PAIN IN THE NECK SARA BAREILLES WEARING THEIR PRIDE

TIPS FOR SAFER HER TUNE, SUNG FOOTBALL PLAYERS SIGN;

WORKSPACES BY MULTITUDES PARENTS DRESS THE PART
PAGE 6 | WELL PAGE 14 | CULTURE PAGE 12 | SPORTS

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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019

It’s high time Trump casts

we abolish socialists as
billionaires Americans’
new threat
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
WASHINGTON

Farhad Manjoo Calling Democrats leftists

OPINION
Last fall, Tom Scocca, editor of the
essential blog Hmm Daily, wrote a tiny,
searing post that has been rattling
around in my head ever since.
“Some ideas about how to make the
world better require careful, nuanced
thinking about how best to balance
competing interests,” he began. “Others
don’t: Billionaires are bad. We should
presumptively get rid of billionaires. All
of them.”
Mr. Scocca — a longtime writer at
Gawker until that site was muffled by a
billionaire — offered
A radical idea a straightforward
argument for
is gaining kneecapping the
adherents on wealthiest among us.
the left. It’s A billion dollars is
the perfect wildly more than
way to blunt anyone needs, even
tech-driven accounting for life’s
inequality. most excessive lav-
ishes. It’s far more
than anyone might
reasonably claim to
deserve, however much he believes he
has contributed to society.
At some level of extreme wealth,
money inevitably corrupts. On the left
and the right, it buys political power, it
silences dissent, it serves primarily to
perpetuate ever-greater wealth, often
unrelated to any reciprocal social good.
For Mr. Scocca, that level is self-evi-
dently somewhere around one billion
dollars; beyond that, you’re irredeem-
able.
I cover technology, an industry that
belches up a murder of new billionaires
annually, and much of my career has
required a deep anthropological inquiry
into billionairedom. But I’m embar-
rassed to say I had never before consid-
ered Mr. Scocca’s idea — that if we
aimed, through public and social policy,
simply to discourage people from attain-
ing and possessing more than a billion in
lucre, just about everyone would be
better off.
In my defense, back in October, abol-
ishing billionaires felt way out there. It
sounded radical, impossible, maybe
even un-American, and even Mr. Scocca
seemed to float the notion as a mere
reverie.
But it is an illustration of the political
precariousness of billionaires that the
idea has since become something like
mainline thought on the progressive
left. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
MANJOO, PAGE 11
The New York Times publishes opinion
from a wide range of perspectives in
hopes of promoting constructive debate
about consequential questions.
Recruiters advertising for workers outside a labor agency in Shenzhen, China. There were at least 1,700 labor protests in China last year, up from about 1,200 the year before.
Xi tested by restless workers
BEIJING
Labor protests underscore
challenges China’s leader
faces as economy slows
BY JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
Factory workers across China are stag-
ing sit-ins demanding unpaid wages for
“blood and sweat.” Taxi drivers are sur-
rounding government offices to call for
better treatment. Construction workers
are threatening to jump from buildings if
they don’t get paid.
With economic growth in China weak-
ening to its slowest pace in nearly three
decades, thousands of Chinese workers
are holding small-scale protests and
strikes to fight efforts by businesses to
withhold compensation and cut hours.
The authorities have responded with a
sustained campaign to rein in the pro-
tests, and most recently detained sev-
eral prominent activists in the southern
city of Shenzhen late last month.
Such protests are a glaring example
of the challenges the economic slow-
down poses to China’s leader, Xi Jinping,
who has aggressively promoted the
“Chinese dream,” his signature vision of
greater wealth and a fairer society.
BRYAN DENTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
year before. Those figures represent
only a fraction of disputes across China,
since many conflicts go unreported and
Mr. Xi has intensified censorship.
The authorities have detained more
than 150 people since August, a sharp in-
crease from previous years, including
teachers, taxi drivers, construction
workers and leftist students leading a
campaign against factory abuses.
The unrest puts the ruling Commu-
nist Party in an uncomfortable position.
Since the days of Mao Zedong, the party
has staked its reputation on protecting
everyday workers, but increasingly
many are blaming party officials for not
doing more to defend their rights.
As protests have multiplied, Mr. Xi,
China’s most powerful leader since Mao,
has sought to reassure workers that he
understands their plight.
JU PENG/XINHUA, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS “You are the most diligent, like dili-
As the Chinese economy has slowed, President Xi Jinping, center, has sought to re- gent bees, traveling here and there and
assure workers he understands their plight. “You are the most diligent,” he told them. being exposed to the sun and rain,” he
said last week as he ventured into the
streets of Beijing to wish a happy new
As Chinese families gather this week an electronics factory that he says owes year to delivery workers, a photo oppor-
to celebrate the Lunar New Year, the him more than $3,000. tunity that was heavily featured in the
most important holiday of the year in “I sacrificed my health for the com- state-run media. “It’s not easy.”
China, many workers say they are pany,” he said, “and now I can’t afford to But experts warn that public trust in
struggling to pay basic expenses like buy even a bag of rice.” the party and Mr. Xi’s “Chinese dream”
food and rent. China Labour Bulletin, an advocacy could suffer if he does not do more to
“Nobody cares about us anymore,” group in Hong Kong that tracks pro- help workers.
said Zhou Liang, 46, who took part in a tests, recorded at least 1,700 labor dis- “If teachers refuse to work, truck
protest last month in Shenzhen outside putes last year, up from about 1,200 the CHINA, PAGE 4
in Venezuelan mold could
be preview of 2020 rhetoric
BY MICHAEL TACKETT
President Trump has proved himself
adroit at creating villains to serve as his
political foils. In his State of the Union
address, he introduced a new one: so-
cialists.
Right after his calls to support the
overthrow of Venezuela’s president,
Nicolás Maduro, and condemning the
“socialist policies” that have reduced
the country “into a state of abject pov-
erty and despair,” he made a quick segue
to the home front.
“Here in the United States, we are
alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism
in our country,” the president said, add-
ing, “Tonight, we resolve that America
will never be a socialist country.”
The speech contained more than a
few suggestions of what Mr. Trump’s
2020 campaign could look like. The pres-
ident dwelled on the economy, pointing
to the low unemployment rate, continu-
ing growth and the tax cut passed by the
last Republican Congress. He spoke of
trying to reduce prescription drug costs
and battling H.I.V., perhaps with an eye
to the kinds of suburban female voters
who deserted Republicans in the
midterm elections. And for his hard-
core followers, he argued for the border
wall.
The threat of socialism was some-
thing new. But it could become the kind
of rhetorical touchstone in his re-elec-
tion campaign that sounding the alarm
about “criminal illegal aliens” was in
2016.
If it does, it could provide Mr. Trump
with a potentially effective weapon in
confronting an increasingly aggressive
and more liberal Democratic Party, de-
fining it through attacks on Senator
Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Repre-
sentative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of
New York, who describe themselves as
democratic socialists, and other mem-
bers of the party pushing progressive
policies like a 70 percent tax rate for the
rich and “Medicare for all.”
The president’s economic advisers
began sounding the socialist alarm in
the fall in a 72-page report criticizing
what it described as the socialist ideas of
leading Democrats, linking them with
the failed economic policies of commu-
nist governments in China, the former
Soviet Union and other countries. The
word “socialism” appeared 144 times —
on average, twice a page.
The report by the White House Coun-
TRUMP, PAGE 5
DIVIDED OVER NEW NAFTA
Republicans and Democrats are insist-
ing on changes to the revised trade
deal lauded by President Trump. PAGE 7

Unearthing the details of a good murder mystery

novel they’re working on?” Harper said
PROFILE
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
over lunch recently here in Sydney.
She was explaining why she didn’t let
on about her manuscript, which she
We’re having an
Jane Harper takes the time worked on for an hour before and after
open house.
work each day. A journalist eking out a
to ‘figure out what keeps novel is cliché, but what happened next
people awake at night’ was so shocking, you’d have to call it a And you’re invited.
twist.
BY AMELIA LESTER
In April 2015, Harper entered pages Don’t miss the new International Homes
she’d written over the past six months section in the Weekend edition.
Four years ago, Jane Harper was a busi- into the Victorian Premier’s Literary
ness reporter at The Herald Sun, a tab- Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Starts Saturday, February 23.
loid in Melbourne, Australia. Harper, She won, picked up six-figure publishing
who is now 38, liked to tell friends that deals in Australia, the United States and
she had “more self-improvement activi- Britain, and went on to sell more than a
ties than a Victorian spinster,” busying million copies worldwide of her debut
herself with hobbies including sewing, novel, “The Dry.”
ballroom dancing, tennis and piano Two subsequent crime novels —
lessons. “Force of Nature” and “The Lost Man,”
But there was one project Harper did- which was just released in the United
n’t talk about: She was writing a murder States by Flatiron Books — have sold an
mystery inspired by “Gone Girl,” additional 600,000 copies. There is also a
Agatha Christie and all the other movie version of “The Dry” in produc-
thrillers she had loved reading since tion, starring Eric Bana and produced
MATTHEW ABBOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES childhood. by Bruna Papandrea of “Big Little Lies”
Jane Harper, a former reporter, uses the isolation, and its psychological and physical “Is there anything more boring than fame.
effects, that Australia evokes. Her novels include “The Dry” and “The Lost Man.” someone trying to tell you about the HARPER, PAGE 2

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 ..
2 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

page two
Musician became a hero
to Zimbabwe and Africa
OLIVER MTUKUDZI
1952-2019
BY GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Oliver Mtukudzi, whose singing and gui-
tar playing harnessed influences from
across southern Africa to create the
most popular musical style in Zimba-
bwe, died on Jan. 23 in Harare, the na-
tion’s capital. He was 66.
The cause was heart failure related to
diabetes, said Damon Forbes, a record
label executive and promoter who had
worked with Mr. Mtukudzi for more
than 20 years.
Starting in the late 1970s, Mr. Mtukud-
zi (pronounced muh-too-KOOD-zie) re-
corded numerous albums — 67, by his
count — and became a hero throughout
Africa. The Zimbabwean music journal-
ist Alex T. Magaisa wrote that Mr.
Mtukudzi was “arguably Zimbabwe’s
finest ambassador.”
Though an official figure was not
available, conservative estimates sug-
gest that Mr. Mtukudzi sold millions of
albums over the past 40 years.
He sang anthems of social lament and
timeless wisdom, typically in Shona,
Zimbabwe’s predominant language, but
also in English and Ndebele. His music
pulled from traditional Shona rhythms
and sounds while incorporating influ-
ences from South Africa’s more cos-
mopolitan, jazz-inflected mbaqanga tra-
dition, as well as African-American
dance music. What resulted — a kind of
soundtrack to Zimbabwean life in the
late 20th century — became known as
its own idiom, called Tuku music, after
BLAKE KESSLER, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS Mr. Mtukudzi’s nickname.
Skiing at Alpine Meadows in the Sierra Nevada range of California. Some of the state’s resorts have reported more than seven feet of new snow in the past several days. “I looked for a sound the guitar could-
n’t make, in a guitar‚” he told the South
African publication TshisaLIVE in an in-
terview shortly before his death, re-
makers that they changed the name of
the movie to “Neria.”
Nine years later, the same filmmakers
made “Shanda,” a documentary about
Mr. Mtukudzi that followed him as he
toured Zimbabwe.
Many of his songs urged government
leaders as well as everyday people to fo-
cus on the well-being of Zimbabwe’s
children. And Mr. Mtukudzi did make
the occasional veiled political swipe. In
2001 he released “Wasakara,” whose ti-
tle translates to “You are worn out,” a
song widely seen as a plea for Mr. Mu-
gabe to step down.
“He was a nation builder,” Paul Mang-
wana, a senior Zimbabwean govern-
ment official, told The Associated Press.
“Where it was necessary to criticize he
would, and where it was necessary to
praise he would.”
Mr. Mtukudzi sought to strengthen
his community through deeds as well as
music.
For the last 15 years, he ran the
Pakare Paye Arts Center, an arts com-
plex he founded in 2003 in Norton, a
town 25 miles west of Harare. With a re-
cording studio, classrooms and per-
formance spaces, it offers young people
a creative and social outlet to combat
unemployment and listlessness.
In 2011 he was named a Unicef re-
gional good-will ambassador for eastern
and southern Africa. A year before, he
had written a song, “Deaf Hear,” in ob-
servation of Unicef’s Day of the African
Child.

Storms are ‘what we live for’
Heavy snow in California
has brought much-needed
relief to state’s ski resorts
BY LAURA M. HOLSON
In the past week, California has been
pummeled by fierce winter storms that
have wreaked havoc from Sacramento
to San Diego. Flash floods have dam-
aged an already fragile landscape, as
near hurricane-force winds downed
power lines along the coast. Mountain
highways were closed because of bliz-
zard conditions, and the National
Weather Service warned about ava-
lanches in the eastern Sierra Nevada
range.
But for the state’s ski resorts, it’s look-
ing a lot like a boom time. At the Squaw
Valley resort near Lake Tahoe, attend-
ance is up 25 percent compared with last
year, according to executives there. In
Central California, Mammoth Mountain
Ski Area said it had record guest attend-
ance at its lodges in December and Jan-
uary, and was on pace for another month
of gains.
To be fair, last year wasn’t the best for
California skiers. But after a long period
of drought that has often left slopes
bare, with occasional years of heavy
snow, the waves of storms that have
swept across the state in recent weeks
are a welcome respite. Some resorts
have reported more than seven feet of
new snow over the past several days,
with more winter storms forecast for the
weekend.
“This is what we live for,” said Craig
Albright, the senior director of skier
services at Mammoth Mountain. “It
kind of is our Super Bowl. It’s intense.
PETER MORNING/MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vehicles buried under snow at Mammoth Mountain, Calif. The Mammoth ski area said it
had record guest attendance at its lodges in December and January.
Tim Bardsley, a hydrologist with the
The winter storms have Weather Service, said increased snow
arrived after a long period and rain would increase the state’s wa-
of drought that often left ter supply. A cross-country skier, he said
the conditions had been great so far.
ski slopes bare. “The back country has been more
variable,” he said. “But there has been a
It’s a little scary outside. You can feel the lot of powder, which is pretty fabulous.”
intensity of the weather.” Of course, getting there can be a chal-
Snowpack from Oct. 1 to Feb. 5 is up lenge. Mike Goar, the vice president and
about 134 percent from normal levels in chief operating officer at Heavenly
the Tahoe area and throughout the Si- Mountain Resort, near Lake Tahoe, rec-
erra, according to officials at the Na- ommended that skiers check road up-
tional Weather Service office in Reno, dates before driving into the mountains.
Nev. While that’s less than the record set This week, 100 miles of Interstate 80, the
two years ago, when winter storms rav- main artery through the Sierra, was
aged the West Coast, it is still welcome closed because of whiteout conditions.
news for ski resorts. And with the new fallen snow — espe-
cially if it is heavy and wet — comes the
risk of avalanches. On Tuesday, Squaw
Valley posted a warning on its website:
“Our 4-day storm total is now over 6
feet! Avalanche conditions exist, please
check lift status.” Squaw Valley has re-
ported 341 inches of snow this season,
while its sister resort, Alpine Meadows,
has reported 277 inches.
Ron Cohen, the president of Squaw
Valley Alpine Meadows resorts, said his
company had recently installed addi-
tional Gazex avalanche control systems,
which set off controlled slides while a
slope is closed so that larger, more de-
structive avalanches are less likely
when skiers are navigating the terrain.
(An explosion using Gazex is triggered
using a mixture of oxygen and propane.)
He said they were safer than other ex-
plosive devices used to control ava-
lanches. Some residents have com-
plained about the noise.
“You can never eliminate the risk en-
tirely,” he said.
While the ski industry has long ner-
vously watched global warming, Mr. Co-
hen said he could not attribute the
swings in California’s weather to climate
change.
Still, he added, “Climate change has a
role in broad weather changes.”
Gale-force winds forced many Califor-
nia resorts to close temporarily in the
early part of the week. “You can’t oper-
ate the chairlifts,” Mr. Albright said.
Still, he said, Mammoth had been for-
tunate that the storms had mostly ar-
rived during the middle of the week,
making way for weekend skiers. “They
hear the hype on the Weather Channel,
see it on the news,” he said.
“People have dreams of powder,” Mr.
Albright added, laughing. “But when
they get stuck, it’s not so pleasant.”
membering his early years. “Profes-
sional guitarists at the time used to
laugh at me. I used to look for a mbira on
the guitar strings,” he said, referring to a
traditional Shona thumb piano.
In the 1970s, as a member of the band
Wagon Wheels, he played alongside the
singer Thomas Mapfumo, who would
become the only other Zimbabwean mu-
sician with a reputation to rival his. Mr.
Mapfumo left the country in the 1990s
and became well known in the West. Mr.
Mtukudzi stayed and cemented his sta-
tus as the country’s most renowned mu-
sician.
His popularity in Zimbabwe reflects
the fact that in a country bitterly divided
by political allegiances, he positioned
himself as a unifier. While Mr. Mapfumo
took a strong political stance in his mu-
sic — pioneering a genre known as
chimurenga (“revolutionary struggle
music” in Shona) before the fall of white
minority rule, then vigorously criticiz-
ing Robert Mugabe, who ruled the coun-
try from 1980 to 2017 — Mr. Mtukudzi
generally avoided taking a political side.
He sang at events for the ruling
ZANU-PF party, as well as at the wed-
ding and funeral of the opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai.
But his songs boldly told the stories of
his community, and he made no effort to
avoid social issues.
Perhaps his biggest hit was “Todii,” a
cautionary song about the perils of
H.I.V. from the 1997 album “Tuku Mu-
sic.” Powered by a melancholy chorus of
background singers and the gravelly la-
ment of Mr. Mtukudzi’s lead vocal, it
warned listeners of the virus that by
then had infected a quarter of Zimba-
bwe’s population.
Another popular song, “Neria,” from
1993, told of a woman thrown into pov-
erty by a law that kept her from inher-
iting her husband’s property. Written as
part of Mr. Mtukudzi’s soundtrack for a
feature film, it so impressed the film-
SCOTT GRIES/GETTY IMAGES
Oliver Mtukudzi in 2002. He sold millions
of albums over the past 40 years.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa of
Zimbabwe acknowledged Mr. Mtukud-
zi’s death in a statement on Twitter. “Oli-
ver Mtukudzi,” he wrote, “your voice
has given us comfort during difficult
times, and will remain with us for pos-
terity.”
Oliver Dairai Mtukudzi was born on
Sept. 22, 1952, in Highfield, a dense, im-
poverished neighborhood of Harare.
(The city was officially known as Salis-
bury at the time; what would eventually
become Zimbabwe was then the British
colony of Southern Rhodesia.) His par-
ents had met after singing in a choir
group, and when he was a child, they en-
couraged his musical interests.
His father died just as Oliver was en-
tering adulthood, and to support his
family he took a job at a bookstore. But
he filled every idle moment practicing
on the guitar that a musician had given
him after noticing his preternatural abil-
ity.
Throughout his career, Mr. Mtukudzi
kept his family and his work entwined.
His brother, Robert, was his keyboard
player until he died in 1992. His daugh-
ters often sang background vocals and
helped him compose. His initial plan in
Norton was for his son, Samson, also a
successful musician, to run the Pakare
Paye center, but Samson died in a car ac-
cident in 2010.
Mr. Mtukudzi’s survivors include his
wife, Daisy; his daughters, Sandra
Mtukudzi, Samantha Mtukudzi and Sel-
mor Manatsa; and three sisters. An ear-
lier marriage, to Melody Mtukudzi,
ended in divorce.

