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Iraq's porous border with Syria includes miles of trackless desert. An Iraqi border guard watches for infiltrators at his post on a berm

Iraq's Ho Chi Minh Trail
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq ? Some American officers call him "Z." In the military's classified signal traffic, he is "AMZ." By any name, American forces in Iraq have found in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a mesmerizing target.

If they could capture this Jordanian-born militant, anointed by Osama bin Laden as Al Qaeda's chief in Iraq, American commanders are hoping, they could strike a compelling, perhaps decisive, blow against one crucial component of the Iraqi insurgency - the Islamic militant groups that draw zealots from across the Arab Middle East to carry out suicide bombings, beheadings and other atrocities.

The capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 dealt the insurrection no such mortal blow, and American commanders know Mr. Zarqawi's capture or death might not either. "It's not about one guy," a senior officer said Friday. "It's more about the network of cells he has across the country. That's where we're applying the pressure."

Still, American officers acknowledge privately, eliminating Mr. Zarqawi would boost American troops' morale like nothing else, and perhaps decapitate the Islamic terrorists whose suicide bombs were a main weapon of the insurgency in the last month. Rebels killed nearly 800 civilians and more than 70 American soldiers during that period, making it one of the war's deadliest months.

That is the backdrop to one of the most important - and, so far, undecided - campaigns of the Iraqi conflict: the American drive to close off insurgent infiltration routes that run into the Iraqi heartland down the Euphrates River corridor. From Husayba on the Syrian frontier through Qaim and the sand-blown towns of Rawa, Haditha, Asad and Hit, onward through Ramadi and Falluja to Baghdad, the corridor has become the Ho Chi Minh trail of this war.

Like the bane of American commanders in Vietnam, the 300-mile stretch of river is not so much a single route as a multi-stranded network of passages, some hewing close to the lush silted landscape of palms and reeds that run along the banks, others crossing vast reaches of stony desert on either side.

Twice since early May, in a constellation of small towns near Qaim and later in a more concentrated sweep around Haditha, the Second Marine Division, backed by American Army units - and at Haditha by Iraqi soldiers - have set out to stifle the Zarqawi network.

But the results have been disappointing, falling far short of stunting the militants' operations.

For the Qaim operation, the marines acted on a tip that Mr. Zarqawi and some of his top lieutenants had found refuge among tribal leaders downriver, in the vicinity of Haditha.

The Americans assembled a 1,000-man battle group that sought to cut off the retreat upriver with a dash across the desert on the river's southern side. Then, close to the Syrian border, the marines crossed to the northern bank on a pontoon bridge. But this was a time-consuming maneuver that cost the crucial element of surprise, some officers said.

Then the Americans ran into fierce resistance at Ubaydi, where repeated Marine assaults, supported by tank fire and 500-pound bombs from an F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber, were needed to quell one group of Islamic fighters.

An account by an embedded reporter for The Washington Post described rebels lying on their backs in a crawl space beneath the concrete floor of a house, blasting marines above them with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. When the battle subsided, the marines found that many rebels who were quartered in neighboring towns had fled, some westward into Syria, others eastward into the interior of Iraq.

After the weeklong offensive at Qaim, the Marines estimated they had killed 125 insurgents, while losing nine marines. When the Haditha operation, which involved 1,000 American and Iraqi troops, ended last weekend, the American command was elusive, saying only that "a significant number of terrorists were killed."

In Baghdad, American officers acknowledged that the hope of smashing the infiltration network had been unfulfilled. "I don't know how many scooted," a senior officer said, speaking of the rebels who escaped the cordon at Qaim. Of the infiltration route as a whole, he added, "We still have a problem with people coming across the border."

From the insurgency's first stages, a common complaint among American officers in the field has been that American troops are overstretched, and there were whispers of this, again, after the Marine operations at Qaim and Haditha.

A Marine spokesman at Camp Falluja, Lt. Col. David A. Lapan, responding to questions sent by e-mail, acknowledged that troop levels in Iraq's immense Anbar Province were lower than they were last year. But he said the shortfall was being filled by Iraqi troops. "There are sufficient numbers of forces to accomplish the mission," he said. "The enemy is losing and he knows it."

But a glance at the map, and even a cursory sense of the region's history, suggests the scope of the problem the Americans face. Anbar is the vast western region that encompasses more than a quarter of Iraq, including the Euphrates corridor and nearly 600 miles of border with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. It has one of the lowest population densities of any of Iraq's 18 provinces, with barely 1.3 million people, many of them living in the cities and towns along the Euphrates. The deserts, of course, are mostly empty; even in the mid-19th century the Bedouins who roamed them were only a tiny fraction of the population, which was recorded as 500,000 in an Ottoman census.

