IHT Quick Read: Nov. 10

NEWS The United Nations reported that 11,000 Syrians fled on Friday, the vast majority of them clambering for safety over the Turkish border. Rick Gladstone and Neil MacFarquhar report.

The question on the minds of many in the German capital the morning after Barack Obama secured his second term was not how the president would save the United States from the “fiscal cliff,” or whether he would close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. It was far more personal: Would he visit Berlin? Melissa Eddy reports from Berlin.

Matteo Renzi, the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, is touring Italy in a white camper, delivering rousing speeches with a bit of American-style campaigning as he competes in a primary vote this month that will decide who will lead Italy's center-left Democratic Party in national elections next year. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Verbania, Italy.

A writer's voice has always had special weight in Russia, but it matters only when Russians are ready to listen. At least that is the experience of Boris Akunin, the best-selling detective novelist who popped up late last year as a prominent member of the political opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin. Celestine Bohlen writes from Paris.

ARTS The art scene in the Portuguese city of Guimarães has flourished since it was declared a European Capital of Culture for 2012 and awarded the European subsidies that go with the title. Raphael Minder reports.

The two international auction houses are heading for an impasse where Impressionist and Modern art is concerned. That became obvious this week as gigantic prices alternated with abrupt failures to sell. Souren Melikian writes from New York.

WINE Aglianico, a serious Italian grape from Campania, has not received the attention it deserves, but that is about to change. Eric Pfanner writes on wine from Tarausi, Italy.

SPORTS A casual observer might not think there was much that connected Ulsan i n South Korea and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, two industrial cities at the opposite ends of Asia, but there are ships, oil and, on Saturday at least, soccer. Clubs from South Korea and Saudi Arabia will play Saturday for the Asian Champions League title. John Duerden reports from Ulsan, South Korea.

From Indonesia, a Documentary With Killers as the Stars

HONG KONG - Joshua Oppenheimer was in northern Sumatra when he first heard the story.

It was about 10 years ago, and he was working on a documentary about a group of Indonesian plantation workers suffering from exposure to a dangerous pesticide. The workers, he found, were too afraid to organize a union to press their case.

Labor organizing on a mass scale has not really taken hold in Indonesia for more than 40 years, in part because in 1965 the union movement was so brutally suppressed. Union workers were labeled communists then, and they were seen as a threat to the nation. As many as 3 million people were said to have been killed in the purges, including some of the parents, grandfathers, aunts and uncles of the Sumatran workers.

Mr. Oppenheimer, a Danish filmmaker, wanted to tell their story, and one of the workers told him, “Well, you can speak to the killers.”

The members of the death squads had lived and been celebrated as heroes of Indon esia. They were called preman - gangsters - and their ruthlessness had been normalized as part of the country's historical narrative. At first, Mr. Oppenheimer was afraid to talk to them.

He went and lingered outside one man's home. Hoping to attract his attention, Mr. Oppenheimer pretended to be filming daily life in the small village. Eventually the man, curious, invited him inside and soon was relating his stories from 1965. The man's 10-year-old granddaughter was in the room as he demonstrated how he killed his victims.

“What's happening to a society when you can tell that to your granddaughter?” Mr. Oppenheimer told me, speaking from Copenhagen. “How does he see himself? How does he think I see him?”

During the Suharto dictatorship, which ruled Indonesia from 1967 to 1998, children were required, as part of the curriculum, to view a 4 and a half hour film on the communist purges - ultra-violence glorified, he said. Many viewed the killing as a necessary part of nation-building, with the purges something to be celebrated.

Mr. Oppenheimer said he wanted to meet as many killers as he could. “I wasn't trying to make a historical film,” he said, “but one about what's happening now.”

The result, seven years after first hearing the workers' story, is “The Act of Killing.” It was shown at the Toronto Film Festival and last week had its first screening in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. The director Werner Herzog, who was so impressed by the work that he signed on as an executive producer, said he had not seen a film as “powerful, surreal and frightening” in a decade.

“It is unprecedented in the history of cinema,” said Mr. Herzog, quoted on the film's Web site.

How, Mr. Oppenheimer wanted to know, were these men imagining themselves? So he gave them the opportunity to stage their remembered history in any way they wished. He calls the result an “observational documentary o f their imaginations.”

The aging gangsters reconstruct their murders for the camera - sometimes using elaborate sets, costumes, makeup and, sometimes, musical numbers.

In one early scene, a man named Anwar Congo is seen dancing on a rooftop where many of the killings took place.

“Here was this incredible allegory for impunity - dancing in the place where he killed hundreds of people,” Mr. Oppenheimer said. “I was chilled.”

