ART IN DEMAND
LOOKING FOR A
SAFE PURCHASE
PAGE 14 | CULTURE
Airstrikes
were the
right choice
Nicholas Kristof
OPINION
President Trumps airstrikes against
Syria were of dubious legality. They
were hypocritical. They were impulsive.
They may have had political motiva-
tions. They create new risks for the
United States.
But most of all, they were right.
Im deeply suspicious of Trumps
policies and competence, but this is a
case where he is right and Barack
Obama was wrong. Indeed, many of us
believe that Obamas worst foreign
policy mistake was his passivity in
Syria.
One of Trumps problems is that he
has lied so much and so often that he
doesnt have credibility at home or
abroad in a foreign crisis like this. I
likewise find it unnerving that he came
to the right decision in an impulsive
way, changing policy 180 degrees after
compelling pho-
tos emerged of
Amid all the children gassed
risks ahead, in Syria. Should a
the crucial presidents deci-
sions about war
question
is what
comes next.
really depend on
the photos taken?
Yet for all my
distrust of
Trumps motiva-
tions and capacity to execute a strategy,
heres why I believe he was right.
Since the horrors of mustard gas
during World War I a century ago, one of
the worlds more successful interna-
tional norms has been a taboo on the use
of chemical weapons. We all have an
interest in reinforcing that norm, so this
is not just about Syria but also about
deterring the next dictator from turning
to sarin.
For an overstretched military, poison
gas is a convenient way to terrify and
subdue a population. Thats why Sad-
dam Hussein used gas on Kurds in 1988,
and why Bashar al-Assad has used gas
against his own people in Syria. The
best way for the world to change the
calculus is to show that use of chemical
weapons carries a special price such
as a military strike on an air base.
Paradoxically, Assad may have used
chemical weapons because he per-
ceived a green light from the Trump
administration. In recent days, Rex
Tillerson, Sean Spicer and Nikki Haley
all suggested that it was no longer
American policy to push for the removal
of Assad, and that may have em-
boldened him to open the chemical
weapons toolbox. That mistake made it
doubly important for Trump to show
KRISTOF, PAGE 11
A storied name in soccer faces uncertain future
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
Steaua Bucharest owner
takes on Romanian Army
for control of clubs legacy
BY JAMES MONTAGUE
For once, the crowds that had gathered
to shout and to denounce were not angry
at Gigi Becali.
In recent years, Becali, the owner of
F.C. Steaua Bucharest, Romanias most
popular and successful soccer team, had
become used to being vilified. And not
just because he is one of the countrys
richest and most controversial charac-
ters, one who makes headlines for his
negative opinions on women and gays.
Since 2011, Becali has also been in a legal
battle for control of Steaua which won
the 1986 European Cup, the precursor to
UEFAs Champions League with a
formidable adversary: the clubs former
owner, the Ministry of Defense.
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BACK PAGE | TRAVEL PAGE 4 | WORLD
..
INTERNATIONAL EDITION | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
Trump
dispenses
with his
own dogma
NEWS ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON
Response to Syria shows
a highly improvisational
and situational approach
BY PETER BAKER
As he confronted a series of interna-
tional challenges from the Middle East
to Asia last week, President Trump
made certain that nothing was certain
about his foreign policy. To the extent
that a Trump Doctrine is emerging, it
seems to be this: Dont get roped in by
doctrine.
In a week in which he hosted foreign
heads of state and launched a cruise
missile strike against Syrias govern-
ment, Mr. Trump dispensed with his
own dogma and forced other world lead-
ers to re-examine their assumptions
about how the United States will lead in
this new era. He demonstrated a highly
improvisational and situational ap-
proach that could inject a risky unpre-
dictability into relations with potential
antagonists, but he also opened the door
to a more traditional American engage-
OZAN KOSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE GETTY IMAGES ment with the world that eases allies
A boy on a bus carrying Syrian victims of a chemical attack after they were treated. Donald J. Trump had spent years arguing that Syrias war was not Americas problem. fears.
As a private citizen and candidate, Mr.
Trump spent years arguing that Syrias
civil war was not Americas problem,
that Russia should be a friend, and that
Chasing parity at the grocers China was an enemy whose leaders
should not be invited to dinner. As presi-
dent, Mr. Trump, in the space of just
days, involved America more directly in
the Syrian morass than ever before,
But now that sense of resentment opened a new acrimonious rift with Rus-
BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA
of being treated as second-class citizens sia, and invited Chinas leader for a
by more prosperous neighbors is largely convivial, lets-get-along dinner
reaching even into the regions refriger- at his Florida resort.
Eastern Europeans say ators and cupboards. With rising pas- In the process, Mr. Trump upended
sion, prominent politicians and local domestic politics as well. He rejected the
they get shoddier goods news media have taken up the issue of nationalist wing of his own White
than some E.U. neighbors whether Eastern Europeans are being House, led by Stephen K. Bannon, his
sold inferior products. chief strategist, who opposes entangle-
BY RICK LYMAN
The issue has steadily emerged with ment in Middle East conflicts beyond
growing consumer awareness among a fighting terrorism and favors punitive
When Simona Budinska, a 31-year-old newly prosperous middle class. Yet it trade measures against Beijing. And Mr.
public relations specialist, had trouble also crosses class and party lines, so it is Trump, by launching the strike on Rus-
finding lactose-free products at her local ready-made for politicians looking to sias ally Syria, undercut critics who
grocery, she and her husband began play on the regions festering griev- have portrayed him as a Manchurian
driving across the border to Austria, ances as a wave of nationalism sweeps candidate doing the bidding of Presi-
where the stores were teeming with the Continent. dent Vladimir V. Putin after the Kremlin
choices. Last month, the leaders of Poland, intervened in last years election on his
But it was not the variety of products Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Re- behalf.
on the shelves as much as what was in public went so far as to ask the Euro- Given his unpredictability, none of
them that stunned the couple. The pean Commission to investigate the this means that Mr. Trump has pivoted
washing powder was just much more ef- complaint, which has been backed up in AKOS STILLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES permanently in any of these areas. The
fective, and the ketchup contained more recent years by several studies, though A supermarket in Budapest. The countries of Eastern and Central Europe have long TRUMP, PAGE 6
tomatoes than the Slovak one, Ms. not exhaustive ones. bridled at being treated like the poor cousins of the European Union family.
Budinska said. People who are bothered about this STRIKE BRINGS UNCERTAINTY TO SYRIANS
The countries of Eastern and Central trend tend to be young, middle class and The American bombing after a chemi-
Europe have long bridled at being higher income, said Daniel Prokop, Food producers and industry ana- Brand owners nearly always tailor a cal attack on Syrian civilians was met
treated like the poor cousins of the Euro- head of social and political research at lysts point out that it is common for in- product for its target market, whether with optimism, but also doubt. PAGE 6
pean Union family. It does not help that Median, a private polling and marketing gredients to differ from country to coun- by age, ethnicity, income, geographic lo-
even after more than a dozen years in agency in Prague. Politicians need try, sometimes to favor local producers, cation or any other demographic, said CHINA ASSAILS U.S. BOMBING
the bloc, wages remain lower, corrup- some enemies to mobilize support. And sometimes to appease local tastes and, Lisa McTigue Pierce, executive editor of After President Xi Jinping left America,
tion persists and public services, like they like the food issue, because it can be yes, sometimes to increase profits by Packaging Digest, published in Oak the Chinese news media denounced the
schools and hospitals, are far scruffier. blamed on foreigners. substituting cheaper ingredients. PARITY, PAGE 2 missile strike on Syria. PAGE 6
It is a dispute that threatens to de-
stroy one of Europes best-known
teams. It has divided the clubs fans,
with the majority boycotting while Be-
cali remains in charge. It has seen Becali
lose the rights to the clubs badge and
even its name. It has also led to the cre-
ation of a new army team, CSA Steaua
Bucharest, which is likely to begin play
next season in Romanias fourth divi-
sion.
Yet over the last few months, as tens
of thousands of protesters braved biting
winter nights to gather in Piata Victoriei
Victory Square to demand an end
to corruption in public life here, Becali
for once was not the target of their ire. In
fact, he joined the crowds.
It was a sign of solidarity, he said,
sitting in a high-ceilinged reception
room in his palace, which lies only yards
from Victory Square. Becali, dressed in
a maroon suit and black shirt, was sur-
rounded in a halo of gold leaf. An icon of
St. George, his patron saint, hung
ANDREI PUNGOVSCHI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES nearby. A self-portrait leaned against
Gigi Becali, a millionaire who has owned F.C. Steaua Bucharest since 2003, has lost the wall by the door.
control of the teams badge and name, and the support of many fans. BUCHAREST, PAGE 12
Issue Number
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Germany 3.20 Latvia 3.90 Oman OMR 1.250 Serbia Din 280 Tunisia Din 4.800
Cameroon CFA 2600 Egypt EGP 20.00 Hungary HUF 880 Lebanon LBP 5,000 Poland Zl 14 Slovakia 3.50 Turkey TL 9
Canada CAN$ 5.50 Estonia 3.50 Israel NIS 13.50 Lithuania 5.20 Portugal 3.20 Slovenia 3.00 U.A.E. AED 12.00
Croatia KN 22.00 Finland 3.20 Israel / Eilat NIS 11.50 Luxembourg 3.20 Qatar QR 10.00 Spain 3.20 United States $ 4.00
Cyprus 2.90 France 3.20 Italy 3.20 Malta 3.20 Republic of Ireland 3.20 Sweden Skr 30 United States Military
Czech Rep CZK 110 Gabon CFA 2600 Ivory Coast CFA 2600 Montenegro 3.00 Reunion 3.50 Switzerland CHF 4.50 (Europe) $ 1.90
Denmark Dkr 28 Great Britain 2.00 Jordan JD 2.00 Morocco MAD 30 Saudi Arabia SR 13.00 Syria US$ 3.00

2 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
page two
Brandy flows at his fountain of youth
NEW YORK CITY JOURNAL
At 107, man is a fixture
in an Italian-American
slice of New Yorks Bronx
BY COREY KILGANNON
The problem with turning 107, Joe Bind-
er said, is that you cant work no more.
Mr. Binder turned 107 on Saturday, but
he had the confidence to celebrate early
during his regular Wednesday lunch at
Marios on Arthur Avenue, the main
drag in Belmont, a longstanding Italian
neighborhood in the Bronx.
Until a few years ago, Mr. Binder was
holding down two jobs. By day, he
tended the Marios parking lot. By night,
while working as a waiter of sorts, an oc-
cupational hazard upended his routine.
I was working as a house boy in a lo-
cal gambling joint, serving coffee for the
guys playing cards, he recalled. But
the secondhand cigarette smoke was
killing me.
Experiencing shortness of breath, he
moved out of his apartment in the area
and into an assisted living center
Joe Binder has been a popular
character for decades on Arthur
Avenue, singing and telling jokes
in numerous establishments.
nearby. Not that this, or his early retire-
ment, put a dent in Mr. Binders social
life on Arthur Avenue.
He has been a popular character for
decades there, livening up numerous es-
tablishments by singing and telling
jokes.
Besides Marios on Wednesdays, Mr.
Binder goes on Saturday nights to
Pasquales Rigoletto restaurant down
the block, where he dances with his 53-
year-old girlfriend and performs songs
like Minnie the Moocher and novelty
tunes like Sweet Violets.
He came in a few years ago and said,
Can I have my job back? said Joe
Migliucci, the fourth-generation owner
of Marios, as he came out of the kitchen
and shook Mr. Binders hand on
Wednesday.
Mr. Binder was dressed sharply in
slacks, a white turtleneck, a tan blazer
and a tan pocket square. He wore a
pinkie ring on his left hand and held a
silver handled cane.
Mr. Binder delighted patrons by
singing Young at Heart, but stopped at
the lyric if you should survive to a hun-
dred and five.
He corrected himself: I mean, If you
should survive to 107, and youre still
telling jokes and not stuck in heaven.
Local residents see a comic irony in
Mr. Binders being the toast of an Italian
neighborhood. He is Jewish and was
raised by Yiddish-speaking parents in
Brownsville, Brooklyn, but now is more
Eastern Europeans chase parity at the grocers
PARITY, FROM PAGE 1
Brook, Ill.
Indeed, she said, the trend has been
that consumers demand such
customization and personalization, not
homogeneity, at the supermarket.
But bitter Eastern Europeans insist
that their situation is different. They are
part of the European Union, a common
market, and they believe that means
that food quality should remain constant
throughout all 28 nations.
We cannot allow our citizens to be
considered second class, said Gabriela
Matecna, Slovakias agriculture min-
ister. Slovak consumers, just like con-
sumers from other countries of the Eu-
ropean Union, have the right to get the
same quality of food when it comes to
the same brand from the same
producer.
With parliamentary elections set for
The old town in Bratislava, Slovakia. Rumors that inferior food is shipped to Eastern Europe have swirled for years.
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Besides Marios on Wednesdays, above, Joe Binder goes on Saturday nights to Pasquales Rigoletto restaurant down the block, where he dances with his 53-year-old girlfriend.
conversant in Italian. He jokes that he
was born Jewish but will die Italian. His
wife was Italian and died in 1987.
His 100th birthday was celebrated in a
neighborhood defined by the culinary
and cultural experiences on Arthur Ave-
nue, with many restaurants supplying
dishes.
Mr. Binder said that before World War
II he worked delivering U-Bet syrups
and sodas, and that he had spent most of
his time on and around the avenue since
leaving the Navy in 1946. Two of his
three sisters lived into their 90s; the sur-
viving sister is 103 and lives in Florida.
He said his parents lived into their 80s,
but they never discussed their age.
Mr. Binder still makes frequent stops
at what he calls his fountain of youth,
the bar at Rigoletto, where he enjoys a
brandy or two.
His secret to a long life, Mr. Binder
said, is being kind to people. If you get
hurt, he added, you turn the other
cheek.
He sat on Wednesday with two wom-
en, Marge Marcone, 90, and Terry Ciril-
lo, 81.
the fall, the food issue has gotten an even
bigger push next door in the Czech Re-
public. Marian Jurecka, minister of agri-
culture there, has been leading the
charge on the issue since 2015.
He denies that it has anything to do
with politics. But the populist party lead-
ing in the polls was created by Andrej
Babis, an oligarch currently serving as
finance minister, whose holdings in-
clude some of the countrys leading food
producers.
In Slovakia, the populist prime min-
ister, Robert Fico, faces rising competi-
tion from extreme right-wing groups
and a series of corruption scandals. He
has seized on the food issue, too.
We will ask the European Commis-
sion to adopt the suitable legislation as
soon as possible, Mr. Fico said this year,
to stop the practices that degrade the
citizens of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland
Mr. Binder, with his friend and occasional dancing partner Marge Marcone, 90, blew out
candles on his cake last Wednesday, in advance of his 107th birthday on Saturday.
Hes the most wonderful, most loving Were just hi friends, Ms. Cirillo
person who ever existed and thats why said. The 53-year-old, thats his gumar,
hes still alive, said Ms. Marcone, add- Ms. Cirillo said, using a slang term
ing that she still dances with Mr. Binder, among some Italian-Americans for a
be it rumba, merengue or swing. mistress.
and the Czech Republic.
While rumors that inferior food is Industry experts insist there are
shipped to the East have swirled for sound reasons for products to
years, only in 2011 did the Slovak Associ- differ between countries.
ation of Consumers conduct a compari-
son of a basket of products purchased in
Austria with the same products bought were of lesser quality, she said. And a
in Slovakia. subsequent survey of Slovak and Aus-
In all but one case, the products in the trian foods had even worse results.
East were inferior, the group concluded. The Czechs found that many brand-
This led Olga Sehnalova, a Czech name products Mvenpick bourbon
member of the European Parliament, to vanilla ice cream, Carbonell extra virgin
take up the cause. She conducted a test olive oil, Heinz ketchup were identical
with her own basket of products and whether purchased in Germany or in
found half were inferior. the Czech Republic.
Regrettably, I had to confirm that dif- But when differences were found in
ferences were really found, and not in other products, lesser quality in the East
terms of something being more or less was almost always the result.
tasty but in the quality of the basic ingre- Rama Classic margarine had lower fat
dients, Ms. Sehnalova said. content. Pepsi-Cola, Sprite and Nestea
A later test, released in February, used fructose as a sweetener in the
found that eight of 23 tested products Czech Republic, but actual sugar in Ger-
many. Canned luncheon meat sold un-
der the Tulip brand was all pork in Ger-
many, but it included mechanically sep-
arated poultry meat in the Czech Re-
public.
Officials at Rama did not respond to
requests for comment. But the differ-
ences are obvious to Jens Hansen, a
spokesman for Danish Crown, which
makes Tulip products.
It is two different products sold un-
der two different names in two different
countries, he said, adding that a quick
look at the list of ingredients makes that
clear.
Ms. Sehnalova, though, said the
Czechs conducting the study had taken
into account the entire visual impact
of the products, including their packag-
ing and label design, before deciding to
compare them.
Less meat, more additives and other
indicators to justify saying that the qual-
ity is lower, Ms. Sehnalova said. Thats
what we found.
Thus far, the only studies conducted
have been between Germany and the
Czech Republic, and Slovakia and Aus-
tria, and these have involved only a
AKOS STILLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES small sampling. But officials from the
region now want all European Union
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENNIFER S. ALTMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Phil Caggiano, 60, a friend of Mr.
Binders, was also at the table and told a
story.
A few years back, he recalled, Im
in the neighborhood and I see a couple
the old-timers kissing on the street
what the old-timers used to call mushing
it up.
Who was it but Joe Binder mushing it
up?
Then Mr. Caggiano stood up and sang
for the restaurant Aint That a Kick in
the Head. But first he said, If I sing
good, maybe I could borrow some
money.
Mr. Binder told a joke about going to
the eye doctor and learning he had a
cataract.
You dont say, he said. I thought I
had an Oldsmobile.
His friends knocked on the table for
good luck and said they would see
him a year later. Mr. Binder made no
guarantees.
People plan, God laughs, he said.
Thats why Im asking only for another
six months. If I make it, Ill ask for an-
other six months.
countries to undergo testing, to deter-
mine how widespread the issue is.
Food producers and industry experts
insist there are often sound reasons for
products to differ between countries: lo-
cal tastes, a preference for local ingredi-
ents, divergent buying patterns.
The formula for Coca-Cola is the
same all around the world, said Petr
Jonak, external affairs director for
Coca-Cola in Slovakia and the Czech Re-
public. Locally we add the water, CO2,
and some from the proven and autho-
rized top-quality sweeteners.
The Czech Republic gets fructose syr-
up, he said, but so do Spain and the
United States.
The Czech Association for Branded
Products said its products met all Euro-
pean Union regulations. If contents do
change from country to country, the dif-
ference is reflected on the ingredients
label.
Special attention is given to provid-
ing consumers with comprehensive in-
formation about the products, including
detailed specifications of ingredients on
the label, enabling them to make a quali-
fied choice, the association said in a
statement.
That has done little to allay a sense of
resentment among many Eastern Euro-
pean consumers.
It is absolutely proven that the prod-
ucts are inferior here, said Helena
Tomkova, 43, who runs a public rela-
tions agency in Bratislava, the Slovak
capital. Foods are different, but also
household products, like laundry deter-
gent.
Ms. Tomkova, though, now has a fi-
nancial interest in the question. In 2014,
with Zuzana Hostakova, 28, she founded
Drogerka, an online site where
residents of Slovakia can buy products
from Austria and have them delivered.
Business is growing, with plans to ex-
pand into the Czech Republic.
Food quality is an issue that some
care about, some dont, said Mr.
Prokop, of the marketing and polling
agency in Prague. But for those who
do, it is a potent issue.
..
Prolific poet
who infused
the Beats
with Zen
JOANNE KYGER
1934-2017
BY SAM ROBERTS
Joanne Kyger, a prolific poet whose
works, inspired by natural wonders and
Zen Buddhism, distinguished her as one
of the few women embraced by the Beat
Generation writers fraternity, died on
March 22 at her home in Bolinas, Calif.
She was 82.
The cause was lung cancer, her hus-
band, Donald Guravich, said.
Along with Diane di Prima, Anne
Waldman and several others, Ms. Kyger
made her mark not only as a writer, but
also as a member of the male-dominated
post-World War II cultural movement
personified by William S. Burroughs,
Lucien Carr, Neal Cassady, Allen Gins-
berg, Herbert Huncke, Gary Snyder and
Jack Kerouac.
The shape of the day, the words of the
moment, whats happening around me
in the world of interior and exterior
space these are my writing concerns,
Ms. Kyger explained in a statement to
the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
in New York in 2005.
In her Night Palace, from 2003, she
wrote:
The best thing about the past
is that its over
When you die.
you wake up
from a dream
thats your life.
Then you grow up
and get to be post -human
in a past that keeps happening
ahead of you
Joanne Elizabeth Kyger was born on
Nov. 19, 1934, in Vallejo, Calif., to Jacob
Kyger, a Navy captain, and the former
Anne Katharine Lamont, who worked
for the City of Santa Barbaras coroner
and police and fire departments.
When she was an infant, her family
moved to China after her father was
posted there for a time, but she was
largely raised in Long Beach, Calif.
Her first published poem appeared in
her elementary school literary maga-
zine when she was 5. She shared the title
of features editor of her high school
newspaper with Leland Hickman, who
later became a poet and publisher of
Temblor magazine. After graduating,
she enrolled in the University of Califor-
nia, Santa Barbara, but left a few credits
short of getting a degree in philosophy
and literature.
GERARD MALANGA
Joanne Kyger in 1971. She entered a world
of drugs, meditation and communal life.
By then she had been drawn to Zen
Buddhism.
My own interest in Zen came about
because I had been studying Wittgen-
stein and Heidegger in Santa Barbara,
Ms. Kyger told an interviewer. Their
philosophy just comes to an end saying
you just have to practice the study of
nothing.
Ms. Kyger moved to San Francisco in
1957 and soon became a student of Shun-
ryu Suzuki Roshi, the Japanese-born
monk who helped popularize Zen Bud-
dhism in the United States. She entered
a world of consciousness-raising hallu-
cinogenic drugs, meditation and
Eastern religion communal living.
While teaching occasionally at Mills
College in Oakland, Calif., and the Jack
Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
at the Naropa Institute in Colorado, Ms.
Kyger became associated with the West
Coast School of writers that also includ-
ed Richard Brautigan, Robert Duncan,
Jack Spicer and Philip Whalen.
Ms. Kygers last collection, There
You Are: Interviews, Journals, and
Ephemera, is to be published in Sep-
tember.
Her travels in Japan and India pro-
vided grist for her witty and well-re-
ceived nonfiction work Strange Big
Moon: Japan and India Journals, 1960-
1964 (1981). In one passage, she recalled
meeting the 27-year-old Dalai Lama,
lounged on a velvet couch like a gawky
adolescent in red robes.
And then Allen Ginsberg says to him
how many hours do you meditate a day,
Ms. Kyger wrote, and he says me? Why
I never meditate, I dont have to.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
World
Dalai Lama visit, hinting at heir, riles Beijing
NEW DELHI
Tibetan leaders trip
to Indian holy site raises
questions of succession
BY ELLEN BARRY
It has been a hard journey for the 81-
year-old Dalai Lama, perhaps his last
over the mountain passes at the edge of
China, to a town that has played a fateful
role in his life, and in the history of Tibet-
an Buddhism.
Violent rains buffeted the small plane
he flew into the valley. His party was
forced to continue overland, traveling
seven or eight hours a day over steep
serpentine roads, lined with villagers
hoping to glimpse him.
Each day, as he came closer to the
holy site of Tawang, China pressed India
more forcefully to stop his progress, its
warnings growing increasingly omi-
nous.
By Thursday, a day before the Dalai
Lama reached Tawang, the official
China Daily wrote that Beijing would
not hesitate to answer blows with
blows if the Indian authorities allowed
the Dalai Lama to continue.
At stake on this journey, scholars said,
is the monumental question of who will
emerge as the Dalai Lamas successor
and whether that successor, typically
a baby identified as the next reincarna-
tion of the Dalai Lama, will live inside or
outside Chinas zone of influence.
By visiting Tawang, a Tibetan Bud-
dhist stronghold that was the birthplace
of a previous Dalai Lama, he is expertly
needling Beijing, which maintains that
this area should be part of China. He is
also consolidating his sects deep roots
among the population, potentially lay-
ing the groundwork for a reincarnation
there.
He is a wise Lama, and he is thinking
far ahead, as he always has, said
Brahma Chellaney, an analyst at New
Delhis Center for Policy Research.
Tawang is home to the Monpa people,
who practice Tibetan Buddhism and
once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa, 316
miles to the north.
A black hole in Chinas laws
BEIJING
Court expected to decide
if a herder has property
rights over a meteorite
BY KAROLINE KAN
AND MIKE IVES
One summer day, a Kazakh herder in
northwest China noticed that a giant
black boulder had appeared overnight
in the grasslands where he raises sheep
and cattle. He left it there, and it sat un-
disturbed for more than two decades.
But in 2011, local officials declared the
rock a meteorite and hauled it away, ar-
guing that natural resources were state
property. So the herder and his sons de-
cided to sue.
The meteorite wasnt made on land,
or even on the earth, the familys law-
yer, Sun Yi, said in a telephone interview
from Shanghai. Its from outer space,
so it should belong to the person who
first discovered it.
The case opened in the Xinjiang au-
tonomous region last month after years
of legal wrangling, and a verdict is ex-
pected within six months. Legal experts
say it highlights how the private land-
use rights that Chinas governing Com-
munist Party introduced in the 1980s
in a country where all land is owned by
the state are so broadly defined that
they often sow confusion.
But the case is also unique, experts
say, because it exposes what is essen-
tially a legal black hole: Chinese
statutes do not clearly indicate who
owns property with intergalactic char-
acteristics.
Were left with a blank, a vacuum, in
Chinese law, with no definition of
natural resources and no clear saying as
to whether meteorite rights belong to
the state, said Zhang Libin, a lawyer in
Beijing who advises the government on
legal reform in the energy and minerals
sectors.
The Xinjiang meteorite weighs 17.8
tons and is made of siderite, or iron car-
bonate, according to a report in the Chi-
nese news media that cited an official re-
search center.
Mr. Sun said he thought it was worth
nearly $320 million based on his under-
standing of the commercial meteorite
market. But Tong Xianping, a meteorite
collector in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capi-
tal, said by telephone that $24 million
was a more realistic value based on
what he estimated was the rocks per-
gram value of about $1.45.
Eric Twelker, the founder of the Me-
teorite Market, an online emporium
based in the United States, said he
doubted that the Xinjiang meteorite was
worth millions of dollars because he
rarely saw specimens of any size selling
The Dalai Lama greeted followers last week at a monastery in Dirang, in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. His trip to the region drew warnings from China.
We have been preparing for the last
two months, said Lobsang Khum, sec-
retary of the monastery. Everybody
wants to see him, get his blessings,
touch his feet. For us, the Dalai Lama is
more important than our lives.
About 50,000 people turned out to
hear his address on Saturday, his organi-
zation reported. Later, at a news confer-
ence, he said that he wanted to meet
with senior monks this year to discuss
his succession, Reuters reported.
The most treasured lore among the
Kenjiebieke Reamazhaen with the meteorite on his familys land in 2011 before the
government took it. His father, Juman Reamazhaen, a herder, found the meteorite.
for much more than about $30,000.
Once you get into something like 17.8
tons, your market is infinitesimally
small, Mr. Twelker said in a telephone
interview from his home in Port
Townsend, Wash.
China is not the only country where
meteorite claims have led to court bat-
tles.
In the United States, an 1892 decision
by the Iowa Supreme Court established
that a meteorite belonged not to the
prospector but to the landowner, accord-
ing to the 2006 book The History of Me-
teoritics and Key Meteorite Collections:
Fireballs, Falls and Finds.
In 1986, the herder in the Xinjiang
case, Juman Reamazhaen, was told by
local officials that he could keep the me-
teorite, according to his son Teliewu-
bieke Juman. But in 2011, a team of gov-
ernment workers went to the familys
property in Kuoleteke village to seize it.
Mr. Reamazhaen and his two sons in-
sisted that the meteorite was theirs, and
they took turns protecting it in round-
the-clock shifts through the summer
and early autumn, Mr. Juman said. But a
few months later, when they ended their
vigil because of cold weather, the work-
ers swooped in.
The meteorite now sits in a wooden
crate outside a government office in the
nearby city of Altay. Mr. Sun, the lawyer,
said that to his knowledge, the govern-
ment had not conducted any scientific
Monpa surrounds Tsangyang Gyatso,
who in 1682 became the sixth Dalai
Lama. People here make pilgrimages to
his childhood home, where a stone is dis-
played with a faint footprint said to be
his, and speak longingly of the possibil-
ity that it could happen again.
That is the dream of many people
here, that the next Dalai Lama should be
born in Tawang, said Sang Phuntsok,
Tawangs deputy commissioner. Tsering
Tashi, a local legislator, said that, as a
layman, he had no business comment-
TELIEWUBIEKE JUMAN
tests on it. Local officials did not respond
to a faxed request for comment.
Legal experts say the herders case
boils down to whether a clause in Chi-
nese law that defines natural resources
as state property in which the word
et cetera appears at the end of a list of
natural resources that includes moun-
tains, grasslands and wetlands
should apply to things from outer space.
Both sides seem to have an argu-
ment which is seemingly right, but there
is no clear answer, said Mr. Zhang, the
legal adviser in Beijing. The state says
if the law says et cetera, then you can
certainly include meteorites. But then it
goes to the question of how to define
natural resources.
In the Xinjiang case, Mr. Reamazhaen
would consider negotiating for a com-
pensation fee if the Chinese authorities
determined that the 17.8-ton meteorite
could be useful for scientific research,
his lawyer said.
His son, however, appeared less will-
ing to compromise.
I have visited our local government
bureau several times and saw some
guards standing around the meteorite,
he said by telephone. Were they pro-
tecting it? Hard to say. In any case, we
are not happy with the way theyve han-
dled this situation.
Karoline Kan reported from Beijing, and
Mike Ives from Hong Kong.
ing, but in the end he could not restrain
himself. I wish that the reincarnation of
the next Dalai Lama happens in
Tawang, he said. Thats all I can say.
The Dalai Lama has been enigmatic
about how his successor will be chosen.
In the past, monks have turned to vi-
sions and oracles to lead them to a child
conceived just as the previous Dalai
Lama died. Having identified a child,
they administer tests seeking to confirm
that he is the reincarnated lama, such as
asking him to pick out objects belonging
From our D Flawless Collection
LONDON GENEVA HONG KONG COURCHEVEL
Tel: +44 (0)20 7290 1536
BIJU BORO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE GETTY IMAGES
to his predecessor.
But that method would leave Tibetan
Buddhism without a leader for at least a
year, allowing China to identify and pro-
mote its own candidate. The Dalai Lama
has hinted that he may instead opt for a
nontraditional selection process, select-
ing a child or an adult to succeed him
while he is still alive.
Aging Tibetan Buddhist lamas have,
in some cases, visited places where they
would later be reincarnated as babies,
and the Dalai Lamas visits to Tawang
www.moussaieff-jewellers.com
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 3
and Mongolia seemed to fall into that
pattern, said Robert J. Barnett, a histori-
an of modern Tibet at Columbia Univer-
sity.
This is a way of getting under the
skin of the Chinese, of probing them, and
reminding them that they have no con-
trol over where the next reincarnation
occurs, he said.
On Wednesday, a Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman said India had obsti-
nately arranged the Dalai Lamas visit,
causing serious damage to bilateral
ties. On Thursday, The Global Times, a
state-run tabloid, suggested that China
could retaliate by supporting the anti-
Indian militancy in Kashmir.
Can India afford the consequence?
it asked sarcastically. With a G.D.P.
several times higher than that of India,
military capabilities that can reach the
Indian Ocean and having good relations
with Indias peripheral nations, coupled
with the fact that Indias turbulent
northern state borders China, will Bei-
jing lose to New Delhi?
Though India is typically wary of pro-
voking China, several officials have
been unusually pugnacious in their re-
sponses.
Pema Khandu, the chief minister of
Arunachal Pradesh, took the unusual
step last week of stating that an inde-
pendent Tibet, not China, is Indias true
northern neighbor.
Let me get this straight, Mr. Khandu
told journalists. China has no business
telling us what to do and what not to do
because it is not our next-door neigh-
bor.
The Dalai Lama also revisited his es-
cape from Tibet in 1959, when he fled a
Chinese military crackdown in Lhasa.
Disguised, and with a small group of
aides, he crossed the mountain passes to
safety in Tawang.
He was reunited last week with Naren
Chandra Das, 76, an Indian soldier who
escorted him on the last three days. The
two embraced before the cameras: the
former soldier painfully thin, his eyes
clouded by cataracts; the monk apple-
cheeked and jovial.
I became old, but he stays the same,
Mr. Das said. He is a big man, the king
of Tibet.
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
info@moussaieff-jewellers.com

