DAMIEN HIRST
EXTRAVAGANZA
ON SALE AT VENICE
PAGE 18 | CULTURE
The priming
of a certain
Mr. Trump
Paul Krugman
OPINION
Donald Trump has said many strange
things in recent interviews. One can
only imagine, for example, what Amer-
icas military leaders thought about his
rambling, word-salad musings about
how to improve our aircraft carriers.
Over here in Econoland, however,
the buzz was all about Trumps ex-
pressed willingness, in an interview
with the Economist magazine, to pur-
sue tax cuts even if they increase
deficits, because we have to prime the
pump an expression he claimed to
have invented. I came up with it a
couple of days ago and I thought it was
good.
Actually, the
The president expression goes
may not back generations
understand his F.D.R. used it
own proposals; in a 1937 speech
and has been
he may be used many times
living in an since, including
economic and several times by
political Trump himself.
Whats more, its
fantasy world. a bad metaphor
for modern
times. Twenty
years ago, in a paper warning that
Japanese-style problems might
eventually come to America, I urged
that the phrase be withdrawn from
circulation: Since hardly anybody in
the thoroughly urbanized societies of
modern America and Japan has any
idea what it means to prime a pump, I
hereby suggest that we rename this
the jump-start strategy.
But why should anyone besides
pedants care?
First, a mind is a terrible thing to
lose. Senior moments, when you cant
remember a name or phrase, or misre-
member where it came from, happen
to many of us. But that Economist
interview was basically one long senior
moment and it wasnt very different
from other recent interviews with the
commander in chief of the worlds most
powerful military.
Second, were talking about some
really bad economics here. There are
times when temporary deficit spending
can help the economy. In the first few
years after the 2008 financial crisis, for
example, unemployment was very
high, and the Federal Reserve nor-
mally our first line of defense against
recessions had limited ability to act,
because the interest rates it controls
were already very close to zero. That
KRUGMAN, PAGE 15
Scaling the worlds most lethal mountain
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
A group of Polish climbers
will attempt K2 in winter,
a feat never accomplished
BY MICHAEL POWELL
The mountain rises glistening from an
encasement of glaciers in the far
reaches of the Karakoram. Pyramid-
shaped, an austere link to eternity, K2
yields only to Everest in height, and it is
deadlier. Its walls are vertiginous, no
matter the approach.
Only the most experienced climbers
attempt ascents, and for every four who
crawl to its peak, one dies.
And then there is winter. Fourteen of
earths mountains exceed 8,000 meters
(26,246 feet), and climbers have
reached the peak of 13 in winter. K2 is the
forbidding exception. Ten Polish
climbers hope to make history by reach-
ing its summit next winter.
NEWSSTAND PRICES
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Andorra 3.60
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Bahrain BD 1.20
Belgium 3.20
Bos. & Herz. KM 5.50
RETAIL FIX WISCONSIN
YOUR WARDROBE LINKS LIKE THESE
IS IN THE MAIL COULD BE IN SCOTLAND
PAGE 16 | TECH BACK PAGE | TRAVEL
..
INTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017
Little hope
in Iran that
election will
lift fortunes
TEHRAN
Despite eased sanctions,
many struggle in stagnant
and rigidly run economy
BY THOMAS ERDBRINK
As a college student studying mechan-
ics, Hamidreza Faraji had expected af-
ter graduation to land a steady job with
a fixed salary, a pension plan and the oc-
casional bonus. He envisioned coming
home at 6 p.m. to his family and vaca-
tioning at a resort on the Caspian Sea.
But Mr. Faraji, 34, has long since giv-
en up on all that. These days, he said, the
only people who lead such predictable
lives are government employees. Their
jobs are well paid and offer security, but
are hard to get in part because older
employees stay on well past retirement
age, limiting opportunities for the next
generation.
So millions of Iranians, particularly
younger ones, find themselves caught
like Mr. Faraji in a vicious cycle of hid-
den poverty, an exhausting hustle to
stay afloat, working multiple jobs and
running moneymaking schemes just to
keep up. The youth unemployment rate
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A tunnel being drilled near Vang Vieng, Laos, as part of a $6 billion Chinese rail project that will eventually link eight Asian countries. is 30 percent.
Seeking opportunities, and trying to
make the best of them, Mr. Faraji said
Rearranging global trade
when asked about how he supported
himself and his wife. A baby is on the
way that just happened but they
have no idea how they are going to pay
for the additional costs with the money
he makes as a small-time goods trader.
state leaders, including President To many in the outside world, Iran
VANG VIENG, LAOS
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in Beijing. seems to be riding high, its coffers re-
On Sunday, Mr. Xi pledged more than plenished with billions of dollars it re-
$100 billion for development banks in ceived after reaching a nuclear agree-
As U.S. turns inward, China that he said would spearhead vast ment with foreign powers. International
spending on infrastructure across Asia, businesses have been swarming into the
Beijing moves to upend Europe and Africa. country, seemingly eager to clinch
global economic patterns It is global commerce on Chinas deals.
terms. IRAN, PAGE 6
BY JANE PERLEZ Mr. Xi is aiming to use Chinas wealth
AND YUFAN HUANG and industrial know-how to create a new
kind of globalization that will dispense
Along the jungle-covered mountains of with the rules of the aging Western-
Laos, squads of Chinese engineers are dominated institutions. The goal is to re-
drilling hundreds of tunnels and bridges fashion the global economic order, draw-
to support a 260-mile railway, a $6 billion ing countries and companies more
project that will eventually connect tightly into Chinas orbit.
eight Asian countries. The projects inherently serve Chinas
Chinese money is building power economic interests. With growth slow-
plants in Pakistan to address chronic ing at home, China is producing more
electricity shortages, part of an ex- steel, cement and machinery than the
pected $46 billion worth of investment. country needs. So Mr. Xi is looking to the
Chinese planners are mapping out A poster for a Chinese high-speed train at a construction site for a bridge over the rest of the world, particularly develop-
train lines from Budapest to Belgrade, Mekong River near Luang Prabang, Laos. The railroad is expected to lose money. ing countries, to keep its economic en-
Serbia, providing another artery for gine going.
Chinese goods flowing into Europe President Xi believes this is a long-
through a Chinese-owned port in ping of China is literally and figuratively The initiative, called One Belt, One term plan that will involve the current
Greece. forging ties, creating new markets for Road, looms on a scope and scale with CHINA, PAGE 12
The massive infrastructure projects, the countrys construction companies little precedent in modern history, prom-
along with hundreds of others across and exporting its model of state-led de- ising more than $1 trillion in infrastruc- PUTIN PLAYS PIANO AT GATHERING
Asia, Africa and Europe, form the back- velopment in a quest to create deep eco- ture and spanning more than 60 coun- The Russian president performed VAHID SALEMI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
bone of Chinas ambitious economic and nomic connections and strong di- tries. To celebrate Chinas new global in- songs from his childhood while waiting President Hassan Rouhanis efforts to lure
geopolitical agenda. President Xi Jin- plomatic relationships. fluence, Mr. Xi has gathered dozens of for Chinas leader. PAGE 12 foreign investment to Iran have run short.
These men will hike through knee-
deep snow to a base camp at 18,645 feet.
Atop K2s near-vertical slopes, glacial
icefalls dislodge car-size hunks of ice.
Winds at the summit reach hurricane
strength, and temperatures can fall as
low as minus 80 Fahrenheit.
The climbers could wait two months
in their tents, in hopes the gales relent
for a few days. They have no margin for
error; K2 routinely kills those trapped
on its flanks.
This is the way of the Polish climbers,
who for reasons of history and culture
have earned reputations as the greatest
climbers of the Himalayas in winter.
They are prisoners of their dreams.
Janusz Golab is a long-limbed lion of a
climber with curly hair that goes here
and there like an ethereal nimbus. He is
49, still in his prime for a great climber,
and he will be one of those charged with
making it to the summit of K2 next win-
ter. We talk as he stands in the attic of a
lodge in the Morskie Oko valley in Po-
MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES land, looping rope in preparation for a
Kacper Tekieli, a mountaineer of considerable reputation, in the Tatra Mountains in training climb in the Tatra Mountains.
Poland. He is undecided on whether to join a team that will try to scale K2 in winter. K2, PAGE 8
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 ..
2 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

page two

Love, loss and what comes next

TABLE FOR THREE
WASHINGTON

Two who lost husbands

at an early age talk
about how they cope
BY PHILIP GALANES

When I meet a woman wearing a ring

on a chain around her neck, I know
immediately: member of the club,
Sheryl Sandberg said. I never noticed
before. That club in question would be
the unenviable one for people whose
spouses have died.
What I loved about the chain was
that I could put both our rings on it,
Elizabeth Alexander added. But these
two club members, who met recently
for breakfast, have more in common
than jewelry.
Ms. Sandberg, 47, the chief operating
officer of Facebook and author of
Lean In, a book about overcoming
the barriers that women face at work,
was widowed young. In 2015, her hus-
band, Dave Goldberg, died at 47, while
exercising, leaving Ms. Sandberg with
two young children.
Her story mirrors that of Ms. Alex-
ander, 54, an acclaimed poet and essay-
ist, and President Barack Obamas
inaugural poet in 2009. After 15 years
on the faculty at Yale, she is currently
a professor at Columbia and the direc-
tor of creativity and free expression at
the Ford Foundation, overseeing grant
making in arts, media and culture.
In 2012, Ms. Alexanders husband,
Ficre Ghebreyesus, died at 50, also
while exercising. The couple also had
two young children at the time.
Now, both women have written
best-selling books about those losses
and their aftermath. Ms. Alexanders
memoir, The Light of the World, was
a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016.
Ms. Sandbergs book, Option B: Fac-
ing Adversity, Building Resilience and
Finding Joy, written with Adam Grant,
was published in April. It weaves the
story of Ms. Sandbergs tragedy into
those of others, along with social sci- JUSTIN T. GELLERSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ence research, in a practical guide to
the inevitable hardships of life.
Over a breakfast of English muffins
and cappuccinos (with a side of bacon
for Ms. Sandberg) at Farmers Fishers
Bakers in Georgetown, the women
discussed the impulse to write about
their struggles, the experience of
parenting through grief, and the value
in sharing our deepest stories.
PHILIP GALANES You two are like
amazing reality-show contestants:
Handed identical baskets of horrible
ingredients, yet you come back . . .
SHERYL SANDBERG With totally differ-
ent books.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER I was sur-
prised that so shortly after my hus-
band passed, maybe two weeks later, I
started writing things down. It felt
unseemly, almost cannibalistic.
PG You felt compelled to write?
EA It was the only way I could know
what was happening to me. I knew I
was alive; I knew I had to take care of
my children. But writing was like
placing my hand on the earth. It wasnt
comfortable. It was more like living
with the steady companion of my life:
making things out of experience.
SS Thats exactly how I felt. I always
wanted to keep a journal, but never
did. I have a box of them from when I
was a child. Id start on January 1st and
The chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, left, and the poet, essayist and Columbia professor Elizabeth Alexander. Both women have written books about being widowed while raising young children.
quit by the 5th or 6th. Then one day I
wrote: Im going to bury my husband
today, and I didnt stop. If I didnt
write every day, I felt like I was going
to burst. I would walk out of the office,
tears pouring down my face, and they
would not stop until I wrote everything
down: about the flight to Mexico
[where Mr. Goldberg died], the way we
didnt go on the hike that last morning,
The end of mourning?
Are you kidding? I
thought: Things cant
get worse.
the way they wouldnt let me into the
back of the ambulance with him.
PG Writing was a kind of self-sooth-
ing?
EA More like: If you can stay at the
bone of whats true, then thats your
lifeboat.
SS I felt increasingly isolated, just so
lonely. Id drop off my kids at school,
and people would stop talking when
they saw me. Id walk into work at
Facebook, where everyone talks all
day, and thered be no chitchat.
Literally, I could silence any room just
by arriving. So, a couple of days before
the end of shloshim, the traditional
Jewish mourning period for a spouse, I
thought, if I was going to write some-
thing, this is what I would say: Stop
asking me, How are you? How do you
think I am? Say: How are you today?
And get out of the way of ambulances.
Because when Dave died, no one
moved.
There was zero chance I was posting
this thing. But when I woke up the
next morning, it was just so bad. The
end of mourning? Are you kidding? I
thought: Things cant get worse, may-
be theyll get better. So, I posted it on
Facebook, but I never thought I was
talking to the world. I was shocked
when it ran as news. It didnt get rid of
the grief, but it changed my life. People
started talking to me again. A friend
said, Ive been driving by your house
every day, but now she stopped and
came inside. There are like 70,000
comments on that post. People con-
nected with each other: mothers in
NICUs, fathers of suicides. That was
probably the beginning of the book.
EA My experience was a bit different. I
was teaching a lecture class that I
loved on contemporary African-Ameri-
can art. We talked about coming
through the middle passage of being
enslaved through Jim Crow and
the resilience of making art out of that.
What it means for black people to be
making art today when our young men
are so vulnerable. So the possibility of
death was something we were dealing
with.
After Ficre died and we buried him,
there was one class left in the semes-
ter. I wanted to go back and give that
final lecture. Afterwards, every stu-
dent all 75 lined up and shook my
hand or hugged me. Every single one.
And making that occasion to connect
got that part out of the way. Of course,
there were still many times when I
felt: Ah, can I go into that room? Im
neon now; Im different.
PG One of the powerful takeaways
from your books is that grief is a form
of love; it cant be rushed. When Ive
grieved, I just wanted to take it off fast
like wet clothes.
SS Same here. I wanted to solve the
problem and put a bow on it. But my
friend Davis [Guggenheim, the docu-
mentary filmmaker] told me that when
he starts a film, he never knows where
its going. He has to let the story un-
fold. Honestly, I probably still feel like
you. I lived through the grief because I
had no choice. And as my rabbi told
me: Lean in to the suck.
EA My husbands death ravaged me,
but its meant to. If we have any life
span, we dont outrun this stuff. It may
not be a husband at 47 or 50, but these
things will happen. Somehow, we have
to let the ravages shape us and make
our souls stronger and more beautiful.
Because that is life.
SS I think of my mother-in-law. Losing
her husband, then losing her son. Its
too much. And she helped me clean.
You know the moments: the wedding
ring, cleaning out the closet.
EA I thought you were brave to do that
with your kids. I did it alone.
SS Trust me, I was advised to include
them, so I did.
PG You just touched on the other great
theme of your books: motherhood.
SS Exactly. How do I raise a 7- and
10-year-old who just lost their father?
Im a single parent. I dont have the
financial challenges that many single
parents have. But Im doing this alone,
and theyre grieving.
PG Were you worried about taking
heat as a wealthy woman, the way you
did on Lean In? What does she
know about regular people?
SS Not if I could shine a light on the
terrible stresses women face: 37 per-
cent of single mothers are living in
poverty. With widows, its 15 percent
25 percent if youre black or Latina. My
kids asked me: Are we going to lose
our home? Do you know how many
people for whom the answer is yes?
PG Youve also taken a strong stand on
bereavement leave.
SS I changed Facebooks policy. It was
great before; now its better. Were at
20 days for an immediate family mem-
ber, 10 days for Grandma.
PG Did being a mother change your
grief?
SS I didnt want Daves death to ruin
my childrens life. And I thought it
would. I really did. People ask, Whats
the worst moment of your life? Well,
there are lots of contenders. But it
might be telling my children their
father died. But Adam [Grant] said to
me, If you dont stop blaming yourself,
if you dont learn to laugh, if you dont
find joy again, your kids cant recover.
And when I did feel a little better, my
kids told my sister-in-law that they
were better because Mommys not
crying all the time.
EA My kids were paramount for me,
too. That didnt mean keeping a stiff
upper lip. But it meant carrying on. It
was weird, as if a voice said, We will
survive. It didnt sound cheerful about
anything on the horizon, but it felt like
the truth. And even through the suffer-
ing, we had these beautiful men who
loved us.

Self-taught chemist who sought to bring LSD to the world

NICHOLAS SAND
1941-2017
BY WILLIAM GRIMES
One day in 1964, Nicholas Sand, a Brook-
lyn-born son of a spy for the Soviet Un-
ion, took his first acid trip. He had been
fascinated by psychedelic drugs since
reading about them as a student at
Brooklyn College and had ex-
perimented with mescaline and peyote.
Now, at a retreat run by friends in Put-
nam County, N.Y., he took his first dose
of LSD, still legal at the time.
Sitting naked in the lotus position, be-
fore a crackling fire, he surrendered to
the experience. A sensation of peace and
joy washed over him. Then he felt him-
self transported to the far reaches of the
cosmos.
I was floating in this immense black
space, he recalled in the documentary
The Sunshine Makers, released in
2015. I said, What am I doing here?
And suddenly a voice came through my
body, and it said, Your job on this planet
is to make psychedelics and turn on the
world.
Like Moses receiving the tablets, Mr.
Sand took this commandment to heart.
After being trained by the lab partner of
Owsley Stanley, Americas premier LSD
chemist, he set about producing vast
quantities of the purest LSD on the mar-
ket. His most celebrated product, known
as Orange Sunshine for the color of the
tablets it came in, became a signature
drug of the late 1960s.
Touted by Timothy Leary as the finest
acid available, the tiny orange pills
quickly acquired near-mythic status,
Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain wrote in
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social
History of LSD (1992). Distributed by
the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a drug
cult based in Laguna Beach, Calif., it
showed up wherever hippies gathered:
at Grateful Dead concerts, in California
communes, in Indian ashrams, in the
hashish havens of Afghanistan. Mr.
Sand made sure that Orange Sunshine
was available to American soldiers
fighting in Vietnam, whose minds he
hoped to bend in the direction of nonvio-
lence and brotherly love.
The goal was simple. If we could turn
on everyone in the world, he said in the
documentary, then maybe wed have a
new world of peace and love.
It did not work out that way. Orange
Sunshine was Mr. Sands ticket to a life
on the run. For years he raced to stay a
step ahead of federal agents, and after
being convicted on drug and tax-eva-
bachelors degree in sociology and an-
thropology from Brooklyn College in
1966. After taking his first psychedelic
drug, mescaline, in 1962, he taught him-
self chemistry and set up an attic lab to
make dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.
An invitation from Richard Alpert, Mr.
Learys former Harvard colleague,
brought him to Millbrook, a farm in
Dutchess County, N.Y., where Mr.
Alpert, Mr. Leary and others had started
a psychedelic community. After 1966,
when LSD became illegal, Millbrook
JOSS THOMAS JON HANNA created the Original Kleptonian Neo-
Nicholas Sand in 1970, left, and in 2009, was the alchemist of a religion formed by American Church, whose clergy mem-
Timothy Leary that administered sacraments in the form of psychedelic drugs. bers, known as Boo Hoos, administered
sacraments in the form of psychedelic
drugs. Mr. Sand was designated the al-
sion charges, he hid in Canada for two and Marcia Hiskey. His father was a chemist of the new religion, as well as
decades under an assumed name. After chemist and, since his college days, a of Mr. Learys church, the League for
being arrested and unmasked, he was committed Communist. He was re- Spiritual Discovery, whose initials
returned to the United States, where he cruited by Soviet intelligence during spelled LSD.
served six years in prison. World War II while working on the Man- In 1967, Mr. Stanley, Americas pre-
He emerged an unchanged man, to- hattan Project, from which he was ex- mier LSD chemist, encouraged Mr. Sand
tally committed to the beatific vision pelled after American investigators saw to shift his operations to California. To
granted to him that day in upstate New him meeting with a Russian agent. help him get started, he offered him the
York. When Nick, as he was known, was a services of his lab partner, Tim Scully.
Mr. Sand died on April 24 at his home young boy, his mother, an activist for a From a lab in Windsor, Calif., north of
in Lagunitas, Calif. He was 75. The cause time with the party, divorced her hus- San Francisco, the two partners turned
was a heart attack, said Gina Raetze, his band, took back her maiden name, Sand, out four million doses of Orange Sun-
longtime companion. and gave it to her son. shine, the first step in a planned produc-
He was born Nicholas Francis Hiskey Mr. Sand graduated from Erasmus tion of 750 million doses.
in Brooklyn on May 10, 1941, to Clarence Hall High School in 1959 and earned a By late 1971 Mr. Sand and Mr. Scully
were being investigated by a joint force
of federal narcotics and tax agents. Both
men were convicted on multiple charges
and sentenced to 15 years in prison by
Judge Samuel Conti, who told Mr. Sand
that he had contributed to the degrada-
tion of mankind and society. In his peni-
tentiary cell in Washington State, which
he shared with Mr. Scully, an unrepen-
tant Mr. Sand conducted LSD sessions
for his fellow prisoners until he won re-
lease pending an appeal of his case.
When it became clear that the appeal
would not succeed, Mr. Sand, dressed as
a tourist, entered Canada under the as-
sumed name Ted Parody officially
Theodore Edward Parody III.
In 1996, Royal Canadian Mounted Po-
lice officers raided a lab near Vancouver
where Mr. Sand produced LSD and
other psychedelic drugs, and in the
course of their investigations, discov-
ered that their suspect, now using the
name David Roy Shepard, was a fugitive
from justice in the United States.
In 1998, Mr. Sand pleaded guilty to
manufacturing drugs in Canada and
was sentenced to nine years in prison, to
run concurrently with his United States
sentence. He was returned to San Fran-
cisco, where Judge Conti added five
years, the maximum, to Mr. Sands origi-
nal sentence.

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..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 3
 ..
4 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

World
How to catch hackers?
Sleuthing, with a twist
LONDON
Traditional detective work
gets a digital update to
chase cybercriminals
BY KATRIN BENNHOLD
AND MARK SCOTT
Bank robbers wear masks and escape in
vans with stolen license plates. Kidnap-
pers compose ransom letters from
newsprint to elude handwriting experts.
Burglars target houses with the upstairs
window ajar.
Cybercriminals do much the same.
They hide behind software that ob-
scures their identity and leads investi-
gators to look in countries far from their
actual hide-outs. They kidnap data and
hold it hostage. And they target the most
vulnerable companies and people
whose information is poorly protected.
Cybercrimes, like the global ran-
somware attack that began Friday and
has affected hundreds of thousands of
computers in more than 150 countries,
are in a way an updated version of an-
cient criminal methods.
And in the global search for the crimi-
nals that continued Monday, investiga-
tors are following much the same
process that detectives in the physical
world have used for decades: secure the
crime scene, collect forensic evidence
chief information officer of the White
House and founder of Fortalice, a cyber-
security firm. Are they still hiding? Are
they going to come back tomorrow? Is
the door that let them in still ajar? Can
they inflict more pain?
And if so, where are they? she add-
ed. How do we cordon them off to miti-
gate further damages?
Instead of searching the closets of a
property that has been broken into, in-
vestigators will examine the affected
server, online software caches and
emails to identify any malware that
might not have been activated yet.
In the case of the ransomware that
was unleashed Friday and is known as
WannaCry, Wcry or Wanna Decryptor, it
was quickly determined that updating
Windows software with the latest secu-
rity patch was enough to inoculate
computers that had not been infected.
Then the forensic work begins, with
agents looking for digital fingerprints.
Because of the highly technical nature
of these investigations, private data se-
curity teams can be expected to help in
the search. That includes working di-
rectly with law enforcement to uncover
clues left behind by the attackers, as
well as tracking the virus and its effects
separately to protect their corporate
clients. These firms have been instru-
mental in solving some cases.
In the WannaCry case, the phishing
emails sent by the criminals with the in-
fected link are a key piece of evidence.
Patricia Lewis, the international securi- CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS/REUTERS

and try to trace the clues back to the per- ty research director at Chatham House Opposition supporters clashed with riot officers in Caracas, Venezuela, at a protest against President Nicols Maduro, who has prosecuted demonstrators in military tribunals.
petrator. in London, likened the text of the email
But for all of their similarities to tradi- to a physical letter and its metadata to

Heavy hand in Venezuela

tional crimes, cyberattacks have major
digital twists that can make them much
harder to solve and can greatly magnify
the damage done.
The latest attack has claimed at least
200,000 victims worldwide, according to
an estimate on Sunday by Europol, Eu-
ropes police agency, and new variants
of the malware are emerging, leading
security experts to warn that the fallout
could spread.
Such a large, complex and global
crime outbreak means any hope of a
successful investigation will require
close teamwork among international
law enforcement agencies like the
United States Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation, Scotland Yard and security offi-
cials in China and Russia often wary
of sharing information with one another.
With cybercrime, you can operate
globally without ever having to leave
the envelope it arrives in.
An envelope has lots of information
on it: the stamp with the time and place
it was sent from, the handwriting or
printer type, a senders address, maybe
a fingerprint or DNA from saliva on the
seal, Ms. Lewis said.
Criminals are aware their emails con-
tain revealing clues, and they try to
cover their tracks. People use cloakers,
which hide your identity, making you
look as if you are someone and some-
where else, she said.
Like tracing the license plates of a
stolen car back to the wrong person, this
can lead investigators astray. But a
good detective can track them, Ms.
Lewis said. They always leave digital
bread crumbs that can be followed.
Investigators will check whether the
email address the malware came from is
linked to social media accounts, past cy-
bercrimes or other locations on the web.
They will study the domain name it is
linked to. And they will look for patterns
to try to connect one crime to others.
Success often depends on whether
law enforcement can tie small digital de-
tails, including potential mistakes or a
certain style in the programming code,
back to the criminals. The location of
where some of the ransom money is
withdrawn can also help connect the
dots.
BOGOT, COLOMBIA
As demonstrations disrupt
the country, protesters are
sent to military courts
BY NICHOLAS CASEY
Cheers erupted as the protesters top-
pled the statue of former President
Hugo Chvez, metal cracking against
concrete. The scenes, distributed
around Venezuela on social media,
showed a crowd smashing the sculpture
on a curbside as others came to set a fire
inside its shattered belly.
But when the authorities rounded up
suspects for the vandalism, they were
not taken to an ordinary court. Instead,
they were hauled off to a military base,
where they faced the judges of a military
tribunal last week.
President Nicols Maduro, belea-
guered by a second month of protests
against him, has prosecuted political ri-
vals under terrorism laws and ex- ISAAC URRUTIA/REUTERS