After showing him the initial footage, Mr. Oppenheimer thought Mr. Congo might show a hint of remorse. Instead, he lamented that he looked like he was going to a picnic. He would never have dressed like that in real life, he said. When they filmed the final scene, Mr. Congo said he would also have to dye his hair black.

The killers said they took their inspiration from American gangster movies starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Even their method of killing was derivative of cinema - using metal wire for strangulat ion. When Mr. Congo declares this on a national talk show, the female host responds with visible delight: “Amazing,” she says.

For all of the preman, Mr. Oppenheimer said, the act of killing was exactly that: Their versions of the Hollywood films were a way of acting outside themselves. It was a way to transport themselves into a character who made killing easy.

They were able, as Mr.Congo said, to “kill happily.”

“These men are human, and we can define their kind of behavior as psychopathic,” Mr. Oppenheimer said. “But that is an arbitrary definition. Their actions have also been described as good.”

Earlier this year, Indonesia's human rights commission released a report recommending that the government settle the cases of human rights violations. The panel also called for the president to apologize for what has been called one of the darkest but least discussed periods in modern Indonesian history.

Pressure to address the past has been stonewalled by a succession of governments.

He said he hopes that the Indonesians who see “The Act of Killing” will question why these men have been so lionized, given the horror of their actions.

Mr. Oppenheimer was fearful that the Indonesian premiere might be attacked, or that the film might be banned. (He says he wants the Indonesian version of the film to be copied, pirated, distributed and seen.) Details and publicity of the event were kept under tight wraps, and Mr. Congo, according to Mr. Oppenheimer, was taken to see the film at a secret location.

Someone who said he was at the Jakarta premiere commented on Facebook that the audience's reaction was stunned silence:

“I've never been in a theater where everyone, just everyone, was so absorbed with the film. Silent. In Indonesia, people usually make noise, talk on the phone. But there was total silence.”

The World on What Obama\'s Second Term Will Mean

The World on Obama

Cristóbal Schmal

The Editors of the International Herald Tribune invited analysts from around the world to share their reactions to the re-election of President Obama.

Dmitri Trenin - Russia and the Reset

The Kremlin is pleased with the outcome of the U.S. presidential vote. Barack Obama's re-election means predictability in U.S.-Russian relations. There will be no ritual or real repudiation of the previous four years, no painful reassessment of past policies, and no abrupt change in the cast of characters. There might even be more flexibility, as Obama promised Dimitri Medvedev, on the thornier issues of the relationship, such as missile defense.

Yet, the relationship is in need of some heavy lifting. Unless the reset is followed by a rethink, both the United States and Russia will be getting less and less from each other.

A rethink would mean, above all, upgrading the relationship from largely tactical to strategic. In the last four years, Obama's Russia policy was primarily geared to Afghanistan and Iran. Cooperation with Moscow has allowed the U.S. to ferry troops and matériel to and from Afghanistan across Russia: a big help, in view of conditions in Pakistan. It has also permitted a modicum of unity among the major powers with regard to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Besides, Washington and Moscow succeeded in reaching another agreement on cutting their nuclear forces and in having Russia finally join the World Trade Organization.

This is certainly good, but not good enough. Differences over Syria and a lack of agreement on missile defense, and reaction in America to Russia's domestic developments and the Kremlin's counter-reaction, threaten to undermine the relationship.

As people used to say during George W. Bush's first term, unless the U.S.-Russia relationship goes up, it will go down. They were right then, and this lesson must be learned. Making the relationship strategic would mean protecting it from being overwhelmed by disagreements abroad and special interests at home.

Does Russia deserve a strategic status in U.S. foreign policy? Consider the following. An agreement on cooperative missile defenses in Europe would make sure that the country with a nuclear arsenal almost as big as America's would no longer have to be counted as a potential military adversary. Expanding Washington's vision for the Asia-Pacific to include the country which has a 2,700-mile long border with China and the longest shoreline in the Pacific would make the “pivot” more realistic. Making sure that the Arctic emerges as an area of cooperation par excellence would require dealing with Russia, the biggest of the five littoral states.

Dealing with Russia will not be easy. It is not America's equal, but fiercely independent; it is not an ally, but not a willing adversary either. Russia, however, is critical for the 21 century's global balance - and that should not escape Obama's attention.

Dmitri Trenin is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Ed Husain - The Arab View

“I wish George W. Bush was still in power,” a leading Egyptian liberal politician said to me in Cairo earlier this year. “At least we knew what we would get with Bush.” Not just in Egypt, but in Syria, Israel, Bahrain, Iran and even Saudi Arabia there is a perception that President Obama and the United States cannot be relied upon. This weakens America's allies, and strengthens its enemies. President Obama can change this perception in his second term by taking his domestic mantra of ‘'I mean what I say, and I say what I mean'' to the world's most volatile region.