Unearthing the details of a good murder mystery

HARPER, FROM PAGE 1
And a baby, who arrived in between
international best sellers.
Harper is unfailingly modest, but she
did admit that “life has changed so much
in the last few years.”
“It was stunning,” a former colleague,
Victoria MacDonald, said of her friend’s
winning a literary award for a manu-
script Ms. MacDonald knew nothing
about, and then becoming Australia’s
most widely read crime writer. “She did-
n’t have a smartphone for a really long
time” — not until 2014, Harper later con-
firmed — “and I remember thinking that
the time the rest of us were wiling away
on Candy Crush were the moments Jane
must have been working on her book.”
Harper outlined her writing process
in a TEDx Talk last October called “Cre-
ativity in Your Control.” She returns of-
ten to the idea that artistic endeavor is
made easier — and more enjoyable —
with planning.
“If you focus on the technical as-
pects,” she said, neat red corkscrew
curls bobbing, “you can build a frame-
work which serves as a base for your
creative ideas.”
Harper’s TEDx Talk was in part, per-
haps, an effort to set the record straight:
Much has been made in the news media
about a 12-week creative writing course
she took in 2014 through an offshoot of
the London branch of the literary
agency Curtis Brown. Shortly after-
ward, she produced the manuscript of
“The Dry.”
When Harper was asked during the
lunch interview about the course, it was
the one time she seemed anything less
than sunny.
“I think honestly the impact of that
has been overstated,” she said. “I was a
journalist for 13 years. I wrote every sin-
gle day. I wrote thousands of words a
week under pressure.” The course, she
said, merely offered her some external
accountability.
The writing is the “fun part” for
Harper, but for several months before-
hand, she plots. As her Australian editor
Cate Paterson said, every development
in a Jane Harper story feels credible.
“It’s one of the things that I get an-
noyed about with other crime writers,”
Paterson said. “Some late inclusion, or a
new character out of the blue, is the one
who did it, but what I find with Jane is
that the clues are there all along and she
puts them together in a clever way.”
Another element that Paterson said
elevates Harper’s books from procedur-
als is an attention to character. At the
center of both “The Dry” and “Force of
Nature” is Aaron Falk, a Melbourne de-
tective. In “The Dry,” he is forced to con-
front a dark chapter in his past as he
solves a murder in his hometown; in
“Force of Nature,” he searches for a
hiker lost in the woods outside the city.
Falk, at times infuriating in his emo-
tional inhibition, is a particularly com-
pelling creation.
“I want people to think, ‘I know some-
one like that,’” Harper said. “I figure out
what keeps people awake at night and
what drives them to get out of bed in the
morning, and that involves a lot of de-
tails that don’t make it into the books.”
Characters’ coffee preferences, for in-
stance: “Aaron Falk is from Melbourne
so he’d probably be a flat-white man,”
she said, using a term for steamed milk
poured over espresso. “And Nathan” —
a divorced dad who solves the death of
his brother in “The Lost Man” — “he’d
be instant coffee, happy to drink it black
but with a splash of long-life milk on oc-
casion.”
Nathan drinks long-life milk in part
because he lives hundreds of miles from
the nearest town, on a remote cattle sta-
tion in the northern Australian state of
Queensland.
Harper leans on the Australian envi-
ronment in all of her novels. “The Lost
Man,” like “The Dry,” is a study in isola-
tion and its psychological and physical
effects — particularly on men, who in re-
gional areas of Australia are vulnerable
to depression and suicide.
“Setting informs plot,” is how Harper
put it, when asked about her skill in con-
juring up a familiar type of Australian
bloke, at once taciturn and tender.
Where “The Dry” probed the dangers
of prolonged drought on a close-knit
farming community, “The Lost Man” is
concerned with how people live — and
die — in the unforgiving outback. The
novel opens in the desert, with the dis-
covery of Nathan’s brother’s body five
miles from his four-wheel-drive vehicle
and the food, fuel and water in its trunk.
What happened to separate Nathan’s
brother from his survival kit?
Jane Harper in Sydney, Australia. Her training as a journalist helps her determine the
things she needs to find out, such as what kitchens look like at cattle stations.
“I knew I wanted somewhere hot and
far-flung, but with a community of
sorts,” Harper said of her choice of loca-
tion.
As part of her planning, she flew to
Charleville, some 400 miles west of Bris-
bane, the state capital of Queensland,
and then drove more than 500 miles far-
ther to the tiny town of Birdsville, on the
edge of the Simpson Desert. The town’s
claim to fame is hitting the highest-ever
temperature in Queensland, of 49.5 de-
MATTHEW ABBOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
grees Celsius (121.1 degrees Fahren-
heit). Now it’s the town that served as
inspiration for “The Lost Man.”
Accompanying Harper on her jour-
ney was Neale McShane, the officer in
charge of Birdsville Police Station for 10
years, who is now retired. McShane, by
himself, once patrolled an area of out-
back the size of the United Kingdom,
with a population of about 250 people.
From her training as a journalist,
Harper had determined exactly what
she needed from the research trip: “I
knew how I wanted the story to play out,
but I’d left enough flexibility for the
things I didn’t have at that stage.” She
didn’t know how two-way radios
worked, for instance, or what kitchens
looked like at cattle stations. Those were
the known unknowns.
But there were still surprises: “If any-
thing,” she said, “I’d underestimated
how dangerous it can be out there, and
how quickly things can go wrong.”
Reached on the phone from his home
in Charleville, McShane praised
Harper’s evocation of (very) small-town
life. “You can drive 12 hours here with-
out passing another car,” McShane said.
“She nailed the loneliness of it.”
Deborah Force, who owns an inde-
pendent Melbourne bookstore called
the Sun, was an early champion of
Harper’s writing. “The Lost Man” was
her shop’s best-selling title over the holi-
days. “Even people who say they don’t
like crime really liked ‘The Dry,’” Force
said.
Harper doesn’t want to be boxed into
a genre. “I don’t really feel drawn to
dark things or human misery,” she said.
Although all three of her books fea-
ture a sudden and mysterious death,
they aren’t grisly or scary.
Harper’s goal is clear: to write books
people will enjoy reading, ones that she
would like to read herself. Right now,
those books happen to involve crime.
“As a journalist I learned not to as-
sume people will read to the end,” she
said. “I need to keep people engaged.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
World
Abuse of nuns emerges from the shadows
ROME
Pope’s acknowledgment
comes after decades of
seeming inaction on claims
BY JASON HOROWITZ
The sexual abuse of nuns and religious
women by Catholic priests and bishops
— and the abortions that have some-
times resulted — has for years been
overshadowed by other scandals in the
Roman Catholic Church.
That seemed to change this week
when Pope Francis publicly acknowl-
edged the problem for the first time.
“I was so happy,” said Lucetta Scaraf-
fia, the author of an article denouncing
the abuse of nuns and religious lay wom-
en by priests that was published this
month in a magazine, Women Church
World, which is distributed alongside
the Vatican’s newspaper.
Speaking from her Rome apartment,
which she said had essentially been con-
verted into a television studio full of in-
ternational reporters, Ms. Scaraffia
said, “Finally, now many women will
have the courage to come forward and
denounce their abusers.”
The pope’s remarks on Tuesday, in re-
sponse to a question posed on the papal
plane about Ms. Scaraffia’s article, came
after decades of persistent allegations of
such abuses, and seeming Vatican inac-
tion, which has now collided with the
heightened awareness of the #MeToo
era. They also came just ahead of an ex-
traordinary conference of bishops on
sexual abuse scheduled this month at
the Vatican.
But it was the pope’s dramatic, and ac-
cording to the Vatican on Wednesday, in-
accurate, description of one example of
such abuse as “sexual slavery” that
most caught the world’s attention.
“When the Holy Father, referring to
the dissolving of a congregation, spoke
of ‘sexual slavery’ he meant ‘manipula-
tion,’” the pope’s spokesman, Alessan-
dro Gisotti, clarified in a statement to re-
porters on Wednesday.
Advocates of abused nuns were re-
lieved that the pope had at last put the
issue on the church’s radar. But they also
noted that it had been a long time com-
ing and that the pope’s other remarks
Tuesday did not inspire confidence in a
speedy solution.
In his typically free-associating riff,
Francis acknowledged that “there have
been priests and bishops” who have
committed sexual abuse against nuns
and that “it’s continuing because it’s not
like once you realize it that it stops.” He
said the church needed to do more.
But while attempting to show that his
predecessor, Benedict XVI, had taken
tough action on the issue of sexual abuse
against nuns, he recalled a separate
case of a religious order marred by sex-
ual and economic corruption, but that
Turning a sober Myanmar landmark into a party venue
Critics say it’s insensitive
to host a bazaar steps from
where a hero was killed
BY MIKE IVES AND SAW NANG
The Secretariat, a building in Myan-
mar’s former capital where the inde-
pendence hero Aung San was assassi-
nated in 1947, is a powerful touchstone
for the country’s history and identity.
Next week, a night bazaar is planned
on the Secretariat’s grounds to promote
ties between Myanmar and the United
States, with Krispy Kreme doughnuts
and other American food, and live music
by the house band of the local Hard Rock
Cafe.
But critics say choosing the complex
for such an event was insensitive.
Do the organizers “want to see busi-
nesspeople washing the blood of our
hero with alcohol?” one critic, U Tin Mg
Htut, asked in a Facebook post. “Such a
shame that this historic place is turning
into a bar.”
U Kyaw Zay Ya, a member of Parlia-
ment from Yangon, the former capital
and Myanmar’s biggest city, said he un-
derstood that the bazaar was a business
venture. “But we can’t replace that
money if we lose the cultural and his-
toric value of the place,” he said.
The United States Department of Ag-
riculture had been identified as a spon-
sor of the event, but the American Em-
bassy in Yangon said in an email that the
United States government had played
no role in planning or funding it. The em-
bassy said the department’s office in
Yangon had merely agreed to “facilitate
connections between the event planner
and restaurants and importers that
serve and sell American foods.”
“We recognize the Secretariat’s sig-
nificance in Myanmar’s history,” Aryani
Manring, a spokeswoman at the embas-
sy, said in an email. “It is of course for
the people of Myanmar to determine
how they wish to see the Secretariat
used.”
The embassy referred further ques-
tions to the event’s organizer, Signature
Night Market, which said the two-day
Pope Francis meeting with nuns at the Vatican last year. On Tuesday, the pope said “there have been priests and bishops” who have committed sexual abuse against nuns.
apparently did not involve nuns. Francis
recounted that Benedict, then known as
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church’s
doctrinal watchdog, had marshaled all
his evidence against the complicit order
in a meeting with Pope John Paul II.
Francis said Benedict had returned de-
feated and told his secretary, “The other
side won.” Francis added in an aside,
“We should not be scandalized by this —
it’s part of a process.”
His point seemed to be that pursuing
justice in the church takes time and he
said that when Benedict became pope,
he immediately told his secretary to get
him the files “and he began.”
But his example confounded advo-
cates of nuns abused by priests, who
noted that the pope is the single person
within the church with absolute author-
ity to take action at any time.
“I was wondering when he said they
were dealing with the problem for a long
time, because we just don’t know what
those actions are,” said Zuzanna
Flisowska, the general manager of
Voices of Faith, a group advocating for
A night bazaar promoting ties between Myanmar and the United States is scheduled to take place outside the Secretariat in Yangon.
event would go ahead as planned on
Feb. 11 and 12.
Signature Night Market said that the
event, known as Nightfest, would be
held outdoors in the Secretariat’s com-
pound, not inside the building, and that
security personnel would not allow
guests to become “unruly” as a result of
drinking too much alcohol.
Daw Ngu K Khaing, the chief opera-
tions officer for the Anawmar Art
Group, which has been renovating the
Secretariat into an art museum, de-
clined to comment on the criticism of the
bazaar.
She said the event’s purpose was to
attract tourists, exchange culture and
food, and enjoy the Secretariat at night.
more participation by women in lay
leadership positions inside the church.
“We feel a little disappointed that it
has to be the media who has to press the
church and the pope to comment,” she
added.
Experts say there is no shortage of
factors contributing to the abuse, its
cover-up and the lack of action inside
the Vatican.
Karlijn Demasure, the former execu-
tive director of the church’s Center for
Child Protection at the Pontifical Grego-
rian University, where she is a professor
and expert in the sexual abuse of minors
and vulnerable adults, said there is no
data on how widespread the problem is.
But, she added, anecdotal evidence sug-
gests “it’s not exceptional.”
Many members of the church, experts
said, suffer from a medieval mind-set
and consider the priests who commit
abuse against nuns to be the victims of
seductive temptresses. Since the vic-
tims in these cases are adults, the ex-
perts say, there is also a reflexive tend-
ency to blame them.
The Secretariat, whose main building
was completed in 1892, was the seat of
government during the country’s
British colonial period and for decades
after the country, then known as Burma,
gained independence in 1948.
The building survived a World War II
bombing of the city but has been unoc-
cupied since 2005, when Myanmar’s
military government moved the capital
from Yangon, formerly Rangoon, to
Naypyidaw.
For many people in Myanmar, the
Secretariat will forever be associated
with the July 19, 1947, assassination of
General Aung San, the elected leader of
an interim government responsible for
drafting the country’s Constitution. He
Often, the abuse occurs in a relation-
ship of spiritual guidance, Professor De-
masure said, with the priest grooming
the victim over time, as is often the case
in cases of child sexual abuse.
The apparent preponderance of such
abuse in Africa and India has led some
in the church to chalk up the abuse to
cultural differences.
In many cases, sexual favors have
been required of nuns who are finan-
cially dependent on priests, and tradi-
tions of subservience by women make
them vulnerable to abuse.
Ms. Scaraffia said she subscribed to
the pope’s critique of abuse, that it is
rooted in a rot in clerical culture that
leads priests to believe they are a higher
authority and thus entitled to do what
they want with their parishioners. In de-
veloping countries, where the abuse of
nuns seems more prevalent, priests
tend to be put on even higher pedestals.
Professor Demasure said there is also
the delicate issue that female superiors
have covered up the abuse of their nuns
to protect the reputation of the church,
YE AUNG THU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
was shot in the Secretariat’s Cabinet
Room along with eight other people.
Gen. Aung San’s daughter Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize lau-
reate and Myanmar’s current state
counselor, the country’s de facto leader.
Myanmar still commemorates the as-
sassination with a holiday known as
Martyrs’ Day. The Secretariat has been
opened to the public on Martyrs’ Day ev-
ery year since 2014, but has otherwise
remained largely closed.
In 2015, criticism swirled on social
media after the daughter of Lt. Gen. Tun
Kyi, a onetime junta member, hosted a
party in the Secretariat’s courtyard. The
Irrawaddy, a news site, reported at the
time that the owners of the Anawmar
VINCENZO PINTO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
just as bishops have done with pe-
dophile priests.
“I’m afraid that’s a similar thing,” she
said.
So is the failure to heed alarm bells.
As far back as the 1990s, members of
religious orders prepared private re-
ports on the issue for top Vatican offi-
cials.
In 1994, Sister Maura O’Donohue sent
the Vatican the results of a multiyear, 23-
nation survey about such abuse, which
was especially rampant in Africa where
nuns were considered safe sexual part-
ners for priests who feared infection by
H.I.V.
One 1998 report focused on Africa ob-
served that “sexual harassment and
even rape of sisters by priests and bish-
ops is allegedly common.”
“When a sister becomes pregnant, the
priest insists that she have an abortion,’’
the report added. ‘‘The sister is usually
dismissed from her congregation while
the priest is often only moved to another
parish — or sent for studies.”
African bishops briefed at the time de-
General Aung San, a Burmese independence hero, was assassinated inside the building
in 1947. His daughter Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is now the de facto leader of Myanmar.
Art Group were related to Gen. Tun Kyi
by marriage.
Critics of the upcoming Nightfest in-
clude Daw Moe Moe Lwin, the director
and vice chairwoman of the Yangon
Heritage Trust, one of the groups that
has been racing to save Myanmar’s co-
lonial-era landmarks from the ravages
of time and a tropical climate.
The Secretariat “is regarded as being
associated with nationwide mourning,
commemorating independence strug-
gles and remembering selfless efforts of
our national leaders,” Ms. Moe Moe
Lwin said in an email on Tuesday. “For
the general public it could be acceptable
to use for art and cultural plus some
business-related activities, but not for
fun-related events, such as concerts.”
She added that the entire site had her-
itage value, including its middle court-
yard, where annual memorial ceremo-
nies are held.
On Tuesday, two American brands
with outlets in Myanmar defended their
participation in Nightfest.
“This is just an American-Myanmar
cultural exchange, and we are partici-
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 | 3
cried the reporting of abuse as “dis-
loyal.”
Among the private reports by nuns in
the 1990s, which were published in a
cover story by The National Catholic Re-
porter in 2001, one asserted that 29 nuns
had become pregnant in one order
alone.
Professor Demasure said there are
firsthand testimonies about such abor-
tions, which would break one of the cen-
tral tenets of church teaching and poten-
tially violate local laws, but she said
there was no data about how wide-
spread they are.
But the problem has clearly not gone
away.
In 2013, the Rev. Anthony Musaala, a
priest in Kampala, Uganda, was sus-
pended and forced to apologize for rais-
ing concerns about his fellow priests’
engaging in sexual relationships with
women, including nuns.
“Now many women will have
the courage to come forward.”
In India, Bishop Franco Mulakkal of
Jalandhar currently faces charges for
repeatedly raping a former mother su-
perior of a congregation. While he has
denied the charges, more than 80 nuns
signed a letter in July urging that he be
removed from pastoral work.
Ms. Scaraffia said the abuse of nuns
occurs “not only” in the developing
world.
‘‘It’s all over,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s in Eu-
rope.”
An investigation last summer by
Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
reporter who asked the pope the ques-
tion about abuse on the papal plane, doc-
umented abuse on at least four different
continents.
In November, the International Union
of Superiors General, or U.I.S.G., the or-
ganization representing the world’s fe-
male Catholic religious orders, pub-
lished an extraordinary statement that
called on religious women who have suf-
fered abuse to come forward and report
it to the church and state authorities.
“If the U.I.S.G. receives a report of
abuse, we will be a listening presence,”
the statement said.
“We condemn those who support the
culture of silence and secrecy, often un-
der the guise of ‘protection’ of an institu-
tion’s reputation or naming it ‘part of
one’s culture,’” it added.
In December, the Vatican began in-
vestigating the Institute of the Good Sa-
maritan, a small Chilean religious order
of nuns, after Chilean national television
revealed that some sisters had been
thrown out after reporting sexual abuse
by priests and maltreatment by their su-
perior.
Ms. Scaraffia, getting ready for her
next interview in Rome, said she sensed
momentum and was confident now that
“the pope understands the problem.”
She added, “This is surely the first step.”
WONG MAYE-E/ASSOCIATED PRESS
pating because we want to promote our
brand,” said Khaing Nyein Mo, a spokes-
woman for The Hard Rock Cafe Yangon.
“I don’t think the event will be unruly, as
people are suggesting on social media,
because it’s not a free event.”
Eye Cheint Cheint Chu, the marketing
manager for Krispy Kreme Myanmar,
said she was aware of the criticism.
“As our Krispy Kreme is an American
franchise brand, we will participate in
Nightfest at the Secretariat because the
event’s purpose is to exchange U.S. and
Myanmar culture,” she said.
Others said they were looking for-
ward to the party.
Ei Thinzar Maung, 24, said she was
excited for the night bazaar because the
tickets, which cost about $3 for locals,
were affordable. “I don’t mind if it’s in
the Secretariat,” she added. “It’ll be nice
to see the place at night.”
R. Zarni, a Burmese singer who is
scheduled to perform at the event, said
that his wife had accepted his invitation
on his behalf and that he had been too
busy to notice the criticism.
“I just focus on singing,” he said.