4 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
world
From hope to dismay in Myanmar
MAWLAMYINE, MYANMAR
Public is losing patience
after Aung San Suu Kyis
first year in power
BY RICHARD C. PADDOCK
The scene would have been unlikely a
year ago. Tens of thousands of
demonstrators filled the streets to pro-
test a decision by Daw Aung San Suu
Kyis government to name a new bridge
for her father.
Recognize the will of the local ethnic
people, protesters chanted last month
as they marched along the waterfront of
this historic city in southern Myanmar.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace
Prize laureate once celebrated as a
champion of democracy, was insulting
the Mon people, the dominant ethnic
group in the area, protest leaders said,
by naming the bridge for a Burmese
leader infamous here for steamrollering
over their rights.
This is not a democratic process,
said Min Zarni Oo, general secretary of
the Mon Youth Forum. This is a big is-
sue for the local people. The govern-
ment doesnt value ethnic diversity.
No one expected governing to be easy
for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who became
the countrys de facto leader a year ago
after her party won a landslide election
that ended more than a half-century of
military rule.
Even so, her first year has been a dis-
appointment to many.
She made it a top priority to end the
long-running ethnic insurgencies that
have torn the country apart, but her ane-
mic peace effort has proved fruitless so
far, and fighting between government
forces and ethnic groups has increased.
The world has been shocked by re-
ports that the military has carried out
atrocities, including rape and murder,
against the Rohingya, a Muslim minor-
ity in western Myanmar, but Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi has said little on the matter
and done even less.
Her governments growing suppres-
sion of speech on the internet seems
perverse for a onetime democracy icon
who spent 15 years under house arrest.
Among the public, patience is wear-
ing thin. She doesnt have support like
before, said Zar Zar Oo, 31, a vendor
selling bottled water at the Yangon train
station. We loved her so much before,
but it seems like she doesnt do enough
for us. For now, we are in trouble.
In a televised speech to the nation
commemorating her first year in office,
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi struck a defen-
sive note, acknowledging her govern-
ments lack of progress and saying peo-
ple could choose another leader if they
were unhappy with her.
If you think I am not good enough for
our country and our people, if someone
or some organization can do better than
us, we are ready to step down, she said.
Some voters apparently listened. In
parliamentary by-elections last week-
end, her National League for Democra-
cy won only nine of 19 seats.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 71, cites build-
ing roads as one of her biggest accom-
plishments. The party spokesman Win
Htein said her government had doubled
spending on health care and education,
though he provided no details.
And the economy has continued to
grow as the country emerges from isola-
Leaders blamed as Afghan security reforms falter
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
BY MUJIB MASHAL
Last year, the American military spent
more than $100 million to rebuild the Af-
ghan Armys 215th Corps, which is bat-
tling resurgent Taliban militants in the
southern province of Helmand.
Soldiers were to be recruited and
trained, and armed with new equip-
ment. A new commander, trumpeted as
visionary and clean of corruption, was
appointed to rebuild and reform the
unit, which was a shambles just a year
after taking charge of security in Hel-
mand from the American-led NATO co-
alition. Casualties were at a record high,
the leadership was corrupt, and many of
the soldiers existed only on paper.
But as winter set in, it became clear
that the plan had not worked.
Over the course of the year, the Tal-
iban gained more territory; the mili-
tants now largely control seven of 14 dis-
tricts in Helmand and contest another
five, according to local officials. Casu-
alties among government forces in the
province broke records again.
And that new, clean commander? He
was arrested on charges of stealing food
and fuel intended for his beleaguered
soldiers.
With large swaths of the Afghan coun-
tryside under Taliban control and sev-
eral cities threatened, American and
NATO leaders are growing increasingly
frustrated with the slow pace of security
reforms that they see as necessary to
battle the insurgency.
A major problem is the rampant cor-
ruption of the Afghan security leader-
ship, which is profiting from the chaos
even as soldiers die in record numbers.
Most of that work was rapidly un-
done, because of corruption and inept
Laborers in Mawlamyine, Myanmar, near a bridge the government chose to name after Daw Aung San Suu Kyis father. The ethnic Mon who dominate the area see it as an affront.
tion under military rule.
But Richard Horsey, a political ana-
lyst and former United Nations official,
said that the growth had slowed and that
foreign investment had dipped signifi-
cantly. Washingtons lifting of economic
sanctions last year has yet to translate
into stronger trade, investment or job
creation, he said.
Aung San Suu Kyis administration
has not offered any compelling eco-
nomic vision, he said.
We loved her so much before,
but it seems like she doesnt do
enough for us. For now, we are
in trouble.
In Yangon, people are waiting for Ms.
Aung San Suu Kyi to deliver results, said
Myat Suu Mon, 28, a department store
clerk. The cost of taking the run-down
bus to work has doubled, she said, while
her pay has remained the same.
Support is less than before because
peoples expectations were too high,
she said. But in reality we dont see
things changing here.
Zaw Htay, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyis
spokesman, acknowledged that
progress had been slow but said the gov-
ernment faced complex problems, such
as ethnic conflicts and clashes with the
Members of the Afghan National Armys 215th Corps in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, last month. The units rebuilding efforts have been hampered by record-high casualties.
leadership, said Maj. Gen. Richard G.
Kaiser, in charge of the Combined Secu-
rity Transition Command in Af-
ghanistan, referring to efforts to reform
the 215th.
The commander of United States and
NATO forces here, Gen. John W.
Nicholson, has likened the reform of Af-
ghan forces to building an airplane
while in flight. Fighting, which used to
slow in the winter and pick up again in
the spring, is now a constant, preventing
the military from being able to regroup.
This years fighting comes as the
countrys government remains stag-
nated by infighting and struggling to
deal with the realities on the battlefield.
There is also a breakdown of the re-
gional consensus over the United States
mission here. Russia and Iran, in addi-
tion to Pakistan, are increasingly ac-
cused of fostering ties with the Taliban
Rohingya, that had been years in the
making. Its very complicated, he said
in an interview. We are not magicians.
Indeed, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi faces
daunting challenges.
In rebuilding the country, she must
overcome decades of mismanagement
and profiteering by previous military
governments that enriched the generals
and their cronies and brought the econ-
omy to its knees.
Though her party has a strong major-
ity in Parliament, it is hamstrung by a
power-sharing arrangement dictated by
the military-drafted Constitution, which
gives the military control of key min-
istries and enough seats in Parliament
to block any constitutional amendment.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is barred by the
Constitution from serving as president
because her children are foreigners, a
prohibition she circumvented by creat-
ing the office of state counselor for her-
self and declaring that the president
would report to her. She also named her-
self foreign minister.
Supporters say her ability to get along
with the military is a significant accom-
plishment. But critics suggest she suf-
fers from Stockholm syndrome, becom-
ing too cozy with her former captors.
Moreover, they say, her imperious ap-
proach alienates potential allies and
contributes to the countrys growing cri-
ses.
ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
and hedging their own bets.
The American military has tried for
15 years to help Afghanistan build a pro-
fessional army, said Karl W. Eiken-
berry, a retired American general who
led coalition forces in Afghanistan and
later was the American ambassador to
Kabul. It has always assumed that its
own goal of defeating the insurgency is
shared by Afghan Army leaders.
But, he added, this is often not so.
Mr. Eikenberry said that for many Af-
ghan commanders, the Taliban were
just one concern in an uncertain political
and economic environment.
Others are ensuring the welfare of
his family and supporters, staying
aligned with political patrons, and
avoiding combat so as to preserve his
unit, which is a source of revenue, he
said, referring to commanders in gen-
eral.
She rarely takes questions from the
news media or speaks out on major is-
sues. Her office declined a request for an
interview for this article.
Perhaps most disheartening to many
of her longtime supporters has been her
record on human rights. While she re-
leased dozens of political prisoners held
by the former regime and repealed laws
used to suppress political dissent, she
left in place a law that is increasingly
used to stifle criticism of public officials.
Under the telecommunications act,
defaming someone online is punishable
by three years in prison. Anyone can
bring a case, and suspects can be held
without bail while they await trial.
The previous government, which
adopted the law in 2013, used it only sev-
en times. In the year since Ms. Aung San
Suu Kyi took office, 47 cases have been
brought, according to Maung Saungkha,
who was once imprisoned under the law
and now tracks its use.
The biggest stain on Ms. Aung San
Suu Kyis record may be her govern-
ments brutal treatment of the Rohing-
ya, and her tepid response to it.
In recent months, government sol-
diers have been accused of widespread
killing and rape of Rohingya in Rakhine
State. A United Nations report con-
cluded in February that the army and
police had slaughtered hundreds of
men, women and children; gang-raped
UZBEKI
UZBEKISTA
TURKMENISTAN
IRAN
IRA N AFGHANISTAN
Kandahar
HELMAND
PROVINCE
200 Miles
Some improvements have been made
to varying degrees across the country
over the winter, the American military
acknowledges; some security officials
have been stripped of duties and put un-
der investigation.
General Kaiser said Afghan forces
had been at about 10 percent to 20 per-
cent higher readiness. He cited the Af-
ghan Special Forces, who while
stretched by heavy fighting last year
met a goal of keeping roughly one-third
of the force fighting, one-third resting
and one-third retraining. In Helmand,
the new army corps commander in-
sisted on the continued training of his
battalions even as fighting raged in a
key district, he said. The leadership of
the air force was replaced wholesale.
But, from interviews with about two
dozen security officials across the coun-
try, it is clear that of the improvements
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has acknowledged her governments lack of progress and said
that people could choose another leader if they were unhappy with her.
women and girls; and forced as many as
90,000 people from their homes.
The deadly crackdown, which the
government says was a response to at-
tacks on police posts by Rohingya insur-
gents, has been roundly criticized by hu-
man rights groups, the United Nations,
Pope Francis and even 13 of Ms. Aung
STAN
STAN
TAJIKI
TAJ IKISTA
IKI STAN
STAN
SAR-I-PUL
PROVINCE
Bat Kot District
Bati trict
Kabul
NANGARHAR
PROVINCE
PAKISTAN
PAK
INDIA
INDIA
that General Nicholson said were ur-
gently needed in several vital areas
leadership, retraining struggling units
and combating corruption little has
been achieved on the ground.
In the eastern province of Nangarhar,
the district governor of Bati Kot said the
pressure of fighting over the winter
months was such that training was im-
possible. In Sar-i-Pul Province, the com-
mander of a police battalion said his
forces had no time to regroup and pre-
pare for the next fighting season be-
cause they had been on standby 24/7
all winter. This year, we did not send
anyone for retraining, said Haji Ghalib
Mujahid, the district governor of Bati
Kot. We are engaged in fighting each
hour, during day and night.
Officials say President Ashraf Ghani
is increasingly aware that his military
commanders have been lying to him on
..
MINZAYAR OO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
EDGAR SU/REUTERS
San Suu Kyis fellow Nobel laureates,
who wrote a letter calling it a human
tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing
and crimes against humanity.
Although Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has
no direct control over the military, she
has played down the reports of atroci-
ties and stood by the military.
the state of their units and on the adop-
tion of changes charted in Kabul. But
there is also skepticism among Western
and Afghan officials about just how com-
mitted he is to keeping the security over-
haul free from patronage politics.
Coalition leaders have had to resort to
drastic measures to jolt their Afghan
partners into action. Last year, General
Kaisers team pulled the fuel contract
from the Afghan Ministries of Defense
and Interior Affairs, which adds up to
about $250 million, because it could not
trust the agencies with that much
money. Then, to get Afghan leaders to
update their systems with biometrics of
existing soldiers to ensure there were no
ghost soldiers on the payroll, they held
back pay for tens of thousands of army
soldiers funded by the United States.
The pressure tactics appeared to
work: The army increased the number
of its properly enrolled soldiers by
20,000 over just two months.
One reason for the leadership prob-
lems is a widening gap between soldiers
and commanders.
One senior Afghan official, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity to can-
didly express his concerns, described
what he called a caste-based system
within the ranks.
At the top, he said, is a class of often
incompetent generals, many of them
from the Communist or the civil war pe-
riod who had strong political ties. The
soldiers and police officers are treated
as an untouchable class, dying at an
average of close to 20 a day. The leaders
show little concern for their men, the Af-
ghan official said, a view that is widely
held by Western officials.
Reporting was contributed by Jawad Su-
khanyar, Fahim Abed and Zahra Nader
from Kabul, and by Taimoor Shah from
Kandahar, Afghanistan.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 5

Still Processing
A podcast with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham

High culture? Low culture?

