BREXIT LIMBO GENTLE START THE PARCHED OUTBACK

CAREERS STUCK WERE ‘TAMED’ AUSTRALIA’S VAST INTERIOR

IN UNCERTAINTY FOXES EVER WILD? FACES A DESOLATE FUTURE
PAGE 9 | BUSINESS PAGE 14 | SCIENCE PAGE 7 | WORLD

..

INTERNATIONAL EDITION | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019

Afghanistan Conspiracy
and a steady debunked,
trail of wars Republicans
pick new one
NEWS ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON

Ross Douthat Trump’s allies repeat tactic

OPINION
In fighting successfully to publish
documents showing that United States
officialdom has been telling lies for
years about its military endeavors in
Afghanistan, The Washington Post has
shown how little has changed since the
Vietnam era — and yet also how much
more sustainable, strangely, our own
era’s quagmires seem to be.
The sameness lies in the substance
of the revelations. In the Afghanistan
document trove, as in the Pentagon
Papers, you can see military and civil-
ian officials feeding the press over-
optimistic assessments of a likely
unwinnable conflict,
Lies have conducting clever
statistical manipula-
kept the U.S. tions to create illu-
in the sions of success,
country for telling hard truths in
years. The private while lying
truth may not subtly or baldly in
change that. their public state-
ments. All quagmires
seem to require a
similar culture of
bureaucratized dishonesty, a similar
mask of optimism with the death’s
head underneath.
The main difference, and the pecu-
of claiming a ‘deep state’
is out to get the president
BY MARK MAZZETTI
President Trump and his allies spent
months promising that a report on the
origins of the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation’s Russia inquiry would be a kind
of Rosetta Stone for Trump-era conspir-
acy enthusiasts — the key to unlocking
the secrets of a government plot to keep
Mr. Trump from being elected in 2016.
On that point, the report by the Jus-
tice Department’s inspector general,
Michael E. Horowitz, did not deliver,
even as it found serious problems with
how F.B.I. officials justified the surveil-
lance of a Trump campaign aide to a fed-
eral court.
But by the time the report was re-
leased, the president, his attorney gen-
eral, his supporters in Congress and the
conservative news media had already
declared victory and decamped for the
next battle in the war to convince Ameri-
cans of the enemies at home and abroad
arrayed against the Trump presidency.
They followed a script they have used
for nearly three years: Engage in a chor-
eographed campaign of presidential
LYNSEY ADDARIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES tweets, Fox News appearances and
Marieke Vervoort and her parents saying goodbye in her bedroom. Knowing that in Belgium she had the legal right to die anytime she chose helped Vervoort live her life. fiery congressional testimony to create
expectations about finding proof of a
“deep state” campaign against Mr.

Embracing the end

liar sustainability, is connected to the
larger political and cultural landscape.
The Pentagon Papers weren’t the first
great disillusioning moment of the
Vietnam era; by the time they came
out, public trust in government had
already fallen considerably from its
early-1960s high.
But the country had not yet fully lost
the capacity to be shocked by official
lying, and the political and military
establishments had not yet grown used
to conducting foreign policy without
strong public support. As Americans
decided the war was unwinnable and
its architects dishonest, policymakers
responded by abandoning the war
itself. The agony of Vietnam seemed
endless at the time, but the American
troop presence rose and fell in a simple
arc, climbing from 1964 until 1968 and
falling thereafter. Three years after the
Pentagon Papers were published, we
weren’t in Vietnam anymore.
The Afghanistan revelations, on the
other hand, arrive in an America al-
ready so distrustful that it’s hard to
imagine how it could be disillusioned
further. Over 50 percent of the country
still trusted the federal government to
DOUTHAT, PAGE 13
The New York Times publishes opinion
from a wide range of perspectives in
hopes of promoting constructive debate
about consequential questions.
DIEST, BELGIUM
Paralympic gold medalist
made an appointment
with death to stop her pain
BY ANDREW KEH
Champagne flutes were hastily un-
packed from boxes, filled to their brims
and passed around the room. Dozens of
people stood around inside Marieke
Vervoort’s cramped apartment, unsure
of what to say or do. This was a celebra-
tion, Vervoort had assured her guests.
But it did not feel like one.
Eleven years earlier, Vervoort had ob-
tained the paperwork required to un-
dergo doctor-assisted euthanasia. Since
her teenage years she had been battling
a degenerative muscle disease that stole
the use of her legs, stripped her of her
independence, and caused her agoniz-
ing, unrelenting pain. The paperwork
had returned some sense of control. Un-
der Belgian law, she was free to end her
life anytime she chose.
Trump. And then, when the proof does
not emerge, skew the results and pre-
pare for the next opportunity to execute
the playbook.
That opportunity has arrived in the
form of an investigation by a Connecti-
But instead, she just went on with it — cut prosecutor ordered this year by At-
seized it with new vigor, even. Within a torney General William P. Barr — and
few years she reached uncharted the president and his allies are now pre-
heights in her career as a wheelchair dicting that it will be the one to deliver
sprinter, winning a gold medal at the damning evidence that the F.B.I., the
Paralympics. Central Intelligence Agency and even
She became a celebrity at home and close American allies conspired against
abroad, appearing in the pages of inter- Mr. Trump in the 2016 election.
national magazines and newspapers, Mr. Barr made clear his thoughts on
sitting for interviews on television the inspector general’s report on Mon-
shows. She traveled the world telling day in a blistering public statement in
her life story, unspooling it as an inspira- which he described how the F.B.I. in
tional narrative. 2016 “launched an intrusive investiga-
But she still had that paperwork. tion of a U.S. presidential campaign on
And now, after more than a decade of the thinnest of suspicions” and carried
uncertainty and pain and joy, of opening out surveillance “deep into President
her private life to friends and strangers Trump’s administration.”
and reporters, of inspiring others, of He chose to leave out the fact that the
vexing them, of wishing for the end of inspector general had found that the
her life and at the same time fearing it, F.B.I. had solid reason to open its inves-
Vervoort had invited her loved ones to ADRIAN DENNIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES tigation. Mr. Barr instead said that in his
her home for the most heart-wrenching Vervoort winning a women’s 100-meter wheelchair sprint final at the London 2012 view there was insufficient reason “to
reason: Paralympic Games. She also won a silver and two medals four years later in Rio. justify the steps taken.”
In three days, she had an appoint- The attorney general’s comments
ment to die. echoed his statements after the conclu-
“It’s a strange, strange, strange feel- oblige her request for everyone to be was the end, a nanoscopic hope that it sion of the investigation by Robert S.
ing,” her mother, Odette Pauwels, said happy. There were toasts. There were might not be. Mueller III, the special counsel. In a sig-
as she scanned the party. wails of anguish. There was, also, a faint Almost three years had passed since nificant political victory for Mr. Trump,
Vervoort’s guests sipped their drinks feeling of uncertainty in the air — an un- two journalists from The New York the special counsel found that there was
and made small talk, struggling to spoken question of whether this really VERVOORT, PAGE 15 REPUBLICANS, PAGE 8

She’s reviving Turkey’s taste for psychedelic rock

cholic songs your father listened to, but
ISTANBUL
mixes them with her own style so
they’re still exciting.”
“My dad loves her,” she added, then
The once-popular style grimaced as if that were an uncool thing
to have said.
was abandoned for years In the 1970s, some of Turkey’s biggest
because of its political links music stars combined the traditional
melodies of folk music with psychedelic
BY ALEX MARSHALL rock to make a sound entirely their own,
said Daniel Spicer, the author of a his-
The Turkish rock star Gaye Su Akyol tory of Turkish psychedelic music, in a
took the stage at a venue on the out- telephone interview.
skirts of Istanbul recently to play to a The decade was a turbulent time in
crowd packed with young women — as the country, with left- and right-wing
might be expected for a singer who has groups facing off in frequent street bat-
appeared on the cover of magazines tles in Istanbul. “Some musicians took a
such as the Turkish edition of Elle. stance to align themselves with the com-
But the fans at the event also included mon people,” Spicer said, “and as part of
a relatively high number of middle-aged that they wanted to speak to them in the
men — a pointer toward how Akyol has most direct way possible. So they took
become Turkish rock music’s biggest rock ’n’ roll and made it into this hybrid,
hope. Akyol has built a broad fan base by by infusing it with traditional instru-
reviving — and reinventing — psyche- ments and time signatures.”
delic rock, a sound that was last truly The left-wing views of those artists
TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES popular in Turkey in the 1970s. did not endear them to the authorities,
Gaye Su Akyol has built a broad fan base by adding her own twists to a genre of music Ece Diler, 27, one of the women in the and their music almost completely dis-
enjoyed in Turkey in the 1970s. She says it “cannot be copied by another culture.” crowd, said, “She takes these old melan- TURKEY, PAGE 2

Y(1J85IC*KKNPKP( +@!z!$!,!"
NEWSSTAND PRICES Issue Number
Andorra € 3.70 Canada CAN$ 5.50 Finland € 3.50 Israel NIS 13.50 Malta € 3.50 Qatar QR 12.00 Slovenia € 3.40 Turkey TL 17 No. 42,531
Antilles € 4.00 Croatia KN 22.00 France € 3.50 Israel / Eilat NIS 11.50 Montenegro € 3.40 Republic of Ireland ¤ 3.40 Spain € 3.50 U.A.E. AED 14.00
Austria € 3.50 Cyprus € 3.20 Gabon CFA 2700 Italy € 3.50 Morocco MAD 30 Reunion € 3.50 Sweden Skr 35 United States $ 4.00
Bahrain BD 1.40 Czech Rep CZK 110 Germany € 3.50 Ivory Coast CFA 2700 Norway Nkr 33 Saudi Arabia SR 15.00 Switzerland CHF 4.80 United States Military
Belgium € 3.50 Denmark Dkr 30 Great Britain £ 2.20 Jordan JD 2.00 Oman OMR 1.40 Senegal CFA 2700 Syria US$ 3.00 (Europe) $ 2.00
Bos. & Herz. KM 5.50 Egypt EGP 32.00 Greece € 2.80 Lebanon LBP 5,000 Poland Zl 15 Serbia Din 280 The Netherlands € 3.50
Cameroon CFA 2700 Estonia € 3.50 Hungary HUF 950 Luxembourg € 3.50 Portugal € 3.50 Slovakia € 3.50 Tunisia Din 5.200

2 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
page two
Turkish rock’s biggest hope
TURKEY, FROM PAGE 1
appeared from Turkish airwaves after a
military coup in 1980, Spicer added.
More than half a million people were ar-
rested during the coup, according to hu-
man rights groups.
Cem Kayiran, the music editor at Bant
Mag, a youth magazine based in Istan-
bul, said bands had only started playing
that music again in the late 1990s.
“There are many bands coming up now,
trying to replicate this psychedelic
sound,” he said. “Some of them, you can
tell they’re not the real thing. It feels like
a touristic trip to the Grand Bazaar.”
But Akyol “is totally different to that,”
he added. “She’s not just hype.”
Akyol’s growing profile is not re-
stricted to Turkey. British radio shows,
such as Iggy Pop’s on BBC 6 Music, have
played songs from her latest album, “Is-
tikrarli Hayal Hakikattir” (“Consistent
Fantasy Is Reality”), and on Nov. 30,
Songlines, a London-based magazine
about global music, named Akyol best
artist at its annual awards.
Akyol is a “glistening seductive intri-
cately poised richly Turkish chanteuse,”
Iggy Pop said in an email. She’s “so
much more musical and satisfying than
any popular music from the depleted
West today,” he added.
In an interview, Akyol, 34, explained
why Turkish psychedelic rock was so
important to her. She recalled a recent
discussion on social media in which peo-
ple were asking if Turkey had ever in-
vented anything. “People were hope-
lessly trying to find something,” Akyol
said, “and my answer was this: Turkish
psychedelic music.”
“It has a philosophy, its own mathe-
matics,” she added. “It cannot be copied
by another culture. That’s why it’s still
alive.”
Akyol was born in Istanbul in 1985.
Her mother was a civil servant and her
father a painter. As a child, she was ob-
sessed with many types of music, from
Nirvana to classical, she said: “I was
like a hungry beast trying to find my
taste.”
Old Turkish psychedelic rock was
played at home, she said, and she espe-
cially enjoyed songs by Baris Manco, a
popular singer who ended up hosting
children’s TV shows. (Akyol has covered
his music.)
But, Akyol said, she was one of just a
few in her age group who enjoyed the
style. “In that period, it was really un-
cool for people to listen to,” she said. “Af-
ter the coup, Turkish people got kind of
far away from their own heritage.”
Playing psychedelic rock today is not
some sort of patriotic throwback, Akyol
added. “What I’m trying to do isn’t just
copy it,” she said. “I want to put new
bricks on it; to make another building,
actually.”
Akyol’s popularity is not just a result
of her revitalizing old styles, said Kayi-
ran, the magazine editor, but also be-
cause of her outspokenness, especially
on women’s issues. “She’s brave enough
to say what she wants, and you can’t un-
derestimate that in today’s Turkey,” he
said.
In the interview, Akyol was happy to
talk about issues like women’s rights
(“There are so many laws, but they’re
not working,” Akyol said, about meas-
ures to protect women from male vio-
lence), but she was careful not to talk di-
rectly about politicians like Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s presi-
dent, who has clamped down on free
speech since a failed military coup in
2016.
Many have interpreted her ambigu-
ous lyrics as poetic comments on Erdo-
gan’s government or on the state of Tur-
key. “The whole country is a hookah
Writer went where no woman had gone before
D.C. FONTANA
1939-2019
BY LIAM STACK
D.C. Fontana, who helped craft the lore
of the 1960s television series “Star Trek”
and developed one of its signature char-
acters, Spock, as the show’s first female
writer, died on Tuesday at a hospital in
Burbank, Calif. She was 80.
Her husband and only immediate sur-
vivor, Dennis Skotak, said the cause was
cancer.
Ms. Fontana was part of the “Star
Trek” universe from its early days,
working alongside the show’s creator,
Gene Roddenberry, as a story editor and
writer.
The original series, which had its pre-
miere in 1966, introduced audiences to
Captain Kirk, the United Federation of
Planets and the Starship Enterprise.
But Ms. Fontana was best known among
fans for her work on Spock, the half-hu-
man, half-Vulcan Starfleet officer por-
trayed by Leonard Nimoy. Spock was
torn between the emotionality of his hu-
man side and a Vulcan’s zealous com-
mitment to logic. That narrative tension
powered much of the series and several
of the feature films that followed.
“From Day 1 she was there helping
Gene, in the early days, as a confidante,”
Mr. Skotak said. “Captain Kirk always
found a way to solve whatever problem
they were facing — using Dorothy’s
words in a lot of cases,” using Ms. Fon-
tana’s given name.
In a 2013 interview with StarTrek-
.com, the franchise’s official website,
Ms. Fontana said she thought her great-
Gaye Su Akyol’s popularity partly stems from her outspokenness. Many see her ambiguous lyrics as poetic political comments.
cafe, we are suffocating in its smoke,”
she sings on “Bagrimizda Tas,” or
“Stones in Our Bosom.” The police once
asked Akyol to explain the song
“Nargile” after a complaint, she said. It
includes the line, “You sold us out well!
You have a palace but it’s just empty
four walls.” She told the police it was not
to do with the president. “It’s about the
power that destroys people every-
where,” she said.
Some Turkish musicians are more di-
rect. In September, Saniser, a rapper, re-
leased “Susamam” (“I Can’t Stay Si-
lent”) a 15-minute track that rails
against a host of Turkish afflictions from
ALBERT L. ORTEGA/GETTY IMAGES
D.C. Fontana in 2016. She was the first
female writer for “Star Trek.”
est contribution to the franchise had
been “primarily the development of
Spock as a character and Vulcan as a
history/background/culture from
which he sprang.”
She fleshed out the character’s back
story as the child of a human mother and
a Vulcan father while she was a story ed-
itor and associate producer for “Star
Trek: The Animated Series” in the
1970s. She later wrote, with Mr. Rodden-
berry, the pilot that launched “Star
Trek: The Next Generation” in 1987.
Dorothy Catherine Fontana was born
on March 25, 1939, in Sussex, N.J. She
was raised by a single mother in Totowa,
N.J., and dreamed of becoming a nov-
bad driving to animal neglect. Some
verses comment directly on the political
situation. “If they falsely arrest you one
night, no journalist can report it ’cause
they’re all locked up,” one line declares.
The track, watched over 38 million
times on YouTube, was heavily criti-
cized in Turkey’s right-leaning newspa-
pers. “I watched crying, smiling, clench-
ing my fists,” Akyol wrote on Twitter
shortly after the song’s release.
Akyol said she loved that song’s di-
rectness, but that she preferred her own
songs to be more enigmatic. “I like the
mystery in it,” she said. “You can open
the door with your own key.”
elist, she said in an interview with the
Writers Guild Foundation in 2014.
After high school, she studied to be-
come a secretary at Fairleigh Dickinson
University in New Jersey. She told the
foundation that she had thought that
clerical work would be a good day job for
an aspiring novelist, but that her goals
had changed when she became a secre-
tary at Columbia Pictures’ television
arm, which was based in New York.
“I was seeing scripts come across our
desks for the various shows we had on
the air at the time and I thought, ‘I can
write this,’ like so many fools before me,”
she said. “I had watched television for
years and years and kind of got the idea
of how stories were structured.”
When her boss died of a heart attack,
leaving her jobless after just two
months, she decided to move to Califor-
nia, in December 1959, to see if she could
break into television writing. She
achieved early success selling scripts to
western series, which were popular in
the early 1960s, including “The Tall
Man,” “Shotgun Slade” and “Frontier
Circus.”
Ms. Fontana told StarTrek.com in
2013 that her big break came when she
was hired to be the secretary to Del
Reisman, the associate producer of a
show called “The Lieutenant.” She was
soon reassigned to work for another
producer, whose secretary had been
hospitalized for two months because of
complications from an appendectomy:
Gene Roddenberry.
When “The Lieutenant” went off the
air, Mr. Roddenberry sold “Star Trek” to
Desilu Productions and asked Ms. Fon-
tana to work for him as a production sec-
retary. But her role soon expanded.
MARIANO REGIDOR/REDFERNS, VIA GETTY IMAGES
At the concert near Istanbul, her mys-
terious lyrics did not seem a problem for
any of her fans, young or old. A man in a
Pink Floyd T-shirt sang almost every
word. So did several women in head
scarves. Many lined up outside Akyol’s
dressing room afterward for selfies.
“They are mesmerized,” Akyol said
with a laugh, after the last person left.
But they had not been speaking to her
about the intricacies of Turkish psyche-
delic rock, it seemed. “All they say is ‘I
love you very much,’ or ‘You give me
hope,’ ” Akyol said.
She smiled. “That’s the whole idea, I
guess.”
“She would read the scripts and re-
type them and things like that,” Mr. Sko-
tak said. “Then she thought, ‘I should
try writing these, because I have some
ideas.’ ”
Mr. Roddenberry recognized her am-
bition, and her record of writing for
westerns, and asked her to pick which
story she wanted to write from the pro-
duction outline for the first season of
“Star Trek.” Her first script, about the
ship’s encounter with a mysterious hu-
man teenager who possesses strange
powers, became the series’ second
episode.
Ms. Fontana wrote for all three sea-
sons of the original series. She later
wrote for other science fiction shows, in-
cluding “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,”
“The Six Million Dollar Man” and “Bab-
ylon 5,” as well as influential series out-
side that genre like “Bonanza,” “Dallas”
and “The Waltons.”
In her later years, Ms. Fontana taught
at the American Film Institute. Mr. Sko-
tak, her husband, a special effects de-
signer, said she had continued to teach
at the institute until just a few weeks be-
fore her death.
Speaking to StarTrek.com in 2013, Ms.
Fontana reflected on what it was like to
be a female writer in Hollywood in the
1960s. While working on “Star Trek,” she
said, she did not realize that she had
gone where no woman had gone before.
“At the time, I wasn’t especially aware
there were so few female writers doing
action-adventure scripts,” she said.
“There were plenty doing soaps, com-
edies, or on variety shows. By choosing
to do action adventure, I was in an elite,
very talented and very different group
of women writers.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Black psychoanalyst
overcame many hurdles
MARGARET LAWRENCE
1914-2019
BY KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
As a senior at Cornell University in New
York in the 1930s, Margaret Lawrence
had a nearly perfect academic record
and expected to attend the university’s
medical school. But Ms. Lawrence (she
was Margaret Morgan at the time), the
only black student in her class, was de-
nied admission.
“Twenty-five years ago there was a
Negro man admitted,” the dean of the
medical school told her, “and it didn’t
work out.” That man had come down
with tuberculosis and died, thus failing
to graduate. It was excuse enough to re-
ject her.
She absorbed the shock, then applied
to Columbia University’s College of Phy-
sicians and Surgeons in New York. She
was accepted, on the condition that she
would not protest if white patients re-
fused to be seen by her. (None did.) She
agreed, and became the only black stu-
dent in her class of 104, graduating in
1940.
She would still face discrimination, of-
ten being mistaken for a cleaning lady.
But she went on to be a renowned pedi-
atrician and child psychiatrist and the
first African-American woman to be-
come a psychoanalyst in the United
States, according to NewYork-Presby-
terian Hospital, where her career began.
When she died on Dec. 4 at an assisted
living facility in Boston, she was 105.
Her daughter Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
confirmed the death.
A student of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s, Dr.
Lawrence was a pioneering therapist
who treated young families in the
Harlem neighborhood of New York and
in Rockland County, just northwest of
the city. There, in 1949, she and her hus-
band helped establish a progressive, ra-
cially integrated cooperative communi-
ty called Skyview Acres, where she
lived for almost 70 years before moving
to Boston to be near her daughter.
“She was an innovative, iconoclastic,
unusual child psychiatrist,” said Ms.
Lawrence-Lightfoot, a Harvard sociolo-
gist, who detailed her mother’s life in a
book, “Balm in Gilead: Journey of a
Healer” (1988).
“She understood that not just the inte-
rior life of a person but their context in
the life of the family as well as forces in
the community — particularly forces
that are discriminatory — can leave peo-
ple oppressed and marginalized,” Ms.
Lawrence-Lightfoot said.
Dr. Lawrence became known for her
empathy toward children. She saw her
task as helping them develop what she
called their “ego-strength,” their sense
of self-worth.
“Strength abounds in Harlem,” Dr.
Lawrence once said. “Three hundred
years of oppression, and it survives.”
Margaret Cornelia Morgan was born
in Harlem on Aug. 19, 1914. Her parents,
the Rev. Sandy Alonzo Morgan, an Epis-
copal priest, and Mary Elizabeth
(Smith) Morgan, a schoolteacher, were
a middle-class couple living in Virginia
at the time but had gone to Harlem for
the birth because they had relatives
there and believed that they would get
better care there than in the Jim Crow
South.
They moved back to Virginia after the
birth, then eventually settled in Vicks-
burg, Miss., where Mr. Morgan had been
assigned to a church. Margaret was
raised there.
Margaret knew from an early age that
she wanted to be a doctor. Her parents’
first child, a boy, had died in infancy two
years before Margaret was born; she re-
solved to become a doctor to save ba-
bies.
She graduated from Vicksburg’s all-
black high school at 14 but knew her edu-
cation was inadequate. She went to live
with her grandmother and aunts in
Harlem, where she attended the selec-
tive Wadleigh High School for Girls. Two
years later, she graduated with prizes in
Greek and Latin. With a scholarship in
Dr. Lawrence with a patient in an undated photo. A renowned pediatrician and child
psychiatrist, she was known for her empathy, even reverence, toward children.
..
hand, she headed to Cornell in 1932 as a
pre-med student.
As the only black undergraduate in
her class, she was barred from living in a
dormitory. Instead, she worked as a live-
in maid for white families, doing the
wash, serving meals and, in one case,
sleeping in an unheated attic.
On a visit back to Vicksburg while a
student at Cornell, she met Charles R.
Lawrence II, a sociologist and civil
rights activist who had also grown up in
Vicksburg. They married in 1938 and
had three children.
Mr. Lawrence died in 1986. In addition
to Ms. Lawrence-Lightfoot, Dr.
Lawrence is survived by another
daughter, Paula Lawrence-Wehmiller; a
son, Charles R. Lawrence III; six grand-
children; and four great-grandchildren.
While she was the only black student
in her medical school class at Columbia,
she was one of 10 women, and that gave
her some comfort and support. But she
still felt the sting of racism. She was of-
ten stopped on the street by white wom-
en asking if she could clean for them.
She recalled that one of her professors,
who wanted to compliment her, told her,
“Margaret, you don’t even seem like a
Negro — you fit in so well.” When she
turned 21 and went to register to vote,
she was asked to take a literacy test.
Margaret Lawrence became a doctor
despite facing racial discrimination.
During a pediatric internship at
Harlem Hospital, she became involved
in politics and the civil rights movement,
spurred on in part by her husband, who
was a conscientious objector during
World War II. Along with other young
doctors, she advocated better medical
care for poor people and joined national
and international movements for peace
and social justice.
She earned her master’s degree in
public health from Columbia in 1943.
There she studied under Dr. Spock,
known as “the world’s pediatrician,”
who was famous for dispensing what he
called “common sense” (critics called it
“permissive”) advice to postwar par-
ents raising the baby boom generation.
He was the first doctor she had met
who talked about the connection be-
tween physical health and psychological
well-being, she is quoted as saying in
her daughter’s book. She also watched
him listen carefully to mothers and treat
children with respect, and she vowed to
pattern herself after him.
“It was Spock who gave me my first
firm feeling of being a pediatrician and a
child psychiatrist,” she said.
After a teaching stint at Meharry
Medical College in Nashville, Dr.
Lawrence returned to Columbia to be-
gin her formal training in psychiatry
and psychoanalysis. She served as chief
of developmental psychiatry services
for infants and children at Harlem Hos-
pital for more than 20 years and as an
associate clinical professor at Colum-
bia’s College of Physicians and Sur-
geons. She later opened a private psy-
chiatric practice in Rockland County
and helped establish a mental health
program in the local school system.
She recalled years later that as a med-
ical student she had wished that she
could have blended in with the other stu-
dents. “I feel especially self-conscious
about my hands,” she told Ms.
Lawrence-Lightfoot. “I think, If only I
had on my white coat, I could put them
in my pockets” to disguise them. But,
she said, “Here I am, black as you see
me.”
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE LAWRENCE FAMILY
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 3