NEIL HALL/REUTERS
Computers at Britains National Health
Service were attacked on Friday.
your home, said Brian Lord, a former
deputy director for intelligence and cy-
beroperations at Government Commu-
nications Headquarters, Britains equiv-
alent of the National Security Agency.
Catching who did this is going to be
very hard, and will require a level of in-
ternational cooperation from law en-
forcement that does not come naturally.
The only institutional arrangement
for international cooperation on cyber-
crime is the so-called Budapest Conven-
tion, whose membership is largely re-
stricted to Western democracies, said
Nigel Inkster, a former assistant chief of
Britains secret intelligence service,
MI6.
Authoritarian states such as Russia
and China have refused to sign on to the
agreement because it permits the digital
Sometimes the patterns that lead in-
vestigators to their target can be sur-
prising. One state-sponsored hack was
traced to Russia because detectives no-
ticed those responsible were online only
from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Moscow time, Ms.
Lewis recalled. In another case, hackers
were observing Chinese holidays.
When Sony was hacked, officials
linked the malware that was used to one
that had been used before in North Ko-
rea. That was a big clue, Ms. Lewis
said. But of course it could have been
deliberately planted.
In the recent hack of the political cam-
paign of the new president of France,
Emmanuel Macron, for instance, securi-
ty experts were able to link the registra-
tion of certain website domains used in
the attack to Russian hackers.
Investigators in the latest attack are
looking for clues in the ransom notes
written in more than 20 languages.
Some suggested that the assailants
might have connections to China be-
cause the Mandarin version of the text
panded his powers by emergency de- Boots are all that remain of a statue of former President Hugo Chvez in La Villa del Rosario, Venezuela. Below, Mr. Maduro, the
crees. His backers on the Supreme president, after issuing a decree this month. He has described the protests as acts of terrorism that would be treated legally as such.
Court have even tried to dissolve the na-
tional legislature, which is led by the po-
litical opposition.
Now, the president is turning to mili-
tary courts to tighten his grip further,
prosecuting demonstrators and other
civilians in tribunals that the govern-
ment closely controls.
At least 120 people have been jailed by
military courts since early April, when
demonstrators began taking to the
streets to call for new elections, accord-
ing to the Penal Forum, a legal group as-
sisting those arrested. Another group
monitoring cases, Provea, counted at
least 90 people jailed by the military.
Both groups contend that the country
has never used the military courts
against so many civilians this way out-
side of wartime.
Military justice sows the greatest
terror in our population, said Juan Mi-
guel Matheus, an opposition congress-
man from the state of Carabobo. He said FEDERICO PARRA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NYT

equivalent of hot pursuit: A police force
investigating a cybercrime can access
networks in other jurisdictions without
first seeking permission.
Any investigation of the recent ran-
somware attack will have to be done by a
coalition of the willing, Mr. Inkster said.
There are signs a coalition is coming
together, at least in parts of the interna-
tional system. Europol said its team of
cybersecurity specialists made up of
agents from countries like Germany,
Britain and the United States was in-
vestigating the attack.
Europe and Asia were the regions
most affected by the crime, with hospi-
tals, car plants and even the Russian
Ministry of Interior falling prey to the
malware, which takes over a computer,
locks down the machine and releases it
only when the owner has paid a ransom.
Hours after the attack was first re-
ported in Britain, where the computer
systems of the National Health Service
were crippled, law enforcement agen-
cies across Europe, Asia and the United
States began looking for clues that could
trace the assault to specific people or or-
ganizations.
As with a physical crime scene, the
first step with any cyberinvestigation is
to make sure the criminal is no longer
hiding out, about to pounce again.
Before we get into who did it, we try
to figure out if the bad guys still have ac-
cess, said Theresa Payton, a former
was better written than its English
equivalent.
Once equipped with enough identify-
ing data to start narrowing down sus-
pects, investigators will go undercover
to listen to the chatter on technology
boards where cybercriminals are
known to spend time. Its like using an
undercover operative purporting to be
part of a criminal gang, except its on-
line, Mr. Inkster said.
Half the dark web are cyberagents
these days, Ms. Lewis joked. Theyre
tripping over each other.
One of the most challenging new de-
velopments for investigators is the use
of Bitcoin, a digital currency with little
oversight.
In the latest attack, the criminals de-
manded ransoms ranging from $300 to
$600, to be paid in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin accounts, or wallets, are ex-
tremely difficult to trace. While law en-
forcement agencies have cracked cases
by tracking Bitcoin transactions, the
process is arduous.
It could take months, if not years, for
law enforcement agencies to pinpoint
the identity of the attackers.
Ultimately, in the world of computers,
as in the physical world, investigators
rely on criminals to make a mistake.
As Adam Malone, a former cybera-
gent for the F.B.I., put it, A lot of times
we catch bad guys because they get
sloppy.
at least 69 people there had been jailed
by the military since early April.
Those held include students, store
owners, mechanics and farmers, rights
groups say. An entire family was ar-
raigned before a military tribunal in Ca-
racas last week and charged with incit-
ing rebellion. In one case in the city of
Valencia, two people were brought be-
fore military courts on suspicion of
stealing legs of ham during a round of
looting then charged with rebellion as
well, according to the Penal Forum.
They are being treated like they are
combatants, said Alfredo Romero, the
director of the legal group. Its taking
civil jurisdiction and putting it in the
hands of the military, like we are in a
war.
Many see another reason for the mili-
tary crackdown against the protesters:
The presidents power is declining
within his own leftist party, especially
among its law enforcers.
Venezuela has witnessed large street
mobilizations in the past, most notably
in 2014, when hundreds were detained.
But while protesters were jailed, tor-
tured and killed that year, they were
largely tried by civilian courts con-
trolled by leftist judges and prosecutors.
This year has been different. Attorney
General Luisa Ortega, who oversaw the
prosecutions in 2014, publicly broke with
Mr. Maduro in March after the Supreme
Court tried to dissolve the opposition-
litical movement that Mr. Maduro in-
Its taking civil jurisdiction herited after Mr. Chvez died in 2013.
and putting it in the hands This time, with hundreds of thou-
of the military, like we are sands of people pouring into the streets
to demand new elections to replace Mr.
in a war. Maduro, clashes between demonstra-
tors and security forces have left at least
led legislature. The president back- 40 dead, hundreds injured and scores of
tracked soon afterward. businesses looted. Fueling the anger is
Ms. Ortega has continued her criti- the worst economic crisis in recent
cisms and now says the state is breaking memory in Venezuela, where more than
the law in its repression of the pro- two years of low oil prices have led to
testers, making it unclear whether she shortages of food and medicine and sky-
will follow his orders in a crackdown. rocketing street crime.
Theyre using military courts be- In April, Mr. Maduro announced what
cause the president is assured of the out- he called the Zamora Plan, a set of de-
come there, said Tamara Taraciuk, a crees meant to combat internal and ex-
senior researcher for Human Rights ternal attacks using the armed forces.
Watch. Its not a coincidence that the Many lawyers and opposition officials
moment the government feels they see it as the legal premise for the shift to
dont control the attorney general, they military courts.
look elsewhere to see that they can lock Mr. Maduro said he had expanded the
up dissidents. role of the armed forces in a strategic
The use of military courts to try civil- civil-military plan to guarantee the
ian cases has long been shunned inter- country functions. He said that the op-
nationally. Nearly all countries, includ- position had called for a coup dtat, an
ing Venezuela, are part of the Interna- accusation he had made before, and that
tional Covenant on Civil and Political the punishments would be tripled for
Rights, a United Nations treaty that dis- such offenses.
courages the practice as unfair. The president has since described the
The unrest is the biggest challenge to protests as acts of terrorism that would
the leftist government since protesters be treated legally as such. A call to the
marched to the presidential palace in Venezuelan Information Ministry for
2002, setting off a coup that briefly de- comment was not returned.
posed Mr. Chvez, the leader of the po- This month, Nestor Reverol, the inte-
rior minister, said on Twitter that the tri-
bunals would be used. Military courts
will be in charge of all investigations
that are necessary of these TERROR-
ISTS hired by the right, he wrote.
Then last week, Vladimir Padrino, Mr.
Maduros defense minister, told a Span-
ish news service that he planned to take
any protester who attacked National
Guardsmen to the tribunals.
Military justice will immediately be
used to hear this kind of case, he said.
Yet human rights lawyers say some
cases have nothing to do with attacks
against soldiers. Mr. Romero of the Pe-
nal Forum cited the case in Valencia,
about a two-hour drive west of Caracas,
where widespread rioting has led to a
near state of martial law. He said his
team had recently attended the arraign-
ment of two residents who were ar-
rested after cuts of ham were found in
their homes, presumably evidence that
they had been involved in the rioting.
However, when the court announced
the charges, the pair stood accused of in-
sulting soldiers and inciting rebellion
among those in the town.
A narrative was completely in-
vented, Mr. Romero said.
Rights groups also point to other
problems in the military courts, like a
lack of lawyers, different standards of
evidence and fewer of the due process
protections found in civilian courts.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Jewish delicacies beguile Berlin
BERLIN JOURNAL
BERLIN
As young Jews emigrate
to German capital, their
traditional foods are a hit
BY LINDSAY GELLMAN
Beige, boiled and usually packed in a ge-
latinous goo, gefilte fish is not the sort of
dish that typically excites foodies.
But the plump pink terrine prepared
by the New York chef Jeffrey Yoskowitz
for Nosh Berlin, a weeklong food festival
celebrating Jewish cuisine, was baked
fresh and gluten-free.
Gefilte fish can be sexy, Mr.
Yoskowitz assured the 150 people who
gathered in late March in Kreuzberg, in
the western part of Berlin, to taste some
of the delicacies that had all but disap-
peared from the citys shops and restau-
rants after World War II.
In the past decade, thousands of
young Jews from North America, Israel
and former Communist states in
GORDON WELTERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gefilte fish prepared for Nosh Berlin by
the New York chef Jeffrey Yoskowitz.
Eastern Europe have emigrated to
Berlin, lured by affordable rents, a grow-
ing technology scene and a vibrant
night life. They brought with them a
taste for the sweet and savory dishes
that had crowded their families dining
tables at home.
Faina Shikher, a 22-year-old Moscow
transplant, marveled at Mr. Yoskowitzs
chic presentation of gefilte fish, which is
not an actual fish but typically a ground
mlange of whitefish, carp and pike.
It was very different from the ones
our grannies made, which she said
were more like bone-filled globs.
Pro-E.U. Britons new tactic
LONDON
Campaigners urge voters
to cross party lines to
battle a hard Brexit
BY STEPHEN CASTLE
Gina Miller says she receives online
death threats most days, thanks to her
recent legal case that forced Britains
government to consult lawmakers over
its plans to leave the European Union.
But Ms. Miller, an investment fund
manager and the lead claimant in the
successful case centering on the pro-
cedure for invoking Article 50, the legal
mechanism for leaving the bloc, has en-
tered another fight that could bring her
more recrimination.
This time, she is leading a tactical vot-
ing campaign called Best for Britain,
which aims to help pro-European candi-
dates in the general election here on
June 8 in the hope that their influence
can soften the impact of Brexit, as the
countrys withdrawal from the bloc is
known.
The group wants to restrict the scale
of Prime Minister Theresa Mays proba-
ble victory Mrs. May has said she
wants to secure a large parliamentary
majority in order to strengthen her hand
as she negotiates Britains divorce. The
Best for Britain campaign hopes to
weaken her hand and prevent a so-
called hard Brexit, or clean break from
the bloc, if that is the strategy Mrs. May
pursues. She has, for instance, ruled out
retaining membership in the European
Unions single market.
This is the last chance saloon, Ms.
Miller said, sipping coffee in a London
restaurant recently and reflecting on
speculation that the elections will de-
liver a big majority for Mrs. May.
Ms. Millers campaign is urging elec-
tors to vote not for the party they prefer,
but for candidates opposed to the hard-
est form of Brexit. With the main opposi-
tion Labour Party trailing in the opinion
polls, it is just one of several initiatives
for tactical, or strategic, voting that are
fast becoming buzzwords of Britains
election campaign.
In essence, the argument is that
voters opposed to Mrs. Mays priorities
should hold their noses and vote for the
least-worst option available, thinking of
the greater good.
Some pro-European groups hope that
British lawmakers will be able to stop a
hard exit or maybe even Brexit itself
if a deal that emerges from Mrs.
Mays talks with the rest of the Euro-
pean Union would be economically dam-
aging to Britain. Others want to form a
broader alliance of left and center par-
ties to compete with her Conservative
Party.
That is part of the point. It cant just
be nostalgia; it cant just be your bubbes
cooking, Mr. Yoskowitz said, using the
Yiddish word for grandmother. This is
a living food tradition.
Other Jewish transplants to Berlin,
though, long for childhood favorites
made just as they remember them. En-
terprising expats have stepped in to sat-
isfy their cravings for blintzes, kugels
and kasha varnishkes, and to appeal to
the denizens of the citys flourishing
foodie scene.
Laurel Kratochvila, the food festivals
co-organizer and a native of Massachu-
setts, moved to Berlin six years ago and
was appalled by what passed for a bagel
at the citys bakeries and cafes. Most
were dry, stale and slathered with may-
onnaise.
There was a lot of bagel ignorance in
this town, she said.
So Ms. Kratochvila, 33, began slinging
her own dough. She pored over old cook-
books and food blogs, adapting tradi-
tional recipes to make use of local ingre-
dients. She served platters of her fresh
bagels and traditional schmears to
customers at Shakespeare & Sons, the
English-language bookstore and cafe
where she worked.
When the hunger for her bagels be-
gan to rival the demand for books, the
shop moved in 2014 to a larger location
with an industrial kitchen. Today, she
churns out as many as 18,000 bagels a
month, supplying the bookstore and
other cafes around Berlin, she said.
Ms. Kratochvila and the chefs and
food writers who participated in the
Nosh Berlin festival are helping to fill in
the gaps in Jewish cultural traditions
since World War II. In 1933, roughly
160,000 Jews lived in Berlin, about a
third of the Jewish population of Ger-
many at the time. When the Soviets
liberated the city in 1945, only a few
thousand Jews remained, according to
the Jewish Museum Berlin.
The Jewish community was slow to
return when the city was divided during
the Cold War and the Communists ruled
East Germany. In recent years, more
foreign Jews have come to make the
German capital their home.
One can now regularly find Jewish
foods at grocery stores in Berlin, and in-
creased immigration from Israel the
embassy here estimates as many as
15,000 Israelis live in the German capital
means dishes like hummus and shak-
shuka (a baked egg and tomato dish)
Pro-European demonstrators gathered outside BBC offices in London last week as
Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband, Philip, gave an interview.
Billy Bragg, a singer, songwriter and
veteran of left-wing causes, was among
the millions of Britons on the losing side
of last years vote to quit the European
Union. A longtime advocate of tactical
voting and of changes to Britains win-
ner-takes-all electoral system, he wel-
comes efforts to create a progressive
alliance to take on the Conservatives.
He calls it a new development in the
whole process of tactical voting.
Yet most polling experts believe that
tactical voting will have limited impact.
In Britain, political loyalties run deep,
making it hard to organize campaigns
that cross party lines, even when parties
have internal divisions over issues like
the Europe Union.
Although a substantial number of
Britons voted against quitting the Euro-
pean Union in last years referendum
around 16 million, while 17.4 million
backed it both Mrs. May, who leads
the Conservatives, and Jeremy Corbyn,
leader of Labour, want to proceed with
Brexit. After Britain withdraws from the
bloc, Labour will want to retain closer
ties than the Conservatives might, but
Labours approach remains fuzzy.
The clearest pro-European position
comes from the Liberal Democrats, who
want another referendum on the out-
come of Brexit negotiations. But they
hold only nine parliamentary seats out
of 650.
Tactical voting is a response to a
British electoral system in which minor-
ity voices tend to be drowned out, even if
they number in the millions. Candidates
run in 650 parliamentary constituen-
cies. The person with the most votes in
each is elected to Parliament, and the
party with the most lawmakers nor-
mally forms the government. But only
about 100 or so seats tend to change
hands in general elections, deciding the
TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 5
world
GORDON WELTERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Partygoers at Nosh Berlin, a weeklong festival celebrating Jewish cuisine, enjoying bagels with whitefish salad. One can now regularly find Jewish foods at Berlin grocery stores.
frequently appear on restaurant menus Berlins resurgent secular Jewish com- Jewish roots, pumps in a hip-hop sound- ker from Tel Aviv who moved to Berlin 13
around the city. munity and foster inventive cross-cul- track and hands out decals promoting years ago. It doesnt fit, he said, sip-
Israelis are convinced that Berlin is tural mash-ups. his other business, a tattoo parlor. ping vodka while listening to a klezmer
the New York of Europe, said Tal Alon, Lauren Lee, the South Korea-born, The increased visibility of Jewish and band at the gefilte fish party during the
42, who moved to Berlin from Tel Aviv Canada-raised chef and owner of Jewish-adjacent culture in Berlin has Nosh Berlin festival.
with her family eight years ago. In 2012 Frulein Kimchi in the trendy Prenzlau- not escaped the attention of German of- Toby Axelrod, a New Yorker who has
she started Spitz, the first Hebrew mag- er Berg neighborhood of Berlin, serves ficials, who extol in their tourism cam- lived in Berlin for 20 years, worried the
azine published in Berlin since before kimchi-ramen burgers and Korean-style paigns the communitys resurgence as city could return to the Jewish Disney-
the war. Germans really want Jewish tacos. Recently, she added a new recipe: active, vibrant and gaining momen- land it was in the 1990s, when tour com-
life back in Berlin because it proves Ger- kimchi-fried latkes, a spicy twist on the tum. panies shepherded tourists to so-called
many has changed, she said. traditional Jewish potato pancake. Some Jews living in Berlin remain Jewish sites in Berlin that were of ques-
Many of the places serving Jewish Schlomos, a cafe also in Prenzlauer leery of drawing too much attention to tionable provenance, she said.
food in Berlin are kosher-style, but they Berg, serves, among other things, hand- their culture in a city that has been hos- Ms. Kratochvila, the bagel-maker and
dont have the official and expensive made bagels with cured lox. Except for tile to their heritage. Others worry about festival organizer, said she treads care-
rabbinical approval to be called ko- the Wi-Fi password MAZELTOV! cultural appropriation, or turning their fully so as to avoid rhapsodizing Jewish
sher. Without having to conform to strict the place is more hipster dive bar than traditions into kitsch. Jewish culture culture. Theres a difference between
religious dietary laws, these restaurants Jewish delicatessen. The German-born here is a bit superficial, said Elad Ja- something being hip and trendy, and
and cafes can serve as lay centers of owner, Nick Carter, 37, who said he had cobowitz, a 39-year-old real estate bro- something being fetishized, she said.
InterContinental London Park Lane
October 1719, 2017
The worlds pre-eminent
JACK TAYLOR/GETTY IMAGES
conference for oil and
gas executives
outcome.
Tony Blair, the former British prime
minister, has joined calls for voters to
opt for candidates who would deny Mrs.
May a blank check. Ms. Miller said
that Best for Britain was also drawing
lessons from the election of Justin
Trudeau as prime minister of Canada,
which was helped by tactical voting
among supporters of three center and
left parties.
Yet according to Colin Rallings, a pro- Patrick Pouyann Bob Dudley Margareth vrum Lorenzo Simonelli
fessor emeritus at Plymouth University, Chairman and C.E.O. Group Chief Executive Executive Vice President, President and C.E.O.
evidence suggests that tactical voting Total S.A. BP P.L.C. Projects, G.E. Oil & Gas
Technology & Drilling
doesnt work en masse. Statoil
When it comes down to it, there are
few people who are aware of the tactical
situation in their constituencies and
have sufficiently strong views to follow This October, over 500 senior executives, policy makers, financiers, strategists
that through, Professor Rallings said.
Even advocates of tactical voting ad- and experts from the international oil and gas industry will convene in London
mit that the odds are stacked against for the 38th annual Oil & Money Conference.
those who voted to remain in the Euro-
pean Union. Because this is a snap elec-
tion, Ms. Millers group will have time to Co-hosted by The New York Times and Energy Intelligence, this world-class
target only about 50 constituencies, but gathering continues to set the standard for frank discussion and stimulating
she said a good result would be to limit
Mrs. Mays parliamentary majority to debate on the key issues facing the global petroleum sector. With a list of
about 30 lawmakers. delegates and speakers which will once again feature C.E.O.s and ministers
If this fails and Labour loses badly,
Ms. Miller said, there may be a need for from the worlds leading oil companies and oil producers, Oil & Money
a new party to occupy Britains political guarantees high-level networking opportunities with international business
center ground.
John Curtice, a professor of politics at leaders and opinion makers.
the University of Strathclyde in Glas-
gow, said a lot of tactical voting already
took place, which means there is limited
scope to increase it. It works best when To register and view the latest speaker line-up, please visit
the supporters of the third-most-popu-
lar party in a constituency are con- oilandmoney.com
vinced that their candidate cannot win,
and so opt for the next best thing.
At the moment, however, the third-
party vote in many areas of Britain has
been reduced because the Conserva-
tives are riding high in the opinion polls.