Let the discussion begin.
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6 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
world
U.S. attack on Syria
provokes uncertainty
ISTANBUL
For those who are caught
in conflict, action doesnt
ease weight of suffering
BY KARAM SHOUMALI
AND BEN HUBBARD
Six years of war in Syria have ravaged
the life of Ebrahim Abbas, 27.
Mr. Abbas, a computer technician,
was detained for protesting the Syrian
government, besieged in his hometown
and shot in the stomach, and watched
his brother die in a shelling attack. He
escaped, but his father, a diabetic, died
later from a lack of medicine, and his
mother was killed by a sniper.
It was from his refuge in Turkey that
Mr. Abbas heard about President
Trumps decision to launch 59 cruise
missiles at a Syrian air base to punish
President Bashar al-Assad for a chemi-
cal weapons attack. It felt good.
Watching a world power taking re-
venge for civilians against the Syrian re-
gime gave me a surge of hope and made
me a bit optimistic, Mr. Abbas said.
But the attack will not bring back all
that he has lost nor help him return
home soon. In a measure of how en-
trenched the war is, there were new
airstrikes on Saturday on the town tar-
geted in the chemical-weapons attack,
with at least one person killed, accord-
ing to the Syrian Observatory for Hu-
man Rights.
The strike on the air base was the
most direct, deliberate military inter-
vention by the United States against Mr.
Assads forces since the war began. Mr.
Trump said he had launched the strike
because he was moved by images of
women and children choking on poison
gas.
That was a horrible, horrible thing,
Ebrahim Abbas after he was shot in the
stomach by a sniper in 2015.
he told reporters after the chemical at-
tack. And Ive been watching it and see-
ing it, and it doesnt get any worse than
that.
But while the strike on Thursday ap-
peared intended to limit the chances of
retaliation, Mr. Trump has offered no
proposals to end the war or to assuage
the vast human suffering it has generat-
ed, sending Syrians fleeing across the
globe.
Yasmine Mashaan, a pharmacy tech-
nician from the town of Muhassan in
eastern Syria who lost four of her five
brothers to the conflict, said the strike
was unlikely to change much for her and
her family. And she doubts Mr. Trumps
motivations.
It would be great if he continued this
in the direction of saving more civilians
or establishing a safe zone, but after his
racist speeches and anti-refugee policy,
I think the strike is more for popularity,
said Ms. Mashaan, who is now in Ger-
many after fleeing there with her family.
But judging by how fast he intervened
in Syria and how powerful it was, then
we might be going somewhere with it.
The number affected by the conflict
boggles the mind. What began as an up-
rising in 2011 escalated into a civil war as
protesters took up arms to respond to
the governments repression and seek
its ouster.
Over time, countries like the United
Chinese news media assail American airstrike
BEIJING
BY JANE PERLEZ
With President Xi Jinping safely out of
the United States and no longer Presi-
dent Trumps guest, Chinas state-run
media over the weekend was free to de-
nounce the missile strike on Syria,
which the American president told Mr.
Xi about while they were finishing din-
ner.
Xinhua, the state news agency, on Sat-
urday called the strike the act of a
weakened politician who needed to flex
his muscles. In an analysis, Xinhua also
said Mr. Trump had ordered the strike to
distance himself from Syrias backers in
Moscow, to overcome accusations that
he was pro-Russia.
That unflattering assessment re-
flected Chinas official opposition to mili-
tary interventions in the affairs of other
countries. But it was also a criticism of
Mr. Trump himself, who Mr. Xi had
hoped was a man China could deal with.
Chinese officials had feared that the
States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia backed
the rebels, while Russia and Iran helped
Mr. Assad.
As chaos spread, extremist groups
gained ground. Al Qaeda infiltrated the
rebel movement, while the jihadists of
the Islamic State group seized territory
that extended into Iraq.
Now more than 400,000 people have
been killed, a figure roughly equal to the
population of Tulsa, Okla., or Oakland,
Calif. Many more have been maimed.
Half of Syrias prewar population of 22
million have fled their homes, a number
close to the population of Belgium. Five
million of those are registered refugees
abroad, according to the United Nations.
Most are in Turkey, Jordan and Leba-
non, where 70 percent live on less than
$3.84 a day, less than the cost of some
lattes at Starbucks.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of
the Norwegian Refugee Council, which
does aid work in Syria, said he could not
comment for or against the strike by the
United States, but he said that they do
not solve any of my urgent priorities.
For the humanitarian situation to im-
prove, aid workers would need more
border crossings for getting aid into the
country, assurances that air and ground
forces would not attack hospitals and
better access to besieged and suffering
communities, including nearly 400,000
people within an hours drive of Da-
mascus, the capital.
It is heartbreakingly frustrating to
be a humanitarian worker and to have
the resources and the supplies but not to
be able to reach these people, Mr. Ege-
land said.
Within the conflicts statistics are
countless stories of torture, detention,
forced conscription, families torn apart
and normal lives downgraded rapidly or
cut short.
Even some Syrians who welcomed
the strike questioned why, after all of the
wars brutality, it was the chemical at-
tack last week that had brought a show
of force against Mr. Assad.
Of course chemicals are weapons of
mass destruction, said a doctor east of
Damascus who treated victims of the
first major chemical attack in Syria, in
2013. He spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity because he feared government
reprisal. But what about sieges? What
about killing children? Isnt it wrong for
children to grow up without knowing
Tom and Jerry? Without knowing choc-
olate?
President Barack Obama did not re-
spond militarily to a chemical attack in
2013, despite having called the use of
such weapons a red line.
Since then, the doctor has watched
the world move on while the siege of his
area has tightened, he said through
Skype. He said he had learned to live
with less electricity, less fuel, less clean
water and less food.
We are living like ancient people, troops who carried out the missile strike
how they depended on themselves, how
they used wood to make fires, he said.
It is a hard life.
He expected more from the United
States and its allies after the 2013 attack,
what he called a position that was ap-
propriate for the free world. But the re-
sult was an agreement, brokered by
Russia, for Mr. Assad to give up his
chemical weapons.
The solution to the crime was a deal
to take away the weapon but leave the
criminal, the doctor said.
The strike by the United States made
him mildly optimistic that Mr. Trump
would intervene more forcefully than
Mr. Obama had.
Trump is a closed box that has
started to open, he said. Soon we will
see whats inside.
While conflict monitors said that Mr.
Assads forces and their allies had
caused the bulk of the wars deaths with
their advanced weapons, communities
loyal to Mr. Assad have also paid a heavy
price.
Tens of thousands of Syrian soldiers
have been killed, and religious minor-
ities, secularists and others who view
Mr. Assad as a symbol of a unified Syria
have continued to fight out of fear that
they would be eradicated if Islamist
rebels take over the country.
President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm
Beach, Fla. Chinas state news agency called the strike the act of a weakened politician.
Syrians examining the rubble of destroyed buildings after a reported government airstrike over the weekend in Douma, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Damascus.
Trump drops his own dogma
TRUMP, FROM PAGE 1
White House has prepared an executive
order that the president may sign in the
coming days targeting countries like
China that dump steel in the American
market. And Mr. Trump is sending Sec-
retary of State Rex W. Tillerson on Tues-
day to Moscow, where he will have the
additional task of trying to smooth over
the rancor of recent days, in addition to
exploring whether Russia could be a
real partner in battling the Islamic State
group in Syria.
Moreover, the missile strike, in re-
sponse to a chemical weapons attack,
was intended to be a limited, one-time
operation, and the president seemed de-
termined to quickly move on. After an-
nouncing the attack Thursday evening,
he made no mention of it Friday during
public appearances, nor on Saturday
during his weekly address. As of Satur-
day afternoon, the Twitter-obsessed
president had not even taunted Presi-
dent Bashar al-Assad of Syria online, al-
though he did thank the American
and defended the decision not to target
the runway at the air base that was hit.
Our decisions, Mr. Trump said in the
Saturday address, will be guided by our
values and our goals and we will re-
ject the path of inflexible ideology that
too often leads to unintended conse-
quences.
That concept, flexibility, seems key to
understanding Mr. Trump. He hates to
be boxed in, as he mused in the Rose
Garden last week while contemplating
the first new military operation of his
presidency with geopolitical conse-
quences.
I like to think of myself as a very flex-
ible person, he told reporters. I dont
have to have one specific way. He made
clear he cherished unpredictability. I
dont like to say where Im going and
what Im doing, he said.
That flexibility was a hallmark of his
rise in real estate, and if critics preferred
the word erratic, it did not bother Mr.
Trump it has since worked well
enough to vault him to the White House.
But now that he is commander in chief of
the worlds most powerful nation, lead-
ers around the world are trying to detect
a method to the man.
There is no emerging doctrine for
Trump foreign policy in a classical
sense, said Kathleen H. Hicks, a former
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bringing a child to a makeshift clinic in Douma. In the space of just days, President
Trump involved the United States more directly in the Syrian morass than ever before.
Pentagon official who is now at the Cen-
ter for Strategic and International Stud-
ies. There are, however, clear emerging
characteristics consistent with the at-
tributes of the man himself: unpredict-
able, instinctual and undisciplined.
On Syria, Mr. Trump had mocked
President Barack Obama for setting a
red line against the use of chemical
weapons and urged him not to launch a
punitive strike against Syria after Mr.
Assad crossed it in 2013. That attack,
with a death toll of 1,400, dwarfed last
weeks toll of 84. And just days before
last weeks attack, Mr. Tillerson indi-
cated that Washington would accept Mr.
Assads remaining in power.
Indeed, critics, including Senator
Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, ar-
gued that Mr. Assad felt free to launch a
chemical attack precisely because Mr.
Trumps administration had given him a
green light. Russia, critics added, did not
constrain Mr. Assad because it has had a
blank check from an overly friendly
Trump administration.
And Mr. Trumps efforts to bar Syrian
refugees from the United States, they
said, sent a signal that he did not care
about them.
President Trump seems not to have
thought through any of this, or have any
kind of broader strategy, but rather to
have launched a military strike based on
two leaders 24-hour encounter at Mr.
Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida
might be marred by a campaign-style
anti-China outburst from Mr. Trump. In-
stead, it was interrupted by the unex-
pected missile attack.
Some Chinese analysts viewed the
strikes timing as no coincidence. Mr.
Trump wants China to do more to deter
the development of nuclear weapons by
North Korea, its ally, and these analysts
viewed the Syria attack as a reminder to
Mr. Xi that the United States could also
attack the North, if necessary.
The missile strike on Syria
overshadowed meetings that American
and Chinese officials described as big-
picture conversations on trade as well
as North Korea, which stopped short of
producing specific agreements.
Both sides agreed that the North Ko-
rean threat had reached a very seri-
ous stage, according to Secretary of
State Rex W. Tillerson. He said the
United States was prepared to take its
own course if China did not do more to
rein in the North.
But the official Chinese account of the
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ABD DOUMANY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE GETTY IMAGES
a sudden, emotional decision, Senator
Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of
Connecticut, wrote in an article for The
Huffington Post on Saturday.
Mr. Assad is not the only leader test-
ing Mr. Trump. North Korea has test-
launched missile after missile in recent
weeks, almost as if trying to get Mr.
Trumps attention.
So far, he has been measured in his re-
sponse, urging President Xi Jinping of
China during his visit to do more to rein
in North Korea. But national security
aides have also prepared options for Mr.
Trump if China does not take a more as-
sertive stance, including reintroducing
nuclear weapons in South Korea.
Mr. Trumps action in Syria was wel-
comed by many traditional American al-
lies who had fretted over Mr. Obamas
reluctance to take a greater leadership
role in the Middle East and feared that
Mr. Trump would withdraw even more.
After the missile strike, Israeli news
outlets were filled with headlines like
The Americans Are Back, and Euro-
pean leaders expressed relief both that
he had taken action and that he had not
gone too far.
We have learned that Trump is not so
isolationist as many Europeans feared
he would be he appears to care about
victims of a gas attack in Syria, said
Charles Grant, director of the Center for
talks in Xinhua did not mention North
Korea a burning issue for Mr. Trump,
but less so for Mr. Xi. Analysts said the
omission was probably intentional, a re-
sponse to the attack on Syria.
Xinhuas commentary on the Syria
strike also made no reference to North
Korea. But it mentioned American mis-
sile attacks on Libya in 1986 and Sudan
in 1998, and scolded the United States for
not achieving its political goals in
those instances.
The Chinese president very rarely
talks to the Chinese or foreign news me-
dia, making it almost impossible to de-
termine his opinion about the attack or
how he expressed it to Mr. Trump.
But Chinese analysts, whose advice is
sometimes sought by the government
on foreign policy questions, were scorn-
ful of the strike, which they viewed as a
powerful country attacking a nation un-
able to fight back. And they rejected
what they viewed as an unspoken
American message equating Syria,
which has no nuclear arsenal, with
North Korea, which has carried out five
nuclear arms tests and hopes to mount a
..
European Reform in London. We have
learned that he understands that U.S. in-
fluence had suffered from the percep-
tion which grew under Obama that
it was a power weakened by its reluc-
tance to use force.
That touches on another animating
factor as Mr. Trump deals with foreign
challenges doing the opposite of
whatever Mr. Obama did.
Mr. Trumps first instinct after the
Syrian chemical attack was to blame Mr.
Obama for not enforcing his red line,
never mind that Mr. Trump had urged
him not to at the time. Even as he an-
nounced the missile strike on Thursday
night, Mr. Trump asserted that his
predecessors handling of Syria had
failed very dramatically.
Intentionally or not, though, Mr.
Trump adopted language similar to that
used by Mr. Obama and many other
presidents in defining American priori-
ties.
While in the past Mr. Trump said the
United States did not have a national in-
terest in Syria, last week he said insta-
bility there was threatening the United
States and its allies.
He also said that America stands for
justice, effectively espousing a respon-
sibility to act in cases of human rights
abuses, as other presidents have at
times.
Until now, Mr. Trump has largely es-
chewed such language.
Just three days earlier, he had hosted
Egypts authoritarian president, Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi, and made no public men-
tion of the thousands of people the Cairo
government has imprisoned in a po-
litical crackdown.
What is striking to me is a subtle yet
clear shift away from the rhetoric of
pure American self-interest narrowly
defined, as espoused by candidate Don-
ald Trump, said Robert Danin, a former
Middle East negotiator who is now at
the Council on Foreign Relations. What
has emerged is a new language of Amer-
ican leadership in the world that we
have not heard before from President
Trump.
Mr. Grant and others noted that the
strike, coming as Mr. Trump shared a
meal with Mr. Xi, could resonate in Asia
as well, leaving North Korea to wonder
whether the president might resort to
force to stop its development of ballistic
missiles.
nuclear warhead on an intercontinental
missile.
I dont deny that the United States is
capable of such an attack against North
Korea, but you need to see that North
Korea is capable of striking back, said
Lu Chao, director of the Border Studies
Institute at the Liaoning Academy of So-
cial Sciences. That would create cha-
os.
If Syria had nuclear weapons, the
United States would not dare attack it,
said Shen Dingli, a professor of interna-
tional relations at Fudan University in
Shanghai.
Mr. Shen added that many Chinese
were thrilled by the attack because it
would probably result in the United
States becoming further mired in the
Middle East. If the United States gets
trapped in Syria, how can Trump make
America great again? As a result, China
will be able to achieve its peaceful rise,
Mr. Shen said, using a term Beijing em-
ploys to characterize its growing power.
Even though we say we oppose the
bombing, deep in our hearts we are
happy.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 7

Business
An American ride pushes into China
SHANGHAI
Amid trade tensions,
Ford pitches its pickup
trucks to urban drivers
BY KEITH BRADSHER
Liu Qipeng has a passion for rock climb-
ing and camping, but for those activities,
a Chinese-branded vehicle just wont do.
So even in this era of rising trade ten-
sions between Washington and Beijing,
Mr. Liu, 38, a chemicals recycling entre-
preneur in southeastern China, chose to
wait for the chance to buy what might be
the most American of rides: a Ford F-150
Raptor pickup truck imported from the
United States.
I like this model because it is very
masculine and powerful, Mr. Liu said,
adding that his friends start to lean to-
ward Ford when they plan to change
their cars.
Ford Motor put the premium version
of the F-150 on sale on Saturday in a
country where pickup trucks are
virtually unheard-of except on farms.
Detroits automakers see a potential
new world of Chinese drivers, who in re-
cent years have embraced sport utility
vehicles and want to drive bigger, beefi-
er cars.
When President Trump and Presi-
dent Xi Jinping of China met in Florida
last week to address growing trade ten-
sions, Fords interest in sending Ameri-
can-made pickup trucks to China under-
lined the debates complexities. Despite
lopsided trade between the countries,
Chinese consumers show a persistent
and lucrative appetite for American
brands.
Fords and Chevrolets mostly made
in China, but profitable either way for
Detroit are common sights on the
streets. They think American-brand
vehicles are reliable, strong and tough,
said Yale Zhang, the managing director
of Automotive Foresight, a consulting
firm in Shanghai.
It goes beyond cars. Apples iPhone
has faced growing competition but re-
mains a sign of affluence and success.
Chinese consumers wear Nikes and buy
lattes at Starbucks. For many buyers,
the brands connote sophistication and
an indication that they have made it.
Ford, which will import the pickups
from Dearborn, Mich., is not alone. Gen-
eral Motors this year began to import
Chevrolet Silverado full-size pickup
trucks from Flint, Mich., and the
Chevrolet Colorado midsize pickup from
Wentzville, Mo. Ford plans to start im-
porting the Ford Ranger midsize pickup
next year as well. Both have modest ex-
pectations compared with the United
States, where nearly 2.7 million pickup
trucks were sold last year, almost eight
times as many as in China last year, ac-
cording to LMC Automotive, a global
consulting firm.
For years, Chinese consumers saw
pickup trucks as polluting rural rattle-
The Ford display at the Beijing auto show in 2016. Ford has started selling premium pickup trucks in China, where pickups are usually only used on farms.
They think American-brand
vehicles are reliable, strong
and tough.
traps suitable only for bringing in
produce from the farm. Pickups made in
the country sell for as little as $7,000.
Many provinces ban trucks, including
pickups, from being driven in cities by
day.
Interest in the cars began to grow
early last year, when central govern-
ment officials urged Chinese provinces
to lighten restrictions on pickups as part
of a broad plan to encourage consump-
tion in the economy, including pur-
chases of automobiles. Chinese-brand
automakers had also called for a relax-
ation of the rules as a way to develop
their pickup truck businesses.
Ford plans to introduce its Built Ford
Tough marketing campaign in China
this spring, said Peter Fleet, the compa-
nys vice president for marketing, sales
and service in Asia and the Pacific. Its
marketers experimented with various
Mandarin translations of the phrase be-
fore concluding that the English version
worked.
The research came back resound-
ingly clear: No, we understand Built
Ford Tough, Mr. Fleet said.
Cars are a particular sticking point
between the United States and China be-
cause Beijing charges heavy taxes and
duties on imported cars. While Ford has
not released the official price for the
Raptor, Mr. Liu said that he had been
told it would be about $81,000. A simi-
larly equipped Raptor sells for $50,000
in the United States. Chinese import and
value-added taxes would make up most
but not all of the difference.
The price could be even higher if Ford
were importing cars from the United
States instead of pickup trucks. China
classifies pickup trucks as trucks and
not as passenger vehicles, a category
that in the country encompasses cars,
sport utility vehicles and minivans. That
truck classification exempts pickups
from a Chinese consumption tax on pas-
senger vehicles with large engines that
can go as high as 40 percent.
Mr. Liu said that if he faced a con-
sumption tax like that, he would not buy
the Ford pickup.
If it has a 20 percent tax, I wouldnt
consider buying it, because one of the
major motives for me to buy it is that its
a very cost-effective model, he said.
Its a toy for me after all, not a must-
have.
China also exempts pickup trucks en-
tirely from fuel economy averages. It
sets a much higher corporate fuel-econ-
omy average 38 miles per gallon
than the United States for all the cars,
minivans and S.U.V.s that each au-
tomaker sells in the country.
This has forced manufacturers to de-
sign and sell models with engines that
are much smaller and less powerful
than in the United States but also more
fuel efficient.
By contrast, Mr. Trump announced
last month that he would roll back in-
creases in American fuel economy aver-
ages that President Barack Obama had
mandated.
Attitudes toward pickups are
QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
softening in parts of China. Ford said six
provinces had exempted pickups from
urban driving restrictions widely im-
posed on trucks in the country.
That liberalization could help the fight
against air pollution. It could shift the
mix of vehicles purchased by farmers
away from heavily polluting tractors
and toward pickups instead, said Hui
He, a senior researcher in the San Fran-
cisco office of the International Council
on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit re-
search group based in Washington best
known for its role in exposing
Volkswagens diesel emissions decep-
tion.
Mr. Liu lives in the city of Guangzhou,
in Guangdong Province, which has not
changed its rules. He said that while he
owned other vehicles, he planned to
drive his pickup around town some-
times as though it were a car and would
see whether the police tried to stop him.
As long as the local authorities dont
ban me from driving it here, he said,
Ill drive it.
Carolyn Zhang contributed research.
The politics
behind sale
of nuclear
company
Washington could step in
if China makes a bid
for Westinghouse Electric
BY JONATHAN SOBLE
The Trump administration is worried
that Chinese investors might try to buy
Westinghouse Electric, the troubled
American nuclear power company that
the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba has
offered for sale.
It is not clear if Chinese buyers might
be interested in the business, which filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
last week.
But the worries highlight the new ad-
ministrations stance on Chinas global
acquisition strategy, and its plans to
build up American industries.
WHY WOULD CHINA WANT
WESTINGHOUSE?
China is a rapidly expanding nuclear-
energy power. It has more than 20 reac-
tors under construction and is aiming to
double the amount of electricity it can
produce at its plants in the next three to
four years.
But it lags behind the West in technol-
ogy.
Advanced reactors in China are being
built by foreign groups, including West-
inghouse, which is installing its next-
generation AP1000 units at two facilities
in the country.
Westinghouse is believed to have
been targeted by Chinese spies. If a Chi-
nese entity were to buy the company,
China could obtain secrets without the
cloak and dagger.
WHATS ALARMING ABOUT THAT?
The Trump administration has not ex-
plained why it does not want China to
own Westinghouse.
Part of its concern could be economic:
A widely predicted nuclear renais-
sance has stalled across most of the de-
veloped world few plants are being
built or planned in Western countries
but it is possible that Washington does
not want China to dominate a future re-
vival.
China is an increasingly wealthy and
ambitious rival, and an advanced nucle-
Toshiba of Japan needs someone
to buy Westinghouse. Removing
Chinese groups from the pool of
potential bidders would come at
an economic cost.
ar energy program could help it catch up
to the United States faster.
Security is most likely a bigger con-
cern.
Although Westinghouse does not
make nuclear weapons, the Trump ad-