4 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019
world
Plasma
recalled in
China over
H.I.V. fear
BEIJING
Blood product used to treat
immune disorders might
have traces of the disease
BY AMY QIN
Officials in Shanghai are investigating
reports that a Chinese pharmaceutical
company may have sold more than
12,000 units of a blood plasma product
contaminated with H.I.V., potentially
the latest in a series of scandals that
have threatened to undermine public
trust in China’s medical institutions and
health care system.
In a statement on its website, the
Shanghai Food and Drug Administra-
tion said Wednesday that the authori-
ties had ordered the company, Shanghai
Xinxing Medicine, to begin an emer-
gency recall and to halt production of
the potentially tainted batch of intra-
venous immunoglobulin, a treatment
made from pooled blood plasma that is
often used to treat immune disorders.
China’s National Health Commission
and the State Drug Administration have
asked all medical institutions across the
country to stop using the blood plasma
in question and to monitor patients who
have already been administered the
treatment, according to the state news
media. Officials did not say how many
patients had been treated with the blood
plasma.
The presence of H.I.V. antibodies in
the treatment was first detected by the
Jiangxi Provincial Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, in southeast
China. A representative of the prov-
ince’s health commission told The Bei-
jing News on Wednesday that, so far, no
patients had been found to have been in-
fected with H.I.V. as a result of the treat-
ment.
Shanghai Xinxing is a subsidiary of
the China Meheco Group, a pharmaceu-
tical company based in Beijing whose
controlling shareholder is the China
General Technology Group, a state-
owned company directly administered
by the central government.
DAVID GRAY/REUTERS
Taking blood to test for H.I.V. in Beijing.
So far, no H.I.V. infection has been linked
to the potentially tainted blood plasma.
The investigation into Shanghai Xinx-
ing comes at a delicate time for the rul-
ing Communist Party, which is already
seeking to minimize the destabilizing ef-
fects of a nationwide economic slow-
down.
It also represents a setback to Presi-
dent Xi Jinping’s efforts to restore confi-
dence in China’s pharmaceutical indus-
try at a time when the country is push-
ing to play a bigger role in the global
drug industry.
Last month, hundreds of angry par-
ents protested against local government
officials in a town in eastern China when
it was revealed that more than 100 chil-
dren had received expired polio vac-
cines.
Months earlier, hundreds of thou-
sands of children across China were re-
portedly injected with faulty vaccines
for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping
cough.
After protests by parents, the govern-
ment imposed a record fine of $1.3 billion
on the vaccine maker, Changchun
Changsheng Biotechnology.
But despite years of food and medi-
cine scandals, relatively few people
have been charged with crimes, fueling
frustrations among the public and criti-
cism that the government has not done
enough to clean up the industry and en-
force regulations.
The National Medical Products Ad-
ministration released a statement on
Wednesday declaring that although the
investigation was continuing, prelimi-
nary results showed that the blood prod-
ucts in question had tested negative for
H.I.V. and the hepatitis B and hepatitis C
viruses.
Though the reports about the poten-
tially tainted treatment emerged during
the annual Lunar New Year celebra-
tions, when large swaths of the country
typically grind to a halt, the news did not
go unnoticed.
“The cleanup is always fast, pretty
soon they’ll say injecting this product is
good for your health,” Cui Yongyuan, a
Chinese television host and producer,
wrote on the microblogging site Sina
Weibo.
“Tainted milk powder, no problem.
Tainted vaccines, no problem. Tainted
inoculations, no problem,” he added. “In
short, if a few people die, no problem.”
Claire Fu contributed research.
Xi tested by restless workers
CHINA, FROM PAGE 1
drivers stop delivering goods, construc-
tion workers stop building infrastruc-
ture, it will be hard to chase dreams,”
said Diana Fu, an assistant professor of
Asian politics at the University of Toron-
to.
The unrest has also affected newer in-
dustries, including companies that pro-
vide food delivery and ride-sharing
services, as workers complain of back-
breaking schedules and low pay.
Mr. Xi, who rose to power in 2012,
faces a variety of headwinds that are
complicating his efforts to manage a
smooth transition to a high-tech econ-
omy. Consumer and business confi-
dence is falling, the housing market is
sputtering and a trade dispute with the
United States is dragging on.
The government says the economy
grew by 6.6 percent last year, the weak-
est pace of growth since 1990. Many ex-
perts, noting problems like declining
property sales and sluggish factory ac-
tivity, say the actual rate may be even
lower.
As economic forecasts have turned
more sober, Mr. Xi has sought to defuse
tensions by urging companies to pay
salaries for low-income workers on
time. The State Council, China’s cabinet,
says it wants to eliminate wage arrears
by next year.
Labor protests in China are common,
and to avoid protracted conflicts, local
officials often put pressure on busi-
nesses to settle disputes. But companies
may be more unwilling — or unable — to
do so as they struggle to find money.
Mr. Xi has expanded the party’s
oversight of the All-China Federation of
Trade Unions, the party-controlled or-
gan that is supposed to mediate dis-
putes for its more than 300 million mem-
bers but often sides with management.
He has also dismantled nonprofit labor
advocacy groups, which in the past pro-
vided advice to workers and helped with
collective bargaining.
In a crackdown in Shenzhen in late
January, the authorities detained five
veteran labor rights advocates and ac-
cused them of “disturbing public order,”
a vague charge the party often uses
against its critics.
Now, with no independent unions,
courts or news outlets to turn to, some
workers are resorting to extreme meas-
ures to settle disputes.
Wang Xiao, 33, a construction worker,
grew tired of lobbying his bosses for
more than $2,000 in unpaid wages for a
project in the eastern province of Shan-
dong. So last week he turned to social
media, threatening to jump off the head-
quarters of the company overseeing the
project.
“If I get to the roof of the building and
make a scene, then the money will be
given to me more quickly,” he said in an
interview. (Mr. Wang did not carry out
his threat.)
Despite the restrictions, activists
have had some success in organizing
protests across provincial lines, often
with the help of social media. Crane op-
erators across China coordinated a La-
bor Day strike last year that involved
tens of thousands of workers from at
least 10 provinces.
But at a time of economic uncertainty
and rising tensions with the West, Mr. Xi
has emphasized social stability above
all else. At a meeting on “risk preven-
tion” last month, he called on provincial
leaders and senior officials to redouble
efforts to expand ideological and social
control.
Geoffrey Crothall, the communica-
tions director for China Labour Bulletin,
How a name change paved Macedonia’s path to NATO
BY UNA HAJDARI
The days of the Republic of Macedonia
are numbered.
On Wednesday, the small southeast
European nation was formally invited to
join NATO. To enter the military alli-
ance, the country, at the insistence of its
neighbor Greece, agreed to change its
name to the Republic of North Macedo-
nia.
While the modification may seem mi-
nor, it followed years of confrontations
between Macedonia and Greece, a
NATO member that had used its veto
power to keep its northern neighbor
from joining the alliance. Greece, which
has a northern territory also called
Macedonia, saw the country’s use of the
name as a historical affront.
Macedonia’s path toward NATO is a
setback for Russia, which has tried to as-
sert itself after having lost sway in East-
ern and Central Europe following the
fall of Communism. The Kremlin is espe-
cially concerned about the Balkans, a re-
gion it still considers within its historical
sphere of influence.
The emotionally charged series of
events, which included an inconclusive
national referendum in Macedonia and
months of protests in Greece, has left a
trail of questions. Why is the name such
a delicate issue? And why is NATO
membership so appealing that a coun-
try would change its identity, at least
formally, to get in?
WHAT WILL MACEDONIA GAIN?
For most formerly socialist countries in
Eastern Europe, joining NATO has sig-
naled their entry into the club of West-
ern, developed nations.
“Accession is good for countries like
Macedonia,” said Jeremy Shapiro, re-
search director at the European Council
Assembling a sport utility vehicle in Zhejiang Province, China. Since Mao, the country’s Communist Party has staked its reputation on protecting workers.
Demonstrators holding banners in support of factory workers in front of a police station in Shenzhen, China, last year.
said the country’s leaders were “taking
a much more stringent approach to
making sure that large-scale protests
don’t happen again.”
Chinese leaders see labor unrest as a
potential political threat and are partic-
ularly sensitive to demonstrations be-
cause this year is the 30th anniversary
on Foreign Relations. “They get a secu-
rity guarantee that helps them with
long-term stability, and it affects the
way other countries look at them.”
A bigger prize often follows. Member-
ship in the military alliance has often
gone hand-in-hand with entry into the
political and economic alliance of the
European Union. Under a process
known as Euro-Atlantic integration,
countries have undertaken extensive
changes before joining both organiza-
tions.
“This really is a big moment,” said
Stevo Pendarovski, a Macedonian offi-
cial who is the coordinator of the coun-
try’s NATO accession efforts. “We have
been waiting for 20 years; Macedonia
has been a candidate since 1999.”
Nikola Dimitrov, Macedonia’s foreign
minister, said NATO membership would
place the country in “a zone of stability
in a region that still has pockets of un-
certainty.”
“Macedonia can be the precedent for
how issues should be resolved in the rest
of the Balkans,” Mr. Dimitrov said.
HOW DID THIS ALL START?
The name hasn’t always been a major
point of contention with Greece. While
the dispute dates at least to the first
Balkan wars of the 1910s, it receded for
most of the 20th century, when Macedo-
nia was part of Yugoslavia. Since it was
an entity of another country, Greece
made few objections to its use of the
name at the time.
The difficulties flared when Yugoslav-
ia disintegrated and Macedonia de-
clared its independence in 1991, as well
as its intention of joining international
organizations that included Greece.
Macedonia entered the United Na-
tions in 1993 under a provisional name,
the Former Yugoslav Republic of Mace-
of the military crackdown on pro-de-
mocracy protesters on Tiananmen
Square.
Mr. Xi has particularly sought to sup-
press a resurgence of labor activism on
college campuses, including a high-pro-
file campaign for workers’ rights led by
young communists at elite universities.
A demonstration last year in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, against renaming the
country the Republic of North Macedonia to mollify Greece and thus join NATO.
donia, or Fyrom. While the name made
the country’s provenance clear, it did not
entirely resolve the issue, since Macedo-
nia did not refer to itself internally as Fy-
rom. Greece accused it of appropriating
Greek symbols and cultural identifiers,
such as the Vergina Star — a similar im-
age appears on the current Macedonian
flag.
NATO made an overture to Macedo-
nia in 2008, but Greece blocked the
move. “It was a crushing defeat,” Mr.
Pendarovski said. “Polls at the time sug-
gested that about 85 percent of the popu-
lation wanted to join, an extraordinary
consensus.”
The prime minister at the time, Nikola
Gruevski, from the conservative
VMRO-DPMNE party, used the disap-
pointment over the name issue as a
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
SUE-LIN WONG/REUTERS
The activists have used the teachings
of Mao and Marx to argue that China’s
embrace of capitalism has exploited
workers. Last summer, they tried to
help workers in southern China orga-
nize an independent labor union, saying
that corrupt local officials were collud-
ing with managers to abuse workers.
ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
means to shore up right-wing populist
support. In the years that followed, re-
forms stagnated in Macedonia, a coun-
try of about two million people that is
one of Europe’s poorest.
Mr. Gruevski’s government began a
major infrastructure project, known as
Skopje 2014, filling the capital with mon-
uments to heroes such as Alexander the
Great, meant to pacify those who felt
they were being bullied out of their iden-
tity by Greece.
In 2016, the country was gripped by
monthslong protests over a corruption
scandal involving suspect pardons and
favors for loyalists. Protesters swung
paint at the various monuments and lav-
ish new government offices built by Mr.
Gruevski, in what came to be known as
the Colorful Revolution.
..
BRYAN DENTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The authorities have repeatedly tried
to quash the protests, leading to the dis-
appearances and detentions of more
than 50 people associated with the cam-
paign.
The authorities have responded so
forcefully to the young communists in
part because their demands are ideolog-
ical, not material, said Professor Fu,
who has studied unrest in China.
“To the government, calling out the
party for not being Marxist is like chil-
dren openly denouncing their birth par-
ents,” she said. “It is seen as outright de-
fiance and rejection of the state-led so-
cialism.”
But most workers are less focused on
challenging the party than they are on
trying to make ends meet.
Song Zuhe, 50, who packages ceramic
tile at a factory in southern China, says
he is owed $1,500 in back pay and has
not received a paycheck in three
months.
Mr. Song worries that he will not be
able to pay medical bills for his wife or
support his son. He recently posted on
social media a poem he had written
about his predicament:
Work is hard and work is exhausting,
I don’t have money to pay my way
home,
My life as a laborer is bitter.
This year, when Mr. Song returned to
his hometown in southwestern China to
celebrate Lunar New Year with his fam-
ily, they sat down to a small dinner of
chicken and vegetables.
“My burden is heavy,” he said. “It’s
very tough.”
Albee Zhang contributed research.
WHAT TURNED THE TIDE?
Following an electoral victory by an
anti-Gruevski coalition in December
2016, its leading party, the center-left So-
cial Democratic Union of Macedonia,
promised to usher in a new era for Mace-
donian politics.
In June 2018, the Macedonian prime
minister, Zoran Zaev, met with his Greek
counterpart, Alexis Tsipras, on the
banks of a lake that is shared by the two
countries. Under an agreement signed
by the foreign ministers of the two coun-
tries, the specifics of the name change
were laid out.
Macedonia held a referendum on the
issue in September. While the name
change was supported by a majority of
those who voted, turnout did not reach
the required level of 50 percent to make
it valid. The Macedonian Parliament
took up the question and voted in sup-
port of the change last month. The
Greek Parliament granted its approval
two weeks ago in a vote that nearly top-
pled the Tsipras government.
On Wednesday, Macedonian officials
were in Brussels to witness the signing
of the so-called NATO accession proto-
col, which was signed by all 29 members
and will now be sent to the countries’
legislatures for approval, a process that
could be finished by the end of the year.
Greece offered to be the first to pro-
ceed with ratification, and is expected to
do so on Friday. Officials in Macedonia
have said they would consider Greek
ratification to be the formal entry into
force of the protocol, and the country is
expected to begin using the new name
once that happens.
The agreement stipulates that Mace-
donia must change plaques on govern-
ment institutions and reword every offi-
cial document that has ever contained
the words “Republic of Macedonia.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Refreshing a blueprint
to cast socialists as villains
TRUMP, FROM PAGE 1
cil of Economic Advisers, “The Opportu-
nity Costs of Socialism,” did not pre-
scribe any action but was meant to
serve as a warning about the destruc-
tive economic policies that Mr. Trump
believes Democrats would inflict on the
United States.
Policies like tuition-free college were
mentioned in the same ominous tone as
the atrocities committed by Vladimir
Lenin and Mao Zedong. The report sug-
gested that Democratic policies emulat-
ing Venezuela would cause the Ameri-
can economy to shrink 40 percent, just
as Mr. Trump did on Tuesday night.
Yet there is no evidence of any grow-
ing public angst about socialism sweep-
ing the United States. As a political phi-
losophy and organizing tool, it took mod-
est root in the country in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, but it never
gained widespread appeal. Eugene V.
Debs, a labor leader from Terre Haute,
Ind., was a five-time candidate for presi-
dent, never to great effect, peaking at 6
percent of the vote in 1916.
The supposed threat of creeping
socialism in the Democratic Party
has become a favorite talking
point for some conservatives.
“You really have not had a self-con-
sciously socialist movement of any size
and influence since the 1930s,” said Mi-
chael Kazin, a professor of history at
Georgetown University and the author
of a history of the American left.
“Clearly this is an attempt to portray
Democrats as too radical for Americans
and to connect them to Venezuela,
which is of course a clever thing do,
since Venezuela is falling apart under an
ostensibly socialist government.”
But the supposed threat of creeping
socialism — and the dangers posed by
someone like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez — has
become a favorite talking point for con-
servatives like the TV personality Sean
Hannity of Fox News, who tells his view-
ers that far-left socialism has taken over
the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is now
firmly aligned with that view.
“Most Americans are obviously not
up on the distinctions between demo-
cratic socialists and communists,” Mr.
Kazin said. “He, like other conserva-
tives who had talked about the so-called
Red Menace over the years, is trying to
confuse the two things in people’s
minds.”
But that is not how conservatives look
at the way that Mr. Trump seems ready
to portray Democrats.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump said that “in the United
States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.”
The guest unmentioned in Trump’s address
Did a tax provision
actually save the job
of a sawmill worker?
BY JIM TANKERSLEY
Among the guests President Trump in-
vited to the State of the Union was Roy
James, the plant manager of a sawmill
in Vicksburg, Miss., whose appearance
was intended to highlight a tax provi-
sion that the White House credits with
saving Mr. James’s job.
But whether the tax incentive actu-
ally saved the sawmill is unclear. Pub-
licly available evidence does not sub-
stantiate the claim, and White House of-
ficials did not provide information that
would substantiate it.
While the White House highlighted
Mr. James in a news release before the
speech, Mr. Trump never mentioned
him — or the provision that the White
House claims saved his job.
Mr. James’s invitation was intended
to call attention to a once-obscure por-
tion of the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul,
known as opportunity zones, meant to
drive investment to parts of America
that continue to struggle economically.
The 2017 law offered potentially lucra-
tive reductions in capital gains tax bills
for investors who put money into
projects inside certain areas that state
officials designate as opportunity zones.
Mr. James worked for 26 years at
what used to be called the Anderson-
Tully hardwood sawmill. Vicksburg For-
“From a political standpoint, he is de-
fending free enterprise, free markets
and freedom,” said Greg Mueller, a con-
servative strategist. “They want to take
the country toward socialism, and their
party is divided on that, and there is a
major fight in their party over whether
to be a socialist party.”
“This is a great debate for Trump to
define in 2019 and the 2020 campaign,”
he added.
Republicans, with limited success,
tried at times to label President Barack
Obama a socialist, particularly for his
call for higher taxes on the wealthy, Mr.
Kazin said, noting that this effort co-
incided with a shift in public opinion
where Americans viewed socialism
more favorably.
But a Gallup poll in August showed
that Democrats had a more positive
view of socialism than they did of capi-
talism, 57 percent to 47 percent. Their
view has been relatively stable since
2010, but attitudes toward capitalism
have become more negative, coinciding
with the financial crisis that fueled ani-
mus toward the large banks and invest-
ment firms blamed for the economic
devastation.
Among Americans ages 18 to 29, the
Gallup poll found, 51 percent were pos-
itive about socialism while 45 percent
viewed capitalism favorably. Gallup
noted there was a marked, 12-point de-
cline in younger adults’ views on capi-
talism in just two years.
“Every single policy proposal that we
have adopted and presented to the
American people has been overwhelm-
ingly popular,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez told
MSNBC late Tuesday. And she dis-
missed Mr. Trump’s criticism. “He feels
himself losing on the issues,” she said,
and now must engage in ad hominem at-
tacks.
But it was no accident that Mr. Trump
chose to introduce the socialist menace
in perhaps the highest-profile setting
available to a president as the first step
in trying to paint Democrats as too far
left, just as they start to engage in a pres-
idential nominating process that will
shape the party’s image.
And even some of the president’s
harshest critics say he may be on to
something.
“The idea of throwing the socialist
thing out there politically is pretty crafty
because, truly, there is just enough truth
in there to make it sticky and interest-
ing,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican
strategist and longtime Trump critic.
“They are lurching left. For once, some-
how, a little honesty crept into one of
Trump’s proclamations. It’s code for the
loony left.”
SARAH SILBIGER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
est Products bought the mill last year
and laid off all 158 workers. It then be-
gan refitting the mill to accommodate a
different type of lumber and eventually
rehired some workers. The plant now
employs 125 people.
It is possible that the mill could have
been closed by its previous owners if it
had not been sold, costing all 158 work-
ers their jobs, rather than a smaller
number. But Anderson-Tully officials
had not previously indicated to the state
that they planned to close the plant,
though state records indicate that An-
derson-Tully had been seeking for
The manager, from Mississippi,
was invited to the State of the
Union speech to highlight new
“opportunity zones.”
months to sell a tract of land it owned
nearby. Local officials were surprised
by the news of its sale and pending lay-
offs, the Vicksburg Post reported in
March.
A representative for Vicksburg Forest
Products said late Tuesday that the tax
provision was a “key reason” it invested
in the sawmill.
But at the time the company agreed to
buy the mill, there were no guarantees
that the property would qualify for the
new federal incentives.
The planned sale of the mill was an-
nounced in March, several days before
the State of Mississippi proposed desig-
nating the area as an opportunity zone.
Ferdinando Galeana, right, glancing at the television coverage of the State of the Union address at D’Poly Taco Grill and Beer, the restaurant he owns in El Centro, Calif.
Trump’s warnings ‘make me laugh’
EL CENTRO, CALIF.
Border residents shrug
at president’s portrayal of
towns as ‘very dangerous’
BY JOSE A. DEL REAL
Donald Trump was on the television, but
no matter. Ferdinando Galeana’s
customers were watching their plates,
not the president.
As Mr. Trump delivered an ominous
State of the Union address from Wash-
ington, which warned repeatedly about
the dangers along the southwest border,
Mr. Galeana dutifully tended to orders of
tacos, horchata and micheladas at
D’Poly, the Mexican eatery his family
runs here about 10 miles from the Mexi-
can border. What the president was say-
ing on the screen behind him, said Mr.
Galeana, would not help his small busi-
ness, his family or his five dozen em-
ployees.
“What we need here is someone to
help people looking for jobs,” said Mr.
Galeana, whose wife and American-
born children work with him at the
restaurant. “The things he says, they
make me laugh.”
Residents of El Centro and several
other towns along the California-Mexico
border have watched with curiosity and
apprehension in recent years as the
president has escalated his calls for a
wall along the southwest frontier. Mr.
Trump repeated his warnings about
such perils again in his address.
“Republicans and Democrats must
join forces again to confront an urgent
national crisis,” Mr. Trump said during
his speech, delivered not long after a bit-
ter impasse over funding for a border
wall that shut down the government for
35 days. “Congress has 10 days left to
pass a bill that will fund our govern-
The Treasury Department did not ap-
prove that designation until April.
The new owners have been praised by
state and federal officials for their in-
vestment — but throughout the sale an-
nouncements, in March, May and June,
no one appears to have publicly men-
tioned the Trump tax cut provision.
News reports did not begin to cite op-
portunity zones as a factor in the mill in-
vestment until December, when a
Trump administration official visited
Vicksburg to promote the project.
Vicksburg Forest Products is man-
aged by Billy Van Devender — a
wealthy timber baron and philan-
thropist who donated $2,700 to Mr.
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
An email to him on Tuesday was re-
turned by his son, William Van Deven-
der Jr. He wrote on Tuesday evening
that “the designation of Vicksburg as an
Opportunity Zone was one of the key
reasons Vicksburg Forest Products
bought, reopened, and invested in the
former Anderson-Tully sawmill.”
“Last April, Vicksburg was designat-
ed an opportunity zone,” he added. “Our
company purchased the mill the follow-
ing month, knowing about the economic
advantages an opportunity zone of-
fered. In June, we announced we were
reopening the mill and planned to hire
125 employees.”
Mr. Van Devender did not respond to
a follow-up question about whether the
company had advance knowledge of the
state’s pending opportunity zone desig-
nation in March, when it first agreed to
buy the mill. He also did not directly ad-
ment, protect our homeland, and secure
our very dangerous southern border.”
On a busy Tuesday night at D’Poly, pa-
trons occasionally glanced at the screen
that played the president’s address to
the nation. Most paid it no mind at all.
Mr. Galeana and others said they had
largely tuned out what the president has
to say because, too often, his rhetoric is
disconnected from what their communi-
ties really want. They have struggled to
reconcile the president’s warnings
about threatening conditions on the bor-
der with their own experiences living in
this quiet, largely agricultural hamlet.
“What he’s saying on the news is dif-
ferent from what we’re seeing here,”
said Cecy Magallanes, 45, who is origi-
nally from Mexicali, not far across the
border in Mexico, and works as a school
bus driver.
She said Mr. Trump’s previous calls
for a border wall seemed “like a strategy
to get votes.”
“His wall — always his wall,” added
Cesar Salas, Ms. Magallanes’s husband,
shaking his head.
Located on El Centro’s Main Street,
D’Poly and its clientele embody the bi-
culturalism of border towns across the
Southwest. Farm workers, white-collar
professionals, big families and off-duty
Border Patrol agents congregate here
for tacos, sopes and flavored juices.
Modern and minimalist, the restau-
rant’s gray walls and dark wood floors
could be the backdrop of an elegant
Crate and Barrel photo shoot — save for
an arresting pink mural of Frida Kahlo
that instantly sets the room apart.
Flashes of pastel pop from behind a tiled
bar, which includes a display of “Dia de
los Muertos” statuettes.
English and Spanish are heard virtu-
ally interchangeably at table after table.
Latin pop plays in the background,
songs like “Dónde Estarás” by the Mexi-
can electrocumbia musician Raymix.
Mr. Galeana, who owns the restaurant
along with his wife, Teresa, said he and
A mill in Vicksburg, Miss., that the White House said was saved by a Trump tax cut. No
information is available to support the claim.
dress the question of how the invest-
ment “saved” jobs when the company
actually reduced employment at the
mill.
The circumstances surrounding the
sawmill’s ability to claim the tax incen-
tive highlight critics’ fear that the oppor-
tunity zone incentives could end up re-
warding economic development that
would have occurred anyway — while
providing rich investors with tax
breaks.
“The best-case scenario is they’ve
his family decorated with the idea of
showcasing Mexican culture in a mod-
ern setting, a concept that “so often is
lost” in Mexican restaurants in favor of
stereotypical décor like sombreros.
“Our idea was to show that Mexico is
not just what the stereotypes say: It’s so
much more,” he said. “We are proud of
our culture, and we want to show that.”
Many residents here say they wish
Mr. Trump understood that immigration
and cross-national exchanges are cele-
brated in these towns along the border.
Hildy Carrillo, the executive director
of the Chamber of Commerce in Calex-
ico, Calif., the border town about 12 miles
south of El Centro, has sharply criticized
the president’s immigration policies.
She watched with exasperation last
Watching with curiosity and
apprehension as the president
has escalated his calls for a wall
along the southwest frontier.
year when Mr. Trump called the replace-
ment of the town’s border barrier “the
start of our Southern Border WALL!”
She said she feared the remark would
turn Calexico into an anti-immigration
symbol and make it seem unsafe.
For that reason, Ms. Carrillo, a Demo-
crat, chose not to watch the speech Tues-
day — “one of the few I’ve ever missed,”
she said. She went shopping instead, she
said, because “I refuse to get stressed
out having to listen to him.”
Such frustrations are frequently ex-
pressed in towns along the southwest
border, which spans nearly 2,000 miles
from California to Texas. Public officials
from El Paso took to social media after
Tuesday night’s speech to accuse the
president of intentionally misleading
the public after he said a border barrier
had turned around high crime rates in
the city. “Simply put, walls work and
walls save lives,” Mr. Trump said.
JUSTIN SELLERS/THE VICKSBURG POST
given a huge capital gains tax break to
continue a sawmill,” said Seth Hanlon, a
former economic policy adviser to Pres-
ident Barack Obama who is now a senior
fellow at the liberal Center for American
Progress in Washington, “but with
fewer employees.”
A spokesman for Gov. Phil Bryant of
Mississippi said in an email: “Gov. Bry-
ant chose these 100 tracts around the
State of Mississippi to encourage the ex-
act type of investment that has been
seen with the Vicksburg Forest Prod-
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 | 5
world
EMILY KASK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“He lies. @POTUS is once again lying
and using the #SOTU address to spread
falsehoods about our beloved city of El
Paso,” Representative Veronica Esco-
bar, a Democrat who represents El Paso,
said on Twitter.
A fact check by The El Paso Times on
the matter, prepared in January but cir-
culated heavily again on Tuesday night,
found the city’s crime rate peaked in
1993, but by 2006 had sharply declined
to its lowest level in decades. Construc-
tion on the border fence that Mr. Trump
appeared to reference began in 2008.
The paper also noted that, before the
fence was approved, El Paso and Ciudad
Juárez, Mexico, had been separated by a
border barrier for decades.
Before the speech on Tuesday, Gov.
Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico,
a Democrat, denounced “the president’s
charade of border fear-mongering” and
ordered the withdrawal of most Na-
tional Guard troops stationed at the bor-
der in her state.
Many people living along the border,
including Mexican immigrants, say
they understand the desire for strong
border security. But even those who
agreed with some of the president’s po-
sitions here were quick to point out that
his statements about immigrants, and
Mexicans in particular, made them dis-
inclined to support him.
Cristina Bejarano, 34, a Mexican la-
borer who picks cilantro and lives in
Calexico, said that life for her and other
immigrants in the region can be difficult
because of the nature of farm work. But
she said she moved to the United States
two years ago because, even if farm la-
bor is backbreaking, her life and pros-
pects are better here than in Mexico.
She said she wished President Trump
and others could understand that.
“A lot of people haven’t had a chance
to meet any Mexicans,” Ms. Bejarano
said. “They say we’re all criminals when
we’re not. Just because we’re brown
doesn’t mean we’re dirty.”
ucts sawmill. This is an American suc-
cess story where more than 100 Missis-
sippians now have jobs thanks to the
creation of opportunity zones. We hope
this type of investment will continue in
other opportunity zone tracts through-
out the state.”
The White House, in announcing Mr.
Trump’s guests, said that Mr. James had
worked at the sawmill for 26 years when
he was told that it would close.
“Thankfully, last year, Vicksburg was
designated an opportunity zone through
provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,”
the White House wrote. “The plant soon
reopened and Roy was hired to oversee
the entire facility.”
Ben Carson, the Housing and Urban
Development secretary whom Mr.
Trump has appointed to lead an admin-
istration task force on opportunity
zones, went further at an appearance in
Vicksburg in December. Mr. Carson said
the mill was “just an incredible sight
here,” The Vicksburg Post reported, “be-
cause this is one of the first places to ac-
tually take advantage of the opportunity
zones and opportunity funds. Had it not
been for that program, it would very
likely that this place would have closed
down and those jobs gone away.”
Mr. Trump did not refer to opportuni-
ty zones in his speech on Tuesday. He
only briefly mentioned the tax law, as
part of a section boasting about the
strength of the economy.
“Companies are coming back to our
country in large numbers,” he said,
“thanks to our historic reductions in
taxes and regulations.”