6 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017
world
Traffic in Tehran. Middle-class Iranians are frustrated after years of high unemployment, inflation that eats relentlessly into living standards and widespread corruption.
Economic hopes wane in Iran
IRAN, FROM PAGE 1
The government is throwing its
weight around regionally as well, lend-
ing political and military support to Shi-
ite groups and governments in Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and extend-
ing its influence eastward into Af-
ghanistan. In fiery speeches, Irans su-
preme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
boasts of Irans far-reaching impact.
The Trump administration has ex-
pressed deep concerns about Irans ex-
panding power, with the secretary of de-
fense, Jim Mattis, saying recently, Ev-
erywhere you look if there is trouble in
the region, you find Iran.
But with a presidential election com-
ing Friday, many middle-class Iranians
see things in a different way. Disillu-
sioned and cynical, they are frustrated
by years of high unemployment, infla-
tion that eats relentlessly into living
standards and widespread corruption.
And they are frustrated with a state
widely regarded as ossified and out of
touch, a mixture of a quasi-socialist
economy dominated by the military and
clergy, and elective institutions super-
vised by conservative clerical bodies
that have the final say on legislation and
candidates for political office.
Veterans of the 1979 revolution, like
Ayatollah Khamenei, are still in charge,
reinforcing a rigid revolutionary ideol-
ogy and doing their best to resist pres-
sures for change. With no obvious
younger generation of leaders, the coun-
try also faces a looming succession cri-
sis.
While foreign investors often are said
to be intent on doing deals, it is unclear
whether they will help start an eco-
nomic boom. With few exceptions, they
are signing memorandums of under-
standing, not actual contracts.
Many are concerned that the Trump
administration could penalize big inter-
national banks that choose to do busi-
ness in Iran, if they are deemed to vi-
olate nonnuclear American sanctions
still in force against the country.
Only big banks can provide the large-
scale financing needed for the major,
job-creating infrastructure projects that
Iran desperately needs.
President Hassan Rouhani who is
running for re-election against, among
others, Ebrahim Raisi, a favorite of
hard-liners had hoped to have made
headway on these problems by now. He
ran in 2013 promising to reinvigorate the
economy by forging the nuclear deal,
ending or easing sanctions that cut Iran
off from international finance and open-
ing the country to foreign investment
and ideas.
He accomplished the nuclear pact,
but the economic benefits have been
meager at best. Instead, Iranians, many
of them college graduates, are working
longer and harder just to make ends
meet.
GROUND TO A HALT
For Mr. Faraji, that means selling honey
and saffron to supermarkets and run-
ning a cosmetics shop. To survive in a
brutally competitive marketplace, he
has to keep an eye out for the police
while he buys smuggled products, pays
bribes, intimidates delinquent bill
payers and devises schemes to dupe
store owners into buying his products.
He counts himself lucky, in some re-
spects. He says he has avoided doing
any smuggling himself, or resorting to
other illegal activities like selling alco-
hol or organizing mixed weddings,
where men and women dance with one
another all common in Irans under-
ground economy.
Some afternoons his wife joins him at
A banner for President Hassan Rouhanis re-election campaign. He ran in 2013 promising to reinvigorate the economy.
his shop. Otherwise, they would never
see each other. I go to sleep at 1 a.m. and
leave the house at 6 a.m., Mr. Faraji
said.
Most of the time, he tries not to think
about why his life has become such a
struggle, he said. But in his heart he
knows: Everything has ground to a
halt. Were moving back, rather than for-
ward.
Still, he explained, he would be voting
for Mr. Rouhani, saying he would choose
the least-bad candidate to prevent an
even worse situation.
Irans Ministry of Labor counts every
Iranian who works at least one hour a
week as employed. There is no welfare
for the long-term unemployed, but laid-
off workers get some unemployment in-
surance. By the official figures, which
economists say understate the problem,
eight million Iranians are jobless, and
only half of Irans educated women ever
find a job.
At the same time, the government,
seeking to provide some sort of safety
net in hard economic times, is running
fat: It employs around 8.5 million peo-
ple, out of a national population of 80
million. But those highly sought-after
jobs are so hard to get, younger Iranians
can barely hope for them.
CHANGE, IN FITS AND STARTS
Not everyone is so jaded. Many in Irans
moderate and reformist faction are
guardedly optimistic that the country is
changing, albeit in fits and starts, and al-
ways subject to reversals by hard-liners.
One of those optimists, Mahmoud
Sadeghi, a former cleric and son of a fa-
mous ayatollah, now wears a suit as a
member of Parliament and takes to
Twitter as he investigates corruption
among the ruling elite.
In the parliamentary elections of 2015,
reformists and moderates gained a
small majority, which they have used to
attack problems like corruption that dis-
courage economic initiatives.
Mr. Sadeghi and other reformists say
that, largely under the radar, Iran has
changed a great deal over the years, and
in some ways resembles many Western
societies. After roughly 20 years of the
internet, satellite television and afford-
able foreign travel, Iranians have grown
more sophisticated, educated and mod-
erate, and less pious.
Irans aging leaders have been forced
to give ground, tolerating changes they
can no longer prevent.
Gone are the days when police offi-
cers would raid rooftops to remove ille-
gal satellite dishes. Most Iranians can
now watch more than 150 foreign-based
Persian-language channels, while state
television, heavily salted with lectures
by conservative clerics, is increasingly
ignored.
He explained he would be voting
for President Hassan Rouhani,
the least-bad candidate to
prevent an even worse situation.
We are successful in bringing
change, as otherwise I would not be sit-
ting in Parliament, Mr. Sadeghi said, re-
ferring to his status as a corruption
fighter.
In November, Mr. Sadeghi gave a
speech in Parliament accusing the head
of the judiciary, Sadegh Amoli-Larijani,
of maintaining a secret bank account to
collect diverted public funds. After the
speech, representatives of the judiciary
tried to arrest him but were stopped
when dozens of people gathered in front
of his house to protect him.
Nevertheless, change for Mr. Sadeghi
and many within Irans establishment
means altering existing law, not over-
hauling Irans political system and es-
tablishment.
And that change is halting. For in-
stance, in 2016, Parliament passed a
measure that would have made women
eligible for top political positions, only to
have it blocked by the 12-member
Guardian Council now led by a 90-
year-old hard-liner, Ayatollah Ahmad
Jannati which reviews all new laws to
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ensure they are properly Islamic.
Parliaments attempts to make it easi-
er for women to obtain a divorce and
more difficult for men to take a second
wife were similarly rejected by the coun-
cil, which also vets candidates for elec-
tions.
This, too, has consequences for the
economy, as obscure laws enacted after
the revolution in 1979 remain on the
books, often used by ideologues or un-
scrupulous officials to undermine busi-
ness ventures that in most other coun-
tries would be brilliant successes.
Even established businesses that suf-
fered during the years of sanctions are
finding it difficult to recapture lost
customers. For Bahram Shahriyari, 58,
the prospect of lifted international sanc-
tions after the nuclear deal was a faint
light at the end of what had become a
dark tunnel.
Until the sanctions were imposed, he
had owned a business providing parts
and components for new and used vehi-
cles made by the PSA Group of France,
the maker of Peugeot and Citron cars,
one of the most prominent foreign
brands in Iran. At its peak just four
years ago, his company had 400
employees and even exported parts to
France.
But the sanctions and mismanage-
ment of our leaders was neck-breaking,
Mr. Shahriyari said. His principal
customer, an Iranian state-owned auto-
motive company, Iran Khodro, stopped
placing orders because it was having
trouble selling cars. Before long, his
checks started bouncing, he said, and he
told employees that he could no longer
pay their wages.
The PSA Group has now re-entered
the market, restarting an existing joint
venture but dealing only with Iran Kho-
dro. For Mr. Shahriyari, who lost his
most valuable employees and
customers and still cannot obtain fi-
nancing, it is far too late.
A contact, an ambassador for Iran,
once told me, You have to pay the price
for the nuclear advancement of our
country, he said. Believe me, I did.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Judging an asset
to Al Qaeda and U.S.
WASHINGTON
Light sentence shows
value of New Yorkers
help in exposing network
BY ADAM GOLDMAN
No one knew it at the time, but Al
Qaedas ability to strike in the West was
severely damaged when a skinny one-
time altar boy who grew up on Long Is-
land stumbled into a Pakistani check-
point in Peshawar in 2008, attacked a
police officer and was detained.
Within days, United States Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents had
flown to Pakistan and were grilling the
young man, Bryant Neal Vinas. He told
them that he had consulted for Qaeda
leadership on spectacular plans to blow
up the Long Island Rail Road. Osama bin
Laden wanted to turn him into a recruit-
ing poster.
Mr. Vinas kept talking to the F.B.I.
agents, and to federal prosecutors back
in New York. He talked for the next eight
years, taking part in 100 interviews, re-
viewing 1,000 photographs and assisting
The offense is among the most
serious you can imagine. On the
other hand, the value of the
cooperation is among the most
valuable you can imagine.
in more than 30 law enforcement inves-
tigations. Mr. Vinas, who had once vol-
unteered to become a suicide bomber,
turned on Al Qaeda with devastating ef-
fect.
Prosecutors called him the single
most valuable cooperating witness
about Qaeda activities spanning his
time in Afghanistan and Pakistan about
a decade ago. He provided, they re-
cently wrote, unparalleled insight into
the internal and external operations of
Al Qaeda.
The extraordinary assistance from
Mr. Vinas, now 34, created a problem for
the federal judge deciding his fate last
week. Mr. Vinas had pleaded guilty to
conspiring to murder United States citi-
zens, providing material support to Al
Qaeda and receiving military training
from the group.
Before the judge was the question of
how to punish a criminal who had
demonstrated such a capacity for evil,
but who had also helped deliver a devas-
tating blow to the terrorists responsible
for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The juxtaposition of Mr. Vinass atro-
cious crimes and his remarkable postar-
rest cooperation is what makes the task
of sentencing Mr. Vinas so difficult, the
judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis, said during
sentencing.
For prosecutors, an overly harsh sen-
tence would signal to other potential
cooperators that agreeing to talk had no
upside. Lawyers for Mr. Vinas, who was
facing a life sentence, argued that the
nearly eight years he had spent locked
up was sufficient.
The seriousness of the offense is
among the most serious you can imag-
ine, said David Bitkower, a former Jus-
tice Department national security offi-
cial and prosecutor in Brooklyn, who
was not directly involved in Mr. Vinass
case. On the other hand, the value of
the cooperation is among the most valu-
able you can imagine.
He added, How do you balance one
off-the-chart factor against another?
Mr. Vinas is a remnant of an era in the
war on terrorism when Al Qaeda was
the main threat and Americans under
the spell of Bin Laden traveled to Paki-
stan to swear loyalty to him.
Syria was not yet at war, and the Is-
lamic State did not exist. Neither did so-
cial media outlets like Twitter, nor a
bevy of easy-to-use encrypted chat
services that terrorists have exploited
in recent years to sway potential
sympathizers.
Back then, A.Q. was the only game in
town, said Jeffrey Ringel, a former
F.B.I. agent with extensive counterter-
rorism experience. It was a different
model.
Mr. Vinas was an early harbinger of
the stream of Westerners attracted to ji-
hadist movements. He watched videos
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a notorious
Qaeda operative with a thirst for be-
heading people, who pioneered the use
of gruesome videos to draw recruits like
Mr. Vinas.
We didnt have all these 18-year-olds
going on Facebook and getting radical-
ized, said Don Borelli, a former F.B.I.
supervisor who oversaw Mr. Vinass Vinas has learned the error of his ways
case. He was one of the first guys we
saw who did that.
Mr. Vinas traveled an unremarkable
path to notoriety.
He was born in Queens in 1982 and
raised in Medford, Long Island, where
he attended Catholic church regularly.
His parents divorced, and he lived with
his mother after that. According to court
documents, he was abused as a child,
though at whose hands is unclear.
He enlisted in the Army as a petro-
leum supply specialist six months after
Sept. 11, but washed out weeks later. He
was given a Chapter 11 discharge a
failure to adapt to the military. His said Steve Zissou, who represented Mr.
superiors were also concerned that he
was suicidal. ment of Al Qaedas destruction.
..
By then 19, Mr. Vinas jumped from job
to job, working at a carwash, a green-
house and a trucking company.
Rudderless, he found Islam in 2004
through a friend, converting at a Queens
mosque that other extremists had em-
braced.
As the United States invasion of Af-
ghanistan dragged on and Iraq plunged
into a catastrophic civil war, Mr. Vinas,
prosecutors say, fell under the sway of
Mr. Zarqawis videos and other propa-
ganda. With little else to lose, he set off
for Pakistan.
In September 2007, he flew to Lahore,
a city near the Indian border known as a
center of arts and literature, figuring he
would arouse less suspicion there than
in a city, like Peshawar, that was swarm-
ing with militants.
Mr. Vinas eventually traveled to
North Waziristan, a remote region that
was home to many militants, and wound
up in a four-month Qaeda boot camp.
There, he learned to handle small arms
and explosives and make suicide vests.
After training, he was issued an AK-47
assault rifle by Al Qaeda, and he played
minor roles in a pair of unsuccessful at-
tacks on an American military base in
Afghanistan.
But Mr. Vinas had more to offer Al
Qaeda than being a low-level fighter: He
had ideas. According to court docu-
ments, he considered establishing a
Qaeda training camp in Peru and was in-
volved in creating Qaeda communica-
tion systems.
One of the few in the terrorist group
who knew New York, Mr. Vinas pro-
posed targeting the Long Island Rail
Road traveled by hundreds of thou-
sands of commuters each day and a
Walmart.
Mr. Vinas acquired a nickname
among his fellow fighters. They called
him Bashir al-Ameriki, the American
who brings good news.
In October 2008, Mr. Vinas headed for
Peshawar in search of a wife. He never
found one. At a checkpoint, he was
pulled off a bus and questioned. Trying
to escape, he attempted to stab a police
officer. He was arrested and turned over
to the American authorities. The F.B.I.
took custody of Mr. Vinas and flew him
back to New York.
He started to cooperate immediately.
He disclosed the plot against the Long
Island Rail Road; people living in New
York who he thought would be of inter-
est to the F.B.I.; how to join Al Qaeda;
and its structure, communications sys-
tems, planning, training and tactics.
Al Qaeda felt the effects of his decision
almost as quickly, as C.I.A.-operated
drones obliterated the places where he
had trained and lived.
He was a big deal, Mr. Borelli said.
He allowed the government to gain
critical insights into Al Qaeda. Having
that insight allowed the U.S. govern-
ment to mount disruption operations.
He also helped convict both a senior
Qaeda operative and a suspect in an-
other subway bomb plot, Adis Medun-
janin, establishing that he met with Al
Qaedas leaders. The cooperation also
allowed Brooklyn prosecutors to charge
another member of Al Qaeda in a case
whose details remain secret.
To say that the defendant provided
substantial assistance to the govern-
ment is an understatement,
prosecutors wrote in a memorandum in
March.
Bryant Neal Vinas helped convict a top
Qaeda operative and a bomb plotter.
Before he was sentenced on Thurs-
day, an emotional Mr. Vinas stood and
addressed the court.
I understand that there is no excuse
that would justify what I did; I accept
full responsibility, he said. I blame no
one but myself.
He said he would like to turn a bad
thing into a good thing and become a
paid counterterrorism expert. If that did
not work, he would like a job in construc-
tion.
Judge Garaufis listened to lawyers on
both sides and then announced his deci-
sion.
I am cautiously optimistic that Mr.
and will never again commit another
crime of this nature, he said. No one,
that is, no one, even Mr. Vinas himself,
has a crystal ball and can know for cer-
tain whether Mr. Vinas will re-offend.
However, he is in control of his destiny.
He then sentenced Mr. Vinas, giving
him just three more months in prison.
He will spend the rest of his life under
tight supervision.
Even agents and prosecutors could
not have predicted such a light sen-
tence, though his lawyers praised the
decision.
He got the sentence he deserved,
Vinas. He really did become the instru-
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
F.B.I. chiefs firing is stress test of democracy
BY AMANDA TAUB
President Trump had the legal authority
to fire James B. Comey, the director of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and
he originally said that doing so last week
was necessary because, in his view, Mr.
Comey had committed serious vio-
lations of law-enforcement norms dur-
ing his investigation of Hillary Clinton
last year.
But critics say that Mr. Trump has
himself violated a longstanding norm of
American politics: the unwritten rule
that presidents should not remove the
F.B.I. director without extreme justifica-
tion, in order to avoid politicizing law en-
forcement. Before Tuesday, only one
F.B.I. director had ever been fired, and
that was after an investigation found he
had committed egregious ethical vio-
lations and after he refused entreaties
to resign.
That has left many wondering how to
evaluate Mr. Trumps actions. Was his
firing of Mr. Comey a necessary deci-
sion? Merely a minor disturbance of po-
litical etiquette? A catastrophic blow to
democracy?
Political scientists who study democ-
racy and authoritarianism know the an-
swers will be long debated. The true sig-
nificance of Mr. Comeys firing, they say,
is that it presents a kind of stress test for
American democratic institutions. In
unhealthy systems, norm violations can
spiral into tit-for-tat retaliation, ulti-
mately tearing democracies apart. But
in strong democracies, institutions will
step in to enforce vital norms, prevent-
ing escalation and protecting the
democratic system.
SEEDS OF AUTHORITARIANISM
Norms about political behavior and
power serve as soft guardrails for de-
mocracy, said Steven Levitsky, a pro-
fessor at Harvard who studies au-
thoritarianism.
In a healthy democratic system, when
politicians violate important norms
other institutions push back, ensuring
that the violators pay a hefty price and
the guardrails are preserved.
But in collapsing democracies, the op-
posite happens. Instead of banding to-
gether to protect democratic norms,
warring parties take violations by their
opponents as justification for breaking
other norms in response. Its a process
of escalation that often begins with mi-
nor stuff and ends with coups, Mr. Lev-
itsky said.
Of course, people dont necessarily
engage in that escalation with the intent
of consolidating authoritarian power.
But without the stability and protections
those guardrails offer, normal
democratic competition can spin into a
partisan battle that ultimately tears de-
mocracies apart.
That kind of partisan fight to the
death is what killed democracy in Spain
in the 1930s; its what killed democracy
in Brazil in the 1960s; its what killed de-
mocracy in Chile with Allende in the
early 1970s, Mr. Levitsky said, referring
to that countrys former president, Sal-
vador Allende. The regimes that took
Months after election, Trump still craves credit for win
NEWS ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON
President said to resent
what he sees as conspiracy
to challenge his legitimacy
BY PETER BAKER
AND MAGGIE HABERMAN
In the small dining room next to the Oval
Office where he works much of the time,
President Trump keeps a stack of color-
coded maps of the United States repre-
senting the results of the 2016 election.
The counties he won are blotchy red and
span most of the nation.
Mr. Trump sometimes hands the
maps out to visitors as a kind of parting
gift, and a framed portrait-size version
was hung on a wall in the West Wing two
weeks ago. In conversations, the presi-
dent dwells on the map and its import,
reminding visitors about how wrong the
polls were and inflating the scope of his
victory.
At the root of Mr. Trumps unpredict-
able presidency, according to people
close to him, is a deep frustration about
attacks on his legitimacy, and a worry
that Washington does not see him as he
sees himself.
As he careens from one controversy
to another, many of them of his own
making like his abrupt decision to fire
the Federal Bureau of Investigation di-
rector, James B. Comey, who was lead-
ing an investigation into the presidents
associates Mr. Trump seems deter-
mined to prove that he won the election
on his own. It was not Russian interfer-
ence. It was not Mr. Comeys actions in
the case involving Hillary Clintons
emails. It was not a fluke of the Electoral
College system. It was all him.
He sits in the dining room or Oval Of-
fice stewing over the Russia inquiry that
Mr. Comey was managing, arguing to
anyone who will listen that the matter is
all a Democratic-inspired conspiracy to
undermine the validity of his victory.
New York on Nov. 7, 1944, the day Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States, a violation of democratic norms.
over in those countries were right wing,
but leftist authoritarians like
Venezuelas Hugo Chvez have followed
a similar path.
Sheri Berman, a political-science pro-
fessor at Barnard College, has observed
that process in her study of democratic
backsliding in countries like Hungary
and Turkey. There was a gradual evis-
ceration of democracy, she said, leav-
ing those countries with the trappings
of democracy, like elections and political
parties, but not the substance.
American democracy is far from that
terminal state, experts say. But they see
the Comey firing as the latest in a string
of norm violations, by Mr. Trump as well
as others, that have been slowly escalat-
ing and as a test of whether todays
polarized political system will halt that
escalation or accelerate it.
GOOD FOR POPULISTS
Mr. Trump has a long history of violating
political norms, Mr. Levitsky said.
Even as he was defending his decision to
dismiss Mr. Comey last week, Mr.
Trump signed an executive order creat-
ing a commission to investigate voting
fraud in a quixotic effort to prove his un-
substantiated contention that he would
have won the popular vote against Mrs.
Clinton were it not for millions of ballots
that were illegally cast against him.
Mr. Trump burns with frustration
over not getting enough credit for win-
ning the nations highest office after
having never so much as run for City
Council or town alderman. He ran when
pundits predicted he would not, stayed
in when they were certain he would drop
out, never lost his core supporters and,
amid a dysfunctional campaign that was
known for self-inflicted wounds, pro-
pelled himself to victory over the vastly
more experienced Clinton machine. He
expected to be celebrated for it, and that
has not happened.
Theres a lot of anger. Ive talked with
him about it, said Christopher Ruddy,
chief executive of Newsmax Media and
a friend of Mr. Trumps. No other presi-
dent in history has faced the barrage of
press attacks, people calling for him to
be impeached before he took the oath of
office.
I think the way Trump looks at this is
the big club theyve tried to get at him
is the Russia collusion argument, Mr.
Ruddy added. Trump sees this as a po-
litical attack, not a fair attack on him.
In the process, allies and advisers
said, Mr. Trump has only made the situa-
tion worse for himself. Rather than ig-
noring the Russia investigation and fo-
cusing on priorities like health care and
taxes, he keeps drawing more attention
to the subject with intemperate Twitter
posts, angry interviews and actions like
the firing of Mr. Comey.
He is so consumed by the matter that
he studies congressional hearings on
the Russia case, scrolling through them
using TiVo. The night before dismissing
Mr. Comey, he invited Time magazine
journalists to dinner and, on a 60-inch-
plus television he has had installed in
the dining room, showed them various
For example, it was once a norm that
you dont insult your opponents wifes
physical appearance, he said, referring
to Mr. Trumps derogatory Twitter post
about Heidi Cruz, the wife of his Republi-
can primary opponent Ted Cruz.
And even before the primary cam-
paign began, Mr. Trump first came to po-
litical prominence through the so-called
birther movement, which asserted
Barack Obama might have forged his
birth certificate and was not born in the
United States. (He was.)
Though many people criticized such
behavior, Mr. Trumps supporters ap-
plauded it as evidence of his willingness
to say what he is really thinking, even
if that meant challenging elites.
Mr. Trumps populist stance meant
that violating norms was a useful po-
litical tool. If you are a politician or a
voter or activist who supports a populist
project, then norm violation is a good
thing, Mr. Levitsky said. Youre bring-
ing down a corrupt system.
Protesters outside the White House after President Trump fired James B. Comey as
F.B.I. director amid an inquiry into Russias role in last years election.
moments from the hearings, offering
play-by-play-style commentary.
If Mr. Trump has nothing to hide, as he
insists, he has only succeeded in making
it appear as though he might. He
seemed to almost invite comparisons to
the Watergate scandal by firing Mr.
Comey late in the day, then hosting
Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office the
next day. He offered contradictory ex-
planations for his actions, making state-
ments by his spokesmen inoperative,
and finally made a veiled threat to Mr.
Comey on Twitter, hinting that he might
have secret tape recordings of their con-
versations.
What weve really learned is either
hes worried about Russia because hes
got a significant vulnerability or hes
worried about Russia because it under-
mines his electoral win, said Jennifer
Palmieri, who was the communications
director for Mrs. Clintons campaign.
Hes clearly been more preoccupied
with it than we understood.
He ticked off examples from his re-
search of populists who had employed
that strategy: Juan Pern in Argentina;
Alberto Fujimori in Peru.
Violations of minor norms of political
civility are distressing but not necessar-
ily serious. However, when politicians
repeatedly violate core norms, that can
be much more damaging.
The norm against American presi-
dents firing their F.B.I. directors may
fall into the latter category, experts say.
It is part of a broader norm of restraint
of politicians not going all the way to
the limits of their legal power.
A key to making democracy work in
the long run is that the parties recognize
that institutions shouldnt be weap-
onized, Mr. Levitsky said. You dont
use your control over institutions to the
max.
That norm may already have been
eroding, for example, in President Oba-
mas expanded use of executive orders
to circumvent an uncooperative Con-
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Even setting aside the Russia investi-
gation, Mr. Trump has seemed absorbed
by his election victory, one that defied
the odds and nearly all political prognos-
tications. Since taking office, he has spo-
ken regularly of his campaign triumph,
even at events where it might not have
seemed fitting, as during a visit to C.I.A.
headquarters to discuss national securi-
ty. In his first days in office, he was fix-
ated on the size of his inauguration
crowd.
He still exults over the win. Novem-
ber 8, wasnt that a great evening? he
asked a few weeks ago at the National
Rifle Association.
At times, he still seems surprised
about the results. At an event in the Rose
Garden to celebrate a House vote on his
health care legislation, he turned to Re-
publican lawmakers. How am I do-
ing? he asked. Am I doing O.K.?
Then, answering his own question, he
said: Im president. Hey, Im president.
Can you believe it?
ERNIE SISTO/THE NEW YORK TIMES
gress. And the Justice Department ex-
plained its recommendation to dismiss
Mr. Comey by saying he had violated
norms while investigating Mrs. Clin-
tons use of a private email server. (Mr.
Trump later said in an interview with
NBC that he would have fired Mr.
Comey regardless of the Justice Depart-
ments recommendations.)
Studying democratic breakdown
around the world, what is clear is that
its much more about the underlying in-
formal norms than about the formal
rules, Mr. Levitsky said. That is what
Americans need to understand. The un-
derlying informal norms are essential.
And Trump just broke one.
Robert Mickey, a professor of political
science at the University of Michigan,
pointed out that even after it was found
that Williams Sessions, the F.B.I. direc-
tor, had broken ethics rules, President
Clinton first sought a resignation before
firing him.
Clinton was trying to bend over
Indeed, he seems to be at his happiest
when reliving the campaign, which he
effectively reproduces from time to time
with raucous rallies of supporters cheer-
ing on his crusade against the Washing-
ton establishment. He formally
launched his re-election campaign on
the day he was sworn in.
When Jeanine Pirro of Fox News
asked him about the health care legisla-
tion in an interview on Friday, Mr.
Trump drifted back to the election, talk-
ing not only about how he had won but
also about how Republicans had kept
control of both houses of Congress.
We were supposed to lose all three,
Mr. Trump said (though few analysts ex-
pected the party to actually lose the
House). But instead, I worked very
hard, and we ended up winning all
three.
The day before, in an interview with
Lester Holt of NBC News, Mr. Trump re-
turned to another favorite assertion to
explain why Democrats were mad about
his victory and therefore promoting
what he called a false story about Rus-
sian meddling and possible collusion
with his campaign team.
The Electoral College is almost im-
possible for a Republican to win, he
said. Its very hard because you start
off at such a disadvantage. So every-
body was thinking they shouldve won
the election. This was an excuse for hav-
ing lost an election.
Political specialists would actually
say the opposite that Republicans
have a disproportionate advantage in
the Electoral College, given the extra
weight it gives to less-populated states
and the ability of Republicans to win it
twice in the past 16 years without also
winning the popular vote. Either way,
Mr. Trumps point is that he won,
Democrats should get over it and the
F.B.I. and congressional committees
should drop their investigations.
A week before firing Mr. Comey, the
president challenged Mrs. Clintons con-
tention that she had lost in part because
of Mr. Comeys announcement shortly
before the election that he was reopen-
TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 7
world
backwards to avoid firing this guy whod
just been investigated by the other
party! Thats a nice illustration of this
norm of not using your powers to the
hilt, Mr. Mickey said.
THE DANGERS OF POLARIZATION
Those inclined to panic over Mr.
Comeys firing may be relieved to hear
that previous presidents have violated
core democratic norms and the republic
is still standing.
President Nixon, for example, ousted
multiple Justice Department officials in
an episode that came to be known as the
Saturday Night Massacre.
And President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt ran for a third term and then a
fourth term in office not illegal, but
unprecedented and sought to pack
the Supreme Court with friendly no-
minees.
But those norm violations triggered a
strong backlash from other institutions
of the American government, unlike in
countries that collapsed into au-
thoritarianism.
And so the main significance of Mr.
Trumps firing of Mr. Comey, some
academics say, may be as a test of
whether todays institutions are strong
enough to maintain limits on presiden-
tial power and ensure that law enforce-
ment is protected from political influ-
ence, a hallmark of democracy.
Partisan polarization may make that
harder. Since 1980, Republicans and
Democrats have been reporting in-
creasingly negative opinions of each
other, and partisanship has become a
kind of tribal identity that many people
see as a representation of who they are
and a team to support.
As a result, politicians now have
tremendous incentive to support their
party at all costs in order to demonstrate
proper partisan loyalties.
Republicans who push back against
Mr. Trumps norm violations, Mr. Levit-
sky and Mr. Mickey said, may face pun-
ishment from voters loyal to Mr. Trump.
Partisanship may also give
Democratic politicians an incentive to
escalate.
Partisanship and Mr. Trumps norm-
breaking, polarizing presidency have
stirred anger among the Democratic
base.
But Mr. Levitsky was careful to distin-
guish between ordinary heated opposi-
tion and claims that Mr. Trump is not
my president, or is unfit for office:
They must understand for the sake of
democracy that that kind of step, reject-
ing the legitimacy of Trumps presiden-
cy, is another important step forward in
that escalation.
A more severe form of that kind of po-
larization fueled the rise of Mr. Chvez,
who ultimately transformed Venezuela,
a longstanding democracy, into an au-
thoritarian regime.
Mr. Mickey, however, sees hopeful
signs in the early response to Mr.
Comeys firing. He pointed out that in
the hours after his firing was an-
nounced, several Republican lawmak-
ers issued statements criticizing Mr.
Trumps actions.
I feel heartened by the elite estab-
lishment freakout, he said. I wouldnt
be too pessimistic about some spiral into
destruction.
ing the bureaus investigation into her
emails.
Perhaps Trump just ran a great cam-
paign? he wrote on Twitter.
Former aides to Mrs. Clinton said that
Mr. Trump obviously could not let go. It
is remarkable, said Ms. Palmieri, her
former adviser. Has there been a presi-
dent ever whos been that obsessed
about proving that hes legitimate?
Mr. Ruddy argued that, from Mr.
Trumps point of view, it was the other
side that could not move on. He is to-
tally secure with the idea that he won
this election fair and square, Mr. Ruddy
said.
Other presidents have basked in their
electoral victories and have seized on
various data points to argue that theirs
was greater than others. But few seem
to have relived their elections and reliti-
gate them as persistently as Mr. Trump
has.
After President George W. Bush lost
the popular vote in 2000 but won the
narrowest of Electoral College victories
after the Supreme Court stopped a hotly
disputed Florida recount, he did not
publicly dwell on the way he had gotten
into office.
Instead, Mr. Bush plowed forward
with his agenda and put the election be-
hind him, rarely speaking of it again. He
also made a point of reaching out to
Democrats in the early days of his ad-
ministration on issues like education
and tax cuts to try to heal some of the
wounds caused by the election,
eventually winning bipartisan votes on
major legislation in his first year.
He knew he won, but he knew many
people didnt see him as a legitimate
president and needed to reach out, said
Matthew Dowd, a senior strategist for
Mr. Bush in 2000 and chief strategist for
his 2004 re-election campaign. But he
didnt look back in any kind of insecurity
because he knew he could only control
what was happening today or in the fu-
ture.
For Mr. Trump, what is happening to-
day is still about what happened last
year. Check out the map.