4 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
World
Indian citizenship bill takes aim at Islam
HYDERABAD, INDIA
Lower house of Parliament
excludes Muslim migrants
as it welcomes other faiths
BY JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
AND SUHASINI RAJ
India took a major step toward the offi-
cial marginalization of Muslims on Tues-
day as one house of Parliament passed a
bill that would establish a religious test
for migrants who want to become citi-
zens, solidifying Prime Minister Naren-
dra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.
The measure would give migrants of
all of South Asia’s major religions a clear
path to Indian citizenship — except Is-
lam. The legislation is the most signifi-
cant move yet to profoundly alter India’s
secular nature enshrined by its found-
ing leaders when the country gained in-
dependence in 1947.
The bill passed in the lower house, the
Lok Sabha, a few minutes after mid-
night, following a few hours of debate.
The vote was 311 to 80. The measure
now moves to the upper house, the Ra-
jya Sabha, where Mr. Modi seems to
have enough allies that most analysts
predict it will soon become law.
Muslim Indians are deeply unsettled.
They see the new measure, called the
Citizenship Amendment Bill, as the first
step by the governing party to make sec-
ond-class citizens of India’s 200 million
Muslims, one of the largest Muslim pop-
ulations in the world, and render many
of them stateless.
“We are heading toward totalitar-
ianism, a fascist state,” said Asaduddin
Owaisi, a Muslim lawmaker, who on
Monday dramatically tore up a copy of
the bill while giving a speech in Parlia-
ment. “We are making India a theocratic
country.”
The legislation goes hand in hand
with a contentious program that began
in the northeastern state of Assam this
year, in which all 33 million residents of
the state had to prove, with documenta-
ry evidence, that they or their ancestors
were Indian citizens. Approximately
two million people — many of them
Muslims, and many of them lifelong res-
idents of India — were left off the state’s
citizenship rolls after that exercise.
Now, Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata
Party, or B.J.P., is hoping to expand that
kind of citizenship test to other states.
And the new legislation would become a
guiding principle for who could hope to
call themselves Indians.
Mr. Modi and his party are deeply
rooted in an ideology that sees India as a
Hindu nation. And since the B.J.P.’s land-
slide re-election win in May, Mr. Modi’s
administration has celebrated one
Hindu nationalist victory after another,
each a demoralizing drumbeat for Mus-
lims.
First came the Assam citizenship
tests. Then Mr. Modi stripped away au-
tonomy and statehood for Kashmir,
which used to be India’s only state with a
Muslim majority. And last month, Hindu
fundamentalists scored a big court vic-
tory allowing them to build a new tem-
ple over the ruins of a demolished
mosque in the flash-point city of Ayodh-
ya.
With the new citizenship bill, Mr.
Modi’s party says it is simply trying to
protect persecuted Hindus, Buddhists
and Christians (and members of a few
smaller religions) who migrate from
predominantly Muslim countries such
as Pakistan or Afghanistan.
But the legislation would also make it
Criticized for Muslim camps, China says: What’s the problem?
BEIJING
BY CHRIS BUCKLEY
AND AUSTIN RAMZY
On Twitter and YouTube, with slick vid-
eos and strident editorials, the Chinese
government has gone on the offensive to
reject mounting evidence that it is de-
taining Muslims in droves, depicting its
critics as players in a Western conspir-
acy.
China’s aggressive media campaign
comes after exposés published by The
New York Times and the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists
about the government’s drive to detain a
million or more members of largely
Muslim minority groups in indoctrina-
tion camps. The reports, which used
leaked official documents to reveal the
coercive workings of the camps in the
northwestern region of Xinjiang, sharp-
ened international criticism of China’s
ruling Communist Party.
The pushback from China has escalat-
ed in recent days after the United States
House of Representatives last week
overwhelmingly supported a bill that
could impose sanctions on Chinese offi-
cials overseeing the internment drive.
Chinese officials have accused West-
ern lawmakers, experts and news out-
lets of maligning the government’s poli-
cies and stirring ethnic discord in Xin-
jiang.
At a news conference in Beijing on
Monday, Shohrat Zakir, the chairman of
Muslims praying at a mosque in Tonk, India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party are deeply rooted in an ideology that sees India as a Hindu nation, despite there being 200 million Muslims in the country.
easier to incarcerate and deport Muslim
residents, even those whose families
have been in India for generations, if
they cannot produce proof of citizen-
ship.
Under Mr. Modi’s leadership, anti-
Muslim sentiment has become blatantly
more mainstream and public. Intimida-
tion and attacks against Muslim com-
munities have increased in recent years.
And overt displays of Hindu piety and
nationalism have become central in pop
culture and politics.
Mr. Modi’s fellow lawmakers in the
B.J.P. are unapologetic about their pro-
Hindu position.
“There are Muslim countries, there
are Jew countries; everybody has their
own identity. And we are a billion-plus,
right? We must have one identity,” said
Ravi Kishan, a famous action-film hero
and member of Parliament who is a cen-
tral supporter of the citizenship legisla-
tion.
When asked if he was trying to turn
India into a Hindu nation, he laughed.
“India has always been a Hindu nation,”
he said. “The Muslims also are Hindus.”
(This is a common Hindu nationalist be-
lief: that India’s Muslims are relatively
recent converts, even though Islam ar-
rived in India hundreds of years ago.)
Even before lawmakers in the Lok
Sabha voted, protests were breaking
out.
In Assam, where the citizenship pro-
A film titled “Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang” was shown on Monday in Beijing, where
an official said that internment camps were holding people who were there voluntarily.
the Xinjiang government, dismissed the
congressional bill as “crude meddling in
China’s internal affairs.”
He sought to foil the criticism by say-
ing that the facilities — which Beijing
calls vocational training centers — were
now holding only people who were there
voluntarily. Others who were previously
in the facilities had “graduated,” he said,
providing no specifics and declining to
say whether they had been released.
He would not say how many people
gram began last summer, thousands of
people have marched in the streets,
hoisting placards and torches and
shouting out their opposition to the bill.
People are talking of mass fasts and
boycotts of schools and markets. On
Monday, some hanged effigies of Mr.
Modi and his right-hand man, Amit
Shah, the home minister.
The leaders of the opposition Indian
National Congress party are trying to
paint the bill as a danger to India’s de-
mocracy. After India won its independ-
ence, its founding leaders, Mohandas K.
“There are Jew countries;
everybody has their own identity.
And we are a billion-plus, right?
We must have one identity.”
Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru among
them, made a clear decision: Even
though the country was 80 percent
Hindu, it would not be an officially
Hindu nation. Minorities, especially
Muslims, would be treated equally.
Rahul Gandhi, a party leader and
great-grandson of Mr. Nehru, said, “In-
dia belongs to everybody — all commu-
nities, all religions, all cultures.”
But the Congress party is at a low
point in its 100-year-plus history. And
Mr. Modi’s party has the numbers: With
allies, it controls nearly two-thirds of the
NG HAN GUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
were currently or previously held. Ui-
ghurs and Kazakhs abroad have said
they have seen no evidence of large-
scale releases.
Beijing’s case appears unlikely to win
over experts who include officials from
the United Nations. An abundance of ev-
idence shows that the authorities have
pursued a sweeping campaign to detain
Uighurs and Kazakhs in camps de-
signed to turn them into loyal support-
ers of the Communist Party.
seats in the lower house.
Forging India into an overtly Hindu
nation has been a core goal of Mr. Modi’s
party and of the R.S.S., a right-wing vol-
unteer group whose ranks Mr. Modi rose
up through and which provides him a
backbone of support. And India’s recent
moves in Kashmir, along with the
Ayodhya temple ruling and the Assam
citizenship tests, have been hugely pop-
ular with the prime minister’s base.
Earlier this year, Mr. Modi’s govern-
ment tried to push similar citizenship
legislation. The bill sailed through the
lower house but stalled after many poli-
ticians in Assam said they did not like
the religious dimension the B.J.P. was
injecting — or the possibility that a large
number of Hindu Bengalis would be
made citizens and would be able to le-
gally acquire land in Assam.
The bill gathered new momentum this
fall, after the citizenship test in Assam.
Assam has witnessed waves of migra-
tion over the years, and many of those
people whose citizenship was being
questioned were migrants, both Hindus
and Muslims, from neighboring Bangla-
desh.
Mr. Shah, the home minister and ar-
chitect of the B.J.P.’s recent political vic-
tories, promised to protect the Hindus
and other non-Muslims. Mr. Shah has
also promised to impose the citizenship
test from Assam on the entire country.
The citizenship bill is a piece of the
Maya Wang, a senior China re-
searcher for Human Rights Watch who
has closely studied Xinjiang, said the
party’s claims lacked credibility. “This
comes from a government that pretty
much lies about most reports coming
from the region,” she said.
“If the Chinese government has in-
deed released people from the camps,”
she added, “then it should allow inde-
pendent observers, including from the
United Nations, to enter the region with-
out any kind of restrictions to see for
themselves.”
Beijing has said that its policies in
Xinjiang are aimed at curbing extrem-
ism and have pulled the region back
from bloody anarchy. The latest media
campaign reflects the government’s
confidence that its narrative could un-
dermine independent Western analysis
and news reports on the region, and per-
haps blunt the push in some countries to
censure China over the hard-line poli-
cies.
On Twitter and in Chinese newspa-
pers, Chinese commentators have ac-
cused prominent Western scholars of
serving as tools of American intelli-
gence agencies regarding Xinjiang.
Twitter is banned within China, but that
does not stop the government and its
supporters from using the platform to
make their case that the camps have
stamped out attacks in Xinjiang.
The Global Times, a newspaper
owned by the Chinese Communist Party,
published an interview with a regional
government spokesman who said that
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
campaign to identify and deport Mus-
lims who have been living in India for
years, critics of the bill say. It lays out a
path to Indian citizenship for migrants
from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghan-
istan if they can prove they have been in
India for at least five years and ascribe
to the specified religions.
To overcome the resistance from poli-
ticians in Assam, who do not want Hindu
or Muslim migrants taking their land,
the new version of the bill carves out
special protections for areas predomi-
nated by indigenous people.
Mr. Modi’s supporters employ a cer-
tain logic when defending the bill’s ex-
clusion of Muslims. They say Muslims
are not persecuted in Pakistan, Bangla-
desh or Afghanistan, which is mostly
true.
They also say that when India and Pa-
kistan were granted independence in
1947, the British carved out Pakistan as
a haven for Muslims, while India re-
mained predominantly Hindu. To them,
the extension of that process is to ask il-
legal Muslims migrants to leave India
and seek refuge in neighboring, mainly
Muslim nations.
Article 25 of the Indian Constitution
says, “All persons are equally entitled to
freedom of conscience and the right
freely to profess, practice and propagate
religion.” Given that, many opponents of
the bill say the citizenship legislation is
patently unconstitutional. But the
two prominent foreign experts on Xin-
jiang, Adrian Zenz and Darren Byler,
were cooperating with “anti-China
forces in the U.S. to smear China’s Xin-
jiang policies.”
Mr. Byler, a postdoctoral researcher
at the University of Colorado Boulder,
and Mr. Zenz, a senior fellow in China
Studies at the Victims of Communism
Memorial Foundation in Washington,
said the attack on them seemed to re-
flect growing anxiety among Chinese of-
ficials that they were losing the interna-
tional argument over the camps.
“If the Chinese government has
indeed released people from the
camps, then it should allow
independent observers.”
“Painting me and Darren Byler as in-
telligence agents is a very poorly done,
crude, smearing counterattack,” Mr.
Zenz said. “I think it’s very unconvinc-
ing. People are not believing them any-
more.”
Not all of China’s media offensive has
dwelled on the claims of success in Xin-
jiang. China’s state-run international
broadcaster, CGTN, posted several Eng-
lish-language videos on YouTube featur-
ing footage of what it said were earlier
attacks by Uighurs swept up in extrem-
ism and separatist movements.
The government showed one of the
videos to journalists on Monday that in-
cluded gruesome scenes from a 2014 at-
..
SMITA SHARMA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Hindu nationalists have an answer for
that, as well.
“We are not talking about citizens,”
said Ramesh Shinde, a spokesman for
the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, a Hindu
organization that is considered a far-
right group. “We are talking about mi-
grants.”
Both sides agree on one thing: The bill
could have far-reaching consequences.
The Indian government is already
racing to build an enormous network of
prisons to house thousands of migrants.
If immigration law is applied selectively,
Hindu migrants who are swept up in
raids may be released and allowed to ap-
ply for citizenship, while Muslim mi-
grants could instead be sent to detention
camps, opponents say.
Mr. Kishan, the action hero turned po-
litician, said he would next push to
change India’s name to Bharat, the tra-
ditional Hindi word for India. But he said
that he was not anti-Muslim, and that
Muslims living in India legally had noth-
ing to fear.
“How can I be anti-Muslim? My staff
in Mumbai is Muslim,” he said.
“Hindus and Muslims in India are like
this,” he said, interlacing his fingers.
“But,” he added with a big smile, “I love
Hindus.”
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Hyder-
abad, India, and Suhasini Raj from New
Delhi.
tack by Uighur militants at a railway
station in Kunming, in southwestern
China, that killed 31 people and injured
141 others.
“The horrific images and alarming
number of violent crimes reveal the se-
riousness of the security situation in
China’s western frontier,” the English-
language voice-over says. “Chinese po-
lice have identified Xinjiang as a key
battlefield.”
Mr. Byler said the videos could help
deflect criticism of the detentions by
playing on exaggerated fears that Ui-
ghurs are susceptible to becoming ter-
rorists. But the videos avoid fundamen-
tal questions about whether the scale of
the government’s response is appropri-
ate, he said.
“They are missing that point where
they go from ‘This handful of people did
bad things’ to ‘We need to lock up 1.8 mil-
lion or however many people are esti-
mated in camps,’ ” Mr. Byler said.
Former camp detainees who have left
China have described numbing, even
brutal treatment inside the facilities.
Detainees are subject to indoctrination
that warns them to renounce religious
fervor and support the Communist
Party. They are forced to study Chinese,
memorize laws, practice marching and
learn skills for factory work.
Legal experts have said that even un-
der China’s sweeping powers of deten-
tion, there is no sound backing for the
camps, which subject inmates to
months or years of detention without
trial or effective means of appeal.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 5

6 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
world
President Emmanuel Macron, right, wants to overhaul France’s complex but popular pension system, an action that has provoked social mobilization in the past. Strikes by union workers and others in Paris, top left, have caused commuter chaos, bottom left.
France may not want its president’s ‘revolution’
PARIS
Pension uproar raises
doubts about Macron’s
ability to enact change
BY ADAM NOSSITER
With his country in turmoil, more chaos
looming and no resolution in sight, Pres-
ident Emmanuel Macron of France tried
changing the subject.
Last Thursday, nearly a million peo-
ple had taken to the streets to protest his
plan to remake France’s generous pen-
sion system.
But a day later, Mr. Macron, instead of
addressing what was on everyone’s
minds — how to get out of the standoff,
which has stranded thousands of com-
muters — delivered a lyrical tribute far
from Paris to three rescue workers
killed in a helicopter crash.
That Olympian silence on the immedi-
ate issue of the day encapsulated Mr.
Macron’s challenge as a reformer, past,
present and future, in the view of some
analysts.
The French president sold himself to
voters as a nonpolitician, but that cre-
dential has come back to haunt him. His
own party criticizes what many call his
maladroit communication on an anxi-
ety-inducing subject. Now, some within
the party are predicting a rough road
Britain will vote amid a rising tide of disinformation
LONDON
BY ADAM SATARIANO
AND AMIE TSANG
Manipulated Twitter accounts, doctored
videos, dodgy websites and questions of
foreign meddling. In just six weeks, the
campaign leading up to Britain’s general
election this Thursday has had a taste of
what the dark arts of online campaign-
ing have to offer.
But in addition to concerns about ma-
terial originating with shadowy groups
or Russian operatives ahead of one of
Britain’s most important votes in a gen-
eration, a surprising amount of ques-
tionable online behavior has come from
the political parties and candidates
themselves.
The use of disinformation techniques
by political leaders, particularly in the
Conservative Party, led by Prime Min-
ister Boris Johnson, points to an evolu-
tion in how the internet is being used to
grab attention, distract the news media,
stoke outrage and rally support.
And it is not just professionals who
are creating false or misleading cam-
paign material online. Just about any-
one can put it together, and that is ex-
actly what seems to be happening.
“It’s the democratization of misinfor-
mation,” said Jacob Davey, a senior re-
searcher at the Institute for Strategic
Dialog, a London-based group that
tracks global disinformation cam-
paigns. “We’re seeing anyone and ev-
eryone picking up these tactics.”
And with polls suggesting that voters
are shrugging off accusations of online
trickery — and Facebook saying that it
will not screen political ads for accuracy
— experts said the tactics were likely to
further enter the mainstream.
“This is the election where disinfor-
mation was normalized,” Mr. Davey
said. “A few years ago people were look-
ing for a massive coordinated campaign
from a hostile state actor. Now, many
more actors are getting involved.”
IAN LANGSDON/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK
YOAN VALAT/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK
ahead for the man who promised his
country a “revolution” in a campaign
manifesto of that name.
His citizens turned out to have a revo-
lution of their own in mind — one that,
like so many in France’s past, is bub-
bling up from the streets.
More strikes and demonstrations
were planned for Tuesday, after the gov-
ernment met through the weekend to re-
fine the details of the pension-streamlin-
ing plan. On Monday, commuters woke
to chaos, with 14 out of 16 metro lines
shut down in Paris, most trains across
the country canceled and traffic backed
up for miles around Paris.
The unions are preparing for a long
fight. Mr. Macron may now may be run-
ning out of space and time to deliver his
own cerebral version of the revolution.
“The reform possibility of this govern-
ment is weakened,” said Gérard Grun-
berg, a veteran political scientist at Sci-
ences Po, the international research uni-
versity.
Mr. Macron has tried to nudge France
toward a closer embrace of market
forces — loosening up rules for hiring
and firing, for example — and has re-
duced the unemployment rate from over
9 percent to around 8 percent.
But this has not widened his circle of
support: barely a third of the French ap-
prove of him. And his latest initiative
may further erode his popularity.
“He seems absolutely incapable of ex-
panding his political and social base,”
said Mr. Grunberg. “He’s only supported
A Facebook video produced by Momentum, a pro-Labour group that says it doesn’t know-
ingly publish false information. Disinformation’s overall influence on voters isn’t clear.
Britain’s election provides an imper-
fect comparison to the upcoming presi-
dential election in the United States,
where the process lasts more than a
year and the campaigns are better
funded and more digitally sophisticated.
But the experience in Britain pro-
vides a preview of the unruly online bat-
tle brewing across the Atlantic, as those
seeking to influence voters become
more cunning about reaching people
through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
YouTube and WhatsApp.
The Labour Party has been drawn
into the maelstrom, with its leader,
Jeremy Corbyn, citing documents criti-
cal of the Conservatives that turned out
to be linked to a Russian disinformation
campaign.
But watchdog groups in Britain have
singled out the Conservative Party in
particular for its use of manipulative in-
ternet tactics. Last month, the party
apologized after spreading a video
edited to make it look as though the op-
by the little quarter who support what
he represents ideologically. I don’t see
him regaining popularity. It’s a big
weakness.”
Mr. Macron insists that the new pen-
sion plan, which aims to simplify the
country’s current 42 systems into one
points-based system, will be fairer.
“It’s to unite, in a single system,” Mr.
Macron said at a town-hall meeting in
October. “And whatever your field of
work, each point you save, that you
‘buy,’ it will give you exactly the same
rights when you reach retirement.”
The pension standoff has shown
Mr. Macron’s determination to
proceed regardless of warnings
from history.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister
Édouard Philippe will present what is
supposed to be the plan’s final draft.
Apart from the huge cost, there is little
doubt the current system works well for
many.
In France the poverty rate among
those older than 65 is less than 5 per-
cent, largely because of the pension sys-
tem, while in the United States it ap-
proaches 20 percent, according to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development. In France, life ex-
pectancy is increasing, while in the
United States it is diminishing in signifi-
cant sectors of the population.
ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
position Labour lawmaker in charge of
the party’s Brexit policy could not an-
swer a question about exiting the Euro-
pean Union.
It then dressed up one of its Twitter
accounts to look like a nonpartisan fact-
check group, drawing a warning from
Twitter. Later, Conservatives bought
ads on Google so that in searches for La-
bour’s policy manifesto, the top result
was a website that criticized the propos-
als.
The actions appeared designed to be
easily discovered, provoke outrage and
distract the news media, said Jenni Sar-
gent, the managing director of First
Draft, a nonprofit group that investi-
gates online misinformation. She said
that whenever journalists questioned
Conservative Party representatives
about the questionable tactics, they
used the opportunity to criticize oppo-
nents in the Labour Party.
The Conservative Party, which did not
respond to requests for comment for
With public opinion behind the strik-
ers, and the unions emboldened by their
success, the margin for maneuvering by
the government appears limited. Fifty-
three percent backed the strikers in a
poll published Sunday in Le Journal du
Dimanche.
Mr. Macron’s political learning on the
job has not helped. Even some of his own
supporters are starting to get anxious.
“We absolutely must remove the un-
certainties for the French, that this re-
form won’t have a negative impact on
their pensions,” said Benoît Simian, a
member of Parliament from Mr. Ma-
cron’s party who represents an area
around Bordeaux.
The standoff, he said, “hurts the re-
formist capacity of the government,
which is a necessity for our future.
Clearly, this could put a wrench in our
ability to reform.”
The lack of clarity over who, if any-
body, will win and lose in the new pen-
sion system has opened a door for Mr.
Macron’s hitherto weak political opposi-
tion and for the unions. Some analysts
say private-sector workers will come
out ahead. That prediction has enraged
the public sector.
“They decided, all by themselves, to
create a revolution in the pensions sys-
tem,” the leftist opposition leader Jean-
Luc Mélenchon told journalists in Mar-
seille last week. “It’s a real provocation
to our welfare state.”
At a union demonstration this week-
end in Paris against the pension
this article, bolstered its online opera-
tion by adding Sean Topham and Ben
Guerin, political consultants in their 20s
from New Zealand whose digital skills
helped fuel Scott Morrison’s surprise
victory as prime minister of Australia
last year.
They also gained attention for
“boomer memes” — low-quality, scrap-
pily produced ads that reiterate simple
messages by pasting them onto images
from popular shows like “Game of
Thrones.”
Their approach is to find ways to at-
tract attention to their clients, whether
candidates or parties, by pushing emo-
tional buttons that elicit a response on-
line. “We’re talking anger, excitement,
pride, fear,” Mr. Guerin said at a confer-
ence in June. “Your content should be
relating to one of these emotions for
anyone to give a damn about it.”
He described the strategy as “How do
you win the battle of the thumbs?”
For all of the effort and attention de-
voted to it, disinformation’s overall influ-
ence on voters is far from clear. Re-
searchers have struggled to precisely
measure how much people are swayed
by what they see in their social media
feeds.
In Wigan, a longtime Labour strong-
hold in northwestern England where
the Conservatives have been trying to
capitalize on strong pro-Brexit senti-
ments, newspapers and television re-
main a common way for many people to
get information. But for others, like
Greg Rimmer, a 26-year-old who works
for the local government, everything
comes from social media.
Pulling out his phone, he scrolled
through a Twitter feed filled with politi-
cal posts criticizing the Conservative
Party’s health care plans. He tapped
over to Facebook, where he saw another
meme about the election.
“I hardly ever watch the news, but I’m
on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and
YouTube all the time,” he said. “I try not
to let it sway me, but if you see some-
thing constantly, you can’t help it.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
changes, protesters made clear who
their target was. “Stop Macron and his
government and their reactionary pro-
gram!” an organizer yelled.
“This movement goes way beyond
just pensions,” said Fabrice Angei, an of-
ficial with the leftist CGT union, shout-
ing above the union anthems blaring
from the loudspeakers.
“Mr. Macron is the representative of
the free-marketers, of Thatcher, and
that is being contested all over the
world,” Mr. Angei said. “And he is an
anachronism in relation to this revolt
against inequality and the authoritarian
state.”
Olivier Thily, a railway worker at the
demonstration, said: “We’re hoping that
they will back down. Anyway, this is
only the beginning.”
The pension standoff may have high-
lighted Mr. Macron’s vulnerabilities as a
reformer, but it has also shown his deter-
mination to proceed regardless of warn-
ings from history.
Nearly 25 years ago, the government
of one of his mentors, Alain Juppé, was
fatally weakened by a similar effort to
streamline the pension systems. After a
general transport strike lasting nearly a
month, Mr. Juppé — often accused of the
same kind of high-minded imperious-
ness as Mr. Macron — was forced to
back down. A year and a half later Mr.
Juppé’s government collapsed.
Mr. Macron already faced a near-
death experience for his government
because of protests last year by the Yel-
Many videos shared on Facebook and
in WhatsApp groups around the country
originate in a cramped office in the
northern London neighborhood of Fins-
bury Park.
Emil Charlaff, who helps lead that ef-
fort at Momentum, a pro-Labour group,
said that social media played a key role
in building support and organizing vot-
ers.
The group has about 15 people who
produce videos, memes and other social
media content, often using humor or
outrage to grab attention. “People are so
saturated, you need to grab their atten-
tion in the first three seconds,” said Mr.
Charlaff, who said that Momentum did
not knowingly publish any false infor-
mation.
It’s not just professionals who are
creating false or misleading
campaign material online. Just
about anyone can put it together.
Britain’s election is the first major
campaign since Facebook said it would
not fact-check political ads from candi-
dates and political parties. Sam Jeffers,
a co-founder of Who Targets Me, a group
that tracks Facebook political advertis-
ing, said there had not been the flood of
disinformation that many had feared.
Yet he said there were a lot of misleading
online ads, some from new outside
groups whose financial backers are not
always clear to the public.
As of Dec. 5, no party or candidate in
Britain had spent more than 750,000
pounds, or about $1 million, on Facebook
ads during the campaign, far below
what candidates in the United States
typically spend.
Yet Mr. Davey of the Institute for Stra-
tegic Dialog said that posts spread
among Facebook users were just as big
a problem as political ads. The British
election, he said, highlights the wid-
ening use of techniques to manipulate
social media by candidates, parties, ac-
..
POOL PHOTO BY LIONEL BONAVENTURE
low Vest movement. They were tamed
with a massive infusion of cash, fierce
police repression and days of presiden-
tial palaver.
“What we’re seeing is that, with con-
siderable courage, Macron is attacking,
like no one before, the systematic re-
form of the pensions system,” said Pas-
cal Perrineau, a political scientist. He
said, “Every time anybody has tried to
do this, there’s been huge social mobili-
zation, because the whole subject is so
anxiety-provoking.”
Mr. Macron’s advisers say he under-
stands the risks.
“He’s not losing his cool, and he’s to-
tally prepared,” said Ismaël Emelien, a
longtime aide to Mr. Macron who is now
in the private sector but still counsels
the president.
“He knows that this reform is compli-
cated, and that reforming pensions is
the hardest one of all,” Mr. Emelien said.
“It revives lots of bad memories for the
French.”
Public opinion appears to be on the
other side.
“I completely support the cause,” said
Anais de Matos, a freelance videogra-
pher, who said the strike “doesn’t bother
me at all — I think it’s great.”
“We can’t go back,” Ms. de Matos said.
“It isn’t that we need to take some privi-
leges from some people, but that we
need to extend those privileges to oth-
ers.”
Melissa Godin contributed reporting.
tivist groups and individuals around the
world.
An Oxford University report this fall
also found that governments were in-
creasingly using online disinformation
tactics.
With few rules around internet cam-
paigns, Mr. Davey said, it is hard for vot-
ers to know what content is legitimate
and where the material originates. He
pointed to several examples in which in-
formation that originated from un-
known sources online had reached the
mainstream.
In one, what claimed to be a leaked
copy of a secret trade document be-
tween Britain and the United States was
posted on the online forum Reddit.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party
leader, later cited the document to sup-
port claims that the Conservative Party
would weaken the National Health Serv-
ice in a post-Brexit trade deal with the
United States.
Last week, Reddit said the document
had links to a Russian disinformation
campaign, raising fresh questions about
foreign interference in the campaign,
though the document itself seemed to be
accurate.
In another effort discovered by the In-
stitute for Strategic Dialog, large
WhatsApp groups were saturated with
anti-Muslim messages in an attempt to
sway Hindu voters in Britain to vote
against Labour.
Perhaps the strangest incident came
when an online forum spread a false ru-
mor that Jo Swinson, the leader of the
Liberal Democrats party, enjoyed hunt-
ing squirrels.
First Draft traced how the rumor had
spread from a fake news clip doctored to
look as if it had come from the Daily Mir-
ror newspaper. As the rumor spread on-
line, Ms. Swinson was asked in a radio
interview whether she hunted squirrels,
leading to newspaper headlines like “Jo
Swinson Denies Firing Stones at Squir-
rels.”
Said Ms. Sargent of First Draft, “It’s
this gentle erosion of trust.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Water-starved outback faces bleak future
EUCHAREENA, AUSTRALIA
As rivers and lakes go dry
in Australia’s vast interior, it
may one day not support life
BY LIVIA ALBECK-RIPKA
Fleur Magick Dennis has stopped show-
ering every day, allowed her vegetable
patch to die and told her four sons to let
the dishes pile up. Sometimes, all her
family has is bottled water, and they
have to preserve every drop.
A year and a half ago, the reservoir in
their town, Euchareena, went dry, leav-
ing the family and some other residents
without running water.
“I didn’t think I’d be in this position,
trying to fight for water for basic human
needs in Australia,” Ms. Magick Dennis
said.
As a crippling drought and misman-
agement have left more than a dozen
Australian towns and villages without a
reliable source of water, the country is
beginning to confront a question that
strikes at its very identity: Is life in Aus-
tralia’s vast interior compatible with the
age of climate change?
In the outback — a landscape central
to Australian lore, far removed in dis-
tance and spirit from the coastal me-
tropolises — rivers and lakes are disap-
pearing, amplifying fears that wide
swaths of rural territory may eventually
have to be abandoned.
Euchareena and other Australian
towns like it are far from alone. A quar-
ter of humanity lives in countries that
are using almost all the water they have,
according to data published by the
World Resources Institute in August.
Shortages have plagued places from
California to Cape Town, which nar-
rowly escaped running out of water last
year.
“We’re starting to glimpse what
the future is going to be like. It’s
possible that parts of Australia
will become uninhabitable.”
But Australia, the most arid inhabited
continent, is unique among developed
nations in its vulnerability to the effects
of climate change, scientists say. With
the country’s driest spring on record
just concluded and another hot, parched
summer likely to be ahead, the chal-
lenge of keeping Australia hydrated is
only becoming more urgent.
“People think about climate change
as this very faraway prospect, but in
fact, it’s here now,” said Joelle Gergis, a
senior lecturer in climate science at the
Australian National University in Can-
berra and an author for the Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change.
“We’re starting to glimpse what the
future is going to be like,” Dr. Gergis add-
ed. “It’s possible that parts of Australia
will become uninhabitable.”
Australia’s cities — which rely on ex-
pansive dams and, increasingly, plants
that transform seawater into drinking
water — may be able to sustain them-
selves even in the driest conditions, pol-
icy experts say.
However, “as soon as you go inland
and you don’t have the ocean, we’re not
going to be fine, and I don’t think anyone
knows what the solution is,” said Ian
Wright, a senior lecturer in environmen-
tal science at Western Sydney Univer-
sity, who worked with Sydney’s water
utility for more than a decade.
Questions over why tourists were allowed on deadly volcano
WHAKATANE, NEW ZEALAND
BY JAMIE TARABAY
AND DAMIEN CAVE
Above the noise of the boat engine, there
was quiet, Geoff Hopkins remembered.
There was no rumble, no roar to signal
that the White Island volcano had awak-
ened.
The crater he’d just circled with his
22-year-old daughter Lilani erupted as
they sat in a catamaran several hundred
yards from shore, watching with other
passengers as the island disappeared
under ash.
“A rolling rumbling mass of ash tum-
bled over the cliff face, in all directions,
and it completely engulfed the island,”
the 50-year-old pastor said. “It cut out
the sun, it went dark. You couldn’t see
that there was an island there, it was
completely covered in ash."
That Mr. Hopkins, his daughter and
dozens of others were allowed to go near
the island — let alone scale the crater at
its center — when geologists had re-
peatedly warned of increased volcanic
activity is now the subject of an investi-
gation, with the death toll from the erup-
tion Monday having risen to six. As of
Tuesday afternoon, eight others were
also believed to have died, with emer-
gency workers still unable to reach the
island to retrieve them.
And the question heard over and over
in the long hours since, heard as the in-
jured were carried to the docks, is:
“Why?”
Why was anyone — from retirees to
children — allowed to tour the crater of
an active volcano, despite warnings
about bursts of gas and steam in recent
Above, James Hamilton at his farm in New South Wales, where he has not planted crops this year and plans to sell his livestock. Below left, a water truck filled a tank at Fleur
Magick Dennis’s home in Euchareena, Australia, as her children played. And right, Ms. Magick Dennis and her son James carrying drinking water home from the town hall.
“It is so dire right now; I’d say it’s an
absolute crisis,” Dr. Wright added. “It’s
beyond desperate.”
Farming families and Indigenous
communities, which in their different
ways have carefully managed the land’s
scarce resources, may have to relocate.
Australia’s tourism industry, which has
always heavily promoted the outback as
a destination, could also suffer.
And with fire season off to a ferocious
start, towns like Euchareena live in fear
that they might not be able to stop any
blazes that ignite.
We’re a “tinderbox waiting to go up,”
Ms. Magick Dennis, 40, said as she
waited on her porch for a water truck to
reach the village, a dusty strip of homes
in a region of fewer than 200 residents a
four-hour drive from Sydney in the state
of New South Wales. Atop a nearby hill
weeks? Why would tour operators and
cruise lines tout an adventure ride, with
prices starting at $260 per child, at such
risk?
And why, as of Tuesday, were there no
clear answers to who is ultimately ac-
countable for ensuring visitors’ safety:
the family that owns the remote island,
or the government charged with enforc-
ing health and safety regulations?
“There has to be more respect for na-
ture. We can’t assume we can access
anything we want,” said Jozua van Ot-
terloo, a volcanologist at Monash Uni-
versity in Melbourne, Australia, who
visited White Island — also known by its
“You’re walking into this
enclosed amphitheater, onto
the floor of a very active
volcano.”
Maori name, Whakaari — in 2012. “This
is something policymakers and the pub-
lic need to consider. Even though this is
such a great place, should we be allow-
ing people to go in such large num-
bers?”
The volcano is the island’s main draw.
The town of Whakatane calls itself the
“Gateway to White Island,” and much of
the local economy is driven by tourist
visits. Already, locals are concerned
about the impact the eruption will have
on the community as questions of disclo-
sure and negligence swirl.
White Island has long been promoted
as New Zealand’s most active volcano,
appearing in “Lord of the Rings” and
other blockbusters, when it is in fact lit-
tle more than its dangerous apex.
Around 70 percent of the volcano sits un-
sits a 20,000-gallon tank, the only re-
source residents have to fight a fire.
It hasn’t always been like this in Eu-
chareena. Ms. Magick Dennis and her
children used to enjoy swimming at the
village dam in the summer. Now the
creek bed is littered with dead reeds and
mussel shells, and the surrounding eu-
calyptus trees are exposed at the roots.
“It’s beyond going, ‘Oh, it’s going to
rain soon and it will get better,’ ” said Ms.
Magick Dennis, who has considered
moving. “The ecosystem is really dam-
aged.”
In rural Australia, that damage often
results from a complex interplay of mis-
management, drought and climate
change.
The conservative Australian govern-
ment has approved water-intensive
mining projects and made contentious
der the water, and tourists walk into its
crater and up to the lip of its crater lake,
peering into its cavity to see its end-
lessly boiling core.
“You’re walking into this enclosed
amphitheater, onto the floor of a very ac-
tive volcano where there are steaming
gas vents, where there are crater lakes
filled with hot water close to boiling tem-
peratures,” said Ray Cas, a volcanolo-
gist at Monash University who visited
the crater twice and on both visits be-
lieved it was a disaster waiting to hap-
pen.
“That tells you there’s a source of heat
under the volcano that is constantly sup-
plying hot gases and heating up fluids
under the molten rock or magma,” he
added. “Basically you have this hot
cooker system at constant high tem-
perature and high pressure that could
explode at any time.”
But New Zealand has always prided
itself as a place where tourists could
dance with danger. It was the first place
in the world where you could bungee
jump, and jet boating and blackwater
rafting in caves are popular attractions.
That allure of adventure — natural
beauty with a dash of risk — framed the
excursion for visitors to the island on
Monday.
Aboard the Ovation of the Seas, the
Royal Caribbean cruise ship where most
of the victims traveled from, the online
promotion for the tour to White Island
promised “a scenic boat ride along the
picturesque Bay of Plenty to White Is-
land for an unforgettable guided tour of
New Zealand’s most active volcano.”
“Get close to the drama,” it read. “Gas
masks help you get near roaring steam
vents, bubbling pits of mud, hot volcanic
streams and the amazing lake of steam-
deals with agribusiness — agreements
that are often blamed for the degrada-
tion of the country’s waterways, which
sustain dozens of communities and hun-
dreds of native plant and animal
species.
A lack of investment has also put the
country behind nations like the United
States and China in its ability to model
future climate and water scenarios, said
Andy Pitman, the director of the ARC
Center of Excellence for Climate Ex-
tremes in Sydney.
At the same time, Australia’s dry and
variable climate is becoming even drier
and more unpredictable. Parts of the
country are experiencing less rain, and
the floods that usually fill rivers, lakes
and dams are decreasing, scientists say.
This is happening as the country’s
growing population puts increasing de-
The White Island volcano in New Zealand during its eruption on Monday. Geologists
had repeatedly warned of increased volcanic activity.
ing acid. And the vivid hues of yellow
and orange resulting from all sulfur on
the island make for remarkable photos,
so have your camera ready.”
Now, more than 27 of the 47 people
who were on the volcano when it
erupted are suffering burns on at least
30 percent of their bodies, officials said.
Mr. Hopkins, the pastor from the
nearby town of Hamilton, watched with
other passengers as the catamaran
turned back to the island after the vol-
cano erupted and tour operators took
rubber dinghies to the shore to seek out
people who were still there.
The crew came back with 23 sur-
vivors. All of them, he said, were “horrif-
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 7
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
mands on its water. “That’s not a very
good set of circumstances to find your-
self in,” Professor Pitman said.
Across New South Wales, where the
drought that began in 2017 has hit hard-
est, plots of abandoned, parched land
stretch for miles. The occasional green
pasture is a sign of a farmer battling the
elements, and probably wealthy enough
to irrigate.
“If the drought went on for another
four years, that would be Armageddon
for Australia,” said James Hamilton,
who farms land about 270 miles inland
from Sydney. He, like many others, has
not planted any crops this year and
plans to sell off his remaining livestock.
The reservoir on Mr. Hamilton’s
6,000-acre property is empty, and the
land where knee-high wheat should be
flourishing is desiccated.
MICHAEL SCHADE, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
ically burned. Skin hanging off people,
off their faces, off their arms.”
Mr. Hopkins and his daughter, both
trained first-aid responders, along with
other passengers who were doctors,
tended to the victims, who ranged in age
from students to retirees. His focus:
Lauren and Matt Urey, two American
newlyweds from Richmond, Va. He
worked to keep them conscious for the
90-minute boat ride back to the main-
land.
Ms. Urey’s mother is one of many who
have asked, in anger, how such a tour
could even exist.
The tours have in fact been running
for decades, under a deal between a
world
Farmers are used to harsh conditions,
but Mr. Hamilton worries that busi-
nesses in small towns are less likely to
bounce back from the drought, given the
cascading economic effects. “Nothing is
sustainable without water,” he said.
Dubbo, the largest town near Mr.
Hamilton’s property, has a population of
about 40,000 and relies on water from
the Macquarie River. According to the
local council, the river could stop flow-
ing by May because the Burrendong
Dam reservoir, which feeds the river, is
currently at about 3 percent of its capac-
ity.
Already, the town — where tempera-
tures can reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit,
or 46 degrees Celsius, in the summer —
has stopped watering some public
spaces, and residents are restricted to
280 liters (about 74 gallons) of water per
day. (Residents pushed back against
tighter limits such as turning off air-con-
ditioning between midnight and 7 a.m.)
The local zoo, one of the largest in
Australia, is recycling water and has re-
placed some garden beds with synthetic
Coral Sea
NORTHERN
TERRITORY
QUEENSLAND
AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
AUSTRALIA Bourke
NEW SOUTH Dubbo
WALES
Euchareena
Sydney
VICTORIA
400 MILES
Melbourne
THE NEW YORK TIMES
turf. The fire station is exploring alter-
native means to smother blazes, like
sand and foam.
If the river runs dry, Dubbo would
have to rely on its wells, which currently
supply just a portion of its water. (Ms.
Magick Dennis is petitioning to have
one dug as a backup for Euchareena.)
But in some parts of Australia, low-
quality groundwater has caused prob-
lems.
In towns north of Dubbo, residents
have reported foul-smelling, metallic-
tasting water, as well as medical prob-
lems like high blood pressure and skin
conditions. Some said they had received
no warning that the water might be un-
safe to drink.
In Australia’s cities, the picture is
somewhat less bleak, but even there wa-
ter supplies are running short. The res-
ervoir at Sydney’s dam is less than half
full, and the city has employed “water
officers” to educate citizens and enforce
restrictions.
The government of Victoria State has
ruled out building more dams to serve
rural areas and the city of Melbourne,
because river flow in that state is ex-
pected to drop by half by 2065.
Possible solutions include recycling
water and relying on desalination
plants, which are often criticized for
their high energy use and the potential
environmental harm of ejecting brine
back into the ocean. These methods are
crucial, though, if Australia is to remain
livable under dire climate change sce-
narios, policy experts say.
In early November, rain finally fell
across parts of New South Wales, pro-
viding some relief and hope as people
reveled in the puddles. But the drought
is far from over, and the question of
whether Australia will learn and adapt
will linger on.
handful of operators and the family that
has passed down ownership of the land
through several generations.
They fall under the jurisdiction of the
2016 Health and Safety at Work (Adven-
ture Activities) Regulations, which re-
quire a safety audit for companies that
“deliberately expose the participant to a
serious risk to his or her health and
safety that must be managed by the
provider of the activity.”
White Island Tours, which was re-
sponsible for bringing most or all of the
people to the island Monday, is a regis-
tered and approved tour provider. A lit-
tle over a year ago, it won an award as
one of the safest places in New Zealand
to work.
But it’s not clear whether the com-
pany or government officials did enough
to protect visitors to a location so remote
that it can be hard to get a substantial
number of people off the island and to
safety quickly.
Employees at the office of White Is-
land Tours declined to comment, as did
New Zealand’s tourism minister and the
area’s member of Parliament. Volcanol-
ogists with GeoNet, the agency that
monitors geological activity in New Zea-
land, also declined to answer questions
on Tuesday.
And local residents hadn’t seemed to
think twice about the risk.
“I was going to buy one of those tours
for my in-laws for Christmas,” said
Karla Lyford, 24.
Jamie Tarabay reported from
Whakatane and Damien Cave from Syd-
ney, Australia. Sasha Borissenko contrib-
uted reporting from Whakatane and Al-
exander Bisley from Wellington, New
Zealand.
 ..
8 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

