria, Ill., said he had waited three weeks for a shipment of solar panels for his home. Several weeks later, Mr. Dewalt said, the supplier told him that four more 120-watt panels he wanted would be at least eight weeks in arriving, and that payment would be required immediately.
Mr. Dewalt said that after calling Northern Arizona Wind and Sun, he had his panels in a week. But Eric Phillips, general manager of that business, said its waiting times had also lengthened.
"I'm probably taking 10 to 20 calls a day for modules I can't supply," Mr. Phillips said.
"Only three to four years ago, solar was a really hard sell - trying to convince people to put a system on their home," he said. "These days, we say, 'I can't get the kinds of numbers you need.' "
On graffiti
It has a slideshow
Cat-and-Mouse Game, With Spray Paint
By SHADI RAHIMI
Ray looks like a police officer. But he's a graffiti writer, with a trim goatee and graying at the temples, who wears a stolen orange New York City Transit vest when sneaking into subway tunnels. He has a stolen set of keys that he says unlock subway cars, and he boasts that he has left his graffiti tag name, PRIZ, on subway cars at least 2,000 times in the past 20 years.
At 40, he says he has no plans to quit.
But if Lt. Steve Mona and the 75 other police officers who make up New York City's new antigraffiti unit have their way, Ray and other self-described "graffiti writers" will have no choice but to stop.
If Ray resembles a police officer, Lieutenant Mona, 45, looks like a biker. A hulking man with arms covered in colorful tattoos, he commands the 10-month-old unit, the Citywide Vandals Task Force, whose sole duty is to hunt down and arrest the thousands of people like Ray who illegally scribble, scratch, spray-paint or, using acid, burn writing onto public and private property.
Unlike Ray, who finds beauty in his work, Lieutenant Mona, an 18-year veteran of the transit police whose best friend as a teenager was a graffiti writer, has an uncompromising view: "I'm not an art critic, I'm a cop. I know what a crime is."
The debate over how to best eradicate graffiti has gone on for more than three decades. In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a sweeping plan to combat graffiti by merging the antivandalism unit of the Police Department with that of the transit police. Graffiti, the mayor said in his State of the City address, is "an invitation to criminal behavior."
The new squad is equipped with infrared and digital cameras, a database with thousands of tags and profiles of those arrested, and a book that contains the 100 or so "worst of the worst" repeat offenders. The police, Lieutenant Mona said, are intensifying their efforts.
But so is Ray. And so are others like him who are adapting to the crackdown. A dozen graffiti writers, who spoke on the condition that their full names not appear because what they do is a crime, said that tagging has become more about strategy than ever before.
They map out targets and plot escape routes. Many go out exclusively at night, favoring rooftops and boarded-up buildings that aren't likely to be painted over quickly, if at all. They trade tips online, and snap photographs of, or videotape, their work, rather than returning to admire it.
But they also admit to a new sense of paranoia. Because each side in the graffiti war keeps tabs on the other, writers are painfully aware that plainclothes officers are patrolling streets and subways, taking pictures of the hardest-hit sites, surfing graffiti Web sites, and dropping in on gatherings of writers and fans.
"When the 'goon squad' first started cracking down, a lot of people went out there with the attitude, 'We're going to get over tonight,' " Ray said. "So of course, they got caught."
Graffiti arrests are up 88.9 percent citywide since January, compared with the same period last year, according to police statistics, an increase that Lieutenant Mona attributes to his unit.
Despite the increased risk of arrest, for many graffiti writers the Citywide Vandals Task Force is not a deterrent so much as a "call to arms," said Eric Felisbret, 42, the editor of the graffiti Web site @149th Street. "It's a challenge," he said. "Most of these guys wouldn't be caught dead painting in a legal context. You get more charged up, and more prestige, this way."
For a younger graffiti writer like Harley, an East Village resident whose tag name is IMUNE, the new unit means nothing more than a shift in approach - better planning and riskier escapes that include jumping across rooftops while being chased by the police, which he brags about doing eight times.
Harley, 19, is a baby-faced skateboarder with sand-colored hair who began tagging six years ago. He said he had been arrested six times in three years - including twice this year. The longest he has spent in jail is 43 hours, he said, and he has been fined $200 twice. But he and his friends keep tagging illegally.
"A lot of my friends don't really care about the squad," said Harley. "But things definitely haven't been like they used to be."
Since his last arrest, Harley has begun painting legal murals more often, on the sides of trucks. Other graffiti writers are asking business owners for permission to paint their gates or building walls.
On a recent Saturday afternoon in South Brooklyn, Ray and his writing partner, a soft-spoken 42-year-old known as Stan1, are legally spray-painting a mural on the side of a brick building owned by a city marshal when a burly officer from the antigraffiti unit stops and asks to see proof that they have received permission to paint there. He inspects a letter from the marshal, and drives off.
Poised on a metal ladder, a can of orange Krylon spray paint in hand, Ray shakes his head. "People are used to seeing graffiti as an eyesore," he said. "But a lot of the people doing murals today are artists."
Ray, in fact, is a city employee, with a degree in fine arts. For him, graffiti is an "itch" that, he says, he will abandon only "when the passion is gone." He is mocked by taggers half his age; a few call him a "dinosaur." And as graffiti moves more into the mainstream, more of his peers are displaying their work in galleries or in advertising. Some even discourage illegal tagging.