He has been wise not to intervene militarily in Syria. In coming months, Syrian rebels, Turkey and Gulf countries will try to lure the U.S. into the jihadist battlefields by escalating violence and chaos. Will the U.S. maintain its sobriety?

Obama's victory will be seen as an amber light in Tehran. To further isolate Iran, and be prepared for consequences of U.S. military options, Obama can't ignore the Palestinians. His second term can see him belatedly deserve the Nobel Prize by bringing Israelis and Arabs to a settlement. He has made new friends in the Middle East, not least the region's most powerful political force: the Muslim Brotherhood. They will expect leadership and reliability.

Ed Husain is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Shlomo Avineri - From Israel

While Obama's Mideast policies during his first term were occasionally misguided and unfocused, he certainly is better equipped to face these regional challenges than Mitt Romney.

Send Us Your Questions for Fashion\'s Most Powerful Leaders

NEW YORK - In the glittering world of global fashion caring about improving the lot of billions of people mired in poverty in the developing world has become increasingly, well, fashionable.

Next Thursday and Friday in Rome, the IHT's fashion editor, Suzy Menkes, will convene the good and the great of the fashion and design industries at the annual IHT luxury conference, the industry confab that brings together hundreds of powerbrokers and the media who cover the trillion-dollar-a-year global fashion industry.

The theme of the conference this year is “The Promise of Africa: The Power of the Mediterranean.” The theme encompasses both the artistic aspects of the Mediterranean as a cauldron of creativity where influences and motifs are shared, exchanged, altered and incorporated. But it also seeks to address issues of development, poverty reduction and global social responsibility: what fashion, with its well-heeled producers and consumers owes the world, esp ecially the developing world - and especially Africa, as the continent's contribution of its style, vibrancy and resilience to fashion and the world are finally being acknowledged.

That's where you come in. Whether you have a question about fashion style or global development substance, we want to hear from you in the comments below.

We'll be livestreaming three conference sessions on Rendezvous on Thursday and Friday:

At about 9:15 CET on Thursday:

“Handmade in Africa”

Suzy will lead a Q&A with Simone Cipriani, the driving force behind
the Ethical Fashion Initiative at the International Trade Center in Geneva. (The I.T.C. is a joint body of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.)

“I am passionate, I am Italian, I roar like a lion,” Mr. Cipriani told Suzy in an article in September, as they drove up Kenya's Great Rift Valley.

“The essence of the I.T.C. work is summed up in a single phrase: ‘Not Charity. Just Work.' ” Suzy wrote.

The goal is to join marginalized communities to the global (and lucrative) fashion chain.

“Connecting ‘the world's most marginalised people to the top of fashion's value chain for mutual benefit,' it enables communities of artisans and micro-manufacturers - the majority of them women - to thrive in association with the talents of the fashion world by fostering local creativity, enabling female employment, and promoting gender equality in order to reduce extreme poverty, according to a detailed brochure published by the ITC this month,” the Fashion of Business website reported in July, 2011.

In the livestreaming session, Mr. Cipriani will talk about his vision for luxury goods produced in Africa for both “small craft” and mainstream brands, the challenges of creating sustainable business models, and the ITC's ambitions for the future. During Q&A, he will be joined by Ilaria Venturini Fendi, the designer behind one of the companies engaged in manufacturing in Africa and empowering communities to transform their lives.

On Friday mid-morning, at about 10 CET :

“Positive change through fashion”

Suzy will linterview Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, co-founders of EDUN, a global fashion brand seeking to bring positive change through trading with Africa. In this session, the couple will aim to show how EDUN proves that sustainable manufacturing is good business too.

And Friday afternoon, at about 4 CET:

“Mia Roma!”

Frida Giannini, creative director of Gucci and Giambattista Valli will wax poetic about the power of the Eternal City and how it has influenced the two very different Rome-raised designers.

So, what questions do you want Suzy to put to the leaders of the fashion world - whether about style or substance? And speaking of style vs. substance, do you believe that fashion can be sustainable and that development for the poorest in the world can go hand in hand with an industry whose greatest success is often built on consumption by the richest in the world?

Join the conversation here all weekend and on twitter using the #IHTLux, and come back here on Thursday and Friday to watch our livestreams and comment on Rendezvous, twitter and Facebook.