8 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017
world
Scaling the worlds most lethal peak
K2, FROM PAGE 1
To scale K2 in winter is not such mod-
est madness. He has children and at
least one girlfriend, and he appears
filled with a love for life. It so happens he
enjoys its deadly challenges. He has
climbed in Antarctica, Greenland and
the Himalayas. Winter is the best sea-
son. He shrugs. Its more challenging.
Its obvious its the best.
Theres so much to unpack about this
climb to the most hostile tip of the plan-
et, a mountain that is 28,251 feet high and
sits in the Karakoram range on the bor-
der of Pakistan and China. There are the
technical and strategic challenges, and
there is the task of picking a team in the
individualistic world of high-altitude
climbing. These men will live and work
in the worst possible conditions for
months. Each knows he may not return.
Four climbers will make the final push
to the summit without oxygen. Each has
lost partners on climbs.
There is, too, the power that history
exerts on the Poles. A decade ago, what
remains of the old guard challenged a
younger generation to test limits of
flesh, endurance and creativity in the
Himalayas. Their story, embedded in
the urge of free spirits to slip the unsmil-
ing bonds of a Cold-War communist gov-
ernment, offers our starting point.
Generations of Poles flocked like
homing pigeons to the dark and jagged
peaks of the Tatra Mountains, which rise
on Polands southern border with Slo-
vakia. Men and women scaled its gran-
ite walls in summer heat and in the belly
of winter. When the photographer Max
Whittaker and I accompanied five Pol-
ish Himalayan climbers to the Tatras in
January, snow piled swollen on steep
mountainsides and the temperature
hovered near zero Fahrenheit.
After World War II and its slaughters,
the Communists imposed a controlling
regime. Its bureaucrats held all pass-
ports. Whether factory worker, engineer
or mathematician, everyone scuffled for
money. The mountains offered freedom
from all that.
Polands climbing clubs swelled with
members. The most famous was found
in Katowice, a steel town a few hours
drive from the Tatras.
The Katowice club overlooked
Frdric Chopin Street; its coat of arms
is an eagle and an ice pick. Many dozens
of climbers each night talked moun-
tains, life, and more mountains, and
sang songs and drank vodka. To gain ad-
mission at that time, a young climber
had to demonstrate technical prowess,
sleep outside on a mountain ledge
(known as a bivouac), pass written tests
and show a command of
mountaineering history, art and litera-
ture.
The blue-eyed Krzysztof Wielicki,
who at 67 is among the most accom-
plished Himalayan climbers alive, will
lead the K2 expedition.
He remains limber and lively in his
seventh decade, with a second wife and
young children. He has climbed three
Himalayan peaks in winter, including
Everest, and has the bowlegged amble
of a man with little left to prove. His eyes
glisten when asked about his youthful
hunger. We climb here, and here, and
here, he recalls. And if you climb O.K.,
they say, O.K., you have passed sum-
mer Tatra.
He lifts his finger high in imitation of
the hardened club members. Now you
have to do winter Tatra.
When Polish climbers obtained per-
mission to climb the peaks of Western
Europe, they discovered another prob-
lem: The West was terrifically expen-
sive.
One night in January, I sit in the vil-
lage home of Janusz Majer, 70, a burly
climber who is working to obtain the
$335,000 in government and private fi-
nancing needed to underwrite the as-
sault on K2. His friend and climber, Woj-
ciech Dzik, joins us.
Over salamis and cheeses and a prodi-
gious amount of wine, we talk of long-
ago mountaineering adventures. They
had finished a climb in the Dolomites in
the 1970s when they saw a sign for
cappuccinos.
Dzik, a mathematician, did the mental
currency conversion. My God! It was
one-tenth of my salary, he recalls. Af-
ter that, we lived like Jesus, on bread
and wine.
The Poles turned to the mountains of
Asia, where the technical challenge was
magnitudes greater and the cost magni-
tudes less. In search of money, they
walked into factory offices in Katowice
and pointed to towering industrial chim-
neys. Well paint these at half your usual
cost.
The factory managers winced. A scaf-
fold, they said, costs more than your
price.
We work Alpine-style, the climbers
replied. Soon engineers and
mathematicians and electricians rap-
pelled down chimneys from dawn to
dusk.
Then they hopped into old vans, Jack
Keroaucs all, and set off for the Hindu
Kush. No fancy equipment, no endorse-
ments, no publicity; just freedom from
the strictures of life in Poland. Back
then, to leave a job was O.K., Wielicki
tells me. Youre making just $50 a
month. No big deal. Bye-bye.
By the time the Poles reached Asia in
great numbers, climbers from other na-
tions had scaled all the 8,000-meter
peaks.
The Poles decided to find fame Tatra-
style and climb those peaks in winter or
by risky new routes. The audacity of
their ascents was legendary.
Marek Chmielarski will be part of the team that will attempt to scale K2 in winter. He paints oil platforms for a living in places like the North Sea and Azerbaijan.
Krzysztof Wielicki, 67, one of the most accomplished Himalayan climbers today, will
lead the K2 expedition. For the summit, he must choose the best of the elite.
Their ranks produced Wanda
Rutkiewicz, the first woman to reach the
summit of K2, and Jerzy Kukuczka, the
first man to scale three giant peaks in
winter. That climber and a partner
scaled K2 in summer along a route so
dangerous, even suicidal it passed be-
neath unstable ridges of ice no one
else has attempted it. To this day, it is
known as the Polish Line.
Some climbers were artists who spe-
cialized in free climbs, with as little gear
as possible. Others were expeditionary
geniuses who plotted climbs like mili-
tary assaults.
To sit now with the Polish
mountaineers, old and young, is to hear
voices rise and laughter roll in like
ocean breakers. They tell tales of sup-
plies piled atop camels and flirtations
with entrancing local women and nego-
tiating with turbaned mechanics to eke
a few more miles out of wizened vans.
They recall Silesian dumplings and
vodka in base camp and frozen bivouacs
at 22,000 feet and fogged brains and hal-
lucinations (they do not use oxygen
when climbing). Always there were
other-worldly vistas.
Up there at night, to hear glaciers
calve: Boom. Boom. Boom. My God, re-
calls Dzik, the white-haired mathemati-
cian. I was just a poor bored lecturer in
Poland. It was like going to heaven.
Another visitor accompanied them:
death.
The grand climbers perished at a
frightful rate. They were trapped by
swirling tempests; died of altitude sick-
ness; slipped and catapulted into the
abyss. There is no field of athletic
achievement where death rides so in-
sistently on your shoulder.
It is tempting to wonder if these men
harbor a romance with two lovers, life
and death. Wielicki, the leader of the
coming expedition, was renowned for
his solo ascents of Himalayan peaks. His
stamina was unmatched. (As expedition
leaders must, he will remain at base
camp during the ascent of K2.)
I put the question of deaths allure to
him and he shakes his head. He wanted
to live, always, even if along the serrated
edge of a knife. He noted an axiom of
climbing: A young climber is the most
endangered, as he does not know
enough to worry. To that, he adds an-
other: An older climber should not draw
too much comfort from mastery of tech-
nique. That can prove a frail shield in the
high Himalayas.
You need luck, he says. Everyone
makes mistakes.
Rough sleep precedes a climb. Its as if
the dark imaginings of Hieronymus
Bosch scamper through the cranium. A
climber clings to a crumbling wall. An-
other sees a friend fall past him. Another
feels creatures pulling at his feet.
On the mountain, climbers escape
into concentration as pure as a monks
repose. Life becomes detail: Click into
the rope and unclick; secure boot cram-
pons and dig for footholds. There is a
whack of the ice pick and another one,
and one after that. They scale 27,000-
foot-high puzzles. Sometimes climbers
go a day or two without food; sometimes
they fail to notice.
Kacper Tekieli is one of the climbers
whom Max and I accompany to the
Tatras. He has a tangle of dark curls and
a mischievous smile, and is a philosophy
major with a love of mountain literature.
At 32, he has built a considerable
mountaineering reputation, although he
cannot afford to give up working as a ba-
rista in the old quarter of Krakow. He
watched a friend slip to his death last
year in the Himalayas; hes not sure he
needs K2.
Tekieli talks of the singular focus
needed to summit a Himalayan peak in
the maw of winter. The universe nar-
rows to a meter or two. Theres some-
thing mystical. Its not about the moun-
tain, which is inert. Its you. Its what you
discover about yourself in all those
hours of concentration.
BLOOD, SWEAT AND STRATEGY
Six K2 climbers gather on a winter after-
noon in a Warsaw gym under the eyes of
a trainer, Karol Hennig, who works with
state health institutes. He invites me to
join. I decline, pleading a sore Achilles
and a severe attack of common sense.
The climbers range from their 30s to
63, and most are of modest build. They
fill backpacks with iron bars and work
stair-climbers. They do tortuous lifts
and pull-ups.
Their fingers and toes are as adhering
as those of a gecko. They retain one-
third more oxygen than a well-condi-
tioned adult. After the workout, their
heart rates return to baseline as easily
as an elevator descends from one floor
to the next.
Two nights later, the Himalayan
climbers are deep in the Tatras, taking a
conditioning climb up the Monk, a saw-
toothed 6,781-foot peak. Max the photog-
rapher is a skilled climber and accompa-
nies them; I hike to an ice fall and wave
goodbye. Janusz Golab is a force unto
himself, climbing with precision and
economy of motion, a strong-limbed cat.
Marek Chmielarski, 40, is one of the
Piotr Tomala training on a stair-climbing machine while wearing a weighted pack in a
Warsaw gym. He is expected to be part of the team this winter.
Tatra climbers and will join the K2 team.
He paints oil platforms from the North
Sea to Azerbaijan. He chuckles at the
mention of their oxygen-retention
scores: Janusz scores pretty much at
the bottom. And he has been to the top of
K2 and is the best climber in Poland. pedition style a half-century ago. It re-
The climbers also monitor levels of vi-
tamin D and iron, which help stave off
hypobaric hypoxia, the process by
which thin air deprives the body of re-
plenishing oxygen.
No one can be certain how a body will
react at the top of the world. At K2 base
camp, the air has half the oxygen found
at sea level. At 26,000 feet, climbers en-
ter the Death Zone; it is devilishly diffi-
cult to draw a breath, and the heart
strains to pump blood. When climbers
reach the summit, their breathing will
be a shallow, fast pant. They will vomit
and suffer dehydration and begin to hal-
lucinate.
Wielicki recalls a past-exhaustion
night on a solo Himalayan climb. He
huddled inside a tiny tent and made tea
for two: himself and his companion,
whose presence was no less intense for
being imaginary. I felt him, he said.
And, of course, he was not there.
K2 is a northern loner; it sits 800 Send summit climbers to Chile, where it
miles northwest of Nepals grand
Himalayan peaks, exposed to winds
that gust from the Arctic Circle. In Feb-
ruary, its walls are colder and more
wind-blasted than those of Everest.
All of which brings us to climbing
strategy.
The favored mountaineering style to-
day is Alpine, which is to say, going solo
At 28,251 feet, K2 is the second-highest mountain on earth and is a more dangerous
climb than Everest. For every four who crawl to its peak, one dies.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
or with a partner, and without fixed
ropes. A premium is placed on daring
routes or the speed of the climb.
None of that would work on K2 in Feb-
ruary.
The Poles mastered the dominant ex-
dren, and his eye is unsparing. For the
quires a willingness to subsume ego in
the collective. If a team numbers 10
climbers, six will take the role of worker
bees, laying pitons and ropes and tents
at camps higher on the mountain.
These men will scale cliffs of pre-colli-
sional granite to 25,000 feet, even as K2
threatens a rain of avalanches. The sum-
mit team will pull up those ropes and
sleep in those tents. As they draw within
3,000 feet of the peak, they will go for-
ward without oxygen.
How to prepare excites debate. I talk
about this with Adam Bielecki, a tall
drink of water with dreadlocks and a
boyish ebullience. Age 33, married with
a toddler and another baby on the way,
he began climbing as a teenager. He is
one of the elite, and a candidate to join
the summit team.
He overflows with ambition and
chafes at old ways. Bielecki favors a bot-
tom-of-the-world strategy to prepare:
is summer, and climb a 22,000-foot An-
dean peak. Stay put until bodies accom-
modate to the thin air. Then fly to Paki-
stan and trek quickly to base camp.
All we need is three days of good
weather and we will get to the top of K2,
he says. It can be a revolution in high-
altitude climbing.
Bielecki attempted that strategy dur-
DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY, VIA GETTY IMAGES
..
ing a winter ascent of Nanga Parbat, a
26,660-foot mountain in Pakistan that
goes by the self-explanatory nickname
Killer Mountain. The climbers arrived
acclimated, but a winter storm front de-
scended and would not lift.
The younger generation of climbers
view Bieleckis strategy as a good gam-
ble. When I put the question to Wielicki,
the old legend sounds distinctly uncon-
vinced. He sees a young climber too sure
of himself. You need super luck to come
from South America and find the
weather to your liking, he says.
He offers a thin smile. You cannot
rely on super luck.
DEATH AND NEW GENERATION
Polish Himalayan exploration all but
ended in 1989. Its greatest climber, Jerzy
Kukuczka, fell to his death, and an ava-
lanche on Everest swept away five other
well-known Polish climbers.
The Communist government col-
lapsed. As that wounded nation rebuilt,
an age of entrepreneurs dawned. The
life of a vagabond climber seemed
frivolous.
Artur Hajzer was among the prema-
turely retired. Intense, a man of many
faces, he had been a partner of the
famed Kukuczka. After his friend died,
he could face no more mountains. He
opened a chain of climbing and outdoor
stores.
Restlessness welled; he yearned for
the Himalayas. He began to run and lost
his pot belly. He and Wielicki issued a
manifesto: Young, angry, ambitious
Polish climbers should embrace pos-
itive suffering and return to winter
Himalayan climbing.
Wielicki speaks of daily life as drained
of excitement. Job, home, eh, O.K., he
says. If you want to feel great emotion,
you must write a story.
Generational tensions bubbled. The
younger climbers had trained less and
came of age in a time of individual
branding. When apprentices returned
from a Himalayan foray with severe
frostbite, veteran mountaineers scoffed
at the preschool climbers.
Success came rapid-fire, as did sor-
row.
In the winter of 2013, Bielecki and
three others set out to ascend the 26,414-
foot Broad Peak. Two grew exhausted
near the top, and Bielecki noted that
nightfall and still more crushing cold ap-
proached. Perhaps they should retreat.
The others disagreed.
Bielecki and his partner made it back
to their tents, badly frostbitten. The
slower duo perished.
Mountain deaths are dominoes; one
precipitates another. Soon after, Hajzer
flew to the Himalayas intent on finding
peace by climbing. He carried the
weight of too many deaths.
A storm coiled like a snake around a
mountain. Hajzer lost sight of his young
partner and descended quickly, looking
for him. He lost his balance and fell 1,800
feet to his death.
He was 51. His body remains in a
Himalayan crevasse.
It was Arturs last lecture, a climber
said at his funeral in a grand cathedral in
Katowice. People die in the mountains,
even the best ones.
Wielicki is the remaining master. He
must choose among their climbing chil-
summit, he must choose the elect of the
elite.
There is Golab, the climber who was
with us in the Tatras.
Bielecki, the man-child with the other-
worldly endurance near the summit, is
another natural choice. But his hunger
for fame is a bonfire, and that worries
the older man. Wielicki defended the
young climber after the deaths on Broad
Peak. To listen to him is to wonder if he
harbors doubts.
He is a very good climber, but he has
climbed for himself, the older climber
says. He is pursuing me, I. Maybe it is a
little strange on our team because we all
must work together.
If a storm approaches, if darkness de-
scends, the climbers must turn back,
even if within sight of that fabled sum-
mit. If I say, No, come down, they must
listen, he says. Everyone wants to be
the best, and that is how we die.
He gives to ambition a nod of self-rec-
ognition.
Logic competes with emotion. Ev-
eryone wants to write their own story.
TO THE BRINK OR NO?
We wander the medieval streets and
bars of Krakow with the Himalayan
climbers. The question of K2, to risk all
for history, falls unevenly across their
shoulders. Marek Chmielarski, that
painter of oil platforms, will go, although
his wife, a teacher, worries.
They think we are crazy. he says.
They are right, of course.
Golab is in: Sometimes I wonder
why I am doing this. I dont like to con-
nect nationalism and climbing. But
these are my friends and we are on a
mission.
Days later, Wielicki, the old legend,
and I watch snow fall on a frozen lake.
He acknowledges the age of winter
climbing could draw to a close. Danger
weighs on him as it did not decades ago.
His wife is adept on cliffs, and he
twitches as she moves up a rock face. He
is pleased his children have not in-
herited his passions.
And yet, God, that mountain.
Its not just the problem of the people
in the Katowice club, but of the people of
Poland. Always they ask: You go? Why
not? You should write something his-
toric. Finish your story.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Business
Students at Yonsei University in Seoul. The youth unemployment rate in South Korea is nearly 10 percent, and the country is struggling with a low birthrate and an aging society.
Tangle of economic woes
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
South Koreas new leader
faces corruption, surging
debt and stagnant wages
BY MOTOKO RICH
The day after South Korea elected a new
president, the mood on the campus of
Yonsei University in Seoul was bleak.
Many students, who might have been
expected to celebrate the election of a
liberal, Moon Jae-in, to the presidency
last week, instead spoke of fears about
their prospects in a country plagued by
corruption, household debt and other
economic ills.
Unfortunately, because we ourselves
do not see the future of Korea as so rosy.
I do not want to bring up children in this
unpromising society, said Bang Seong-
deok, 26, a civil engineering doctoral
student taking a break outside a class-
room block last Wednesday. I think that
mentality is persistent among many of
my peers.
Anger at the collusive ties between
government and business was at the
heart of the protests that led to the im-
peachment of Mr. Moons predecessor,
Park Geun-hye. During the election
campaign, Mr. Moon vowed to end that
corruption, but he also promised to ad-
dress other factors that had fueled the
revolt: skyrocketing household debt,
high youth unemployment and stagnant
wages, all of which are hobbling the
economy.
He faces daunting obstacles as he
tries to overhaul entrenched practices
and deliver on ambitious campaign
promises in a country that has yet to
complete the tough transition from tiger
economy to developed society.
Mr. Moon, whose party spent nearly a
decade in opposition, is a very sincere
person, and I think he will try his best,
but its a much bigger problem, said Gi-
Economists doubt Trump tax plan will bolster growth
WASHINGTON
BY BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
President Trump says the perfect medi-
cine for the economys sluggish growth
is a big tax cut.
Mr. Trump and his advisers say that
leaving more money in the hands of
businesses and consumers will lead to
more spending and investment, lifting
economic growth, which has been stuck
in a 2-percent-a-year rut.
Indeed, the Trump administration in-
sists that its tax plan will be so good for
growth that the federal government
wont even lose any revenue. The gov-
ernment will simply get a smaller share
of a much larger pie.
But a range of economists, both con-
servative and liberal, are highly skepti-
cal that a tax cut is the cure for what ails
the economy. They say Mr. Trump has
little opportunity to increase economic
growth in the next few years because
the economy is already growing about
as fast as it can. The governments fo-
cus, they say, should be on raising the
economys speed limit, for example, by
wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stan-
ford. Its not something that you can fix
by tweaking one or two issues. They are
all related to each other.
In a student lounge at Yonsei, Lee Ji-
won, 23, a public administration major,
said her friends often described the
moribund state of their country as Hell
Chosun, a reference to the last dynasty
of Korea, which lasted for five centuries.
Ms. Lee, who aspires to be a lawyer,
said she worried about eventually hav-
ing to take care of her parents and
grandparents. Although over half of
voters in their 20s and 30s cast ballots
for Mr. Moon, according to exit polls, Ms.
Lee did not. She said she was not con-
vinced that he would be able to pay for
his economic policy prescriptions.
During the past decade, when conser-
vatives were in power, they tried to re-
capture the high-growth years that
characterized South Koreas dynamic
postwar rise from poverty. Much of that
growth was turbocharged by chaebol,
the family-controlled conglomerates
like Hyundai and Samsung that domi-
nate the economy and in which vast
wealth is concentrated.
Because the chaebol tend to guaran-
tee lifetime employment to an elite
group of employees, those who do not
secure these jobs have grown disaf-
fected.
And since the chaebol effectively
wield monopolistic powers over their
suppliers, workers at smaller busi-
nesses that depend on the large compa-
nies for their revenue often suffer from
depressed wages and tough working
conditions.
Those factors have exacerbated in-
come inequality in South Korea, and
young people in particular are affected
as they scramble to compete for a small
pool of prestigious jobs at the chaebol or
accept lower-paid work at smaller com-
panies. In some cases they cannot find
jobs at all. The youth unemployment
rate here is nearly 10 percent.
In a country with one of the lowest
encouraging investments that increase
productivity.
Indeed, by some estimates, Mr.
Trumps plan could reduce economic
growth although such estimates nec-
essarily involve a large dollop of guess-
work because the administration has
provided few details.
I dont think any of this should be
thought of as increasing short-term
growth, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an
economist and former director of the
Congressional Budget Office who now
runs the American Action Forum, a con-
servative think tank. He said he re-
mained hopeful, however, that congres-
sional Republicans would push for a dif-
ferent set of changes that could improve
the nations long-term economic
prospects.
When the economy is struggling, cut-
ting taxes can increase spending by
leaving consumers and businesses with
more money to spend. That increased
demand is valuable when unemploy-
ment is high; it puts people back to
work.
But during periods of low unemploy-
ment, tax cuts can actually be damaging
to the economy. If companies find it diffi-
birthrates in the world and a rapidly ag-
ing society, improving conditions for
young South Koreans is vital.
Koreans really have to think hard
about how to motivate young people and
meet them partway, not only with job op-
portunities but better working envi-
ronments, said Katharine H.S. Moon, a
professor of political science at Wel-
lesley College.
They are the backs on which the mid-
dle-aged and elderly people are going to
be eating, sleeping and surviving for the
next few decades, she added.
Some economists have expressed
skepticism about how Mr. Moons ad-
ministration will finance his plans,
which include pledges to create 810,000
We ourselves do not see the
future of Korea as so rosy. I
do not want to bring up children
in this unpromising society.
public sector jobs and subsidize living
expenses for young people during job
searches.
Some measures could work in the
short term, economists said, but would
not be sustainable.
Mr. Moons job creation plan for the
public sector got mixed reviews even
among students studying for the exams
that are required to land jobs in the bu-
reaucracy.
In the Noryangjin neighborhood of
Seoul, which is home to several cram
schools dedicated to preparing for the
exams, Yoon Bo-mi, 26, a nutrition ma-
jor, said she was studying for the test be-
cause she did not think corporations of-
fered enough good opportunities.
To be honest, I dont think that young
people all learning to become bureau-
crats is so desirable for society, she
said.
Economists say that for South Korea
to create more private sector jobs, it
needs to open up the market for en-
trepreneurs and prevent the chaebol
cult to respond to the additional demand
for goods and services by hiring work-
ers and increasing output, the result is
likely to be higher prices rather than
faster economic growth.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.4 per-
cent in April, a low level that most econ-
omists regard as the normal churn of
people moving among jobs. Some econ-
omists argue that stronger growth could
persuade more people to start looking
for work. But that debate is academic
because the Federal Reserve is in the
first camp. Fed officials have said that if
fiscal policy makers step on the gas by
cutting taxes, the Fed is likely to step on
the brakes by raising interest rates
more quickly.
Mr. Trumps plan also would signifi-
cantly increase annual federal deficits,
adding trillions of dollars to the federal
debt. Increased government borrowing
drives up interest rates and reduces the
financing available to the private sector,
both of which weigh on economic
growth. An analysis by the Urban-
Brookings Tax Policy Center of Mr.
Trumps campaign tax plan which year close to the actual pace since
closely resembles the current White
House plan projected that the net re-
JEAN CHUNG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
from taking over start-ups before they
have the chance to expand.
The government needs to nurture a
business ecosystem that is more ably
disposed to start-ups protecting their in-
tellectual property rights and giving
them better financial access and incu-
bating and supporting them, said Lim
Wonhyuk, professor of economic devel-
opment at the KDI School of Public Pol-
icy and Management in Sejong City.
For now, many entrepreneurs are
concentrated in retail and dining. The
fate of Reo Sushi Maguro, a cozy restau-
rant in the heart of Seoul, is a sobering
illustration of the challenges facing Mr.
Moon.
Around the corner from several gov-
ernment office buildings, Reo Sushi,
which specialized in premium tuna sa-
shimi, enjoyed a bustling business as
corporate executives treated civil ser-
vants to expensive meals.
But in September, the legislature
passed an anticorruption law barring
public servants from accepting a meal
worth more than 30,000 won, about $27,
to avoid a potential conflict of interest.
Reo Sushis business took a dive.
To cover costs as well as replace lost
income, the owner, Oh Sung-min, 39, be-
gan borrowing money at high interest
rates, until the debt spiraled to about
$266,000.
Mr. Ohs wife, Chung Sora, 35, a
beauty salon owner who learned the ex-
tent of the debt only two weeks ago,
blames the antigraft law.
I think its ridiculous, she said. The
politicians may have thought, We will
try to regulate peoples bad behavior,
but so many shops closed as a result.
Mr. Oh decided to close his restaurant
after a government counselor agreed to
help him develop a 10-year debt-repay-
ment plan.
Mr. Oh, the father of a toddler, will de-
pend on his wifes beauty salon to sup-
port the family for now. Ms. Chung, who
recently took on her own debt to expand
the salon, said she was determined to
pay off her husbands debt in a year.
Deficit-increasing tax reforms
are as likely to reduce growth
as they are to add to growth.
sult would be slower growth.
I think well-designed tax reform
could add to economic growth in the
long term, said Jason Furman, a fellow
at the Peterson Institute for Interna-
tional Economics who served as chair-
man of President Barack Obamas Coun-
cil of Economic Advisers. But poorly
designed, deficit-increasing tax reforms
are as likely to reduce growth as they
are to add to growth.
Economists see little short-term ben-
efit in a tax cut, but they think the gov-
ernment could strengthen long-term
growth by focusing on the right prob-
lem: productivity.
The speed limit on economic growth
depends on how much more every
American worker produces. The Fed es-
timates the economy can expand at a
sustainable pace of around 1.8 percent a
Research Service concluded in a 2012 re-
2010.
The Trump administration argues
Hacking is weapon
against goliaths
HONG KONG
Attacks from Vietnam
appear to be linked to
government, report says
BY MIKE IVES
AND PAUL MOZUR
Hackers in Vietnam have been attack-
ing foreign companies and other targets
for years, seeking information and us-
ing tactics that suggest links to the Viet-
namese government, a cybersecurity
company said Monday.
The findings, laid out in a report re-
leased by the company, FireEye, come
as companies and experts look beyond
traditional sources of attacks like China
and Russia to deal with new or rising
threats. Smaller countries are now try-
ing their hand at hacking, experts say,
as they seek to follow dissidents, under-
mine enemies or comb corporate files
for trade secrets.
FireEye, a company based in Califor-
nia that deals with large network
breaches, said it had watched a Viet-
namese group known as OceanLotus
target foreign companies in the manu-
facturing, hospitality and consumer
products sectors since at least 2014.
While identifying hackers or the govern-
ments that might back them can be diffi-
cult, FireEye said OceanLotus had used
tactics similar to those in attacks previ-
ously identified by experts as having
targeted Vietnamese dissidents, jour-
nalists and governments at odds with
the country.
The OceanLotus group accessed per-
sonnel details and other data from mul-
tiple victim organizations that would be
of very little use to any party other than
the Vietnamese government, said Nick
Carr, a security expert at FireEye and
the primary author of the report.
Le Thi Thu Hang, a spokeswoman for
the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, called
the findings of the report groundless
and said the country looked forward to
working internationally to fight digital
breaches. Vietnam does not allow
cyberattacks on organizations or indi-
viduals, she said in an emailed state-
ment. All cyberattacks or threats to
cybersecurity must be condemned and
severely punished in accordance with
regulations and law.
FireEye experts said OceanLotus
was the first of 32 state-linked hacking
groups it had identified worldwide that
was neither Russian nor Chinese.
State-sponsored hacking is the new
way to do espionage in the 21st century
because its much easier to resource
compared to a human operation, said
Tim Wellsmore, FireEyes Asia director
of threat intelligence. This is a low-cost,
high-return model.
Plainclothes security forces in Viet-
nam, a one-party authoritarian state,
Le Thi Thu Hang, a spokeswoman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, said
that the nation did not allow cyberattacks on organizations or individuals.
that cutting corporate tax rates would
encourage investment and research.
Kevin A. Hassett, an economist
nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as
chairman of his Council of Economic
Advisers, is one of the authors of a 1995
study that found that previous corpo-
rate tax cuts produced economically
significant increases in investment in deduct from income the full value of in-
12 out of 14 countries, including the
United States. Cutting tax rates would
unleash the bound-up energy of the
American economy, Vice President
Mike Pence said on ABCs Meet the
Press.
But that benefit to the economy ap-
plies only to a corporate tax cut. Econo-
mists do not see a similar upside in re-
ducing personal income taxation be-
cause there is little evidence that cur-
rent rates are high enough to discourage
people from earning as much money as
they can. When Mr. Reagan took office,
the top tax rate was 70 percent; now, it is
39.6 percent. The top tax rates appear
to have little or no relation to the size of
the economic pie, the Congressional
port examining the impact of tax cuts on
economic growth.
TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 9
regularly spy on journalists, activists
and political dissidents, sometimes in al-
most comically obvious ways tailing
them by motorbike, for example, or
eavesdropping in a cafe.
In a 2014 blog post, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advo-
cacy group in California, documented
what it said appeared to be a state-affili-
ated Vietnamese hacking operation that
had targeted a range of people critical of
the government, including an
Associated Press reporter in Vietnam
and a pro-democracy blogger in Califor-
nia. FireEye said OceanLotus employed
a similar type of email phishing, using
messages to bait victims into download-
ing malicious software or turning over
their user names and passwords.
The report also documented the
groups hacking of companies from Brit-
ain, China, Germany, the Philippines,
the United States and Vietnam. It did
not analyze specific breaches in detail,
but it said one European manufacturing
company had been compromised in 2014
before building a factory in Vietnam. It
also said that OceanLotus malware had
been detected last year on the network
of a global hospitality developer that
was planning to expand into the country.
Ben Wootliff, who oversees digital se-
curity at the business consultancy Con-
trol Risks, said online crime was a risk
for local and international companies in
Vietnam for a number of reasons, in-
cluding a rapid pace of digitalization and
an improvisational business envi-
ronment. There is a lack of desire,
awareness and capability to implement
decent cyberhygiene, he said.
The European Chamber of Commerce
in Vietnam and the American Chamber
of Commerce in Hanoi said hacking was
a growing problem for businesses in the
country. More and more companies
have to hire experts and train the staff to
understand the security risks that are
part of their everyday working routine,
said Amanuel Flobbe, the chairman of
the Information and Communications
Technology Sector Committee at the Eu-
ropean Chamber of Commerce in Viet-
nam.
Digital security experts say private-
sector cybercriminals or activists are
responsible for much of the hacking in
Southeast Asia. But FireEye said
OceanLotus was notable because it ap-
peared to be state-sponsored and used
some unique malware that was not com-
mercially available.
By nature asymmetrical, hacking is a
natural outlet for smaller countries to
confront larger rivals. OceanLotus, for
example, has attacked corporate and
government entities in China that were
focused mostly on oceanic development
and fishing, according to a report by the
Chinese internet security company Qi-
hoo 360. That may indicate that Vietnam
was seeking to learn more about Chi-
nese plans in the South China Sea,
where the two countries have disputes
over islands and reefs.
LUONG THAI LINH/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Many economists, moreover, think
that larger changes are required to
produce a significant shift in corporate
behavior. One such idea is included in a
tax plan backed by House Republicans,
but it is not in the one-page outline the
White House released last month. It
would allow companies to immediately
vestments in research or infrastructure
or new technology.
It means that right up front the busi-
ness is seeing a payoff in sticking money
into something that will make it bigger
and more productive in the future, Mr.
Holtz-Eakin said.
Even the rosiest estimates of the po-
tential benefits of such changes fall well
short of creating the economic growth
necessary to offset the cost of Mr.
Trumps plan.
Mr. Furman said he thought he could
write a tax code that would increase an-
nual economic growth by about 0.3 per-
cent. Over a decade, thats enough to
add about $1,500 to the average familys
income.
Others are slightly more optimistic.
The Tax Foundation thinks 0.4 percent is
a reasonable estimate of the best case.

10 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017
business
Losing the right to a new job
Phillip Barone, a midlevel salesman, was let go from his job after his old company sent a cease-and-desist letter saying he had signed a noncompete clause.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
The surprise Mr. Gonzalez got is not
uncommon. Many workers, not just blue
collar but people who went to college or
have an advanced degree, have only a
vague understanding of what a noncom-
pete is, and they are often asked to sign
one when they have little chance to ne-
gotiate.
In a 2011 paper that surveyed techni-
cal workers who had signed noncom-
petes, Matthew Marx, a professor at the
Sloan School of Management at M.I.T.,
found that employers typically pre-
sented workers with noncompete con-
tracts when the employees lacked nego-
tiating leverage, on their first day at
work, for instance.
By then, they had said yes to their
company, and no to the other companies
they were negotiating with, Mr. Marx
said.
Companies have always owned their
employees labor, but todays employ-
ment contracts often cover general
knowledge as well. In addition to non-
compete clauses, there are nonsolicita-
tion and nondealing agreements, which
prevent employees from calling or ser-
vicing customers they have worked
with in the past. There are nonpoaching
agreements that prevent employees
from trying to recruit old colleagues.
Put it all together, and suddenly some
of the main avenues for finding a better-
paying job taking a promotion with a
competitor, being recruited by an old
colleague are cut off.
Companies say this is a natural reac-
tion in an economy that is more about
knowledge and less about sweat. Data
makes up a larger share of many compa-
nies assets, and the more people work
around the clock, and remotely, often
switching between company-owned
and personal devices, the more difficult
it becomes to guard it.
When a person takes a trade secret
and walks across the street to another
The superlative-charged chronograph. 50 mm case in Breitlight. Exclusive Manufacture
Breitling Caliber B12 with 24-hour military-style display. Officially chronometer-certified.
Russell Beck, a litigator, said use of noncompete clauses had exploded.
company, how am I going to know that?
said Paul T. Dacier, a longtime technol-
ogy executive who was once general
counsel for EMC Corporation (now Dell
EMC), and today serves in the same po-
sition for an agriculture technology
start-up called Indigo. And when I do
find out, its too late.
The problem is that it can be hard to
distinguish true intellectual secrets
from the accumulated skills that make
workers more valuable. And since few
companies want to lose good workers or
give out huge raises, these agreements
are making their way down the eco-
nomic ladder to people like hairstylists
and sandwich makers, far removed
from what is thought of as the knowl-
edge economy.
Noncompete enforcement varies
from state to state, and economists have
used that disparity to study how they af-
fect businesses and the economy. The
LYNDON FRENCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ADAM GLANZMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Patricia ODonnell was unemployed for months after being laid off.
rival publication. A few months later, his
Workers are often astonished old employer sent a letter saying he had
to learn that theyve signed violated a noncompete agreement that
away their right to leave barred him from working with other mil-
itary publishers.
for a competitor. Since his new company was unwilling
to defend him, and since he was unable
to pay the legal bills himself, Mr. Barone
results are almost universally negative: resigned and lived on unemployment
Wages, employment and entrepreneur- while looking for a new job, but found
ship are all diminished when workers nothing. When his unemployment ran
have little leverage to bargain with their out, he took a $15-an-hour job with a
employer or leave a job for a better op- landscape firm, where he whacked
portunity. weeds and planted flowers.
Some workers end up idle, collecting My whole mission was to do what-
unemployment and using programs like ever I could to bring in some money to
Medicaid. Many others take jobs well take care of my family and make sure
below their means, robbing the nation of nobody could take my house from me,
their skills. said Mr. Barone, who lives in Lake in the
Two years ago, Phillip Barone left his Hills, Ill.
job doing sales and marketing for a mili- Mr. Barone left his landscaping job
tary magazine to take a similar job, with this year and is now a sales manager
a pay increase of about 10 percent, at a elsewhere.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Noncompete clauses bind
even blue-collar workers
so they cant get ahead
BY CONOR DOUGHERTY
Keith Bollingers paycheck as a factory
manager had shriveled after the 2008 fi-
nancial crisis, but then he got a chance
to pull himself out of recessions hole. A
rival textile company offered him a bet-
ter job and a big raise.
When he said yes, it set off a three-
year legal battle that concluded earlier
this month but wiped out his savings
along the way.
I tried to get a better life for my wife
and my son, and it backfired, said Mr.
Bollinger, who is 53. Now Im in my
mid-50s, and Im ruined.
Mr. Bollinger had signed a noncom-
pete agreement, designed to prevent
him from leaving his previous employer
for a competitor. These contracts have
long been routine among senior execu-
tives. But they are rapidly spreading to
employees like Mr. Bollinger, who do the
kind of blue-collar work that President
Trump has promised to create more of.
The growth of noncompete agree-
ments is part of a broad shift in which
companies assert ownership over work
experience as well as work. A recent
survey by economists including Evan
Starr, a management professor at the
University of Maryland, showed that
about one in five employees was bound
by a noncompete clause in 2014.
Employment lawyers say their use
has exploded. Russell Beck, a partner at
the Boston law firm Beck Reed Riden
MARK MAKELA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
any company looking to hire a bunch of
And he will be free of his noncompete
eventually.
Still, there is evidence that these
agreements can reduce wages far be-
yond the terms of one job or contract. In
January, Mr. Starr, from the University
of Maryland, and others produced a
study showing that technology workers
who began their career in a state where
noncompetes are strictly enforced made
significantly less than their colleagues,
regardless of whether or not they left.
These things slow your ascent up the
job ladder, Mr. Starr said.
Moreover, many burn through their
savings and pile up debt while searching
for a job from a weakened negotiating
position.
Several years ago, Patricia ODonnell,
a market researcher in Philadelphia,
spent 18 months unemployed after being
laid off by a company whose noncom-
pete prohibited her from working for a
..
who does an annual survey of noncom-
pete litigation, said the most recent data
showed that noncompete and trade-se-
cret lawsuits had roughly tripled since
2000.
Companies of all sorts use them for
people at all levels, he said. Thats a
change.
Employment lawyers know this, but
workers are often astonished to learn
that theyve signed away their right to
leave for a competitor. Timothy Gonza-
lez, an hourly laborer who shoveled dirt
for a fast-food-level wage, was sued af-
ter leaving one environmental drilling
company for another.
Phillip Barone, a midlevel salesman
and Air Force veteran, was let go from
his job after his old company sent a
cease-and-desist letter saying he had
signed a noncompete.
Then there is Mr. Bollinger, whose
long-running legal battle is full of twists
and turns that include clandestine pho-
tography, a private investigator, a mys-
terious phone call and courthouse vic-
tories later undone by losses in appeals
court.
This is the strangest noncompete
case I have ever been involved with, or
even heard of, said Michael P. Thomas,
Mr. Bollingers lawyer and a partner at
Patrick, Harper & Dixon in Hickory, N.C.
Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton econom-
ics professor who was chairman of Pres-
ident Barack Obamas Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers, recently described non-
competes and other restrictive employ-
ment contracts along with outright
collusion as part of a rigged labor
market in which employers act to pre-
vent the forces of competition.
By giving companies huge power to
number of major pharmaceutical com-
panies, thus limiting her prospects in a
major local industry. She finally found a
job, but only recently got clear of the
bills she racked up.
It took years to get rid of that credit-
card debt, she said.
Noncompetes damage regional econ-
omies as well. States with strict enforce-
ment end up suffering a brain drain, by
encouraging their best and smartest
workers to move elsewhere for better
pay.
The great counterexample, which
comes up in just about every discussion
of the subject, is the growth of Silicon
Valley.
California law prohibits noncompete
clauses, contributing to the inveterate
poaching with which the states technol-
ogy industry was founded. It can be bru-
tal for employers, but it helps raise
wages and has created a situation where
engineers in a hurry, be it an established
giant or a start-up, feels it should locate
there.
Its not just that it allows employees
to leave their company for another job,
said Mark A. Lemley, a professor at
Stanford Law School. It allows them to
leave to start new companies.
Recognizing this, several states have
moved to curb the use of noncompetes.
This includes Democratic-leaning
states like Massachusetts as well as Re-
publican-leaning ones like Utah, which
last year passed a bill limiting the scope
of the agreements.
Mike Schultz, the bills Republican
sponsor, framed it with the most conser-
vative of talking points: the right to
work. If an employer can fire anybody
for any reason, he said, employees
also need to have the right to walk.
MY HEART WAS BROKEN
Mr. Bollinger, the factory worker in
North Carolina, started working when
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 11