Rapid investment in tech worries Pentagon

HONG KONG
BY PAUL MOZUR
AND JANE PERLEZ
China is investing in Silicon Valley start-
ups with military applications at such a
rapid rate that the United States govern-
ment needs tougher controls to stem the
transfer of some of Americas most
promising technologies, a Pentagon re-
port says.
There are few restrictions on invest-
ing in American start-ups that focus on
artificial intelligence, self-driving vehi-
cles and robotics, the report contends,
and China has taken advantage. Beijing,
the report says, is encouraging its com-
panies to invest for the purpose of push-
ing the country ahead in its strategic
competition with the United States.
In some instances, Chinese compa-
nies have made under-the-radar invest-
ments intended to dodge the oversight
of a government agency, the Committee
on Foreign Investment in the United
States, known as Cfius.
If we allow China access to these
same technologies concurrently, then
not only may we lose our technological
superiority, but we may even be facili-
tating Chinas technological su-
periority, the report says.
Such concerns show that China is
looming in Americas rearview mirror
after a decades-long campaign by Bei-
jing to close the technological gap be-
tween the two countries. Although the
race is often cast in an economic light,
the Pentagon report underlines the na-
tional security threat.
In recent years, China has combined
domestic subsidies with aggressive in-
vestment overseas to build its own
technological know-how. A government
plan, Made in China 2025, that pro-
poses lavishing state funds on 10 impor-
tant industries has raised concerns from
American and European business
groups. Meanwhile, the global semicon-
ductor industry has been shaken by Bei-
jing-backed investment aimed at ac-
quiring new microchip knowledge.
President Trump has said he would
resist Chinese trade tactics that put
American companies at a disadvantage,
though it is unclear whether the topic
came up in meetings with President Xi
Jinping of China on Thursday and Fri-
day.
The report found that increasingly so-
phisticated commercial technology had
blurred the lines between what was
available to military consumers and ci-
vilian ones. Often start-ups and leading
internet companies like Facebook and
Google are working on products as so-
phisticated as anything the military has
at its disposal.
For example, V.R. for gaming is at a
similar level of sophistication as the V.R.
used in simulators for our armed
forces, the report said, referring to vir-
tual reality. Facial recognition and im-
age detection for social networking and
online shopping has real application in
tracking terrorists or other threats to
national security, the report continued,
which added that much of the autono-
mous vehicle and drone technology of
today was developed using grants from
the Pentagon.
In some cases, companies aided by
those grants have since raised money
from Chinese investors. Velodyne, for
example, started developing light sen-
sors for driverless cars after participat-
ing in a competition set up by the De-
fense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, a unit of the Pentagon, in 2005.
Since then, those sensors have been
used on the United States Navys un-
manned surface vehicles.
Last summer, the company received a
$150 million joint investment from Ford
and the Chinese internet giant Baidu.
Baidu declined to comment on the in-
vestment.
Laurel Nissen, a Velodyne spokes-
woman, said the round represented its
first outside investment.
The company obtained all necessary
government clearances relating to the
investment as part of the funding
process, the spokeswoman wrote in an
email. Notably, the investments were
designed to make advanced LiDAR sen-
JOE KLAMAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE GETTY IMAGES
Velodyne sensor technology, on display at the 2013 International CES trade show, is
used in some driverless vehicles. The company benefited from a Pentagon grant.
of the issue.
Not only may we lose our The U.S. government does not have a
technological superiority, but we holistic view of how fast this technology
may even be facilitating Chinas transfer is occurring, the level of Chi-
nese investment in U.S. technology, or
technological superiority. what technologies we should be protect-
ing, the report said.
Michael A. Brown, the former chief
sors more accessible to the broader in- executive of Symantec, led the study,
dustry, resulting in the development of called How Chinese Investments in
safer, less expensive autonomous vehi- Emerging Technology Enable a Stra-
cles. tegic Competitor to Access the Crown
Ashton B. Carter, the former secre- Jewels of U.S. Innovation. The New
tary of defense, commissioned the re- York Times reviewed a copy of the un-
port as an urgent review of what senior classified report.
Pentagon officials have considered Chi- Mr. Carter declined to comment on
nas alarming penetration of Silicon Val- the final document issued to cabinet offi-
ley, particularly in deals that finance cials last month.
nascent technology with military appli- The report does not offer examples of
cations. American companies that have ac-
The report found that American pri- cepted Chinese investment and then
vate industry was mostly unaware of found that their sensitive technologies
Beijings efforts many of the deals in- were transferred to China.
volve relatively small amounts of But it does take exception to tactics
money and that Washington did not that it says Chinese funds have used to
have a strong understanding of the scale skirt government oversight. For exam-
ple, it singles out Canyon Bridge, a ven-
ture capital firm that it says was formed
to buy Lattice Semiconductor, an Ameri-
can microchip company. The firm has
Chinese capital and American manage-
ment expertise. The purpose of creating
Canyon Bridge was to obscure the
source of capital to enhance the possi-
bility that the transaction would be ap-
proved by Cfius, the report said.
Peter Kuo, a partner at Canyon
Bridge, said that there was never any in-
tention to obscure the source of the
funds capital, as shown by meetings it
had with Cfius before the deal was
signed.
Chinese investors plowed about $30
billion into early-stage technology
through more than 1,000 funding deals
between 2010 and 2016. During that time,
participation from China rose to about 10
percent of total venture deals, with in-
vestment in crucial industries like artifi-
cial intelligence, robotics and aug-
mented reality accelerating in 2016, ac-
cording to the report.
Among the investors identified in the
report are well-known private firms and
funds like Alibaba and Baidu. It also
points to government-sponsored
investors like Westlake Ventures, a fund
in Redwood City, Calif., that is owned by
the Hangzhou government, and ZGC
Capital, an investor owned by 17 state-
owned enterprises with an office in
Santa Clara, Calif.
The rising trend in venture capital in-
vestments has occurred alongside state-
directed industrial espionage and online
theft, which the American government
has been unable to slow, the report says.
In the Federal Bureau of Investigations
Silicon Valley field office, only 10 people
are dedicated to counterespionage, and
F.B.I. officials said in interviews for the
report that it has very limited re-
sources relative to the threat.
The scale of the espionage continues
to increase, the authors say. Despite
the rise in convictions, there is no way to
know how big this problem really is.
Paul Mozur reported from Hong Kong,
and Jane Perlez from Beijing.
ministration may fear that China could
find ways to use the companys technol-
ogy to improve its nuclear arsenal, an-
other pillar of its growing power.
HOW MIGHT WASHINGTON BLOCK A
SALE?
It has options.
The most direct involves the Commit-
tee on Foreign Investment in the United
States, or Cfius, a government body that
reviews acquisitions with possible na-
tional security implications. Its mem-
bers include the secretaries of defense,
state, energy, commerce and the Treas-
ury.
While only the American president
has the power to block a cross-border
acquisition on national security
grounds, a recommendation by the com-
mittee to squelch a deal is widely consid-
ered a death sentence.
Alternatively, the administration
could encourage a rival bid from a busi-
ness based in the United States or in a
friendly country though that could be
a challenge, given the small number of
nuclear-plant builders and Westing-
houses history of losing large amounts
of money.
DOES JAPAN HAVE A SAY?
If anything, Japan is more wary of China
than the United States is, and the gov-
ernment in Tokyo has no wish to see
China get its hands on Westinghouses
technology. That means that Japan
would most likely welcome moves by
the Trump administration to block a Chi-
nese bid.
In any case, since Westinghouse is
based in the United States, Cfius has ju-
risdiction, regardless of what the Japa-
nese might want.
Yet Japan does need someone to buy
Westinghouse, whose problems have
caused billions of dollars in losses at
Toshiba, one of Japans largest and
proudest conglomerates, pushing it per-
ilously close to collapse. Eliminating
Chinese groups from the pool of poten-
tial buyers would come at an economic
cost.
So of all the ways Washington might
block a Chinese bid, simply saying no
through Cfius, but without arranging a
yes elsewhere, would be the least ap-
pealing to Japan.

8 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
business
Maggie Norris, right, a fashion designer who has had parties at the Russian Consulate and the New York Yacht Club to show off her couture. She is with her intern, Rayah Shapiro.
A grand spot for a party
Wealth Matters
PAUL SULLIVAN
Maggie Norris, a fashion designer,
likes to throw a good party. But after a
while its hard to find a venue interest-
ing enough to attract her coterie of
well-heeled, socially busy friends.
So a few years back, she rented out
the Russian Consulate in New York for
a Russian-themed bash. The consulate,
a former Vanderbilt mansion, was a
hit, she said. This past fall, she gained
entree to the New York Yacht Club, the
exclusive club that held the Americas
Cup sailing trophy for much of the 20th
century.
Beyond the unique locations, these
venues served up a different experi-
ence for her guests: access to places
they wouldnt normally be able to go.
I like to create really special events,
but they have to be so special that they
dont happen every year, Ms. Norris
said.
Thats probably a good thing, since
events like these a fixture of the
spring social scene are anything but
easy to pull off.
They take a long time to organize,
involve complex logistics and cost
more than a traditional party. Yet when
the host succeeds, the parties leave
memories far more lasting than the
most expensive dinner.
The first step is planning, which is
how any good party starts.
All planners say they can pull to-
gether an event in a few months, but
most prefer to have nine months to a
year. Ms. Norris said it took her a year
to organize the event at the New York
Yacht Club, and it happened only be-
cause she knew a member.
Planning too far in advance will not
necessarily make the event grander,
Does Uber prevent drunken driving?
Alcohol-related accidents
may drop; studies differ
on role of ride services
BY JACEY FORTIN
It seems like common sense: People will
be less tempted to drink and drive if they
have an easier, safer way to get home af-
ter a night out.
Uber has plenty of incentive to make
this case, and has reported on declines
in drunken-driving incidents in several
major cities after the company rolled out
its ride-hailing services, beginning in
San Francisco in 2010.
A recent independent study backs
this up. It found that in four boroughs of
New York City, excluding Staten Island,
there has been a 25 to 35 percent reduc-
tion in alcohol-related car accidents
since Uber came to town in 2011, as com-
pared to other places where the ride-
hailing company doesnt operate.
Thats a significant reduction,
amounting to about 40 fewer collisions
per month in those boroughs. And its
good news for Uber, which could use
some positive attention after months of
hurtling from one public relations crisis
to the next.
We need more evidence, but the
trend seems to be pointing toward
experts say. Theres a sweet spot,
said Matthew David Hopkins, presi-
dent and creative director of Matthew
David Celebrations. If they come to us
two years before their event, we know
were going to design it five times
before we have to commit to some-
thing. A couple of months is a little
short.
The venue is as much a star as the
host. And like any diva, the venues
rules can delay, change or even derail
an event. Many are institutions where
the staff, club members or paying
public are likely to be inconvenienced
by the event.
When youre at any type of cultural
landmark, anything where there is a
curatorial responsibility, you have got
to be so careful, said Bronson van
Wyck, a New York City party planner.
Almost everything that you want to do
there will require an extra step or two
to protect and preserve the place
where you are.
At the New York Public Librarys
flagship building in Manhattan, for
example, the loading docks lead di-
rectly into rooms of historic signifi-
cance, putting the people working the
party on watch from the moment they
arrive.
With a space like that, Mr. van Wyck
said, setting up the party is a lot easier
and potentially less expensive if it is
planned for a day when the institution
is not open to the public. Otherwise the
planner might have to wait until clos-
ing time and rush to set up. (Though
with the New York Public Library,
which is closed only on major holidays,
that may not be possible.)
Weather plays its own role in these
events. An institution may not allow a
tent for an outdoor party. Even if its
allowed, the tent may block the view
that made someone want to have a
party there in the first place.
Then there is the issue of electricity.
Simon Powles, a founder and the chief
executive of Starr Catering Group
ridesharing reducing drunk driving in-
cidents, said Jessica Lynn Peck, a doc-
toral candidate at the City University of
New York Graduate Center who wrote
the study, a working paper that was pub-
lished in January.
But not all studies have reached the
same conclusion. One report, published
in the American Journal of Epidemiolo-
gy last year, looked at 100 densely popu-
lated counties across the United States
and found no correlation between the
rollout of Uber services and the number
of traffic fatalities.
Noli Brazil, a postdoctoral research
associate with the University of South-
ern California who wrote that paper
with David S. Kirk, an associate profes-
sor at Oxford University, said common-
sense arguments that ride-hailing
apps should prevent drunken driving
made some sense on an individual level.
But he warned against making
broader assumptions, especially since
those who would drive drunk are not
necessarily rational decision-makers.
Researchers on the subject, he added,
had to deal with a dizzying array of
variables, including state laws, time
frames and communities access to pub-
lic transportation. All of these can affect
a studys conclusions, and there is
plenty of opportunity to cherry-pick
data.
In order to explain our results, we
which has supplied food for events at
the John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts and the National
Museum of American History in Wash-
ington said that for a 75th birthday
party at the New York Botanical Gar-
den in the Bronx, he brought in a gen-
erator powerful enough to run the
whole party.
We have no control over mother
nature, but we do have control over the
event being flawless, Mr. Powles said.
You peel the onion back until youve
looked at every possible thing.
Given this level of planning, these
events cost a lot
more than a
I like to similar event at a
create really more traditional
special events, space, like a
hotel ballroom.
but they have For the food
to be so special alone, Mr. Powles
that they dont said, it might
happen every cost $150 per
year. person at a hotel,
but around $225
per person at a
cultural institu-
tion, since those venues often lack
industrial kitchens and all the meals
must be brought in. Its definitely a
steep increase in what youd see in a
hotel or a restaurant, he said. But
youre getting something very custom
or private.
At that price, though, Mr. Powles
said clients should do a tasting as close
to the real thing as possible.
We show them every dish were
going to serve, he said. If its a spe-
cial event, we have our staff in that
uniform. We get their input and do
detailed notes. When they get to the
event, they know exactly what theyre
going to get.
The cost of renting the venue can
range from $5,000 for a room to
$100,000 or more a night to have a
museum to yourself. Some venues
include more for that fee, like lighting
pointed out the fact that the proportion
of individuals who use Uber is quite
small relative to the number of drivers
in a given county, Mr. Brazil said.
Most studies, like Ms. Pecks, have
noted a correlation between Uber
services and lower rates of alcohol-re-
lated accidents. A 2015 report from Tem-
ple University found that Uber was
associated with a decrease in motor ve-
hicle homicides in California. A report
this year from researchers at West Car-
We need more evidence, but
the trend seems to be pointing
toward ridesharing reducing
drunk driving incidents.
olina University also found that Uber
service rollouts led to declines in fatal
accident rates across the country.
But none of these reports has been as
unequivocal as the one Uber itself re-
leased in 2015. It stated that in several
major cities, Uber ridership peaked at
times when drunken driving accidents
tend to happen.
It also found that in Seattle, the intro-
duction of services was associated with
a 10 percent decrease in arrests for driv-
ing under the influence. And in places
where Uber was launched in California,
GUERIN BLASK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
and sound equipment, while with
others, the clients have to bring every-
thing themselves, including a kitchen
to cook in.
One of these parties could easily cost
$100,000, but planners say costs can
stretch to $1 million or more.
Ms. Norris said that the New York
Yacht Club donated what she paid to
charity. As for her event at the Russian
Consulate, she would say only that she
got a good price, and that it was worth
it given the atmosphere.
I thought it was kind of interesting
all these Russian guys were smok-
ing cigars in the stairwell, she said.
Mr. Hopkins, the planner, said he
provided line-item estimates for clients
so they can decide what they really
want included.
For a wedding, he recently designed
a wall with pictures of the bride and
groom on it. When dinner was over, the
wall rotated to reveal acrylic shelves
on which desserts appeared to float.
For that one piece, he needed people to
build the wall and the shelves, light the
wall properly, make the desserts and
then individually place each dessert on
a shelf.
Every piece of this becomes expen-
sive, because there are often multiple
vendors who become involved in any
one thing, Mr. Hopkins said.
Charges that may look negligible can
add up, Mr. van Wyck noted. You
dont want to be hit after the fact with
a cleanup fee, or a fee for taking all the
books off the floor and storing them in
a secure facility and they are going
to be handled by art handlers who get
paid $100 an hour, he said.
But as the MasterCard ad re-
minds us there are some things
money cant buy. Its one thing to walk
through the Temple of Dendur in the
daytime, Mr. van Wyck said, referring
to an exhibition in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Its another thing to
sit and have dinner by candlelight
inside the Temple of Dendur.
it reported, the number of alcohol-relat-
ed crashes every month decreased by
6.5 percent among young drivers.
Several independent studies have
shown Ubers presence in cities can help
reduce drunk-driving, a company
spokeswoman said. Were glad to pro-
vide an alternative to drunk driving that
helps people make safer, more responsi-
ble choices.
Ms. Peck, whose research used data
from the New York Department of Mo-
tor Vehicles and the states Department
of Transportation from 2007 to 2013,
agreed that the growing body of re-
search suggests ride-hailing services
lead to fewer alcohol-related accidents.
But she noted that analyzing data sets
and teasing out causation from correla-
tion is slow and tricky work.
I think anyone who does statistics for
a living is going to be really careful
about saying they are sure, she said.
Because we are scientists, and we are
never sure.
Mr. Brazil said that as Uber becomes
more popular across the United States, a
growing body of research could indeed
show that the app leads to lower drunk-
en driving rates but its too early to
say for sure.
The company made this claim that it
made cities safer, he said. We felt like
theres not enough people using Uber
just yet to make that kind of claim.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
On climate, NRG
faces challenge
Activist hedge funds
have installed directors
on power companys board
BY DIANE CARDWELL
AND ALEXANDRA STEVENSON
Over the years, NRG, a leading inde-
pendent power producer whose fleet
once depended heavily on coal, has
made big bets on low-carbon energy
technologies and publicized its embrace
of sustainability as essential to its fu-
ture.
It pursued developing renewable en-
ergy for customers large and small and
set aggressive goals to reduce its emis-
sions of carbon dioxide 50 percent by
2030, and 90 percent by 2050.
But now, the company finds its strat-
egy challenged from within.
Activist hedge-fund investors, intent
on extracting value from NRG assets,
have installed two directors on the
board who, in one potential approach,
would push to sell off some of the compa-
nys renewable-power projects, raising
questions about how it would meet its
clean-energy goals.
It is but the latest skirmish in NRGs
long struggle to make several kinds of
energy products conventional and re-
newable, large-scale and decentralized
profitable under one corporate um-
brella.
Raising further questions, one of the
directors installed by the activists,
Barry T. Smitherman, a lawyer and for-
mer energy industry regulator from
Texas, has publicly questioned accepted
climate science and called global warm-
ing a hoax. Dont be fooled not every-
one believes in global warming, he said
on Twitter from a presentation called
The Myth of Carbon Pollution at a con-
ference of regulators in 2013.
And that has drawn the attention of
New York Citys comptroller, Scott M.
Stringer, who oversees the citys pen-
sion funds that are shareholders in
NRG. On Friday, he filed a letter with the
Securities and Exchange Commission
urging shareholders to oust Mr.
Smitherman at their annual meeting on
April 27.
In light of Mr. Smithermans stated
views on climate change, which are in-
compatible with NRGs disclosed busi-
ness strategy and risks, we question his
ability to act in the best interests of NRG
and its shareholders, Mr. Stringer
wrote in the letter. Additionally, we be-
lieve his role on the board sends a de-
moralizing message to the many NRG
employees responsible for implement-
ing the companys existing business
strategy and managing its risks.
Mr. Smitherman did not return an
email or phone call seeking comment
about his views and how the board
shake-up might affect NRGs long-term
strategies and goals.
The conflict has its roots in efforts led
by Elliott Management, a multibillion-
dollar hedge fund run by Paul E. Singer,
and Bluescape Energy Partners, run by
C. John Wilder, a former executive at the
Texas utility TXU who has been credited
with its turnaround.
Under Mr. Singer, an early titan of the
hedge-fund industry who has also made
a name for himself as a top Republican
donor, Elliott has been known for its no-
holds-barred approach to taking on
companies and governments over its in-
vestments around the world.
As an activist investor, Elliott quietly
builds up equity stakes in companies un-
til it has a big enough position to start
rattling the cages of a companys man-
agement. In South Korea, Elliott became
the first investor to publicly spar with
Samsung, a conglomerate run by one of
the countrys most powerful corporate
dynasties. In Argentina, Elliott was pil-
loried in the local press as a vulture in-
vestor for waging a decade-long battle
with the government over its defaulted
debt.
In its investment in NRG, Elliott has
so far remained largely behind the
scenes. But in an emailed statement on
Thursday, Elliott said that if a buyer in
the market were willing to pay a pre-
mium for some of NRGs renewables
businesses, it may be a good decision
for NRG and its shareholders to crystal-
lize that value.
Most of the companys power plants
run on fossil fuels like coal and natural
gas, but it has extensive wind and solar
farms, including several unfinished
projects it bought last year from
SunEdison, which had gone bankrupt.
One of the directors installed by the activists, Barry T. Smitherman, a lawyer and for-
mer energy industry regulator from Texas, has called global warming a hoax.
..
Earlier this year, the company reported
a loss of $891 million for 2016, largely be-
cause of low natural gas prices, down
from a $6.4 billion loss the year before.
As for investor concerns about the ap-
pointment of Mr. Smitherman, Elliott
pointed to the fact that Mr. Smitherman
had extensive knowledge of the Texas
regulatory landscape.
NRG is one of the largest energy
suppliers in Texas, and some of its as-
sets in the state could be considered for
sale, requiring extensive knowledge of
the regulatory hurdles.
Mr. Smitherman and Mr. Wilder are
two of three independent board mem-
bers on a five-member committee
formed as part of the agreement with El-
liott and Bluescape to make recommen-
dations about cost savings, asset sales
and other potential actions, according to
Mr. Stringers letter. The companys full
board has 13 directors, according to its
website.
Mr. Smitherman, an ally of Rick Perry,
the energy secretary and former Texas
governor, was chairman of the Texas
Public Utility Commission, where he
helped usher in the high-voltage trans-
mission lines that spurred the develop-
ment of a robust wind industry. He then
ran the state Railroad Commission,
which largely regulates the oil and gas
industries.
It was not until around 2013, when he
announced his candidacy for state attor-
ney general, that Mr. Smitherman be-
gan publicly questioning climate sci-
ence and global warming, according to
energy experts in Texas. He appears to
still support the development of renew-
able energy, writing in The Dallas Morn-
ing News in December about how bene-
ficial Texas wind power development
had been to the state.
NRG has reeled in recent years as it
has sought to transform itself from a
conventional-energy giant into a leader
in the clean-energy economy.
NRG is caught between what we
consider the next generation of power
supply and the status quo, said Travis
NRG has reeled in recent years
as it has sought to transform
itself from a conventional-energy
giant into a clean-energy leader.
Miller, an energy and utilities analyst at
Morningstar. The move toward renew-
able energy and gas generation is a
trend that wont stop anytime soon so
every power generator is trying to de-
velop a strategy where they can benefit
from the transition period.
Marijke Shugrue, an NRG spokes-
woman, said: These are not altruistic,
sustainability-only goals. We are firm
believers in climate change and that CO2
emissions are a leading factor.
The company, for instance, recently
re-signed the Business Backs Low Car-
bon pledge organized by Ceres, an advo-
cacy group.
But corporate aims may end up in the
hands of directors with a different
agenda.
In January, Elliott and Bluescape an-
nounced that they had each bought a
large stake in NRG and were teaming up
to put pressure on the company to make
changes to its business. NRG was
deeply undervalued and could be
worth more if its management under-
took operational and financial im-
provements as well as strategic initia-
tives, Elliott said at the time in a filing to
the Securities and Exchange Commis-
sion.
Elliott said that Mr. Wilder and his
team had directly relevant experience
in effectuating such improvements,
adding that they were in a dialogue with
the board.
By February, NRG announced that it
had struck an agreement with Elliott,
which owned 6.9 percent of the compa-
nys stock, and Bluescape, which had 2.5
percent, to replace two departing direc-
tors and appoint Mr. Wilder and Mr.
Smitherman.
NRG also agreed to undertake a busi-
ness review of the different parts of the
company, including examining poten-
tial portfolio and/or asset de-
consolidations.
The companys renewables business
is likely to be among the assets spun off.
Some analysts have argued that those
businesses are undervalued because
they are housed within NRGs legacy
business, which involves burning
natural gas, coal and oil.
TODD WISEMAN FOR THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Opinion
We need smart diplomacy on Syria
President Antony J. Blinken
Trump did Contributing Writer
the right
thing in
striking the President Donald J. Trump was right to
strike at the regime of Syrian President
Assad Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of
regime for mass destruction, the nerve agent
using nerve sarin, against its own people. Mr.
Trump may not want to be president
gas. The of the world but when a tyrant bla-
hard part tantly violates a basic norm of interna-
comes next. tional conduct in this case, the ban
on using chemical or biological
weapons in armed conflict, put in place
after World War I the world looks to
America to act. Mr. Trump did, and for
that he should be commended.
The real test for Mr. Trump is what
comes next. He has shown a total lack
of interest in working to end Syrias
civil war. Now, the administration has
leverage it should test with the Assad
regime and Russia to restrain Syrias
air force, stop any use of chemical or
biological weapons, implement an
effective cease-fire in Syrias civil war
and even move toward a negotiated
transition of
power goals
Mr. Trump that eluded the
must also Obama adminis-
carefully guard tration.
At the same
against the time, it must
possible prevent or miti-
downsides of gate the possible
his actions, unintended
consequences of
especially with using force,
regard to the including compli-
counter-ISIS cating the mili-
campaign. tary campaign
against the Is-
lamic State. All
this will require
something in which the administration
has shown little interest: smart di-
plomacy.
That smart diplomacy starts with
Russia. The administration reportedly
previewed the strike with Moscow.
Cynics might conclude the fix is in: The
United States quietly warns the Rus-
sians, they give Mr. Assad a heads-up
and tell him not to react, and everyone
calls it a day. More likely, the adminis-
tration wanted to make sure Moscow
knew exactly what we were doing so
that Moscow would not overreact or
leave its forces in harms way.
The administration should make
clear to Moscow that it will hold it
accountable for Mr. Assads actions
going forward, rally others to do the
same and launch more strikes if neces-
sary. The United States should also
condition counter-terrorism coopera-
tion with Russia something Moscow
wants on Russias efforts to rein in
the Assad regime and push it toward
genuine peace negotiations with rebels.
I survived a sarin gas attack
In August Kassem Eid
2013, the
Assad
regimes On Aug. 21, 2013, I woke up in the dark
forces around 4:45 a.m., struggling to breathe.
My eyes were burning, my head was
dropped throbbing, and my throat was blocked.
chemical I was suffocating.
weapons on I tried to inhale but all I heard was a
horrible rasping sound as my throat
my home- closed up. An unbearable pain
town. It drummed in my head. The world began
changed my to blur. I pounded my chest but couldnt
breathe. My heart seemed about to
life forever. explode.
Suddenly, my windpipe opened. A
gust of air pierced my lungs. Needles
seemed to stab my eyes. A searing pain
clawed at my stomach. I doubled over
and shouted to my roommates: Wake
up! Its a chemical attack!
More than two years earlier, on
March 18, 2011, my hometown, Moad-
hamiyeh, a Damascus suburb of about
80,000 people, had held its first demon-
stration against the government of
President Bashar al-Assad.
Within hours, regime forces attacked,
shooting and arresting protesters. I
had recently returned home from
college in the city of Homs, where I
studied translation from Arabic into
English.
About a year later, in June 2012, Mr.
Assads forces started a siege of Moad-
hamiyeh, hoping to starve out the
rebelling residents; food and medical
supplies were blocked. The bombing
and shelling, which had been going on
since the winter, was relentless. The
town emptied. My childhood home,
close to the front line, was bombed
repeatedly. My mother and siblings
fled. About 10,000 people remained
trapped.
A council to manage the besieged
town was formed. I worked as a trans-
lator, helping communicate with aid
organizations and foreign govern-
ments. By the summer of 2013, I had
seen children and infants starve to
death. Several friends who tried to
Secretary of State Rex Tillersons trip
to Moscow this week will be pivotal in
advancing this message and managing
any risk of escalation with Russia.
The administration should play on
the likelihood that Russian President
Vladimir V. Putin is livid with Mr. As-
sad. Mr. Putin has helped the dictator
gain the upper hand in Syrias civil war.
But Mr. Assads renewed use of sarin
gas which the United States and
Russia stopped him from employing in
2013 by diplomatically enforcing Presi-
dent Obamas much maligned red line
against chemical weapons was
totally unnecessary and hugely embar-
rassing to Moscow.
The Russians also know they run an
increased risk of blowback for their
continued support of Mr. Assad and
complicity in his inhumane brutality
against Syrias Sunni community.
Syrias Sunni Arab neighbors and
escape the town were captured, tor-
tured and killed. We buried their muti-
lated bodies.
I moved into an abandoned apart-
ment in the city center with three
friends: Abu Abdo, my high school
writing partner; Ahmad, a friend from
middle school; and Alm Dar, a Free
Syrian Army field commander. The
siege had reduced us to eating weeds
and leaves and to going through trash
to survive.
On the night of Aug. 20, we spent
about four hours looking for food. Even
the trash offered nothing. Eventually
we found some wild grass. We boiled it,
drank it as soup and went to sleep. And
the next morning we found ourselves
battling a chemical gas attack.
Ahmad and Abdo scrambled out of
bed, fighting for breath and coughing
furiously. I splashed water on my face
in an attempt to ease the burning. We
staggered around the room, panting
and retching. We heard urgent knocks
on our door. Help, please, theyre
dying! gasped our neighbor Umm
Khaled. She was carrying her children,
4 and 6, one under each arm. Both were
unconscious. Their faces were blue and
yellow and they were foaming at the
mouth.
Alm Dar ran downstairs to get his old
Range Rover. Ahmad and Abu Abdo
followed, carrying the children. I raced
through the building past blasted-out
windows, crumbling walls and piles of
rubble looking for the injured. When
I reached the street I froze: Dozens of
men, women and children writhed on
the ground. Others screamed out for
doctors, wailing, praying, pleading for
their beloved fallen to breathe again.
I screamed too. And then I noticed a
little boy lying in the dirt. What I saw
eclipsed every horror I had seen so far:
burned and rotten corpses after
massacres, bodies of women and chil-
dren shredded by shelling, shrieks of
my friends wounded in combat.
The boys face had turned grotesque
shades of red, yellow and blue. His eyes
were glassy. White froth oozed from his
mouth. His throat grated as he strug-
Turkey may now feel compelled to
double down on their support for the
Syrian opposition, making Moscows
life a lot harder.
Sunni Muslims in Russia, central
Asia and the Caucasus will be further
enraged against Moscow, and some of
the thousands of Chechen fighters in
Syria could now seek vengeance back
home.
The recent horrific attack in the St.
Petersburg subway apparently by
an ethnic Uzbek possibly radicalized by
the war in Syria may be a preview of
things to come if Moscow does not
begin to extricate itself from the Syrian
morass. The Trump administration
should help Mr. Putin find an exit ramp.
Mr. Trump must also carefully guard
against the possible downsides of his
actions, especially with regard to the
counter-ISIS campaign.
The administration will have to
The bodies of Syrians said to have been killed in a chemical weapons attack in 2013.
gled to breathe. I took off his shirt and
tried to blow air into his mouth. I
pressed against his chest and tried to
pump the white poison from his lungs.
Nothing helped.
After two or three minutes, Alm Dar
pulled up in the Range Rover overflow-
ing with injured women and children.
He stared blankly at the boy, turned to
his overflowing truck, turned back to
me. I sat in the trunk with the boy. He
was still struggling to breathe, that
horrible grating sound still coming
from his throat. We drove past more
bodies and wailing survivors. I held
him and cried.
When we pulled into the field hospi-
tal, a mile away, I lifted the boy out of
the truck. He seemed heavier than
before. I could barely keep my balance.
I used all my strength to put him down.
Then the world began to shimmer and
turn gray, and the ground rose up to
meet me.
I woke up to find a man holding me
and yelling that I was alive. He had a
long, wet black beard and reddened
eyes. I knew him. Ahmad. My friend,
my housemate, Ahmad. I was in a
convince Moscow not to complicate life
for American pilots by painting them
with their potent air defenses, or en-
gaging in dangerous fly-bys. He will
have to warn Mr. Assads other major
patron, Iran, not to retaliate by un-
leashing its militia in Iraq against
American troops. He will have to bal-
ance further action against the Assad
regime with the need to keep our re-
sources focused on defeating the Is-
lamic State.
And the president will have to control
for mission creep. If Mr. Assad persists
in the use of chemical or biological
weapons, it will take extraordinary
discipline to avoid falling into an esca-
lation trap that leads from justified
punitive strikes to a broader, and riski-
er, United States intervention. After all,
American involvement in Libya, which
I advocated, began as an effort to pro-
tect civilians from violence by the
BASSAM KHABIEH/REUTERS
basement with small windows. People
were crying and screaming, dousing
victims with water, pumping their
chests to revive them. The floor was
wet and cold and covered with blood.
A doctor holding a syringe and two
men carrying buckets of water ap-
proached me. They splashed water
over my body. The doctor injected me
with a clear liquid. I was in great pain,
but as the liquid coursed through me I
began to feel stronger.
I tried to push the men back when
they bent down to pick me up. Lets go
upstairs, they told me. The air is
starting to get poisoned in here. They
helped me up a set of broken, rusty
stairs into the open air.
The sun was rising. I shielded my
eyes from a red ray of sunlight. All
around, people cried as they lay on the
ground or tried to revive their friends
and relatives.
I took a few steps until I reached a
burned-out bus parked in the middle of
the street. The bus seemed familiar; I
had a clear memory of seeing it on fire.
I stopped and looked around. I knew
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 9
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
government of Col. Muammar el- President Trump
Qaddafi. But it ended in regime change. spoke about the
Owning Syria would be exponentially missile attack on
more challenging than our already Syria at his Mar-a-
fraught responsibility for post-Qaddafi Lago estate in Palm
Libya. Beach, Fla., on
Here at home, Mr. Trump must speak Thursday.
directly to the American people about
the countrys mission and its objec-
tives, thoroughly brief Congress and
seek its support, and make clear the
legal basis for United States actions.
And while hes at it, he should reopen
the door he has tried to slam shut on
Syrian refugees. The presidents hu-
man reaction to the suffering of those
gassed by the Assad regime should
extend to all the victims of Syrias civil
war, including those fleeing its vio-
lence.
ANTONY J. BLINKEN was a deputy secretary
of state in the Obama administration.
this place. I was in the field hospital in
Moadhamiyeh. Many people ran to me
and hugged me. Praise to God, youre
alive! Kassem, youre alive!
I began to recognize my longtime
friends and neighbors. But I still could-
nt understand what had happened to
me. Why did I feel so cold? I realized
that I was wearing only my boxers. I
wanted my clothes. Theyre covered in
water and sarin, my friend Abu Malek
said. Assad hit us with sarin gas. He
left to get me some clothes.
I remembered gasping for air, inhal-
ing the most painful breath of my life. I
recalled the bodies on the street, the
glassy stare of the little boy. Abu Malek
returned with my jacket and a blanket.
Now you should be A loud blast
cut him off midsentence. The explosion
shook the ground. The regime forces
began firing at us with tank shells,
mortars and heavy artillery. A desper-
ate effort to evacuate the hospital
began.
A group of Free Syrian Army fighters
sprinted past me. Abu Jamal, a young
fighter I knew, urged the crowd to take
cover, to fight. His face turned red as he
yelled louder and louder. I kept staring
at him, rooted to the ground.
The regime jets roared overhead. I
craned my neck, searching for the
planes, waiting for the sound of bombs.
I surveyed the ruins of my neighbor-
hood, hoping for something that might
help me comprehend what was hap-
pening.
Alm Dar appeared and began shout-
ing at me, trying to get me to move. I
simply stood there in my boxers and
stared at him. He slapped me. Are they
trying to invade? I asked. Yes! he
answered. From where? Every-
where!
I gathered myself and followed Alm
Dar to the front line. A little later, I fired
my first bullet in defense of my home
against the people who had dropped
poison on us.
KASSEM EID lives in Berlin, where he is
working on a memoir about the Syrian
civil war.
 ..
10 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 + THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