Archbishop Ranks as England\'s Top Non-Royal, in One of the World\'s Least Religious Countries

LONDON - As Queen Elizabeth on Friday ended months of speculation by confirming Bishop Justin Welby, a 56-year-old former oil executive, will be the next head of the Church of England, her increasingly secular subjects might be forgiven for asking what all the fuss was about.

As Archbishop of Canterbury, the new primate will assume the spiritual leadership of 85 million Anglicans worldwide. However, a dwindling number of them belong to the country of the Church's birth.

According to the Church of England's own figures, Sunday attendance at its 16,000 parish churches has fallen to less than one million. As a symbol of Englishness, the Anglican Church is, on the face of it, as anachronistic as warm beer, London fogs and the stiff upper lip.

Anglicanism nevertheless survives as the state religion in what is now a multicultural, multi-faith, but mostly faithless society. So, is it any longer relevant to the mass of its citizens?

Bishop Welby acknowledg ed on Friday he was taking over at “a time of spiritual hunger.”

Summing up the challenge that had confronted Rowan Williams, the departing Archbishop, Fraser Nelson wrote in the Daily Telegraph that, “Dr. Williams has had to keep the Church alive in one of the least religious countries on earth.”

Officially, the Primate of All England enjoys a public status that belies the empty pews. In a well-defined establishment pecking order, he ranks as the senior non-royal. The position elevates the holder to the senior position on the bishops' bench in the House of Lords, upper chamber of the British Parliament.

“The temptation for any archbishop is to suppose he is a terribly important figure,” The Guardian warned.

The Right Reverend Welby, Bishop of Durham for only a year, ticks many of the establishment boxes. Like Prime Minister David Cameron, who confirmed his appointment on Friday, he attended the prestigious Eton College.

As a former businessman and a relative latecomer to the priesthood, however, he does not fit the mold of previous holders of the See of Canterbury (there have been 104 of them since 597.)

Much of the commentary surrounding his elevation has cast him as a compromise candidate capable of healing tensions between liberals and conservative evangelicals in the Church.

Divisions have centered on sexual politics: the ordination of women bishops and gay marriage. Bishop Welby supports the former but has so far opposed the latter. As holder of a post that is as much political as religious, his pronouncements on these and other issues are expected to resound beyond the Church.

As secularists as well as Christians get to know Bishop Welby as he heads towards his enthronement next March, Dr. Williams has advised his successor to carry a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

IHT Quick Read: Nov. 9

NEWS The Syrian public is increasingly disgusted with the actions of some rebels, including poorly planned missions, senseless destruction, criminal behavior and the coldblooded killing of prisoners. Anne Bernard reports from Beirut.

The departing Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, has made it clear that he has little interest in the bold changes that many Chinese now see as long overdue. Ian Johnson and Keith Bradsher report from Beijing.

A large, high-tech Jewish history museum, personally championed by Vladimir V. Putin and underwritten by oligarchs, opened in Moscow on Thursday. Ellen Barry reports from Moscow.

The French and Belgian governments said on Thursday that they would inject an additional 5.5 billion euros into Dexia, in an acknowledgment that its finances had continued to deteriorate since the bank was first rescued in the 2008 financial crisis. David Jolly reports from Paris.

As the debate in Europe widens over the merits of female quotas on company boards, a parliamentary committee in Britain plans to stake out its position: not so fast. A report to be released Friday by a House of Lords committee concludes that such quotas would “generate negative perceptions amongst women and business leaders” while failing to address the “root causes” of inequality. Stephen Castle reports from London.

ARTS “Water Lilies,” a 1905 painting by Monet, went for $43.76 million at Christie's, but other works earned little enthusiasm during an auction of Impressionist and Modern art. Souren Melikian reports on the art auctions in New York.

Not so long ago there might not have been five countertenors in the world who could sing the demanding opera “Artaserse” as it would have been done in 18th-century Italy, possibly with castratos. Now five are assembled under one roof, with a live stream in the offing for Saturday. George Loomis on the opera in Nancy, France.

The latest James Bond movie finally op ened in American movie theaters Thursday, having already made a lap or two around the world. Jan Benzel writes on Rendezvous.

SPORTS Though all the top rugby countries will be in action against one another over the next few weeks, no one is a bigger prize than New Zealand. Emma Stoney writes from Wellington.

Celtic, celebrating 125 years as a soccer club, had one of its biggest victories ever when it beat Barcelona, 2-1, in the Champions League. Rob Hughes on soccer.

Shut Out of Party Congress and Power Transfer, Chinese Citizens Turn to Humor

After Thursday's theatrical opening in Beijing of the 18th Communist Party Congress, the real action shifted today to behind-the-scenes meetings among kingmakers who will hammer out the deals that decide China's new leadership. Traditionally, these meetings have taken place in private locations, including hotels like the Xiyuan and the Capital, where delegates are staying.