business

dictate where and for whom their
employees can work next, noncompetes
take a persons greatest professional as-
sets years of hard work and earned
skills and turn them into a liability.
Its one thing to have a bump in the
road and be in between jobs for a little
while; its another thing to be prevented
from doing the only thing you know how
to do, said Max Burton Wahrhaftig, an
arborist in Doylestown, Pa.
Mr. Wahrhaftig was threatened in
2013 by his former employer after leav-
ing for a better-paying job with a rival
tree service. He was able to avoid a full-
blown lawsuit.
Noncompetes are but one factor atop
a great mountain of challenges making
it harder for employees to get ahead.
Globalization and automation have put
American workers in competition with
overseas labor and machines. The rise
of contract employment has made it
harder to find a steady job. The decline
of unions has made it harder to negoti-
ate.
But the move to tie workers down
with noncompete agreements falls in
line with the decades-long trend in
which their mobility and bargaining
power has steadily declined, and with it
their share of company earnings.
When a noncompete agreement is liti-
gated to the letter, a worker can be
barred or ousted from a new job by court
order.
Even if that never happens, the threat
alone can create a chilling effect that re-
duces wages throughout the work force.
People cant negotiate when their
company knows they wont leave, said
Sandra E. Black, an economics profes-
sor at the University of Texas at Austin.
THE RIGHT TO WALK AWAY
In 2011, Timothy Gonzalez started work-
ing as a labor hand for a company called
Singley Construction. He was 18 years
old and already a father, and the extent
of his education was a high school equiv-
alency test. In other words, he needed
money and did not have many options.
Mr. Gonzalez started at a little over
$10 an hour in a job he described as
pretty much shoveling dirt. Neverthe-
less, he signed an employment contract
that included a noncompete clause, en-
forceable for three years within 350
miles of Singleys base in Columbia,
Miss.
All I heard at that age and the situ-
ation I was in was just, If you want a
paycheck, sign here, and so I signed
there and went to work, said Mr. Gonza-
lez, who is now 24 and lives in Milton,
Fla.
Mr. Gonzalez was later promoted to a
job where he operated an environmental
drilling rig. After leaving the company
two years ago, and subsequently taking
a better-paying position with a competi-
tor, Mr. Gonzalez was sued for violating
his agreement not to compete. His new
boss, Gary Hill, owner of Walker-Hill
Environmental, an environmental
drilling company, said he ignored the
suit for two weeks because he didnt be-
lieve it was real.
I said, Theres no way this will hap-
pen, but Ill be danged if I didnt have to
attorney-up and fight the thing, said
Mr. Hill, who settled the case out of
court. Its ridiculous its slavery in
the modern-day form.
Representatives of Singley Construc-
TRAVIS DOVE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
tion declined to comment.
CONTINUED BELOW LEF T, PAGE 10 Keith Bollinger, a factory manager, was enmeshed in an agonizing legal battle with his former employer over a noncompete contract.

he was 14, and by his senior year of high
school, he was the assistant manager of
a local shoe store.
He didnt like retail, so in 1982, shortly
after graduating, he took a job in the tex-
tile industry.
He began in a position that entailed
pulling the fabric off cardboard rolls,
and worked his way up from there, one
job to the next, hourly wages to a sala-
ried position, until eventually he was the
quality control manager for two plants
owned by a company called TSG Finish-
ing.
TSG is a 115-year-old, family-owned
company that works with textile
manufacturers and others. It doesnt
make fabrics but is an intermediary,
treating them with chemicals and lam-
inates, giving them special finishes and
properties that make them fire resistant
and water-repellent.
Mr. Bollinger, as quality control man-
ager, worked with customers to make
sure they got what they wanted. Still, he
said, the job was about learning a gen-
eral process, not absorbing any special-
ized knowledge.
I dont know how to make the goop, I
just know how to apply the goop, he
said.
TSG would disagree. The company
declined to comment beyond an emailed
statement, but its lawsuit described Mr.
Bollinger as instrumental to the com-
pany, and said he knew important de-
tails about things like pricing, proprie-
tary processing methods and customer
preferences.
In 2007, in exchange for a $3,500 bo-
nus and a $1,300 annual raise that
brought his salary to a little over
$70,000, Mr. Bollinger had signed an em-
ployment agreement that included a
confidentiality clause and noncompete
agreement. The list of prohibited territo-
ries began with a list of states and ended
with North America.
Then the financial crisis struck, lead-
Timothy Gonzalez, an hourly laborer with a wage like a fast-food workers, was sued.
ing to bankruptcies and layoffs across
the textile industry. I saw people get
laid off that I didnt think would ever lose
their job, Mr. Bollinger said.
His pay shriveled, and by 2013, after
TSG had gone into and out of bank-
ruptcy, he was on pace to make about
$61,000, according to income statements
he provided. Six miles away, however,
the economic recovery was taking hold.
The assets of Premier Finishing, a
TSG competitor that had also fallen into
bankruptcy, were purchased by Ameri-
can Custom Finishing, which was
owned by a chemist and entrepreneur
named Gary Harris.
The two spoke, and eventually Mr.
Harris offered Mr. Bollinger a job and a
raise, to $75,000, a little above his pre-
recession pay.
Mr. Bollinger said American advised
him to check his employment agree-
ment, and a lawyer he hired said that the
ALEX LAU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
noncompete was probably unenforce-
able. He assumed his defection wouldnt
go over well, so on the day he gave no-
tice, while his boss considered the rivals
offer, he quietly packed up his office and
loaded things like his family pictures
and a framed B. B. King concert ticket
into his car. It turned out to be a good
idea; a few hours later, he was escorted
off the property.
Two months later, he was served pa-
pers at work: TSG had sued him for vio-
lating his confidentiality and noncom-
pete agreements, and had asked a court
to remove him from his job. The suit did
not allege that Mr. Bollinger had stolen
anything, but said he knew so much
about TSGs business that he would in-
evitably disclose trade secrets that the
company wanted to protect.
Calvin E. Murphy, a superior court
judge, did not grant TSGs wish. In a
written order, Judge Murphy said, En-
Paul T. Dacier, an executive, cited the danger of losing trade secrets.
Noncompete agreements are
part of a decades-long decline
in workers mobility and
bargaining power.
forcement of the noncompete provision
in the manner articulated by TSG
would effectively bar Mr. Bollinger
from seeking employment anywhere in
North America in the only profession he
has practiced since graduating high
school.
TSG appealed, however, and the
North Carolina Court of Appeals re-
versed the decision. A little after that,
Mr. Harris, Americans chief executive,
called Mr. Bollinger at home and told
him not to return to work.
My heart was broken, Mr. Bollinger
said.
ADAM GLANZMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
About a year after the Appeals Court
decision, TSG filed an amended com-
plaint against Mr. Bollinger and others,
alleging that he had quietly continued
working for American even while the in-
junction was in place, and asking the
court to prohibit him from working there
ever again.
The new complaint cited evidence,
like photos of Mr. Bollingers wifes car
parked at Americans facility, and a
phone call TSG had received from a fe-
male who would not reveal her identity,
who said Mr. Bollinger had continued to
work there. At one point, TSG hired a
private investigator to look into it.
It is regretful that a great deal of
money and resources have to be spent in
our court system which could be other-
wise spent on employee raises or invest-
ing in new equipment to make us more
competitive, Mr. Harris said in an
emailed statement.
Perhaps more important, the whole
ordeal had caused a strain between
TSG and its customers. The complaint
said that one customer had asked TSG
to resolve the dispute in a way that al-
lowed Mr. Bollinger to continue at his
new job.
When a competitor has the opportu-
nity to poach that knowledge without
making the investment in research and
development, it gives them an unfair ad-
vantage, which a three-judge panel
agreed happened in this case, said Jack
Rosenstein, TSGs chief executive, in an
emailed statement.
As with everything else in business,
the case came down to money. TSG has
accepted a $200,000 offer of judgment
from American and the other
defendants, freeing Mr. Bollinger from
the lawsuit. Mr. Bollinger has found an-
other manufacturing job elsewhere.
But the financial scars remain: Mr.
Bollinger and his wife, Sandie, drained
their savings to pay the legal bill. They
have borrowed from friends and rela-
tives, and racked up $50,000 in credit
card bills and other debt.
Mr. Bollinger said the saddest part to
him is that such a small sum of money,
the $14,000 raise from American, could
have started the whole dispute.
During a recent interview, he talked
about his last day at TSG and the emo-
tions of walking away from a plant
where he had worked for two decades.
That job, and the advancement that
came with it, had given him the means to
raise a family, as well as middle-class
luxuries like the musical instruments in
his house and the framed concert tickets
he hung on his office wall.
If all they would have said is, Keith,
we want to keep you, and we are going to
reinstate your pay, he said, I would
have taken all that stuff out of my car
and hung it back up in my office.
Doris Burke contributed research.

12 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017
business
Putin plays
piano tunes
at Beijing
gathering
MOSCOW
Russian president adds
to his public repertoire,
and Chinese respond fast
BY IVAN NECHEPURENKO
He has ridden shirtless on a horse in Si-
beria, piloted a hang glider with migra-
tory birds, swum with dolphins, tossed
judo opponents, and dived into the
depths of Lake Baikal and the Black Sea.
He is Russias president, Vladimir V.
Putin, and he added to his public reper-
toire of feats on Sunday by showing off
his skills as a pianist.
He was in Beijing for the One Belt,
One Road initiative, a $1 trillion plan for
infrastructure and economic develop-
ment in some 60 countries. And while
waiting at a state guesthouse for Chinas
president, Xi Jinping, Mr. Putin sat
down at a grand piano and played two
tunes: Evening Song, by Vasily
Solovyov-Sedoi, and Moscow Win-
dows, by Tikhon Khrennikov.
Both songs are from the late 1950s,
when Mr. Putin, 64, was a child and the
Soviet Union was emerging from the
shadow of Stalin, who died in 1953.
The performance seemed casual, but
it was clearly not spontaneous a cam-
eraman was on hand, and video of the
impromptu recital quickly circulated on
the Russian state news media.
It was not the Russian leaders first
time playing music in public: He per-
formed Blueberry Hill at a 2010 char-
ity event attended by celebrities like the
actors Sharon Stone and Grard Depar-
dieu in St. Petersburg, and Moscow
Windows at a 2014 event at the Moscow
Engineering Physics Institute.
Mr. Putins spokesman, Dmitri S.
Peskov, told journalists in Beijing that
while Mr. Putin was waiting for a bilat-
eral meeting with Xi Jinping, the presi-
dent studied some papers, prepared for
the meeting and also played piano, as
quoted by Gazeta.ru, a Russian news
website.
Chinese propaganda chiefs did not ap-
pear to be amused that Mr. Xi had been
upstaged to some extent at his own con-
ference, and the official Chinese news
media pointedly made little mention of
the piano performance. But Mr. Putins
piano playing seemed to strike a chord
with Chinese social media users. Fe-
male users posted notes online saying
he was handsome. (Mr. Putin has long
been popular among Chinese women as
a symbol of manliness.) Other social me-
dia users suggested that their countrys
leaders also had musical talent.
One user of Weibo, a popular Chinese
microblogging site, posted one photo-
graph of Mr. Putin, and six images of for-
mer President Jiang Zemin playing pi-
ano, a traditional Chinese flute, two
kinds of traditional stringed instru-
ments and even a Hawaiian guitar.
That Weibo posting had a single-word
rebuff to Mr. Putin: Ability.
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting
from Beijing.
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Chinas Global Ambitions
Under the One Belt, One Road plan, President Xi Jinping is remaking global trade and nurturing geopolitical ties. The audacious plan, with
little precedent, promises more than $1 trillion in infrastructure investments that span 60-plus countries across Europe, Asia and Africa.
Countries participating in the plan and
selected African countries expected to receive
the most investment from China
from 2017 to 2021
1 ROMANIA
$7-11
EGYPT
$13-20
NIGERIA
$19-29
S. AFRICA
$13-19
Source: Credit Suisse
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Rearranging global trade
CHINA, FROM PAGE 1
and future generations to propel Chi-
nese and global economic growth, said
Cao Wenlian, director general of the In-
ternational Cooperation Center of the
National Development and Reform
Commission, a group dedicated to the
initiative. The plan is to lead the new
globalization 2.0.
Mr. Xi is rolling out a more audacious
version of the Marshall Plan, Americas
postwar reconstruction effort. Back
then, the United States extended vast
amounts of aid to secure alliances in Eu-
rope.
China is deploying hundreds of bil-
lions of dollars of state-backed loans in
the hope of winning new friends around
the world, this time without requiring
military obligations.
Mr. Xis plan stands in stark contrast
to President Trump and his America
First mantra.
The Trump administration walked
away from the Trans-Pacific Partner-
ship, the American-led trade pact that
was envisioned as a buttress against
Chinas growing influence.
Pursuing protectionism is just like
locking oneself in a dark room, Mr. Xi
told business leaders at the World Eco-
nomic Forum in January.
As head of the Communist Party, Mr.
Xi is promoting global leadership in Chi-
nas own image, emphasizing economic
efficiency and government interven-
tion. And China is corralling all manner
of infrastructure projects under the
plans broad umbrella, without neces-
sarily ponying up the funds.
China is moving so fast and thinking
so big that it is willing to make short-
term missteps for what it calculates will
be long-term gains. Even financially du-
bious projects in corruption-ridden
countries like Pakistan and Kenya make
sense for military and diplomatic rea-
sons.
The United States and many of its ma-
jor European and Asian allies have tak-
en a cautious approach to the project,
leery of bending to Chinas strategic
goals. Some, like Australia, have re-
buffed Beijings requests to sign up for
the plan. Despite projects on its turf, In-
dia is uneasy because Chinese-built
roads will run through disputed terri-
tory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
But it is impossible for any foreign
leader, multinational executive or inter-
national banker to ignore Chinas push
to remake global trade.
Germanys minister of economics and
energy, Brigitte Zypries, was attending
the meeting in Beijing. So was Britains
chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip
Hammond.
Western industrial giants like Gen-
eral Electric and Siemens are there,
looking for lucrative contracts and try-
ing to stay in Chinas good graces.
The Trump administration upgraded
its participation.
Originally, it planned to send a Com-
merce Department official, Eric
Branstad, the son of the incoming Amer-
ican ambassador to Beijing, Terry
Branstad. Instead, Matthew Pottinger,
senior director for Asia at the National
Security Council, attended a signal
that the White House is enhancing its
warm relationship with Mr. Xi by hon-
oring his favorite endeavor with the
presence of a top official.
INFLUENCE VIA INFRASTRUCTURE
As the sun beat down on Chinese work-
ers driving bulldozers, four huge trac-
tor-trailers rolled into a storage area
here in Vang Vieng, a difficult three-
hour drive over potholed roads from the
RUSSIA
$53-80
KAZAKHSTAN
$7-11
IRAQ
IRAN
PAKISTAN
$7-11
$17-26 $11-16
SAUDI ARABIA
3
$7-19
INDIA
$84-126
2 $4-12
Forecast
investment
from China
2017 - 2021,
in billions
Maximum forecast
Minimum
A newly built section of an access road to the site where a Chinese company is bridging the Mekong River for the new railroad. Below,
Laotian boys bathing in the Mekong river at a wharf where construction supplies are delivered.
capital, Vientiane. They each carried
massive coils of steel wire.
Half a mile away, a Chinese cement
mixing plant with four bays glistened in
the sun. Nearby, along a newly laid road,
another Chinese factory was providing
cement for tunnel construction.
Nearly everything for the Laos
project is made in China. Almost all the
labor force is Chinese. At the peak of
construction, there will be an estimated
100,000 Chinese workers.
When Mr. Xi announced the One
Belt, One Road plan in September 2013,
it was clear that Beijing needed to do
something for the industries that had
succeeded in building Chinas new cit-
ies, railways and roads state-led in-
vestment that turned it into an eco-
nomic powerhouse. China did not have a
lot left to build, and growth started to
sputter.
Along with the economic boost, tiny
Laos, a landlocked country with six mil-
lion people, is a linchpin in Beijings
strategy to chip away at American
power in Southeast Asia. After Mr.
Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific
CHINA
BANGLADESH
$8-12
4 VIETNAM
PHILIPPINES
THAILAND
$8-12
$12-18
INDONESIA
$50 $35-52
10
Partnership in January, American influ-
ence in the region is seen to be waning.
The rail line through Laos would pro-
vide a link to countries that China wants
to bring firmly into its fold.
Each nation in Mr. Xis plan brings its
own strategic advantages.
The power plants in Pakistan, as well
as upgrades to a major highway and a $1
billion port expansion, are a political
bulwark. By prompting growth in Paki-
stan, China wants to blunt the spread of
Pakistans terrorists across the border
into the Xinjiang region, where a restive
Muslim population of Uighurs resides. It
has military benefits, providing Chinas
navy future access to a remote port at
Gwadar managed by a state-backed
Chinese company with a 40-year con-
tract.
Many countries in the program have
serious needs. The Asian Development
Bank estimated that emerging Asian
economies need $1.7 trillion per year in
infrastructure to maintain growth,
tackle poverty and respond to climate
change.
In Kenya, China is upgrading a rail-
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Selected major Chinese international investment projects
STEFAN WERMUTH/REUTERS
1 BRITAIN: NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
China is financing more than a third
of the $23.7 billion cost of the
Hinkley Point C nuclear power
plant, on the Somerset coast of
southwest England. The project, in
a major western economy, was
added to the Belt and Road plan to
give added prestige.
AKHTAR SOOMRO/REUTERS
3 PAKISTAN: PORT
This deepwater port at Gwadar on
the Arabian Sea will be linked by
new roads and rail to western
Chinas Xinjiang region, creating a
shortcut for trade with Europe. The
port is part of $46 billion China says
it is spending on infrastructure and
power plants in the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
way from the port of Mombasa to
Nairobi that will make it easier to get
Chinese goods into the country. The
Kenyan government had been unable to
persuade others to do the job, whereas
China has been transforming crumbling
infrastructure in Africa for more than a
decade.
The rail line, which is set to start run-
ning next month, is the first to be built to
Chinese standards outside China. The
country will benefit for years from main-
tenance contracts.
Chinas Belt and Road initiative is
starting to deliver useful infrastructure,
bringing new trade routes and better
connectivity to Asia and Europe, said
Tom Miller, author of Chinas Asian
Dream: Empire Building Along the New
Silk Road. But Xi will struggle to per-
suade skeptical countries that the initia-
tive is not a smokescreen for strategic
control.
CALCULATING THE RISKS
Although Chinese engineers just started
arriving in this tourist town several
months ago, they have started punching
three tunnels into mountains that slope
down to roiling river water. They are in a
race to get as much done as possible be-
fore the monsoon rains next month slow
down work.
It is a fast start to a much-delayed pro-
gram that may bring only limited bene-
fits to the agrarian country.
For years, Laos and China sparred
over financing. With the cost running at
nearly $6 billion, officials in Laos won-
dered how they would afford their share.
The countrys output is just $12 billion
annually.
A feasibility study by a Chinese com-
pany said the railway would lose money
for the first 11 years.
Such friction is characteristic.
In Indonesia, construction of a high-
speed railway between Jakarta and
Bandung finally began last month after
arguments over land acquisition. In
Thailand, the government is demanding
better terms for a vital railway.
..
ANDREW JACOBS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
2 AFRICA: RAILWAY
China financed most of the $4 billion
cost of Africas first transnational
electric railway, which opened this
year and runs for 466 miles from
Djibouti to Addis Ababa, the capital of
Ethiopia. Chinese companies
designed the system and supplied
train cars and also the engineers who
built the line over a six-year period.
GILLES SABRIE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
4 LAOS: RAILWAY
China is leading a $6 billion
investment to build a 260-mile rail line
from northern Laos to the capital,
Vientiane. Mountainous terrain means
bridges and tunnels will account for
more than 60 percent of the line, and
construction is further complicated by
the need to clear unexploded land
mines left from American bombing of
the country during the Vietnam War.
Chinas outlays for the plan so far
have been modest: Only $50 billion has
been spent, an extremely small
amount relative to Chinas domestic in-
vestment program, said Nicholas R.
Lardy, a China specialist at the Peterson
Institute for International Economics in
Washington.
Even Chinas good friends so far are
left wanting. Mr. Xi attended a ground-
breaking ceremony in 2014 in Tajikistan
for a gas pipeline, but the project stalled
after Beijings demand waned.
Mr. Putin is at the center of the Beijing
conference. While two companies
owned by one of his closest friends, Gen-
nady Timchenko, have benefited from
projects, there has not been much else
for Russia.
Russias elites high expectations re-
garding Belt and Road have gone
through a severe reality check, and now
oligarchs and officials are skeptical
about practical results, said Alexander
Gabuev, senior associate at the Car-
negie Center in Moscow.
China is making calculations that the
benefits will outweigh the risks.
The investments could complicate
Beijings effort to stem the exodus of
capital outflow that have been weighing
on the economy.
The cost could also come back to
haunt China, whose banks are being
pressed to lend to projects that they find
less than desirable.
By some estimates, over half the
countries that have accepted Belt and
Road projects have credit ratings below
investment grade.
A major constraint in investor enthu-
siasm, said Eswar Prasad, professor of
trade policy at Cornell University, is
that many countries in the Central Asian
region, where the initial thrust of the ini-
tiative is focused, suffer from weak and
unstable economies, poor public gov-
ernance, political stability and corrup-
tion.
Laos is one of the risky partners. The
Communist government is a longstand-
ing friend of China.
But fearing Chinas domination, Laos
is casting around for other friends as
well, including Chinas regional rivals,
Japan and Vietnam.
After five years of negotiations over
the rail line, Laos finally got a better
deal.
Laos has an $800 million loan from
Chinas Export-Import Bank and agreed
to form a joint venture with China that
will borrow much of the rest.
Still, Laos faces a huge debt burden.
The International Monetary Fund
warned this year that the countrys re-
serves stood at two months of prospec-
tive imports of goods and services. It
also expressed concerns that public
debt could rise to around 70 percent of
the economy.
As construction gathers steam,
nearby communities are starting to
rumble.
Farmers are balking at giving up their
land. Some members of the national as-
sembly have raised questions about
property rights.
At Miss Mais Noodle Shop here, a
customer, Mr. Sipaseuth, who said he
used only one name, pondered the
project over a glass of icy Beer Lao.
In the past, he said, the government
had promised $10 for an acre of land
worth about $100. But then they never
paid it, Mr. Sipaseuth added.
Was the rail project good for Laos?
We need civilization. Laos is very
poor, very underdeveloped, he said.
But how many Chinese will come here?
Too many is not a good idea.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 13

Opinion
Do Muslims have to be Democrats now?
Our other Wajahat Ali
option is Contributing Writer
a party
that has
embraced American Muslims face a choice: vote
Democratic, or vote themselves off the
anti-Muslim island. Thats how Haroon Moghul, the
views. author of the coming memoir How to
Be a Muslim, put it to me this month
and how many of my fellow Ameri-
can Muslim voters feel.
As Republicans have embraced an
extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim
platform, has the Democratic Party
emerged as our only viable political
home?
As a Muslim, Id vote for Jesus, but
the Republicans wont let him in, and
the Democrats dont believe in him,
said Hussein Rashid, a professor of
religion at Barnard College, who con-
cedes that hes a tad bitter about his
political options. Like him, many
American Muslims cant imagine
voting for the Home Alone 2 actor
who trumpeted anti-Muslim bigotry all
the way to the White House. They also
support progressive policies, like
affordable health care and a living
wage. But privately, they adhere to
traditional values, believe in God and
think gay marriage is a sin, even
though an increasing number support
marriage equal-
ity.
Nearly every Can the pro-
person I talked gressive tent
to warned that stretch to include
them?
Democrats Sabir Ibrahim,
cannot take a Pakistani-
the Muslim American lawyer
vote for from the San
Francisco Bay
granted. Area, is skeptical.
Even though he
held his nose
and voted for Hillary Clinton, he per-
ceives a hostility from progressives
toward socially conservative sensibil-
ities.
MAURIZIO BRAMBATTI/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
As an example, he cited liberals
derision earlier this year when a news
report noted that Vice President Mike
Pence once said that he avoids dining gious fundamentalist. From many continued since the election. Hasan ing of Muslim voters, its not as if the sive values or even the existence of The scene at the
alone with women who arent his wife Republicans, I am asked, Why arent Minhaj recently received a standing Republicans will be getting our votes gay Muslims, feminist Muslims, people Womens March in
something some practicing Muslim you condemning extremism? or ovation at the White House back anytime soon. That leaves marrying outside their faith the Rome in January.
men do, too. The liberal ridicule, ac- What are you doing to fight the Is- Correspondents Association dinner Democrats or neither party. consequences, they imagine, will be Many American
cording to Mr. Ibrahim, results from a lamic State? as if I can magically after his blistering roast of Mr. Trump. Dalia Mogahed, director of research that their sons will abandon the reli- Muslims cant
narrow-minded dogmatism that de- uncover militants using my extremist Progressives are rallying behind Linda at the Institute for Social Policy and gion, engage in a threesome, and snort imagine voting
mands across-the-board acquiescence spidey sense. Sarsour, a Palestinian-American in Understanding in Washington, noted cocaine off a bar table on which Muslim Republican, but
to a certain set of cultural values. In liberal circles, I am apparently Brooklyn who was one of the that data shows that many Muslims women, with lower back tattoos, are are uncomfortable
Nearly every person I talked to only a safe, useful Muslim until they organizers of the Womens March. favored neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. dancing in stiletto heels. with Democratic
warned that Democrats cannot take find out I dont drink alcohol and I do It might seem like a kumbaya love Trump. On the other side, Fawzia Mirza, a positions.
the Muslim vote for granted. Even take my religion seriously. Ive heard: parade, but Im not convinced the halal Some liberals can show up also as gay storyteller born to Pakistani immi-
though there are only about three Oh, you pray? I thought you were Kool-Aid isnt still spiked with some extremists, said Imam Makram El- grant parents, said that, in her experi-
million of us, we live in critical battle- progressive a comment that seems fear. Amin of Minnesota, citing Bill Maher ence, many progressives still havent
ground states. (In Florida, Muslim to assume Im against womens rights, It was just nine years ago that work- as an example of a person who fails to met anyone who is queer and Muslim.
voters helped push George W. Bush to democracy, marriage equality and ers for the Obama campaign in Detroit see the layeredness of American For them, she says the worst night-
victory in 2000.) deodorant just because I fast during prevented two women in hijabs from Muslims. As a black Muslim American, mare is that Muslims will come in and
Many Muslims believe that any Ramadan. sitting behind the candidate, where Mr. El-Amin says hes not going to be hijabify their daughters.
embrace from the Democratic Party During the 2016 primary, it did seem they might appear in photographs. Two defined or forced to make decisions by One positive thing emerging from
today is just another pity invite given to me that Democrats were actually months before the 2008 election, I was those who make litmus tests. this political moment is that our respec-
by the popular kids to the freaks and slobbering over Muslims, including invited to a fund-raising event in Sili- Both progressives and Muslim com- tive communities are forced to confront
geeks so they can continue using us for those who are practicing and tradi- con Valley attended by Howard Dean, munities still need to question their issues like racism, sexism and anti-
homework, eating our mothers tan- tional. At one event, Bernie Sanders the chairman of the Democratic Na- own bubbles and orthodoxies. Muslim bigotry that have always ex-
doori chicken and wielding us as a club invited a young woman in a hijab to the tional Committee. I asked him why the Some practicing Muslims, like their isted but have been hidden under
to beat up Republicans. stage and promised to fight against all Democrats werent openly embracing Republican and progressive counter- toothless slogans promoting progress.
Muslims, among the most diverse forms of racism. The Democratic Muslim voters. Why? The elections parts, are unwilling to open their tent, Now we have to actually do the hard
religious community in America, still convention featured the Gold Star are just two months away, he said. fearing that if they accept everyone, work to achieve it.
seem to exist in two bland flavors: the parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan. Even though theres still an unpleas- then everything will fall apart. If reli-
angry progressive or the angry reli- This embrace of Muslims has ant edge beneath the Democrats court- gious communities accept progres- WAJAHAT ALI is a playwright and lawyer.