opinion

In Thailand, a kings coup?

the authority to resolve a constitu- public appearances with the crown not command the same respect as
ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER JR., Publisher A.G. SULZBERGER, Deputy Publisher David Streckfuss tional crisis not explicitly addressed by prince, a tacit endorsement that Bhumibol, but his relatively clean slate
DEAN BAQUET, Executive Editor MARK THOMPSON, Chief Executive Officer
the charter. Under the juntas draft, it smoothed his path to the throne. The is another kind of asset: It gives him
JOSEPH KAHN, Managing Editor STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, President, International
was to be the heads of all three Prayuth government has invoked credibility, perhaps even leverage, with
TOM BODKIN, Creative Director PHILIPPE MONTJOLIN, Senior V.P., International Operations
branches of power, convened by the liberally Thailands draconian lse- pro-democracy advocates, including
SUZANNE DALEY, Associate Editor JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, Senior V.P., Global Advertising KHON KAEN, THAILAND King Maha Constitutional Court. Now the king will majest laws against critics of the supporters of the populist former
ACHILLES TSALTAS, V.P., International Conferences Vajiralongkorn signed into force Thai- play final arbiter in a crisis, as was the throne or the military sending a prime minister Shinawatra Thaksin,
JAMES BENNET, Editorial Page Editor lands 20th Constitution on Thursday, case, at least in practice, under both record number of ordinary citizens to commonly known as the red shirts.
CHANTAL BONETTI, V.P., International Human Resources
JAMES DAO, Deputy Editorial Page Editor three months after surprising the the 1997 and the 2007 Constitutions. jail for record-long sentences. Vajiralongkorn does not seem to
CHARLOTTE GORDON, V.P., International Consumer Marketing
military government by requesting These changes and perhaps more So is Vajiralongkorn trying to rede- share the near-hysterical anti-Thaksin
TERRY TANG, Deputy Editorial Page Editor HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS, V.P., International Circulation
revisions to its proposed charter. The so still the fact that they even were fine the monarchys relationship with sentiment pervasive among the junta
HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific
text could not go into effect until the requested represent a loss of power the military, unexpectedly, or is he and the privileged urbanites who profit
SUZANNE YVERNS, International Chief Financial Officer
king approved it. for Gen. Prayuth and his backers. They simply reasserting a few royal prerog- from authoritarian rule. This could
Vajiralongkorn, who acceded to the also appear to be a departure from the atives so he can keep on living as he help him play broker among a wider
throne just this past December, may be longstanding cooperation between the pleases? Either way, what are the range of actors, including some that
trying to wrest some power from the military and the monarchy. For implications for the prospects of de- the junta has prevented from engaging
junta, which ousted a democratically decades, successive generations of mocracy in Thailand? in any political activity.
elected government in a coup in 2014. Thai generals have deposed elected For decades, the palace has almost The military government often says
And the Constitutions promulgation governments, rewritten constitutions always aligned itself with the military, that it seeks reconciliation, but then
A SERBIAN ELECTION ERODES DEMOCRACY sets in motion a timetable for the next, and passed undemocratic laws and generally against politicians and de- lapses into blaming peoples
long-awaited, election, now tentatively all of that was mocracy. The military would call the democratic aspirations for Thailands
With Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucics decisive vic- then legitimized shots, and the palace would sign off.
Having sti- scheduled to take place by late 2018. instability. Gen. Prayuth is reported to
tory in the presidential election on April 2, Serbia has King with a stroke of Gen. Prayuths government cleared have said earlier this year, If they are
Yet none of that necessarily bodes well
fled opposi- edged closer to autocracy. Though the presidency is for the prospects of democracy. Vajiralongkorn the royal pen. Vajiralongkorns way to the throne, and carried away with thoughts about
wants more But Gen. expected him to rubber stamp its
tion and largely ceremonial, Mr. Vucic can now handpick his The Constitution seems designed to
Prayuths gov- Constitution. But he didnt. He asked to
rights, liberties and democracy in
press free- successor as prime minister and consolidate his power, ensure that even if an election does power for ernment could change it, and in seemingly innocuous
every issue, it will lead to anarchy.
take place, the military will remain in himself. That To foster a somewhat more open
dom, Alek- since Parliament and the judiciary are all but locked up control. Among other things, it allows
hardly refuse to ways, which may be even more un-
political atmosphere, Vajiralongkorn
sandar Vu- by Mr. Vucics Serbian Progressive Party. Having se- the senate, which is essentially ap-
means less accede to Vajira- nerving to the generals. After they
could use his (never-challenged) con-
power for the longkorns de- assented to his changes, he chose to
cic, now as verely curtailed press freedom and marginalized po- pointed by the junta, to select the mands. The approve the revised draft, well ahead
stitutional powers to pardon or reduce
litical opposition, his concentration of power bodes ill prime minister with the support of just generals. But the sentences of political prisoners or
president, one-quarter of elected members in the what does it
Constitution of the deadline, on Chakri Memorial
people who have been jailed for lse-
for Serbian democracy. couldnt come Day, which commemorates the estab-
has control House of Representatives. mean for into force if the lishment of the current dynasty 235 majest crimes. After all, the juntas
Though Mr. Vucic won more than 50 percent of the
of all No wonder the military government
democracy? king didnt sign years ago. abusive application of the lse-majest
vote, far surpassing the second-place candidate, Sasa seemed both irritated and flustered laws risks undermining the prestige of
branches of when in early January Vajiralongkorn,
it, and the docu- The timing was no coincidence; it
the royal family. Vajiralongkorn could
Jankovic, who won a little over 16 percent, the election ment, having was a message. This monarch is going
government. was marred by accusations of voter intimidation and a after just a month on the throne, asked been approved to be a player, it said. Uncertainty is speak out against it (as Bhumibol once
to modify the draft charter. The junta by a popular referendum however the rule in Thai politics, but typically did) or ask for revisions to the laws
near total domination of Serbias media by Mr. Vucic promptly announced that the kings themselves so that, for example, no
orchestrated that was may be the its been the doing of the generals and
and his party. request would affect only a few provi- juntas only claim to having anything their guns. Now its the generals who prosecution could proceed without the
It speaks volumes about many Serbians cynicism sions. It does not involve peoples resembling a mandate from the people. face uncertainty, and from their tradi- palaces assent.
that Luka Maksimovic, a 25-year-old student who ran rights and freedom at all, Prime Min- That Vajiralongkorn even asked for tional ally. Theres nothing more alarm- Vajiralongkorn doesnt have the kind
ister Prayuth Chan-ocha said, appar- revisions is all the more surprising ing for people used to wielding arbi- of standing that his father, the so-called
initially as a joke under the pseudonym of Ljubisa
ently trying to downplay its impor- because as crown prince he was known trary power than knowing someone Development King, built over seven
Beli Preletacevic a name that alludes to someone tance. It is about His Majestys au- decades in power. Then again he may
for a lavish lifestyle abroad and else with even more arbitrary power is
who switches political parties for personal gain won thority. seemed neither interested in nor suited looking over their shoulder. not need to. He could serve his country
9 percent of the vote. But Serbians political disaffection And so it is only, given the revi- to being as active a king as his late But theres more. Tying the promul- well enough by simply reasserting
goes beyond cynicism. sions in question, more power for the father, King Bhumibol, much less a gation of the Constitution to Chakri traditional royal prerogatives against
monarchy will mean less for the mili- challenger to the junta. Day is significant is another way as the generals overreach. For what
Every day since the election, thousands of protesters, tary. happens to be good for the Thai
The military government had also well: It seems to signal that constitu-
mostly young, have turned out in the streets of Bel- One change allows the king to name worked hard to win Vajiralongkorns tions are a gift to the people from the monarchy today displaying clemen-
grade, blowing whistles and brandishing banners with a regent to act on his behalf, including favor. In 2014, while he was said to be monarchy, and that opens wide the cy and greater tolerance toward advo-
slogans such as Down with dictatorship and Vucic, when he is traveling outside Thailand. having an affair, it set the stage for his question of what this king might do for cates of democracy would be good
This strips the Privy Council, a royal divorce from his third wife by having democracy. for the Thai people too.
you stole the election. Mr. Vucic boasts that the fact
advisory group known to support the her extended family arrested and Having spent much of the last dec-
that the government hasnt cracked down on the junta, of its traditional authority to act sending her into internal exile. When ade abroad means that Vajiralongkorn, DAVID STRECKFUSS is the author of
protests is a sign of democracy. Given the hideous in the kings place on such occasions. there was talk of allowing a princess to who is 64, has stayed clear of political Truth on Trial in Thailand: Defama-
repression of public protest in many autocratic states, Another change concerns who has succeed Bhumibol, the generals made entanglements in Thailand. He may tion, Treason and Lse-Majest.
he has a point or, perhaps he simply doesnt view
whistling students to be much of a threat now that the
election is over.
In any case, Mr. Vucic could show a commitment to
democracy by restoring freedom of the press, allowing
access by the public to dissenting views and independ-
ent sources of information, and ordering an independ-
ent investigation of allegations of voter intimidation
with a promise any involved will be punished.
European leaders who see in strongmen such as Mr.
Vucic a force for stability and who hope Mr. Vucic will
make good on his promise to keep Serbia on track to
join the European Union even as Russias influence in
the Balkans grows must avoid the temptation to look
the other way as Mr. Vucic and his allies seize monop-
oly control over the countrys political institutions and
its press.
To accede to such control by Mr. Vucic would be a
betrayal of the European Unions core values, and of the
many Serbians who look to the European Union as a
beacon of democratic rights and freedoms at a time
when Eastern and Central European leaders are turn-
ing their backs on democracy.

ONLY HEAD OF STATE IN A WHEELCHAIR

Lenn Moreno, Ecuadors president-elect, has described
Lenn More- being a paraplegic as a blessing. People who walk, he
no trans- explained a few years ago, keep their gaze trained for-
formed how ward and upward.
Ecuador saw When you dont have legs, you look down, he said in
RUNGROJ YONGRIT/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
people with 2012, when he was vice president, during a visit to the
World Bank. Thats what I learned: that theres an- Thai workers installing a framed photograph of King Maha Vajiralongkorn at a shopping mall last December in Bangkok.
disabilities.
He now has other life, another existence, that there are other hu-
man beings that need a lot from us. For me, this was a
a bigger
novel experience that I thank God for.
bully pulpit.

The America I didnt want to see

When he assumes office next month, Mr. Moreno will
be the only head of state who needs a wheelchair to get
around. That will make him among the most powerful
and visible champions of people with disabilities, and
position Ecuador to continue setting an example on a ade ago on an F1 student visa. The in our communities. At her house, could never understand someone like
human rights issue that has lagged as a global priority. Jane Madembo AIDS pandemic was gripping my coun- Marjorie made me watch Birth of a Marjorie.
try, in addition to civil unrest and eco- Nation. So you can see how evil white For many years racism performed a
Among his first priorities was to carry out a detailed
nomic calamity. My sister and numer- people are, she said. However, not all dance around me, without actually
census of Ecuadors population of people with disabili- ous relatives were among hundreds of African-Americans share the same touching me. It was something I read
ties. One day I returned from lunch to find thousands of Zimbabweans whose lives view as Marjorie, even her children. about, as I read about the Holocaust or
When we started on this issue 10 years ago, we had four or five police detectives in the were cut short by AIDS. I hungered to Her son, from whom she was es- watched Schindlers List.
three basic questions, Xavier Torres, the president of office I share with others at a college make new connections to replace those tranged, was Now that I have accumulated my
library. It turned out that a valuable I had lost or left behind. White Ameri- married to a own catalog of racial incidents, racism
the National Council on Disability Equality, said in an book was missing, and the police had cans were friendly but spoke to me As an African white woman, is more real to me than words on paper.
interview. Where are they, how are they and what do received my name as someone who about African-Americans as if they immigrant, and they had When the police showed up in our office
they need. might have come in contact with it. In were of a different species. They re- I sometimes three children. I was scared and alarmed, especially
The conclusions were horrifying, Mr. Moreno told the fact, I had never touched the book. ferred to black neighborhoods as full of When I finally given widely publicized incidents of
African-Americans in other depart- drug addicts and criminals. This didnt thought emerged from violent contact between police and
United Nations General Assembly in a 2010 speech. We African-
ments immediately suspected racism. bother me because I considered myself her house, I felt minorities. Being black, I felt like a
could not have conceived what we would find: human Look at the people in your department African, not African-American. Americans like I had woken condemned woman. I felt vulnerable
beings abandoned in holes in the ground, in cages, with who do you think they suspect took Those first days in America I became were clinging up from a night- and defenseless. I thought about Mar-
silence as their companion and death as their only that book? they said. I brushed them acquainted with Marjorie, a tall mare. The Amer- jorie, and about those African-Ameri-
off, but I started feeling uneasy. I had African-American woman in her
to the past. ica she painted cans whose voices I dared to disbelieve.
hope.
heard that racists could use law en- mid-60s. Dreadlocks flowed down her Then I for me wasnt the I understood then that the embers of
Over the past decade, the government ramped up
forcement as extra ammunition to back like a cascading river. In Mar- experienced America that I racism were still smoldering in Amer-
spending to make public facilities accessible and pro- silence their victims; now I worried I jories living room, African masks, had come to see. ica. Racism is not just about burning
racism myself.
vide people with wheelchairs, prosthetics and was experiencing this firsthand. I found wooden sculptures and African fabric As an African, I crosses, crude signs on bathroom doors
caretakers. It also has promoted Ecuador as a hospita- myself consulting African-Americans I competed for space on the wall. We felt a connection or graffiti on walls. It doesnt announce
ble tourist destination for people with physical disabili- trusted and respected because I bonded over her love for Africa. Mar- to African-Ameri- its arrival. It often ambushes its vic-
doubted myself. I wanted them to tell jorie was outspoken about her opinions cans because of our shared history. But tims, like the sudden appearance of
ties. me that I was wrong. But they all nod- of white people. They are evil, she privately, other Africans and I accused plainclothes detectives.
The prospect of seeing Mr. Moreno in the presidential ded knowingly, as if this was something said, face twisted with emotion. Mar- African-Americans of clinging to the Now that I am an American citizen,
palace is joyous for Ecuadoreans with disabilities, said they had all gone through. jorie did her grocery shopping in up- past, of not letting go. I felt burdened by American history is part of my history. I
Mr. Torres, who also uses a wheelchair. Like millions of other immigrants, I market neighborhoods. I want to buy the stories of racism they shared. I have to bear the burden of its past,
Its a milestone for the region, he said. The period had been lured to America by the prom- the food they are buying, she ex- wanted to stay African and on the present and future.
ise of the American dream. I arrived plained. They fill our supermarkets fringes of American political issues.
when we were talked about with pity is over. here from Zimbabwe more than a dec- with foods that cause health problems Until I experienced racism myself I JANE MADEMBO is an essayist.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 11

opinion

Keep politics out of Passover

Shmuel Rosner
Contributing Writer
TEL AVIV More than any other Jewish
text, the Passover Haggadah the
book that guides participants through
the Seder is a quilt sewn over gener-
ations. It is mysterious and beautiful,
and often restless. It weaves together
social justice (inviting the needy to join
the meal), storytelling (about how our
forefathers were enslaved in Egypt),
ceremonial symbols (unleavened
bread and a shank bone, to name just
two), pedagogy (asking questions from
a wise son and a wicked one), celebra-
tion (for the Exodus) and pleas for
help (Pour out Your wrath upon the
nations who do not know You).
The Haggadah also encapsulates
two competing instincts in Jews today.
On one hand is the tribal-national
sense of peoplehood the Exodus
ROBERT B. FISHMAN/PICTURE-ALLIANCE, VIA DPA,
VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
emphasize social justice, feminism,
secularism, vegetarianism. Some add a
fifth cup of wine to the traditional four
either to note the ultimate redemp-
process over hundreds of years will
continue to evolve.
But in other ways, the modern Hag-
gadot are a curse. They take a
historically unifying celebration of a
people and turn it into a politically
divisive event. Some Jews celebrate
their Passover by mourning an occupa-
tion of land; others celebrate by high-
lighting the reclamation of the same
land. Some Jews celebrate by stressing
the need for compassion for the strang-
er; others celebrate by underscoring
the merits of tribalism. Passover is a
time for Jews to acknowledge their
shared roots and their covenants of
fate and destiny. Yet many new Hag-
gadot define Jewish groups by pitting
them against one another.
They also trivialize Judaism and its
sacred festivals and texts. And this is
not unique to Passover. Theres a grow-
ing tendency among Jews whether
rabbis, teachers, community leaders or
lay people to employ Jewish texts to
score political points. A Passover Seder