This horse-trading has been going on for months, of course, but now the pressure is really on. If you're interested how the process works, this Associated Press report spells it out.

For ordinary Chinese, the meetings may as well be happening on Mars. Neither Chinese nor foreign reporters are allowed in the hotels and while some door-stepping in the past has been possible, this year the South China Morning Post reported that military members of the congress (who form the single largest interest group at 251 of 2,268 delegates), have been warned not to give impromptu interviews to the media.

Coverage in the state media, meanwhile, consists of bland expressions of joy and admiration. For a sense of that, check out these unforgettable photos from the China Daily that show people around the country gazing raptly at the show in Beijing.

Yet China's citizens are a savvy lot. From taxi drivers to professors, many care deeply about what's happening and have turned to humor to deal with their frustration at the gap between what they want to know and what the government wants them to know. It's a subversive, bitter humor that is often cynical rather than laugh-out-loud funny.

Take this joke, circulating this week on China's microblogs, known as Weibo (it has since been censored so I reproduce it here in text):

“Yesterday Obama said to me: ‘Hey, bro', you're only starting your power changeover tomorrow, we had ours today!' I shot him a look and said: ‘What damn changeover, don't you get it!' Kim Jong-un was standing next to us li stening and said: ‘What's a power changeover? When someone dies?'”

Or this one, posted last Sunday and still up on Friday noon in Beijing, on the Weibo site of a user with the online handle The Emperor is Not Dead (in Chinese).

Xiao Li wants to emigrate to the United States. His leader asked him, “Aren't you happy with your salary?”
Xiao Li said, “I'm happy.”
“Unhappy with your living conditions?”
“Happy too.”
“Unhappy about the online situation?”
“Also happy.”
“Health care, education, are you happy?”
“Happy with all of it!”
“Then why do you want to emigrate to the U.S.?”
“Because you're allowed to be unhappy there!”

Inevitably, perhaps, Gangnam Style, the K-Pop video by Psy that is approaching 700 million views on You Tube, has hit the congress - this time in the form of a parody by Tibetans living in exile who prance about with a flag an d a giant-headed Xi Jinping, tapped to assume the top party post next week.

Chinese officials can be their own worst enemies. Seven Tibetans have set fire to themselves this week so far to protest Chinese rule, Tibetan advocacy groups said, bringing the total of self-immolations to nearly 70.

But in Beijing on Thursday, Qiangba Puncog, the deputy party chief of Tibet, in a bizarre comment, told the South China Morning Post: “I can't say there are no self-immolations in Tibet; however, most Tibetan people and monks didn't burn themselves.” (His comments are behind a paywall here, on the SCMP's interesting congress
blog.)

Also in the SCMP blog, Can Rong, a delegate and party secretary at the China Iron and Steel Research Institute Group, said China wasn't “psychologically prepared” for officials to disclose their personal fortunes, though he said he agreed they should, eventually. Such transparency in one of the major demands of the public here, w ith corruption and ill-gotten hidden income the number one hot button issue.

“In the long term, this should be the way to go. But in the short
term, we don't have enough psychological and technical preparation for it. The whole society, including the masses and the officials, is not ready yet,” Mr. Can said.

There was a sting in his comments, though: “The publication should be from the top down,” meaning that top officials (like Wen Jiabao, the premier, or Xi Jinping, the likely next president), should publish their accounting first.

With the very term “shiba da,” or “eighteenth big' (shorthand for the congress) widely censored online, netizens have turned to ironic references such as comparing China today to Sparta, a tough and militaristic state in ancient Greece. In Chinese, “sibada,” or Sparta, sounds almost identical to “shiba da,” so the parallel works. This scary image from the movie, Sparta, was making the rounds and is now cached on the Web site of the U.S.-based China Digital News. Note the subtitle, which says: “This is Shiba da!”

Then there's the China Daily Show, a savagely satirical fake-news Website whose name plays off the state-run China Daily and The Daily Show in the United States.

In this story, a fictitious Beijing-based Western newspaper correspondent admits that he hasn't a clue what's really going on in the congress' secret meetings: “Neither he nor any of his colleagues had any notion about what is actually happening behind the walled compounds of Zhongnanhai and Beidahe, where the key decisions are usually made about the upcoming leadership transition.” (Some of the language might offend, so you'll have to Google it yourself.)

The frustration of being kept in the dark is shared by many Chinese. In this cartoon, posted by an anonymous Chinese cartoonist and picked up by the China Digital Times, we see starkly the contrast between the noise of the U.S. Presidential elections and the deafening silence of China's power transfer.