Since that census, camel trains have yielded to Land Cruisers and Pajeros, and the old trading routes to smuggling. American intelligence officers say that trails across the desert used for decades to smuggle herds of sheep and goats, leather hides, car parts, gasoline and sundry other commodities have now been adapted to the insurgents' needs.

The American forces use sophisticated surveillance aircraft and unmanned drones to keep watch, especially along the 310 miles of the frontier with Syria. But how easy it is to slip unnoticed across the desert is something the Americans themselves demonstrated during the last months of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, when United States forces based in remote areas of eastern Jordan ran deep-penetration missions, some of them all the way to Baghdad.

For their part, the insurgents have access to a resource network of their own - Sunni Arab mosques sympathetic to the insurgency in almost every village and town from Damascus to Baghdad. American officers say they have become stations on a relay run straight into the heart of Iraq.

In numbers, the foreign Arab recruits account for a fraction of the insurgents operating across Iraq, whose total is estimated by the American command to range from 12,000 to 20,000. How small a fraction can be guessed from the fact that, as of last week, only 370 of the 14,000 men held as suspected insurgents in American-run detention centers in Iraq were foreigners, according to figures provided by the American command.

But the significance of the infiltration was starkly evident last week in an incident near Rawa in which the kidnapped governor of Anbar was killed during a shootout between insurgents and an American patrol. The American officer commanding the patrol said the four insurgents who died and three who were captured were all non-Iraqis, from Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Nor is there much doubt that the foreign Arabs' impact has been out of proportion to their numbers, primarily because of the willingness of the non-Iraqis to die in suicide bombings. According to a tally kept by the American command, more than 60 of these bombings took place across the country in May, responsible for about two-thirds of the civilians who died.

Iraqis commonly insist that suicide bombing is alien to the Iraqi character, and American commanders agree. "In every case we've seen, the driver has been a foreigner," an American officer who has studied the bombings said last week.

The officer said intelligence reports had established that many bombers passed through mosques in Damascus, Syria's capital, or Aleppo, another Syrian city, and from there through a network of mosques that filtered, in many cases, down the Euphrates, through Qaim, Haditha and Ramadi. At every stage, the officer said, the handlers were organized in cells, each separate from the next, so as to guard the network's secrecy.

As for the bombers, he said their sojourns in Iraq were generally short.

"They don't stay in Iraq very long," the officer said. "They get a lot of indoctrination along the way, but once they're here they are moved into operations very, very fast."

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Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

HISTORIC HAVEN The historic homes in Angelino Heights stand out against a downtown Los Angeles backdrop.

June 5, 2005
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Preserving History in Los Angeles Neighborhoods
By KIMBERLY STEVENS
LOS ANGELES

A FEW years ago, Laura Weekes bought a fixer-upper home nestled in the heart of the Angelino Heights neighborhood, a collection of around 500 homes in Echo Park, just a stone's throw from downtown.

The house, built in 1905, has details from both the Victorian era and the Craftsman style of architecture.

"To build a new house with the quality of materials they used back then would be financially impossible for me," said Ms. Weekes, who was drawn to the neighborhood because she restores houses professionally. "And because these houses don't always point to a quick financial return they get torn down, which is a travesty."

As the real estate market in Southern California continues to boom, so does the destruction of old houses. Large new houses or apartment buildings are simply more profitable, and they continue to take the place of the old structures.

Although there is no record of exactly how many houses are torn down, The Los Angeles Times estimated in 2001 that there were three demolitions a day in Los Angeles. "It is safe to say that since the Times survey in 2001, there has been more permit activity and an increase in teardowns," said Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Those who love old houses admit that there is rarely money to be made in their restoration, at least short term. But they insist that preservation pays off in the long term, both financially and psychologically.

The experience of residents in the Angelino Heights neighborhood gives some insight into what happens when a neighborhood receives a legal designation that protects its architecture. When Angelino Heights was granted the designation of a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, or H.P.O.Z., in 1981, it was a first for Los Angeles. Preservationists consider it a rousing success.

Since 1981, 20 more zones have been formed in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and 12 more are being considered in neighborhoods as diverse as Hancock Park, known for its grandiose mansions, Stonehurst in the Valley, for its small stone-clad bungalows, and Balboa Highlands, for the 1960's Eichler tract houses.