world

Congress nears vote

on revised trade pact
WASHINGTON
Democrats on cusp of deal
with White House over
North American treaty
BY EMILY COCHRANE, ANA SWANSON,
ELISABETH MALKIN
AND MAGGIE HABERMAN
Democratic lawmakers in the United
States are nearing an agreement to
bring the revised North American trade
deal to a vote after securing additional
labor, enforcement and other provi-
sions, and winning the support of top la-
bor leaders.
An agreement between congressional
Democrats and the White House on the
final terms of the revised trade deal
would lift the last remaining barrier to
enacting President Trump’s trade pact
in the United States. It would also cap
more than two years of talks between
the United States, Canada and Mexico
over a critical agreement that governs
commerce around North America.
Congressional aides and trade advis-
ers said they were still reviewing the fi-
nal provisions of the revised treaty, the
United States-Mexico-Canada Agree-
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES ment, but a resolution appeared to be
Attorney General William P. Barr, center, has pledged to continue investigating the origins of the Russia inquiry even after a report said the F.B.I. was justified in starting it. close at hand. The group of House Dem-
ocrats negotiating changes to the pact
emerged from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
A.F.L.-C.I.O., an umbrella group of labor
unions, said in an email to The Washing-
ton Post on Monday morning that there
was a deal, adding “we have pushed
them hard and have done quite well.”
People familiar with the negotiations
said Mr. Trumka would likely seek ap-
proval from the union group’s leader-
ship, one of the last remaining obstacles
to securing Democratic support. The
group did not respond to a request for
comment.
Congressional approval of the agree-
ment would constitute Mr. Trump’s big-
gest trade win to date and give him a big
talking point as he seeks re-election in
2020. Mr. Trump, who has long criticized
NAFTA as one of the “worst” trade deals
ever reached, promised as a candidate
in 2016 to rip it up and replace it with
something that did more to help Ameri-
can workers.
But it would also give Democrats a
tangible accomplishment amid a bitter
impeachment fight and long-sought pol-
icy changes to a trade pact they have
criticized as prioritizing corporations
over workers. Many of the freshman
Democrats who flipped Republican dis-
tricts in 2018 have lobbied for a vote on
the deal before Christmas.
While the Trump administration
reached an agreement with Canada and
Mexico a year ago, the deal requires
congressional approval, and Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and a tight-knit group of
Democrats have insisted on putting
their own stamp on the pact before

Trump allies push new inquiry

REPUBLICANS, FROM PAGE 1
no criminal conspiracy between the
Trump campaign and Russia, and did
not make a judgment about whether Mr.
Trump had obstructed justice.
But Mr. Barr went further, suggesting
that the president had been a victim of
America’s law enforcement machinery
and pledging to investigate the origins
of the Russia inquiry.
The man he has asked to lead that in-
vestigation, John H. Durham, the
United States attorney in Hartford,
Conn., chummed the waters on Monday
by releasing a highly unusual statement
saying he disagreed with some of the
findings of the inspector general’s re-
port and had a mandate to conduct a
broader, more thorough investigation.
Mr. Durham is carrying out his inqui-
ry in the heat of a presidential cam-
paign, raising the prospect that Mr.
Trump could seize on his findings should
they come out in the months or weeks
before the 2020 election.
The strategy on display Monday was
first used by the president and his allies
in March 2017, when Mr. Trump tweeted
that the Obama administration had used
the F.B.I. to wiretap Trump Tower dur-
ing the presidential campaign.
The tweet caused a sensation among
the president’s supporters, and Repre-
sentative Devin Nunes, a California Re-
publican who was then the chairman of
the House Intelligence Committee,
pledged to investigate. Months later, the
Justice Department told a federal court
that the claim was unsubstantiated, but
the damage was done.
Mr. Trump eventually told Sean Han-
nity of Fox News that the claim in the
tweet was based on “a little bit of a
hunch and a little bit of wisdom.” The
fact that it became such a controversy,
the president brazenly asserted, was ac-
tually evidence of F.B.I. misdeeds.
“If they weren’t doing anything
wrong, it would’ve just gotten by,” he
said. “Nobody would have cared about
it.”
In early 2018, Republicans fueled
speculation that the release of a docu-
ment written by Mr. Nunes would prove
widespread F.B.I. surveillance abuses
during the 2016 campaign and show how
When the proof does not emerge,
skew the results and prepare for
the next opportunity to execute
the playbook.
the bureau opened its Russia investiga-
tion based on a dossier of uncorroborat-
ed information provided by a former
British spy, Christopher Steele.
Mr. Trump’s allies used the F.B.I.’s ob-
jections to the release of the Nunes
memo to promote a Twitter campaign
—#releasethememo — and in February
2018 Mr. Trump ordered it declassified.
It landed mostly with a thud, and it
even ended up debunking the claim that
the dossier was the origin of the F.B.I..’s
Russia investigation. The Nunes memo
confirmed press reporting — that the in-
vestigation began after a Trump cam-
paign aide told an Australian diplomat
that the Russian government had ob-
tained thousands of emails from Mr.
Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary
Clinton.
But the president’s allies soon found
another opportunity: the Justice De-
partment’s announcement of an investi-
gation into the origins of the Russia in-
quiry led by Mr. Horowitz. It would be
this investigation, they predicted, that
would reveal the depths of the F.B.I.’s
perfidy.
During a congressional hearing in
September, one Republican lawmaker
asked Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s
former campaign manager, where he
thought the “whole lie of Russian collu-
sion started.”
Mr. Lewandowski replied that he ex-
pected Mr. Horowitz would get the an-
swer — that it “began at the highest lev-
els of the government and was perpe-
trated through the intelligence commu-
nity to come up with a narrative of why
Hillary Clinton lost the campaign as op-
posed to the real narrative, why Donald
Trump won the campaign.”
Mr. Horowitz’s report made no such
conclusions, even if it did criticize F.B.I.
officials for serial mistakes in their ap-
plications to carry out surveillance of a
Trump campaign aide.
“That so many basic and fundamental
errors were made by three separate,
handpicked teams on one of the most
sensitive F.B.I. investigations that was
briefed to the highest levels within the
F.B.I., and that F.B.I. officials expected
would eventually be subjected to close
scrutiny, raised significant questions re-
garding the F.B.I. chain of command’s
management,” the report said.
But the report did not find a wide-
spread, anti-Trump conspiracy inside
the F.B.I., and it even contained damn-
ing information about how some agents
working on the case hoped that Mr.
Trump would win a surprise victory
over Mrs. Clinton.
It is uncertain when Mr. Durham will
conclude his investigation, but Mr. Barr
has given him a wide aperture to exam-
ine the work of the law enforcement and
intelligence officials in 2016, and even to
examine whether close American allies
collaborated in an effort to elect Mrs.
Clinton.
Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham traveled to
Italy to examine whether the Italian
government played a role in setting up a
meeting between a Russia-linked pro-
fessor and a Trump campaign aide.
There is no indication that Mr.
Durham will exhume any information
that will fundamentally change the un-
derstanding of what happened in 2016.
But for Mr. Trump and his allies, the final
conclusions might ultimately be less im-
portant than the months spent speculat-
ing about what those conclusions might
be.
Speaking to reporters in London last
week, Mr. Trump played down expecta-
tions about the Horowitz inquiry — indi-
cating it was only an appetizer for
what’s to come.
“I do think the big report to wait for is
going to be the Durham report,” he said.
“That’s the one that people are really
waiting for.”
office Monday night optimistic that an
announcement could be made this
week.
“I hope that we will be able to give you
some verification on it tomorrow,” Rep-
resentative Richard E. Neal, Democrat
of Massachusetts and the chairman of
the Ways and Means Committee, said on
Monday, adding that he was “delighted”
with the agreement. Mr. Neal ticked off
multiple phone calls with Robert Light-
hizer, the United States trade represent-
ative, and Ms. Pelosi over the weekend
about the trade deal.
“We have constructed, I believe, a
template for the future,” Mr. Neal said,
declining to elaborate on the deal’s spe-
cifics. “Many of the things that people
said could never be in an agreement are
in this agreement.”
Ms. Pelosi told reporters that a deal
was not final, but indicated that those in-
volved in negotiations were close.
In a weekly meeting with Senate Re-
publican aides Monday morning, a
White House official said Mr. Lighthizer
was involved in intense talks with both
House Democrats and the Mexican Sen-
ate, according to two people in the room
who requested anonymity to discuss a
private meeting.
The official, Jessica Ditto, the White
House’s deputy communications direc-
tor, said in the meeting that the revised
pact included tough labor enforcement
provisions that should help address one
of the main concerns that House Demo-
crats have raised in monthslong negoti-
ations with Mr. Lighthizer.
Mr. Lighthizer and Jared Kushner, the
president’s son-in-law and a senior ad-
viser, were expected in Mexico on Tues-
day morning, according to an adminis-
tration official. Chrystia Freeland, who
negotiated the deal on behalf of Canada
and is now deputy prime minister, will
also travel to Mexico City at the invi-
tation of the Mexican government, ac-
cording to a Canadian spokesman.
bringing it for a vote. They have spent
months pressing Mr. Lighthizer to
strengthen the deal’s protections for la-
bor and the environment, ensure that its
rules can be enforced, and strip out a
provision they call a giveaway to the
pharmaceutical industry.
A revised trade deal would give
Democrats a tangible
accomplishment amid a bitter
impeachment fight.
Republicans have repeatedly ham-
mered Ms. Pelosi for not bringing the
agreement to the floor for a vote sooner.
Even if an agreement in principal is
announced this week, House Democrats
will have to finalize the implementing
legislation needed to codify the trade
pact before putting it up for a vote on the
House floor, though some procedural
hurdles could be waived in order to
speed the process through both cham-
bers. There are less than 10 legislative
days remaining before lawmakers are
scheduled to leave for the holidays.
The terms of the deal have yet to be
announced, and it is not yet clear how
the negotiations will change the 2,082-
page agreement announced by Canada,
Mexico and the United States last year.
In recent weeks, the administration
has also been tasked with taking those
revisions to Canada and Mexico, who
must sign off on the final deal.
On Sunday, Mr. Ebrard said Mexico
had drawn several red lines on revi-
sions, including a blanket rejection of
foreign labor inspectors in Mexican fac-
tories. Speaking to Mexican senators,
Mr. Ebrard said Mexico would accept
three-person panels to resolve disputes,
not only for labor issues but also for
other controversies.
Mexico and the United States have
also sparred over an American proposal

Picking an impeachment catchphrase

WASHINGTON
BY ANNIE KARNI
Representative Doug Collins of Georgia,
trying to minimize the impeachment in-
vestigation of President Trump, pointed
to the lack of memorable lines uttered by
participants compared with impeach-
ments past.
“There are famous lines from Nixon,
like ‘What did the president know, and
when did he know it?’ ” Mr. Collins, a Re-
publican ally and defender of the presi-
dent, said during a contentious hearing
before the House Judiciary Committee
on Monday. “From the Clinton impeach-
ment, there was ‘I did not have sex with
that woman.’ ”
In fact, Mr. Clinton said he did not
have “sexual relations” with Monica
Lewinsky, a critical parsing of his activi-
ties. And the legendary line from the
Nixon impeachment was actually deliv-
ered by Senator Howard H. Baker Jr.,
Republican of Tennessee, while trying to
defend the president during his interro-
gation of John W. Dean, the former
White House counsel.
But Mr. Collins’s larger point was that
the Ukraine affair had no catchphrase
associated with it — and that was some-
how telling, because of the facts under-
pinning the case against Mr. Trump and
because of how it would be remem-
bered.
Representatives Doug Collins of Georgia, right, and Jerrold Nadler of New York during
a House Intelligence Committee hearing this week.
produced a few lines that scholars pre-
dicted could live on.
“Collins’s statement was absolutely
ludicrous,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the
founding director of the Center for Pres-
idential History at Southern Methodist
University in Texas.
Mr. Engel said the lasting catch-
phrase of Mr. Trump’s impeachment
would be “Do us a favor, though,” a line
uttered by Mr. Trump during his July 25
ANNA MONEYMAKER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
But Mr. Engel said that line from Mr.
Trump actually had the opposite effect.
“It crystallizes the dramatic differ-
ences between what we talked about in
Clinton’s case and what we’re talking
about today,” he said. “This is the very
definition of what a high crime would
be.”
Another historian, Douglas A. Brink-
ley, called the request for “a favor” Mr.
Trump’s “indicting line” and said its res-
Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican foreign that steel and aluminum used to make
minister, said on Twitter late Monday cars would be smelted in North Amer-
that negotiating teams were to meet at ica, not just finished here. The new pact
noon in Mexico City to announce the ad- requires automakers to purchase 70
rectly implicating not only Mr. Trump, vances to the agreement. percent of the steel and aluminum they
but also Vice President Mike Pence, Sec- Both the White House and congres- use from North American sources to
retary of State Mike Pompeo and other sional aides have said in recent days qualify for the pact’s zero tariffs.
top administration officials in what he that a deal could come shortly, and are Mr. Ebrard said Sunday that “Mexico
described as a push for a “clear quid pro pressing for a vote before Christmas. has shared that this would create many
quo” with the president of Ukraine. Pressed on timing, Mr. Neal said he problems.” He said that Mexico would
Perhaps less meaningful, but no less thought a vote before the end of the year accept the limit for steel five years after
memorable, he also told Mr. Trump that remained possible. the agreement took effect, but not on
Mr. Zelensky “loves your ass.” Labor union leaders, who have long aluminum.
John R. Bolton, the former national criticized the existing North American
security adviser who so far has refused Free Trade Agreement and Mr. Trump’s Ana Swanson, Emily Cochrane and Mag-
to testify in the impeachment inquiry, proposed changes to it, also struck a gie Haberman reported from Washing-
has managed to create some lasting im- more positive note. ton, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico
ages of the Trump White House even Richard Trumka, the president of the City.
without being present.
“I am not part of whatever drug deal”
Mr. Sondland and Mick Mulvaney, the
acting White House chief of staff, “are
cooking up,” Fiona Hill, a former White
House aide, testified that Mr. Bolton told
her.
Ms. Hill also quoted Mr. Bolton as re-
ferring to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the presi-
dent’s personal lawyer, as a “hand
grenade who’s going to blow everybody
up.”
Mr. Trump, of “you’re fired” fame, has
long considered himself a king of catch-
phrases and has tried to brand his own
impeachment. “Read the Transcripts!”
he wrote on Twitter during the hearing
on Monday, a statement that has be-
come a semiregular refrain. His cries of
“PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT”
and “WITCH HUNT” are typed out on-
line in all caps at all times of day, some-
times seemingly unconnected to any in- JULIO CÉSAR AGUILAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