6 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019
well
How to soothe a pain in the neck at work
Small adjustments
can relieve or reverse
damage to the body
BY MELINDA WENNER MOYER
Last month, I bought myself a big new
computer screen, thinking that if I
stopped crouching over my laptop like a
turtle, my lower back would stop hurt-
ing. It worked great — for about 48
hours. Then I started getting searing
pains in my neck, which prevented me
from turning my head to the right, which
then almost got me into a car accident.
All because, I eventually figured out, I
had positioned my new screen about
two inches too high.
The United States spends $1 billion a
week dealing with entirely preventable
work-related musculoskeletal injuries,
many of which are caused by small
flaws in body positioning. You can do a
surprising amount of damage to your
body if you hold parts of it in strange po-
sitions for hours at a time, five days a
week. But some research suggests that
you can also prevent and even reverse
damage by engineering your office
work environment properly.
INVESTING IN FURNITURE
A healthy workstation is one that en-
ables you to work in a neutral, relaxed
position. That setup “requires the least
force, the least strength, the least ef-
fort,” said Alan Hedge, director of the
Human Factors and Ergonomics Re-
search Group at Cornell University,
“and that means you’re putting the least
amount of strain on your body.”
To get there, you’ll want furniture that
can be adjusted to your body size and
shape — basically, “the more adjustabil-
ity, the better,” said Justin Young, an in-
dustrial and operations engineer at Ket-
tering University in Michigan.
Your chair is especially important.
Ideally, you want one with adjustable
height and lumbar support that easily
reclines and that also supports your up-
per and middle back. The seat pan
should be at least one inch wider than
your hips and thighs on either side, and
not so long that you can’t sit all the way
back without the edge hitting you be-
hind the knees.
Very few people sit back when they
work, but they should, Dr. Hedge said,
because when you recline, more of your
body weight is supported by your chair,
rather than supported by (and also com-
Do low-impact sports put bones at risk?
Fitness
GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
Could competitive cyclists be putting
their bone health at risk?
A disquieting new study of bone
density in elite cyclists and runners
suggests that the answer might be yes.
The study found that the cyclists, both
male and female, had thinner bones
than the runners, even though all of
the athletes were young, healthy and
enviably fit, and many of the cyclists
lifted weights.
The results underscore the divergent
effects of various sports on our skele-
tons and also stir a little unease about
the long-term consequences of pursu-
ing low-impact exercise at the expense
of more high-impact activities.
By and large, the available scientific
evidence shows that physical activity
is desirable and even necessary for
bone health. Children who run, hop and
play develop thicker, stronger bones
than those who remain sedentary, as
do teenagers and young adults who
participate in sports involving sprint-
ing and leaping.
Most scientists agree that these
kinds of activities build skeletal
strength by generating sudden, sharp
forces that minutely bow or deform the
affected bones. Such activities jump-
start processes within the body that
increase the number of bone cells and
help to prepare those parts of the
skeleton to withstand similar forces in
the future.
Even middle-aged and older people,
who once were thought to face inevita-
ble thinning of their bones with age,
can maintain strong skeletons if they
are sufficiently active, recent studies
show.
But which types of exercise bend
bones in a desirable way — and which
are too gentle — remains uncertain.
Some past studies suggest that run-
ning generates enough force to re-
model bone, while other experiments
with runners conclude the opposite.
Ditto with weight training. And multi-
ple studies have raised concerns about
negligible or even adverse effects from
nonweight-bearing exercises, such as
cycling and swimming, which put little
pressure on bones.
In hopes of gaining more clarity
about sports and bones, researchers at
the Norwegian School of Sport Sci-
ences and the Norwegian Olympic
Training Center, in Oslo, decided to
look closely at the skeletons of world-
class, competitive cyclists and runners.
They focused on elite, full-time ath-
letes in large part because the athletes’
Having the right chair is especially important in avoiding back and neck issues at work. Ideally, you want one with adjustable height and lumbar support that also reclines easily.
pressing) your spine. Chair arms aren’t
essential, but they can support you as
you stand up and sit down.
Desks can be tricky if you’re a com-
puter user, because most desks are built
at the correct height for writing, not typ-
ing. You don’t want to have to hunch up
your shoulders to type, for example, nor
do you want your wrists bending up or
down — an ideal keyboard height is
about two inches above your knees.
If your desk is too high, one solution is
to get a keyboard tray that slides out
from under the desk and slopes down-
ward or has what’s called a “negative
Though elite cyclists trained more rigorously than elite runners in a study, the cyclists’ bones were significantly weaker.
heavy training could be expected to
amplify any impacts from and differ-
ences between the two sports.
They wound up recruiting 21 high-
level runners and 19 road cyclists, men
and women, most of them in their 20s
and all of them lean, fit and with sev-
eral years of intense competition be-
hind them.
The athletes re-
A new study ported to a lab,
where scientists
raises measured their body
concerns that composition, with
cycling may particular focus on
put too little the density of their
pressure on bones, both over all
bones. and in their lower
spines and the tops
of their femurs —
portions of the skele-
ton that can indicate general bone
health.
The researchers also asked the
athletes about their training, health
and calcium intake and whether they
spent much time in the gym. The latter
question was of particular interest to
the researchers, since weight training
often is recommended to athletes in
sports like cycling to bulk up their
bones, as well as their muscles.
The scientists then compared data.
Some of the differences between ath-
slope,” because that slope keeps your
wrists in a vertically neutral position. A
split keyboard, like one of these ergo-
nomic models, can keep wrists in a hori-
zontally neutral position, as well.
As for sitting versus standing desks:
The research is mixed on terms of what
is better, so it really depends on what
feels good to you, Dr. Young said. Sit-
stand desks, on the other hand, have the
distinct advantage of encouraging you
to change positions regularly, which is
good for your body.
If the furniture you have doesn’t en-
able you to work in a neutral position,
letes were substantial, if expected. The
cyclists trained far more than the
runners, for instance, averaging about
900 hours a year in the saddle, versus
about 500 hours on the road or tread-
mills for the runners.
The cyclists also did more weight
training, with most of them heading to
the gym during their off-season for
intense lifting. None of the runners did
that.
The athletes in both sports con-
sumed enough calcium to meet their
expected daily requirements.
But they had noticeably different
bones.
The cyclists, as a group, all had
thinner bones than the runners, and
more than half of them met medical
criteria for low bone mineral density in
some portion of their skeleton. One of
the riders, a man, displayed clinical
osteoporosis in his spine.
These results are potentially worri-
some, said Oddbjorn Klomsten Ander-
sen, a graduate student at the Norwe-
gian School of Sport Sciences and a
former national-team cyclist himself,
who led the study, which was pub-
lished in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise
Medicine.
“There are limited studies following
young cyclists through their careers,”
he said. “But studies in master cyclists
make tweaks with what you have — cre-
ate lumbar support with a pillow, for in-
stance. Then ask your employer for an
upgrade. The best commercial office
chairs are ones that exceed standards
set by the American National Standards
Institute and the Business and Institu-
tional Furniture Manufacturer’s Associ-
ation, and products that do usually say
so in their product descriptions. If your
boss scoffs at the idea, point out that er-
gonomic investments yield as much as a
10-to-1 return on investment.
When employees work safely and
comfortably, they are less likely to get
JED JACOBSOHN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
demonstrate that a larger proportion of
them have low bone mineral density or
osteoporosis” than people who do not
cycle.
This study cannot tell us, though,
why cyclists’ bones might be thin, he
added.
They could have been eating too
little or sweating too much for ideal
bone health. Both low calorie intake
and high rates of calcium loss through
sweating have been tied to bone loss in
other studies.
More surprising, the cyclists’ heavy
weight training seems not to have built
much bone.
But, as Mr. Andersen points out, this
was a one-time snapshot of the ath-
letes’ health. It’s possible, he said, that
weight training prevented even great-
er bone thinning.
It is also encouraging, he said, that
the runners harbored relatively
healthy bones, since some past studies
have hinted that running might not
stimulate bone building.
Over all, the study’s findings suggest
that serious cyclists might want to
consider at least sometimes branching
out, Mr. Andersen said.
“I would generally recommend
combining cycling with weight-bearing
exercise to promote good bone health,”
he said.
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
GEORGE ETHEREDGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
injured and miss work and they are also
more motivated and productive.
POSITION YOUR GEAR PROPERLY
Once you’ve adjusted your work space,
don’t overlook the tools you use to do
your job. The goal is, again, to keep your
body as neutral as possible, so adjust
your equipment to make that happen.
Is your mouse way off to the side?
Bring it closer to your body so you don’t
have to reach so far. Your keyboard
should be set so that the “B” or “H” key
is at your midline, and your monitor
should be straight in front of you and a
Opening doctors’ eyes
to women’s heart disease
One patient’s diagnosis
leads her on a quest to get
her condition recognized
BY HAIDER WARRAICH, M.D.
Katherine Leon was 38 and living in Al-
exandria, Va., when she gave birth to
her second son in 2003. She was dis-
charged from the hospital, but instead of
getting better, she recalls, she kept feel-
ing “worse and worse and worse.”
Five weeks after she had her child,
Ms. Leon’s husband came back early
from work and found her barely able to
breathe. “I hate to use the word panic,
because so many people say if it’s a
woman she is just having a panic attack,
but I was terrified,” she said.
Her husband called 911, and she was
taken to the emergency room where, af-
ter a few tests, the physicians told her
there was nothing wrong. She went
home but continued to have chest pain
and kept laboring to breathe.
Things came to a head several days
later, she said, when she developed “that
impending doom feeling.” Reluctantly,
she called 911 again.
Things went differently in the emer-
gency room this time.
“There was a young woman doctor
who took care of me,” said Ms. Leon.
“Her reaction was totally different. She
knew that there was something defi-
nitely wrong.”
A few days later, she underwent an ex-
plorative cardiac catheterization pro-
cedure and received a devastating diag-
nosis: She had a critical blockage in the
main artery supplying her heart. She
would need emergency heart bypass
surgery.
She remembers thinking at the time:
“Are you kidding me? I have two babies
and I was going to do the whole mom
thing, with playgroups and a jog stroller,
and take classes. I may have tried one
cigarette in my life. I didn’t have choles-
terol issues. I didn’t have blood pressure
issues.”
She received what at the time was
considered one of the rarest possible di-
agnoses: spontaneous coronary artery
dissection, or SCAD. The condition oc-
curs when one of the arteries supplying
the heart with oxygen spontaneously
tears open, leading to a heart attack that
can sometimes be fatal. It occurs most
often in women, and can be exacerbated
by pregnancy.
But at the time, few doctors knew that
SCAD even existed, or knew much
about it.
“You are never going to meet anyone
else who has this,” Ms. Leon remembers
one doctor telling her. Another told her,
..
height such that you don’t have to tilt
your neck down or up to see it. (That
was my downfall.)
If you frequently look at papers, con-
sider getting a document holder and
keeping it close to your monitor so you
don’t have to move your head as much.
Adjust your chair so that your feet are
flat on the floor, your legs are bent at a
right angle and you can work in a re-
clined position.
Smartphones present unique prob-
lems. For one thing, they increase the
risk for “texting thumb,” or de Quervain
syndrome, an irritation of the tendon or
tendon sheath on the outside of the
thumb. Dr. Hedge suggests download-
ing a swipe-to-type keyboard app, which
uses predictive text and finger swiping.
Even better, dictate your texts. And if
you talk on your phone a lot, invest in a
handset.
When you’re looking at your phone,
don’t hold it down near your chest or
your waist, because then you have to
look down to see it, which strains your
neck muscles.
“When you tilt your head down, you
increase the effective weight of your
head six times, from about 10 pounds to
about 60 pounds,” Dr. Hedge said.
TAKE TIME FOR BREAKS
Perhaps the most important tip is one
we have the hardest time with: take fre-
quent breaks and change your position
regularly.
“We say, ‘Your next position is your
best position,’” said Michelle Robertson,
a lecturer at Northeastern University
and the director of the Office Ergonom-
ics Research Committee, a group of
companies that fund ergonomic re-
search.
Sitting for a long time in the same po-
sition restricts blood flow and isn’t good
for your muscles, she explained. You
also need to focus your eyes on new ob-
jects and distances every 20 minutes or
so to prevent eyestrain.
If you start feeling pain at your desk
or while working and don’t know what to
do, consider hiring a Certified Profes-
sional Ergonomist to evaluate your
workstation (even better, hire one be-
fore you experience pain). Talk to your
company’s human resources depart-
ment — there might already be someone
to work with.
Don’t just work through the aches, be-
cause — and I say this from experience
— they will only get worse if you do. But
the good news is that small adjustments
can make a really big difference.
“You need to move on and enjoy your
children.”
Her doctors also told her that the only
thing she could do to avoid SCAD in the
future was to never get pregnant again.
But seeking to learn more about the dis-
ease that had almost taken her life, she
went online and started to find other
women with similar symptoms around
the world.
In 2009, Ms. Leon went to the Wom-
enHeart Science and Leadership Sym-
posium at the Mayo Clinic, where she
met Dr. Sharonne N. Hayes, a professor
of cardiovascular medicine at Mayo. At
that time, the largest study on SCAD in-
cluded 43 patients. “I walked up to Dr.
Hayes and told her we had 70 people,
and we wanted research,” Ms. Leon re-
called. “She was like, ‘Wow.’”
“Everything I learned about SCAD in
my medical training was wrong,” Dr.
Hayes said.
By 2010, with the help of Dr. Hayes,
and subsequently SCAD Research Inc.,
an organization founded by Bob Alico,
who lost his wife to SCAD, Dr. Hayes de-
vised an innovative way to do research,
She received what at the time
was one of the rarest possible
diagnoses: spontaneous coronary
artery dissection, or SCAD.
using online networks of far-flung pa-
tients and analyzing genetic and clinical
data. “We never imagined there would
be 1,000 female patients in our virtual
registry,” Dr. Hayes said.
That fortuitous meeting between Ms.
Leon and Dr. Hayes has helped trans-
form SCAD from being an unknown, un-
recognized condition to something all
physicians are taught about during
medical school and in later training.
SCAD is now recognized as the most
common cause of heart attacks in wom-
en under 40.
Why did it take so long for physicians
and researchers to recognize SCAD?
The most important reason might have
been that the condition predominantly
affects women.
“We listen less well to women,” said
Dr. Hayes. “We are much more likely to
associate their symptoms with psycho-
logical causes.” A heart attack is more
likely to be fatal in a young woman than
a young man, perhaps because women’s
cardiac symptoms are more often mis-
attributed to anxiety or depression than
men’s.
She offers this advice: “Don’t walk out
of a doctor’s office without answers.
Find a doctor who is committed to listen-
ing to you and does not think they know
everything about anything.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Business
Steel coils at an ArcelorMittal Dofasco plant in Hamilton, Ontario. Many Republican lawmakers in the United States want the White House to remove steel tariffs on Canada.
Resistance to the new Nafta
WASHINGTON
In a divided Congress,
both parties are insisting
on changes to the deal
BY JIM TANKERSLEY
President Trump lauded his new trade
agreement with Canada and Mexico in
his State of the Union address and urged
Congress to pass the revised pact. The
deal, he argued, will help American
farmers and workers and ensure “that
more cars are proudly stamped with the
four beautiful words: Made in the
U.S.A.”
But the pact, which replaces the
North American Free Trade Agreement,
is currently imperiled in Congress, and
both Democrats and Republicans say it
has little chance of passing without sig-
nificant changes.
Democrats say the deal does not go
far enough to protect workers and the
environment, while Republicans say it
goes too far in restricting trade, particu-
larly in the auto sector.
The stalemate has some business
leaders increasingly worried that the
administration lacks a winning strategy
to move the revised deal through a di-
vided Congress, in a year when a pro-
longed government shutdown has fur-
ther eroded what little inclination Dem-
ocrats and Republicans had to work to-
gether on large pieces of legislation.
“Partisan rancor has made it more
difficult to see any kind of major legisla-
tion move forward, including on trade,”
said John Murphy, senior vice president
for international policy at the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce.
Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republi-
15 cents an hour to meet fashion’s needs
BY ELIZABETH PATON
Ever since the Rana Plaza disaster in
2013, Western fashion brands have been
under pressure to investigate and police
their own supply chains. Now, a new re-
port from the University of California,
Berkeley, shows just how shadowy
those supply lines are, as scores of la-
bels rely not just on factories in India but
also on exploited home workers.
India is the world’s second-largest
manufacturer and exporter of fashion
garments after China, with some 13 mil-
lion people working in factories within
its supply chain alone. But millions more
are employed in less formal settings
and, according to the report — titled
“Tainted Garments” and written by Sid-
dharth Kara, an expert on contempo-
rary slavery — many are women and
girls from historically oppressed ethnic
communities or Muslims who work
from home, the majority for long hours
and in hazardous conditions, earning as
little as 15 cents per hour.
Researchers working with Mr. Kara
spoke to 1,452 home workers for the re-
port, published in January, “in the hopes
that their otherwise silent voices would
be heard and might motivate others to
take action to ameliorate the exploit-
ative working conditions many of them
endure,” he wrote in the introduction.
can of Pennsylvania, said late last week
that he was doubtful that the deal, also
known as the U.S.M.C.A., would pass
Congress given the concerns from both
sides of the aisle.
“It’s hard for me to see how it’s a pri-
ority for Nancy Pelosi to give Donald
Trump what would be his biggest eco-
nomic policy victory, certainly since tax
reform,” Mr. Toomey, one of Mr. Trump’s
most vocal critics on trade, said.
Privately, some congressional Demo-
crats remain hopeful that the agreement
can pass, particularly if negotiations
with the administration continue to fly
under the radar.
Mr. Trump must still submit the deal
— along with legislation laying out how
it would be put in place — to Congress.
And administration officials continue
to insist that the deal will ultimately get
approved. “We are confident that Con-
gress will approve U.S.M.C.A.,” a
spokesman for the United States trade
representative said in an email. “It was
negotiated in close consultation with
Democrats and Republicans, and enjoys
overwhelming support from the busi-
ness community and farm groups.”
But big hurdles remain to achieving
bipartisan consensus that would allow
the pact to move through Congress. Mr.
Toomey said he could not support the
deal without significant changes in the
implementing legislation. The new
agreement inhibits free trade, he said,
citing new wage requirements on auto-
mobile manufacturing as a particular
concern.
And many Republicans, including Mr.
Toomey and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin,
the chairman of the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, say they want the White
House to remove steel and aluminum
tariffs on Canada and Mexico because
Mr. Trump had reached a deal with the
A sewing machine at a home in India. A study on home-based garment workers in India
found that 99 percent were paid less than the state-mandated minimum wage.
“Due to the lack of transparency and
the informal nature of home-based
work, which takes place right at the bot-
tom of the fashion supply chain, the
worker has virtually no avenue to seek
redress for abusive or unfair condi-
tions,” Mr. Kara said in a phone inter-
view this week. “The situation is wors-
two countries. Mr. Trump has so far re-
fused to budge on the metal tariffs and
has instead threatened to withdraw
from Nafta to try to force Congress to
vote on the new trade deal.
A formal notice of withdrawal would
give Congress six months to pass the
pact or potentially return to a pre-Nafta
trading system with higher tariffs and
more restrictive trade barriers.
Republicans are warning that such a
move most likely falls outside Mr.
Trump’s authority and would only re-
duce the chances of Congress passing
the U.S.M.C.A.
“I imagine you’d have a huge sell-off
in equities and have very, very dis-
rupted financial markets,” Mr. Toomey
Both Democrats and Republicans
say the revised trade agreement
has little chance of passing
without significant changes.
said. “I sure hope the president does not
go down that road.”
Republican strategists say that unless
Mr. Trump agrees to compromise, he
will most likely face defeat.
“The president has two options on
this trade deal: the honey or the ham-
mer,” said Antonia Ferrier, a Republican
strategist with Definers Public Affairs
and a former aide to the Senate majority
leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Mr. Trump, she said, could bargain with
Ms. Pelosi or withdraw from Nafta.
“Neither are great options,” she said,
“which is why there’s so much skepti-
cism that U.S.M.C.A. will even happen.”
Democrats, including populists who
tend to side more with Mr. Trump than
Mr. Toomey on trade issues, say they are
open to working with the administration
to improve and pass the agreement.
FREDO DE LUNA/VW PICS - UIG, VIA GETTY IMAGES
ened by the fact that there is little to no
regulation or enforcement from the
state regarding their work.”
In South Asia, Mr. Kara added, the in-
formal economy is populated almost en-
tirely by low caste or religious minor-
ities, who lack access to social systems,
education and opportunities.
COLE BURSTON/GETTY IMAGES
Party leaders have had productive dis-
cussions with Robert Lighthizer, the
United States trade representative, to
reinforce the need for negotiators to se-
cure additional labor and environmental
protections before any floor vote.
The Trump administration spent
more than a year negotiating with Cana-
da and Mexico to try to salvage Nafta, a
25-year-old pact that has become criti-
cal to the North American economy, par-
ticularly the automobile and agriculture
sectors.
The agreement expanded the flow of
goods and capital between the three
countries, and prompted multinational
corporations to stretch their supply
chains up and down the continent.
While Mr. Trump had long threatened
to rip up Nafta, the business community
and many Republican lawmakers
pushed to keep it intact, insisting that
doing away with the pact would ulti-
mately hurt the United States economy.
The new deal, which was agreed to in
September, primarily updates Nafta but
contains some new provisions, includ-
ing requiring higher wages at automak-
ers and greater ability to sell dairy prod-
ucts in Canada.
Mr. Toomey said he remained deeply
concerned that the administration had
not rolled back the steel and aluminum
tariffs that it had imposed on Canada
and Mexico after the trilateral trade
agreement was reached last year.
He is working on bipartisan legisla-
tion that would curtail Mr. Trump’s abil-
ity to impose tariffs on the basis of na-
tional security — which the president
used to justify the steel and aluminum
tariffs — without congressional approv-
al.
The president would almost certainly
veto such a measure.
Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.
“These people are the most vulnera-
ble of all. They currently have no other
choice other than to accept the exploit-
ative labor conditions offered to them by
these fashion sub-suppliers,” he said.
Home work — working from home or
a small workshop as opposed to in a fac-
tory, often for a subcontractor who is
then employed by a supplier for an es-
tablished company or brand — has long
been a cornerstone of the fast-fashion
supply chain. It is particularly prevalent
in countries such as India, Bangladesh,
Vietnam and China, where millions of
low-paid and predominantly female
home workers are among the most un-
protected in the industry. However,
there is also evidence of exploitation in
global fashion more broadly. An investi-
gation into the rights of home workers
employed within the shadowy luxury in-
dustry in Italy was published by The
New York Times last September.
The findings from the University of
California report constitute some of the
most comprehensive assessments of
conditions facing home-based garment
workers to date. The report shines fresh
light on the harsh realities of the prac-
tice, including the use of child and forced
labor. In northern India, where most of
the 1,452 workers interviewed were lo-
cated, about 76 percent started their
INDIA, PAGE 8
A World Bank critic
might be its next chief
WASHINGTON
Trump nominee professes
his belief in mission, but
skeptics fear politicization
BY ALAN RAPPEPORT
AND BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
President Trump’s nominee for the next
World Bank president is a longtime
critic of the organization’s lending prac-
tices and its business model who has ex-
pressed concern about the power that
multilateral institutions exert.
The nominee, David Malpass, a Wall
Street veteran who is currently the un-
der secretary for international affairs at
the Treasury Department, has been a
point person in the Trump administra-
tion’s trade negotiations with China and
has overseen the government’s relation-
ship with the World Bank.
His appointment, which needs ap-
proval by the World Bank’s board, could
prove controversial given Mr. Malpass’s
skepticism about the bank and concerns
that the Trump administration could po-
liticize the role and use it to curb China’s
growing influence around the world.
Mr. Malpass tried to clarify his views
toward the World Bank, arguing that
critics ignore his experience with devel-
opment issues and insisting that he be-
lieves in the mission of the organization.
“As I look at it, I’ve been a construc-
tive force for development and for devel-
oping countries,” Mr. Malpass told re-
porters during a briefing at the Treasury
Department. “I think the bank is well po-
sitioned to be a positive contributor to
that.”
The World Bank is collectively owned
by nearly 200 countries, and its priori-
ties include addressing global poverty,
combating climate change and provid-
ing foreign aid.
Much of its mission is at odds with the
Trump administration’s priorities,
prompting supporters of the bank’s role
to question how effective a Trump-in-
stalled president would be in fulfilling
the World Bank’s goals.
“If you believe there is any merit-
ocratic element to the selection process,
there are others who are by most objec-
tive metrics more qualified,” said Doug-
las Rediker, who represented the United
States on the executive board of the In-
ternational Monetary Fund from 2010 to
2012. “That suggests a political agenda
by the Trump administration to put
someone in to address a U.S.-policy-
driven agenda.”
He added, “That was not necessarily
how that job was intended when it was
created.”
In nominating Mr. Malpass, Mr.
Trump is installing a loyalist and presi-
dential campaign adviser to a promi-
nent post with a five-year term. The
president, in announcing his pick on
Wednesday, called Mr. Malpass a “very
extraordinary man.”
“He’s been a supporter for a long
time,” Mr. Trump said.
The former Bear Stearns economist
and veteran of the George Bush and
Reagan administrations has managed
to win accolades from both the populist
and free-market wings of the Trump ad-
ministration by mixing financial acu-
men with hawkishness on China.
Mr. Malpass is being tapped to head
the World Bank after its previous presi-
dent, Jim Yong Kim, abruptly an-
nounced in January that he would re-
sign from the post, nearly three years
before his term expired.
Senior Trump administration officials
told reporters on Wednesday that
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secre-
tary, has briefed many finance ministers
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of other countries about the plan to se-
lect Mr. Malpass and that they have
been “receptive” to the choice. The offi-
cials said that Mr. Malpass had a history
of working constructively with China
and that he would honor commitments
the bank had made on issues such as cli-
mate change.
Other countries have until March 14 to
offer their own candidates for president
and, on Wednesday, a World Bank offi-
cial said that at least one other country
is expected to nominate someone. The
head of the World Bank is traditionally
selected by the United States, but the
nomination must be approved by the
bank’s board, which consists of officials
from across the world.
Mr. Malpass said he had already re-
ceived numerous expressions of sup-
port from other countries.
He will begin a six-week confirmation
process by traveling to Japan and China
to present his credentials and ask for
support from officials from those coun-
tries. He will also join the American del-
egation heading to Beijing next week for
the next round of trade talks ahead of a
March 2 deadline.
As World Bank president, Mr. Mal-
pass could put additional pressure on
China at a time when it is locked in a pro-
tracted battle with the United States for
geopolitical and economic dominance.
The Trump administration has been
urging the bank to reduce lending to
China, which since 2016 has received
more than $7.8 billion in bank loans, ac-
cording to the Center for Global Devel-
opment.
In comments in 2017 at the Council on
Foreign Relations, Mr. Malpass argued
that this should change.
EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The World Bank nominee, David Malpass,
has had a key role in China trade talks.
“The World Bank’s biggest borrower
is China,” Mr. Malpass said. “Well, China
has plenty of resources. And it doesn’t
make sense to have money borrowed in
the U.S., using the U.S. government
guarantee, going into lending in China
for a country that’s got other resources
and access to capital markets.”
Last year, Mr. Malpass helped negoti-
ate a $13 billion capital increase for the
World Bank. One condition of the agree-
ment was that richer developing coun-
tries, such as China, would face higher
borrowing costs.
Mr. Malpass could also steer the bank
away from accommodating China’s Belt
and Road development initiative, which
he has assailed for being harmful to de-
veloping countries that receive loans
and other financing from China. In testi-
mony before the House Financial Serv-
ices Committee last December, Mr. Mal-
pass warned that the initiative “often
leaves countries with excessive debt
and poor-quality projects.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Malpass made
clear that he wants to see greater trans-
parency when it comes to loans that
China is giving to developing countries
and that, as president of the bank, he
would push to make that happen. He
said he continues to believe that wealth-
ier countries like China should not drain
funds from poor countries that need the
bank’s assistance.
- BE MY GUEST PRODUCTION /ILLUSTRATION ALEXANDRE BENJAMIN NAVET
LINK
© FONDS DE DOTATION