A neighborhood receives the historic preservation designation if the majority of its properties have architectural and historic significance. They are protected from demolition, and rules govern what can be done to the exteriors.

The guarantee that houses will not be demolished is either a great thing or an unfair limitation, depending on one's perspective. Ms. Weekes, who bought her house in the neighborhood several years ago, is now trying to have a historic house in Pasadena lifted up and moved to the neighborhood, so she can restore and sell it.

"I can be sure the personality of the neighborhood will stay the same and there is a true appreciation for history in pockets like this," she said.

But it isn't always easy on the pocketbook. The cost of preservation is nearly always more than that of a basic renovation.

Jim Prager, a resident of Angelino Heights long before the Historic Preservation Overlay Zone designation, owns two meticulously restored homes on Carroll Avenue. Historic houses haven't been the best investments in the city, he said. "If we had invested our money in the 70's over on the west side of Los Angeles, we'd probably be sitting on $10 million," he said. "But we had a connection to these old houses. I certainly don't regret it."

According to Mr. Bernstein of the conservancy, the historic zones add value, but not always in the most obvious ways.

The historic districts tend to be diverse neighborhoods economically, ethnically and culturally, he said. "There is a stereotype which comes from the East Coast that historic districts are blue blood, old money, homogeneous and wealthy and that's just not the case here in Los Angeles," he said. He also said that a much wider variety of architectural styles are considered worth saving.

"The H.P.O.Z. fosters a real sense of community and a sense of place and I think that adds to property value," her said.

Henni Bouwmeester, a sales agent for Sotheby's International Realty, who has been selling in the neighborhood since 1998, claims that there is very little turnover, but that when there is, there has been a considerable profit. She sold an Eastlake Victorian five years ago for $430,000 and she recently sold it again for $942,000. That was consistent with the market in neighborhoods that do not have the historic designation, she said - neither higher nor lower. But the buyers get more. "What you're getting is a much better quality home with cachet," she said.

The existence of many rules and regulations in the historic districts tends to keep the so-called flippers away. "I have seen some people turn homes over quickly and make money, but they are not top- notch examples of historic homes," she said.

She works with one woman, however, who buys dilapidated historic houses and restores them, using tax breaks to her advantage. Ms. Bouwmeester will list one of her properties this August for $1 million that she has owned for only a year. "This is an example of very high-end flipping, but it is unusual in this neighborhood and I doubt she's making a huge profit," she said.

Jim McHargue, who bought his home in 1986, said the historic designation has caused some real demographic shifts in the neighborhood. "When we moved to the neighborhood, over half the properties were owned by absentee landlords," he said. "The H.P.O.Z. has created a longstanding group of homeowners and it is the only thing that has enhanced and added value to the homes in this neighborhood."

Murray Burns, who owns 12 properties in the neighborhood, is known for doing high-end restorations and renting the houses to tenants who tend to stay.

"It's difficult and expensive," he said. "I think the payoff comes in the long run."

Ms. Weekes said that living in old houses becomes a way of life. "There really isn't any way to quantify financially what it means to wake up in a beautifully restored old house every morning," she said.

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BOB HERBERT

The Mobility Myth
By BOB HERBERT

The war that nobody talks about - the overwhelmingly one-sided class war - is being waged all across America. Guess who's winning.

A recent front-page article in The Los Angeles Times showed that teenagers are faring poorly in a tight job market because of the fierce competition they're getting from older workers and immigrants for entry-level positions.

On the same day, in the business section, the paper reported that the chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9 percent raise that the average California worker saw last year.

The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote, "It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known."

Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.

It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat.

Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and sprinting off with the nation's bounty.

Economic mobility in the United States - the extent to which individuals and families move from one social class to another - is no higher than in Britain or France, and lower than in some Scandinavian countries. Maybe we should be studying the Scandinavian dream.

As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap between the rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough. An analysis by The Times showed the following:

"Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."

The social dislocations resulting from this war that nobody mentions have been under way for some time. But the Bush economic policies have accelerated the consequences and intensified the pain.

A big problem, of course, is that American workers have been hurting badly for years. Revolutionary improvements in technology, increasingly globalized trade, the competition of low-wage workers overseas and increased immigration here at home, the decline of manufacturing, the weakening of the labor movement, outsourcing and numerous other factors have left American workers with very little leverage to use against employers.