All the presidents generals

Ross Douthat
By the standards of recent American
presidencies, two very normal-seeming
things happened in the Trump adminis-
tration last week. On Wednesday, Steve
Bannon, the presidents not particularly
effective strategist and ideologist, was
demoted out of the National Security
Councils principals committee. And on
Thursday, the president rained cruise
missiles onto Syria.
The demotion suggested that Trumps
foreign policy might be losing some of
its promised America First distinc-
tiveness; the bombing seemed to con-
firm it. Allowing for a few Trumpian
flourishes, the strikes could have hap-
pened under Bill Clinton or Ronald
Reagan or George W. Bush, and so could
the response: Politicians of both parties
offered support, liberal hawks and
neoconservatives were suddenly happy,
TV pundits talked up Trumps newfound
stature . . . and critics of U.S. warmaking
were back to crying in the wilderness,
the taste of betrayal in their mouths.
So has the ideological revolution in
U.S. foreign policy been canceled? In
one sense, yes: If you were expecting
Trump to actually govern as a paleocon-
servative, to eschew the use of force
absent some immediate threat to the
American homeland, to pull U.S. troops
out of all their far-flung bases and leave
entangling alliances behind, then the
strikes against Bashar al-Assad are the
latest evidence that you got played.
But that doesnt mean that Trump is
just going to return to the same grooves
as his predecessors. Most recent presi-
dencies have been distinguished by
tugs of war between different groups of
foreign policy hands
neoconservatives and Kissingerians
and Jacksonians under Republicans,
liberal interventionists and liberal
realists and the antiwar left under
Democrats.
The Trump administration, though,
doesnt really have many normal for-
eign policy experts among its civilian
officials. Rex Tillerson may have a
realist streak and Nikki Haley a mor-
alistic style, but neither one has been
part of these debates before. Mike
Pence has nothing like the experience of
a Dick Cheney or a Joe Biden. If Ban-
nons vision is getting sidelined, its not
like Jared Kushner is ready with a
deeply thought-out alternative.
What Trump has instead are generals
James Mattis and H. R. McMaster
and the other military men in his
cabinet, plus, of course, the actual pro-
fessional military itself. And its this
team of generals,
not any of the
Why the
usual foreign
military may
policy schools,
end up guiding that seems in-
Trumps foreign creasingly likely
policy. to steer his state-
craft going for-
ward.
The profes-
sional military always influences U.S.
foreign policy, and military minds are
hardly monolithic in their views. (Just
ask Gen. Michael Flynn.) But for Ameri-
can policy to be effectively military-
directed, as opposed to just military-
influenced, would be a new thing in
recent U.S. history, with strong implica-
tions for how the weakening Pax Ameri-
cana gets defended in the age of Trump.
First, in certain ways a military-
directed foreign policy promises to be
more stability-oriented than other
approaches to international affairs. It
would be less prone to grand ideological
ambitions than either liberal hawkish-
ness or neoconservatism less in-
clined to imagine the U.S. as an agent of
democratic revolution or a humanitar-
ian avenging angel. But it would also be
skeptical of the shifts in our strategic
posture and retreats from existing
commitments that realists and anti-
interventionists sometimes entertain.
Thus, had the U.S. military been
running George W. Bushs White House,
its unlikely that we would have at-
tempted to plant democracy in Iraq.
Had it been running the Obama admin-
istration, its unlikely that we would
have abandoned Hosni Mubarak or
sought a region-reshaping dtente with
Tehran. And so far, the Trump White
Houses re-emphasis on longstanding
military relationships (with the Sunni
Arab states, especially), its quieter line
on human rights and its backpedaling
from promised big-deal shifts in our
posture toward Russia and China all fit
with what you might expect from a
brass-led presidency.
But even as it prizes stability, the
military has a strong bias toward, well,
military solutions whenever crises or
challenges emerge. These solutions are
not usually huge invasions or expensive
nation-building exercises. But they
treat bombs and missiles and drone
strikes and (in limited, extractable
numbers) boots on the ground as first-
resort tools of statecraft.
Thus, you would expect a military-
guided foreign policy to be leery of
massive involvement in Syrias civil war
. . . but when something like Assads use
of chemical weapons happens, its first
and strongest impulse would be a puni-
tive strike. A similar logic would apply
around the worlds trouble spots. A
generals foreign policy wouldnt seek
out a land war in Asia, but it would be
open to many limited interventions that
might take us, by increments, deeper
and deeper into conflict.
Overall, the armed forces worldview
a status-quo bias plus doses of hard
power is hardly the worst imaginable
vision for Trump to adopt. But where the
presidents inability to back down from
a big fight meets the militarys willing-
ness to start a lot of small ones lies the
great peril of his presidency: not delib-
erate warmongering, but an accidental
escalation that his generals encourage,
and that the ultimate decider has no
idea how to stop.
from Egypt represents the creation of
a people, the Jewish people. On the
other hand is the universalist-human-
ist the Hebrews emancipation from
Pharaoh has become a symbol of free-
dom from oppression, and Let my
people go a rallying cry everywhere.
Because it reconciles these two
threads in Jewish life, Passover is
appreciated by nearly everyone in the
Jewish community and more widely
observed than any other holiday. In
Israel, more than 90 percent of Jews
celebrate Passover; in the United
States, 70 percent. But this holiday can
also be a moment of polarization, and
the Haggadah can be a Rorschach test
as Jews choose competing interpreta-
tions.
A contemporary reading is often a
political one. Life today is, of course,
very different from what it was cen-
turies ago when the Haggadah was
assembled. So some Jews reinvent the
book to suit their new needs. The
socialist kibbutz movement produced
hundreds of Haggadot over the years,
with references to collectivist ideals
and modern events like the Holocaust.
In 1969, some American Jews created a
freedom Haggadah in support of the
African-American struggle for equality.
More recently, the novelist Jonathan
Safran Foer edited a stylish postmod-
ern Haggadah, well suited, one critic
wrote, to our age of distraction.
Jews today use the Haggadah to
tion, the establishment of the State of during which you spend time criticiz-
Israel, or to celebrate Mosess sister ing the Trump administrations immi-
Miriam, and the role of women gration policies or regretting the evac-
throughout Jewish history. uation of Israeli settlements from Gaza
This year, there seem to be two is not a relevant Seder, it is a me-
trendy themes for Haggadot. Liberal diocre and redundant one. Passover is
American Jews could use the Hag-
for celebrating the transcendent, the
gadah and its lessons about welcoming
mysterious, the eternal, not rehashing
strangers to express their opposition to worn-out political debates. It is a night
President
to find new meaning in an old script,
Trumps immi- not to force the text into a precon-
The Jewish
holiday is a time
gration policies.
Israeli Jews who
ceived political platform.
What makes this night different
for celebration, oppose Israels than all other nights? the Haggadah
reflection and control of the
asks. It is our responsibility to give a
mourning. Not West Bank could
proper answer. We were slaves to
tired debates use the Jubilee
Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord, our
Haggadah, put
about Donald God, took us out from there with a
out by a group
Trump. called Save Is-
strong hand and with an outstretched
arm.
rael, Stop the
Occupation, For many generations, this is how
we answer this question as the
which marks the 50th year of the
state of Israels rule over the Palestin- Haggadah guides us. For many gener-
ations, we have followed a script.
ian people and argues that the Pales-
tinian people yearn for their own es- There is an answer for the wise son,
and an answer for the wicked son, one
cape from bondage.
for the simple son, one for the silent
In some ways, new readings of the
Haggadah are a blessing. They take an son. The Haggadah doesnt tell us how
ancient text and make it relevant. They to answer the son who cannot stop
make it easier for disconnected Jews talking about the news, not even for
to find meaning in the Passover Seder. one night. Maybe it is hinting that he
They enable a contemporary often does not merit an answer.
secular Jew to relate to a text that is
in many ways culturally foreign. And it SHMUEL ROSNER is the political editor at
is reasonable to expect that a text that The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at
was devised in a messy and unorderly the Jewish People Policy Institute.

Syria airstrikes were the right choice

KRISTOF, FROM PAGE 1
that neither Assad nor any leader can
get away with using weapons of mass
destruction.
Look, for a Syrian child, it doesnt
matter much whether death comes from
a barrel bomb, a mortar shell, a bullet, or
a nerve agent. I hope Trump will also
show more interest in stopping all
slaughter of Syrians but its still
important to defend the norm against
chemical weapons (the United States
undermined that norm after Saddams
gas attack by falsely suggesting that
Iran was to blame).
Critics note that Trumps airstrikes
dont have clear legal grounding.
Theyre right, and that was one reason
Obama didnt act. But Bill Clintons 1999
intervention to prevent genocide in
Kosovo was also of uncertain legality,
and thank God for it. Clinton has said
that his greatest foreign policy mistake
was not intervening in Rwanda during
the 1994 genocide; any such interven-
tion also would have been of unclear
legality and the right thing to do.
There are risks ahead, of Russia or
Syria targeting American aircraft or of
Iran seeking revenge against Ameri-
cans in Iraq. War plans rarely survive
the first shot, and military interventions
are easier to begin than to end. But as
long as we dont seek to topple Assad
militarily, everybody has an interest in
avoiding an escalation.
Its also fair for critics to highlight
Trumps hypocrisy, and raise concerns
that he may have fired missiles for
political reasons, to show himself as a
leader and distract from political prob-
lems. Certainly Trump previously ob-
jected to what he is now doing.
Referring to Obama in 2013, he
tweeted: The president must get Con-
gressional approval before attacking
Syria. And when Trump speaks about
the suffering of Syrias beautiful little
babies, one wonders how he justifies
vilifying and barring those same babies
with his travel ban. Yet Id rather Trump
inconsistently do the right thing than
consistently do the wrong thing.
Many of my fellow progressives
viscerally oppose any use of force, but I
think thats a mistake. I was against the
Iraq war, but some military interven-
tions save lives. The no fly zone over
northern Iraq in the 1990s is one exam-
ple, and so are the British intervention
in Sierra Leone and French intervention
in Mali. Its prudent to be suspicious of
military interventions, but imprudent to
reject any use of force categorically.
Want proof that military interven-
tions in the Middle East can work? In
2014, Obama ordered airstrikes near the
Syria-Iraq border against ISIS as it was
attacking mem-
bers of the Yazidi
For all the minority. Those
legitimate U.S. strikes saved
concerns about many thousands
the risks ahead, of Yazidi lives,
although they
now again we
just might have came too late to
save thousands
a window more who were
to curb the killed or kid-
bloodshed napped as sex
in Syria. slaves.
In Syria, the
crucial question
is what comes next.
Theres some bold talk among poli-
ticians about ousting Assad from Syria.
Really? People have been counting on
Assads fall for six years now, and hes as
entrenched as ever.
Moreover, air strips can be rebuilt,
and if this was a one-time strike then the
larger slaughter in Syria will continue
indefinitely. But Im hoping that the
administration may use it as a tool to
push for a cease-fire.
As Secretary of State, John Kerry
worked valiantly for a peace deal in
Syria. But he had neither carrots nor
sticks to offer. Kerry pleaded with
Obama for leverage in the form of mili-
tary strikes, but Obama refused.
Now the State Department finally has
leverage. But, tragically, we seem to
lack a Secretary of State with the clout
and inclination to seize that leverage
and push for a peace deal.
My proposed course in Syria is the
same one that Hillary Clinton and many
others have favored: missile strikes to
ground Assads small air force. This
should help end the barrel bombs and
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tiation. The most plausible negotiated
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putting off reintegration until Assad is
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strikes into a peace deal, the strikes are
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assets that Assad uses to kill his own
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that deepens your understanding of the issues that matter,
Syria is a spectacular country redo- and includes unlimited access to NYTimes.com and apps for
lent with history, and inhabited by a
normally warm and hospitable people. smartphone and tablet.
Yet Obamas well-meant caution has
allowed Syrias downward spiral to turn
it into a symbol of brutality and suffer-
ing that has also aggravated the Sunni-
Shia schism all over the world.
Because there was no good option on
any given day, we always chose to do
little or nothing. The result was that
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more than 300,000 people were killed,
vast numbers were tortured and raped,
nytimes.com/discover
almost five million refugees fled Syria
and destabilized other countries, ISIS
sowed terrorism worldwide, and geno-
cides unfolded against the Yazidi and
Christian communities in Syria and
Iraq.
For all the legitimate concerns about
the risks ahead, now again we just
might have a window to curb the blood-
shed in Syria. Im glad Trump took the
important first step of holding Assad
accountable for using chemical
weapons. But its all going to depend
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now on whether Trump, who so far has
distributors. Smartphone and tablet apps are not supported on all devices.
been a master of incompetence, can
manage the far more difficult challenge
of using war to midwife peace.

12 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
Sports
An uncertain future for a storied name in soccer
BUCHAREST, FROM PAGE 1
I wanted to show that I am loved by
the people, he explained, saying, I
think I am the only public person who
could go there without an escort or
bodyguards.
It was an odd picture to paint, the
much-maligned millionaire as a man of
the people. But hardly more so than the
reality: a great European soccer club in
a battle for its name, and perhaps even
its existence, while its owner wages a
one-man war against the Romanian
Army.
A TEAMS PROUD PAST
The battle for Steaua Bucharest is a
complex tale of greed, money and, quite
possibly, revenge. Steaua Bucharest
was formed in 1947 and, like many sports
teams in Eastern Europe under commu-
nism, it was owned and run by a govern-
ment department. For decades, the
team was seen as representing the
army, while its biggest rival, Dinamo,
represented Romanias Ministry for In-
ternal Affairs.
When Steaua Bucharest beat
Barcelona on penalties to lift the Euro-
pean Cup in 1986, Romania was still un-
der the control of the communist dicta-
tor Nicolae Ceausescu. The team would
go on to reach the European Cup
semifinals in 1988, and it returned to the
final a year later. After the fall of commu-
nism, however, state ownership of
teams became unfashionable, and
Steaua was spun away from the army
sports association, CSA Steaua Bucha-
rest, in 1998.
At that point, Becali, a former shep-
herd who made a fortune in real estate
after the fall of communism, gradually
increased his influence, and in 2003 he
seized control of Steaua.
I became rich, and when a man be-
comes rich, he wants to become fa-
mous, Becali said. That is why I took
over at Steaua. And I became famous.
For many in this country, Becali, 58,
represents a Romania that should have
been left in the past. He calls himself an
antiglobalization nationalist and has
been compared with Donald J. Trump,
whom he admires. (I said that if Trump
can become president, God will cancel
the apocalypse, Becali said.) After a ca-
reer as a politician in both the Romanian
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Steaua Bucharest players working out. The club won the 1986 European Cup and has long been one of Eastern Europes top teams.
and European Parliaments and a
failed run for Romanias presidency
Becali landed in prison in 2013 after a
land swap deal he struck with the army.
When he was released, the legal battle
for Steaua was already underway.
Under Becalis ownership, Steaua had
been a success, winning five league ti-
tles and a handful of domestic cups and
regularly appearing in the Champions
League, a significant source of revenue.
But Becali also has alienated fans and
others around the club, including
supporters within the army, with his
outbursts at club legends and the wider
population.
Shortly after the clubs first Champi-
ons League group stage qualification in
2006 and a few months after it
reached the semifinals of the UEFA Cup,
now known as the Europa League the
army began to take a closer look at the
R T O F
When a man becomes rich, he
wants to become famous. That is
why I took over at Steaua. And I
became famous.
deal that allowed Becali to buy the club.
It claimed serious irregularities had tak-
en place. The armys lawyer charged
that some documents were faked, an ac-
cusation Becali strenuously denies.
In 2011, a complex series of legal ac-
tions began, challenging the sale and the
use of the clubs colors and brand. At
first, the machinations took place large-
ly under the radar. But the struggle
burst into public view in December 2014
when a Romanian court ruled that Be-
cali did not have the right to use the
Steaua crest and other symbols related
to the club.
F U S I O N
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREI PUNGOVSCHI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Unsure how to apply the decision, the
club changed its traditional red and blue
colors and removed the Steaua badge
from its players jerseys, the bench and
even the scoreboard before the next
home match. At one point last year Be-
cali even threatened to name the club af-
ter himself.
He quickly walked that back, ac-
knowledging that it would alienate the
fans. But amid the confusion and acri-
mony, attendance collapsed. A separate
case is pending to decide whether Becali
will have to pay tens of millions of dol-
lars in compensation, and a final appeal
has yet to determine if Becali can use the
name Steaua Bucharest. For now, the
team has introduced a new crest and
registered itself with UEFA, which gov-
erns soccer in Europe, under a new
name to ensure that it can play in Euro-
pean competition.
A valuable starter, if he stays healthy
EXTRA BASES
Astros have high hopes
for pitcher Charlie Morton,
a ground-ball specialist
BY TYLER KEPNER
The Houston Astros, overloaded with
talented position players and dominant
relievers, looked like a contender in
spring training. The only question
would be their starting rotation but
Jeff Luhnow, their general manager,
wanted to make something clear.
I do believe that Charlie Morton isnt
a back-of-the-rotation guy, Luhnow
said early in the exhibition season. He
hit 97 three times in the first inning yes-
terday, with a lot of sink on his pitches
and good secondary stuff. A healthy
Charlie Morton could work himself into
the conversation with Dallas Keuchel
and Lance McCullers at the top of our ro-
tation.
A few qualifiers: Morton has often
been hurt in his 10-year career, and he
would gladly sacrifice velocity for com-
mand. But to the Astros, he was worth a
two-year, $14 million gamble in free
agency, and the early returns are prom-
ising.
Morton, 33, followed up his impres-
sive spring with six strong innings
against Seattle in the Astros third game
of the season. After victories by Keuchel
and McCullers, Morton allowed two
runs and helped Houston to its first 3-0
start in 16 years.
The whole team is strong, Morton
said by phone on Friday. I just dont see
how were not set up to win. Just got to
stay healthy, thats the biggest thing.
Morton knows that painful truth. He
made just four starts for Philadelphia
last April before succumbing to his
fourth operation in six years. Since
working a career-high 171 innings for
Pittsburgh in 2011, he has had operations
on his left hip (2011), right elbow (2012),
right hip (2014) and left hamstring
(2016).
The last injury came while Morton
was running out a bunt attempt. His leg
swelled so badly that he had trouble sit-
ting down. He had made only four starts,
but his hamstring was so badly shred-
ded that his season was over. He spent
lonely months commuting from his
Bradenton, Fla., home to the Phillies
Clearwater complex, working back to
health while knowing he had hurt his
value in free agency.
Yet with a thin market for starting
pitchers, the Astros acted quickly to
sign Morton, eager to pair his ground-
ball tendencies with their young and
athletic infielders.
As hitters increasingly tailor their
swings to hit fly balls, a pitcher like Mor-
ton whose career average for homers
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Col. Cristian Petrea, the president of CSA
Steaua, the new team that is likely to play
next season in Romanias fourth division.
The name is not that important, Be-
cali said. He quoted an online poll that
said 85 percent of fans believe his club,
whatever it is called, is the true Steaua.
A NEW TEAM RISES
Across the city, opposite a new shopping
mall, CSA Steaua Bucharests revived
soccer team is taking shape inside an
army base.
There wasnt an exact moment when
we decided to get the brand back, said ger to paint himself as a deeply religious
Col. Cristian Petrea, the president of
CSA Steaua. Petrea is a bear of a man,
dressed in a smart blue suit with a mili-
tary haircut. It was a matter of analy-
sis. We made a decision to protect the
Steaua brand. This legal action began af-
ter a strong overview of the documents.
At first, it was thought that the new
Steaua might be able to replace F.C.
Steaua in Romanias first division. But
while Petrea said he insisted on a clean
start, there are links, real and sentimen-
tal, to Steauas glory days.
The clubs famed, crumbling Ghencea
stadium where many of Steauas Eu-
ropean Cup highlights in the 1980s took
place, and which Becali departed in 2015
for the new national stadium is being
renovated with 60 million euros, or
about $65 million, of state money ahead
Charlie Morton signed a two-year deal with the Astros for $14 million.
per nine innings is just 0.7 can be valu-
able.
Drafted in the third round by Atlanta
in 2002, Morton struggled for his first
three years in the majors until the Pi-
rates coaches showed him film of Roy
Halladay, then a star with the Phillies, in
2011.
Morton imitated Halladays distinc-
tive shoulder tuck for a while, but more
lasting were the lessons about keeping
his head still and maintaining a three-
quarters arm slot. Those adjustments
turned Morton into a solid starter for the
Pirates, until the very end.
DOUBLE DUTIES
As teams use more and more relievers
for shorter and shorter stints it
makes sense to be creative with roster
construction, especially for noncon-
tenders. Teams can carry just 25 active
players, so versatility matters.
Consider the rebuilding Cincinnati
Reds and San Diego Padres. The Reds
carried 13 pitchers on their opening-day
roster, and the Padres had 12. On Thurs-
day, both showed loose interpretations
of those numbers.
Cincinnatis Michael Lorenzen had
pitched in relief the first two games of
the season. But the Reds called on him
when they needed a pinch-hitter in the
sixth inning Thursday, and Lorenzen de-
livered a 420-foot home run to break a
tie score in a victory over the Phillies.
Four years ago, as a junior at Cal
State, Fullerton, Lorenzen hit .335 with
seven home runs. He also homered last
August after returning from the be-
reavement list following his fathers with his wife, Sandi.
death. Thursdays blast was the first
pinch-hit homer by a pitcher since the
Reds Micah Owings who pinch-hit
..
of the 2020 European Championships.
The clubs trophies are all under lock
and key, Petrea said, including a minia-
ture replica of the European Cup. A
Steaua player from that team, striker
Marius Lacatus, has been installed as
the new teams sporting director.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Thick snow lay outside the national sta-
dium. It was match day in February, and
Becalis Steaua Bucharest was playing
F.C. Voluntari. It was 10 degrees and Be-
cali was wearing a black overcoat with a
fur collar, an electric blue turtleneck and
a porkpie hat. I dont feel the cold, he
said as he left his private box to sit out-
side and watch the match.
A few hundred fans were inside the
cavernous, empty stadium. The only
noise came from perhaps a dozen of
them, including a fan named Cosmin,
who declined to give his last name, and
his small band of ultras, and others who
had decided to look past the current dis-
putes and stand by the team.
Five miles from Victory Square,
where 70,000 Romanians had braved
freezing temperatures to protest cor-
ruption, Becali sat unmoved as Volun-
tari took an early lead. Steaua soon tied
the score before, after several penalties
and questionable referees decisions,
the game ended in a breathless 2-2 draw.
I dont feel the same joy as I watch
football, as I am not the same person I
used to be, Becali had said earlier, ea-
man, changed by his stint in prison, con-
cerned with bigger things.
Still, with the match over, Becali was
quickly out of his seat, watching a replay
of one of the penalty decisions on a tele-
vision. He stormed out of the near-
empty stadium in disgust and headed
back to where that nights biggest crowd
had gathered, around his golden palace,
chanting against corruption.
A few weeks later, Becalis executives
announced the clubs new name: F.C.
FCSB. Perhaps the switch was yet an-
other legal maneuver, or maybe an at-
tempt to defuse the fight with the army,
but the effect is clear. For a few months,
maybe more, the celebrated name of
Steaua Bucharest will simply vanish.
Emanuel Rosu contributed reporting.
BOB LEVEY/GETTY IMAGES
fairly often connected in 2009.
The Padres are trying the reverse ex-
periment with Christian Bethancourt,
one of four catchers listed on their ros-
ter. Bethancourt pitched twice in relief
last season, both times with the Padres
far behind, and resumed the role in their
opening series this season at Dodger
Stadium.
Bethancourt can throw hard (94 miles
an hour), but his performance was not
as successful as Lorenzens. After allow-
ing three runs on Monday, Bethancourt
allowed three more on Thursday, when
he got a groundout and then walked four
batters in a row.
NO MACK, NO SCULLY
This astounding fact circulated widely
on Twitter on opening day, but its worth
repeating as the first week winds down:
This is the first year since 1885 without
Connie Mack or Vin Scully working in
professional baseball.
Mack, who was born in 1862, started
his playing career in 1886 and last man-
aged for the Philadelphia As in 1950.
That was the first year behind the
Brooklyn Dodgers microphone for
Scully, now 89, who stayed through the
end of last season.
Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles
Times spoke with Scully by phone dur-
ing the Los Angeles Dodgers opener.
Scully did not know the score, reporting
that he was spending his day paying
bills and happily bustling to the post of-
fice, the carwash and the hardware
store.
He said he was enjoying retirement
Im aware that Im not where Ive
been for about 60,000 years, Scully
said. But Im just where I want to be.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 13