“What would be known about this one
is probably: ‘Where is the impeachable
offense?’ ‘Why are we here?’ ” Mr.
Collins said, quoting two lines that have
been said by nobody but that broadly
speak to the Republican view of the en-
tire process as illegitimate.
In fact, Mr. Trump’s impeachment, fo-
cused on how the president put personal
and political interests above the nation’s
when he pressured Ukraine to investi-
gate his political rivals, has already
phone call with the Ukrainian president,
Volodymyr Zelensky, when he asked
him to conduct a corruption investiga-
tion into former Vice President Joseph
R. Biden Jr. The request, in Mr. Trump’s
own words, was revealed when the
White House released a reconstruction
of the call.
Mr. Collins was trying to make the
point that the lack of a catchy phrase
showed that no one understood what the
impeachment inquiry was even about.
onance in history would depend on
whether Mr. Biden emerged as the Dem-
ocratic presidential nominee.
“It may be Day-Glo in history because
Biden may be his rival,” Mr. Brinkley
said. If not, he predicted, “it will melt.”
Other notable lines came out of the
public testimony by Gordon D. Sond-
land, the United States ambassador to
the European Union and a former
Trump campaign donor who told Con-
gress that “everyone was in the loop,” di-
stigating event.
His claim that there was “no quid pro
quo” has become quick shorthand for
supporters who want to understand im-
mediately and viscerally that Mr. Trump
did nothing wrong.
Mr. Trump’s entreaties line up more
with a lasting phrase that Mr. Collins did
not bring up on Monday — “I am not a
crook,” Mr. Nixon’s statement that he
made during a televised news confer-
ence.
A steel coil on a truck in Monterrey, Mexico. The United States and Mexico disagree on
changing the tariff restrictions for the steel and aluminum used to make cars.
CORRECTIONS
• An article on Friday about a father • An article on Friday about blockchain
who finally saw value in the movie technology and gold mining misspelled
“Frozen” after repeated viewings mis- the given name of the head of the World
stated the title of a Hayao Miyazaki film. Economic Forum’s mining and metals
It is “My Neighbor Totoro,” not “My industry group. He is Jorgen Sand-
Friend Totoro.” strom, not Jordgen.
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Business
Workers crossing the London Bridge. Few jobs in Britain have been left untouched by the confusion surrounding the country’s plan to leave the European Union.
Lives caught in Brexit limbo
Long delay in leaving
E.U. is causing problems
for workers and businesses
BY AMIE TSANG
AND ADAM SATARIANO
Britain’s halting march toward Brexit
has prompted two changes in prime
minister, two general elections (includ-
ing one this Thursday) and a paralysis
in Parliament as the debate over leaving
the European Union has overwhelmed
everything else.
But away from the political cut and
thrust, Brexit has brought a new level of
uncertainty for many of the people who
go to work each day in Britain, putting
lives and livelihoods in the balance. The
persistent inability to decide the matter,
undermined by a lack of a strong con-
sensus on whether a divorce from Eu-
rope is even a good idea, has left few jobs
untouched.
A dairy farmer cannot plan for the fu-
ture because the price paid for milk has
been held hostage by Brexit; a customs
broker is cautiously preparing for a big
expansion of business, but is fearful that
he’ll make the wrong call; a tech execu-
tive in London whose payroll relies on
European Union workers wonders how
she will fill her job vacancies; and two
building cleaners, whose livelihoods
have been rocked by outsourcing, dread
the loss of job protections built on Euro-
pean Union rules.
GEORGE BAKER, CUSTOMS BROKER
Years ago he “lost everything.” Will
Brexit be better?
FELIXSTOWE, ENGLAND If and when Brexit
happens, it could produce mountains of
new paperwork at Britain’s ports, be-
cause every item shipped from the Eu-
ropean Union will probably need a
customs declaration.
Most people’s souls might crumple at
the thought. But it’s a prospect George
Baker relishes, with a bit of anxiety.
Whistle-blower details 737 Max problems
BY DAVID GELLES
Four months before the first deadly
crash of a Boeing 737 Max in October
2018, a senior manager approached an
executive with concerns that the jet was
riddled with production problems and
potentially unsafe. That manager, Ed
Pierson, is telling his story to the United
States Congress.
Employees at the American plane
maker’s factory in Renton, Wash., just
south of Seattle, where the Max is
produced were overworked, exhausted
and making mistakes, Mr. Pierson said
in an interview. A cascade of damaged
parts, missing tools and incomplete in-
structions was preventing planes from
being built on time. Executives were
pressuring workers to complete planes
despite staff shortages and a chaotic fac-
tory floor.
“Frankly right now all my internal
warning bells are going off,” Mr. Pierson
said in an email to the head of the 737
program in June 2018 that was reviewed
by The New York Times. “And for the
first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that
I’m hesitant about putting my family on
a Boeing airplane.”
Mr. Pierson, who was scheduled to
testify on Wednesday at a House Trans-
A 67-year-old customs broker, Mr.
Baker’s fortunes have sunk and soared
with the shipping industry.
He lost most of his business when the
European Union was created in 1993
and goods were allowed to move freely
within its borders. Now, if Britain de-
parts from the European customs union,
as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has
proposed, it could result in a fivefold in-
crease in declarations, an agency of Par-
liament estimated.
BEN QUINTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
George Baker is wary of hiring workers.
That could be a huge opportunity for
Mr. Baker, calling for a rapid expansion
of his business, or a costly disappoint-
ment if the government changes its
plans.
Until Brexit came along, Mr. Baker
was headed for retirement. He had
stepped back from day-to-day opera-
tions and was looking forward to honing
his patchy do-it-yourself skills at an
apartment he had bought on Tenerife in
the Canary Islands, Spain.
But to his wife’s dismay, he has been
spending more time in his home office as
the family firm, George Baker Shipping,
has been inundated with inquiries.
“All that infrastructure we just
trashed, people are asking when we can
portation Committee hearing on the two
737 Max crashes, called on Boeing to
shut down the Max production line last
year. But the company kept producing
planes and did not make major changes
in response to his complaints. During
the time when Mr. Pierson said the Ren-
ton facility was in disarray, it built the
two planes that crashed and killed a to-
tal of 346 people.
Mr. Pierson did not raise concerns
about the new automated system,
known as MCAS, that caused pilots on
both doomed flights to lose control. He
focused on the potential safety hazards
resulting from production problems.
Mr. Pierson retired in August 2018,
partly because he was uncomfortable
with the conditions in the 737 factory. Af-
ter the first Max crash, in Indonesia in
October 2018, he repeated his concerns
to Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis A.
Muilenburg, and the company’s board.
Boeing lawyers, including its general
counsel, spoke with Mr. Pierson about
his complaints, according to Mr. Pierson
and documents reviewed by The Times.
But Mr. Pierson said the company did
nothing in response. The Max has been
grounded since March, shortly after the
second deadly crash, in Ethiopia.
Now, Mr. Pierson is going public for
get that back together again,” he said.
Mr. Baker has always worked in
customs. At age 16, he would board
Dutch ships and sit with the captain, go-
ing through the tedious paperwork.
They would finish by knocking back a
shot of gin before he scurried back on
land with the completed forms.
By 1982, he had started his own com-
pany, determined to be his own boss.
Customs clearance was a laborious
process. The paperwork for one ship
could take all day.
Just as the process started to speed
up with the help of fax machines and
computers in the 1990s, a financial crisis
hit, and then the European Union was
formed. Eighty-five percent of Mr. Bak-
er’s business vanished.
“I lost everything,” he said.
Business at George Baker Shipping
has grown again as globalization has
brought in bigger ships bearing cargo
from places like China and Vietnam. The
declaration that used to take a whole
day can now be done in minutes on a
computer, and the company tears
through thousands of declarations a
week.
But Mr. Baker views Brexit with trepi-
dation, in part because so few details
have been nailed down. If the number of
customs declarations surges to the 255
million estimated by the National Audit
Office, from 55 million, the volume of
work will be daunting.
Mr. Baker and his family — two of his
children are executives in the company
— are wary of hiring a lot of people until
they are absolutely certain the jobs
won’t be derailed by some twist in the
Brexit saga.
A decade ago, after the financial crisis
hit, the company had to lay off workers.
“Horrible, absolutely horrible,” Mr.
Baker recalled. “The huge irony is we’d
be desperate for them now.”
Mr. Baker remembered a bit queasily
the times his fortunes changed
overnight on the back of political
events: “I think probably I’ve got the
collywobbles a bit about this whole thing
because I’ve been through it.”
JOVELLE TAMAYO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ed Pierson, a former manager on the
Boeing 737 Max line, is set to testify
before Congress on Wednesday.
the first time. In an interview, he ex-
pressed concern that many of the planes
produced in 2018 were unsafe and that
Boeing was more focused on meeting
production deadlines than on safety. On
Wednesday, he will join witnesses in-
cluding Stephen Dickson, the adminis-
trator of the Federal Aviation Adminis-
ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ANDREW URWIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Marta Jasinska may want to leave London.
MARTA JASINSKA, TECH EXECUTIVE
Brexit is a problem, but the uncertainty is
worse
LONDON Marta Jasinska, a Polish soft-
ware developer in London, was among
dozens of employees at her company
whose immigration status was suddenly
in flux after the Brexit referendum in
2016.
When she went to the office the morn-
ing after the vote, there wasn’t much
work being done. “People were emo-
tional,” said Ms. Jasinska, the chief tech-
nology officer at Moo, an online sta-
tionery company that specializes in
business cards.
Rather than hang around the office,
she and others on her engineering team
left. “We all ended up at the pub,” she
said. “I made an executive decision.”
Many others in London’s Farringdon
neighborhood where Moo’s office is had
the same idea. The pub became a group-
therapy session for those upset by the
vote — drowning their sorrow in pints of
beer and guessing what would come
next for the country.
In the three years since the vote, there
hasn’t been much more clarity for work-
BRITAIN, PAGE 10
tration, before the House committee,
which is conducting a sweeping investi-
gation of Boeing.
His account of the disarray lends new
weight to reports that Boeing rushed the
737 Max to market, and echoes claims of
the shoddy production of the 787 Dream-
liner at Boeing’s factory in North
Charleston, S.C.
Mr. Pierson believes that the produc-
tion problems may have played a role in
the crashes. In both accidents, MCAS
was triggered when a vane installed on
the plane’s fuselage malfunctioned.
“It doesn’t make sense that new air-
planes are having these kinds of prob-
lems so early in their lives,” he said.
Boeing disputed the notion of any con-
nection between the production prob-
lems and the crashes.
“The suggestion by Mr. Pierson of a
link between his concerns and the re-
cent Max accidents is completely un-
founded,” a Boeing spokesman, Gordon
Johndroe, said in a statement. “None of
the authorities investigating these acci-
dents have found that production condi-
tions in the 737 factory contributed in
any way to these accidents.”
In the interview, Mr. Pierson also
identified 13 instances, besides the
BOEING, PAGE 10
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 9
Spreading the wealth
of innovation jobs
Just a handful of cities
have the U.S. market
cornered. Can that change?
BY EDUARDO PORTER
There are about a dozen industries at
the frontier of innovation in the United
States. They include software and phar-
maceuticals, semiconductors and data
processing. Most of their workers have
science or tech degrees. They invest
heavily in research and development.
While they account for only 3 percent of
all jobs, they account for 6 percent of the
country’s economic output.
And if you don’t live in one of a handful
of urban areas along the coasts, you are
unlikely to get a job in one of them.
Boston, Seattle, San Diego, San Fran-
cisco and Silicon Valley — just south of
San Francisco — captured nine out of 10
jobs created in these industries from
2005 to 2017, according to a report re-
leased on Monday. By 2017, these five
metropolitan regions had accumulated
almost a quarter of these jobs, up from
under 18 percent a dozen years earlier.
On the other end, about half of America’s
382 metro areas — including big cities
like Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadel-
phia — lost such jobs.
And the concentration of prosperity
does not appear to be slowing down.
America’s deepening inequality has
become a cause for alarm. The picture of
a country cloven between a small set of
prosperous urban “haves” and a large
collection of “have-nots” has come
sharply into focus as an opioid epidemic
has overtaken vast swaths of the coun-
try. It gained the attention of the political
class in 2016, when voters across the in-
dustrial heartland embraced Donald J.
Trump’s populist message.
The search for ideas that could im-
prove the economic conditions of de-
prived areas, long derided by econo-
mists as a fool’s errand — why spend
money on improving the lot of places
rather than people, many experts ar-
gued — is now at the top of policymak-
ers’ lists.
The report is by Mark Muro and Jacob
Whiton from the Brookings Institution’s
Metropolitan Policy Program, and Rob
Atkinson of the Information Technology
and Innovation Foundation, a research
group that gets funding from tech and
telecom companies. They identified 13
“innovation industries” — which in-
clude aerospace, communications
equipment production and chemical
manufacturing — where at least 45 per-
cent of the work force has degrees in sci-
ence, tech, engineering or math, and
where investments in research and de-
velopment amount to at least $20,000
per worker.
The authors argue that a broad push
by the United States government is
needed to spread the business of inven-
tion beyond the 20 cities that dominate
it.
“Hoping for economic convergence to
reassert itself would not be a good strat-
egy,” Mr. Muro said.
Expanding the knowledge economy
across all of America might indeed be a
fool’s errand. As Mr. Atkinson noted,
Erie, Pa., and Flint, Mich., might never
attract the Googles or Apples of the
world. But midsize cities like St. Louis,
Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, could
feasibly transform into hubs of techno-
logical entrepreneurship.
The report’s authors propose identify-
ing eight to 10 cities, far from the coasts,
Metro areas that have gained
innovation jobs . . .
2
1
9
3 8
5
75,000
10,000
1,000
. . . and those areas that have lost them.
8
5 7
104
9
3
Data are the change in jobs from 2005 to 2017 in 13 industries including
scientific research and development services, aerospace product and parts
manufacturers, and software publishers.
Source: Brookings Institute analysis of Emsi data.
that already have a research university
and a critical mass of people with ad-
vanced degrees. The government would
then spend about $700 million a year for
research and development in each of
them for a decade. Lawmakers could
give high-tech businesses that set up
shop in these cities tax and regulatory
breaks. Mr. Atkinson suggested a lim-
ited break from antitrust law to allow
businesses to coordinate location deci-
sions.
Battling the forces driving concentra-
tion will be tough.
Unlike the manufacturing industries
of the 20th century, which competed
largely on cost, the tech businesses com-
pete on having the next best thing.
Cheap labor, which can help attract
manufacturers to depressed areas,
doesn’t work as an incentive. Instead,
innovation industries cluster in cities
where there are lots of highly educated
workers, sophisticated suppliers and re-
search institutions.
Unlike businesses in, say, retail or
health care, innovation businesses ex-
perience a sharp rise in the productivity
of their workers if they are in places with
lots of other such workers, according to
research by Enrico Moretti, who is an
economist at the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley, and others.
Other industries and workers are also
better off if they have the good fortune of
being near leading-edge companies.
The report points out that the average
output per worker in the 20 cities with
the most employment in the 13 high-tech
industries is $109,443, one-third more
than in all other metro areas across the
country.
The cycle is hard to break: Young, ed-
ucated workers will flock to cities with
large knowledge industries because
that’s where they will find the best op-
portunities to earn and learn and have
fun. And start-ups will go there to seek
them out.
Even skyrocketing housing costs
have not stopped the concentration of
talent in a few superstar cities. High-
tech companies that seek cheaper
places to set up beyond their hubs often
go to Bangalore, India, rather than
Birmingham, Ala.
“They keep the core team in Silicon
Valley or Seattle but put the other stuff
in Shenzhen or Vancouver or Banga-
lore,” Mr. Atkinson said. Shenzhen,
China, may not be much cheaper than
Indianapolis, he added, but Shenzhen is
already a tech hub in its own right.
It is uncertain whether government
support could pull innovation out of the
clutches of superstar cities. The pro-
posal by Brookings and the Information
Technology Foundation will not come
cheap: They estimate a $100 billion
price tag over 10 years.
The payoff, however, would extend
beyond the new technology hubs. Jon
Gruber, an economist at the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology, noted that
in a world where Cincinnati becomes a
hub of entrepreneurship, “we don’t need
to fix opioid country” in Appalachia.
That’s because many of those areas are
within commuting distance of Cincin-
nati.
What’s more, not trying also entails
risks. In his book “Jump-Starting Amer-
ica,” Mr. Gruber and his co-writer,
M.I.T.’s Simon Johnson, argue for a sus-
tained national effort to seed new tech-
nology clusters widely.
Without federal government support,
Mr. Gruber said, the United States is un-
likely to produce many new high-tech
hubs.
4
7
6
10
1 2
6
KARL RUSSELL/THE NEW YORK TIMES

10 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
business
A legacy that leapfrogs economics
AN APPRAISAL
BY NEIL IRWIN
It is easy to forget just how miserable
the situation was for the United States
economy when Paul Volcker took
charge as its chief central banker in Au-
gust 1979.
Inflation was nearly 12 percent a year
and rising. People were lining up for
gasoline. Unemployment was 6 percent,
having spiked over the previous four
months. President Jimmy Carter had
delivered an Oval Office address a
month earlier complaining of “a crisis
that strikes at the very heart and soul
and spirit of our national will” — his fa-
mous “malaise” speech.
In that world of hurt, Mr. Volcker, who
died Sunday at 92, came to an unpopular
view: Things had to get worse before
they could get better.
His view was that Americans’ expec-
tations of ever-rising prices were creat-
ing a vicious cycle, and that only ag-
gressive actions by the Fed to constrict
the money supply would stop this —
even at the cost of what would become
the worst recession between the Great
Depression of the 1930s and the global
financial crisis of 2008.
The standard story that is told about
the legacy of Paul Volcker is that history
proved him correct. The recessions his
actions triggered were painful, but brief,
and by the end of 1982 the United States
was beginning what would be called the
Great Moderation, a quarter century of
steady growth, low inflation, booming fi-
nancial markets and recessions that
were rare and mild.
Four decades later, there are reasons
for some historical revisionism, particu-
larly given what has happened to infla-
tion and living standards since.
For one thing, inflation has fallen
since the 1980s across the advanced
world, not just in countries where a Vol-
cker-esque central banker engineered a
severe recession to break inflation ex-
pectations.
And there is reason to think the doc-
trine that Mr. Volcker and his successors
embraced — of raising interest rates to
slow the economy whenever a risk of in-
flation appeared on the horizon — has
contributed to stagnant wages for many
workers.
If a central bank views higher pay for
workers as a potential cause for alarm,
but is more sanguine when corporate
profits rise, it’s reasonable to expect
that the share of national income going
to capital, versus labor, will rise over
time. And that is exactly what has hap-
pened in the United States since the Vol-
cker era.
These kinds of reassessments are im-
portant for taking the right lessons from
Mr. Volcker’s time. After all, he left the
Fed chairmanship 32 years ago. What
Scared and paralyzed: Lives caught in Brexit limbo
BRITAIN, FROM PAGE 9
ers like Ms. Jasinska. As the country
headed for another election that may
help determine the country’s exit from
the European Union, she was forced to
apply for “settled status,” which she re-
ceived from the government this month,
allowing her to continue working in Brit-
ain.
“Brexit is a problem, but the uncer-
tainty around what is going to happen to
you is a much bigger problem,” she said.
In 2008, Ms. Jasinska moved to Lon-
don from Poland to pursue software en-
gineering work. Now, she leads a team
of 110 people at Moo, including 80 engi-
neers and developers.
Ms. Jasinska, 35, knows her predica-
ment is hardly the most dire of those af-
fected by Brexit. Demand for software
engineers remains robust, and she knew
that getting residency would be easier
for her than many others. Her company
has helped with many legal and logisti-
cal questions.
But the experience has altered Ms.
Jasinska’s view of Britain in a way that
could have wider ramifications for the
nation’s economy and labor force. While
the country’s leaders have said technol-
ogy will be a cornerstone of the post-
Brexit economy, many engineers work-
ing for start-ups and other tech firms in
London come from outside Britain, lead-
ing to fears that the pool of talent for
people like Ms. Jasinska will dry up.
Ms. Jasinska has already seen a shift
in her own hiring efforts since the Brexit
vote. Moo canceled a recruiting initia-
tive to lure software engineers from
other European Union countries to Lon-
don because of the lack of interest from
applicants.
“We found the pipeline had dried up,
it’s a real challenge,” said Kingsley
Macey, who leads Moo’s recruitment ef-
forts.
Even as Ms. Jasinska tries to recruit
engineers, she is no longer certain she
wants to remain in London.
“This is a great tech scene, but it’s go-
ing to be very interesting to see over the
next five to 10 years how it shifts,” Ms.
Jasinska said. “That may change my de-
sire to stay here.”
MERVYN GORDON, DAIRY FARMER
New border could sour a farmer’s
prospects
COLERAINE, NORTHERN IRELAND Mervyn
Gordon herded his cows into stalls for
the second round of milking that day,
patting some of them reassuringly.
Paul Volcker in 1980. His actions as Fed chief triggered a brief recession in the United States, followed by years of steady growth.
made Mr. Volcker a great economic
statesman was not so much the details
of his analysis of inflation dynamics and
the money supply in 1979. It was the cul-
ture and mind-set he brought to that job,
PAULO NUNES DOS SANTOS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mervyn Gordon is making less money.
Regardless of where people stand on
Brexit, Mr. Gordon said, they’ll still
want their milk. “You still have to do this
here,” Mr. Gordon said, as the milking
machine chugged like a heartbeat over
his soft voice.
But behind his sanguine comments,
Mr. Gordon, a 55-year-old dairy and
chicken farmer in Northern Ireland, is
worried. He is getting less money for his
milk because of the uncertainty around
Brexit. Mr. Gordon’s biggest market for
his milk is across the Irish Sea, and he
does not know if he will readily find buy-
ers if Britain adopts the Brexit deal ne-
gotiated by Mr. Johnson. And as the gen-
eral election nears, it’s still uncertain
when he’ll get any answers.
Mr. Johnson’s deal would keep North-
ern Ireland aligned with the European
Union’s single market, avoiding a physi-
cal border with the Republic of Ireland.
But it effectively draws a customs bor-
der down the Irish Sea, separating
Northern Ireland from the rest of the
United Kingdom.
“Boris’s deal has still got an awful lot
of unknowns,” Mr. Gordon said, express-
ing a concern commonly heard in North-
ern Ireland. “With this talk about a bor-
der down the Irish Sea, what are we?
Are we U.K.? Or are we E.U. as far as
trade tariffs go?”
The same day, Mr. Johnson was about
45 miles away telling Northern Ireland
exporters that they would enjoy unfet-
tered access to Britain. He told them
they would not face any extra checks or
paperwork, contradicting his own cab-
inet ministers who have said that
customs declarations would be re-
quired.
and all of those he held over a career in
public service that stretched from the
Eisenhower administration to the
Obama administration.
Mr. Volcker was a civil servant’s civil
The uncertainty around the terms of
departure have weighed on milk prices
in Northern Ireland, which have fallen
further than in the rest of Britain. Milk
processors, who might face higher costs
if customs declarations and physical
checks are required under a new Brexit
arrangement, are hesitant to pay more
for Mr. Gordon’s milk. The drop in the
value of the British pound since the 2016
referendum has also helped push up
costs for dairy farm supplies like fuel
and fertilizer.
The effects are expected to be felt
across Northern Ireland’s economy.
Treasury documents leaked last week
said that 98 percent of exporters from
Northern Ireland to Britain are small
and medium-size businesses that would
struggle to bear the extra costs of
customs declarations and checks. The
rising cost of goods coming from Britain
to Northern Ireland is also likely to
weigh on the economy.
At the same time, Mr. Gordon would
like to build a new milking parlor. He
spends about five hours a day milking
his 117 cows, once at 5:30 a.m. and again
at 4 p.m. A new milking parlor, costing as
much as 300,000 pounds, or about
$394,000, would give him more time to
do other things.
But if Mr. Gordon is cut off from his
biggest market in Britain, that new in-
vestment may not make sense.
The Felixstowe port. Brexit could produce mountains of paperwork at Britain’s ports
because items shipped from the European Union will likely need customs declarations.
GEORGE TAMES/THE NEW YORK TIMES
servant. At the Treasury Department in
the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years,
he toiled at rethinking an international
monetary system that was breaking
down.
Still, he feels the need to expand if he
is to survive. Margins are constantly be-
ing squeezed and the price he gets for
milk has not kept up with inflation over
the years. “If you stand still, you go back
in dairy farming,” he said.
WILSON AYALA AND MARITZA
CASTILLO CALLE, CLEANERS
Migrant workers fear their rights could
vanish
LONDON Every evening, after office
workers across London have logged off
and headed home, people arrive to clean
up the mess. Very often, these cleaners
are from outside Britain.
“We do the job that they don’t do,” said
Wilson Ayala, an Ecuadorean who came
to Britain seven years ago. “They see us
as cheap labor.”
Mr. Ayala, 57, has cleaned the presti-
gious Royal College of Music and office
buildings in the financial district. He
pointed out that cleaners like him help
keep businesses and organizations run-
ning, and that they pay taxes.
Mr. Ayala has a Spanish passport and
so-called settled status with the govern-
ment, which allows him to remain in
Britain after Brexit. For low-wage work-
ers who want to come after Brexit, it
may be more difficult: They may only be
allowed in on limited visas.
And Mr. Ayala, a labor activist, wor-
BEN QUINTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Despite jobs at the epicenter of world
financial power — early in his career he
worked at Chase Manhattan, and he
would lead the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York before Mr. Carter picked him
as chairman of the Federal Reserve sys-
tem — he seemed uninterested in the
trappings of wealth and power.
Always rumpled, always mumbling,
his 6-foot-7-inch frame often slumping,
he was not trying to be a globe-trotting
master of industry or political mover
and shaker. He was often dismissive of
the views of powerful bankers and poli-
ticians. And he lived modestly, wearing
ill-fitting suits and smoking cheap ci-
gars and living in a small, not-at-all-
posh apartment in Washington with his
family back in New York. He didn’t focus
much on his own status, which made
him especially suited to resist the inev-
itable political pressure that arose when
his course of action caused mass unem-
ployment in the early 1980s.
What made Paul Volcker a great
economic statesman was the
culture and mind-set he brought
to the job.
The tidy story of Mr. Volcker’s early
years at the Fed — that a central banker
needs to be willing to tank the economy
to prevent inflation — is not necessarily
the most important lesson. What made
Mr. Volcker such a consequential figure
is that he did not merely take the con-
ventional wisdom of public policy as he
inherited it. He was willing to rethink
the Fed’s policy based on what was hap-
pening on the ground, not on the theo-
ries of politicians and tradition-bound
economists.
Right now, Fed leaders are grappling
with an opposite set of problems from
those that Mr. Volcker inherited. Infla-
tion is too low, not too high. Workers’
wages are rising too slowly, not too fast.
With interest rates persistently low, it’s
not clear how central banks will fight the
next recession.
Essentially, the post-Volcker lessons
about how central banks ought to act is
in doubt — no surprise given that he left
the Federal Reserve more than three
decades ago. His successors have to fig-
ure out what elements of his approach
have staying power and which should be
discarded in creating a 21st-century
monetary policy.
Regardless of what those answers
turn out to be, Mr. Volcker’s life offers
guidance about the values they might
want to embrace in seeking them.
His life is a testament to what dedi-
cated public servants can do when they
put their heads down, and are guided
not by how things worked in the past, or
how they might wish them to be, but by
the world as it is. And the right answer
isn’t always the most popular.
ries that the protections that he and his
union have fought for could unravel
without a European regulatory frame-
work.
Building maintenance and cleaning is
often outsourced. Cleaning companies
compete for contracts, and workers of-
ten end up changing employers when a
building’s contract changes hands. Mr.
Ayala has worked for five or six compa-
nies since arriving in Britain, and work-
ing conditions change with each trans-
fer, he said.
Through the Independent Workers
Union of Great Britain, Mr. Ayala has
taken a previous employer to court over
discrimination and breach of regula-
tions, and has tried to help other work-
ers who say they have been mistreated
by their employers.
The union has fought cases relying on
regulations derived from European Un-
ion law, like protections against unilater-
ally cutting pay or firing employees
when one company takes over from an-
other.
With Britain a part of the European
Union, “the U.K. has to respect the laws
that come from the E.U.,” said Mr. Ayala,
who is now the chairman of the cleaners’
branch of the union.
The latest Brexit deal allows for sig-
nificant divergence from European
rules, according to documents leaked to
the British media. The Labour Party
said the papers confirmed its “worst
fears” about the potential weakening of
workers rights.
“We’re worried, we’re scared, we
have doubts,” Mr. Ayala said. “We don’t
know what’s going to happen with our
future.”
He said he believed that most people
who voted for Brexit weren’t motivated
by anti-immigrant bias. But others feel
differently.
Many people “don’t like us coming
here to work,” said Maritza Castillo
Calle, 36, who cleaned London colleges
for five years. Like Mr. Ayala, she is from
Ecuador and has a Spanish passport.
“They don’t understand that we’re
fundamental for this country,” she said.
“They don’t know what we do. They
don’t know what we suffer here. They
want us to go back or to lose our rights.”
Ms. Castillo Calle joined the union af-
ter she, like Mr. Ayala, saw her working
conditions worsening, being asked to
work fewer hours and to do more work.
“We’re fighting for these terms and
conditions, but what’s going to happen
to us after Brexit?” Ms. Castillo Calle
wondered.
..
Ex-manager
to testify on
737 Max
factory flaws
BOEING, FROM PAGE 9
crashes, in which newly produced Max
jets had safety incidents, including en-
gine shutdowns and problems with hy-
draulics.
“Boeing is deeply committed to en-
couraging its employees to raise issues
— particularly those that might involve
safety or quality — and provides several
internal avenues for employees to do
so,” Mr. Johndroe said. “Mr. Pierson did
the right thing by elevating his con-
cerns.”
Mr. Pierson described a chaotic fac-
tory that was scrambling to produce the
737 Max despite mounting problems. By
early 2018, he said, Boeing had a signifi-
cant backlog in its production of 737
planes. Delays became 10 times more
common, he said, and fewer than 10 per-
cent of planes were being produced on
time.
Despite this, in June 2018 Boeing con-
tinued with its plan to increase its pro-
duction rate to 52 planes per month from
47 per month.
Mr. Pierson and his lawyers declined
to answer whether he was seeking whis-
tle-blower protection or filing a federal
whistle-blower case. He has hired a
prominent whistle-blower lawyer, Eric
Havian, and could stand to gain mone-
tarily if he pursued such a case.
During this time, Mr. Pierson said, a
shortage of workers, including mechan-
ics, electricians and technicians, caused
the overtime rate at the factory to more
than double. Workers were completing
jobs out of sequence, leading to addi-
tional mistakes. And senior executives
at Boeing exacerbated the problems, he
added, by berating employees about de-
lays and urging them to work faster.
“What I witnessed firsthand, the cha-
os and the instability in the factory, is
really unsettling to me as someone
who’s been around aircraft their entire
life,” he said.
Mr. Pierson first expressed his con-
cerns to the head of the 737 program,
Scott Campbell, in June 2018. Mr. Camp-
bell told Mr. Pierson that the company
was focused on safety, but did not ac-
knowledge his suggestion to shut down
the production line, a drastic move that
would have resulted in serious delays
and significant costs to the company.
“For the first time in my life, I’m
sorry to say that I’m hesitant
about putting my family on a
Boeing airplane.”
When Mr. Pierson met with Mr.
Campbell in July 2018, he said, he again
urged Boeing to shut down the Max line.
Mr. Pierson had spent decades in the
Navy before joining Boeing, and said he
told Mr. Campbell that he had seen the
military stop exercises over less serious
concerns. In response, he claims, Mr.
Campbell said, “The military isn’t a prof-
it-making organization.”
Mr. Pierson retired from Boeing the
next month, after 10 years at the com-
pany.
Last December, after the crash of Lion
Air Flight 610 in October, Mr. Pierson
sent a letter to Mr. Muilenburg express-
ing his concerns. In January and Febru-
ary, Mr. Pierson had several conversa-
tions with Boeing’s legal team, but said
the lawyers “were more interested in
placating me than seriously investigat-
ing the factory conditions.”
In late February, Mr. Pierson wrote a
letter expressing his concerns to Boe-
ing’s board of directors. Then, Ethiopian
Airlines Flight 302 crashed on March 10,
and he never received a response from
the board.
At an earlier hearing, members of the
committee read an excerpt from Mr.
Pierson’s letter to Mr. Campbell, but did
not identify him.
Mr. Pierson said he reached out to the
Federal Aviation Administration, the
Department of Transportation and the
National Transportation Safety Board to
express his concerns after the second
crash, but was disappointed by their re-
sponses. He said the safety board told
him that his concerns fell outside the
scope of their responsibilities, that the
F.A.A. appeared uninterested and that
the Transportation Department never
replied.
“The F.A.A. takes all whistle-blower
complaints seriously,” said an agency
spokesman, Lynn Lunsford. “Our team
has interacted on several occasions with
Mr. Pierson and his attorneys about his
allegations.”
A safety board spokesman, Eric
Weiss, said the agency had thoroughly
reviewed Mr. Pierson’s information and
determined that the Transportation De-
partment’s inspector general was the
best office to review the claims.
Mr. Pierson is calling on the F.A.A. to
investigate Boeing’s factory in Renton
to ensure that the production problems
have been corrected. He also wants the
agency to instruct Boeing and airlines to
inspect, and if necessary replace, the
vanes that played a role in the accidents.
He worries that once the Max is flying
again, Boeing — scrambling to make up
for the costly delays — will not have
changed.
“Every indication to me is that the fo-
cus to is going to shift back to pushing
planes out the door,” he said. “That’s
concerning to me.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 11