The looming threat of yellow fever

An outbreak Seth Berkley
in Brazil of
the deadly
disease Three years ago, the West African
should raise Ebola epidemic set off a worldwide
panic and the biggest global-health
an alarm in security crisis in years. Then Zika
the United struck and the reality of those trans-
States and mittable disease threats was brought
even closer to home in the United
the rest of States, with more than 5,000 cases
the world. reported and America still on high
alert. Yet today, an even greater poten-
tial threat to the world is sweeping
across Brazil.
The disease, yellow fever, is a deadly
virus that spreads as rapidly as Zika,
with symptoms that can be as horrific
as Ebola. It is transmitted by certain
species of mosquito, including the
same Aedes aegypti that carries Zika.
Up to 15 percent of those bitten become
severely ill, with symptoms that in-
clude black vomit and bleeding from
the nose, mouth and eyes. For up to
half of those who develop severe
symptoms, yellow fever ends in a
painful death.
Until about a century ago, the dis-
ease regularly caused urban epidemics
in the United States, including one in
Philadelphia that killed 10 percent of
the population in 1793, forcing Presi-
dent George Washington and others in
his administration to flee what was
then the nations capital.
Now, with Brazil facing an unusually
large outbreak of yellow fever there
are 715 confirmed cases, more than 820
suspected cases and 240 confirmed
deaths another global health crisis
looms. So far, the outbreaks have
largely been confined to sparsely
populated jungle areas. There is seri-
ous concern, however, that if the virus
starts spreading in a major city, health
authorities will be ill equipped to con-
tain it. Rio de Janeiro, for one, is ag-
gressively vaccinating its citizens in
hopes of inoculating 12 million by the
end of the year.
Yellow fever already kills upward of
30,000 people a year worldwide,
though in 2013 as many as 60,000
might have died from the disease. With
the threat of yellow fever returning to
regions where it was once expunged,
that number could rise significantly.
What is particularly worrying is the
possibility of yellow fever taking hold
in previously unaffected parts of the
world like Asia. The combination of
Aedes aegypti being prevalent there
and about 1.8 billion unvaccinated
people living in densely populated
parts of that continent makes for a
potential disaster.
While there is no cure for yellow
fever, a licensed vaccine has long been
available that is safe, affordable and
highly effective, providing lifetime
protection with just one dose.
Last year, Angolas capital, Luanda,
endured the worlds largest outbreak
of yellow fever in three decades. A
surge in demand resulted in vaccine
shortages, particularly when the dis-
ease spread to the neighboring
Democratic Republic of Congo and
farther afield to Kenya. With a large
Chinese work force in Angola, many
whom were unvaccinated, 11 cases
reached China. Miraculously those
were contained without further spread.
The shortages made the situation so
desperate that the World Health Orga-
nization and Unicef had to resort to
fractional dosing in Kinshasa, capital
Health care workers talking to relatives of Watila Santos, who died from yellow fever in
Casimiro de Abreu, Brazil, in March. Several cases have been reported in the area.
of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
administrating one-fifth of a normal
dose. We got lucky: The Brazilian
manufacturer made available up to 2.5
million doses of the vaccine, and the
outbreak was curbed.
Now, the situation has reversed.
Having already distributed 15 million
vaccine doses since the outbreak be-
gan in December, Brazil has been
forced to request 3.5 million doses
from the International Coordinating
Group on Vaccine Provision, which
oversees emergency stocks financed
by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the
nonprofit group I manage. With a
global emergency stockpile of six
million doses and about 12 million
LEO CORREA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
people living in and around Rio, it is
easy to see why public health experts
are worried. If Rio and one other major
city experience an outbreak, it is
doubtful whether stocks could be
replenished fast enough to keep up
with demand.
The proportion of people living in
urban areas, where diseases can
spread far more rapidly than in rural
areas with scattered populations, is
forecast to rise from one-third of the
planets population in 1950 to two-
thirds by 2050. Clearly, we need to
revise our risk assessments for infec-
tious diseases to reflect this trend. But
just how large should vaccine stock-
piles be? And for how many cities
should we prepare?
And while these emergency stock-
piles are essential, if we have to call
upon them we have in some way al-
ready failed. They should be our last
line of defense. Instead, if we want to
avoid a return of the kind of urban
epidemic that killed 5,000 people in
Philadelphia two centuries ago, we
need to prevent outbreaks from occur-
ring in the first place. That means
improving mosquito control and si-
multaneously increasing immunity
against yellow fever through routine
immunization and pre-emptive vacci-
nation campaigns.
With winter arriving next month in
South America, the outbreak will most
likely be brought to heel. But as mos-
quito season approaches in the north,
control measures will be essential if we
want to avoid yellow fever following
Zikas path, making its way north
through Latin America to southern
states in the United States like Florida.
And if, or when, it arrives, aware-
ness will also be critical to prevent its
spread, especially because very few
doctors in the United States have ever
seen a case and hardly anyone is vac-
cinated. As things stand, shortages are
already affecting the availability of
yellow fever travel vaccines in the
United States.
History has shown that preventive
approaches can be highly effective at
controlling yellow fever, but if they are
to work we first need to recognize
there is a problem. To quote a long-ago
Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin, an
ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure.
SETH BERKLEY is the chief executive of
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
 ..
14 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

opinion

Why Czeslaw Milosz still matters

work abroad to get a feel for the world, ideologies, communism and fascism. French writers who helped him sur-
ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER JR., Publisher A.G. SULZBERGER, Deputy Publisher Andrzej Franaszek and generally do not feel under threat. Though they proclaimed concern for vive a long period of solitary exile.
DEAN BAQUET, Executive Editor MARK THOMPSON, Chief Executive Officer
The issues that outraged Milosz were the future of humanity and pledged to Still, it was during this period that
JOSEPH KAHN, Managing Editor STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, President, International
things of the past. bring justice and build heaven on Milosz produced one of his most fa-
TOM BODKIN, Creative Director PHILIPPE MONTJOLIN, Senior V.P., International Operations
It turns out, however, I was deeply earth, what they created bore no rela- mous widely read works, the 1953 book
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, Senior V.P., Global Advertising
In 2011, on the centenary of the birth of mistaken. tion to their promises. Instead they led The Captive Mind. In it he examined
SUZANNE DALEY, Associate Editor
ACHILLES TSALTAS, V.P., International Conferences
the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and Someone once said that in his life millions of people to their deaths. why so many intellectuals and artists
JAMES BENNET, Editorial Page Editor
seven years after his death, a confer- Milosz had encountered every kind of Milosz witnessed World War II and of the time succumbed to, or pretended
CHANTAL BONETTI, V.P., International Human Resources
JAMES DAO, Deputy Editorial Page Editor
ence about his life and work took place hell the 20th century could devise, yet the Holocaust, living through the Ger- to believe in, communism. A successful
CHARLOTTE GORDON, V.P., International Consumer Marketing
in Sejny, a small town on the Polish- also had at times tasted paradise. And, man occupation of Poland and the ideology, he wrote, is comforting, an
HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS, V.P., International Circulation
Lithuanian border. Because I had just like Dante, he captured both for us. terrible, pitiless slaughter that accom- all-encompassing tool to salve our
HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific
written his biography, I was invited to As a boy, he panied it. Among his many famous deepest fears and orient our lives. The
SUZANNE YVERNS, International Chief Financial Officer
discuss Native Realm, an autobio- witnessed the poems is Campo dei Fiori, which book brought him international fame,
graphical work, written over half a The Polish demise of the movingly commemorates the fate of although as a poet he felt uneasy about
century before. poets message 19th century, the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in being pigeonholed as an analyst of
The book relates his own life experi- against which took place 1943. Soviet politics.
ences, yet at the same time stands as a on the battle- After the war, he spent several years Perhaps a decade ago, it would have
biography of an intellectual from the ideology and fields of World in the United States as a diplomat been easy to pass off The Captive
EXTREMISTS IN GERMAN UNIFORM eastern or, as we Poles prefer to put nationalism War I. For a representing the new, communist-run Mind as a relic of the totalitarian 20th
it to differentiate ourselves from Rus- seemed pass. while he lived in Poland. While he enjoyed reading century: However, the last decade has
The discovery of a far-right plot in Germany to assassi- sia, the central part of the continent. Wilno then Faulkners novels, translating Auden demonstrated how the mechanisms of
Anxiety is Not any more.
nate a high government official and then blame Syrian In that book and elsewhere, Milosz part of Poland, and Eliots poems and meeting Ein- mind control Milosz exposed continue
high after refugees is shocking, given Germanys admirable willing- wrote powerfully about totalitarianism, now Lithuanias stein, he was unable to come to terms to be deployed throughout the globe.
revelations ness to give refuge to people fleeing the horrors of the anti-Semitism and nationalism, the capital, Vilnius with what to his mind was a consumer- Some people, for example, feel cer-
topics that occupied European and increasingly became aware of ist, soulless society. He frequently felt tain that their failures or the collective
of an Middle East. Even more troubling for many Germans is
intellectuals for much of the 20th cen- what was happening nearby, just be- at odds with communism as well as failures of the state are caused by
assassination that two of the plotters were army officers, raising ques- tury. yond Polands eastern border, where with capitalism and considered joining enemies one can easily pinpoint. They
plot involving tions about how they got into the army and how many I declared to the audience that in my the empire of the czars morphed blood- a Christian farming community in embrace ideologies that demonize
more extremists there might be in uniform. view many of the authors political ily into the Soviet Union. Paraguay. liberals, communists, capitalists, Jews
officers, one diagnoses were outdated. After all, I Like the majority of young In 1951, not without misgivings, he and, more fashionably in recent times,
The problem is not unique to Germany. Armies that
of whom thought, most of my students view intellectuals, he retained leftist lean- defected to the West, enduring the migrants and Muslims.
have abandoned conscription, as Germany did in 2011 themselves primarily as citizens of ings, but, at the same time, found migrants life and fate, first in France, The importance of Miloszs analysis
possessed (and the United States did in 1973) attract all sorts of Europe, as countless young people do himself caught in an ideological quan- where at times he was shunned like a is that it applies to much more than
Nazi people, including some who harbor extremist views. throughout the European Union. They dary. From the mid-1920s and the early leper by Pariss Left Bank intellectuals communism and fascism, or even
memorabilia. What is different in Germany is the sensitivity to any speak foreign languages, travel and 1930s onward, much of the continent because he had betrayed communism. political ideology. Toward the end of his
fell under the spell of two totalitarian Albert Camus was one of the few FRANASZEK, PAGE 15
echoes of the Nazi past, especially in the military. The
German Constitution adopted after World War II barred
German defense forces from taking part in any conflicts
abroad, and only since a 1994 constitutional court ruling
have they been allowed to participate in international
missions led by NATO or the United Nations.
So the discovery that one of the plotters, identified
only as 28-year-old Lt. Franco A., had written a masters
thesis in 2014 expressing extremist views, and that he
had kept Nazi memorabilia which it is unlawful to
display in Germany and is at the very least suspect in
the possession of an officer quickly led to broader
soul-searching about the prevalence of such sentiments
in the military. That in turn set off a political storm. The
defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, declared that
the army had an attitude problem, which drew indig-
nant retorts from an association representing soldiers,
charging that her comments cast aspersion on all sol-
diers.
Exactly how widespread the extremism is in the army
is hard to gauge. According to the German public broad-
caster Deutsche Welle, 18 members of the military were
relieved of duty for extremist views between 2012 and
2016, and 280 cases are currently under investigation by
military counterintelligence (unhappily known by its
German initials as MAD). That is not a lot in a force of
nearly 180,000, but it could reflect a far broader mind-set.
In any case, Ms. von der Leyen and the military have
ordered closer security scrutiny of new recruits and
searches of military installations for any displays glorify-
ing the Nazi past.
Given the grave consequences that the plot would
have had had it worked, and how dangerous extremists
are in any armed force, the German government and
military command are right to investigate how broadly
extremist sentiments run in the army, and to seek ways
of curbing them. They are right, too, to recognize the
anxiety any such manifestation creates in Germanys
allies. Their response so far has been reassuring, and it
should not flag. BETTMAN, VIA GETTY IMAGES

Members of the Kennedy family, including Ethel and Edward, applaud as the writer Czeslaw Milosz accepts the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1986.

THE CLASS OF 2017

It has taken 10 years, but the job market for young
Job prospects
have improved
from the dark
days of the
college graduates has largely recovered to where it was
in 2007, before the Great Recession. The recent unem-
ployment rate for college graduates ages 21 to 24 was 5.6
percent, basically the same as in 2007. The wages of
Please, someone, enable me
adults on couches with controllers in friends. Our dad was dying from can- and the graphics are elaborate, unlike
downturn, but young college graduates have also recovered, to $19.18 an Sofija Stefanovic their hands, home on the weekends cer in the next room, while my mom the pixelated eight-bit renderings of
that is a low hour. playing Switch, on a break from the worked a full-time job and tended to my memories, punctuated by a primi-
For the college Class of 2017, those improvements offer real world. him. tive synthesizer score. In the several
bar and I have an online shopping alert set to Rather than deal with real life, my decades Ive been out of the game, the
real prosperity a better starting point than was true for those who grad- notify me the second the new Nintendo sister and I escaped into Zelda. There, Nintendo has grown up. What a re-
uated in earlier post-recession classes. What they dont I am a 34-year-old woman who is Switch stock arrives (retail price our actual circumstances became union it would be, the two of us togeth-
is slipping obsessed with the Switch Nintendos
guarantee, however, is prosperity. While the labor mar- $299.99). But Im not going to get one. minor details. er again as adults, I often think.
further out of newest and best gaming console, Im just a curious observer is what I There were no Im at a point in my life when a lot of
ket for young college graduates has improved from its which came out in March. Small prob-
reach. tell myself. I am immigrants in big decisions need to be made. My
recession-era lows, it is still not showing robust signs of lem: Ive banned myself from getting There is a history to my Nintendo obsessed with the world of partner, Michael, annoyingly wants to
full employment, in which everyone who wants a job has one. Another problem: The thing is fanaticism. When I was 12, my family Nintendo. Being talk about them. I want the opiate
hard to get. Some 2.7 million people a Nintendo
one, prices are stable and wages are rising. lived in Australia. Wed emigrated from different would- release of a Nintendo Switch.
rushed to buy the Switch, with its Yugoslavia (now Serbia) when the video game nt get us teased, Ive dropped Michael many hints to
To take one example of labor market weakness, under- hybrid controllers and portable screen, console that
wars began. I was in charge of looking our social status this effect. Ive signed him up for the
employment among young college graduates is still when it was released, and demand after my 7-year-old sister, and all we I dont own. was irrelevant, notification, too. If he is the one who
elevated, with 9.9 percent idled or sidelined, com- outstripped supply. Now many retail- did was play games in the dining room and anyway we actually buys it, then I am absolved of
pared with 8.4 percent in 2007, according to research by ers have been out of stock for weeks, we had renamed the Nintendo Room. had a more im- responsibility, and my life of lying on
and others have marked up the pre- I was an awkward adolescent who portant task to focus on: rescuing a the couch absorbed in escapist game-
the Economic Policy Institute. These graduates are not cious console by hundreds of dollars. didnt fit in at school embarrassed princess from a dungeon. play can begin.
counted as unemployed because they are neither work- I work from home, and if I had a by my English-as-a-second-language, I have not actually touched a Nin- You know, people are selling
ing nor looking for work. Nor are they enrolled in further Nintendo Switch, work is not what Id arriving at parties in T-shirts my mom tendo Switch with my own hands or Switches on eBay for a couple hundred
education. be doing. My apartment would instead got from Target while other girls even been in the same room as one, dollars more than the retail price! I
become a glorious pleasure den from showed up in tight tops and lipstick. but from my sophisticated online say, leaving my computer open to the
Elevated underemployment indicates the absence of which I would enter the brightly My sister was equally weird, sporting snooping, I can tell you that the con- purchase page, as I conveniently dis-
professional job opportunities, which in turn acts as a colored world of my favorite game: a bowl cut and struggling to make troller vibrates and can be detached, appear to get some air. But my hints
brake on wage growth. The Legend of Zelda. fall on (sensible) deaf ears. Im pretty
Young people with only high school degrees fare even Zelda is a gaming series set in a sure Michaels not going to order me a
fantasy world, where the main charac- Nintendo Switch.
worse. The recent unemployment rate of high school
ter must complete a mission, solving And yet. Whenever a package ar-
graduates ages 17 to 20 was 16.9 percent, compared with puzzles, munching on bat wings and rives, I lose my mind. I clutch it to my
15.9 percent in 2007. fighting terrestrial jelly monsters on chest as I run back up to the apart-
The Class of 2017 both college and high school grad- the way. The newest installment, The ment. I tear the packaging with my
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, is keys because I cant waste time
uates is coming of age in an economy that is still en-
world class, apparently. If I had a procuring a better implement. But its
feebled by the serial busts of this century and the failure Switch, and Zelda, Id traverse forest dog poop bags. Its always dog poop
of government to pick up the slack with more robust ranges on horseback, while my bills bags.
policies. These young people deserve better. They de- would go unpaid, my dogs would die of The new stock of Nintendo Switches
serve a legal and regulatory system that safeguards hunger and my work deadlines would should be hitting the shelves any
fade into the background, secondary to minute now. Ill just be sitting here,
against boom-and-bust cycles. They deserve federal whats really important: defeating an stewing. Unless someone and I dont
investment in infrastructure, clean energy and scientific evil boar king. really mind who it is gets one for
research that creates jobs and lays the foundation for Each morning, I look at the news me.
prosperity. They deserve increased resources for public- and want to flush my head down the
toilet. Lucky jerks around the nation SOFIJA STEFANOVIC is the host of the
sector jobs that require college degrees, notably teach- are meanwhile firing up their Nintendo Women of Letters literary salon and
ing. Switches. Facebook is full of photos author of the forthcoming memoir
Will they get it? snapped by annoyed spouses: prone SIMONE NORONHA Miss Ex-Yugoslavia.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 15

opinion

Is Trump obstructing justice?

Nicholas Kristof
When George Washington was prepar-
ing to take office, everybody wondered
what to call him. Senators proposed
lofty titles like Illustrious Highness
and Sacred Majesty.
But Washington expressed irritation
at such fawning, so today we are led by a
modest Mr. President. Later, Wash-
ington surrendered office after two
terms, underscoring that institutions
prevail over personalities and that, in
the words of the biographer Ron Cher-
now, the president was merely the
servant of the people.
That primacy of our countrys institu-
tions over even the greatest of leaders
has been a decisive thread in American
history, and its one reason President
Trump is so unnerving. His firing of
James Comey can be seen as simply one
element of a systematic campaign to
undermine the rule of law and
democratic norms.
The paradox is that Trump purports
to be (like Richard Nixon) a law-and-
order president. His administration has
ordered a harsh crackdown on drug
offenders, when we should be scaling up
addiction treatment instead. Trump is
Hard to imagine. The uproar would be
staggering. Even Republicans would
never stand for that.
Alas, my contacts underestimated the
myopic partisanship of too many Re-
publicans. Senator Charles Grassley, an
Iowa Republican, spoke for many of his
colleagues when he scoffed at the furor
by saying, Suck it up and move on.
This goes way beyond Comey. When
judges block presidential orders, Trump
denounces the courts. When the opposi-
tion criticizes him, Trump savages
individual Democrats. When journalists
embarrass him, Trump threatens to
tighten libel laws and describes the
SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
press as the enemy of the people.
Trump has also challenged and George Washington rejected fancy titles,
evaded the ethics rules that tradition- so today we use Mr. President.
ally constrain administration officials.
He has breached the four-decade norm
that presidential candidates release behavior is obstruction of the rule of law
their taxes. And how else to put this? and democratic norms.
he has waged war on truth. These Earlier this year I quoted a presiden-
days, any relationship between White tial historian as saying that theres a
House statements and accuracy seems smell of treason in the air, and its es-
coincidental. sential that we have a thorough investi-
Patterns emerge. Trump also ousted gation to find out what happened. With
Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney who Senate Republicans blocking an inde-
infuriated Mos- pendent commission, that means that
cow and investi- Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosen-
His entire gated Tom Price, stein must choose an independent
pattern of Trumps secre- special counsel to probe Russian inter-
behavior is tary of health and ference in our election.
obstruction of human services. George Washington warned that we
the rule of law Likewise, Trump need checks on leaders because of the
and democratic fired Sally Yates, love of power and the proneness to
the acting attor- abuse it. This prophecy was tested
norms.
ney general, after during Watergate, and as a teenager
she warned the then I watched Republicans like How-
White House that ard Baker, Lowell Weicker, Elliot

Why Czeslaw Milosz still matters focusing on chimerical fraud by nonciti-

FRANASZEK, FROM PAGE 14
life the British historian Tony Judt was
reading The Captive Mind with his
students and pointing out that there
are many different ideologies to which
we passively yield and lies we choose
to believe in: that wealth will make us
happy, that thanks to the latest iPad we
will find sense in our existence, that
Facebook will bring us closer to others
and that, because of all this, we will
avoid pain and disappointment.
Many of the political and social
transmutations that appalled Milosz
the fears and hatreds have been
revived. In Native Realm he tells of
his journey through France in the
1930s and how, walking together with
his friends across a bridge joining
Switzerland and France, he en-
countered a sign saying, Gypsies,
Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians are
forbidden entry. Change the ethnici-
ties, and one could easily find a similar
message along other borders today,
and not just in Europe.
It could be said that the history of
humanity is defined and dictated by
two opposing processes: building
bridges and raising walls. A bridge
brings us closer to others, allows us to
get to know them; it is a beginning of
or an extension to a road.
A wall separates, closes. And al-
though it appears to provide security, it
also generates a defensive mentality,
the conviction that everything on the
other side represents a threat, as the
Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski
points out.
Milosz was deeply critical of the
narrow nationalist views of his fellow
countrymen, which provoked hostility
from many quarters and accusations
that he was betraying the homeland.
He often said that Poles, Lithuanians,
Jews and Russians could live amicably
with each other, as his long, deep
friendship with the poets Joseph Brod-
sky of Russia and Tomas Venclova of
Lithuania proved.
At least in my country, Poland, the
end of 20th century and the beginning
of the 21st belonged to the bridge
builders. Today, however, watchers on
the walls
physical and
The importance political can be
of Miloszs observed there
analysis is that it and everywhere.
applies to much It is hard to
more than comprehend why
communism and fanaticism, vio-
lence, hatred,
fascism, or even fear and a des-
political perate search for
ideology. security are on
the loose again.
Could anyone a
few years ago have anticipated that
George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-
Four would become a best seller on
Amazon?
The vision of multicultural societies
seems to have vanished; the language
of politicians has become more and
more nationalistic; people no longer
tolerate open discussion, determined to
accept only confirmation of their own
point of view. That stance makes life
much easier, as The Captive Mind
shows. Everything that surrounds us
has to be familiar. There should be no
opponents or outsiders. We should be
able to exist in an airtight bubble.
In my country, despite surprising
zen voters, even as he impinges on an
investigation into what could be a monu-
Michael Flynn could be blackmailed
over his lies about Russian contacts.
In short, Trump challenges the legiti-
Richardson and William Ruckelshaus
heroically stand up for their country
rather than for a corrupt president of
mental electoral fraud by Vladimir macy of checks on his governance, their own party. Partly because of them,
prosperity over the last few years, Putin. He favors tough law and order for bullies critics and obfuscates every- our institutions triumphed.
millions of people imagine that they the little guy. thing. Trump reminds me less of past The passion for truth over politics
have become worse off than others and Comey took the investigation into American presidents than of the big was then periodically expressed in a
that they have been wronged by some- possible collusion between the Kremlin men rulers I covered in Asia and Af- Latin phrase: fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
one. Is it the Germans? The Russians? and the Trump campaign seriously rica, who saw laws simply as instru- Let justice be done, though the heavens
The Jews? As a result they vote for the enough that for his last three weeks ments with which to punish rivals. fall.
far right. There are more and more leading the F.B.I. he was getting daily Its reported that Trump sought a Now that principle is tested again,
young people, like those in the 1930s, updates, according to The Wall Street pledge of loyalty from Comey. That is and so are we, all of us politicians,
who demonstrate, chanting chauvinist Journal. The new acting director of the what kings seek; the failure to provide journalists, judges and citizens.
slogans against immigrants, leftists F.B.I. confirms that the inquiry is one got Thomas More beheaded. But in In particular, this is the moment of
and homosexuals. Some among them highly significant. a nation of laws, we must be loyal to truth for G.O.P. moderates like Senators
break the windows of cafes run by For months, as Ive reported on the laws, norms and institutions, not to a Susan Collins, Jeff Flake and Bob
migrants. Perhaps they will soon begin multiple investigations into Trump- passing autocrat. Corker, who may hold decisive power.
burning books. Russia connections, Ive heard that the Trump acknowledges that he was Will they align with George Washing-
Eighty years ago, Milosz read Thom- F.B.I. investigation is by far the most frustrated by the Russia investigation tons vision of presidents as servants of
as Manns novel The Magic Moun- important one, incomparably ahead of and that it was a factor in firing Comey. the people or with Trumps specter of
tain. It was a time when large num- the congressional inquiries. I then This may not meet the legal test for His Sacred Majesty, the Big Man of
bers of his contemporaries did not usually asked: So will Trump fire obstruction of justice, but step back and America? Will they stand for justice, or
believe in democracy, ridiculed the Comey? And the response would be: you see that Trumps entire pattern of for obstruction of it?
books worldly protagonist Settembrini
and were drawn instead to the charac-
ter of Naphta, who despises freedom
and condones dictatorship. It seems
that now Naphtas attitudes are again
in vogue.
There is very little a university
lecturer and an author of books about
poetry like me can do in this situation.
But at least I urge my students to read
Native Realm, because Milosz had
already written about it all the xeno-
phobia, the seeking-out of enemies
responsible for our economic and
political crises, the lure of false ideals
that promise comfort and sense in our
lives. The Devils temptations. I just
hope that the book will help them
retain noncaptive minds.
ANDRZEJ FRANASZEK is the author of
Milosz: A Biography. This article was
translated by Aleksandra and Michael
Parker from the Polish.