sports

Note to Tiger Woods: Victory isnt only path to joy

andering journey replete with blind
ON GOLF
AUGUSTA, GA. curves, the occasional detour and a
blowout or two can bring. Look at Palm-
er, whose life and legacy have been cele-
4-time Masters champion brated this past week.
Did you know that Palmer posted
could learn from example scores in the 80s in 12 of the last 16 com-
set by Arnold Palmer petitive rounds that he played at the
Masters? The patrons who came to see
BY KAREN CROUSE their hero in the flesh didnt care. If any-
thing, his struggles made him all the
Dear Tiger, more endearing. Our vulnerabilities are
Out of sight, but not out of the head- what make us fully human. They are the
lines: Thats been your lot in the 81st ties that bond us.
Masters. A leading man in absentia. We know your back is giving you fits,
I know you dont read anything thats but are your expectations also holding
written about you, but trust us: More you back? Robert Damron, who arrived
column inches have been devoted to on the PGA Tour full time the same year
your star-making victory at Augusta as you, in 1997, said he suspects that you
National 20 years ago at age 21 than to dont like playing like everyone else and
William McGirts startling start in his that your attitude is, Why go out and do
Masters debut this week at age 37. it anymore if I cant be perfect?
The 1997 Masters changed the sport. Well, we can think of lots of reasons.
Your record 12-stroke victory inspired a For starters, to give the fans what they
generation, led by Rory McIlroy, Jason want, which is your presence, not your
Day, Patrick Reed, Hideki Matsuyama pre-eminence. Or have you forgotten the
and Adam Hadwin, to become profes- chorus of people shouting, I love you,
sional golfers. The first of your four Mas- Tiger! in Greensboro, N.C., in your last
ters titles was the seed that pollinated official 72 holes of competitive golf?
the sport in countries, and communities, There are many more fans where they
where it had never taken root. came from, and they dont care if you
But in liberating the sport from its shoot 64 or 84 as long as you smile as you
monochromatic, moralistic past, you be- walk by them or sign their programs.
came a captive of your legacy. Someone If Palmer came across as someone
maybe your father, Earl drilled into who never had a bad day, it was because
your head that winning is what matters, he realized that in life, unlike golf, the
that the only path to joy is through suc- rules are pretty simple: The more you
cess. reach out to others, the more you get in
What you need to know is that theres return.
another course, one that Arnold Palmer You think that nothing can match the
blazed. You do not have to end up at the feeling of walking up to the 18th green on
summit to experience joy. Youd be sur- the Sunday of a major with victory as-
prised at how much happiness a me- sured? You might be surprised how ex-
A huge gallery greeted Tiger Woods for the final round of his victory at the 1997 Masters.
hilarating it feels to make that walk at
the end of the first round of your next
tournament with your eyes, ears and
heart open.
Julie Elion, a mental coach who works
with several players on the PGA Tour,
said she spends a good part of her time
helping her clients redefine success. If
first place is the only goal, its a setup for
misery because every week produces
dozens of losers and only one winner.
At the Farmers Insurance Open in
January, before your first official PGA
Tour tournament in a year and a half,
BILL WAUGH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
you said, as you always do, that your
goal was to win. But how about if in your
next start, you promise to do your best
and invite everyone to hold on tight be-
cause it might be a bumpy week?
He could come out with his shoulders
back and his head held high and enjoy
the process and the people that hes
brought to the game and celebrate what
hes accomplished, Elion said.
What if solving your chipping yips
were as simple as giving up the ghosts
that are your past glories and saying,
This is who I am now, frailties and all?
We get that being fully human is prob-
ably a scarier prospect than being a
part-time golfer. After his three-under-
par 69 made him the early first-round
leader, McGirt told the story of crossing
paths with you at the 2012 P.G.A. Cham-
pionship, which he had qualified for by
finishing second at the Canadian Open
two weeks earlier.
Do you remember? He was on the
putting green, and you came over and
congratulated him on his fine play. He
told you that his only regret was that he
had never looked at a leader board on
Sunday because he was afraid he would
get too nervous and falter if he knew
where he stood.
And you stared at him as if he were
from Mars. You moved closer and said,
You think Kobe doesnt look at the
scoreboard with a minute to go in the
game?
McGirt got your point. But forget
what you told him. Forget Kobe. Youve
more than earned the right to ignore the
scoreboard and play, once you are
healthy, for your fans and for fun.
You could learn something from Mc-
Girt, who said he had made sure to savor
every minute of this week because he
doesnt want to look back and wish he
could have enjoyed the experience
more.
Savor whats left of your competitive
career. At this point, what have you got
to lose?

U.S., Mexico and Canada expected to do joint bid for World Cup
BY ANDREW DAS United States lost out to Qatar in bidding field to 32 teams. ered bidding alone, is expected to take a proval in May, would still give a guaran- 1986, and its recent performances sug-
for the 2022 tournament when that vote The tournament will expand again for leading role in any 2026 campaign by teed place to the host country, at the ex- gest that barring some drastic improve-
Top soccer officials from the United was taken in 2010, and U.S. Soccer Presi- 2026, to 48 teams, under a plan ap- virtue of its existing stock of stadiums, pense of its confederations full allot- ment, it may require a guaranteed place
States, Mexico and Canada have sched- dent Sunil Gulati has worked tirelessly proved by FIFAs governing council in training facilities and infrastructure. ment. But in the event of co-hosts, the to take part in its own party.
uled what they billed as a historic an- in the years since to cultivate the sup- January. That plan has drawn scorn Mexico and Canada most likely would decision of how many automatic places The bidding process will last about
nouncement for Monday in New York port and the personal relationships in- from critics who fear it will water down host a smaller number of matches. to give to host nations would be left to three years under a four-phase plan an-
the clearest indication yet that the side FIFA, world soccers governing the field, and praise from countries that It is unclear if all three countries the FIFA council. nounced in 2016. The process will culmi-
countries will mount a joint bid to host body, to bring the event back to the rarely get to take part. But nearly every- would be granted direct entry into the Either path should be of little worry to nate in a decision in May 2020, but the
an expanded 48-team World Cup in United States. one agrees that an expanded event, es- field. Under a proposed allocation of the the United States and Mexico: The Concacaf bid will be an overwhelming
2026. The United States last hosted the pecially one held in North America, places for the 2026 tournament an- Americans have played in every World favorite. Last year, FIFA affirmed rules
For several years, plans for a joint bid World Cup in 1994, a 24-team tourna- would be the most profitable in the his- nounced in late March, Concacafs allot- Cup since 1990, and Mexico in every one that will bar Europe and Asia from bid-
have been the worst-kept secret in Con- ment that still holds the tournaments tory of the worlds most popular sport- ment of guaranteed World Cup berths since 1994. They routinely finish near ding for the 2026 event because their
cacaf, the regional confederation to attendance record (just over 3.5 mil- ing event. would double to six from three. The the top of qualifying under the current confederations will host the next two
which all three nations belong. The lion), despite a later expansion of the The United States, which had consid- proposal, which is subject to FIFAs ap- format. But Canada last qualified in tournaments.

NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1988

GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES

SUDOKU No. 1004

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. 0804 1 2 3 4 5 6 007 8 9 10 11 12 13

that every row,

column 3x3 box Fill the grids with digits so as not Across 34 Command before 65 ___ of the line 14 15 16

and shaded 3x3 to repeat a digit in any row or giving a dog a bone
column, and so that the digits
1 Pay hike 66 Kitchen cutting tool
box contains
17 18 19
within each heavily outlined box 6 Humble living 35 With 39-Across, 1973- 67 Likelier to win a baby
each of the
will produce the target number quarters 85
contest 20 21 22
numbers
1 to 9 exactly shown, by using addition, 11 Inner part of an ear of 37 Carry with effort 68 British rule in colonial
once. subtraction, multiplication or corn 39 See 35-Across India
23 24 25 26

division, as indicated in the box. 14 Killer whales

A 4x4 grid will use the digits
43 Single-stranded 69 Joe ___ (ordinary sort) 27 28 29 30 31
For solving tips
1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
15 Like some processed molecule
and more puzzles: apples
70 Saw logs
www.nytimes.com/ 45 Ill-bred fellows 32 33 34
sudoku
For solving tips and more KenKen 16 King topper
47 PlayStation competitor Down
puzzles: www.nytimes.com/
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
17 1962-67, 1971
kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@
48 1995-2002 1 ___ Hashana (Jewish
19 Hawaiian neckwear
kenken.com
holy day) 43 44 45 46 47
51 Leaning left
20 Put up, as a picture 2 Roughly 3.8 million
53 Its kept in a pen 48 49 50
21 The Washington Post, square miles, for the
KenKen is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. CNN, etc. 54 S.&L. offerings United States
Copyright 2016 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved. 51 52 53
22 Think ahead 55 Finish in the top three, 3 Words of self-
in the Olympics empowerment 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61
23 Airport screening grp.
58 Whats gotten ___ 4 Serenaded
Answers to Previous Puzzles 25 Gossiping you? 62 63 64
27 1987-89
5 Keyboard key
62 Prominent shark
32 Had breakfast or lunch feature 6 Clearasil target 65 66 67

33 Let (up) 63 2006 007 What the answers 68 69 70

to the italicized clues
Solution to April 8 Puzzle share, in two ways
PUZZLE BY LONNIE BURTON
A N T I G O N E W A T T 8 Frozen potato brand 26 Henry L. ___, 38 Talk incessantly 51 Long-term inmate
H O U S E P E T D O N E E 9 Jumps the track secretary of war
E T C E T E R A Q U O T A S 40 Have the title to 52 One of Chekhovs
10 Big name in ice cream during W.W. II Three Sisters
M A K E S D O D U E L I S T 41 River inlet
R E N D S W A T C H E S 11 Format of some talk 27 La Brea goo 56 Per ___ (daily)
R O T O B E E R A E R I radio shows 42 German one
28 What was ___ think? 57 Commercial prefix
W I W I V E T P R A T 44 Jesus language with postale
12 Most of our planets 29 Actress Ryan of
C O T E N T I Z E N O D E
surface Sleepless in Seattle 46 Tool for a carpenter or 59 Alliance that keeps a
A N I L S P L I T U P
N E M O C A L L S F O R 13 Human ___ dentist wary eye on Russia
30 Designer letters on a
T H E O D O R E F O E S 18 Largest city in handbag 48 Popular sandwich, 60 Wedding cake layer
F O L K A R T C A S H B O X informally
Nebraska 31 Two, in cards 61 Shrek, for one
A R E O L E R O B A B A N K
I S S U E A D R I A T I C 22 Instagram upload 36 Iroquoians of New 49 Tighten, as a fist 63 Cavity fillers deg.
L E S T D E A D H E A D 24 Less forgiving York 50 Vail trail 64 Dosage amts.

14 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
Culture
The new sells, not necessarily the young
LONDON
The art business keeps
growing, but most
collectors are conservative
BY SCOTT REYBURN
The art market is almost as old as art it-
self. But its only in the last decade or so,
with increased globalization, digitiza-
tion and the rise of art as a multibillion-
dollar investment vehicle, that the mar-
ket has been viewed as an industry. And
where there is industry, conferences are
sure to follow.
On Tuesday, the inaugural New York
edition of the Art Business Conference
was held at the Time Warner Center.
Aimed at senior art market profession-
als, the event sold 240 tickets, priced at
$275 to $500, to representatives of more
than 140 organizations.
Its a pause-for-thought day about
where the industry is at, said Louise
Hamlin, the British-born organizer of
the conference, whose company, Art
Market Minds, has been holding similar
events in London since 2014. Until re-
cently, art was one of few industries
without an annual conference in the
United States, she added.
The audience soon learned that this is
an industry that is troubled at least in
the West by a sense of uncertainty
and of Whats next? Britain, one of the
worlds largest art markets, is leaving
the European Union, auction sales were
down in 2016, and established contem-
porary galleries such as Andrea Rosen
in New York and Vilma Gold and IBID in
London are closing, as is a Christies
salesroom in the British capital.
In a session on the challenges of run-
ning art businesses in London and New
York, the British dealer John Martin
spoke of soaring rental bills (in the case
of his gallery, totaling 250,000 pounds,
or about $310,000, a year) and highly
popular fairs threatening the existence
of smaller galleries.
The New York art adviser Lisa Schiff
talked about how the numbing satura-
tion of the art world and the pressures
of globalization had created an im-
passe in todays market.
Its an endless cycle, Ms. Schiff said,
referring to this years ever-more-
crowded calendar of art fairs, ex-
hibitions and other events. Theres
simply too much now. I want to shut off
the noise.
The spring and summer are shaping
up to be exceptionally noisy. A Medi-
terranean offshoot of the quinquennial
Documenta survey opened on Saturday
in Athens, and Damien Hirst made a
comeback on Sunday with Treasures
From the Wreck of the Unbelievable in
Venice. The 57th Venice Biennale opens
next month, followed by bellwether auc-
tions in New York, the Art Basel fair in
Switzerland in June, and additional auc-
tions and fairs in London.
It remains to be seen how much a new
desire among contemporary artists and
curators to engage with political issues
at events such as Documenta will perco-
late to the commercial realm. A hand-
From lost soul in London to Off Broadway star
The British actor Obi Abili
is winning acclaim playing
a Eugene ONeill role
BY LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES
The British actor Obi Abili remembers
what he was wearing (a Michigan
Wolverines jacket, because anything
American was cool) and who he was
with (the hot girl from his high school,
because he had wangled a date with
her) the first time he saw the Quentin
Tarantino film Pulp Fiction.
And within 10 minutes, he said, she
had just receded into the distance, be-
cause I was like: What are these dudes
doing? Why am I laughing when some-
ones heads being blown off, and who is
this cool guy with the Jheri curl? I want
to be like Sam, man!
By Sam, of course, he meant Samuel
L. Jackson, the Pulp Fiction star who
last month criticized Hollywood for hir-
ing black British actors to play African-
American roles. Mr. Abili is currently
working off Broadway, not in films, but
he is winning praise for his portrayal of
an African-American: the violent flim-
flam man Brutus Jones, the despot of a
Caribbean island in Eugene ONeills
drama The Emperor Jones, at Irish
Repertory Theater in New York.
Mr. Abilis presence in the Irish Rep
production comes courtesy of a fluke of
timing. When the director Ciaran
OReilly called the casting director Deb-
orah Brown a few months ago, to ask if
she knew of anyone who could follow in
the footsteps of John Douglas Thomp-
son, who played Brutus in Mr. OReillys
lauded 2009 production, she drew a
blank. I just said, Good luck, and I sort
of hung up the phone on him, she said.
Then she met Mr. Abili. When you
see someone with that kind of charisma
and that kind of mind, you just know,
Four Yellow/Red Negative Waterfall by Pat Steir, born in 1940. She is among the artists from once-marginalized groups who are now making an impact in the market.
carved marble refugee tent pitched near
the Acropolis by the Canadian artist Re-
becca Belmore remains a world away
from the investment-grade art of auc-
tions and art fairs.
Marta Gnyp is an art adviser and
writer based in Berlin, who, like many
people in the art world, has noted how
conservative the tastes of collectors
have become in these uncertain times.
Collectors are looking for the new,
but it doesnt necessarily mean young,
Obi Abili, who has the lead in The Emperor Jones, an experimental play from 1920.
she said. They dont come along that of-
ten, leading men who are classically
trained. Mr. OReilly felt the same in-
stant certainty. There was no audition.
An experimental play from 1920, The
Emperor Jones is often perceived as
racist; Brutuss language, rendered in
dialect, reeks of caricature on the page.
But Mr. OReillys production makes the
opposite case, and Mr. Abili has come,
through his research, to be a fierce de-
fender of the play and its author, who
said Ms. Gnyp, who was to present a pa-
per on Friday on the burgeoning market
for works by older or deceased female
artists at the 43rd conference of the As-
sociation of Art Historians in Loughbor-
ough, England.
Ms. Gnyp points to a long and grow-
ing list of artists from once-mar-
ginalized groups who are now making
an impact in the market. Last month, for
example, Sothebys achieved an auction
high for the American artist Pat Steir
DEVIN YALKIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
wrote a complex role for a black actor at
a time when that was groundbreaking.
Some African-Americans are like, I
still think the play is racist, but youve
humanized the character, Mr. Abili, 40,
said over a pot of chai tea in Chelsea one
afternoon recently. If Ive humanized
the character, then thats inherently in
the play. I havent done that on my own.
He sees ONeill as a consummate out-
sider, like himself: Forget black and
white. He was interested in humanity
(born in 1940), with the sale for 680,750
of the 1993 painting Four Yellow/Red
Negative Waterfall. Influenced by min-
imalism and Buddhism, Ms. Steirs Wa-
terfall paintings were the subject of a
solo show in November at Dominique
Lvy in London.
Galleries can present them as a dis-
covery, but at the same time, a safe buy
with the potential to grow financially,
added Ms. Gnyp, who also cited the
artists Mira Schendel (Hauser & Wirth),
Mr. Abili, left, and Sinclair Mitchell onstage at the Irish Repertory Theater.
the thing that were all up in arms about,
all this tribalism all over the world at the
moment. He could see past all of that.
As an undergraduate in the war stud-
ies program at Kings College London,
Mr. Abili thought he would become a
journalist covering conflict zones. Such
an adrenaline-spiked career would have
been a good match with his turbulent
childhood.
His life began in material comfort in
London, because his father had means,
then descended into rank poverty dur-
ing four years in Nigeria, where his
mother took him and his siblings after
their parents breakup. She left them
there with relatives. By the age of 12, Obi
was back in England, living with his fa-
ther, but that didnt last. He spent his ad-
olescence in foster homes. At 17, he was
ejected on his own into public housing.
He worked for four years at a sneaker
shop before he went to college.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
PAT STEIR VIA SOTHEBYS
Carmen Herrera (Lisson Gallery) and
Dora Maurer (White Cube). People
think young art is risky.
The markets reliance on the tried and
trusted was highlighted last month
when the Art Basel and UBS Art Market
report showed that works by roughly
48,380 artists were sold at auction in
2016. Almost half the total value of the
sales came from just 1 percent of those
artists. Moreover, works that sold for
more than $1 million accounted for 48
IAN DOUGLAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
I had a life of just loneliness, and I
didnt know what I was doing, and my
family werent around, and so I turned
inward, he said. Thats when he became
an obsessive cinephile, inhaling so
many movies that he quickly exhausted
the stock of his local video shop.
Film, not drama, was his point of ref-
erence when a friend dared him, in his
final year at Kings, to audition for a the-
ater society production of Tom Stop-
pards The Invention of Love. He got a
nice part, and soon someone introduced
him to a weekly play-reading circle.
So I turn up at Sloane Square, around
the corner from the Royal Court, this
beautiful house, he said. This very
beautiful girl opens the door, very tall,
dark hair. She says, Hi, Im Rebecca. you better have a job.
It was Rebecca Hall, and the house,
lined with drama books, was her fa-
thers. If Mr. Abili had ever heard of him,
the renowned director Peter Hall, that
..
percent of the auction markets value,
while representing less than 1 percent of
the transactions.
Todays collectors concentrate their
buying on a limited number of 20th- and
21st-century names, from a small num-
ber of international auction houses and
galleries. That everyone is essentially
buying the same thing pushes up prices,
reinforcing the sense that doing so is a
good investment.
The former Christies and McKinsey
& Company executive Doug Woodham,
who published the book Art Collecting
Today in January, calls this process
homogenization.
Its a reflection of new people who
want to buy a sure thing, said Mr. Wood-
ham, a New York collector and wealth
manager who left Christies in 2015. Art
is so expensive now, and they are con-
cerned about liquidity. If you buy a
known name, you have a better chance
to sell. It also reflects the prevalence of
art advisers, and of the networked na-
ture of the art economy.
Todays collectors concentrate on
a limited number of 20th- and
21st-century names, from a small
number of international auction
houses and galleries.
Mr. Woodhams book contains star-
tling information about the number of
people in the market for the worlds
most expensive art. It was based on
notes taken in 2015 by an unidentified
collector, whom senior specialists at
Sothebys and Christies tried to per-
suade to sell paintings by Picasso and
by Warhol. They told the collector that
about 140 people worldwide had the de-
sire and means to spend $50 million or
more on a work of art, that there were
perhaps 300 potential bidders for pieces
valued at more than $20 million, and
about 1,000 for works worth more than
$5 million.
There were 124,000 people worth at
least $50 million in 2015, according to
data compiled by Credit Suisse.
For all the Sothebys and Christies
talk of global wealth coming into the
market, buying art remains a niche ac-
tivity.
The New York art industry confer-
ence might have left its audience with a
sense of What next?, but in reality, the
top end of the sector, particularly at auc-
tion, increasingly resembles a washing
machine. A few things are added to the
load a Njideka Akunyili Crosby here,
a Wolfgang Tillmans there but the
same basket of major art brands, such
as Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ger-
hard Richter, Lucio Fontana and Chris-
topher Wool, keep circulating in that
endless cycle, generating more or less
financial froth from that 1 percent of the
0.1 percent.
The worldwide art scene has agreed
these are good artists, said Jean
Minguet, an art market analyst at the
French auctions database Artprice.
These are safe investments. Its getting
kind of boring.
But that is the nature of industry. Its
all about global brands.
might have been intimidating, but the-
ater was brand-new to him. And the oth-
ers in the little group including Ms.
Hall, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston,
Khalid Abdalla and, making occasional
appearances, Benedict Cumberbatch
were all just starting out.
The groups leader, Mr. Abdalla (The
Kite Runner), told Mr. Abili that he
should go to the Royal Academy of Dra-
matic Art, so he did.
For Mr. Abili, who performed last sea-
son at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
in Ivo van Hoves Antigone, starring
Juliette Binoche, it is easy to remember
his lost young self. That may be one
source of his humility, a quality that
made Mr. OReilly swear as he men-
tioned it with gruff affection. Emperor
has a cast of seven, and he wanted Mr.
Abili to make a solo entrance at the end
for a separate bow.
He absolutely, categorically re-
fused, Mr. OReilly said. I had to have a
cast intervention for him to even accept
where he steps forward for a second and
does it. The cast all said, If you dont
step forward, were going to step back.
After Emperor, Mr. Abili has some
work waiting for him back in Britain
(Dawn Frenchs television series Deli-
cious), but mostly he would like to stick
around. He would like, in fact, to become
an American in which case Mr. Jack-
sons criticism of casting British actors
wouldnt technically apply.
Mr. Abili said he had met Mr. Jackson
once, very briefly, when he was a drama
student, and Mr. Jackson was promoting
a film in London. He was very nice to
me, really cool guy, Mr. Abili recalled.
And he said to me, he added, slipping
into a dead-on impression of Mr. Jack-
sons baritone, Next time I see you,
Mr. Abili laughed, and then, in his own
voice, issued what sounded like an invi-
tation: So if I see him, if he wants to
come, Ive got a job.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017 | 15