Opinion
Hypnosis changed my life
When my Ilana Kaplan
anxiety and
insomnia
returned, It had been nearly a week, and I hadn’t
my therapist slept more than two hours a night.
It was the summer of 2016, and I had
suggested spent all night with my face in my
a new form palms, shaking in the bathroom of my
of treatment. Brooklyn third-floor walk-up. The 3
a.m. stroll in my neighborhood that my
The results boyfriend encouraged me to go on with
challenged him had the opposite effect of a Xanax,
my inner and the speed of my anxious thoughts
was physically excruciating. I was in
skeptic. the midst of a new trial of antidepress-
ants — my Lexapro stopped working
after seven years — and I hadn’t been
engulfed in anxiety-induced insomnia
since college, the kind where sleep
doesn’t exist without the use of pre-
scription sleep aids. I was so tired, but
my anxiety made me fear rest.
I made a decision: I’d check myself
into a psychiatric hospital. When my
boyfriend woke up, I told him my plan,
while attempting not to drown in my
shame.
“Babe, there’s nothing wrong with
going to a doctor or a hospital,” he told
me. “If you broke your arm, that’s
where you’d go.”
Before I left for the hospital, I de-
cided to call my therapist for her ad-
vice. She revealed she had an alterna-
tive treatment idea for me, cautioning
me to “be open.”
“You need to go to Joanne. She’s a
miracle worker,” she told me.
“What does she do? I don’t under-
stand,” I said.
“She’s a hypnotist,” she replied.
Before that summer, I had assumed
hypnosis involved mind control, a
pocket watch swinging in front of my
face and me unknowingly word-vom-
iting my secrets. But after hitting rock
bottom with my depression, anxiety,
insomnia and obsessive-compulsive
disorder after a layoff from my media
job, I was willing to try anything.
At that point, life had become an
amalgamation of “Groundhog Day” and
“Russian Doll.” It was an understate-
ment to say that the cocktail of mental
health issues I suffered from was suffo-
cating me. Some days, the extra energy
I had made my job as a writer easy —
people called it hustle, I called it keeping
ANGIE WANG
myself sane. Other days, I could barely
get out of my wrinkled T-shirt and
queen-size bed. I had to silence my Our session began like any talk notic state — for my overworked cording, my body tightened at the mere trauma it had been through. I believed
inner skeptic. I was a high-functioning therapy appointment as she listened to thoughts. As she recited a slew of jum- sound of the woman’s voice. The words in hypnosis like people believed in God.
zombie who had hit rock bottom, so me relay an abridged version of my bled words, it felt as if a magic wand filling my ear felt like a 30-minute For six months I stuck to that routine
what did I have to lose? If hypnosis had trauma, in between my dry-heaving — was sprinkling tranquillity around me prison sentence: I forced myself to until one day I was back in my body
the power to save me, I’d be a fool not to how it had been seven years since I had like glitter. A tingling overcame my keep my eyes shut while trying to quiet again: no longer crying, no longer
give it a try. been in the throes of anxiety-induced body as the chimes circled my brain the stifling anxiety in my body. Weeks wearing the same distressed tee; I was
What was slightly comforting to me insomnia, how my medication stopped like waves. And with that, a small part went by, and I didn’t feel anything, but sleeping without the aid of medication
was that research proved that hypnosis working, how the weight of my body of my unease was sucked out of my Joanne encouraged me to keep with it. again. What I learned was that people
wasn’t just a woo-woo concept, and that was crushing me and how losing my body. By the end, she counted to five After two months of doing so, I felt who are struggling with phobias,
it did, in fact, have effects. A 2016 study job and going freelance had imprisoned and my eyes struggled to open from something shift. As if a string of yarn trauma and other mental health prob-
conducted by Stanford University me on a hamster wheel of worry. what felt like a deep meditation. My was slowly spinning off a spool, I be- lems can see results with hypnosis if
School of Medicine found changes in Near the end of our conversation, mind didn’t feel controlled but slightly came slightly more at ease. they’re open to it, as I had been.
three areas of the brain when people she asked me to lie back in a red calmer. I was militant in my regimen — a But I would be lying if I said I don’t
are hypnotized. And 2013 findings from leather recliner and “relax” — a word Joanne told me I’d notice the combination of my O.C.D. and a willing- find myself spiraling from time to time.
the University of Quebec in Montreal truly no person with anxiety fully changes in two to three days; they ness to do whatever it took to get bet- Hypnosis isn’t necessarily a “cure”; it’s
revealed that“the short-term effects of comprehends. would be small, but the anxiety and ter. I became a master at self-hypnosis, a tool. Sometimes when I find myself
hypnosis (one-two months) and relax- “Do you trust me?” she asked. depression would begin gradually all the while traveling to Long Island stuck in a “cycle,” I take a breath and
ation training were comparable to the “Yes, but I’m worried hypnosis won’t lifting, and sleeping wouldn’t be as more than I ever had before. remember that I know what to do. I
effects of short-term drug therapy, and work on me. Or that this is some kind of much of a chore. I was to visit her two It became harder to pinpoint what play my recording, shut my eyes and
that the long-term outcomes even fake energy thing.” to three times a week and listen to a had changed and when it had, but it find comfort in the monotonous audio
surpassed the drug therapy in certain “I get it,” she said. “But in a few 30-minute hypnosis recording nightly had. Just six weeks in, I began sleeping that has saved me so many times be-
instances.” sessions, you’ll believe in it.” before I went to bed. through the night and found myself fore. Some people might unwind with
Just a few weeks later, the already Soon enough, musical chimes rang in Despite having done reiki and medi- wanting to escape the walls of my meditation apps, but I have my own
overbooked Joanne made time for me my ears as my eyes fluttered shut. For tation, the stigma of hypnosis stuck apartment; nearly three months later, personalized one that will put me —
in her schedule. Two trains, a cab and 20 minutes, my mind floated in dark- with me at first. But I listened to Jo- my constantly quivering foot stopped and my body — to sleep.
three hours later I sat in a dimly lit ness as Joanne read a nonsensical anne and followed the simple instruc- tapping.
corner office of a wellness center on script full of “suggestions” — straight- tions given to me. I gained a newfound optimism that ILANA KAPLAN is a Brooklyn-based music
Long Island. forward statements that create a hyp- The first night I listened to the re- fed me as my body coped with the and culture critic and writer.

The fury in France

Could the Jacob Hamburger
latest round
of strikes
spell the France is paralyzed. Since a general
beginning of strike began on Thursday, planes have
been grounded, mail delivery stopped
the end for and schools closed, and trains remain
Emmanuel in their depots. Even lawyers are
Macron? staying home. Some 800,000 people
took to the street across the country
last Thursday, and another major
demonstration had been planned as
the strike continues. As one partici-
pant put it to the French newspaper
Mediapart, the mass mobilizations are
meant as a rebuke to “Macron and his
world.”
The uprising is in response to Presi-
dent Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to
drastically reform France’s pension
system. It’s not the first major labor
action of Mr. Macron’s presidency:
Similar mobilizations followed his plan
to revise labor protections in late 2017,
as well as his cuts to the national rail
service and overhaul of university
admissions last spring. But this looks
to be the largest. Will it decisively
change France’s political landscape?
With such a broad turnout, the labor
movement believes it may achieve a
repeat of the general strike of 1995,
which shut down the country for
weeks and forced President Jacques
Chirac and Prime Minister Alain
Juppé to abandon a similar pension
reform. Union leaders hope that the
threat of an economic standstill lasting
through the Christmas holidays will
give the government no choice but to
capitulate and at the same time seri-
ously weaken Mr. Macron’s credibility
through the remainder of his presiden-
cy.
Mr. Macron — who has long thought
himself uniquely capable of succeeding
where his predecessors failed — is
hoping to weather the storm once
again. Despite the frequency of strikes
and protests throughout his time in
office, opposition parties have failed to
convert this anger into a serious politi-
cal challenge. After the dust has
cleared each time, the most likely
outcome in the next nationwide elec-
tions in 2022 will once again be a
choice between Mr. Macron and his
technocratic center-right agenda and
the far-right leader Marine Le Pen,
who is even less popular. Mr. Macron
may not be able to avoid being loathed
by a large portion of the French public,
but if he can outlast the strikers, he
may well remain the most palatable
option in a field of weak political oppo-
sition.
Short of an outright victory in the
streets, then, Mr. Macron’s opponents
will have to use this strike to create a
political alternative to the binary
choice between Mr. Macron’s market
austerity and Ms. Le Pen’s xenophobic
neo-fascism.
This will require grappling with the
enigmatic Yellow Vests, who emerged
just over a year ago to protest eco-
Demonstrators during a national strike against changes to the French pension system
last week in Paris. A strike in 1995 forced the government to abandon such reform.
nomic inequality and the burdensome
cost of living. For most of the past
year, these protesters have largely
remained distinct from organized labor
and political parties. The Yellow Vests
refused familiar tactics of French
protest movements, preferring to
occupy rural traffic circles rather than
march down symbolic Parisian boule-
vards. Drawing on the rural and subur-
ban middle and working classes, the
protests brought new people into
political action, some of whom were
KIRAN RIDLEY/GETTY IMAGES
quickly radicalized in the face of police
repression.
The Yellow Vest movement suc-
ceeded where the labor movement and
the left opposition so far have failed: in
securing concessions from Mr. Macron
and Prime Minister Édouard Philippe,
who agreed last year to scrap the tax
on fuel that initially prompted the
protests and to spend billions of euros
to try to increase ordinary households’
purchasing power.
But the movement, which is deeply
committed to direct democracy, has
been unable to translate mass anger
into concrete political opposition,
rejecting all attempts by politicians,
labor leaders or any other institutions
to represent them. When a young
protester named Ingrid Levavasseur
tried to form a Yellow Vest party for
the European elections earlier this
year, she gave up the effort after being
assaulted on the street by fellow vest-
clad demonstrators.
Following the union-led demonstra-
tions last Thursday, the Yellow Vests
came out this weekend in full force,
leading some on the French left to
believe that the two movements will
finally unite to defeat Mr. Macron. The
past two years, however, have demon-
strated that there’s no easy way for the
president’s opponents to translate
these movement into an electoral
challenge.
Still, some novel political coalitions
may hold promise: François Ruffin —
a member of the left-wing party La
France Insoumise, or France Un-
bowed, with an independent streak
and working-class credentials — is
hoping to build an “eco-populist alli-
ance,” uniting urban green voters with
disaffected inhabitants of deindustrial-
ized France.
Such initiatives, like Mr. Ruffin
himself, are relatively untested. But
since coalition politics is generally
more viable at the local level in France
and Mr. Macron’s La République en
HAMBURGER, PAGE 13