Many in the middle class are mortgaged to the hilt, maxed out on credit cards and fearful to the point of trembling that all they've worked for might vanish in a downsized minute.

The privileged classes, with the Bush administration's iron cloak of protection, avoid their fair share of taxes, are reluctant to pay an honest dollar for an honest day's work (the federal minimum wage is still a scandalous $5.15 an hour), refuse to fight in their nation's wars, and laugh all the way to their yachts.

The American dream was about expanding opportunities and widely shared prosperity. Now we have older people and college grads replacing people near the bottom in jobs that offer low pay, no pensions, no health insurance and no vacations.

A fellow named Mark McClellan, who was bounced out of a management position when Kaiser Aluminum closed down in Spokane, Wash., told The Times in the "Class Matters" series: "I may look middle class. But I'm not. My boat is sinking fast."

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

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East is east - get used to it

As Japan has shown, and China will too, the west's values are not necessarily universal

Martin Jacques
Friday May 20, 2005
The Guardian

Not so long ago, Japan was the height of fashion. Then came the post-bubble recession and it rapidly faded into the background, condemned as yesterday's story. The same happened to the Asian tigers: until 1997 they were the flavour of the month, but with the Asian financial crisis they sank into relative obscurity. No doubt the same fate will befall China in due course, though perhaps a little less dramatically because of its sheer size and import.

These vagaries tell us nothing about east Asia, but describe the fickleness of western attitudes towards the region's transformation. A combination of curiosity and a fear of the unknown fuel a swelling interest, and then, when it appears that it was a false alarm, old attitudes of western-centric hubris reassert themselves: the Asian tigers were victims of a crony culture and Japan was simply too Japanese.
During Japan's crisis, western - mainly American - witch doctors advised that the only solution was to abandon Japanese customs like lifetime employment and adopt more Anglo-Saxon practices such as shareholder value. The age-old western habit of believing that its arrangements - of the neo-liberal variety, in this instance - are always best proved as strong as ever: it is in our genes. The fact that the US was at the time in the early stages of its own bubble might have suggested a little humility was in order. In the event, Japan largely ignored the advice and has emerged from its long, post-bubble recession looking remarkably like it did before the crisis.

Japan has long been part of the advanced world. It was the only non-western country to begin its industrialisation in the 19th century, following the Meiji Restoration in 1867. It has the second largest economy and enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world. By any standards, it is a fully paid-up member of the exclusive club of advanced nations. Yet Japan is quite unlike any western society. In terms of the hardware of modernity - cars, computers, technology, motorways and the rest - Japan is, unsurprisingly, largely familiar. However, in terms of social relations - the way in which society works, the values that imbue it - it is profoundly different.

Even a casual observer who cannot understand Japanese will almost immediately notice the differences: the absence of antisocial behaviour, the courtesy displayed by the Japanese towards each other, the extraordinary efficiency and orderliness that characterise the stuff of everyday life, from public transport to shopping. For those of a more statistical persuasion, it is reflected in what are, by western standards, extremely low crime rates. Not least, it finds expression in the success of Japanese companies. This has wrongly been attributed to an organisational system, namely just-in-time production, which, it was believed, could be imitated and applied with equal effect elsewhere. But the roots of the success of a company such as Toyota lie much deeper: in the social relations that typify Japanese society and that allow a very different kind of participation by the workforce in comparison with the west. As a result, non-Japanese companies have found it extremely difficult to copy these ideas with anything like the same degree of success.

So how do we explain the differences between Japan and the west? The heart of the matter lies in their different ethos. Individualism animates the west, now more than ever. In contrast, the organising principle of Japanese society is a sense of group identity, a feeling of being part of a much wider community. Compared with western societies, Japan is a dense lattice-work of responsibilities and obligations within the family, the workplace, the school and the community. As Deepak Lal argues in his book Unintended Consequences, the Japanese sense of self is quite distinct from the western notion of individualism. As a result, people behave in very different ways and have very different expectations, and their behaviour is informed by very different values. This finds expression in a multitude of ways.

Following the recent train crash in which 106 people died, the president of the operating company, JR West, was forced to resign: this is the normal and expected response of a company boss when things go seriously wrong. Income differentials within large corporations are much less than in their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, because it is group cohesion rather than individual ego that is most valued. Even during the depth of the recession, the jobless figure never rose much above 5%: it was regarded as wrong to solve a crisis by creating large-scale unemployment. Even those who do the more menial tasks - shop assistants, security staff, station attendants and canteen workers - display a pride in their work and a courtesy that is in striking contrast to the surly and resentful attitude prevalent in Britain and other western societies.