8 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019
business
A.I. reporters: Fast, and no typos
Major news organizations
testing out journalism
generated by machines
BY JACLYN PEISER
As reporters and editors find them-
selves the victims of layoffs at digital
publishers and traditional newspaper
chains alike, journalism generated by
machine is on the rise.
Roughly a third of the content pub-
lished by Bloomberg News uses some
form of automated technology. The sys-
tem used by the company, Cyborg, is
able to assist reporters in churning out
thousands of articles on company earn-
ings reports each quarter.
The program can dissect a financial
report the moment it appears and spit
out an immediate news story that in-
cludes the most pertinent facts and fig-
ures. And unlike business reporters,
who find working on that kind of thing a
snooze, it does so without complaint.
Untiring and accurate, Cyborg helps
Bloomberg in its race against Reuters,
its main rival in the field of quick-twitch
business financial journalism, as well as
giving it a fighting chance against a
more recent player in the information
race, hedge funds, which use artificial
intelligence to serve their clients fresh
facts.
“The financial markets are ahead of
others in this,” said John Micklethwait,
the editor in chief of Bloomberg.
In addition to covering company
earnings for Bloomberg, robot reporters
have been prolific producers of articles
on minor league baseball for The Associ-
ated Press, high school football for The
Washington Post and earthquakes for
The Los Angeles Times.
Last week, The Guardian’s Australia
edition published its first machine-as-
sisted article, an account of annual poli-
tical donations to the country’s political
parties. And Forbes recently announced
that it was testing a tool called Bertie to
provide reporters with rough drafts and
story templates.
As the use of artificial intelligence has
become a part of the industry’s toolbox,
journalism executives say it is not a
threat to human employees. Rather, the
idea is to allow journalists to spend more
time on substantive work.
“The work of journalism is creative,
it’s about curiosity, it’s about storytell-
ing, it’s about digging and holding gov-
ernments accountable, it’s critical think-
ing, it’s judgment — and that is where
we want our journalists spending their
energy,” said Lisa Gibbs, the director of
news partnerships for The A.P.
The A.P. was an early adopter when it
struck a deal in 2014 with Automated In-
sights, a technology company specializ-
ing in language generation software
that produces billions of machine-gener-
ated stories a year.
In addition to leaning on the software
to generate minor league and college
game stories, The A.P., like Bloomberg,
has used it to beef up its coverage of
company earnings reports. Since join-
ing forces with Automated Insights, The
A.P. has gone from producing 300 arti-
cles on earnings reports per quarter to
3,700.
The Post has an in-house robot report-
er called Heliograf, which demonstrated
its usefulness with its coverage of the
2016 Summer Olympic Games and the
After uproar, Instacart reverses ‘misguided’ tips policy
The Shift
KEVIN ROOSE
The gig economy’s work force is fight-
ing back, and in some cases, it’s win-
ning.
This week, Instacart, the Silicon
Valley upstart that delivers groceries
and other household items to
customers through an app, reversed a
tipping policy that had outraged work-
ers, who accused the $7 billion com-
pany of cheating them out of rightfully
earned wages.
“We heard loud and clear the frus-
tration when your compensation didn’t
match the effort you put forth,”
Apoorva Mehta, Instacart’s chief exec-
utive, wrote in an open letter to In-
stacart’s contract workers, known as
shoppers.
Instacart’s workers had taken to
Reddit forums and private Facebook
groups to express their anger with the
policy, which counted tips toward the
guaranteed minimum payments the
company offered to shoppers. In some
cases, the more customers tipped, the
less Instacart paid them.
“It’s offensive, it’s unethical, and in
this climate it’s a very dumb thing to
do,” Matthew Telles, an Instacart
courier in Chicago, said this week
before the reversal.
In the letter to shoppers, Mr. Mehta
apologized for the tipping policy, which
he called “misguided.”
He said that from now on, Instacart
would calculate tips separately from
base pay. He also said the company
was putting new minimum payments
into effect: at least $5 for orders that
require only delivering an item, and $7
to $10 for orders that involve picking
2016 elections. Last year, thanks to Heli-
ograf, The Post won in the category of
Excellence in Use of Bots at the annual
Global Biggies Awards, which recognize
accomplishments in the use of big data
and artificial intelligence. (As if to make
journalists jittery, the Biggies ceremony
took place at Columbia University’s Pul-
itzer Hall.)
Jeremy Gilbert, the director of stra-
tegic initiatives at The Post, said the
company also used A.I. to promote arti-
cles with a local orientation in topics like
political races to readers in specific re-
gions — a practice called geo-targeting.
“When you start to talk about mass
media, with national or international
reach, you run the risk of losing the in-
terest of readers who are interested in
stories on their smaller communities,”
Mr. Gilbert said. “So we asked, ‘How can
we scale our expertise?’”
The A.P., The Post and Bloomberg
have also set up internal alerts to signal
anomalous bits of data. Reporters who
see the alert can then determine if there
is a bigger story to be written by a hu-
man being. During the Olympics, for in-
stance, The Post set up alerts on Slack,
the workplace messaging system, to in-
form editors if a result was 10 percent
above or below an Olympic record.
A.I. journalism is not as simple as a
shiny robot banging out copy. A lot of
work goes into the front end, with edi-
tors and writers meticulously crafting
several versions of a story, complete
with text for different outcomes. Once
items off supermarket shelves.
In addition, Instacart said it would
retroactively compensate workers who
had lost base pay as a result of the old
tipping system.
The victory at Instacart, which will
ultimately affect thousands of workers,
is just the latest in a string of success-
ful pressure campaigns by workers for
gig economy platforms. Drivers for
Uber and Lyft in New York success-
fully agitated for a citywide minimum
wage that took effect this week. Post-
mates, another highflying start-up,
recently settled a class-action suit with
thousands of delivery workers who
contested the way
The delivery the company classi-
fied them as contract
app had workers.
counted tips It’s no secret that
toward many modern gig
guaranteed workers exist in a
minimum permanently precari-
payments for ous state, with few
its couriers. legal protections,
unstable working
conditions and pay
that varies based on
who’s flush with venture capital money
that week. Most gig economy workers
are still classified as contract workers,
meaning that they aren’t covered by
federal minimum wage laws and other
labor protections.
Still, by organizing en masse and
expressing vocal opposition to exploit-
ative policies, they have managed to
wring some concessions out of the
billion-dollar corporations whose labor
they provide.
For Instacart, the drama began late
last year when it changed its method
for paying its contract workers.
Until then, Instacart’s shopper pay
was determined by an algorithm that
factored in a fixed base payment for
each order, along with a per-item bo-
nus and extra payments for certain
the data is in — for a weather event, a
baseball game or an earnings report —
the system can create an article.
But machine-generated stories are
not infallible. For an earnings report ar-
ticle, for instance, software systems
may meet their match in companies that
cleverly choose figures in an effort to
garner a more favorable portrayal than
the numbers warrant. At Bloomberg, re-
“I hope we’ll see A.I. tools
become a productivity tool
in the practice of reporting
and finding clues.”
porters and editors try to prepare Cy-
borg so that it will not be spun by such
tactics.
A.I. in newsrooms may also go be-
yond the production of rote articles.
“I hope we’ll see A.I. tools become a
productivity tool in the practice of re-
porting and finding clues,” said Hilary
Mason, the general manager for ma-
chine learning at Cloudera, a data man-
agement software company. “When you
do data analysis, you can see anomalies
and patterns using A.I. And a human
journalist is the right person to under-
stand and figure out.”
The Wall Street Journal and Dow
Jones are experimenting with the tech-
nology to help with various tasks, in-
cluding the transcription of interviews
or helping journalists identify “deep
tasks, such as delivering over long
distances. After the change late last
year, Instacart presented shoppers
with a single, itemized “earnings esti-
mate,” and guaranteed them a $10
minimum payment for each batch they
accepted.
But Instacart shoppers began to
notice that for some orders, the tips
that customers had added during
checkout were being counted toward
their $10 minimum, rather than being
paid out on top of them.
Angry shoppers collected shocking
examples of low pay, like a receipt
submitted by an Instacart shopper who
appeared to have been paid a total of
$10.80 after a $10 tip. (Instacart
claimed that the payment was an
“edge case,” and that it was putting
new policies in place to prevent similar
incidents.)
In another example, two identical
Instacart batches paid out $10 — the
guaranteed minimum — even though
one delivery earned a $2 tip and the
other a $6 tip. In the case of the $2 tip,
Instacart’s “batch payment” came to
$8; in the case of the $6 tip, Instacart
paid only $4.
“We started to notice customers who
said they tipped, but a lot of times we
wouldn’t see the tips,” said Kaylania
Chapman, a worker in Orlando, Fla.,
who delivers orders for both Instacart
and DoorDash, a rival delivery app
with a similar tipping policy.
The workers’ complaints started to
be picked up by news outlets including
Fast Company and NBC. And they
caught the attention of Working Wash-
ington, a union-backed labor group in
Seattle, which collected more than
1,500 signatures of Instacart shoppers
who objected to the company’s pay
practices. Some began asking for cash
tips outside the app, while others en-
couraged customers to leave 22-cent
tips — a nominal amount meant to
fakes,” the convincingly fabricated im-
ages generated through A.I.
“Maybe a few years ago A.I. was this
new shiny technology used by high tech
companies, but now it’s actually becom-
ing a necessity,” said Francesco Mar-
coni, the head of research and develop-
ment at The Journal. “I think a lot of the
tools in journalism will soon be powered
by artificial intelligence.”
The New York Times said it had no
plans for machine-generated news arti-
cles, but the company has experimented
with using A.I. to personalize newslet-
ters, help with comment moderation
and identify images as it digitizes its ar-
chive.
Previous technological advances
have rendered moot a number of jobs
that were once essential to the journal-
ism industry, such as Linotype operator.
But reporters and editors have not yet
been tempted to smash the programs
now taking care of some of the busy
work that once fell to them.
“When you look at the ways things are
laid out and printed and produced and
distributed, a lot of those functions have
been replaced with technology,” said
Nastaran Mohit, the organizing director
for the News Guild of New York. She
added that she did not consider A.I. a
threat to newsroom workers, while also
noting that the guild monitors emerging
technologies to make sure that hypothe-
sis holds true.
Mr. Marconi of The Journal agreed,
likening the addition of A.I. in news-
Matthew Telles, a courier in Chicago, in a Facebook image. “It’s offensive, it’s unethical,
and in this climate it’s a very dumb thing to do,” he said of Instacart’s tipping policy.
show solidarity with workers —
through the app and then adjust the
tips higher after a delivery was made.
On Wednesday, after the announce-
ment that Instacart was changing its
policies, a representative from Work-
ing Washington, Sage Wilson, said, “In
the space of two weeks, Instacart
workers came together, sparked a
national media sensation and trans-
formed the entire pay model of a $7
billion corporation.”
DoorDash, which is valued by in-
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
CAM COTTRILL
rooms to the introduction of the tele-
phone. “It gives you more access, and
you get more information quicker,” he
said. “It’s a new field, but technology
changes. Today it’s A.I., tomorrow it’s
blockchain, and in 10 years it will be
something else. What does not change is
the journalistic standard.”
Marc Zionts, the chief executive of Au-
tomated Insights, said that machines
were a long way from being able to re-
place flesh-and-blood reporters and edi-
tors. He added that his daughter was a
journalist in South Dakota — and al-
though he had not advised her to leave
her job, he had told her to get acquainted
with the latest technology.
“If you are a nonlearning, nonadap-
tive person — I don’t care what business
you’re in — you will have a challenging
career,” Mr. Zionts said.
For Patch, a nationwide news organi-
zation devoted to local news, A.I. pro-
vides an assist to its 110 staff reporters
and numerous freelancers who cover
about 800 communities, especially in
their coverage of the weather. In a given
week, more than 3,000 posts on Patch —
5 to 10 percent of its output — are ma-
chine-generated, said the company’s
chief executive, Warren St. John.
In addition to giving reporters more
time to pursue their interests, machine
journalism comes with an added benefit
for editors.
“One thing I’ve noticed,” Mr. St. John
said, “is that our A.I.-written articles
have zero typos.”
vestors at $4 billion, has not an-
nounced plans to change its tipping
policy, which dates to 2017.
“DoorDash’s pay model provides
transparency, consistency and predict-
ability,” a company spokeswoman said
on Tuesday. “Since implementing this
pay model more than a year ago, we’ve
seen a significant increase in dasher
retention, percentage of on-time orders
and dasher satisfaction.”
After Instacart’s announcement on
Wednesday, the DoorDash spokes-
..
15 cents
an hour
to produce
garments
INDIA, FROM PAGE 7
home-based work because of “some
form of duress,” including severe finan-
cial hardship, family pressure or lack of
alternate income. The youngest individ-
ual interviewed was 10 years old; up to
19 percent of the workers were between
10 and 18 years old.
Most of the women and girls inter-
viewed for the report said they are
tasked with the “finishing touches” of a
garment: embroidery, tasseling, fring-
ing, beadwork and buttons. None be-
longed to a trade union or had a written
agreement for their work, and more
than 99 percent were paid less than the
state-stipulated minimum wage under
Indian law. Minimum wage for an eight-
hour work day ranges from the equiva-
lent of $3.08 (39 cents per hour for un-
skilled work in the state of Rajasthan) to
$8.44 ($1.05 per hour for work in New
Delhi). According to the report, most
home workers received between 50 per-
cent and 90 percent less than they were
owed. And approximately 85 percent ex-
“We cannot leave this work, even
though we are treated so badly. If
we leave this work, the company
will never give us work again.”
clusively worked in supply chains for
the export of apparel products to the
United States and the European Union.
“Their days amount to little more
than running the home and working as
many hours as they can to meet these
orders, cooped up inside,” Mr. Kara said,
noting that injury and chronic illness, in-
cluding back pain and diminishing eye-
sight, were common complaints as a re-
sult of the monotonous work.
“We cannot leave this work, even
though we are treated so badly. If we
leave this work, the company will never
give us work again,” said one 36-year-
old garment worker from near Jaipur
whose account was detailed in the re-
port. None of those interviewed were
named, for fear that they would lose
their livelihoods or their families would
be punished for speaking out. The wom-
en said that labor subcontractors, who
typically are male, were often verbally
abusive or intimidating to secure com-
pliance.
The report also stated that few of the
brands or companies who employ these
workers in their supply chain were
aware that this work was being out-
sourced to home workers, or of the con-
ditions many home workers faced. For-
eign brands found to be involved —
“largely household names,” said Mr.
Kara — were not named in the report in
an effort to discourage them from
pulling out of contracts or from limiting
economic opportunity.
“We could name and shame them, but
it could be more successful to try and
take a more constructive avenue here,”
Mr. Kara said. “These women and girls
may only earn pennies but they are cru-
cial ones. If the brands simply pulled out
and they lost their home work, it could
be disastrous for them and their fam-
ilies.”
woman declined to comment.
Many Instacart shoppers were
thrilled by the company’s about-face.
In a private Facebook group, some
celebrated their successful campaign
to get the company to change its tip-
ping policy and make them whole on
previous payments.
“I can’t believe it! Back pay!” one
shopper wrote.
“THIS is why you stand up for your-
self against corruption,” wrote another.
“I’m very excited that we got In-
stacart to listen to our complaints,”
said Ashley Knudson, an Instacart
shopper in Washington State. “I feel
like we have some work to do, and
we’re not going to back down until we
get the consistency that we need in our
batch payments. We consider this a
small victory, for acknowledging their
mistreatment, but we look forward to
pushing onward and having our voices
be heard.”
Many gig economy workers still face
economic insecurity and exploitative
platform policies, of course, and law-
makers may ultimately need to come
to their rescue. (On Tuesday, Repre-
sentative Ro Khanna, a Democrat who
represents parts of Silicon Valley, told
BuzzFeed News that Instacart’s now-
defunct tipping policy was a “deceptive
business practice that should end.”)
But ultimately, it may be up to
customers to demand more account-
ability and worker-friendly policies.
Elizabeth Haslam, a DoorDash
customer in California who has spent
more than three years placing orders
from the delivery service, said on
Tuesday that she was “shocked” to
learn about the company’s tipping
policies.
“It made me really angry that I was
contributing to a company that would
do that,” she said. “And it makes me
wonder how many other services are
doing the same thing.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 | 9