12 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
opinion
A new Evita rises in Argentina
A.G. SULZBERGER, Publisher Pola Oloixarac
DEAN BAQUET, Executive Editor MARK THOMPSON, Chief Executive Officer
JOSEPH KAHN, Managing Editor STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, President, International
SUZANNE DALEY, Associate Editor JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, Senior V.P., Global Advertising When victory was declared on Oct. 27,
CHARLOTTE GORDON, V.P., International Consumer Marketing the twin 10-story monumental portraits
JAMES BENNET, Editorial Page Editor HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS, V.P., International Circulation of Eva Duarte de Perón that hover
JAMES DAO, Deputy Editorial Page Editor HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific above Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos
KATHLEEN KINGSBURY, Deputy Editorial Page Editor SUZANNE YVERNÈS, International Chief Financial Officer Aires were lit up against the night sky
for the first time since Cristina Fer-
nández de Kirchner left the presidency
in 2015.
A Peronist miracle had taken place,
and what seemed unthinkable during
the four years the party spent in the
BREAK BOLIVIA’S HISTORY OF COUPS opposition became real: Argentine
voters again crowned Mrs. Kirchner
After the Bolivian military forced out Evo Morales as the country’s political queen. Even
Evo Morales president last month, following a wave of demonstra- with 11 corruption cases piled up
is out after tions protesting fraud in his fourth presidential elec- against her, the former two-term presi-
corruption at dent regained the pinnacle, this time
tion, the right-wing Catholic politician Jeanine Añez by running as vice president alongside
the polls, but Chavez, second vice president of the Bolivian Senate, Alberto Fernández, a former ally (and
his right-wing was deemed next in the line of succession and sworn also longtime foe).
temporary “Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” goes
in as his replacement.
the song from the old musical. Indeed,
successor must Ms. Añez pledged to “bring back democracy and tears, drama and the nation of Ar-
ensure free tranquillity,” but she instead embarked on a blatantly gentina have been inseparable since
elections. revanchist, ruthless path, stacking her cabinet with the life of Evita, as Eva Perón was
known to her fans, became the subject
religious conservatives bitterly opposed to Mr. Mora- of a hit Broadway show. About three
les’s Movement for Socialism, breaking ties with the decades earlier, as Argentina’s first
left-wing governments of Cuba and Venezuela and lady, she wielded great political influ-
ence both as a champion of the poor
dispatching an ambassador to a gleeful Trump admin- and as the fashionable wife of Gen.
istration, the first in Washington in 11 years. Juan Domingo Perón, the president.
She issued a decree exempting security forces from Under the Peróns, polarization be-
criminal prosecution when maintaining public order; tween supporters and opponents took
hold of the country’s political con-
the following day, eight protesters were killed in a sciousness. A similar divide opened up
lethal crackdown, and more have been killed since. during Mrs. Kirchner’s presidential
At the same time, Mr. Morales’s legions of Indige- tenure, from 2007 to 2015. It still domi-
nates the national conversation today.
nous followers sealed off access to their region, where Not since Evita has a woman held so
he comes from, with scores of barricades and vowed to much concentrated power for so long
give the government no peace until he returns. — or become so entangled in the coun-
try’s present — as Mrs. Kirchner. The
Mr. Morales became Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader parallels are clear, and she does not
when he was elected 14 years ago, breaking the mo-
shy away from drawing on them. Each
woman started out as an ambitious,
nopoly on power of a small elite of European descent.
energetic first lady before rising in
He sharply reduced the poverty rate, expanded the
status alongside her husband. For Mrs.
economy and helped introduce a new, more equitable Kirchner, whose husband and prede-
constitution. cessor was Néstor Kirchner, politics
was an intensely personal journey,
shaped both by those who support her
and those who oppose her.
Instrumental in her ascent to power
was the spousal devotion that Evita
Perón had made central to her own
image. “Everything that I am, every-
thing I have, everything I think and
everything I feel is because of Perón,”
Evita said of her husband in her auto-
biography, “La Razón de Mi Vida”
(“My Mission in Life”).
Evita embodied the conservative
role of the woman for whom marriage
is sanctity, and the husband a godlike
entity. This outlook suffuses Mrs.
Kirchner’s attitude of superiority over
other women in power today; during
her campaign, she belittled Maria
Eugenia Vidal, the outgoing governor
MARCO BELLO/REUTERS
A supporter of Evo Morales, former president of Bolivia, at a protest in November.
Then he overreached, calling a referendum in 2016
How to fix Pakistan’s crashing economy
to lift constitutional term limits he himself had sup-
Atif Mian
ported and, when the vote went against him, getting a
Constitutional Court filled with his followers to rule
that term limits violated his human rights.
If an airplane took off a dozen times
The flawed election on Oct. 20 followed. Early suspi- only to come crashing down each time,
cions of fraud by the Organization of American States the only logical conclusion would be
helped fuel the protests and provided cover for the that the aircraft requires a fundamen-
tal redesign. Pakistan’s economy, like
military to “suggest” that Mr. Morales leave office. the airplane, has crashed 13 times in
Last week the O.A.S. issued an audit, to which Mr. the last 60 years, each time requiring
Morales had agreed, substantiating those suspicions an International Monetary Fund bail-
out.
and finding “a series of malicious operations aimed at It wasn’t always so. During the
altering the will expressed at the polls” on Oct. 20. 1980s, in per capita terms Pakistan
The Bolivian legislature has passed a law, with sup- was richer than India, China and Bang-
ladesh by 15, 38 and 46 percent. Today
port from Mr. Morales’s party and signed by Ms. Añez, Pakistan is the poorest. Its most recent
paving the way toward new elections within a few gross domestic product growth esti-
months, with Mr. Morales barred from running. mate was only 3.3 percent, barely
sufficient to keep pace with population
Mr. Morales, who is now in Cuba, has agreed to growth.
renounce his candidacy, though he continues to claim, Pakistan’s federal government is
effectively bankrupt. Last year, the
as he told The Guardian newspaper, “I have every
sum of interest payment due on the
right to it.” government’s debt obligations and
Renouncing any candidacy is the right way for him pension payments owed to retired
employees was more than the federal
to help restore peace and democracy in a country for
government’s net revenue. The entire
which he has done so much. There is no clear succes- government machinery, including the
sor on the left, so Mr. Morales should focus on finding military, is running on borrowed
money.
a worthy successor in his party who could hold off an
The consequences of Pakistan’s
inevitable challenge from the far right. crashing economy have been devastat-
Ms. Añez, for her part, can make clear that her dubi- ing for its over 200 million people.
They are instinctively aware of how far
ous leap from obscurity was not the coup that her
they have fallen behind and there is a
opponents claim it was by abandoning her vindictive clamor for change for a future where
policies and fulfilling her promise to arrange a free their children can live in dignity and
comfort.
and fair election. Anything less would mark a sad
It was this public desire for change
relapse to the era of serial coups and counter-coups that propelled Pakistan’s most famous
that ravaged Bolivia, often with the clandestine par- cricketer, Imran Khan, and his rela-
tively new party, the Pakistan Tehreek-
ticipation of the C.I.A. e-Insaf, into power in 2018. Prime
A continued standoff would only exacerbate the Minister Khan promised change and a
country’s deep ethnic and ideological polarization. Mr. “naya” or new Pakistan to his people,
but change is proving far more difficult
Morales’s fall thrust Bolivia into the center of a left- than imagined.
right struggle convulsing much of the Americas. See- The fundamental challenge in bring-
ing that resolved through the democratic process, ing change is that those who are bene-
fiting the most from the dysfunctional
rather than outside meddling, should be the goal of the economy and stand to lose the most
United States and Bolivia’s Latin American neighbors. from change would fight every attempt
Printed in Athens, Denpasar, Beirut, Biratnagar, Doha, Dubai, Frankfurt, Gallargues, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Lahore, London, Luqa, Madrid, Manila, Milan, Nagoya, Nepalgunj, New York, Osaka, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Tokyo.
The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018-1405, NYTCo.com; The New York Times International Edition (ISSN: 2474-7149) is published six days per week. A.G. SULZBERGER, Publisher ©2019 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. To submit an opinion article, email: opinion@nytimes.com, To
submit a letter to the editor, email: nytiletters@nytimes.com, Subscriptions: Subscribe.INYT.com, nytisubs@nytimes.com, Tel. +33 1 41 43 93 61, Advertising: NYTmediakit.com, nytiadvertising@nytimes.com, Tel.+33 1 41 43 94 07, Classifieds: nyticlassified@nytimes.com, Tel. +44 20 7061 3534/3533, Regional Offices: U.K. 18
Museum Street, London WC1A 1JN, U.K., Tel. +44 20 7061 3500, Hong Kong 1201 K.Wah Centre, 191 Java Road, North Point, Hong Kong, Tel: +852 2922 1188, Dubai PO Box 502015, Media City, Dubai UAE, Tel. +971 4428 9457 nytdubai@nytimes.com, France Postal Address: CS 10001, 92052 La Defense Cedex, France, Tel. +33 1 41 43
92 01, Commission Paritaire No. 0523 C83099. Printed in France by Paris Offset Print 30 Rue Raspail 93120 La Courneuve
of Buenos Aires Province — who is
divorced — over her marital status.
In her memoir published this year,
“Sinceramente” (“Sincerely”), Mrs.
Kirchner suggested that President
Mauricio Macri and his wife (both of
whom have been divorced and remar-
ried) do not fit the image of the perfect
family they are made out to be. She
made comparisons to her own union
with Mr. Kirchner,
which was the only
Cristina
marriage for both
Fernández and lasted 35 years,
de Kirchner’s until his death in
brand of
2010.
feminism Recently, Mrs.
isn’t actually Kirchner has ex-
designed to panded her views on
empower issues related to
other women feminism. During
her nearly decade-
— only long tenure as presi-
herself. dent she opposed the
legalization of abor-
tion. When the press
asked her how she felt about so-called
women’s issues, she famously declared
that she is “a Peronist, not a feminist.”
When the grass-roots women’s
rights movement Ni Una Menos (Not
One Less) started out in 2015 with a
huge street protest against the rise in
gender-related killings of women, Mrs.
Kirchner was the sitting president. She
later wrote that she had seen Ni Una
Menos as an opposition force. Then, in
2018, apparently moved by the global
at reform and attack the people trying
to ensure reform.
Pakistan’s leadership must muster
the courage to take on two primary
forces of status quo that hold the coun-
try back. First, the moneyed elite who
tip the scales of markets in their favor
through unfair business practices, tax
evasion and preferential access to
power. They use their privilege to grab
the fruits of other people’s labor rather
than create something of value
through their own enterprise.
The second force inhibiting Paki-
stan’s progress is religious extremism.
Decades of patronage by successive
military and civilian governments for
promoters of religious hate has created
a culture of institutionalized intoler-
ance. The result has been devastating
for society. Thou-
To redesign sands have been
killed, communities
its economy, have been ripped
the country’s apart and hundreds
leaders must of thousands of
take on the
people have been
moneyed elite displaced or forced
and religious to flee the country
extremism. altogether. It is no
wonder then that few
want to invest in an
environment af-
flicted with violence and intolerance.
Many whose talents are sorely needed
in Pakistan are forced to flee the coun-
try because of extremism.
The combined effect of extremism
and an unproductive rent-seeking elite
is that Pakistan has one of the lowest
investment rates in the world. Pakistan
invests only 15 percent of its output
compared with 30 percent for the rest
of South Asia. This has led to dimin-
ished productivity. Pakistan’s total
volume of exports has not risen since
2005. It has become a nation of con-
sumers with limited capacity to
produce and innovate. Last year, the
country imported more than two times
as much as it exported.
Reversing those trends requires a
courageous commitment to fight the
entrenched elements and extremists.
Consider the unproductive moneyed
class which instead of investing in real
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
hue and cry of both Ni Una Menos and
the #MeToo movement, Mr. Macri
opened up a national debate over a bill
that would have allowed abortion. This
time, seemingly enthused by her role
in the opposition, Mrs. Kirchner voted
in favor of legalization.
The former president understands
the dynamics of power like no one else
in Argentina. If Evita — whose untime-
ly death from cancer added to her
myth — was revered as a supporter of
the downtrodden, Mrs. Kirchner crafts
her allure as the resilient widow who
survives it all: the death of Mr. Kirch-
ner, the corruption charges, the grow-
ing list of traitors. In fact, Mr. Fer-
nández, the president-elect, had be-
come a foe when he left his post as
Mrs. Kirchner’s cabinet chief in 2008 to
organize a new Peronism without her.
For a while Mr. Fernández, along
with Mrs. Kirchner’s other political
enemies, aimed to weaken her, dispar-
aging her and her coalition in political
rallies and on television shows. The
power held by La Señora did not wa-
ver, however. She maintains control of
35 percent of the voting base, with the
densely populated, low-income sub-
urbs of Buenos Aires at the heart of
her support. If you can’t beat ’em, join
’em. Eventually, Mr. Fernández came
around to kiss Mrs. Kirchner’s ring.
A master of theatrics much like
Evita, Mrs. Kirchner has reinvented
herself as an author. It’s a move that
demonstrates how she considers her
Supporters of one of the largest religious parties in Pakistan marched from Karachi
to Islamabad in late October seeking the removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
businesses buys urban land and sits on
it. This is an idle activity that adds
nothing to the country’s output and
contributes directly to Pakistan’s low
investment rate. The value of land
keeps rising, not because of any effort
by the landowners but because of an
urbanizing population.
The correct policy response to dis-
courage such activity would be to tax
the value of land appropriately. This
would dissuade the rich from hoarding
land and instead incentivize them to
invest in real businesses. Land would
then be available for more productive
uses and at cheaper prices. Moreover,
the revenue generated from land taxes
could fund much-needed urban infra-
structure.
While instituting a land tax ad-
dresses multiple problems in a single
strike, carrying through with the policy
requires courage as a large percentage
of urban land is held by the powerful
elite. Pakistan’s leadership must de-
velop the courage to put the interests
of the collective above those of the
..
RACHEL LEVIT RUIZ
actions reflected in the mirror of his-
tory. Her book tour for “Sinceramente”
was her recent campaign, and at these
events she could be seen signing cop-
ies and speaking directly to her faithful
followers.
Mrs. Kirchner’s world is shaped by
the fight between the forces of evil and
the guardians of the good (the latter of
course are on Team Cristina). In her
view, she is locked in a battle against
legal overreach and her persecution in
the courts. In fighting the corruption
investigations, she continues to paint
herself as a champion of the people, a
soldier of mythical status not unlike
Evita herself. For Mrs. Kirchner, it is a
conflict that, by design, keeps her in
power.
In facing the many obstacles to her
return to power, Mrs. Kirchner pro-
vided an answer to a pressing question
in feminism today: What do we do with
men? She has opted to turn her hus-
band into a Peronist martyr. In this
respect, Mrs. Kirchner has followed
the lead of Juan Perón, not Evita.
Néstor Kirchner has been transformed
into a quasi-religious figure — much
like General Perón once transformed
his own wife into an icon — so that
Mrs. Kirchner can get down to busi-
ness. It’s her way of saying: Goodbye,
Néstor. Now I rule.
How long can the illusion last?
POLA OLOIXARAC is an Argentine novelist
and the author of “Savage Theories.”
RIZWAN TABASSUM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
privileged few.
Similar challenges exist in other
parts of the economy. For instance,
sugar cane, which is one of the most
water-intensive crops, is grown on
nearly 2.5 million acres in Pakistan.
This makes no economic sense for a
country with a very serious water
shortage. Rationalizing agriculture
toward more efficient farming choices
requires that the government take on
the landed aristocracy by removing
subsidies and charging for excessive
water use.
The government also continues to
dole out large export subsidies without
an iota of proof that these subsidies
have helped increase exports. Will the
government develop courage to say no
to special interests and devise a per-
formance-based assistance mecha-
nism? The auto sector is another ex-
ample that has not innovated in dec-
ades but continues to be protected
heavily by the government. And the
power sector is dominated by private
MIAN, PAGE 13
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
The parable of the sick pig and the lonely rooster
Margaret Renkl
Contributing Writer
NASHVILLE John Chester’s lovely new
documentary film, “The Biggest Little
Farm,” opens with a tragedy in the
making: Wildfires are moving toward
the farm from three different directions.
A horse whinnies in alarm as workers
rush to shepherd a storybook cast of
farm animals — chickens, pigs, sheep,
cows — toward what they hope will be
safer pastures. Sirens wail in the dis-
tance. Smoke and ash fill the air.
It’s a sobering opening for a feel-good
film about a young California couple
who leave their day jobs to become
organic farmers. “Everyone told us this
idea was crazy, that attempting to farm
in harmony with nature would be reck-
less, if not impossible,” Mr. Chester says
in a voice-over. But it wasn’t impossible:
After the opening sequence, the film
backtracks to tell the story of how Mr.
Chester, a documentary filmmaker, and
Molly Chester, a personal chef, man-
aged to turn 200 acres of worn-out, arid
land 40 miles north of Los Angeles into
an agricultural paradise called Apricot
Lane Farms.
As “The Biggest Little Farm” unfolds,
the Chesters hire Alan York, an expert
in biodynamic farming practices, to
teach them traditional methods that will
restore their land to true fertility, no
chemicals required. Cover crops fix
nitrogen in the soil and sequester rain-
water, preventing runoff and holding
the topsoil in place. Sheep graze among
the cover crops, leaving behind fertil-
izer for the soil. A giant worm-compost-
ing facility produces more fertilizer for
the gardens and orchards. It’s breath-
taking, all the ways the Chesters have
found to ensure that every animal on the
farm contributes to the health of the
crops, and to ensure that the crops can
sustain the farm animals while still
producing enough fruits and vegetables
to sell at market. And all of it works in
concert with the wildlife that soon re-
turns to the newly restored ecosystem.
I won’t give away the film’s genuine
drama by revealing too many details,
but it’s not a spoiler to point out that
there’s a reason industrial farms typi-
cally use enormous amounts of chemi-
cals: Attempting to farm in harmony
with nature means that nature will
sometimes get the upper hand, at least
at first. “I guess I don’t know what
Afghanistan and a steady trail of wars
DOUTHAT, FROM PAGE 1
do the right thing at least most of the
time in the early Nixon years; today
the equivalent figure is 17 percent. The
Washington Post’s reporting should be
shocking, but in the current envi-
ronment it’s hard to imagine any
reader actually being shocked.
And with the absence of shock, it
seems, comes an absence of antiwar
energy as well. The newly disillusioned
America of 1971 wanted withdrawal
from Vietnam and got it within a few
short years; the more cynical America
of 2019 has favored withdrawal from
Afghanistan for almost a decade with-
out getting it.
This disconnect has no doubt con-
tributed something to the instability of
American politics; both Barack Obama
and Donald Trump, in their different
ways, drew on forever-war fatigue in
their winning presidential runs. But
the permanence of the policy is the
more remarkable fact: American disil-
lusionment with the war in Afghani-
stan has been substantial and stable
since 2012, and yet without much do-
mestic controversy, or even much
attention, thousands of American
soldiers are still there.
Admittedly, U.S. troop presence has
declined substantially since the
Obama-era surge of troops and the
much smaller early-Trump-administra-
tion troop increase. So it’s possible that
in a Trump second term or a Bernie
Sanders presidency it will finally trace
a slow descent to zero — with or with-
out a deal of some sort with the Taliban
— and after 20 years or so we’ll finally
discover that even endless wars can
end.
But it’s also possible that in cutting
troop numbers the Pentagon is groping
toward sustainability rather than an
endpoint — toward some figure that’s
How to fix Pakistan’s crashing economy
MIAN, FROM PAGE 12
producers who enjoy high government-
guaranteed returns in dollars only to
run grossly inefficient plants.
It is even harder to find courageous
leadership when it comes to dealing
with religious extremists. One would
have hoped that decades of suffering at
the hands of religious extremism
would convince at least one govern-
ment or major political party to roll
back the purveyors of hate. But no one
seems interested. Or perhaps no one
has enough courage.
All major political parties continue to
fraternize with the merchants of hate
whenever it politically suits them, thus
empowering the extremists further.
Last month, a cleric who specializes in
John and Molly Chester at Apricot Lane Farms, 40 miles north of Los Angeles.
Alan’s idea of a ‘perfect harmony’ is
even supposed to look like,” Mr. Chester
laments midway through the film.
“Because every step we take to improve
our land seems to just create the perfect
habitat for the next pest.”
Nevertheless, we understand from
the beginning that all will be well with
this little patch of abundant life. From
the cheerful background music in the
opening credits to the animated se-
quences that mimic the illustrations in
children’s books, this is visual storytell-
ing designed to reassure. The message
is gentle but insistent: The earth may be
going to hell in a handbasket, but there
are still ways to undo the damage we’ve
done.
“The Biggest Little Farm” is a balm
for the weary soul. I know because I’ve
watched it four times already — twice
last summer at the Belcourt, Nashville’s
historic theater, and twice more this fall,
after it became available to watch at
home. Seeing that dead land come back
to vibrant life gives me hope, even as
news about the environment gets worse
and worse and worse.
deemed sufficient to manage stale-
mate, to preserve certain American
objectives and prevent the embarrass-
ment of real defeat.
In that case, despite the similar
pattern of deception and denial, Af-
ghanistan could represent something
very different from the Vietnam expe-
rience. Vietnam proved that despite a
certain amount of patriotic naïveté,
Americans ultimately wouldn’t put up
with a seemingly unwinnable war
founded on lies and self-delusion. But
Afghanistan may yet prove that given
an all-volunteer military, the right
The Wash-
amount of cynical
detachment at
home and a low
ington Post’s
reporting
should be
shocking, but
in the current
enough casualty
rate in the theater
itself, Americans
will accept a war
where there is no
environment
it’s hard to
imagine any
reader actually
prospect for vic-
tory, and no clear
objective save the
permanent post-
ponement of de-
being shocked. feat. More even
than America’s
Indochina debacle,
it could bury George Patton’s dictum
about our addiction to victory, our
contempt for defeat, by proving that
21st-century Americans have learned
to swallow stalemate.
In which case the documents pub-
lished by The Post will tell a story of
how policymakers lied their way not
toward a Vietnam-style debacle but
through a strategic transition — one
which, when complete, won’t require
quite so much official lying, because
nobody will even be paying attention
anymore.
Seen in this sort of hypothetical
hindsight, the first 10 years of the
spewing hate against minorities
marched on Islamabad with his follow-
ers to put pressure on the government.
As he rallied his crowd with dog whis-
tles and extremist rhetoric, the leader-
ship of Pakistan’s two main opposition
parties, the Pakistan People’s Party
and the Pakistan Muslim League-
Nawaz, stood next to him in solidarity.
The ruling political party, Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaf, was no different when
it was in the opposition.
This is Pakistan’s ultimate dilemma.
It takes courage to put principles
above petty political advantages, to
stand firm against vested interests and
to openly call out religious bigotry
when you see it.
Prime Minister Khan was known for
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 13
opinion
The fury
collapse of agriculture itself.
I ran into Ms. Little at the Southern
in France
Festival of Books in October and asked HAMBURGER, FROM PAGE 11
her if she’d seen the film. She had and Marche party has few footholds in city
said she had some thoughts. We made government, municipal elections in
plans to meet for coffee a few weeks March may be an opportunity to try
later. I felt a lot better after our conver- out such an innovative coalition be-
sation. For Ms. Little, it turns out, the tween leftists and greens. Such a strat-
biodynamic approach taken by the egy may even spell a comeback for
Chesters is not an anachronism that has Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, a mem-
no place in a bigger, hotter world. She ber of France’s struggling Socialist
calls it the “microcosm of an optimally Party once thought to be on her way
functioning food system, an example of out but who is now leading Mr. Ma-
ecosystems functioning at their best.” cron’s preferred candidate after gain-
True, it’s not replicable on a scale that ing support from some members of the
will feed 10 billion people affordably, and Green Party.
it’s not accessible — either geographi- Like the Yellow Vest protests, the
cally or financially — to the vast major- strike has revealed a broad rejection of
ity of people. But that’s not really the “Macron’s world” and a willingness of
point. What the Chesters have learned ordinary people to enter the political
is how to integrate all the different kinds arena to oppose it. If the French left
of food production with one another, and has any chance of building on the
with the specific environmental condi- strike’s momentum, it will have to pose
tions of the farm’s location, in a way that an alternative vision of the world. This
is very nearly self-sustaining: “And all will mean not only calling to preserve
of that is crucial knowledge that we social protections but also coming up
need to apply to bigger food-systems with a new message of what these
production,” Ms. Little says. protections will look like in an envi-
The use of crop diversity and compan- ronmentally sustainable future. It will
ion planting to enrich the soil and man- mean not only standing at the head of
age pests, for example, is essential to demonstrations with union leaders but
reducing the need for chemical fertiliz- also speaking directly to ordinary
CHRIS PIZZELLO/INVISION, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
ers and chemical insecticides, though people at the back of the line who have
most industrial farms still rely on a long been turned off by politics. As it
mono-cropping approach to food pro- stands today, the left is politically weak
duction. In California, however, which is at the national level, but it has an
The same week I saw “The Biggest 10 billion in 2050, never mind the in- already being ravaged by the heat and opportunity to begin building a new
Little Farm” for the first time, I also creasing problems with heat, drought, drought of climate change, large-scale coalition.
heard the environmental journalist flooding, crop diseases and invasive farmers are beginning to integrate crop It is worth remembering that even
Amanda Little talk about her new book, species that farmers will increasingly diversity into their operations. And after his own defeat during the 1995
“The Fate of Food,” at Parnassus Books. face in the years to come. there are other biodynamic practices strikes, Mr. Chirac overwhelmingly
Much of “The Fate of Food” concerns “The Fate of Food” explores a variety that can be applied by much larger won re-election in a 2002 contest
what Ms. Little of options for responding to the disrup- farms and still produce food on a scale against Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-
calls a “third way” tions in the food chain that climate that will feed a growing world afford- Marie. Whether or not the strikes can
I still believe
for approaching change is already bringing, and will ably. force concessions from the govern-
that living food production in continue to bring, by using every inno- The value of “The Biggest Little ment, Mr. Macron’s opponents will
gently on “a bigger, hotter, vative tool available to feed a growing Farm” is not merely in the way it warms have to keep the focus on an alterna-
the land will smarter world,” as population without exacerbating the our hearts with its adorable cast of tive vision to improve ordinary peo-
produce an the book’s subtitle role agriculture itself plays in warming animal characters (the sick mama pig, ple’s economic well-being.
ecological puts it. the planet: Agriculture, along with the the orphaned lamb, the lonely rooster) Mr. Macron will hope to move past
paradise. I also The basic argu- deforestation that accompanies it, and its idealistic farmers, determined to the strike and focus the national de-
fear the global ment of this fasci- currently accounts for roughly one- do the right thing under very difficult bate on issues of immigration, culture
nating book is that third of greenhouse gas emissions. conditions. Its value is in what it teaches and national identity, where he be-
collapse of
industrial-scale For months, I thought about these us about both moral responsibility and lieves he can highlight contrasts be-
agriculture. agricultural prac- two approaches to farming — the na- ecological possibility. “The Biggest tween himself and Ms. Le Pen. If the
tices aren’t envi- ture-responsive biodynamic tactics of Little Farm,” in other words, is not the French left fails to start a new political
ronmentally sus- “The Biggest Little Farm” and some of film equivalent of a children’s picture conversation, offering a viable alterna-
tainable, but returning wholesale to the the very high-tech approaches to food book or a fairy tale. It’s a parable. tive to the center and the far right,
sustainable ways of the past isn’t feasi- production in “The Fate of Food” — and even a defeated Mr. Macron may well
ble either. There are just too many of us tried to reconcile what I want to believe MARGARET RENKL covers flora, fauna, coast on to re-election.
now, and most of us can’t afford the food with what I truly fear. I want to believe politics and culture in the American
grown by small-scale organic farms. that living gently on the land will al- South. She is the author of the book JACOB HAMBURGER writes on French
Heritage farms will never be able to ways result in the paradise that is “Late Migrations: A Natural History of politics and is an editor at Tocqueville
feed an estimated population of nearly Apricot Lane Farms. I fear the global Love and Loss.” 21, a blog on contemporary democracy.
Afghanistan War represented a last
experiment in conventional war, na-
tion-building, idealistic democracy
promotion . . . but in the second dec-
ade, the conflict gradually became just
the largest example of the endlessly
multiplying, low-casualty police ac-
tions that have defined America’s
grand strategy under Obama and now
Trump.
And this strategy, for all its possible
defects, has one obvious advantage for
national security policymakers: It
frustrates popular opposition by never
supplying a strong reason — whether
in mass casualties or clear military
defeats — for antiwar sentiment to
leave the rightward and leftward
Whatever happens
fringes and become a major popular
concern.
As Samuel Moyn of Yale Law School
put it last year in a perceptive essay
for The New Republic, the more “con-
next, we’ll help you
tained” American warfare becomes —
the more America’s wars look like
Afghanistan in 2019, rather than Af-
ghanistan in 2010, Iraq in 2005 or
Vietnam in 1968 — “the more likely it is
make sense of it.
that the war will continue indefinitely.”
You can agree with this diagnosis
without fully embracing antiwar an- Newspaper subscription offer:
guish or despair. As with other features
of U.S. decadence, a Pax Americana
sustained by indefinite police actions,
Save 66% for three months.
indefinitely frozen conflicts and indefi-
nite postponements of defeat is hardly
the worst geopolitical scenario imagi-
nable, and definitely preferable to In unpredictable times, you need journalism that cuts through
certain bloodier alternatives.
But there is still something unusual- the noise to deliver the facts. A subscription to The New York
ly grim about reading The Post’s cata-
log of the official deceptions that have
Times International Edition gives you uncompromising reporting
carried us through 18 years in Afghani- that deepens your understanding of the issues that matter,
stan, and then considering the possibil-
ity that it could be years, decades, even and includes unlimited access to NYTimes.com and apps for
generations before the last American smartphone and tablet.
soldier finally dies for these mistakes.
Order the International Edition today at
his fearless play on the cricket field as
if he were a “cornered tiger.” Pakistan
nytimes.com/discover
needs similar spirit in the political field
today as its politicians have unfortu-
nately developed a habit of conniving
with vested interests and those who
trade in religious hatred. Pakistan will
change only when its leadership devel-
ops the courage to act otherwise. For
the sake of Pakistan’s children, may
that day come soon.
ATIF MIAN is John H. Laporte Jr. Class of
1967 Professor of Economics, Public
Policy and Finance at Princeton Uni-
versity and the co-author of “House of Offer expires December 31, 2019 and is valid for new subscribers only. This offer is not available in all markets and hand
Debt: How They (and You) Caused the delivery is subject to confirmation by local distributors. Smartphone and tablet apps are not supported on all devices.
Great Recession, and How We Can
Prevent It From Happening Again.”