In a survey conducted by the Japanese firm Dentsu, 68% of Americans and 60% of Britons identified with "a society in which everyone can freely compete according to his/her will and abilities" compared with just 22% of Japanese. In the same survey, only 15% of Japanese agreed with the proposition that "it's all right to break the rules, depending on the circumstances", compared with 37% of Americans and 39% of Britons. This finds rather bizarre expression - to an Englishman at least - in the way pedestrians invariably wait for the pedestrian lights to turn to green even when there is not the slightest sign of an approaching vehicle. Even the preferred choice of car reflects the differing ethos: whereas in the US and Britain, the fashionable car of choice is a 4x4 - the very embodiment of a "bugger you and the environment" individualism - the equivalent in Japan is the tiny micro-car, much smaller than a Ford Ka - a genre that is neither made nor marketed in the UK.

The differences are legion, and not always for the better. Japan, for example, is still blighted by a rigid and traditional sexual division of labour. In a survey on the gender gap published last week by the World Economic Forum, Japan came 38th out of 58 countries, an extraordinarily low ranking for a developed nation. Or take democracy, that hallowed and allegedly universal principle of our age. Japan has universal suffrage, but the idea of alternating parties in government is almost entirely alien. Real power is exercised by factions within the ruling Liberal Democrats rather than by the other political parties, which, as a consequence, are largely marginal. We should not be surprised: in a society based on group culture rather than individualism, "democracy" is bound to be a very different kind of animal.

Far from conforming to the western model then, Japan remains profoundly different. And so it has always been. After the Meiji Restoration it deliberately sought to engineer a modernisation that was distinctively Japanese, drawing from its own traditions as well as borrowing from the west. Globalisation notwithstanding, this is still strikingly the case. Indeed, Japan remains unusually and determinedly impervious to many of the pressures of globalisation. The lesson here, perhaps, is that we should expect the same to be true, in some degree or another, of the Asian tigers - and ultimately China too. That is not to say they will end up looking anything like Japan: China and Japan, for example, are in many respects chalk and cheese. But they will certainly be very different from the west because, like Japan, they come from very different histories and cultures.

? Martin Jacques is a visiting professor at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Japan
 

June 5, 2005
The Case Against Coldplay
By JON PARELES

THERE'S nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it's right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There's nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to create a sound large enough to get lost in. Male sensitivity, a quality that's under siege in a pop culture full of unrepentant bullying and machismo, shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, no matter how risible it can be in practice. And building a sound on the lessons of past bands is virtually unavoidable.

But put them all together and they add up to Coldplay, the most insufferable band of the decade.

This week Coldplay releases its painstakingly recorded third album, "X&Y" (Capitol), a virtually surefire blockbuster that has corporate fortunes riding on it. (The stock price plunged for EMI Group, Capitol's parent company, when Coldplay announced that the album's release date would be moved from February to June, as it continued to rework the songs.)

"X&Y" is the work of a band that's acutely conscious of the worldwide popularity it cemented with its 2002 album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head," which has sold three million copies in the United States alone. Along with its 2000 debut album, "Parachutes," Coldplay claims sales of 20 million albums worldwide. "X&Y" makes no secret of grand ambition.

Clearly, Coldplay is beloved: by moony high school girls and their solace-seeking parents, by hip-hop producers who sample its rich instrumental sounds and by emo rockers who admire Chris Martin's heart-on-sleeve lyrics. The band emanates good intentions, from Mr. Martin's political statements to lyrics insisting on its own benevolence. Coldplay is admired by everyone - everyone except me.

It's not for lack of skill. The band proffers melodies as imposing as Romanesque architecture, solid and symmetrical. Mr. Martin on keyboards, Jonny Buckland on guitar, Guy Berryman on bass and Will Champion on drums have mastered all the mechanics of pop songwriting, from the instrumental hook that announces nearly every song they've recorded to the reassurance of a chorus to the revitalizing contrast of a bridge. Their arrangements ascend and surge, measuring out the song's yearning and tension, cresting and easing back and then moving toward a chiming resolution. Coldplay is meticulously unified, and its songs have been rigorously cleared of anything that distracts from the musical drama.