Opinion
A deal with the Taliban will prevent U.S. attacks
Taliban Borhan Osman
members
have come to
see Al Qaeda The United States and the Taliban
and the made progress in peace talks in late
January after coming to a basic under-
Islamic State standing about withdrawing American
as a threat to troops in return for Taliban commit-
their cause. ments to prevent Afghanistan from
becoming a safe haven for transnation-
al terrorists. An agreement between
the United States and the Taliban has
been long overdue — as part of a
broader settlement also involving the
Taliban's Afghan opponents — and is
the way out of a war without victory.
The fear of Afghanistan-based ter-
rorists attacking the United States has
been the key reason for keeping Amer-
ican troops in the country and keeping
the Taliban out of power, but it is
rooted more in perception than in
reality.
The transnational terrorist threat
from Afghanistan has been exaggerat-
ed. For years, I have puzzled over
claims from American and Afghan
officials that 20 terrorist groups oper-
ate in Afghanistan. Ashraf Ghani, the
president of Afghani-
The reality stan, portrayed the
country as a “front
is that the line” in the global
Afghan war fight against terror-
is a two-sided ism. These state-
struggle, ments make the
something Afghan conflict
increasingly appear terribly
rare in the chaotic.
fragmented The reality is that
the Afghan war is a
landscape two-sided struggle,
of modern something increas-
warfare. ingly rare in the
fragmented land-
scape of modern
warfare. The conflict in Afghanistan is
simpler than the multifactional wars in
Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Almost
every battle in Afghanistan involves
the Taliban fighting the government MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS

forces, which makes insurgency al-

most synonymous with the Taliban.
Foreign jihadist groups in Afghani-
stan grew, mutated and faded over the
past two decades. Al Qaeda dwindled
from a potent force in southern and
eastern Afghanistan to a peripheral
actor. This happened partly because of
the relentless American campaign
against them and partly because Al
Qaeda’s attention moved to the Middle
East.
The decline of other militant groups
in Afghanistan has also resulted from
the Taliban’s calculated effort to estab-
lish a near-monopoly over insurgent
operations in the country. This could be
observed when the Taliban declared a
three-day cease-fire in June. No mili-
tants broke the cease-fire except for the
Islamic State in Khorasan Province, a
local franchise of the Islamic State.
I.S.K.P. was born in 2015 partly in reac-
tion to the Taliban’s purge of foreign
jihadist groups and its own hard-line
commanders.
When the I.S.K.P. emerged in eastern
Afghanistan, the Taliban was the first
to move against it. The Taliban was one
of the three forces alongside the United
States military and Afghan govern-
ment forces whose sustained offensive
against I.S.K.P. confined it to a handful
of districts in the remote eastern moun-
tains, although it has shown resilience.
Hunted and isolated, I.S.K.P. is the
biggest nonstate group after the Tal-
iban; the other “20 terrorist groups”
have little strength, reach or opera-
tional capability. More than half are
local Pakistani groups, some are long
defunct, and others regularly change
their ideology and branding. Most of
them target Shia or Christian minor-
ities in Pakistan and occasionally Indi-
ans.
Others are weak and divided Central
Asian organizations, driven mostly by
hostility to their repressive states
rather than the West. Some of these
groups have a mere 20 or 30 members.
There is no public evidence that apart
from the remnants of Al Qaeda and
I.S.K.P., any militant group in Afghani-
stan has actively threatened the United
States. Not a single attack against the
United States or Europe by any of
these groups has been publicly linked
to Afghanistan since 2001.
Critics of the American negotiations
with the Taliban are questioning
whether the Taliban’s assurances to not
allow any terrorist acts against the
United States and its allies from Af-
ghanistan can be trusted.
The Taliban — like any group or state
— can be expected to act in their own
interests. Instead of trying to evaluate
their trustworthiness, the more rele-
vant questions are: Do the Taliban
have their own reasons for excluding
terrorist groups from Afghanistan? Do
they have the capability to do so?
I have observed the evolution of the
Taliban’s relations with transnational
jihadist groups on the ground. The
Taliban’s full-throated fight against the
Islamic State franchisee in Afghanistan
shows their will and capability to
counter a jihadist group that they
consider a competitor.
The Taliban are a nationalist and
traditionalist group with no trans-
national ambitions; these features of
Taliban ideology have strengthened
over the past four years since the emer-
gence of the I.S.K.P. The Taliban leader-
ship has purged commanders whose
ideology did not align with their own in
recent years.
Because the Taliban have struck
tactical compromises with Al Qaeda in
the past, an important question is
whether the Taliban will again offer
hospitality to Al Qaeda or fail to pre-
vent its resurgence after an American
withdrawal.
After hundreds of conversations with
Taliban figures, I concluded that both
the pragmatists and the former cham-
pions of Osama bin Laden within the
Taliban have grown weary of Al Qaeda
and its ideology.
Harboring transnational jihadist
groups cost the Taliban their govern-
ment and sparked a bloody war. Many
Taliban members have come to see Al
Qaeda as a threat to their cause. There
is now little sympathy in the Taliban’s
internal discussions for any trans- Sher Mohammad
national jihadist group, which is a Abbas Stanakzai
remarkable break from the Taliban’s headed a Taliban
ambivalent attitude toward global delegation at
jihadism a decade ago. meetings with
A clear and public rejection of Al Afghan opposition
Qaeda and other transnational jihadist leaders in Mos-
groups, with verifiable commitments to cow this week.
prevent them from resurfacing, must
follow as part of a political settlement.
An agreement with the Taliban that
brings them into the Afghan political
mainstream would create an opportu-
nity to harness their interests in and
capability to deal with any resurgent
terrorist groups.
A Taliban that has made commit-
ments against terrorism to join an
Afghan government could be a more
effective barrier against terror attacks
in the West than keeping troops in
Afghanistan and fighting an unending
war.
BORHAN OSMAN is the senior analyst for
Afghanistan for the International Crisis
Group.

In State of the Union speech, Trump comes out as a feminist

And this
is just one
of many
fictitious
alter egos
to emerge.
Frank Bruni
So Donald Trump is a champion of
women. Who knew?
He’d been hiding that facet of himself
diabolically well all these years, as he
grabbed them by parts of their bodies
that newspapers try not to mention and
showed them special derision on Twit-
ter, comparing Stormy Daniels to a
horse and Omarosa Manigault to a dog.
A shallow, casual observer might rush
to judgment and conclude that he didn’t
fully respect the opposite sex.
But his remarks and bearing during
his State of the Union address on Tues-
day night surely corrected that impres-
sion.
He beamed at the rows of women in
white, female House members who
were seated together and dressed in a
single hue to make a statement about
their progress and their strength.
It was to them that he targeted his
assertion that “no one has benefited
more from our thriving economy than
women, who have filled 58 percent of
the newly created jobs last year.”
He then addressed them even more
directly: “Exactly one century after
Congress passed the constitutional
amendment giving women the right to
vote, we also have more women serving
in Congress than at any time before.”
Indeed we do. There are 102 in the
House. But here’s the thing: That group
includes 89 Democrats and just 13
Republicans. History was made cour-
tesy of the party that he worked hard in
the midterms to defeat, that he works
hard all the time to diminish and that he
repeatedly trolled in the rest of his
remarks on Tuesday night. If he’d had
his way and sway, those rows of white
would have been sparser. But he neither
exhibited any awareness of that nor
made any resolution to improve his
party’s stubbornly miserable record of
recruiting and promoting female candi-
dates.
Instead he basked in the women’s —
and the Democratic Party’s — accom-
plishment as if it were his own. “That’s
great,” he told them. “Really great. And
congratulations.”
It’s nice to be Trump. His bragging is
unencumbered by his past. His self-
satisfaction crowds out any self-exami-
nation. What he needs isn’t a fact check.
It’s a reality check, because his worst
fictions aren’t statistical. They’re spiri-
tual. He pretends to care about matters
that don’t move him in the least. He
feigns blamelessness in situations
where he’s entirely culpable and takes
credit in circumstances where he has
more to apologize for. He presents
himself in a positive light, as one kind of
person, when his actions paint him in a
negative light, as a different character
altogether. Many of his biggest lies are
to himself.
The State of the Union address was a
herky-jerky testament to that. I say
herky-jerky because it was six or eight
or maybe 10 speeches in one, caroming
without warning from a plea for unity to
a tirade about the border; from some
boast about American glory under
Trump to some reverie about American
glory before Trump (yes, it existed!);
from a hurried legislative wish list to a
final stretch of ersatz poetry that read
like lines from a batch of defective or
remaindered Hallmark cards. As much
as Trump needed modesty, his para-
graphs needed transitions.
But there was a leitmotif running
President Trump delivered the State of the Union address on Tuesday.
through the disparate patches, and it
was Trump’s readiness to reassemble
recent history and reinvent himself.
If you didn’t know that he was a
champion of women, then you probably
also didn’t know that he saved us from
war with North Korea. He alone can fix
it! And according to him, he did fix it, or
is fixing it, never mind what his intelli-
gence chiefs told the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee just last week. They
had doubts about his supposed success
on that front. He doesn’t. So he’ll cling to
his version. It’s the one that flatters him.
On Tuesday night Trump suddenly
cared about diversity and minorities,
and abandoned much of the divisive
lexicon that he had used over the first
two years of his presidency, most mem-
orably when he attached a fecal epithet
to countries with largely black popula-
tions.
On Tuesday night he ached for Ameri-
cans with H.I.V. or AIDS. I can’t recall
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
them being on his radar much before,
but I do recall that he or other members
of his administration worked to expel
transgender people from the military,
appoint homophobic judges and argue
against civil rights protections for
L.G.B.T. Americans.
On Tuesday night he excoriated
wealthy Americans who benefit from
undocumented immigrants even as
those immigrants (supposedly) dimin-
ish less wealthy Americans. He made no
acknowledgment of his own use of
undocumented immigrants at the
Trump golf resort in Bedminster, N.J.
Two of them, in fact, were invited by
Democrats to the speech.
On Tuesday night he said that we
Americans “must never ignore the vile
poison of anti-Semitism or those who
spread its venomous creed.” And he
himself has not ignored those who
spread it; rather, he has defended and
encouraged them — by accepting their
support during his campaign, by re-
tweeting them, by insisting that some of
the white nationalists who marched in
Charlottesville, Va., and railed against
Jews were good people.
On Tuesday night he called for comity.
He yearned for bipartisanship, at least
when he wasn’t modeling the opposite.
“We must reject the politics of revenge,
resistance and retribution,” he said, and
it was like an alliterative butcher declar-
ing that we must reject red beef. He
urged that we “rekindle the bonds of
love and loyalty and memory that link
us together as citizens, as neighbors.”
Might he try out some of that rekindling
on his Twitter account, which, even in
the hours before his speech, was a font
less of love than of spite? President,
heal thyself.
But most incongruous of all was his
feminism, closeted until Tuesday night.
He framed his concerns about illegal
immigration in terms of migrant women
being sexually assaulted on the way
north to our border with Mexico or sold
into prostitution by traffickers.
And then there was the shout-out to
women in the workforce. During it,
female House members stood, and
some pumped their fists in the air. He
registered surprise at first, followed by
satisfaction, as he seemed to realize
that their moment could also be his
moment; that he could, for this one
instant, hallucinate mutual respect and
pantomime common cause; that he
could just slough off all his sins and
latch on to a spurious grace.
“Don’t sit yet,” he told them when he
feared that they would end their cele-
bration too soon, before his next great
pronouncement. “You’re going to like
this.”
Even the newly, briefly, falsely sensi-
tive version of Trump couldn’t lose his
bossy streak — or stop hungering for,
and predicting, the next round of ap-
plause.
 ..
10 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