The priming of Mr. Donald Trump

KRUGMAN, FROM PAGE 1
was a time for serious pump-priming;
unfortunately, we never got enough of
it, thanks to scorched-earth Republican
opposition.
Now, however, unemployment is
near historic lows; quit rates, which
show how confident workers are in
their ability to find new jobs, are back
to pre-crisis levels: wage rates are
finally rising; and the Fed has begun
raising interest rates.
America may not be all the way back
to full employment theres a lively
debate among economists over that
issue. But the economic engine no
longer needs a fiscal jump-start. This is
exactly the wrong time to be talking
about the desirability of bigger budget
deficits.
True, it would make sense to borrow
to finance public investment. We des-
President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
perately need to expand and repair our an economic and political fantasy
roads, bridges, water systems, and world. If so, hes not alone. Which
more. Meanwhile, the federal govern- brings me to my third point: Trumps
ment can borrow incredibly cheaply: fiscal delusions are arguably no worse
Long-term bonds protected from infla-
tion are paying
only about 0.5
than those of many, perhaps most
professional observers of the Washing-
ton political scene.
Newspaper subscription offer:
This is exactly
the wrong time
percent interest.
So deficit spend-
If youre a heavy news consumer,
think about how many articles youve
Save 66% for three months.
to be talking ing on infrastruc- seen in the past few weeks with head-
about the ture would be lines along the lines of Trumps budg-
desirability of defensible. et may create conflict with G.O.P. fiscal
bigger budget But thats not conservatives. The premise of all such
what Trump is articles is that there is a powerful
In unpredictable times, you need journalism that cuts through
deficits.
talking about. faction among Republican members of the noise to deliver the facts. A subscription to The New York
Hes calling for Congress who worry deeply about
exploding the budget deficits and will oppose propos- Times International Edition gives you uncompromising reporting
deficit so he can cut taxes on the als that create lots of red ink. that deepens your understanding of the issues that matter,
wealthy. And that makes no economic But there is no such faction, and
sense at all. never was. and includes unlimited access to NYTimes.com and apps for
Then again, he may not understand There were and are poseurs like
his own proposals; he may be living in Paul Ryan, who claim to be big deficit
smartphone and tablet.
hawks. But theres a simple way to test
such peoples sincerity: when they
propose sacrifices in the name of fiscal
responsibility, do those sacrifices ever
involve their own political priorities?
And they never do. That is, when you
see a politician claim that deficit con- Order the International Edition today at
cerns require that we slash Medicaid,
privatize Medicare, and/or raise the
retirement age but somehow never
nytimes.com/discover
require raising taxes on the wealthy,
which in fact they propose to cut
you know that its just an act.
Yet somehow much of the news
media keeps believing, or pretending
to believe, that those imaginary deficit
hawks are real, which is a delusion of
truly Trumpian proportions.
So Im worried. Trump may be not
just ignorant but deeply out of it, and
his economic proposals are terrible
and irresponsible, but they may get
implemented all the same.
Offer expires June 30, 2017 and is valid for new subscribers only. Hand delivery subject to confirmation by local
But maybe I worry too much; may- distributors. Smartphone and tablet apps are not supported on all devices.
be the only thing to fear is fear itself.
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Do you like that line? I just came up
with it the other day.
 ..
16 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

tech

Open secrets
FROM THE MAGAZINE
More and more, privacy
is being seen as a luxury
and no longer as a right
BY AMANDA HESS
Recently I handed over the keys to my
email account to a service that
promised to turn my spam-bloated
inbox into a sparkling model of effi-
ciency in just a few clicks. Unroll.mes
method of instant unsubscribing from
newsletters and junk mail was trusted
by millions of happy users, the site
said, among them the Scandal actor
Joshua Malina, who tweeted in 2014:
Your inbox will sing! Plus, it was
free. When a privacy policy popped up,
I swatted away the legalese and
tapped continue.
Last month, the true cost of Un-
roll.me was revealed: The service is
owned by the market-research firm
Slice Intelligence, and according to a
report in The Times, while Unroll.me is
cleaning up users inboxes, its also
rifling through their trash. When Slice
found digital ride receipts from Lyft in
some users accounts, it sold the ano-
nymized data off to Lyfts ride-hailing
rival, Uber.
Suddenly, some of Unroll.mes trust-
ing users were no longer so happy. One
user filed a class-action lawsuit. In a
blog post, Unroll.mes chief executive,
Jojo Hedaya, wrote that it was heart-
breaking to see that some of our users
were upset to learn about how we
monetize our free service. He stressed
the importance of your privacy and
pledged to do better. But one of Un-
roll.mes founders, Perri Chase, who is
no longer with the company, took a
different approach in her own post on
the controversy. Do you really care?
she wrote. How exactly is this shock-
ing?
This Silicon Valley good cop, bad
cop routine is familiar, and we spend
our time surfing between these two
modes of thought. Chase is right:
Weve come to understand that privacy
is the currency of our online lives,
paying for petty conveniences with bits
of personal information. But we are
blissfully ignorant of what that means.
We dont know what data is being
bought and sold, because, well, thats
private. The evidence that flashes in
front of our own eyes looks harmless
enough: We search Google for a new
pair of shoes, and for a time, sneakers
follow us across the web, tempting us
from every sidebar. But our informa-
tion can also be used for matters of
great public significance, in ways were
barely capable of imagining.
When I signed up for Unroll.me, I
couldnt predict that my emails might
be strategic documents for a power-
hungry company in its quest for total
road domination. Such privacy costs
often become clear only after theyve
already been paid. Sometimes a pri-
vate citizen is caught up in a viral
moment and learns that a great deal of
information about him or her exists
online, just waiting to be splashed
across the news like the guy in the
red sweater who, after asking a ques-
tion in a presidential debate, had his
Reddit porn comments revealed.
But our digital dossiers extend well
beyond the individual pieces of infor-
mation we know are online some-
where; they now include stuff about us
that can be surmised only through
studying our patterns of behavior. The
psychologist and data scientist Michal
Kosinski has found that seemingly
mundane activity like the brands
and celebrities people like on Face-
book can be leveraged to reliably
predict, among other things, intelli-
gence, personality traits and politics.
After our most recent presidential
election, the company Cambridge
Analytica boasted that its techniques
were instrumental in identifying
supporters, persuading undecided
voters and driving turnout to the polls
on Donald Trumps behalf. All these
little actions we think of as our pri-
vate business are actually data points
that can be aggregated and wielded to
manipulate our world.
Years ago, in 2009, the law professor
Paul Ohm warned that the growing
dominance of Big Data could create a
database of ruin that would someday
connect all people to compromising
information about their lives. In the
absence of intervention, he later
wrote, soon companies will know
things about us that we do not even
know about ourselves. Or as the social
scientist and Times contributor Zeynep
Tufekci said in a recent talk: People
cant think like this: I didnt disclose it,
but it can be inferred about me. When
ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK BRAHNEY
a peeping Tom looks between the
blinds, its clear what has been re-
vealed. But when a data firm cracks watchful eye. The novels protagonist, they called the right to ones per- emotional release and moments of business practices. In 2013, Facebook
open our inboxes, we may never find Winston, begins to suspect that real sonality. passive reflection. We cradle it in bed, revoked users ability to remain un-
out what it has learned. freedom lies in those unwatched Now that our privacy is worth some- at dinner, on the toilet. Its pop-up searchable on the site; meanwhile, its
Privacy has not always been seen as slums: If there is hope, he writes in thing, every side of it is being privacy policies are annoying speed chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was
an asset. The ancient Greeks, for in- his secret diary, it lies in the proles. monetized. We can either trade it for bumps in the otherwise instantaneous buying up four houses surrounding his
stance, distinguished between the In the influential 1967 book Privacy cheap services or shell out cash to conjuring of desires. It feels like a Palo Alto home to preserve his own
public realm (koinon) and the pri- and Freedom, Alan Westin described protect it. It is increasingly seen not as private experience, when really it is privacy. Sean Spicer, the White House
vate realm (idion). In contrast to privacy as having four functions: a right but as a luxury good. When everything but. How often have you press secretary, has defended Presi-
those public citizens engaged in po- personal autonomy, emotional release, Congress recently voted to allow inter- shielded the contents of your screen dent Trumps secretive meetings at his
litical life, humble private citizens were self-evaluation and intimate communi- net service providers to sell user data from a stranger on the subway, or the personal golf clubs, saying he is enti-
known as idiotai, a word that later cation. This modern understanding of without users explicit consent, talk partner next to you in bed, only to offer tled to a bit of privacy, and the admin-
evolved into idiots. Something simi- privacy as an intimate good grew up emerged of premium products that up your secrets to the data firm track- istration has cut off public access to
lar is true of the English word pri- right alongside the technology that people could pay for to protect their ing everything you do? White House visitor logs, citing securi-
vacy. As Hannah Arendt wrote in threatened to violate it. At the end of browsing habits from sale. And if they The surveillance economy works on ty risks and privacy concerns. When
The Human Condition, privacy was the 18th century, the Fourth Amend- couldnt afford it? As one congressman such information asymmetry: Data- The New York Times reported that the
once closely associated with a state of ment to the United States Constitution told a concerned constituent, No- mining companies know everything president takes counsel from the Fox
being deprived of something, and even protected Americans from physical bodys got to use the internet. Practi- about us, but we know very little about News host Sean Hannity, Hannity
of the highest and most human of searches of their bodies and homes. cally, though, everybodys got to. Tech what they know. And just as privacy indignantly tweeted that his conversa-
mans capacities. In the 17th century, One hundred years later, technological companies have laid claim to the public has grown into an anxious buzzword, tions were PRIVATE.
the word private arose as a more advancements had legal minds think- square: All of a sudden, we use Face- the powerful have co-opted it in order Weve arrived at a place where
politically correct replacement for ing about a kind of mental privacy too: book to support candidates, organize to maintain control over others and public institutions and figures can be
common, which had taken on con- In an 1890 paper called The Right to protests and pose questions in debates. evade accountability. As we bargain precious about their privacy in ways
descending overtones. Privacy, Samuel Warren and Louis Were essentially paying a data tax for away the amount of privacy that an were continually deciding individual
And yet somewhere along the way, Brandeis cited recent inventions and participating in democracy. ordinary person expects, weve also people cant. Stepping into the White
privacy was recast as a necessity for business methods including instant The smartphone is an intimate de- watched businesses and government House is now considered more private
cultivating the life of the mind. In photography and tabloid gossip that vice; we stare rapt into its bright light figures grow ever more indignant than that weird rash you Googled. Its
George Orwells 1984, the proles are they claimed had invaded the sacred and stroke its smooth glass to coax out about their own need to be left alone. a cynical inversion of the old associa-
spared a life of constant surveillance, precincts of private and domestic life. information and connect with others. It Companies mandate nondisclosure tion between private life and the lower
while higher-ranking members of They argued for what they called the seems designed to help us achieve agreements and demand out-of-court class: These days, only the powerful
society are exposed to Big Brothers right to be let alone, but also what Westins functions of privacy, to enable arbitration to better conceal their can demand privacy.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

An order about to be shipped from Stitch Fixs warehouse in California. As traditional retailers struggle, their online rivals are planning expansions. Katrina Lake, founder of Stitch Fix. Data science plays a big part in choosing what to ship.

Wardrobes by mail
SAN FRANCISCO
BY MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED
AND KATIE BENNER
The retail landscape is littered with the
casualties of changing consumer behav-
ior. Shoppers are bargain hunting on-
line, department stores are struggling,
and once-mainstay brands are closing
out permanently.
Then there is Stitch Fix, a mail-order
clothing service that offers customers
little choice in what garments they re-
ceive and shies away from discounts for
brand name dresses, pants and acces-
sories.
Despite a business model that seems
to defy conventional wisdom, Stitch Fix
continues to grow.
For the fiscal year that ended last
July, the company recorded sales of $730
million. It has been profitable since 2014
and has raised just $42 million from out-
side investors, a relatively modest sum
for a high-flying Silicon Valley start-up.
And while Stitch Fix executives say
they have no specific plans to go public,
the company is well positioned to file for
an initial public offering as soon as this
year.
Should Stitch Fix go public, it would
be the biggest retail offering since Etsy
two years ago. Perhaps more important,
it would be a Silicon Valley rarity: a prof-
itable company that did not raise money
at a sky-high valuation, and one that
could potentially tap the public markets
at a price many times greater than its
current value.
Stitch Fix is not the first company to
try this business model. Similar start-
ups, from clothing rival Trunk Club to
the cosmetics specialist Birchbox, have
found a market mailing consumers a
grab bag of items and offering free re-
turns for anything unwanted.
But many such start-ups have had
trouble keeping costs down, and
customers around. Nordstrom, which
bought Trunk Club in 2014 for a reported
$350 million, wrote down nearly $200
million from the business value last
year.
Those businesses have mostly strug-
gled to grow and remain profitable over
a long period of time, said Mark Cohen,
a professor at Columbia Business
School who previously served as chief
executive of Sears Canada. Will a loy-
alist want to receive this every month?
Is anyone interested in consuming this
much apparel and accessories?
So far, Stitch Fix has found success
where other online clothing start-ups
have struggled. To the companys
founder, Katrina Lake, success comes
down to delivering what consumers
want: making it easier to shop.
Theres been a lot of innovation
around being the cheapest or fastest,
she said in an interview at one of the
companys warehouses south of San
Francisco. In her view, what was impor-
tant was helping customers find cloth-
ing they liked without taking lengthy
shopping trips and returning dozens of
items.
Stitch Fix was founded in 2011 and was
initially run out of Ms. Lakes apartment
in Cambridge, Mass. At first the com-
pany catered only to women, but it has
since expanded to offer mens clothing,
plus sizes and maternity wear.
Each box contains a handful of selec-
tions from trendy brands like Citizens of
Humanity, Scotch & Soda and Barbour.
Up next is a luxe offering featuring
clothes from higher-end labels like The-
ory, with price tags going from $150 to
about $500 per item.
Expansion plans like that drive home
the diverging fortunes of struggling tra-
ditional retailers and fast-growing on-
line rivals.
Online retailers who sell luxury prod-
ucts for less are undercutting sales at
high-end department stores like
Neiman Marcus. Nordstrom recently
announced layoffs and told investors it
plans to focus on e-commerce, despite
its Trunk Club write-down. And J. Crew,
which has hundreds of stores around the
country, has suffered three straight
years of losses and is deeply in debt.
While early e-commerce start-ups
like One Kings Lane, Gilt Groupe and
Fab were failures for investors, the cate-
gory has picked up steam in the past few
years as traditional retailers have
looked to start-ups to lift their busi-
nesses. Jet sold itself to Walmart for $3
billion.
Last year the subscription razor serv-
ice Dollar Shave Club sold to Unilever
for $1 billion. And the online pet store
Chewy.com was acquired by PetSmart,
reportedly for more than $3 billion.
Some start-ups have also moved away
from models that compete for
customers on price or rely on fads, like
flash sales, for traction.
Stitch Fixs pitch is straightforward
enough: Trust the company to pick out
your tops, bottoms, shoes or accessories
for you.
When customers sign up, they fill out
an extensive form detailing style prefer-
ences, clothing needs and price points.
The start-ups algorithms then churn
out a set of potential choices, which one
of its 3,400 stylists most of them part
time then tailors to the individual
customer before sending out five items
in a package. Anything a customer does
not want can be returned free of charge,
and customers receive a 25 percent dis-
count when they buy everything in the
box.
At the companys warehouse, Eric
Colson, formerly a top data scientist at
Netflix, spoke to the role that data sci-
ence once the province of high-tech
giants plays in nearly every aspect of
the Stitch Fix business.
Mr. Colson excitedly illustrated on
whiteboards how the companys sys-
tems can narrow down a broad range of
womens pants to a relative few that
each individual customer is statistically
likely to keep.
Customers say, This thing you
picked out for me, I would never have
picked it out for myself, he said.
Algorithms have even cut the number
of steps needed for workers to pick out
clothes for individual clients.
Some people call this the Moneyball
of fashion, said Bill Gurley of the ven-
ture capital firm Benchmark, who sits
on Stitch Fixs board. The level of data
science done at this company compared
to the incumbent set is incomparable.
But that data-driven approach has
also been yoked to Ms. Lakes insistence
on running a financially healthy com-
pany. Given her early troubles raising
money from outside investors, Ms. Lake
worked toward becoming profitable
early.
We had a lean plan and a lean-lean
plan, Ms. Lake said of the business
model.
Stitch Fix declined to say what per-
centage of items are returned.
Yet the question remains whether
customers who are initially thrilled by
receiving a customized box of clothing
will remain customers for months or
even years.
Lauren Rivellino, an optometrist in
Charlotte, Va., was a Stitch Fix enthusi-
ast when she subscribed in 2015. She
loved trying clothes on at home rather
than a poorly lit dressing room, and
most items were flattering and reflected
her style.
But a year later, Ms. Rivellino stopped
using the service. I really have nothing
bad to say about them, she said in a re-
cent email. I just dont shop a lot.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 17

Sports
Teams brace for Olympics without N.H.L. players
I wouldnt say that any other country
PARIS
has an advantage, Prospal said. I
would actually say that Czechs will be
BY SALIM VALJI the ones to have the advantage because
AND JULIE ROBENHYMER we dont have as many players in the
N.H.L. as we used to.
Mens Olympic hockey teams are pre- Although the N.H.L. said the door was
paring for life without N.H.L. players. closed regarding player participation in
With about nine months until the Win- Pyeongchang, the International Ice
ter Games begin in Pyeongchang, South Hockey Federation remains hopeful
Korea, national hockey federations are that a deal can be reached. At a news
grappling with how to build their rosters conference in Paris last Tuesday, Ren
after the N.H.L. announced last month Fasel, the federations president, restat-
that it would not release its players for ed his hopes to have the worlds best
the Olympic tournament. players in South Korea.
Eleven of the 12 teams that qualified Im an optimistic guy, Fasel said.
for the 2018 Winter Olympics are partici- If N.H.L. players do not participate in
pating in the mens hockey world cham- the Olympics, the fans will not be
pionship in Paris and Cologne, Ger- happy, he added. The players will not
many, which ends Sunday. It is the last be happy. I hope you media will not be
major international tournament before happy. And the whole world will not be
the Pyeongchang Games. happy.
Vaclav Prospal, an assistant coach for Fasel also revealed that the federa-
the Czech Republic, said the N.H.L.s de- tion was engaged in talks with the
cision on the Olympics was going to N.H.L. Players Association and its ex-
change the entire thing. ecutive director, Donald Fehr. The two
We need to react to the situation, he communicate several times per week.
added. Last month, the union said it ad-
At the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, amantly disagreed with the N.H.L.s
17 N.H.L. players were on the Czech ros- shortsighted Olympic decision.
ter. Now the Czechs may be concentrat- N.H.L. owners and officials do not like
ing their scouting efforts on the Czech shutting down the league for a few
Extraliga, the Kontinental Hockey weeks during the Olympics and expos-
League, the Swedish Elite League and ing their best players to the risk of injury
the Finnish Elite League. halfway around the world. The league
Prospal said players in the Czech Ex- has sought financial, marketing and
traliga should be more motivated, given sponsorship concessions from the Inter-
the roster spots that could be available national Olympic Committee.
come February. We are trying to find a way to con-
Germany was among the last teams vince Gary to change his opinion, Fasel
to qualify for the Olympics, taking ad- said of Gary Bettman, the N.H.L. com-
vantage of a change in format that al- missioner.
lowed N.H.L. players to participate in But Fasel conceded that the Interna-
the qualifying tournament in Septem- tional Ice Hockey Federation was pre-
ber. But several players who helped paring for the Olympics without N.H.L.
Germany make it to South Korea will not GRIGORY DUKOR/REUTERS players. He suggested that the N.H.L.s
be going there with the team. A game between Norway and Slovenia last week in Paris in the world championship. Slovenia has only one N.H.L. player, and he is not playing in the tournament. loss would be a boon for the Russia-
I feel we would be more competitive based Kontinental Hockey League,
if our N.H.L. players were available, of which has 29 teams across eight coun-
course, but the players playing in Ger- end, were going to have a very competi- ent from its probable roster in Slovenia is that they have fewer non- the second time, was in a tough position. tries, including China.
many or other parts of Europe, they see tive team, said Jim Johannson, USA Pyeongchang. In countries like the N.H.L. players than countries like Swe- Our range for the national team is On the other side, what we will do if
a chance and a challenge for themselves Hockeys assistant executive director of United States and Canada, Olympics den, Finland, Russia and Canada. Ac- very small, Zupancic said. Were lucky the N.H.L. is not coming for sure, we will
that maybe they didnt see before with hockey operations. Its just tough today teams were made up entirely of N.H.L. cording to the International Ice Hockey because, except for one player, every- work with China and the K.H.L. that is
the opportunity to go to the Olympics, to be able to say, This is our core, be- players. Slovenia has only one N.H.L. Federation, Slovenia has just over 1,000 one else plays outside the country. That present in China, Fasel said.
said Franz Reindl, president of the Ger- cause we just dont know who is even go- player: the captain of the Los Angeles registered hockey players a far cry brings us quality in the national team.
man ice hockey federation. Its not our ing to be available to us at the moment. Kings, Anze Kopitar and he did not from the nearly 640,000 in Canada. Prospal said the Czechs would send a Salim Valji reported from Paris, and Ju-
decision, but we have to live with it. But for teams like Slovenia, not much come to the world championship. The Slovenia coach, Nik Zupancic, ac- quality team to South Korea, regardless lie Robenhymer from Cologne, Germany.
The good news is, we have a lot of will change in the selection process. The challenge for smaller hockey na- knowledged that his team, which will be of whether it has N.H.L. players at its Allan Kreda contributed reporting from
players, and were confident that in the Slovenias roster in Paris is not so differ- tions like the Czech Republic and participating in the Olympics for only disposal. Greenburgh, N.Y.

NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1988

GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES

SUDOKU No. 1605

WIZARD of ID DILBERT
(c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New York Times syndicate
Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz

KENKEN CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz

Fill the grid so Solution No. 1505 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

that every row,

column 3x3 box Fill the grids with digits so as not Across 27 Martin who wrote 48 Aid for administering 14 15 16

and shaded 3x3 to repeat a digit in any row or London Fields an oath of office
column, and so that the digits
1 Whole slew
box contains
17 18 19
within each heavily outlined box 28 Short dance wear 49 Segment of a binge-
5 Outer protein shell of
each of the
will produce the target number
watch
a virus 29 Rode the bench 20 21 22
numbers
1 to 9 exactly shown, by using addition, 11 Verve 30 Whopper inventor
50 Prince Williams mom

once. subtraction, multiplication or 51 Mules father 23 24 25

division, as indicated in the box. 14 Celeste Aida, e.g. 31 Marching well

52 CALIFORNIA + N
A 4x4 grid will use the digits
26 27 28
For solving tips 15 Futures analyst? 33 MARYLAND + O =
1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
and more puzzles:
= Majestic beast
16 Famous Tokyo-born Period in which
www.nytimes.com/
29 30 31 32
nothing special 55 1920s car
sudoku singer
For solving tips and more KenKen happens 56 Parodied
puzzles: www.nytimes.com/
33 34
17 WASHINGTON + R
kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@ = Intimidation tactic 35 Imps are little ones 57 ___ it ironic?
kenken.com
35 36 37 38 39 40 41
19 Option words 38 Sacagawea dollar, e.g. 58 Phishing target: Abbr.
20 Fusions 39 ___-relief 59 Gave an exam 42 43 44

KenKen is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 21 Smoked marijuana 42 Evelyn Waughs writer 60 Divergent actor
Copyright 2016 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved. brother James 45 46 47 48
23 Word repeated in
Ring Around the 43 Laborious Down 49 50
Rosy before We all task 1 Places where oysters
Answers to Previous Puzzles fall down are served 51 52 53 54
44 Salad green
24 MISSOURI + E = 45 NEBRASKA + T = 2 Victim of river
55 56 57
No fooling! diversion in Asia
Mortgage
26 Interpret specifications 3 Professional headgear 58 59 60
thats stereotypically
Solution to May 15 Puzzle red PUZZLE BY BRUCE HAIGHT
P E A R E B O N Y M O R A L 4 Got some sun 13 Prepares to shoot 33 Shaving mishaps 44 Curious George
A R I A B E N E S A M A Z E 5 Fleeces near the basket, say
34 English johns books, e.g.
C A M I N O R E A L Y E N T A
S O L E S G O E S 6 S. Amer. home of the 18 Phishing targets,
briefly 35 Chicago squad in old 46 Honor with insults
P R I V A T E E N T R A N C E tango
S.N.L. skits
A L A N C L O N E S 7 Ballet step 22 Scatterbrained 47 Charge for a plug?
R E S E N D S L O O M S P A 36 Passes by
8 Straight downhill run 24 Muslim leader 48 Complete block
C A P T A I N F A N T A S T I C 37 Hunters freezerful,
S T Y G A U L S E X T A N T
on skis 25 One-in-a-million
event maybe 50 SoCal force
F A R C E S A N T S 9 You win, alternatively
Q W E R T Y K E Y B O A R D S 27 Affected manner 39 Infantile 53 Big inits. in the
10 Put off
A H M E D E A N S 40 Finished! aerospace industry
11 Get dog-tired 30 [You crack me up]
T O A S T I N N E R C H I L D
A L I C E S C E N E I D E A 31 Understood, dude 41 View, as the future 54 Nod from offstage,
12 Neither here nor
R E L A X T O Y E D P O N Y there? 32 A Bobbsey twin 43 Rears of ships maybe
 ..
18 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Culture
A stage for Hirst (and a Biennale, too)
VENICE

Blockbuster show aims

to open wallets of both
collectors and curators
BY SCOTT REYBURN

Damien Hirsts Treasures From the

Wreck of the Unbelievable is the most
talked-about art show on earth. And all
of it is for sale.
The numbers boggle. Two museums;
54,000 square feet of exhibition space;
189 artworks, including more than 100
sculptures (one of them almost 60 feet
high); 21 cabinets filled with smaller ob-
jects.
Occupying the Punta della Dogana
and the Palazzo Grassi, museums run
by the French billionaire Franois
Pinaults foundation, until Dec. 3, this
privately financed exhibition purports
to display artifacts that were once
owned by the second-century collector
Cif Amotan II and that were salvaged, at
vast expense, from the depths of the In-
dian Ocean. Mr. Hirst told the BBC that
he had sunk probably more than 50
million pounds, or about $64.4 million, of
his own money into the project.
The visitor soon discovers maybe
when seeing a coral-encrusted bronze
self-portrait of the artist as a collector
holding Mickey Mouse by the hand
that the shipwreck is an elaborate
shaggy dog story. Treasures is Mr.
Hirsts latest body of work that aims to
astound with the scale of its ambition
and commercial success, like his $200
million Beautiful Inside My Head For-
ever auction at Sothebys in 2008.
That the latest gigantic selling ex-
hibition has been timed to coincide with
the 57th Venice Biennale underlines the
citys transformation every two years
into the worlds biggest art fair, as well
as a must-see overview of the latest cur-
rents in contemporary art.
Tailoring the exhibition to the trophy-
hunting mentality of wealthy collectors, GIANNI CIPRIANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

most of the major sculptures in the show
are available in three versions: Coral
(as if just retrieved from the sea), Treas-
ure (as if just restored) and Copy (like a
museum reproduction), each made in
an edition of three, with two extra re-
served for the artist. No real coral is
used in the exhibition. The bronzes were
cast by the Pangolin Editions foundry in
western England, and the marbles
carved in the Carrara region of Italy. The
largest bronzes are priced at more than
$5 million; a 4-foot-long white marble
Sphinx in the Copy format is $1.5 mil-
lion.
Mr. Hirsts showmanship and chutz-
pah have turned this extravaganza of
post-truth art into one of the great
love-it-or-hate-it exhibitions of recent
years.
Its virtuosity and a big workshop,
said Susanne Titz, director of the
Abteiberg Museum in Mnchenglad-
bach, Germany. Hes supersmart, but it
is cynical.
Critical opinion of the show is divided,
but has Treasures drawn enough
buyers to become a commercial suc-
cess? Franois Odermatt, a collector
from Montreal, is one such customer.
Its a fantasy; the ideas are bril-
liantly audacious, said Mr. Odermatt,
who, like others, bought works after be-
ing shown images on an iPad by Mr.
Hirsts dealers.
Mr. Odermatt said he paid about $2
million for a color-patinated Coral ver-
sion of The Diver, a 16-foot-high bronze
sculpture inspired by a Francis Bacon
painting, now on display at the Punta
della Dogana. He said he had also tried
to buy two other sculptures, but that the
editions of those pieces had already
The Diver, inspired by a Francis Bacon painting, is in Damien Hirsts new show, Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable, in Venice. A Canadian collector said he had bought a version for about $2 million.
Body, new and recent sculptures by the
Canadian artist Evan Penny. One of the
many unofficial collateral shows in
Venice, Ask Your Body features hy-
per-realistic pigmented resin imagin-
ings of the human body in varying states
of decline and distress. The life-size
sculpture Marsyas, informed by a cel-
ebrated Titian painting, is priced at
$325,000.
Were happy our neighbor is Da-
mien, said Yves Trpanier, the gallerys
founder, adding that the works of Mr.
Penny and Mr. Hirst play off each other
in interesting ways.
The London dealer Victoria Miro
staked a more permanent claim in
Venice last week, opening a gallery
there with a show of 22 works on paper
by Chris Ofili, the artist who repre-
sented Britain at the 2003 Venice Bien-
nale.
Is it counterintuitive for a major inter-
national gallery to open a branch in a
city as underpopulated and over-
touristed as Venice?
Artists love coming here, Ms. Miro
said, and theyre queuing up to exhibit
in this space. The art world is so global
now.
Titled Poolside Magic, the inaugural
FRANCESCO ALLEGRETTO, VIA VICTORIA MIRO GALLERY show at Victoria Miro Venice consists of
Poolside Magic, the inaugural show at Victoria Miro Venice, features the British painter Chris Ofili. vibrantly colored mixed-media draw-
ings that evoke the exotic atmosphere of
Trinidad, where Mr. Ofili lives and
been bought. one of a number of events in Venice look- runs through Nov. 26. works. Prices range from about $50,000
Mr. Hirsts dealers, Gagosian and ing to gain the attention and perhaps Near the Palazzo Grassi, in the church to $100,000.
White Cube, have declined to comment open the wallets of the thousands of of San Samuele, the Calgary, Alberta, The market is more discreet at the Bi-
on sales. collectors, curators and museum direc- gallery Trpanier Baer and the curator ennale itself, but collectors who learn
Mr. Hirsts blockbuster show is just tors who flock to the Biennale, which Michael Short are presenting Ask Your the codes are aware that there is plenty
for sale. This says call me, Alain Ser-
vais, a collector in Brussels, said last
week at the Viva Arte Viva exhibition
in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini.
Mr. Servais was pointing to a label with
the telltale combination of Courtesy of
the artist and the name of a sponsoring
commercial gallery.
Pretty well everything is for sale
here, Mr. Servais added.
Unlike the pattern at a mainstream
art fair, curation this year in the hands
of Christine Macel rather than com-
merce is the prime consideration of the
Venice Biennale.
Ms. Macel invited 120 artists to con-
tribute to her main group show at the Gi-
ardini and the Arsenale, but with a budg-
et of about $14.2 million, the Biennale re-
lies on dealers to fund these
presentations.
The African-American artist Senga
Nengudi was among 40 selected for the
Giardini component of Viva Arte Viva.
Best known for her pantyhose sculp-
tures from the 1970s, Ms. Nengudi, 73, is
showing a new installation and wall
pieces combining industrial metal with
her trademark pantyhose medium.
These were priced on request at about
$120,000 to $250,000.
Martin Bethenod, director of the
Venice museums hosting the Hirst
show, said that there was something ap-
propriate about Treasures being at
the Punta della Dogana, a former mer-
cantile customs house.
Venice has always been a city of art
and trade. In 2017, the two are more
closely entwined than ever.