Unfortunately, all that sonic splendor orchestrates Mr. Martin's voice and lyrics. He places his melodies near the top of his range to sound more fragile, so the tunes straddle the break between his radiant tenor voice and his falsetto. As he hops between them - in what may be Coldplay's most annoying tic - he makes a sound somewhere between a yodel and a hiccup. And the lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English. Coldplay's countless fans seem to take comfort when Mr. Martin sings lines like, "Is there anybody out there who / Is lost and hurt and lonely too," while a strummed acoustic guitar telegraphs his aching sincerity. Me, I hear a passive-aggressive blowhard, immoderately proud as he flaunts humility. "I feel low," he announces in the chorus of "Low," belied by the peak of a crescendo that couldn't be more triumphant about it.

In its early days, Coldplay could easily be summed up as Radiohead minus Radiohead's beat, dissonance or arty subterfuge. Both bands looked to the overarching melodies of 1970's British rock and to the guitar dynamics of U2, and Mr. Martin had clearly heard both Bono's delivery and the way Radiohead's Thom Yorke stretched his voice to the creaking point.

Unlike Radiohead, though, Coldplay had no interest in being oblique or barbed. From the beginning, Coldplay's songs topped majesty with moping: "We're sinking like stones," Mr. Martin proclaimed. Hardly alone among British rock bands as the 1990's ended, Coldplay could have been singing not only about private sorrows but also about the final sunset on the British empire: the old opulence meeting newly shrunken horizons. Coldplay's songs wallowed happily in their unhappiness.

"Am I a part of the cure / Or am I part of the disease," Mr. Martin pondered in "Clocks" on "A Rush of Blood to the Head." Actually, he's contagious. Particularly in its native England, Coldplay has spawned a generation of one-word bands - Athlete, Embrace, Keane, Starsailor, Travis and Aqualung among them - that are more than eager to follow through on Coldplay's tremulous, ringing anthems of insecurity. The emulation is spreading overseas to bands like the Perishers from Sweden and the American band Blue Merle, which tries to be Coldplay unplugged.

A band shouldn't necessarily be blamed for its imitators - ask the Cure or the Grateful Dead. But Coldplay follow-throughs are redundant; from the beginning, Coldplay has verged on self-parody. When he moans his verses, Mr. Martin can sound so sorry for himself that there's hardly room to sympathize for him, and when he's not mixing metaphors, he fearlessly slings clich?s. "Are you lost or incomplete," Mr. Martin sings in "Talk," which won't be cited in any rhyming dictionaries. "Do you feel like a puzzle / you can't find your missing piece."

Coldplay reached its musical zenith with the widely sampled piano arpeggios that open "Clocks": a passage that rings gladly and, as it descends the scale and switches from major to minor chords, turns incipiently mournful. Of course, it's followed by plaints: "Tides that I tried to swim against / Brought me down upon my knees."

On "X&Y," Coldplay strives to carry the beauty of "Clocks" across an entire album - not least in its first single, "Speed of Sound," which isn't the only song on the album to borrow the "Clocks" drumbeat. The album is faultless to a fault, with instrumental tracks purged of any glimmer of human frailty. There is not an unconsidered or misplaced note on "X&Y," and every song (except the obligatory acoustic "hidden track" at the end, which is still by no means casual) takes place on a monumental soundstage.

As Coldplay's recording budgets have grown, so have its reverberation times. On "X&Y," it plays as if it can already hear the songs echoing across the world. "Square One," which opens the album, actually begins with guitar notes hinting at the cosmic fanfare of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (and "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Then Mr. Martin, never someone to evade the obvious, sings about "the space in which we're traveling."

As a blockbuster band, Coldplay is now looking over its shoulder at titanic predecessors like U2, Pink Floyd and the Beatles, pilfering freely from all of them. It also looks to an older legacy; in many songs, organ chords resonate in the spaces around Mr. Martin's voice, insisting on churchly reverence.

As Coldplay's music has grown more colossal, its lyrics have quietly made a shift on "X&Y." On previous albums, Mr. Martin sang mostly in the first person, confessing to private vulnerabilities. This time, he sings a lot about "you": a lover, a brother, a random acquaintance. He has a lot of pronouncements and advice for all of them: "You just want somebody listening to what you say," and "Every step that you take could be your biggest mistake," and "Maybe you'll get what you wanted, maybe you'll stumble upon it" and "You don't have to be alone." It's supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, magnanimous, inspirational. But when the music swells up once more with tremolo guitars and chiming keyboards, and Mr. Martin's voice breaks for the umpteenth time, it sounds like hokum to me.

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