14 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
science
Why are these foxes tame?
A new paper questions
if the animals in a famous
experiment were ever wild
BY JAMES GORMAN
In the 1950s, Dmitri K. Belyaev began
one of the most famous experiments in
animal domestication. Dr. Belyaev, a ge-
neticist at the Institute of Cytology and
Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, selec-
tively bred foxes that he had acquired
from a fur farm, concentrating only on
reducing their fear of humans.
Within 10 generations, he wrote in
1979, “Like dogs, these foxes seek con-
tact with familiar persons, tend to get
close to them, and lick their hands and
faces.”
In a new paper in the journal Trends
in Ecology and Evolution, several scien-
tists have challenged a common inter-
pretation of Dr. Belyaev’s results, and
have questioned whether scientists who
study domestication have any common
understanding of what the word means.
The authors don’t dispute the essence
of Dr. Belyaev’s work: the selection for
tameness, which is regarded as pro-
foundly important in exploring the ge-
netics and evolution of behavior.
But that wasn’t all that Dr. Belyaev
discovered. His foxes also showed phys-
ical changes, like piebald coats and
floppy ears — characteristics shared by
dogs, cows and other domesticated ani-
mals.
Dr. Belyaev and the researchers who
followed up his work suggested, as had
Charles Darwin before them, that there
might be a collection of physical traits
that go along with tameness called do-
mestication syndrome.
The authors of the new paper argue
that this idea is undermined by an in-
triguing subchapter in the long history
of the fur trade in Canada. The reaction
to that criticism from other scientists
has been mixed, reflecting contentious
but cordial disagreements about what
domestication is and how it happens.
The average pet lover may know the
story of the foxes from a book by Lee
Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut, who
collaborated with Dr. Belyaev, called
“How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog).”
Far fewer people probably know
about the development of fox farming on
Prince Edward Island, Canada’s small-
est province. This history is buried in
plain sight, you might say, since you can
learn about it easily if you visit the Inter-
national Fox Museum and Hall of Fame
on the island.
The museum is not a common desti-
nation for evolutionary biologists who
specialize in domestication. But one of
them did visit back in 2015, and he was
taken aback.
The late Raymond Coppinger, a biolo-
gist at Hampshire College in Massachu-
setts who was a major contributor to the
study of dog evolution, toured the mu-
seum and returned full of questions.
“He saw these pictures of spotted
foxes, and they looked just like the
Belyaev foxes,” recalled Kathryn Lord,
an animal behaviorist at the Broad Insti-
tute in Cambridge, Mass., and the first
author of the new paper. Dr. Coppinger
was her mentor at Hampshire College.
There have been academic reports as
well, suggesting that the Russian foxes
hailed from Prince Edward Island, Dr.
Lord said: “Different pieces of the story
were all over, but nobody had put it to-
gether.”
Rewriting the script on same-sex animal behavior
Researchers suggest
cultural ideas may have
led to faulty assumptions
BY ASHER ELBEIN
Male field crickets perform mating
songs and dances for each other. Female
Japanese macaque monkeys pair off
into temporary but exclusive sexual
partnerships. Pairs of male box crabs
occasionally indulge in days-long mara-
thon sex sessions.
Comparable arrangements can be
found in damselflies, Humboldt squid,
garter snakes, penguins and cattle. In
fact over 1,500 species across most ma-
jor animal families have been observed
engaging in sexual activity with individ-
uals of the same sex. But the origins of
such same-sex sexual behavior have
long puzzled evolutionary biologists.
How could this behavior evolve and per-
sist in so many lineages, even when it
doesn’t directly aid reproduction?
That very question may be the wrong
one to ask, a group of researchers argue
in a study published last month in Na-
ture Ecology and Evolution, seeking to
flip the underlying assumptions of a
whole wing of biology.
“The expectation has been that same-
sex sexual behavior evolved in different
species independently, against this de-
fault background of heterosexual sex,”
says Ambika Kamath, a researcher at
the University of California, Berkeley,
and a co-author of the study. “And what
we’re saying is that baseline isn’t neces-
sarily the right baseline.”
Instead, the researchers suggest that
same-sex behavior is bound up in the
very origins of animal sex. It hasn’t had
to continually re-evolve: It’s always
been there.
Dmitri K.Belyaev with domesticated foxes, above, in March 1984. Dr. Belyaev claimed to
have bred foxes that were tame and had no fear of humans. Top, A silver fox named
Eblis at the Russian institute that Dr. Belyaev directed from 1959 to 1985.
As it turned out, genetic tests showed
that Dr. Belyaev’s foxes did have roots in
eastern Canada, which almost certainly
meant Prince Edward Island. So the
question bothering Dr. Coppinger and
Dr. Lord was this: How much domesti-
cation had gone on before the famous
Evolutionary biologists have long
pondered same-sex behavior, often de-
scribing it as a “Darwinian paradox.”
Paul Vasey, an expert on nonconceptive
sexuality at the University of Leth-
bridge in Alberta, who did not partici-
pate in the study, says one school of
thought held that such behaviors were-
n’t primarily sexual, instead relating to
dominance or grooming.
Other researchers have suggested
that it persists in some species because
it helps social animals maintain commu-
nities, said Max Lambert, a biologist at
Berkeley and a co-author of the study.
Still others suggested that examples of
same-sex behavior were “practice” for
reproductive sex, or even cases of mis-
taken identity. Most agreed that it had to
have some sort of evolutionary benefit
to make up for the presumed costs of
nonreproductive sexual behavior.
None of these explanations satisfied
Julia Monk, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale
and the study’s lead author.
“The idea that same-sex sexual be-
havior had to be justified at all seemed
like a perspective of dominant cultural
norms rather than a more holistic view
of the actual biology,” she said. “I really
disagreed with some of the ways I saw
that discussion framed.”
Instead of wondering why same-sex
behavior had independently evolved in
so many species, Ms. Monk and her col-
leagues suggest that it may have been
present in the oldest parts of the animal
family tree. The earliest sexually repro-
ducing animals may have mated with
any other individual they came across,
regardless of sex. Such reproductive
strategies are still practiced today by
hermaphroditic species, like snails, and
species that don’t appear to differenti-
ate, like sea urchins.
Over time, Ms. Monk said, sexual sig-
nals evolved — different sizes, colors,
SPUTNIK, VIA ALAMY
fox experiment began?
She got the attention of Elinor Karls-
son, a geneticist at the Broad Institute in
whose lab Dr. Lord worked. And she
drew in Greger Larson, a specialist in
ancient canine DNA at the University of
Oxford in England, who is deeply in-
A pair of male king penguins in the Berlin Zoo in August. The one on the right was incubating an egg.
anatomical features and behaviors — al-
lowing different sexes to more accu-
rately target each other for reproduc-
tion. But same-sex behavior continued
in some organisms, leading to diverse
sexual behaviors and strategies across
the animal kingdom. And while same-
sex behavior may grant some evolution-
ary benefits, an ancient origin would
mean those benefits weren’t required
for it to exist.
But how has same-sex behavior stuck
around? The answer may be that such
behaviors aren’t as evolutionarily costly
as assumed. Traditionally, Ms. Monk
said, any mating behavior that doesn’t
volved in questions of dog evolution and
domestication. They began to refine the
work Dr. Lord and Dr. Coppinger had al-
ready done.
Dr. Belyaev had plainly stated that his
foxes were from farmed stock. So some
domestication must have occurred be-
fore his experiment, said Anna
Kukekova, a geneticist at the University
of Illinois who researches the genetics of
Russian foxes and has collaborated with
Dr. Trut.
Dr. Belyaev recognized that fur farm-
ers would have chosen animals that
were at least somewhat tolerant of peo-
ple, Dr. Kukekova said. But Dr. Belyaev
also described his foxes as mostly un-
comfortable with people, virtually wild
animals. Now, Dr. Lord and her col-
leagues suggest otherwise.
Fox-farming pioneers on Prince Ed-
ward Island began by breeding wild-
caught black foxes, also called silver
foxes, a color variant of the red fox
(Vulpes vulpes) common all over the
world.
They were bred mainly for the look of
the pelts. In 1910, one company sold 25
skins for $34,649.50, according to “Silver
Fox Odyssey: History of the Canadian
Silver Fox Industry.”
Then breeding stock became more
profitable. “Old proven breeders of good
quality were valued during the last
months of 1912 at from $18,000 to
$25,000 a pair,” according to a 1913 re-
port by the Canadian government
quoted in “Silver Fox Odyssey.” Eventu-
ally the industry declined, and there are
only traces of it remaining.
The museum on Prince Edward Is-
land has old photographs that show
produce young is seen as a waste. But
animal behavior often doesn’t fit neatly
into an economic accounting of costs
and benefits.
Mating attempts between different
sexes don’t always efficiently lead to off-
spring either, Dr. Kamath said — mating
attempts can be rebuffed, conception
may not occur and clutches or young
may not survive. These are normal hic-
cups in population-level reproduction,
and the team predicts that the costs of
same-sex behavior aren’t likely to be
any greater.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to as-
sume that at some early stage of animal
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
ARTYOM GEODAKYAN/TASS, VIA GETTY IMAGES
foxes looking very comfortable with hu-
man beings. And as Dr. Lord took a deep
dive into fox-farming history, she found
other sources suggesting that the ani-
mals were already somewhat domesti-
cated, including “The Black Fox Maga-
zine,” a publication for people who
hoped to make their fortune raising
foxes for their pelts.
The magazine offers a glimpse into a
bygone world. For example, an article
by F.E. Muzzy in the January 1921 issue
described the 1921 International Fox
Show in Montreal. Mr. Muzzy wrote that
one of the island’s fox industry bigwigs,
Breeding for domestication
brought about changes like
floppy ears, spotted coats and
differences in tail carriage.
Leo Frank, brought a pair of tame foxes
to town, and not only walked them on
leashes but took them to a dance “where
the girls did the fox trot with these foxes
around their necks.”
Hearsay, of course, but a good story,
given the other evidence.
Dr. Belyaev’s claims in his landmark
article were twofold. One, he had shown
how quickly one could select for tame-
ness and tolerance of human beings.
The second was that breeding, or select-
ing for lack of fear in the presence of hu-
mans, also had brought about other
changes, like floppy ears, spotted coats
and differences in tail carriage.
He didn’t use the term, but that suite
of physical traits came to be known as
domestication syndrome. And it was
OMER MESSINGER/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK
evolution mating was more indiscrimi-
nate and that this is part of the evolu-
tionary heritage of higher animals,” Dr.
Vasey said of the study. “Occasional
same-sex sexual behavior is not particu-
larly difficult to accommodate within an
evolutionary framework when such be-
havior is performed within the larger
context of different-sex sexual behav-
ior.”
An issue with past research in the
field, Dr. Lambert said, is that unexam-
ined cultural projections — largely by
the white heterosexual men who have
dominated the field — resulted in many
researchers failing to accurately docu-
..
thought to cross species, showing up in
cows and goats, for example, as well as
foxes.
The idea of domestication syndrome,
said Dr. Larson, has been appealing but
not thoroughly examined. He, Dr. Lord
and their colleagues looked at 10 papers
that defined domestication syndrome
and found that there wasn’t one trait
that was included in all the definitions.
“What the hell are we even talking about
here?” he asked.
The authors argue that the foxes al-
ready showed some of the physical
traits that Dr. Belyaev described by the
time he got them. His breeding may,
however have affected how frequently
the traits appeared.
The researchers also note that differ-
ent species show different combinations
of the traits that were proposed to be in
the syndrome.
“The paper provides the final nail in
the coffin to the idea of a universal set of
traits characterizing all domesticated
animals,” said Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villa-
gra, a professor of paleobiology at the
University of Zurich who studies domes-
tication and was not involved in the
study.
But that was not surprising, he added,
given other research showing varying
processes of domestication. He appreci-
ated “the critical look at the fox experi-
ment, because I also think its value has
been overestimated.”
Dr. Kukekova said she found that cri-
tique oversimplified, although she sym-
pathized: “I completely understand
their frustration with domestication
syndrome.”
But “many aspects of the fox domesti-
cation experiment were not presented
correctly,” she added.
Dr. Belyaev created a pattern of be-
havior totally different from that of the
farmed foxes he began with, Dr.
Kukekova said. The old photographs of
the friendly foxes were not scientific evi-
dence, she added, and there was no evi-
dence that the foxes actively sought out
human interaction, as Dr. Belyaev’s did.
She cautioned, however, that there is
an enormous difference between a do-
mesticated animal and a pet. The foxes
“are domesticated, but they are not
pets,” she said.
Adam Wilkins, a biologist at Hum-
boldt University in Berlin, found the
new paper “deeply flawed.” In a letter to
the authors, he argued that mammals do
share a suite of physical characteristics
that go along with tameness.
Dr. Wilkins has argued that mutations
in cells in a part of the embryo called the
neural crest are linked to behavioral and
physical changes.
“The fact that different kinds of do-
mesticated animals have somewhat dif-
ferent sets of the affected traits is per-
fectly consistent with the idea of a ‘syn-
drome,’ ” he wrote in an email.
Asked if there was a working defini-
tion of domestication, Dr. Sánchez-Villa-
gra replied, “There are as many as there
are authors who have provided a defini-
tion.”
Despite their differences, the spirit of
collaboration and scientific discourse
among researchers in the quite small
field of canine evolution might best be
captured by Dr. Wilkins at the end of his
letter.
He tempered his criticisms with a
friendly note, concluding, “We clearly
share a strong interest in the subject and
I suspect a love of dogs. Here, I attach a
picture of my personal favorite domesti-
cated animal, my dog Wolfie.”
ment what they were seeing.
“We’re missing so many observations
of sexual behaviors because the people
looking at them thought that it must
have been an abnormality, based on a
preconceived notion of how the world
should work,” Dr. Lambert said.
While cultural ideas can affect our ob-
servations of biology, Dr. Kamath said,
biology doesn’t necessarily tell us any-
thing clear about culture. The team was
careful not to draw explicit links to any
aspects of human culture, including
L.G.B.T.Q. communities.
“We do not want our work to be lever-
aged in harmful ways, and we’ve done
our best to avoid that in the way that
we’ve constructed the paper itself,” she
said.
Ms. Monk and her colleagues say that
explicitly flipping the cultural assump-
tions — in this case by conducting the
study with researchers who self-identify
as queer, and bringing in outside disci-
plines like social science — can yield bet-
ter research.
“It’s important for us as scientists to
recognize that while we’d love to think
about what we do as objective, it might
be really framed by our culture and con-
text,” Ms. Monk said.
There are still a lot of questions left to
be answered, and the team hopes that
the study will inspire more research on
the prevalence of same-sex behavior
across the animal kingdom and its po-
tential costs and benefits. When it
comes to opening up new avenues of re-
search, Ms. Monk said, sometimes it’s as
simple as looking at a place where peo-
ple are asking “why,” and instead asking
“why not?”
“Sometimes there’s a really exclusive
view of evolutionary fitness and we can
have a more inclusive view,” she said.
“Variation is the baseline, and that base-
line persists to this day.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Sports
A champion’s appointment with death
VERVOORT, FROM PAGE 1
Times — the photographer Lynsey Ad-
dario and I — began spending time with
Vervoort to chronicle the end of her life,
to observe a top athlete taking control of
her destiny in an extraordinary fashion.
Being around her during that time
sometimes felt like one extended, indefi-
nite goodbye.
She had come close to scheduling her
euthanasia on multiple occasions, but
had always switched course, found a
reason to put it off. Something would
come up. Conflicts would emerge. There
would be another date to look forward
to, another reason to live.
This time, Vervoort, 40, seemed re-
solved. Over the previous week, she had
been discussing the procedure with a
degree of clarity and seriousness that
those who knew her best admitted they
did not often see.
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said of
her death. “Looking forward finally to
rest my mind, finally have no pain.” She
paused. “Everything I hate will be over.”
THE PAIN
Paralympic athletes rarely enjoy any-
thing close to mainstream renown, but
Vervoort captivated Belgian sports fans
with her displays of power on the track
and charmed them with her unadulter-
ated screams of elation beyond the fin-
ish line.
Her colorful personality helped, too —
as did the presence of her loyal sidekick,
a service dog named Zenn.
Soon, those fans learned of the melan-
cholic story behind her competitive suc-
cess, and of the debilitating hardships
that lay ahead.
What had begun for Vervoort as a
happy childhood — loving parents, a
younger sister, long days playing sports
on a dead-end street — had grown com-
plicated by her teen years, when the
pain that plagued her for the rest of her
life first appeared. It emerged initially
as a tingling in her feet. The tingling
over the years turned to pain, smolder-
ing up her legs, sapping their strength.
She spent her teens on crutches. At 20,
she was in a wheelchair.
Doctors were bewildered. They at-
tached labels to her worsening condition
— reflex sympathetic dystrophy, pro-
gressive tetraplegia — and noticed a de-
formity between her fifth and sixth cer-
vical vertebrae.
But they could never fully understand
why the pain had started, or why her
eyesight was failing, or why she was
having intermittent seizures. All the
while her pain grew, often feeling like a
muscle cramp coursing through her en-
tire body.
With her childhood dreams of becom-
ing a teacher derailed by her precarious
health and the uncertainty that accom-
panied it, Vervoort, by her 20s, had
come to find some meaning in sports:
wheelchair basketball, scuba diving,
triathlons. But the constant pain and
fear eventually plunged her into deep
depression. At age 29, she determined
that her disease was too heavy a burden
to bear. She began hoarding pills at
home. That was how she would end
things, she thought.
As a last resort, a psychiatrist sug-
gested she speak to Dr. Wim Distel-
mans, the leading advocate for euthana-
sia in Belgium.
The right to end one’s life with the as-
sistance of a doctor has been legal in the
country since 2002, available to patients
who exhibit a “hopeless” medical condi-
tion with “unbearable” suffering, includ-
ing mental illnesses or cognitive dis-
orders. No country has more liberal
laws for doctor-assisted death than Bel-
gium, a country of 11 million people,
where 2,357 patients underwent eutha-
nasia in 2018.
And even as the choice to undergo eu-
thanasia had become more common in
Belgium, there were still many, includ-
ing Vervoort’s parents, who were philo-
sophically uncomfortable with it.
But she kept the appointment with Dr.
Distelmans, and he, after a close exami-
nation, granted her the preliminary ap-
proval to end her life. He added, though,
that she did not quite seem ready to fol-
low through with it.
She agreed.
“I just wanted to have the paper in my
hands for when the time comes that it’s
too much for me, when, day and night,
someone has to take care of me, when I
Above, Marieke Vervoort calling out to a home health care nurse for emergency pain management; top left, Vervoort called her hometown, Diest, Belgium, “a small but beautiful
place”; top right, Vervoort with Dr. Wim Distelmans, the leading advocate for euthanasia in Belgium; below, friends saying their final goodbyes at a hospital in Leuven, Belgium.
have too much pain,” she said in one of a
series of conversations we had over
three years of reporting. “I don’t want to
live that way.”
TAKING CONTROL
In Vervoort’s telling, the euthanasia pa-
pers allowed her to wrest back some
control of her life. She no longer feared
death because she could hold it in her
hands at any time.
“Because of those papers,” she said, “I
started to live again.”
Unencumbered by old anxieties, she
produced an extended run of excellence
in her small corner of wheelchair sports.
Along with the gold medal she won at
the 2012 Paralympics in London, she
took home a silver in the 200 meters.
After that came three gold medals at
the 2015 world championships in Doha,
Qatar, and then two more medals — a sil-
ver in the 400 and a bronze in the 100 —
at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janei-
ro.
The victories changed her life. Sud-
denly in the spotlight, she blossomed.
A year after the London Games, she
was named a Grand Officer of the Order
of the Crown by King Philippe, one of
Belgium’s highest honors. She gave mo-
tivational speeches to corporate audi-
ences and picked up sponsors. One of
them delivered meals to her home. An-
other gave her a car with her picture on
the side. She went on shopping sprees at
the Belgian headquarters of Nike.
I first contacted Vervoort in the fall of
2016, a few months after she returned
home from Rio, and only a few weeks af-
ter I moved to Berlin as The Times’s Eu-
ropean sports correspondent. An email
turned into a phone call, which quickly
turned into a trip to see her in Diest. She
was eager to share her story. Over the
ensuing three years, she allowed
Lynsey, our photographer, and me to
document the final chapter of her life.
Eventually, as she told us on many oc-
casions, she came to trust us. She made
clear over time that she wanted people
to see the full picture of her life, the pain
and sadness and toil hidden behind the
inspirational images and motivational
talks, the profound loneliness beneath
the jokes and laughter.
On one night that lingers in my memo-
ry, I sat in her apartment as she lit two
dozen candles and brought out packs of
premade sandwiches. Vervoort had
hosted a parade of visitors throughout
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 15
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYNSEY ADDARIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
the afternoon — a local journalist,
nurses, her parents — and now, nearly
alone, she was trying to soothe herself.
We sat on her couch and talked about
her past relationships: how she began
dating women when she was 30, how
those relationships had fallen apart, and
her belief that, perhaps, she was happier
without a companion.
“I’m alone,” she said, matter-of-factly,
“but I like it.”
DESCENT
The Rio Games brought her a new rush
of attention, and it was obvious that she
enjoyed it.
She welcomed every interview, every
television and radio appearance. She be-
came an object of fascination in the Bel-
gian tabloid press and was trailed by a
documentary filmmaker. She posted
minute details about her life on a Face-
book page followed by tens of thousands
of people and talked openly about her
desire to have a museum built to memo-
rialize her life.
The mesmerizing specter of mortality
hung over everything, creating a ten-
sion that could not be ignored. Her ce-
lebrity came with a dark twist: The
prospect of her dying by euthanasia
brought her more renown than she ever
imagined, and yet it would, in time,
bring everything to an end. Many ath-
letes endorse shoes or soft drinks; here
was a gold medalist effectively endors-
ing doctor-assisted suicide.
If the Rio Paralympics were a launch-
ing pad for her fame, their aftermath,
her official retirement, would symbolize
a turn toward the dark and inevitable.
The pain intensified. She had long
traveled with a rattling green toolbox of
pills, but by mid-2017 she was openly ad-
dicted to morphine, taking several doses
daily. Her days, once filled with training
and appearances, became a blur of hos-
pital stays, pain treatments and drug-in-
duced naps.
“This is a difficult period for her,” her
father, Jos, said in late 2017. “Last year,
she had sports. Now, most of the time,
when we see her at her house, she’s ly-
ing down on the couch, sleeping.”
By the time she returned from a
bucket-list trip to Japan in the spring of
2017 — which had been paid for by a ra-
dio station that had been tracking her
story — Vervoort was relying heavily on
a circle of friends who were beginning to
function more like caretakers. “It was al-
ways bad; now, it’s very, very bad,” said
Patricia Doms, one of several friends
who drove Vervoort around town after
she grew too weak to do it herself. “It’s
hard to see as her friend.”
Those closest to Vervoort could see
her eyes sag under the weight of the
drugs she took to ease her pain. They
heard her speech slur, filled in the gaps
when she would forget entire conversa-
tions, sat patiently when she nodded off
midsentence.
Her parents cried at seeing her suffer.
But they also lived in fear of receiving a
telephone call that something had hap-
pened to her, or that she had made con-
crete plans, at last, to undergo the pro-
cedure. Their stance on euthanasia be-
came more complicated as their daugh-
ter inched toward it.
“I’m looking forward to it.
Looking forward finally to rest
my mind, finally have no pain.
Everything I hate will be over.”
“We don’t support it,” Jos Vervoort
said, “but we understand it.”
They were among those who held out
hope that she would change her mind.
She tried picking up new hobbies. She
spent time with friends, peppering them
with sophomoric jokes, filling the spaces
around her with laughter.
But increasingly the fundamental de-
mands of daily life made her weary. She
fell unconscious at a child’s birthday
party in late 2017 and left feeling help-
less and embarrassed. She sneered at
people who accused her of exaggerating
her pain or faking it for publicity.
The Paralympic champion was with-
ering in plain sight.
“I really try to enjoy the little things,”
she said. “But the little things are get-
ting so little.”
By this autumn, it became clear she
was growing impatient. Her doctors
were struggling to coordinate a date,
and she was convinced that they were
finding reasons to stall.
“When they tell me the day,” she said,
“I will be the happiest person on earth.”
THE END
Vervoort convened her so-called good-
bye party at her apartment on short no-
tice for a Saturday in October. Barring a
last-minute postponement, she was
scheduled to die the following Tuesday.
The night of the party, with dozens of
people in her home, Vervoort barely
moved. She wore a loose, orange sweat-
shirt, and her hair — short, spiky and
bleached blond at the height of her ath-
letic career — was matted to her head in
her natural muted brown. She stationed
her wheelchair outside her bedroom,
and one by one her guests crouched
down to meet her eyes and squeeze her
head, whisper into her ear. After the
party, she asked to be returned to the
hospital; the unending stream of vis-
itors and roiling waves of emotion had
become too much.
Three days later, on the Tuesday, her
parents drove her home, this time to die.
They stopped at the pharmacy to pick
up the euthanasia drugs, which by law
the family must purchase itself.
Back at her apartment, another small
group of people gathered to say their
goodbyes, but Vervoort seemed only
partly aware of their presence. She
sought out and held her nephew, Zappa,
her sister’s first child, who was less than
a month old. She had scheduled her
death for after his birth, so that she
could meet him. Then she climbed out of
her wheelchair, lay on her couch and fell
asleep.
When Dr. Distelmans arrived two
hours later, most of the guests were
gone. Vervoort was sipping cava and
munching on Maltesers chocolates, a
guilty pleasure. She offered him one.
Dr. Distelmans and another doctor
wheeled Vervoort into her bedroom,
where pictures of her in her racing days
had been taped to the door, and helped
her into bed.
She spent a final moment with her
parents, her godmother and two of her
best friends.
“Are you sure you want to continue?”
one of the doctors said.
“Yes, I want to continue,” she said.
The time of death was recorded as
8:15 p.m. The doctor touched a stetho-
scope to her skin. The family called the
undertaker.
 ..
16 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

sports

What does Russia’s ban from global sports mean?

BY VICTOR MATHER muted, but fans tried to make up for
the lack of Russian official trappings
Like many such rulings, this week’s by singing Russian folk songs and
decision to ban Russia from interna- wearing gear with messages like “Rus-
tional sports for four years raises more sia in My Heart.” Russians won 17
questions than it answers. For in- medals, two of them gold.
stance, Russia has been banned before,
but its athletes have continued compet- Let’s back up. What did Russia do
ing. Why is that? Let’s try to clear wrong?
away the fog. First, the sports authorities found that
Russia ran a sweeping state-backed
So there won’t be any Russians at the doping program and carried out an
Olympics? elaborate cheating scheme at the 2014
In all likelihood, there will be hundreds Winter Games in Sochi. That led to
of them at the 2020 Summer Games in certain athletes being barred from the
Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Games in 2016 Summer Games and the national
Beijing. The World Anti-Doping Agen- ban at the 2018 Winter Games. Russia
cy’s ruling means Russian teams are was then reinstated on the condition
banned from top international events, that it turn over data about doping. But
but that only tells half the story. Rus- thousands of crucial files from that
sian athletes, provided they can prove data were found to have been deleted
they were not connected to the Rus- or manipulated, leading to the new
sian doping program or linked to any punishments.
of the manipulated data, can be invited
as neutrals to events that Russian So who cheated?
teams are banned from. Russia’s cover-up was so vast that
entire databases, particularly underly-
But what about the ban? ing files known as raw data, have been
Global antidoping leaders agreed so badly compromised that we may
unanimously to banish Russia — the never truly know the identities of
country, the government, its Olympic scores of cheats. Olympic medals may
committee — from international now never be recovered and true
sports. Russia, not Russian athletes. winners of major championships may
So Russia’s flag, name and anthem never be able to celebrate their
will not be allowed at the Tokyo Sum- achievements. The World Anti-Doping
mer Games and other events, but Agency said that as many as 145 sus-
athletes from Russia not implicated in pected cases were impacted, and that
doping can still compete. figure could rise significantly.

So individual Russian athletes will be So why was there not a blanket ban?
there, but not Russian teams? Top international sports figures, such
No, the teams can come, too, though as the International Olympic Commit-
their uniforms can’t say “Russia.” But tee president, Thomas Bach, have
a team of Russian gymnasts or Rus- leaned on WADA not to take the harsh-
sian handball players will be a Russian est step. WADA officials insisted that
team in all but name. And no one MAXIM SHIPENKOV/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK they had to strike a balance between
knows yet what acronym they might Russia’s Olympic committee headquarters in Moscow. Despite a ban imposed by world antidoping officials, Russian athletes are likely to appear at next year’s Tokyo Games. hitting Russia hard but also protecting
come up with. a new generation of clean athletes —
Russia was also banned from the words and sentiments that have been
2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, but Russia is one of several host countries That doesn’t sound exactly like a ban. Does Russia feel that it got off easy? awarded and at the opening cere- expressed by Bach since the earliest
its men’s hockey team played as the for the Euro 2020 tournament. But Some international athletic officials Well, its prime minister, Dmitri mony? days of the scandal. The I.O.C. pro-
“Olympic Athletes From Russia,” or because that is considered a continen- agree. “I am not happy with the deci- Medvedev, said the penalties were a A Russian team will walk into the vides half of WADA’s budget and a
OAR. That team won a gold medal. tal event, not a world championship, or sion we made today,” Linda Helleland “continuation of anti-Russian hysteria,” opening ceremony behind the Olympic number of members of its board.
one open to athletes from all over the of Norway, a vice president of the so possibly not. This will be the third flag, as it did in Pyeongchang, South
Are there any other consequences? world, the ban does not apply there. World Anti-Doping Agency, said on consecutive Olympics with Russians Korea. When a Russian athlete wins a Can Russia appeal the latest penal-
Russian sports and government offi- As for Qatar in 2022, Russia will be Monday. “This was as far as we could competing under a cloud of doping gold medal, the Olympic flag will be ties?
cials will not be able to attend the allowed to compete in the qualification go.” accusations. raised and the Olympic anthem played. Yes, to the Court of Arbitration for
Olympic Games, and Russia suppos- matches for the World Cup as it nor- Travis T. Tygart, the lawyer who is They may be getting used to it. Sport. It is expected to do so. The
edly may not host international events mally would. Should it progress to the chief executive of the United States Medvedev did concede, however, that How did this play out in Pyeongchang Russian government has long insisted
during the ban, but there are going to final tournament in Qatar, the team Anti-Doping Agency, said, “To allow Russia “still has significant problems in 2018? that the cheating was all the work of
be exceptions. would not be allowed an insignia that Russia to escape a complete ban is yet with doping.” Russia sent 168 athletes, not far from renegade doping officials and that
would identify it as being Russian. Its another devastating blow to clean its total of 177 in Vancouver in 2010. (It nothing was “state-sponsored.”
What about the Euro 2020 soccer anthem would not be played before athletes, the integrity of sport and the Without Russia’s flag or anthem, had more in 2014, in Sochi, when it was
tournament or the 2022 World Cup? matches. rule of law.” what happens when medals are host.) Russian athletes were mostly Tariq Panja contributed reporting.

NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1993

GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES

SUDOKU No. 1112

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
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Solution No. 1012
that every row,
column 3x3 box Fill the grids with digits so as not Across 32 [Like magic!] 62 Phrase in an article on 14 15 16

and shaded 3x3 to repeat a digit in any row or grown-up child stars,
column, and so that the digits
  1 Swear 35 Dot follower
box contains perhaps … or a hint to 17 18 19

each of the within each heavily outlined box   5 “America” begins and 36 Cavernous opening this puzzle’s shaded
numbers will produce the target number ends with this 37 Petulant squares 20 21 22 23

1 to 9 exactly shown, by using addition, 10 Greeting card text, 39 Sound of a penny 64 Clip
once. subtraction, multiplication or often dropping? 65 Pandemonium
24 25 26

division, as indicated in the box. 14 Mother of Castor and 42 Map abbr. before
A 4x4 grid will use the digits 66 Dungeons & Dragons 27 28 29 30
For solving tips Pollux 1991
1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
figure
and more puzzles: 15 Rigel’s constellation 44 Garment in Gujarat
www.nytimes.com/
31 32 33 34 35
67 Locale of Charon’s
sudoku
For solving tips and more KenKen
16 Tolstoy heroine 45 “Rats!” ferry
puzzles: www.nytimes.com/
36 37 38 39 40 41
17 Australian wind 46 Word of greeting or 68 Worries
kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@ instrument farewell
69 Travels (about) 42 43 44 45
kenken.com 19 Old story 49 Gently boosted, as
20 Commencement someone’s ego 46 47 48 49 50
Down
KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 21 Pinochle plays 51 “Grease” song with
onomatopoeic lyrics   1 Brand of shoes and
Copyright © 2018 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.
51 52 53
23 It may be checked at a handbags
54 Figure on some
station   2 Target for a 54 55 56 57 58 59
greeting cards
24 Decorative garden phlebotomist
Answers to Previous Puzzles 55 Ltr. accompaniers
element   3 Racetrack ratio 60 61 62 63
56 How seafood may be
27 Build up charges shipped   4 Engage in conflict
64 65 66
30 Impolite onlooker 60 ___ Blanc, highest of   5 Frat.’s counterpart
31 ___ interface the Alps   6 Mafia don, for one 67 68 69

Solution to Dec 10 Puzzle   7 One who’s not “it”

PUZZLE BY JAKE HALPERIN
  8 Penner of the line
G A G A A D D S A P S E “Language is wine 22 Nickname for Louis 37 Put pen to paper 50 Steed stopper
E M I T C R O O K N O O K upon the lips” Armstrong
C A M E O U T S W I N G I N G
38 Wielders of the dark 52 Onetime instant-
  9 Some terminals 25 Fiesta finger food side of the Force messaging app
K I M O L S E N E L S
O N E M P T Y G I V E O F F 10 Brand of cooking 26 Confucian path to 40 Tint
enlightenment 53 École attendee
U S S A R S E N E E spray 41 Contribute
U A M M I N C A A C I T E 11 Line heard from the 27 Ingredient in a 57 Female role in “Young
B B O B E D A N D W E A V E D Bahama Mama 43 ___-mo Frankenstein”
starting line
E R U O I C E E A B Y S S 28 Its members are 45 Carnival fare on a
R E T A D H D P G A 12 Unabridged 58 Thin rope
represented by stars stick
S A H M P O O B A L L A S T 13 “Das Lied von der 59 Members of a flock
S A O C R U D E S P A Erde” composer 29 Reuters or Bloomberg 46 Overwhelms
P U T U P T H E I R D U K E S 33 Cost-controlling W.W. 47 Billy 61 It borders Mex.
18 “L’___ c’est moi”
A R O D B I B L E P E L T (declaration of Louis II org. 48 Their days are 63 Window boxes, for
W I F E S P A T I D L Y XIV) 34 Winter milestone numbered short
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 17

Culture
A weighty musical fixes the jukebox
THEATER REVIEW
Rousing and sincere,
‘Jagged Little Pill’
has a focused fury
BY JESSE GREEN
The problem with most jukebox musi-
cals isn’t the juke, it’s the box. The
tunes are fine, but they rarely match
the container that someone is trying to
jam them into. How could they? Com-
mercial pop and musical theater have
different kinds of tales to tell and dif-
ferent tools for telling them.
So it’s easy to imagine all the ways
“Jagged Little Pill” could have gone
wrong. Based on material from Alanis
Morissette’s 1995 megahit album and
several of its follow-ups, it could have
wound up in a bio-musical straitjacket
or with a story either too light for the
songs’ furious intelligence or too broad
for Broadway.
When I saw “Jagged Little Pill” last
year at the American Repertory The-
ater in Cambridge, Mass., I worried
that it was falling into the “too broad”
category. The script by the “Juno”
screenwriter Diablo Cody deliberately
aimed to incorporate as many pressing
concerns as it could. Rape culture,
racism, addiction, adoption, homopho-
bia, global warming, overparenting
and underparenting were but a few of
the themes dramatized or sometimes
literally put on placards.
Fair enough: We want certain musi-
cals to do serious work. But in the
show’s first incarnation it was often
difficult to discern the central story in
a plot so tangled with issues that it
came to seem like a cantata of discon-
tent.
The great news for “Jagged Little
Pill,” and for Broadway audiences, is
that its creative team, led by the direc-
tor Diane Paulus, did more than just
fiddle with a show that, though blurry,
was already entertaining. The over-
hauled version that opened on Thurs-
day at the Broadhurst Theater is fully
in focus: clear in its priorities, rich in
character, sincere without syrup,
rousing and real. It easily clears the
low bar of jukebox success to stand
alongside the dark original musicals
that have sustained the best hopes of
Broadway in recent years.
And despite its pre-existing songs —
beautifully arranged for the stage by
Tom Kitt — it certainly is original. At
the center of Cody’s story is a wealthy
Connecticut family aptly named
Healy: They have a lot of healing to
do.
Mary Jane (Elizabeth Stanley) is a
brittle tiger mom suppressing secret
trauma; she and her workaholic hus-
band, Steve (Sean Allan Krill), have
grown peevishly distant. Son Nick
(Derek Klena) is a high school senior
bound for Harvard if the myth of his
own godliness doesn’t derail him;
daughter Frankie (Celia Rose Good-
ing) is a 16-year-old firebrand whose
sense of alienation — as a black adopt-
ee in a blindingly white community —
is not just personal but political.
In the course of “Jagged Little Pill,”
the Healys’ habits of denial are shat-
tered by two developments. One is
external: When Nick’s snobby friend
Andrew (Logan Hart) rapes wrong-
side-of-the-tracks Bella (Kathryn
Gallagher) at an alcohol-soaked party,
Nick’s and Frankie’s polar responses
to the assault help split the family.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Elizabeth Stanley, seated, is a seemingly well-adjusted but secretly struggling mother of two in “Jagged Little Pill,” based on the music of Alanis Morissette.