Opening up, a bit, on going solo

After One Direction,
Harry Styles finds writing
very therapeutic
BY JOE COSCARELLI
After being in a boy band, Harry Styles
was a blank slate.
Speaking recently about recording
his debut solo album which has, for
years, felt like a foregone conclusion,
given his status as the most breezily
winning member of One Direction
the floppy-haired 23-year-old Mr.
Styles said: When we started, I didnt
know what it was going to sound like,
or what I wanted it to sound like.
Where he landed, while not entirely
predictable, considering the beat-
driven pop sounds of the day, was close
to home: Pink Floyd, Beatles, Stones,
Fleetwood all the stuff I grew up
listening to, Mr. Styles said. And as
unlikely as that may sound, its true:
His self-titled LP is a paean to classic
rock and its English progeny (Oasis,
Blur), built around fingerpicked acous-
tic guitars, McCartneyesque jangle and
lyrics about one-night stands with
devilish women.
Shes all over me, its like I paid for
it/Im gonna pay for this, Mr. Styles
sings on Kiwi, a sleazy-sounding
number with grown-up references to
cigarettes and cocaine. Softer and
more broadly sensitive are the first
single, Sign of the Times (a homage
to Prince in title, and Bowie in prac-
tice), and the more believably adult
closing track, From the Dining Table.
Yet, for all the earthbound introspec-
tion and insistent maturity, Mr. Styles,
who was discovered, along with his
former group, by Simon Cowell on
The X Factor, remains as slippery in
conversation as any megafamous pop
star whos been dodging tabloids since
he was 16. On the phone from London
this month, he insulated his vagueness
with polite deflection and generalities
while declaring that his new album
was his most open work to date.
I just realized that I find writing to
be very therapeutic I think its when
I allow myself to be most vulnerable,
Mr. Styles said. Its exciting to kind of
share a piece of me that I dont feel like
Ive really put out there before. These
are edited excerpts from the conversa-
tion.
How did writing and recording in
Jamaica influence the album?
I went there because I didnt want to
be around distractions. The thing with
being in London, or L.A., or pretty
much anywhere that you know people,
is its tough, because you go into the
studio for 10 hours, and then, at some
point, everyone has to eat, and you go
home. I just wanted to really dive into
it and immerse myself. It became this
fluid thing that we were just doing all
of the time, rather than going in from 9
to 5. I also didnt want to be around
people who might tell me what [the
music] should sound like.
Was there added pressure in being
the one who had final say?
The guys that I was working with [the
writers and producers Jeff Bhasker,
Alex Salibian, Tyler Johnson and Kid
Harpoon], we were kind of all working
it out together. But in terms of choos-
ing the songs and the track listing, it
was probably time for me to have to
make some decisions for myself and
not be able to hide behind anyone else.
As a person, too, probably. Everything,
workwise, that Id done since I was 16
was made in a democracy.
There arent a lot of mainstream pop
stars going the rock route right now.
Did that feel like a risk?
Thats just what my references are. A
lot of people, when they make music,
they build a wall between them and
fans. They think: Well do this be-
cause people will get it. I really
wanted to make an album that I
wanted to listen to. That was the only
way I knew I wouldnt look back on it
and regret it. It was more, What do I
want to sit and listen to? rather than,
How do I shake up compared to
whats on radio right now?
Theres a handful of more PG-13
subject matter on the album. Was it
liberating to be able to act your age?
Starting out with no reference points
for the actual sound, the only thing
that I knew I wanted to be was honest.
I didnt want to sit and edit lyrics. In
the times of going, Oh, can I say
that? I wanted to be like, Yeah, I can
because thats what I wrote.
Youve spoken with a real respect for
the tastes of teenage girls, who have
driven a lot of your popularity.
When people have fans that are young-
er girls, people assume that their opin-
ion on the music is tainted by desires
that arent based around music. When,
in fact, I believe that fans that Ive had
in the past, if anything, expect and
demand more. Fans are usually the
first people to tell you when stuffs not
good enough. And I just think its a
HARLEY WEIR little nave to just write off younger
Harry Styles is releasing a solo album filled with adult themes and a rock edge. female fans.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
It isnt just about the steps
Misty Copeland reflects
on her essential growth
as an actor in dance
BY GIA KOURLAS
Misty Copeland isnt one of those princi-
pals who step onstage a few times a sea-
son. She dances. A lot.
Its crazy how I took jumping for
granted all these years, Ms. Copeland,
34, said as she stretched out on the floor
between rehearsals at American Ballet
Theaters studios. Stella Abrera, a fellow
principal, nodded in agreement. What
did you just do? she asked.
Kitri, Ms. Copeland replied.
Ouch, Ms. Abrera said.
This season Ms. Copelands second
year as a principal is a killer that in-
cludes her debut as Kitri in Don Qui-
xote on Tuesday and her New York de-
but as Giselle on May 26. As the compa-
nys artistic director, Kevin McKenzie,
put it, its symbolic because shes
taking the mantle of the classics on.
Acting will be an integral part of get-
ting her through it. Yes, she is Ballet
Theaters first African-American female
principal, but Ms. Copeland has, per-
haps more subtly, carved out another
space for herself: as a ballerina with
true acting chops.
You feel the age and the injuries, and
you realize the importance of character,
she said in a recent interview. I used to
muscle through these things. I cant do
that anymore. There needs to be some-
thing more, something else.
And that something else is acting, as
she has shown over the past few years in
ballets like Romeo and Juliet, Swan
Lake, Copplia and La Fille mal
Garde, not to mention Miss Turnstiles
in On the Town on Broadway. Ms.
Copeland has worked with Byam
Stevens, an acting coach, since 2008,
when she received the Leonore Annen-
berg Fellowship in the Arts. Their first
project? Gulnare in Le Corsaire,
which shell reprise this season.
She wasnt always aware of her talent
for acting, but Mr. McKenzie brought it
to her attention after she performed
Twyla Tharps Sinatra Suite, before
she was promoted to soloist in 2007.
Youre changing character from song
to song, she said. It was a good chal-
lenge for me to be able to do that: to be
romantic and be sassy and have empa-
thy, but be strong. That was the first
time that I realized, oh, this could be
something that Im good at.
BRAVEHEART
Misty clearly has an aptitude for
acting, Mr. Stevens said. Ballet in
some ways is so competitive that its not
unusual for dancers to forefront their
strengths and background their weak-
nesses. She goes right there and isnt
afraid.
And that bravery serves a purpose.
For Ms. Copeland, becoming invested in
her characters helps her get through
highly technical parts. Its making the
character, she said, so much more im-
portant than the steps.
While not an official member of the
coaching staff, Mr. Stevens has a history
of working with Ballet Theater dancers,
dating back to Mr. McKenzie, whom he
coached as Romeo in his dancing days,
and Susan Jaffe. (He also works with the
current members Isabella Boylston,
Devon Teuscher and Cassandra Tre-
nary, and in the fall will begin to work
with Ballet Theaters Studio Company.)
Ms. Copeland and Mr. Stevens dont
keep a regular schedule, but when they
Alphas and betas, and their egos
BOOK REVIEW
TRAJECTORY STORIES
By Richard Russo. 243 pp. Alfred A.
Knopf. $25.95.
BY JENNIFER SENIOR
Few authors do male vulnerability as
well as Richard Russo. Even his ras-
cals, you want to wrap in tissue paper
for safekeeping. (Well, not all of them.
But most.) He may be renowned for
his cuddly rogues, but he also special-
izes in their opposites unentitled
men who are unassuming and hopeless
around women and rumbling with
uncertainty. Russo is the troubadour of
self-deprecation.
You want a typical Russo beta male?
Heres an example: Nate, an English
professor whos been whisked out of
his university with a broom, and not
under pleasant circumstances. He
wonders if people actually see him
differently now, or if hes just seeing
himself differently, Russo writes.
Maybe its his own low self-esteem
that people are picking up on, self-
recrimination his new default mode.
Nate is the protagonist of Voice,
one of the quartet of thoughtful, soulful
stories that make up Russos new
collection, Trajectory. Three of them
originally appeared elsewhere; one,
Milton and Marcus, is new, and its How controlled, even in defeat.)
such a tart, dishy portrait of a famous
Hollywood actor that its a wonder that
Misty Copeland, outside American Ballet Theater. As she gets older, she seeks even more depth in her acting.
Ms. Copeland with Alban Lendorf in Giselle at American Ballet Theater.
meet, the process is the same: First,
they talk about the character and the
ballet in great detail. Then we get to a
point where well just watch a video of
someone doing it and break down the
steps, Ms. Copeland said. What are
you saying there? This gives me differ-
ent options and things to think about.
And the last step is hell come into the
studio with me. His thing is youre not to
be afraid of being ugly, which is hard for
dancers to do.
She laughed and, referring to Giselles
mad scene, added: Even when youre
it isnt being served at Spago.
The stories in Trajectory are a
guided tour through the authors
preoccupations: the follies of acade-
mia. (Fighting words, but Id pit Rus-
sos Straight Man against any of the
novels in David Lodges Campus
Trilogy.) The disappointments of
midlife. (A theme in virtually every
Russo novel, but if youre new in these
parts, grab The Risk Pool or No-
bodys Fool or Empire Falls; the last
one earned the Pulitzer Prize in 2002.)
How marriage devolves into a two-
headed Kabuki drama. How children
recapitulate the mistakes of their
parents. And, most notably most
persistently in this collection how
the world neatly divides into those who
believe they are special, and those who
do not.
The egos of all the main characters
in Trajectory fall on the invisible
ends of the electromagnetic spectrum.
At some point, each of these characters
collides with another whose self-regard
is of a far more vivid hue.
In Voice, Nate has to endure the
mockery of his slick older brother, who
repeatedly describes Nates fragile
state with an adjective thats as vulgar
as it is emasculating. In Horseman, a
smug frat boy tells his professor,
Dont hold back, as she contemplates
how to punish him for plagiarism.
(How brash men are, she told herself.
In Intervention, a real estate agent
in Maine listens, somewhat incredu-
KHALID AL-BUSAIDI
going crazy, its so pretty. Just be ugly.
ROLE CALLS: KITRI AND GISELLE
Im still trying to find Kitri, Ms.
Copeland said. Im just not there yet.
The high-spirited Kitri was the first
role that Ms. Copeland fantasized about
performing as a young dancer. Its not
super deep or doesnt seem that way,
she said, and now with all of the experi-
ences Ive had, its hard for me to go to
that. It feels very phony, and I hate that.
Im trying to make her seem real.
As for Giselle, the young girl who falls
lously, as a client tells him that she
always believed it when her father told
her that she was special. (Only re-
cently has she concluded otherwise.)
The idea is foreign to the agent, who,
even after receiving a cancer diagno-
sis, never got angry or succumbed to
self-pity. Hed simply concluded,
Russo writes, that he wasnt special.
But the real revelation in Trajec-
tory is Milton and Marcus, the story
of a down-on-his-luck novelist and
sometime screenwriter whos sum-
moned to the home of a legendary
actor named William Nolan.
To be clear: Richard Russo is not
down on his luck. And I hope pray
that his wife is not, and has never
been, as ill as the narrators is here.
But Russo has written and doctored
a number of screenplays before, in-
cluding an adaptation of Bill Brysons
A Walk in the Woods. One of the two
stars of that film was Robert Redford.
Theres really no question that Rus-
sos William Nolan character is based
on Redford.
Nolan insists on being called Regu-
lar Bill. (People call Redford Ordi-
nary Bob, a holdover from his Ordi-
nary People days.) Nolans place is in
Jackson Hole, Wyo. (Sundance, Jack-
son Hole; tomayto, tomahto.) Nolan is
15 years older than the author. (Red-
ford is 13 years older than Russo; close
enough.) Nolan made a series of buddy
movies with another actor, now dead,
the first and best about two Depres-
sion-era con artists.
Ms. Copeland preparing for Don Quixote with her acting coach, Byam Stevens.
in love with Albrecht, a nobleman in dis-
guise when she learns of his decep-
tion, she goes mad and dies Ms.
Copeland knows one quality she will
steer clear of: childlike.
I think shes a little bit more with it,
she said. Shes in denial about the reali-
ties of her life. Shes not a peasant, and
shes not royalty, so she has this weird
in-between fairy-tale life. She knows
somethings off about Albrecht, but she
refuses to accept that because hes read-
ing her poetry, and its making her feel a
certain way. So shes kind of removed.
ELENA SEIBERT
Richard Russo
The guy is about as well disguised as
Inspector Clouseau.
Milton and Marcus also features a
brief and affectionate cameo of a char-
acter who is clearly Paul Newman,
with whom Russo collaborated three
times.
Nolan is not imbued with nearly the
same affection. He comes across as a
secret cheapskate and overt narcissist,
a man whos shrewdly selective about
dialing up his sincerity, which itself is a
mask for ruthlessness.
Dont let the wickedness of Milton
and Marcus fool you. It happens to be
DOLLY FAIBYSHEV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
DOLLY FAIBYSHEV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
But I dont think shes stupid.
She also wants to tackle the mad
scene as a progression. The town, she
said, has witnessed Giselles humilia-
tion. She cant believe that this is going
to be the rest of her life, Ms. Copeland
said. Shes always going to be that girl
that this happened to. I think her ques-
tion is: How do I get out? How do I es-
cape this? Thats what pushes her to go
over the edge.
Mr. Stevens said such an approach
plays to Ms. Copelands strengths.
Misty doesnt do coy very well, he
JAMES NIEVES/THE NEW YORK TIMES
the most beautiful story in the book.
And how much of it is true is beside
the point. What matters is how it re-
flects the larger themes of Russos
work. Jackson Hole is the ultimate foil
to the decaying mill towns of Russos
novels, and actors the ultimate foils to
the low-esteem schlubs Russo writes
about so well.
More than their beauty, wealth and
talent, the narrator observes, we
envied their moral freedom, their
ability to trade up and up again, while
avoiding the consequences of doing
so.
TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017 | 19
culture
said. Its not her energy. And what is
her dramatic power? Her incredible
emotional and spiritual generosity.
TURNING THOSE FOUETTS
Ms. Copeland continues to explore roles
shes done before. For example Odile,
the evil counterpart to Odette, the en-
chanted swan queen in Swan Lake.
Its been hard for me to connect with
her, Ms. Copeland said. I thought it
was going to be the opposite.
Its no secret that shes faced difficulty
executing Odiles famous 32 whipping
fouett turns. By attacking Odile in
terms of her character, she was hoping
that would change. Its so mental, she
said. Its crazy.
During a rehearsal the night before a
performance in Washington earlier this
year, Ms. Copeland described how after
her first fouett, she felt a pop in her
neck and a warm sensation travel down
her spine. Even just approaching the
fouetts, she said, it was like some-
thing tensed up in me and made that
happen.
So she reached out to a sports psy-
chologist in California. I spent 10 hours
with this guy nonstop, talking about my
feelings about myself in connection to
my career and how I feel people are
judging me, she said. Especially when
it comes to that role, and what it means
to be a black woman doing it. Im trying
to get to the root of all of it, and just be
like as pure as I can be when I go out
there and not carry all that baggage.
Mr. Stevens said he wants Ms.
Copeland to get to where the fouetts
are a tool of seduction, not a technical
feat. Odile is saying: All right, big boy:
What Im offering you is an adult liaison
with no strings. The other girl is selling
forever marriage. Im not doing that.
Im selling tonight. Thats what well be
working on.
NO THANKS, BROADWAY
If Ms. Copeland seems particularly at-
tentive to her emotions, its because her
life has been placed under a microscope.
In ballet, she is that rare thing a celeb-
rity. She knows Barack Obama. On two
recent days off, she spoke at Harvard
University and filmed a Dannon com-
mercial. But she maintains her devotion
to ballet, even though, as she put it,
Spike Lee will not leave me alone.
Broadway is calling, too; she isnt in-
terested. People dont understand that
this is a full-time job, she said. Its
what Ive worked on my whole life, and
Im not going to throw it away because I
can make some money and do a couple
of Broadway shows.
She doesnt have time to waste. Body
maintenance is also something of a full-
time job; another reason she has trouble
with fouetts is physical. She turns on a
leg that has a plate screwed into it to pre-
vent more stress fractures, to which she
is susceptible.
In other words, fouetts hurt. She is
cross-training to strengthen her ham-
strings and her glutes, hoping that it will
ease the pain in her shins.
Don Q is just so much jumping!
Ms. Copeland said, with an anguished
laugh. Youre counting the jets.
But Ms. Copeland will figure Kitri out.
Shell act her way through it, and if she
focuses hard enough, real life will take
over, as it did when she was performing
Juliet recently at La Scala Ballet.
That was the first time that it truly
hit me about Princes passing, said Ms.
Copeland, who was close to the musician
and performed with him. I always try
to make my acting as realistic as possi-
ble, but I remember having that thought
in that moment and just weeping.
Boy, do these people believe they are
special.
Russos insight into the differences
between Redfords and Newmans
styles is also one of the best snippets of
film criticism youll read this year.
Newman here referred to as
Wendy was a risk-taker and emo-
tional anarchist, playing characters
who either screwed up or got sucker
punched by circumstance and had to
take a standing eight count. Whereas
Redford Regular Bill is an
emotional conservative, the reliable,
competent American Everyman, the
Nick Carraway who would never un-
derstand or accept or like himself half
as much as Gatsby did.
Now reconsider all the Newman and
Redford films youve watched with this
in mind. Reconsider Russos novels,
while youre at it. The author may as
well be describing the two male
archetypes that dominate his fiction.
Unfortunately, Nolan could be an
Everyman only onscreen. Ironically, it
was in real life that being regular had
become unattainable, the narrator
concludes. Regular Bill disappears into
the sunset by the storys end, presum-
ably to continue with his charmed,
bespoke life. But the narrator a
genuine Everyman and substitute for
so many of us will go on to face a
reality far more brutal and compli-
cated. It will abruptly break your
heart. Thats what Richard Russo does,
without pretension or fuss, time and
time again.

20 | TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2017
travel
A golf course at home with nature
NEXT STOP
An ambitious new resort
in central Wisconsin
evokes links of Scotland
BY TOM REDBURN
Aldo Leopolds A Sand County Alma-
nac is an environmental classic. First
published in 1949, a year after Leopolds
death, it chronicled and celebrated the
natural life amid the changing seasons
around his scruffy weekend retreat and
family farm, in a dirt-poor region of Wis-
consin that starts an hours drive north
of Madison, the state capital.
The area is still dirt-poor, particularly
once you get away from the honky-tonk
tourist attractions and water parks sur-
rounding the Wisconsin Dells. The near-
est big city is Milwaukee, more than 150
miles away. OHare airport, in Chicago,
is four hours by car; so are the Twin Cit-
ies. Its not exactly the first place that
comes to mind when one thinks of build-
ing a world-class golf resort.
But nestled near the tiny towns of
Rome and Nekoosa, about 100 miles
from Madison, hidden away for decades
under vast rows of red pine trees
planted to produce pulp, was something
extraordinary: a stunning section of the
exposed sandy bottom of a prehistoric
glacial lake that, geologists say, flooded
a large area of central Wisconsin about
18,000 years ago, when an ancient ice
dam collapsed.
Mike Keiser, who made a fortune in
the greeting card business, is known to
avid players for creating the golf mecca
Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast, a
long 250-mile drive from Portland. He
found his way to this equally far-off-the-
beaten-path spot in Wisconsin in 2013. It
lacked the year-round playing possibili-
ties of places like Myrtle Beach, S.C.,
and Scottsdale, Ariz., and the pictur-
esque seaside locale that Mr. Keiser had
considered essential to luring golfers
away from home, but he fell in love with
the place anyway.
What the land had, in spades, was im-
mense tumbling dunes, some 50 feet
high or more. And the potential, once the
nonnative trees were cleared, of becom-
ing home to not just one but four or five
spectacular courses. The firm, sandy
fairways, long open views, and expo-
sure to strong winds would evoke the fa-
mous links of Scotland and Ireland and
pay direct homage to the less well-
known but well-loved heathland
courses outside London. Mr. Keiser
bought 1,700 acres from a tree plantation
owner. He commissioned the golf design
team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, a
former touring pro, to create a new
course, to be known as Sand Valley. It
opened earlier this month.
Ive managed to play at some of Wis-
consins better known public-access golf
courses, including Erin Hills outside
Milwaukee, where the United States
Open will be held in June, and Whistling
Straits, along Lake Michigan, which an-
chors the Kohler luxury resort complex.
It is one of four courses, all designed by
Pete Dye, that offer a rare combination
of links-style and parkland golf within
proximity of one another.
Last year I learned about the ambi-
tions of Sand Valley, and that it would be
open for limited preview play that sum-
mer. As it turned out, my wife, Lisa, and I
were planning to drive to Minneapolis
from our home outside New York last
fall so that I could attend the Ryder Cup
golf tournament and we could visit
Lisas sister and her partner. Sand Val-
ley was not far off our route.
When we drove toward the course, on
the last Monday morning of September,
I didnt know what to expect. A couple
months earlier, I had made a reservation
by email to play that afternoon, spend
the night at one of the new rooms that
were supposed to have opened, and then
play again the next morning before
moving on to Minneapolis. Where we
would go for dinner was an open ques-
tion.
Our GPS device led us astray, and as
we wandered around the countryside of
The professional golfer Luke Donald hitting out of a bunker during the 2010 P.G.A. Championship, which was held at Whistling Straits
in Kohler, Wis. It is another high-profile course that features links-style play in the state.
A course at the Sand Valley golf resort in Nekoosa, Wis., on land that is filled with tumbling dunes, some 50 feet high or more. The resort and its first course opened earlier this month.
farms, cottages, cranberry bogs and
lakes, we came upon a roadside bar with
an original Pabst Blue Ribbon logo.
Eventually, having stopped to call for di-
rections, we found a small sign directing
us onto a gravel road, and entered what
looked a lot more like a sprawling con-
struction site than a golf resort.
In the strong wind, sand was blowing
everywhere across an unpaved parking
area. The future clubhouse was a hole in
the ground, with a foundation in place
and not much else. We found the check-
in desk and golf shop, in a nearly win-
Golf and restoration will have a
symbiotic relationship at Sand
Valley. The success of the golf
resort will feed the expansion of
the restored landscape.
dowless converted 40-foot shipping con-
tainer. However, as soon as we saw the
immense landscape of wide green fair-
ways, golden-colored prairie grasses,
low shrubs and acres of washboard sand
dunes, we knew we had come to some-
place special.
At first blush, though, this didnt look
like Aldo Leopolds vision. A thing is
right when it tends to preserve the in-
tegrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic
community, Leopold wrote in one of his
most famous passages. It is wrong
when it tends otherwise.
Could a sprawling golf development
really reflect his conservation ethic?
Maybe it could.
Mr. Keisers son Michael lives in Mad-
ison and is responsible for carrying out
the project. In an email after our visit, he
said that Leopolds words inspired us to
rebuild a forgotten world in Adams
County, where Sand Valley is located.
The pine barrens of central Wisconsin
are as rare as they are beautiful wed
like to help them flourish.
Last year, the Keisers bought another
7,000 acres, setting it aside in a land con-
servation easement. Ultimately they
hope to return at least 100,000 acres to
their natural state. Golf and restoration
will have a symbiotic relationship at
Sand Valley, he said. The success of
the golf resort will feed the expansion of
the restored landscape.
That afternoon, when I stood on the
first tee, at a high point that the
developers call the Volcano, the end-
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
RYAN FARROW
less landscape of rolling hills and emer- Thats fine in a limited edition, he Lisa and I walked the first hole and a The next morning, I couldnt wait to
ald green fairways, interlaced with wav- added, but we are more interested, like couple others as the sun was setting, play a second round. With Mr. Schroeder
ing grasses and ripples of sand, seemed Mike, in making a golf course that is ex- and the course looks as if it will be as as my caddie again, I teed off early from
to be dancing in the wind. I was thrilled. tremely enjoyable to play on a repeated beautiful, and even more open, than some longer tees.
The course is for walkers, except for basis, and naturally spectacular in Sand Valley. Mr. Coore and Mr. Cren- It was tougher, and the best I could
those with disabilities that require a terms of visual presentation. shaw are also designing a short par-3 manage was an 85. If anything it was
cart. After the resorts opening, the Coore/ course, which should be ready in 2018. even more exciting, and I was able to
My caddie, Mark Schroeder, a retired Crenshaw layout will be the only course Theres already great golf in Wiscon- truly appreciate the natural features of
teacher, urged me to play from the mid- fully available for play. But a second de- sin, said Josh Lesnik, an executive at the land.
dle Sand tees, which made the length sign, by David McLay Kidd, who created KemperSports, which will manage Sand Mike gave us a great gift, a really
of the course a modest 6,100 yards. He the first links at Bandon Dunes, is al- Valley for the Keisers. But soon golfers spectacular site for golf, Mr. Coore said.
pointed to a distant spot on the right side ready well underway. A six-hole loop will look to Wisconsin as a place like And I remember he told us, If the first
of the first fairway and we were off. I named Mammoth Dunes is expected to Scotland or western Ireland, where they course is not very good, there wont be a
dont remember that much of the indi- open for preview play this summer, and can go for a week and, within a short second or third course, so dont mess it
vidual holes, perhaps because I rarely the full 18 holes might be ready as early drive, play someplace special every up.
got into too much trouble and I was hav- as September. day. They didnt.
ing too much fun. I almost never break
80, but that day, despite the wind, I shot
a 77, with one birdie (on the fourth hole,
a par 5) and no double bogies.
There are five par 3s, all of different
lengths and styles. The 17th was one of
my favorites; a mound partially blocked
a view of the punch bowl green, but my
slightly wayward shot nonetheless fun-
neled onto the surface, where I man-
aged to two-putt from 60 feet away.
The par-5 18th, which had a bent el-
bow green just below Craigs Porch (the
food stand, named for the Wisconsin golf
contractor who found the site), plays
back up to the Volcano. My second shot
had to find an opening between a steep
dune on the left and a tremendous trap
on the right that stretched at least 120
yards. I finished with a nifty par and re-
warded myself with a chocolate peanut
butter Nyes ice cream sandwich.
Despite the nearby construction,
wildlife was thriving. Birds were every-
where, and we saw two foxes and a fam-
ily of deer.
That evening was the first presiden-
tial debate. We were offered an excellent
dinner, served in a common room with a
big-screen TV, shared with other guests.
Bill Coore, the course co-designer, was
staying there, too, with his wife and two
friends from France.
Mr. Coore, in a later telephone conver-
te in er
sation, said Sand Valley was one of those
ar eth ov
relatively rare sites that feels like golf
r. g
in a natural state. You can lay it out
sm m le
pretty quietly on the land to bring the
so uzz
golf course to life.
The course, he said, is intended to ap-
P
.
id
o
peal to players of any caliber, particu-
dr
An
larly those with average skills. When he
on
so
and Mr. Crenshaw started designing
al
w
golf courses decades ago, everybody
No
was trying to build courses to test the
best players.
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