Lee Quinones, 45, for instance, is now a legal graffiti muralist. Still idolized by fans for painting 10 cars one night in 1977 with his graffiti crew, the Fabulous 5ive, Mr. Quinones said that despite taunts of "sellout" from writers who shun the commercial market, he encourages teenagers to seize any opportunity to "go legitimate."
"It's time to move on, to move forward," he said.
Lieutenant Mona has never liked graffiti, even though one of his best friends tagged. "I was always kind of disturbed by it," he said. "It did make you feel unsafe. The theory was the best you could hope for with a graffiti-covered subway car was that people would feel like nobody was in control. At worst, they felt that the criminals were."
A mock street sign that reads "Graffiti Free Blvd." hangs in his office, inside the Citywide Vandals Task Force headquarters, a brick building in a Brooklyn trainyard, where the silence is interrupted often by the roar of the F train, which runs through the nearby Avenue X subway station. Plainclothes officers from the unit go out on patrol on foot, on bikes and in cars, and document subway tunnels and neighborhoods.
The unit is among the most expansive antigraffiti efforts in the country, says Lieutenant Mona. Police lieutenants from each of the city's precincts, housing projects and transit districts are now assigned to report their monthly progress in combating graffiti.
Lieutenant Mona's goal is for the streets of the city to be scrubbed nearly as clean as its subway trains - and, he hopes, to stay that way. "Success would be just that people can say, 'I remember when,' about the streets, like they do now with the subways," he said.
Pulling graffiti-soaked trains from service until they are cleaned is a practice that began in 1989, under Mayor Edward I. Koch. Cleaning the trains was made even easier with the introduction of stainless steel models. Frustrated by the temporary nature of their canvas, more graffiti writers moved aboveground - where the antigraffiti squad now awaits.
"The risk is greater; it's more sketchy now," said Stan1, who paints illegally on trains and in the streets. "But to me, it's about the challenge. I'm competitive, so I'm going to keep doing what I do. And, I guess, they will too."
And an editorial involving Afghanistan
Afghanistan's Forgotten War
Afghanistan is out of the headlines, but its war against the Taliban goes on. These days, it is not going well. One of the most important reasons for that is the ambivalence of Pakistan, the nation that originally helped create, nurture and train the Taliban. Even now, Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seems to invest far more energy in explaining his government's tolerance of Taliban activities than he does in trying to shut them down.
General Musharraf has provided logistical help to Pentagon operations and cooperation to American law enforcement agencies trying to track down Al Qaeda leaders. But his aid has been frustratingly selective. He has been an intermittent collaborator in the fight against international terrorism rather than a fully committed ally. Washington has been understandably reluctant to push him for more consistency, not wanting to risk losing the help he does offer.
Pakistan's passive enabling of the Taliban, however, is too important and dangerous for Washington to overlook. The current Taliban offensive is killing American soldiers - at least 38 have died in action so far this year, as well as hundreds of Afghans. It also endangers next month's parliamentary elections.
Successful elections are crucial to extending the geographical reach of Afghanistan's new national institutions. And they can provide needed political accountability for President Hamid Karzai, who now rules without an elected Parliament. Afghanistan will be a functioning democracy only when citizens can take their grievances against the central government to elected local representatives instead of to armed local warlords. Those grievances are real. Some governors and police chiefs Mr. Karzai has appointed are thuggish and corrupt. Antidrug efforts go after poor farmers while traffickers thrive. Alternative development lags. A lack of judges stymies the rule of law.
Earlier this year, there were reasons to be hopeful about Afghanistan's future. The presidential election had gone off remarkably smoothly, and the absence of major attacks on polling places suggested that Pakistan was at last responding to Washington's pleas to rein in the Taliban. Mr. Karzai had begun easing notorious warlords out of cabinet ministries and provincial governorships. More money was being directed at antinarcotics efforts.
But once the snows began to melt this March, Taliban fighters started showing up in greater numbers and with suspiciously sophisticated gear in regions of Afghanistan that border Pakistan. Afghan military and intelligence officers are convinced that they are coming from Pakistani training camps.
General Musharraf says that he has sent tens of thousands of troops to police border areas. Yet well-supplied Taliban fighters keep showing up to battle American troops in Afghanistan. He insists that the training camps are still shut down and that he is committed to thwarting the Taliban, but says he must proceed cautiously so he doesn't inflame militant groups in Pakistan. That would be more persuasive had the general not spent close to six years marginalizing mainstream parties and cutting deals with Islamic extremists to reinforce his rule.
When questioned about why he has repeatedly violated his promises to restore civilian democracy, General Musharraf argues that he must retain power because Pakistan needs his strong and effective hand. Washington needs to ask him why that strong hand seems so helpless against the Taliban.
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Date: 2005-08-07 06:56 am (UTC)And that article on solar? OMG IF THE US WOULD DO WHAT GERMANY IS DOING OMGWTFBBQ!!!11four
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Date: 2005-08-07 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-07 06:56 am (UTC)And that article on solar? OMG IF THE US WOULD DO WHAT GERMANY IS DOING OMGWTFBBQ!!!11four
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Date: 2005-08-07 09:39 pm (UTC)