Also helping is the internal pressure
of Mary Jane’s worsening addiction to
Oxycodone, prescribed for pain from a
car accident months before the action.
How her secret, which hides another
one, intersects with those of her
household and community is the big
burden of the ambitious story. And yet
there’s more: A third strand of narra-
tive puts Frankie at the apex of a
romantic triangle with Jo (Lauren
Patten) — a classmate she claims as
her girlfriend — and Phoenix (Antonio
Cipriani), the cute new boy she hooks
up with.
Yes, that’s eight principal charac-
ters, and the main problem with “Jag-
ged Little Pill” in Cambridge was that,
until too late, too many of them were
given nearly equal weight. But thanks
to heavy restructuring of the first act,
there’s now no question that this is
Mary Jane’s story; we learn of her
Top, Celia Rose Gooding, center, in the show, whose book is by Diablo Cody. Above, addiction much sooner and are never
Lauren Patten performing “You Oughta Know,” one of 22 songs in the musical. allowed to lose sight of her for long.
This not only provides a spine for the
show’s various pointy ribs but allows
Stanley, making the most of her meati-
est role to date, to show how a fine
singing actor can deepen pop into
drama.
Though the 22 songs — all with
lyrics by Morissette, most with music
by Morissette and Glenn Ballard — are
as catchy and crunchy as ever, that’s
no easy job. To allow them to serve the
story, Cody is forced to make further
metaphors out of material that was
highly metaphorical in the first place.
This works straightforwardly
enough when rebellious Frankie (in
“All I Really Want”) sings, “My sweat-
er is on backwards and inside out, and
you say, ‘How appropriate’ ” — even if
she’s not wearing a sweater. Or when
Jo, betrayed in love, sings (in the
showstopping “You Oughta Know”),
“It’s not fair to deny me of the cross I
bear that you gave to me.”
It’s no surprise that such lyrics, even
in their awkwardness, sound natural in
these smart teenage characters’
mouths, as do the arch phrasings of
“Ironic” and “That I Would Be Good”;
Morissette was just 19 herself when
she started writing the songs that
eventually became the epochal album.
(All 13 are used here, including “Your
House,” the hidden track; seven num-
bers are from later releases and two
are newly written.)
But when the match isn’t perfect —
as when older characters are forced to
appropriate the same kind of language
to describe problems of an entirely
different life stage — a slight fog rises
between us and their emotions. Luck-
ily, it’s a fog the performers (especially
Stanley, Patten and the heartbreaking
Gallagher) are generally able to dis-
perse with their heat; if I never quite
understood what Mary Jane’s stupen-
dous Act I closer “Forgiven” meant, I
sure knew what she was feeling.
Paulus’s staging — and especially
the yearning, fitful choreography by
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui — helps too. The
show moves swiftly despite its heavy
burdens, with Justin Townsend’s light-
ing (and the tireless dancers) doing
much of the atmospheric work. The
reorganization of scenes and songs,
along with strong cuts taken to second-
ary characters, has not resulted in the
bald patches that afflict so many juke-
box musicals; “Jagged Little Pill”
never feels like a coy concert or a
greatest-hits medley as it threatened
to in Cambridge.
Rather, it feels like a summation: of
our world’s worst ills but also the way
song can summon resistance to them.
That may make “Jagged Little Pill” the
first jukebox musical to truly make
sense of its genre. Joyful and redemp-
tive as it is at times, the show’s
strength comes from the dead serious-
ness of its one presiding voice, filtered
through characters who are more alike
than their shame lets them know.

Better acoustics, yes, but don’t forget the bathrooms

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
A concert hall’s look
and feel will be crucial
elements in a renovation
BY ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Before a concert, the lobby of David
Geffen Hall, the home of the New York
Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, can
bring to mind a big-city train station at
rush hour. It’s hard to know what to do
in the crush of people jammed in front
of the box office. Then you have to wait
in line to go through airport-style
security checkpoints to take the escala-
tor up to the Grand Promenade —
which, with a few paltry refreshment
stands and yet more lines at intermis-
sion, doesn’t feel very grand.
The auditorium — especially the
stage, with its curiously low ceiling and
odd-looking, acoustics-aiding “bongo
drums,” as Philharmonic officials call
them — remains an uninviting place to
attend a concert, nondescript at best.
Many of the seats in the huge shoe box
feel insuperably distant from the play-
ers. The color scheme is a brown that
Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s
president, has taken to describing with
an unkind expletive.
In truth, the much-invoked deficien-
cy of the hall’s acoustics has been
exaggerated. There are many, many
performances — Esa-Pekka Salonen’s
resplendent recent account of Hin-
demith’s “Mathis der Maler” Sym-
phony with the Philharmonic, for one
— at which no one in the audience
could think the acoustics were prob-
lematic. Still, the sound is not ideal.
But it may improve. Last week, the
Philharmonic and Lincoln Center
announced a $550 million project to
“reimagine” Geffen Hall — a long-
promised, often-contentious and much-
delayed goal. Many of the proposed
changes, perhaps the most important
ones, promise enhanced amenities and
revamped public spaces throughout
the hall.
Indeed, “amenities” seems inade-
quate to describe how transformative
the improvements could be. I’d argue
that the physical details of a concert
hall are crucially important for classi-
cal music. With theater and dance,
there’s much to watch and stories to
follow. Many older Broadway theaters
have terrible amenities, as anyone
who’s tried to go to the bathroom at
intermission will know. But you don’t
really care, if you have a seat — any
seat — for “Hamilton.”
But an orchestra doesn’t offer the
same kind of visual stimulation. While
there’s certainly an impressive visual
component to a big ensemble uniting
for a Beethoven or Mahler symphony,
2,700 seats to roughly 2,200, much
closer to the widely agreed-upon sweet
spot for a concert hall’s acoustics.
But that reduction will be just as
important because it will increase the
hall’s intimacy and warmth. The stage
will be moved forward some 25 feet,
and seats will wrap around it. Sight-
lines will improve. Everyone stands to
feel more immersed in the music, as
they do at Walt Disney Concert Hall,
which Ms. Borda opened in her previ-
ous job with the Los Angeles Philhar-
monic.
Geffen Hall’s lobby will double in
size, hopefully reducing congestion;
the designers have pledged to make
the security situation smoother. The
currently wasted northeast corner of
the building will be turned into a “Side-
walk Studio” for educational and com-
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS munity activities, visible from the
An artist’s rendering of David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic at street. The Grand Promenade will be
Lincoln Center, after a $550 million renovation scheduled to begin in 2022. reconfigured, with expanded intermis-
sion seating and food service (and,
therefore, shorter lines). And we are
the drama comes almost entirely from or look of a concert hall affects what promised that most important of
hearing the music. You have to lean in you hear. (Is it a coincidence that so amenities: more bathrooms.
and pay attention, which requires many describe the sound at gilded Thank goodness, a new bistro and
feeling at ease. Anything that makes Carnegie Hall as warm and golden?) bar to the side of the lobby will stay
the experience more intimate and From the plans described by the open after concerts. I’ve been struck
pleasurable helps you immerse your- project’s acoustician, Paul Scarbrough by how enthusiastically the public
self. of the firm Akustiks, there will be responds when, after a concert at
Acoustics are, of course, crucial. notable improvements to the pure Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival
Still, it’s amazing how much the phe- sound in the hall, especially the reso- across the street at Alice Tully Hall,
nomenon of psychoacoustics can come nance of bass frequencies. Seating complimentary wine is offered in its
into play: the idea that the experience capacity will be reduced from around beautifully renovated lobby. People
linger to talk, and even mingle with the
musicians who drop by. This could be
the norm at Geffen Hall, too.
Audiences stand to benefit from the
renovation. Another beneficiary will be
Jaap van Zweden, now in his second
season as the Philharmonic’s music
director. Ms. Borda said she expected
Mr. van Zweden to lead the orchestra
when the hall reopens in March 2024
— which signals the extension of his
current contract, due to end a year
before that.
The announcement of the renovation
happens to have come at a moment
when a series of guest conductors —
Mr. Salonen, Santtu-Matias Rouvali,
Jakub Hrusa and Susanna Malkki
among them, with Gustavo Dudamel to
arrive for two weeks next month —
have appeared with the Philharmonic.
Their performances have sometimes
impressed more than Mr. van Zwe-
den’s.
But the news that he will open the
new hall means that the Philharmonic
is truly committing to Mr. van Zweden,
who will have to lead the orchestra
through two nomadic stretches during
construction. After that, he’ll deserve
our thanks — as will Ms. Borda, who
has suggested that this project will be
the capstone of her career. Music
lovers will owe them both and want to
cheer their success.
Maybe over a drink in the new
bistro.

18 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019
culture
In Italy, measuring ‘the Ferrante effect’
ROME
Novels written by women
are shaking up a deeply
traditional establishment
BY ANNA MOMIGLIANO
In Italy, literary fiction has long been
considered a man’s game. Publishers,
critics and prize committees have dis-
missed books by women as chick lit and
beach reads. They scoffed at Elena Fer-
rante, the author of “My Brilliant
Friend,” as the writer of mere page-turn-
ers.
Then Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels
became an international sensation, sell-
ing over 11 million copies, inspiring an
acclaimed HBO series and cementing
her reputation as the most successful
Italian novelist in years. Her ascent, and
the rediscovery of some of the last cen-
tury’s great Italian female writers, has
encouraged a new wave of women and
shaken the country’s literary establish-
ment. Women here are winning presti-
gious literary prizes, getting translated
and selling copies.
Their achievements have set off a
wider debate in Italy about what consti-
tutes literature in a country where self-
referential virtuosity is often valued
over storytelling, emotional resonance
and issues like sexism or gender roles.
“Once we were more reluctant to
write about certain topics, fearing they
could be labeled as ‘women’s stuff,’ ” said
Veronica Raimo, author of the novel
“The Girl at the Door,” an exploration of
marriage, pregnancy and sexual assault
allegations that was translated into
English this year. “There was this idea
that stories told by women couldn’t be
universal. But that’s changing.”
“We are standing up
for each other, and
calling out the
double standards.”
One author to see the progress first-
hand is Helena Janeczek, who has been
publishing for decades but who last year
became the first woman in 15 years to
win the Premio Strega, the country’s top
literary award.
“That was quite a time gap, wasn’t
it?” she said. “But I wasn’t that sur-
prised. The times are changing.”
The book that won her the award,
published in October in English as “The
Girl With the Leica,” is a historical novel
about the war photographer Gerda
Taro, who was killed in 1937 while docu-
menting the Spanish Civil War with her
more famous boyfriend and colleague,
Robert Capa.
In the past two years, novels by wom-
en have accounted for roughly half of It-
aly’s top 20 best sellers in fiction —
nearly double the percentage from 2017,
according to data released by Infor-
mazioni Editoriali, which surveys sales
in the country’s bookshops.
In interviews, Italian authors, editors,
critics, translators and publishers said
that women have gained extraordinary
attention for their writing. Some call it
“the Ferrante effect.”
“My Brilliant Friend” and the other
Ferrante novels (her latest, “La Vita Bu-
giarda Degli Adulti,” came out in Italian
last month and is slated for publication
in English as “The Lying Life of Adults”
next year) showed that “there is a mar-
ket for fiction by women,” said Daniela
Brogi, a contemporary literature schol-
ar at the University for Foreigners of Si-
ena. “And they also gave literary dignity
to fiction about women.”
Establishment critics were previ-
ously quick to disregard stories about
A detective in the corridors of the mind
BOOK REVIEW
The Great Pretender: The Undercover
Mission That Changed Our Understand-
ing of Madness
By Susannah Cahalan. 382 pages. Grand
Central Publishing. $28.
BY JENNIFER SZALAI
Books about mental illness often re-
flect on how reality is experienced. In
addition to the standard questions —
What do we know, and how do we
know it? — is another layer of inquiry:
What do we know about our own
minds, and what if it isn’t true?
In her first book, “Brain on Fire,”
Susannah Cahalan described her horri-
fying experience of presenting symp-
toms of mental illness that looked like
schizophrenia but turned out to be an
autoimmune disease. She eventually
received the treatment she needed, but
the tortuous ordeal disrupted her
assumptions about the medical profes-
sion and her sense of self.
Her next project promised to be
straightforward by comparison: She
would use her skills as an investigative
journalist to write about somebody
else — a scientist and his pathbreaking
study.
In 1973, the psychologist David
Rosenhan published “On Being Sane in
the bonds between women. That has
changed.
Three much-discussed recent books
delve into mother-daughter relation-
ships. Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s “A
Girl, Returned,” released last summer in
English, is a coming-of-age story set in
rural Southern Italy. Claudia Durastan-
ti’s “La Straniera” (“The Stranger”) re-
calls her upbringing in a dysfunctional
family between Brooklyn and Abruzzo.
Nadia Terranova’s novel “Addio Fan-
tasmi” (“Goodbye Ghosts”) tells the
story of a 30-something woman facing
her painful past on a trip home to see her
mother. Both of those are being translat-
ed into English.
Raimo, the author of “The Girl at the
Door,” said that younger readers in Italy
had become more open to fiction written
Insane Places” in the journal Science,
helping to upend the field of psychia-
try. He had recruited healthy volun-
teers to feign symptoms of mental
illness and get admitted to hospitals,
thereby showing how easily “sane”
people could be institutionalized by a
profession that had enormous confi-
dence in its diagnoses and had accu-
mulated a vast amount of power.
Cahalan decided to track down these
volunteers, or “pseudopatients.” She
had landed on a puzzle that seemed to
be missing only a few pieces.
What she unearthed turned out to be
far stranger, as documented in her
absorbing new book, “The Great Pre-
tender.” It’s the kind of story that has
levels to it, only instead of a townhouse
it’s more like an Escher print. On one
level: A profile of Rosenhan and his
study. On another: Cahalan’s own
experience of researching the book.
And on a third: The fraught history of
psychiatry and the pursuit of scientific
knowledge.
Rosenhan’s paper has been one of
the most reprinted and cited papers in
psychiatric literature. An anti-psychia-
try movement was growing throughout
the 1960s, promoted by books like
Thomas Szasz’s “The Myth of Mental
Illness” and Erving Goffman’s “Asy-
lums”; what Rosenhan’s experiment
provided was a reassuring buttress,
Cahalan writes, of “scientific certainty.”
SIMONA FILIPPINI
CHRIS WARDE-JONES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
by women partly as a result of having
read women in translation.
“They know there are countries in
which having someone like Jennifer
Egan or Zadie Smith is normal,” she
said.
But many of the new wave of women
producing literature attribute their mo-
mentum to the pseudonymous Fer-
rante, who has guarded her anonymity
even as her books have become best
sellers. (Some people speculate that
Ferrante could be Anita Raja, a promi-
nent literary translator married to the
novelist Domenico Starnone, and they
have looked for evidence of his hand in
her work.)
Beyond the guessing game, Ferrante
has generated international interest in
Italian writers over all.
His influence was real and lasting.
Psychiatric hospitals closed, while an
embarrassed profession tried to re-
invent itself, eventually overhauling its
diagnostic manual. Gone were the
fuzzy psychoanalytic references, which
were replaced by a more biological and
standardized approach.
But this isn’t just a case of a journal-
ist uncovering the details of an impor-
tant story; Cahalan was intrigued by
Rosenhan’s study because it resonated
with her own experience. Reading “On
Being Sane in Insane Places,” she
realized that the pseudopatients were
like her “mirror image”; if it hadn’t
been for the doctor who identified the
inflammation in her brain that was
masquerading as a mental illness,
Cahalan, like Rosenhan’s volunteers,
might have been swept “inside our
broken mental health system.”
So she set out to find the eight volun-
teers, all of them unnamed in the paper
and identified only by pseudonyms in
Rosenhan’s notes. She soon learned
that the pseudopatient named “David
Lurie” was Rosenhan himself, who
died in 2012, after a series of debilitat-
ing strokes.
She eventually met with two other
volunteers. Only one of them was
included in the study; the second was
excluded for having “falsified aspects
of his personal history,” Rosenhan
wrote.
“There’s a global buzz about contem-
porary Italian writers, including many
women and even minorities, and we owe
a lot to her for that,” said Igiaba Scego, a
Somali-Italian writer. Her novel “Be-
yond Babylon,” which explores the trau-
mas of the immigrant experience
through the eyes of two women, was
translated into English this year after
being published in Italy a decade ago.
Some new translations of Italian
works reach back even further.
A new English translation of “Family
Lexicon,” the 1963 masterpiece by Na-
talia Ginzburg, came out in 2017. Three
more of her novels were reissued this
year, two of them in new translations.
Another major writer from Italy’s post-
war period, Elsa Morante (whom Fer-
rante has cited as a source of inspira-
CELESTE SLOMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Susannah Cahalan.
As Cahalan would learn, though, this
volunteer was excluded for a very
different reason. “HE LIKES IT,”
Rosenhan wrote in his notes, clearly
incredulous. The volunteer had been
admitted into psychiatric care during a
difficult time in his life and found him-
self benefiting from what he described
as a supportive environment. Rosen-
han had a story to tell about miserable
institutions that abused their power,
and here was a data point that would
have complicated such an unremit-
tingly grim portrait.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
DANIEL DORSA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
tion), is likewise getting a fresh look,
with a new translation this year of her
coming-of-age classic, “Arturo’s Island.”
And yet, Italian women who are writ-
ers still face obstacles.
“The problem is not getting published
or selling copies,” Janeczek said. “It’s
getting recognition.”
She said that women had generally
been kept far from the Italian canon, and
that Ferrante’s success overseas was
not likely to get her much closer. “When
she had all that recognition abroad, our
critics said, ‘Look, those Americans
think she’s a great writer,’ ” Janeczek
said.
In 2015, as Ferrante was receiving
enormous acclaim, the novelist Fran-
cesco Longo wrote in the Roman news-
paper Il Messaggero that “Ferrante is a
But there was more. Rosenhan ap-
parently falsified parts of the paper
itself. Some of it looked like careless-
ness, or sloppy note-taking, but Caha-
lan also caught him “filling in gaps
with outright fabrications.” She ob-
tained the record of Rosenhan’s admis-
sion to Haverford State Hospital in
1969, and was taken aback by the
difference between what the admitting
physician recorded and Rosenhan’s
version in his paper.
“The Great Pretender” reads like a
detective story, with Cahalan revealing
tantalizing clues at opportune mo-
ments so we can experience the thrills
of discovery alongside her. Her voice is
warm and often charming, though she
has a weakness for whimsical asides —
“take that, oncology!” — and at one
point describes Rosenhan’s son as “the
kind of teddy-bear man you can’t help
but hug.”
But such amiability was probably
what got some reluctant sources to
talk. One man sent her some crucial
information while he was in the last
stages of pancreatic cancer; another
source agreed to an interview at her
nursing home just before her 100th
birthday. Without Cahalan’s intrepid
reporting, the truth of Rosenhan and
his paper might have been lost.
Cahalan calls Rosenhan’s willful
distortions “infuriating,” faulting him
for having “missed an opportunity to
..
STEPHANIE GENGOTTI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Clockwise from top left, Italian writers
who have seen their field open up: Igiaba
Scego, Veronica Raimo and Helena
Janeczek. Far left, Elena Ferrante’s
Neapolitan novels, which have sold more
than 11 million copies worldwide.
powerful storyteller. But not a writer.”
Some of Italy’s female critics think
their male counterparts are missing the
point.
Tiziana de Rogatis, a critic whose
book on Ferrante’s diction came out in
the United States this month, said that
Ferrante, like Morante, was a sophis-
ticated thinker and writer who chooses
to write plainly and empathetically to be
understood. Academia, she said, even-
tually catches up with great authors
“first popular with the public.”
Some writers and literature profes-
sors argue that dusty elitism, more than
overt sexism, hinders women from be-
ing recognized.
“There is a widespread idea here that
literary fiction should be virtuoso and
self-referential,” said Elisa Gambaro, a
scholar at the University of Milan. As a
result, fiction that is commercially suc-
cessful is often disparaged.
But some women say it should be the
other way around.
“To put it bluntly, women writers tend
to be less self-referential, because
they’re less used to thinking of them-
selves as the center of the world,” said
Brogi, the contemporary literature
scholar at the University for Foreigners
of Siena.
She said women developed literary
language to make themselves better un-
derstood — and incidentally, easier to
translate — because they were so often
ignored. It was a condition, she said, that
Ferrante had eloquently coined as
“smarginatura,” or, roughly put, being
pushed to the margins.
But this new crop of writing women is
pushing toward the center.
“We are standing up for each other,
and calling out the double standards,”
Durastanti said. “This sense of sis-
terhood wasn’t there a few years ago.”
Terranova said the results were al-
ready there to see.
“Italy always had great women writ-
ers,” she said. “The truly new thing is
that, for the first time, they’re getting
recognition.”
create something three-dimensional,
something a bit messier, but more
honest.” She’s right. But if Rosenhan
had published something less sweep-
ing and more subtle, chances are it
would have been forgotten while
louder voices stole the show. By 1973,
the American public was already
primed to believe the more extreme
story he set out to tell. His paper gar-
nered so much attention precisely
because its clear-cut anti-establish-
ment narrative aligned so neatly with
the anti-establishment times.
In the end, Cahalan treads a delicate
line between condemning Rosenhan
and forgiving him; for all his exaggera-
tions and outright falsehoods, she says,
“I believe that he exposed something
real.”
“The Great Pretender” shows
Rosenhan and his paper for what they
are, but it also shows us something
else. Pretensions to certainty can be
seductive, eking out a temporary tacti-
cal advantage, but their victories are
often brittle. Once the veneer of imper-
meability is cracked, it “breeds an
anti-science backlash born of distrust,”
Cahalan writes.
Instead of arrogance, her book coun-
sels humility. As one Oxford psychia-
trist haltingly puts it: “I think we
should be honest about — acknowl-
edge how limited our understanding
is.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 | 19

travel

Finding food, art, fun and meaning in Washington

Piccolina La Vie
In the heart of downtown, this spot with an Italian vibe is The year-old restaurant and rooftop bar, with a
one of the latest cafes owned by women to join Washington’s Mediterranean-inspired menu, is often Ms. Spruce’s first stop
BY AUDREY E. HOFFER
lively culinary scene. “I really love going to women-owned at the Wharf, the huge waterfront development in Southwest
Lanae Spruce, above, describes eateries,” Ms. Spruce said. “This one is small, chic and cute. Washington lined with food spots, shops and entertainment
The oven churns out hot breakfasts, lunches and dinners sites. “It’s where I go to have fun and be seen, when I’m
herself as a foodie and cultural every day.” The owner, Amy Brandwein, is also the chef. “She dressed fancy or after a stressful week,” she said. “It’s got the
connoisseur. But in Washing- makes a kind of stuffed bread called scacce. It’s like a savory perfect mix of stunning views, a chic ambience and delicious
sandwich.” 963 Palmer Alley NW; piccolinadc.com cuisine.” 88 District Square SW; lavie-dc.com
ton, she is better known for dig-
ital storytelling and building
social media brands. Until re-
cently, she designed and man-
aged the Smithsonian National Anacostia Arts Center
Museum of African American This welcoming community hub opens into “a collection of
black-owned shops and two art galleries displaying
History and Culture’s social me- established and emerging black artists.” 1231 Good Hope Road
dia accounts. SE; anacostiaartscenter.com

Ms. Spruce, 31, relishes ex-

ploring neighborhoods that
have become buzzing destina-
tions, like hers, the Trinidad-H
Street Northeast area, with its
“rich history of black en-
trepreneurship and proximity to
all the hip things.” She and her
fiancée, Brianna Cooper, a chef,
are decamping to New York for
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Ms. Spruce’s new job with iOne “For me, the most meaningful spot is the fourth-floor
Digital, a media platform for an PHOTOGRAPHS BY DARREN S. HIGGINS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES panorama lens,” she said. “It’s a cutout in the lattice facade
overlooking the green lawn of the National Mall,” much of
African-American millennial Marvin
which “was once occupied by plantations and worked by
audience. She shares her favor- Named for the Washington native Marvin Gaye, this restaurant and rooftop bar attracts stylish locals. “It’s a great place to slaves.” Sometimes “I like to stand here, look out and
meet young professionals and hear local musicians,” Ms. Spruce said. “There’s live music several nights a week, mostly jazz. remember we’re sitting on the shoulders of our ancestors.”
ite Washington spots. It’s not pretentious. You can sit right up next to the band and talk to them during sets.” 2007 14th Street NW; marvindc.com 1400 Constitution Avenue NW; nmaahc.si.edu

Apps to hone your ski runs

BY LAUREN SLOSS
Before you hit the slopes, you might
want to download ski apps on your mo-
bile phone. There has never been so
much technology to help optimize your
time on the mountain.
A BETTER WEATHER REPORT Available on
iOS and Android, OpenSnow is free to
use, though the “All Access” premium
subscription ($19 per year) includes ad-
free, longer-range weather forecasts,
alerts for particularly powdery days and
24-hour access to snow camera feeds
from resorts.
PEAK PERFORMANCE Performance track-
ing is the bread-and-butter of ski apps,
with longstanding favorites like Ski
Tracks still earning rave reviews from
users who appreciate the simple,
straightforward interface.
Slopes is an app that renders runs in
3D, provides captures of top speeds and
allows users to overlay photos of ski
days on the app’s map view. The app is
free to download, with a $19.99 premium
version that includes interactive re-
plays, live stats and daily timelines.
REAL-TIME COACHING Perhaps the most fu-
ture-forward app on the slopes, CARV
combines tricked-out ski boot inserts —
equipped with sensors measuring the
force of your foot and your motion while
skiing — with an app that provides real-
time coaching, allows users to home in
on specific skill development (say, edg-
ing) and calculates your specific “ski
I.Q.” on every run.
Available on iOS, the CARV unit, in-
cluding inserts and app, is $279 in pre-
season, $299 when ski season has
started. An Android version will be re-
leased on Dec. 20.
PASSES AND MORE Other apps worth try-
ing this season include Liftopia, a web
platform and iOS and Android app that
allows users to find and purchase dis-
counted lift tickets for 100-plus ski re-
sorts in North America, Switzerland, Ja-
pan and more.
Wherever you ski, PeakFinder can
help you get to know the mountains sur-
rounding you.
Using an elevation model of the whole
planet, PeakFinder overlays images,
viewed through your camera, showing
names and elevations of nearby moun-
tains. The app is a $4.99 one-time fee,
works offline and is available on An-
droid and iOS.
Planning on getting deep into back-
country? Cairn is a safety app that al-
lows users to easily share trip plans with
family and friends, send “check-in” noti-
fications at certain times and alert fol-
lowers if check-ins are missed.
It also allows users to find a cell signal
via crowdsourcing technology.

A lifeline for endangered crafts

BY CHARU SURI

A rising number of indigenous crafts

Times Style.
worldwide are in danger of becoming Presenting the contemporary collection of
extinct or endangered, largely because New York Times goods from the Store.
they are time-consuming and because
there are fewer people who possess
these specialized skills.
In Britain, a Red List issued by the
Heritage Crafts Association biannually
notes the number of critically endan-
gered crafts in the country. The number
has more than doubled since 2007.
But efforts to promote these disap-
pearing crafts as hobbies or souvenirs
are underway in some destinations, par-
ticularly areas with specific historical
ties to specific traditions.
Geetika Agrawal started Vacation
With an Artist to provide a platform for
travelers to book mini apprenticeships
with master craftspeople, to help “crafts
under threat.”
Following are four endangered crafts, OLD NEWBURY CRAFTERS

and the destinations that are keeping Old Newbury Crafters in Amesbury, Mass., makes sterling silver flatware.
them alive.

HISPANIC EMBROIDERIES The Traditional
Spanish Market in Santa Fe, N.M., is the
largest and oldest juried traditional His-
panic arts show in the world. The annual
market held in the summer attracts
more than 70,000 people; the market
now has a Winter Spanish Market in Al-
buquerque.
SILVER-SMITHING In Amesbury, Mass., Old
Newbury Crafters is one of the few
stores that will hand-forge sterling sil-
ver flatware sets for you, starting from
$1,000. “We make only around 300 sets a
year and constantly have visitors in the
showroom, especially during the sum-
mer,” said Charlene Morin, an employ-
ee.
CHERIYAL MASKS AND PAINTINGS The vil-
lage of Cheriyal in the state of Telangana
in India is the only place in the world
where these stylized paintings and
masks dating as far back as the 12th cen-
tury can be found; only a handful of fam-
ilies practice the art today among the
village’s 20,000 residents.
Sai Kiran Dhanalakota, one of the
youngest members practicing this art
form, said visitors have increased
weekly to his village because of efforts
by his family and the government.
AMISH AND MENNONITE QUILTING “In terms
of traditional Amish crafts, quilts are a
huge draw to the area,” said the Penn-
sylvania Dutch County communications
manager, Joel Cliff. He added that
nearly nine million people come to Lan-
caster, Pa., annually, in large part be-
cause of the crafting traditions; there
are around 22 quilting stores. “Quilting
is part of the people’s imagery of Amish
country.”
A few festivals, like the Ohio Amish store.nytimes.com
Country Quilt Festival, which is enter-
ing its third year, have helped raise
awareness of the craft through classes,
speakers, sewing sessions and shows.
 ..
20 | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

louisvuitton.com