culture

Feists potent, positive solitude

The Canadian singer has
a new album and the kind
of fame that suits her
BY JOE COSCARELLI
What are 10 words to describe the way
you experience your sadness? What
makes you feel tenderness? Describe
a lonely day in one sentence.
This is how Leslie Feist, the Canadian
singer and songwriter best known by
her last name, returns to public life:
armed with 16 emotional prompts that
she calls The Pleasure Questionnaire
an icebreaker of sorts for the
strangers she will meet while promoting
her new album, Pleasure, out April 28
from Interscope.
She realizes its a big ask. Itd be hard
to know if even within a lifetime of
friendship some of these topics on the
questionnaire would be tackled, Feist
wrote in an email, promising discretion.
Theyre just the things Id most like to
know.
Its true that the survey is an accurate
indicator of where Feists head is lately
Pleasure, her first LP in six years, is
concerned with similarly lofty themes
and broad questions, with the music
serving as her version of an answer.
Here I am living in my life, she said,
and songs occur to help me make sense
of it. Epiphanies are not the point. I
know less now than I ever did about how
life is supposed to go. Its relaxing.
This is the semi-Zen state of a singer,
now 41, who has rejected a kind of fame
that did not suit her in favor of a more
personal version of her own making. A
decade removed from 1234, the acci-
dental midcareer hit that altered the
course of her life (but not her music),
Feist has turned further inward with
Pleasure, inspired by a short back-to-
basics solo tour in 2014. The album is
largely just her singular voice and gui-
tar, but it pummels with intimacy and
tape hiss as raw whispers turn to wails
and tinny riffs clang until they break.
Across two long walks in February
and March one in Central Park as
spring tried to prematurely bloom, and
another in the sunny mountains above
Los Angeles Feist was voluble and
The singer-songwriter Feist, known for her angst-heavy work. Her new album is called, surprisingly, Pleasure.
loose, prone to discursive reveries even
as she described the personal turmoil
and uncertainty that led to this knotty,
taxing album.
Theres been a lot of sad times lately,
she said, speaking somewhat abstractly
to avoid revealing their roots, while
parsing the decision to put a word that
so doesnt seem to fit at the forefront of
her new work, which hardly oozes joy.
(Pleasure is also the albums first song
and single.) Its such an inaccurate,
one-dimensional word that, in fact,
when you look a little closer, it carries in
it yearning and loss and self-punish-
ment, she said. Pleasure is implicit in
pain, which is implicit in pleasure.
The producer Mocky, who has worked
with Feist on her last three albums, said
the goal of the sessions Pleasure
was recorded mostly live, three times in
three different locations was to be
more vulnerable than youve been be-
fore.
Amid the success of The Reminder,
her 2007 album that featured 1234,
Feist took on a rather inaccurate reputa-
tion for indie-folk tweeness through her
most widespread songs (see also:
Mushaboom, I Feel It All). But with
Metals in 2011, she shook off any lin-
gering commercial expectations, recast-
ing her ambitions with more complex
songwriting draped in grand, intricate
musical layers.
This time around, following that pal-
ate cleanser, she tore it all down.
If you came to Metals looking for
1234, you didnt find it, Mocky said.
Just when you thought you had that
maneuver clocked, now with this, its
like, Oh, you thought that was a hard
left? No, no, that wasnt a hard left at all.
This is a hard left.
New songs like Lost Dreams and
Century are borderline crude with
shame and despair, while the minimalist
instrumentation leaves Feists tender
melodies and often gutting lyrics un-
adorned. I felt some certainty that you
ELIZABETH WEINBERG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
must have died/because how could I
live if youre still alive? she sings on I
Wish I Didnt Miss You.
It can feel heavier than metal when
youre by yourself, because you can
make so little seem like so much, Feist
said of the stark arrangements, which
she called the natural reflection of my
state of mind. The album may have
started from a place of loneliness, it
landed at potent, positive solitude, she
said, stressing the difference.
In person, Feists sprightly demeanor
does not betray her inner burdens;
leave her alone for a moment, and you
might return to find her practicing Si-
lent Night on a harmonica, giggling
knowingly at the absurdity of the scene.
There are lighter moments on the al-
bum, too attempts to mitigate her own
propensity to swing like a pendulum to
extremes, said Feist, who has sparred
with classic, constant low-grade de-
pression and anxiety, an affliction she
called so boring. The soft and dreamy
Get Not High, Get Not Low is a re- control around the success of 1234 a
minder to herself, while on the relatively song she did not even write which
optimistic album closer Young Up, she snowballed from an iPod commercial to
reassures a past self, Young buck, the Sesame Street, the pop charts and the
ends not coming. Grammys, where Feist was nominated
These songs came to her at a time for best new artist in 2008 alongside
when making another album was not a Taylor Swift and Amy Winehouse.
foregone conclusion. I was completely I felt like a lot of expectations had
open to the idea that I might focus on grown up around me that had not much
something else for a while, Feist said. to do with me, Feist said. My goal was
She watched a lot of Nashville, to just very carefully descend the ladder
traveled and read extensively, and even with dignity, and go back to the altitude
took up woodworking making that I can breathe at.
benches, bed frames, a screen porch Still, surrounding Metals, I was
inspired in part by John Steinbecks much too aware of the external side of
Journal of a Novel, the letters he kept things, a distraction she was finally
while writing East of Eden. able to shake for Pleasure, she said.
Long a nomad, having leapfrogged for Having accidentally achieved autono-
years among Toronto, Paris, Berlin and my, with consistent sales and touring
now Los Angeles, Feist also collects, in a revenue, I actually finished making
classic bohemian sense, what she calls this album before we told the label that
aspirational people, though never for wed made it.
wealth or power. Theres the older play- This release will also coincide with a
wright with access to far-off real estate, return to an earlier chapter in Feists ca-
the musical neuroscientist with theories reer: playing with the Canadian super-
on pleasure, the free-spirit busker group Broken Social Scene, which has a
aspiring to art therapy and the Beckett new album planned for summer.
actress, each with jewels of arcane My only caveat going in was I want
knowledge to be gleaned. to actually contribute I cant commit if
Fifteen-year-old Leslie felt super- Im just singing oohs and aahs, said
compelled to be in a band with her Feist, who wrote one song for the project
friends she decided what Im doing and contributed to about six others. I
with the rest of my life? Feist pondered. dont even know if I was a part of the last
I just took a minute to see if any other couple of records I cant actually re-
lightning would strike me a different member. Certainly I didnt bring myself
moment, a different era. to the table like I just did for this song.
Of songwriting, she explained, I Kevin Drew, the groups de facto
wanted to make sure it was a legitimate leader and one of Feists closest friends
drive, coming from a really honest and (as well as an ex), said: She penned
humble place, not because its what I something stunning. Creatively, it
do. couldnt have gone any better. Mr. Drew
She added: Of course I worked really also recalled sitting in Feists rehearsal
hard, but its been completely built on a space as she worked on her own album.
zeitgeist and luck and timing. I didnt I see the struggle of honesty, he said.
want to keep just plunking quarters in Theres no hiding.
the meter as if I owe it something or It was laying her emotions so bare
as if it owes me something. It had to be a that allowed Feist some perspective on
legitimate exchange. And it turned out it them. Climbing rocks in Central Park,
was. she recalled the shanty hut on a raw
Though she set out to make the album Canadian island where she spends
alone, Feist eventually welcomed in Re- weeks during the summer, isolated and
naud Letang, a longtime collaborator, without electricity.
and Mocky as co-producers. Their job Being on that island, I found really
was to get out of the way, Mocky said. concrete poetry, Feist said, comparing
She was really owning every note, ev- her moods to the storms that passed
ery decision. over the exposed landscape. I could see
Such artistic possessiveness may it coming, I would experience it, and
have stemmed from a perceived loss of then it would be gone.

Onstage stories on the page

BOOK REVIEW
THE MOTH PRESENTS ALL THESE WON-
DERS: TRUE STORIES ABOUT FACING
THE UNKNOWN. Edited by Catherine
Burns. Crown Archetype. 330 pp. $25.
BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI
The storytelling phenomenon the Moth
with a Peabody Award-winning
radio show on more than 450 stations
around the world and a hugely popular
podcast is celebrating its 20th anni-
versary this year. The Moth was
founded in 1997 by the writer George
Dawes Green its name comes from
his memories of growing up in St.
Simons Island, Ga., where neighbors
would gather late at night on a friends
porch to tell stories and drink bourbon
as moths flew in through the broken
screens and circled the porch light. It
has since grown into what its artistic
director, Catherine Burns, calls a
modern storytelling movement that
has inspired tens of thousands of
shows worldwide in places as diverse
as Tajikistan, Antarctica, and Birming-
ham, Ala.
Participants have included well-
known authors like Richard Price,
Salman Rushdie, George Plimpton and
Garrison Keillor, and scores of people
from every background imaginable
scientists, police officers, doctors,
musicians, humanitarian aid workers,
ministers, professional gamblers,
among myriad others.
A wonderful new book, The Moth
Presents All These Wonders which
takes its title from a thrilling account
by the NASA scientist Cathy Olkin of
last-minute emergency repairs made
to the New Horizons spacecraft as it
traveled three billion miles to get a
close-up of Pluto gathers 45 stories
from the last two decades. Some are
heartbreakingly sad; some laugh-out-
loud funny; some momentous and
tragic; almost all of them resonant or
surprising. They are stories that attest
to the startling varieties and travails of
human experience, and the shared
threads of love, loss, fear and kindness
that connect us.
Dori Samadzai Bonner recounts how
her family made its way out of war-
torn Afghanistan in the early 1990s
with forged papers, and how her father
who had been tortured there and
feared for his life had to beg an
American judge for asylum in the
United States.
Louis C. K. describes a visit he made
to Russia in 1994 because he was
burned out and lonely, and because
when I was a kid, I used to read Rus-
sian novels, and I loved them. (I
would open all the windows so I would
be cold. I wanted to be cold like they
were.) He realized, after a miserable,
surreal trip, that hed gone there to
find out how bad life gets and how
funny it still is.
Hasan Minhaj recalls developing a
crush in high school on a pretty girl
named Bethany, who asked him to go
to the prom with her his American
dream come true! Only when he ar-
rived at her house, he saw the captain
of the water polo team putting a cor-
sage on her. Bethanys mother ex-
plained that since they would be taking
a lot of photos, they didnt think that he
would be a good fit. In other words,
Hasan who is the son of an immi-
grant from a small town in India
thinks that the prom wasnt an event
for people that look like me.
PATRICIA WALL/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The stories here, for the most part,
have translated seamlessly to the
page. Though they are all relatively
short average Moth performances
range from five minutes to 12 minutes
most possess a remarkable emo-
tional depth and sincerity. The stories
vary greatly in tone and voice by
turns, raw, wry, rueful, comic, elliptical
and confiding but there is little
sarcasm or snark. The emphasis is on
communicating with the audience, with
sharing an experience, a memory, a
moment of grace.
Moth stories can be seen as part of
the oral tradition dating back to
Homer, but the personal nature of the
tales and their air of spontaneity
owe as much to stand-up comedy,
blogging, talk-show anecdotes and
group therapy. They are not random
reminiscences, however, but closely
focused, finely tuned narratives that
have the force of an epiphany, while
opening out to disclose the panoramic
vistas of one persons life or the shock-
ingly disparate worlds they have in-
habited or traversed.
In Unusual Normality, Ishmael
Beah who lost his family to war in
Sierra Leone and became a child sol-
dier at age 13 relates how he was
adopted by an American woman when
he was 17, and how he attempted to fit
in at school in New York. For instance,
he did not tell his new classmates why
he was so adept at paintball: I wanted
to explain certain things, but I felt that
if they knew about my background,
they would no longer allow me to be a
child. They would see me as an adult,
and I worried that they would fear me.
My silence allowed me to experi-
ence things, to participate in my child-
hood, to do things I hadnt been able to
do as a child.
Other stories pivot around a rela-
tionship between two people: the
scientist Christof Koch and his long-
time collaborator Francis Crick (who
together with James Watson discov-
ered the structure of DNA); Stephanie
Peirolo and her son RJ, who suffered a
traumatic brain injury after his car
was struck at a blind intersection; the
actor John Turturro and his troubled
brother Ralph, who lives at the Creed-
more Psychiatric Center in Queens;
Suzi Ronson, a hairdresser from a
London suburb, who cut the young
David Bowies hair, joined his tour and
went on to become a music producer;
the filmmaker Arthur Bradford and his
friend Ronnie Simonsen, who has
cerebral palsy and who became ob-
sessed with meeting the actor Chad
Everett, who played a doctor on the old
TV show Medical Center.
One of the most moving tales is Fog
of Disbelief, by Carl Pillitteri, who was
working as a field engineer on the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear generating
station in Japan when a devastating
earthquake and tsunami hit the island
in 2011, resulting in the worst nuclear
disaster since Chernobyl; it left some
18,490 people dead or missing and led
to the evacuation of more than 300,000.
After checking on his crew and
colleagues, Pillitteri was most con-
cerned about the older woman who ran
the restaurant where he ate five, six
times a week. He spoke no Japanese,
she spoke no English, and he and his
friends knew her, fondly, only as the
Chicken Lady. The little building
housing her restaurant was badly
cracked by the quake, and she was
nowhere to be found even months
later, when Pillitteri returned to the
exclusion zone from America to look
for her. Eventually, he enlisted the help
of The Japan Times in tracking her
down, and learned that her name was
Mrs. Owada; the name of her restau-
rant, Ikoi, meant rest, relax, and
relief.
Finally, almost a year after the
quake, he received a letter from her: I
have escaped from the disasters and
have been doing fine every day. Pillit-
teri-san, please take care of yourself. I
know your work must be important. I
hope you enjoy a happy life like you
seemed to have when you came to my
restaurant. Although I wont be seeing
you, I will always pray for the best for
you.

16 | MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2017
travel
Barbecue, beer and bargains in Kansas City
FRUGAL TRAVELER
BY LUCAS PETERSON
I had just learned my first lesson of Kan-
sas City barbecue the hard way: Dont
just waltz right in at closing time expect-
ing to be served. In my defense, I was
coming pretty much directly from Kan-
sas City International Airport, where I
had landed on a Saturday night. I
checked into my hotel, on the downtown
Missouri side and quickly crossed over
to Kansas to Slaps BBQ, which I had
heard good things about. And while I ar-
rived well before closing time, a sign
greeted my arrival that clearly stated
that they were open until 8 p.m. or
when they sold out, whichever came
first. It had come first. I slunk back to
Missouri.
Fortunately, the rest of my time in
Kansas City was full of top-notch barbe-
cue (and state border crossings). Its
such a revered barbecue destination
that its one of the major regional styles
typically cited (along with the Carolinas,
Texas and Memphis) when people talk
about smoked meats. I also stumbled on
a fantastic music scene, some satisfying
museums, well-made local beers and
great shopping (all on a limited budget,
naturally). And I had a chance to see dif-
ferent sides of a great city in Americas
heartland that truly seems to be coming
into its own.
As for any kind of rivalry between the
Missouri and Kansas sides, I didnt
sense that much existed. The Missouri
side, frankly, has most of the stuff: the
people, urban development, sports
teams and the international airport. But
the city seems unified, if split by an arbi-
trary border.
That is not to say there arent differ-
ences. I found the Kansas side was
quieter and felt more suburban than the
Missouri side. It was also cheaper. My
Kansas Airbnb in the Rosedale neigh-
borhood was a great deal at $70 a night
and gave me the run of a small house. I
stayed one night downtown, on the Mis-
souri side, and couldnt find anything
less than $169 at the Crowne Plaza.
As for barbecue, there is enough on
both sides of the state line to satisfy the
most dedicated fanatic. During my time
in Kansas City I asked a half-dozen
residents Whats the best barbecue in
the city? and got a half-dozen different
answers. In general, expect slowly
smoked meats covered in a slightly
thick, sweet tomato-based sauce.
Barbecue is highly subjective, said
James Folder, a local I met outside Blip
Roasters in the West Bottoms neighbor-
hood, an old industrial area that has
seen the arrival of restaurants, coffee
shops and vintage stores in recent
years. I picked up a strong cup of $2 Co-
lombia El Obraje (roasted in-house) and
a $3 peanut butter bar and struck up a
conversation with Mr. Folder and Ed
Klein, both of whom arrived on
motorcycles. Mr. Folder had the letters
T-R-U-E tattooed on the fingers of his
right hand and G-R-I-T on his left.
Mr. Klein, who lives in nearby Lea-
wood and judges barbecue competi-
tions, said he is looking primarily for
taste, presentation and texture,
among other attributes. Real barbecue
doesnt fall off the bone, he said, It
should have some tensile strength.
They both gave me lists of their favorite
spots before zooming off.
But I had my own list to work through,
beginning with Arthur Bryants. The
restaurant that Calvin Trillin pro-
nounced the single best restaurant in
the world was definitely worth a visit,
even if that pronouncement was made
in 1972. Arthur Bryants traces its lin-
eage back to Henry Perry, the father of
The Gathering Place, which impressed with its curated selection of goods.
Above, the smoker behind the counter at LCs Bar-B-Q in Kansas City, a no-frills restaurant with crunchy and flavorful burnt ends, below.
Kansas City is an excellent place
for shopping, especially for used
and vintage threads.
Kansas City barbecue.
Today, it still serves up the heaping
plates of burnt ends ($9.55) it became
famous for. Burnt ends, the smaller,
tougher bits from the point end of a
brisket, were originally considered
scraps and even given away before
restaurant owners realized how much
customers enjoyed them (and would be
willing to pay for them). Their crunch
comes from the meaty chunks getting
fired again in the smoker. Everyone
knows that burned bits are the best part
of any barbecue: Kansas City turned it
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNA PETROW FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
into an art form. I queued up and stum- time I got there around 11:30 a.m., the Another evening near closing time, I enormous portion of smoky, flaky,
bled out 30 minutes later, full of pickles, line was well out the door. My eyes were walked into Rickys Pit Bar B Que, a slightly spicy catfish with potato salad
fries and tender, blackened beef. watering at the sight of the full slabs of charming dive filled with old trinkets and coleslaw for $20. It was excellent
Was Arthur Bryants still the king, spare ribs, but I got something more in and photographs. We got the best but was it the best? A hard claim to back
though? I thought the burnt ends were line with my frugal budget: A Z-Man smoked catfish in the world, said Ricky up in a city with so much great food. But
slightly better at LCs Bar-B-Q, 15 min- sandwich with brisket, provolone and Smith, who has owned the business with between mouthfuls of flaky, tender cat-
utes southeast of downtown. The onion rings for $7.79. his wife, Bonnie, since 1985. I got an fish, I wasnt about to argue.
crunchy, chewy, flavorful ends were per-
fect, as was the atmosphere: no frills,
with a big smoker behind the counter.
Barbecue, while Kansas Citys prime
attraction, certainly isnt the only thing
going on. I explored the Negro Leagues
Baseball Museum and the American Book Now +1-202-750-8073
Jazz Museum (housed within the same
complex, $15 for a combo ticket) in the
18th and Vine district. The baseball mu-
seum is the stronger of the two, offering
biographies of players, memorabilia and
Cruising the Treasures of Southeast Asia
a detailed history of the Negro Leagues
but it was what I discovered after the
museums closed that was really spec-
tacular: The Blue Room Jazz Club,
attached to the museum complex, hosts
a killer open mike every Sunday night
called Neo-Soul Lounge ($5 cover).
I had a couple of excellent beers dur-
ing my stay in Kansas City. While I was
at the fun Up-Down bar playing its sub-
stantial collection of vintage arcade and
pinball games (Sunday special: six do-
mestic beers and 80 tokens for $25), I
tried a Tea Weiss ($6) from Crane Brew-
ing, a brewery based in a Kansas City
suburb. I love sour beers, and this is one
of the best Ive had: fruity and mouth-
puckeringly tart but eminently drink-
able.
In addition to the great barbecue,
beer and music in the city, I took the op-
portunity to indulge in a pastime I rarely
enjoy: shopping. Kansas City is an ex- From $9,990
cellent place for it, especially for used
Sailing & Cruises
and vintage threads. After I left my two
new motorcycle-riding friends at Blip Itinerary 13 days
coffee in West Bottoms, I walked over to Departing Oct. 28, 2017
Hickory Street, where there are at least
Vessel LAustral
a half-dozen great thrift stores all within
eyesight of one another. From Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Yangon
The enormous Le Fou Flea is perhaps in Myanmar, cruise the waters of Southeast Asia
the most impressive, if only for its size: a on this journey aboard the 466-foot megayacht
four-story warehouse of clothes, shoes, LAustral. With expert guidance and the accessibility
books and knickknacks. Across the a smaller ship offers, immerse yourself in one of the
street is Varnish and Vine, a slightly most beautiful regions of the world.
more upscale store opened about nine Mingle with longtime New York Times journalists.
months ago; I met one of its buyers, a See the legacies of the Vietnam War and
nice guy named Michael Lais. colonialism in Ho Chi Minh City.
My big score, though, was at the Gath- With the guidance of Times-selected experts,
ering Place, which didnt have the learn more about this important region of
broadest selection of the places I had the world.
been, but seemed to be the best curated.
I felt like splurging: A Pendleton wool
winter jacket with a plaid pattern caught ONBOARD EXPERTS
my eye. It was in immaculate condition
Gretchen Morgenson, Times Columnist
and fit like a glove a rare experience has covered the world financial markets for The Times and won
for a tall person like me for $58. the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Wall Street. At Forbes, she
I had another good experience in Old became national press secretary to Steve Forbes when he ran
Westport, a popular neighborhood with for president. She has won two Gerald Loeb awards.
the bar crowd. Several people warned Roger Cohen, Times Op-Ed Columnist
me away from hanging out there at joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign
night, so I went during the day instead. I correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting
foreign editor on Sept. 11, 2001, and foreign editor six months
stopped into Bunker, a store with a later. Since 2004, he has written a column for the International
slightly hipper-than-thou vibe to take New York Times, formerly known as The International Herald
advantage of a 50 percent-off sale on Tribune. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York
new jeans (I picked up a pair for $23) Times. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.
and then headed across the street to Richard Paddock, Times Foreign Correspondent
Mills Record Company. The friendly reports on Southeast Asia as a contributor to The New
owner, Judy (and her dog, Loretta York Times based in Bangkok. He has worked as a foreign
correspondent for more than a dozen years and reported
Lynn), gave me a tour of the store that from nearly 50 countries on five continents, including
deals primarily in vinyl. There is a good wartime Bosnia and Iraq.
selection of used band T-shirts, too (I
snagged an old Weezer shirt for $14).
In the end, though, it does come down Book Now +1-202-750-8073 Travel with
to the barbecue. Joes Kansas City Bar- Learn more at nytimes.com/timesjourneys Follow us on Facebook
B-Que, formerly known as Oklahoma
Joes, was a short walk from my Airbnb. Quoted tour prices are per person, double occupancy except where indicated and subject to availability. All terms and conditions can be found at
nytimes.com/timesjourneys or you can call 855-NYT-9959 and request a copy be sent to you. CST# 2122227-40.
Joes is inside of a functioning gas sta-
tion, and the line forms early. By the