opinion

The stench of the Athens academy

A.G. SULZBERGER, Publisher
thinks was due to the influence of the
Simon Critchley Pythagorean school that Plato encoun-
DEAN BAQUET, Executive Editor MARK THOMPSON, Chief Executive Officer tered on his trips to Sicily and that had
JOSEPH KAHN, Managing Editor STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, President, International been revived by Archytas of Taras, a
SUZANNE DALEY, Associate Editor JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, Senior V.P., Global Advertising friend of Plato’s and some say the model
CHARLOTTE GORDON, V.P., International Consumer Marketing The weekend traffic in the center of for the philosopher king described in the
JAMES BENNET, Editorial Page Editor HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS, V.P., International Circulation Athens was awful on the late January Republic. Legend has it that the motto of
JAMES DAO, Deputy Editorial Page Editor HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific day I decided to visit the site of Plato’s the Academy, written over the entrance,
KATHLEEN KINGSBURY, Deputy Editorial Page Editor SUZANNE YVERNÈS, International Chief Financial Officer
Academy. Each of the narrow, slightly was “Let no one ignorant of geometry
dog-legged streets in Plaka, the old city, enter.” For the Academy is not just a
was completely jammed, because re- building. It is an idea, in accordance
cent angry protests, some of them with Plato’s theory of the forms, but also
violent, had forced the closing of roads the Pythagorean view that ultimate
around Syntagma, or Constitution reality is expressed by number.
Square. But the Academy was also a privately
WHERE’S THE UNITY, MR. TRUMP? Still, pedestrians were out in impres- funded research and teaching facility,
sive force, filling the streets, intent on situated outside the city. Most of us have
For all of President Trump’s political eccentricity, the enjoying their Saturday shopping. a rather whimsical idea of philosophy as
The president’s man delivers a fairly conventional State of the Union Athenians take their weekends very a bunch of men in togas having a chat in
soothing seriously. Pantelis, my cabdriver, the agora. And we think of Socrates as a
address. threaded his way delicately around gadfly, philosophizing in the street and
message was As he did last year, Mr. Trump showed up with a people suddenly lurching, seemingly somehow speaking truth to power. It’s
wholly at odds standard list of broad policy aims — many of them semi-oblivious, into the street and the PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIA MAVROPOULOU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
an attractive idea. But this is the literary
with the acrid constant chorus of motorcycles appear- Plato’s bust at the Academy in Athens. conceit of philosophy — one that is still
ambitious, some enjoying bipartisan support and few ing out of nowhere and disappearing in circulation today. It is the fiction that
reality of how likely to go anywhere in this hyperpolarized climate. noisily into the distance. Plato wants his readers to believe.
he has His vows to tackle the cost of prescription drugs, pro- Once past the clogged junction at Behind that fiction stands the library,
governed. Monastiraki Square, we pushed more the editing and copying rooms, and the
tect American jobs and fix America’s crumbling infra-
easily along Ermou Street and headed entire research engine of the Academy,
structure could have been lifted straight from his 2018 northwest. We came to an area scat- which was devoted to the careful pro-
State of the Union note cards. His call to fight child- tered with warehouses and former duction and dissemination of knowl-
hood cancer was new, but the money he proposed for it factories. The cab stopped by a huddle edge through texts and teaching. Much
of abandoned buses. Ahead of us was as we may flinch at the idea, philosophy
— $500 million over 10 years — is hardly adequate to what looked like an open area of green- has always been academic and linked to
the task. ery. Pantelis pointed and said, the activity of schools since its incep-
The president issued a paean to “unity” that could “Akadimia Platonos.” This must be the tion.
place, I thought. At this point, a rather vulgar question
just as easily have come from a predecessor who might Plato’s Academy is now a public park comes to mind: Who paid for the Acad-
have meant it. Not that Mr. Trump avoided hot topics. in a not particularly nice part of town. It emy? According to Mr. Staikos, the cost
He brought up abortion and Syria and a “tremendous is just next to Colonus, Sophocles’ birth- of construction is estimated at 25 to 30
place and, according to the legend he talents. As a wild modern-day estimate,
onslaught” of migrants on the southern border. But the
helped to invent, the final resting place we could say that the Academy cost a
thematic heart of his address, as released and hyped in of Oedipus. The day was cool and sunny, couple of hundred thousand dollars to
advance by the White House, sounded like the anodyne but the previous 48 hours had been filled build. How did Plato get this money? We
output of a random speech generator: “Together, we with storms, strong winds and intense don’t know. It is said that he was cap-
rain. tured on his return trip from Sicily in 387
can break decades of political stalemate, we can bridge As I entered the park from the south, An archaeological site at Plato’s Academy. and sold as a slave on the island of Aegi-
old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, the ground was muddy with large pud- na, which Athens was at war with at the
forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary dles. My boots slipped and slid under- time. According to one account, An-
foot as I made my way past a man talk- acres) and was reached by leaving the well stocked with texts, stacked papyri, niceris of Cyrene paid a ransom of 30
promise of America’s future.” ing loudly on a cellphone in what I think city of Athens by the Diplon gate and possibly with labels, on which the titles minas. But he refused to be paid back
Mr. Trump’s soothing message, in short, was wholly was Bengali. A couple were playing in walking along a road flanked by a public were inscribed. The library was the first after Plato was returned to Athens, and
at odds with the acrid reality of how he has governed. the distance with their dog. There was cemetery. The Gymnasium was a rec- of its kind in Athens. the money was used to pay for a plot of
an empty playground and a rather nice tangular complex, approximately 200 To delve a little deeper, here’s an land where the Academy was built.
In that way, the entire spectacle — reflected in the gravel area for playing pétanque, which feet long and 100 feet wide. Standing in intriguing question: What was on the Although the splendidly unreliable
vibrating hostility between the two sides trapped to- is apparently popular with the locals. It the ruins, the scale of the building felt shelves of Plato’s library? What had he Diogenes Laertius says that Plato
gether in the House chamber — evinced the true state was also deserted. larger than I had anticipated. The site read and what did he give his students possessed no property other than what
I oriented myself with notes and was excavated in 1929-39 and a plan of to read? We can only guess, but it’s is mentioned in his will, he received a
of the union: fractured, fractious, painfully dysfunc-
guidebooks and made my way to the the main building was published. likely there would have been writings on large sum of money from Dionysius I.
tional. ruins of Gymnasium, which is thought An open courtyard or atrium was mathematics, geometry and medicine, Plato had a significant fund of money at
The State of the Union address is one of those mo- to have been the main building of the surrounded on three sides by a single- volumes by Homer and Hesiod. From his disposal (the exorbitant figure of 80
ments that allows Mr. Trump to play the role of presi- Academy. A large grassy hollow indi- story, roofed colonnade or peristyle, the evidence of the Dialogues, it is clear talents is mentioned). Indeed, Plato is
cated the site of a former archaeological which may have provided shelter for that Plato had read the long-lost works also said to have had a banker called
dent, with pomp, standing ovations and, sweeter still, a dig. I peered through some trees into the academicians engaged in reading and of pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus Andromedes. In other words, Plato was
captive audience of his opponents. Even Mr. Trump open, green area of the ruins. There was copying papyri or (“On Nature”) and Anaxagoras rich and had wealthy patrons and very
grasps that, for this one night, he is called upon to rise a solitary man standing, very reflec- perhaps just passing (“Nous”), and texts by the Eleatic probably wealthy students.
tively, smoking a huge joint with what What books the time. In the mid- thinkers like Parmenides. It is also said We are less attracted to the idea of the
above partisanship and address the entire nation appeared to be a bottle of water at his were in dle of the atrium that Plato made an extremely expen- wealthy Aristocratic philosopher se-
rather than merely his rump political base. feet. In fact, the only people I saw Plato’s stood a cistern, which sive purchase of three works by Pythag- questered in his research facility and
Beyond the general theme, he nonetheless failed this around the various ruins were doing library, and supplied water, and oras. There would also have been works making occasional overseas trips to
exactly the same thing as this man: farther north are the by the Sophists, whom Plato loathed, visit foreign tyrants than the image of
challenge.
quietly getting wasted on a Saturday
why is every- remains of a pedestal and possibly the widely read works of the poor, shoeless Socrates causing
The president, facing several investigations and a lunchtime. I began to doubt whether the one getting on which stood stat- the atomists, like Democritus, whom trouble in the marketplace, refusing to
Democratic House determined to hold him to account, liquid was water or some kind of clear wasted there? ues of the nine muses, Plato completely ignored, possibly out be paid and getting killed by the city for
called for an end to “ridiculous partisan investigations.” alcohol, as these men didn’t have the the protectresses of of envy. his trouble. But our captivation with this
appearance of compulsive Brooklyn the arts and letters. In addition to the bookshelves storing image, once again, is overwhelmingly
“If there is going to be peace and legislation,” the yoga hydrators. Ah, the sacred groves of The Academy is literally a museum, a these texts, there was possibly a wood- Plato’s invention.
president said, “there cannot be war and investigation. academe! temple or a sacred space, an association en dais for the readings, lectures and And behind his extraordinary inven-
It just doesn’t work that way!” After a moment’s hesitation, I walked that is continued in Aristotle’s Lyceum discussions that took place daily. Most tiveness, Plato performs a characteris-
down into the ruins, exchanged a brief and on into the most famous library of intriguing perhaps in the design of the tic disappearing trick. Truth to tell, we
In the lead-up to his big night, the president’s tweets “ya sass” (hello) with the man, who the ancient world: the Museum of Alex- Academy is the House of the Reader, or know very little about Plato. According
and remarks were designed to incite. He assailed Dem- didn’t seem to care in the slightest that I andria (which contained its famous and anagnostes. It is said that a young Aris- to Plutarch, he was a lover of figs. Big
ocratic leaders and repeatedly threatened to declare a was there. It was very quiet, and all famously destroyed library), founded totle served as Reader or Lector during deal! Plato is mentioned only a couple
around was a calming, low chatter of by the Ptolemies after 297 B.C.E. his 20 years in the Academy. Appar- of times in the many dialogues that
national emergency if lawmakers didn’t provide bil-
birds. No riots here. Behind the muses was the main ently, he was nicknamed Nous or Mind bear his name. He was present at Soc-
lions for his border wall. In a preview session with I began to try to imagine the Acad- building of the Academy, divided into a by Plato, which seems appropriate. It rates’ trial but — in a beautifully reflex-
network anchors, he called Chuck Schumer, the Senate emy. number of rooms. We are not exactly would appear that the agnostic Reader ive moment that he describes in the
Democratic leader, a “nasty son of a bitch.” He called The school, founded by Plato around sure of their function, but it is highly was responsible for reading aloud every Phaedo — absent from the moment of
387 B.C.E., was named the Hecademia likely that they were used for teaching treatise submitted for publication in the Socrates’ death, because he was sick.
former Vice President Joe Biden “dumb” and said that and later Academia after the nearby and were equipped with boards, writing Academy. In fact, we don’t even know that he
Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, had sanctuary dedicated to the hero materials, geometric instruments, What is striking is the wholly geomet- was called Plato, which might have been
“choked like a dog” in trying to explain a racist medical Hecademus. In Plato’s time, the area globes and celestial spheres. But the ric nature of the design of the Academy, a nickname. Laertius claims that he was
occupied about 1.5 hectares (about 3.5 center of the Academy was the library, which my new friend, Mr. Staikos, CRITCHLEY, PAGE 11
school yearbook photo.
Democrats responded with a set of guests intended
to score political points. There were Dreamers and
undocumented immigrants (some of whom formerly
worked for Mr. Trump or a Trump resort), family mem-
bers of victims of mass shootings, transgender service
members, a #MeToo activist and a bevy of federal
workers who went without pay during the shutdown.
Democratic women showed up by the dozens
dressed all in white, a nod to the suffragists of the early
20th century, in a display of sisterly solidarity with all
women.
Again and again in the speech, the president tried —
for an evening at least — to change the tone he has set
since the day he announced his candidacy with an
attack on Mexican immigrants.
“We can make our communities safer, our families
stronger, our culture richer,” Mr. Trump said early in
his address. “But we must reject the politics of revenge,
resistance and retribution — and embrace the bound-
less potential of cooperation, compromise and the com-
mon good.”
He went on, in his speechwriters’ loftiest and most
alliterative prose, “We must choose between greatness
or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance,
incredible progress or pointless destruction. Tonight, I
ask you to choose greatness.”
If Mr. Trump’s words ring hollow, his actions still
matter enormously. Given how bitterly divided the
government is, how wounded and uneasy the nation is,
it’s impossible not to cling to a hope that he might yet
rise to the office and do something for his fellow Ameri-
cans. But, rather than wait for that to happen, the wis-
est course for citizens interested in a stronger union is
to focus on building it themselves. A reproduction of Raphael’s “School of Athens” in the museum of the Academy.

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..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
It’s high time we abolish billionaires
MANJOO, FROM PAGE 1
Warren are floating new taxes aimed at
the superrich, including special rates
for billionaires. Representative Alexan-
dria Ocasio-Cortez, who also favors
higher taxes on the wealthy, has been
making a moral case against the exist-
ence of billionaires. Dan Riffle, her
policy adviser, recently changed his
Twitter name to “Every Billionaire Is A
Policy Failure.” Last week, HuffPost
asked, “Should Billionaires Even Ex-
ist?”
I suspect the question is getting so
much attention because the answer is
obvious: Nope. Billionaires should not
exist — at least not in their present
numbers, with their current globe-
swallowing power, garnering this level
of adulation, while the rest of the econ-
omy scrapes by.
I like to use this column to explore
maximalist policy visions — positions
we might aspire to over time rather than
push through tomorrow. Abolishing
billionaires might not sound like a prac-
tical idea, but if you think about it as a
long-term goal in light of today’s deep-
est economic ills, it feels anything but
radical. Instead, banishing billionaires
— seeking to cut their economic power,
working to reduce their political power
and attempting to question their social
status — is a pithy, perfectly encapsulat-
ed vision for surviving the digital future.
Billionaire abolishment could take
many forms. It could mean preventing
people from keeping more than a billion
in booty, but more likely it would mean
higher marginal taxes on income,
wealth and estates for billionaires and
people on the way to becoming billion-
aires. These policy ideas turn out to poll
very well, even if they’re probably not
actually redistributive enough to turn
most billionaires into sub-billionaires.
More important, aiming to abolish
billionaires would involve reshaping the
structure of the digital economy so that
it produces a more equitable ratio of
superrich to the rest of us.
Inequality is the defining economic
condition of the tech age. Software, by
its very nature, drives concentrations of
wealth. Through network effects, in
which the very popularity of a service
ensures that it keeps getting more
popular, and unprecedented economies
of scale — in which Amazon can make
Alexa once and have it work every-
where, for everyone — tech instills a
winner-take-all dynamic across much of
Protesting against the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
The stench of the Athens academy
CRITCHLEY, FROM PAGE 10
actually called Aristocles, after his
grandfather. “Plato” is close to the word
“broad” in Greek, like the broad leaves
of the platanos or plane tree under
which Socrates and Phaedrus sit and
talk about eros. Some think that Plato
was so called because he was broad-
shouldered because of his prowess in
wrestling.
I began to ponder and wandered from
the Gymnasium, across the park and a
street to the scant remains of another
building in the Academy complex,
which is approximately 130 feet square.
It has the typical dimensions of a palaes-
tra, or wrestling school. In my mind’s
eye, I saw an elderly Plato sitting watch-
ing his academicians wrestle, occasion-
ally offering coaching advice and en-
couragement.
Sometimes the less we know, the
the economy.
We’re already seeing these effects
now. A few superstar corporations,
many in tech, account for the bulk of
American corporate profits, while most
of the share of economic growth since
the 1970s has gone to a small number of
the country’s richest people.
But the problem is poised to get
worse. Artificial intelligence is creating
prosperous new industries that don’t
employ very many workers; left un-
checked, technology is creating a world
where a few billionaires control an
unprecedented share of global wealth.
But abolishment does not involve
only economic policy. It might also take
the form of social and political opprobri-
um. For at least 20 years, we’ve been in
a devastating national love affair with
billionaires — a dalliance that the tech
industry has championed more than
any other.
I’ve witnessed a generation of striv-
ing entrepreneurs join the three-comma
club and instantly
transform into
Inequality is
superheroes of the
the defining global order, cele-
economic brated from the Bay
condition of Area to Beijing for
the tech age. what’s taken to be
Software, by their obvious and
its very irrefutable wisdom
nature, drives about anything and
concentrations everything. We put
billionaires on
of wealth. magazine covers,
speculate about
their political ambi-
tions, praise their grand visions to save
the world and wink affectionately at
their wacky plans to help us escape —
thanks to their very huge and not-in-
any-way-Freudianly-suggestive rock-
ets — to a new one.
But the adulation we heap upon bil-
lionaires obscures the plain moral quan-
dary at the center of their wealth: Why
should anyone have a billion dollars,
why should anyone be proud to bran-
dish their billions, when there is so
much suffering in the world?
As Ms. Ocasio-Cortez put it in a con-
versation with Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I’m
not saying that Bill Gates or Warren
Buffett are immoral, but a system that
allows billionaires to exist when there
are parts of Alabama where people are
still getting ringworm because they
don’t have access to public health is
wrong.” (She meant hookworm, she
FABRICE COFFRINI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
more space is open to the imagination.
Plato worked at the Academy until his
death in 347 B.C.E., interrupted only by
two more extended trips to Sicily. The
Academy survived for a few more cen-
turies until it was destroyed by the
Roman general Sulla in 87 B.C.E. during
the sack of Athens. The buildings were
probably burned along with many other
sanctuaries, and the trees from the
grove of academe were felled to provide
timber for his siege machines. So it
goes, I thought.
A faint but clearly perceptible smell of
urine hung in the air of the palaestra. On
the corner as I looked up, two men were
rummaging carefully and quietly
through a baby-blue refuse bin.
What was striking was how exposed
and all these remains were: no fences,
no border walls and no security cam-
eras.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 | 11
opinion
Thank God for Canada!
women’s rights around the world.” interim president, he won credibility
Canada may be one of the world’s because nobody sees Ottawa as an
more boring countries, as yawn-inspir- imperialist conspirator.
ing as sensible shoes — wake up, reader, Canada has spoken up about the mass
I know you’re snoozing! — but it’s also detention of about one million Muslims
emerging as a moral leader of the free in the Xinjiang region of China even as
world. Muslim countries have mostly kept
Nicholas Kristof There’s no one else. The United States mum, and it detained a Chinese execu-
under President Trump is on a national- tive at the request of the American
ist tear. Britain’s leaders seem deter- government. China retaliated by arrest-
mined to drag their people over a Brexit ing Canadians and sentencing one to
precipice. France is distracted by pro- death, but Canada is sticking to its guns
After the Canadian foreign minister, tests. Germany is preparing for succes- — even as Trump undercut Canada by
Chrystia Freeland, tweeted concern sion. So Canada is stepping up. suggesting that the case against the
about Saudi Arabia’s imprisoning of a During the worst of the Syrian refu- executive might be dropped for political
women’s rights activist, the crown gee crisis, President Barack Obama reasons.
prince there seemed to go nuts. admitted just 12,000 Syrians and pro- For aid programs in the developing
Saudi Arabia announced that it was voked a furious backlash. Canada ac- world, countries usually try to finance
expelling Canada’s ambassador, halting cepted 40,000 Syrians, with Trudeau big, glamorous projects that will get lots
flights to Canada, ending purchases of appearing at the of attention. Instead, Canada champi-
Canadian wheat, recalling students America’s airport to hand out ons programs that are extremely cost-
from Canada and selling off Canadian winter coats to these effective but so deathly boring that they
assets. Did the United States or other
boring new Canadians. will never be discussed on TV — initia-
Western countries stand up for an old neighbor All around the tives like iodizing salt to prevent mental
friend and ally, Canada? Not a bit. is a moral world, doors to refu- impairment. Reader! Wake up!
“The United States doesn’t have to leader of the gees were clanging Still, Canadians can be devious. A
get involved,” Heather Nauert, then the free world. shut. But Canadians couple of years ago I sought an inter-
State Department spokeswoman, told were so eager to view with Trudeau for a piece about
reporters.
Yet Canada stuck to its principles.
When a young Saudi woman, Rahaf
sponsor Syrians that
organizations were clamoring for more
of them. Canadian politicians are
Canada’s successes — and he kept
stalling. Aides explained that praise
from an American might damage his
later corrected.)
Last week, to dig into this question of Mohammed Alqunun, fled to Bangkok mostly rewarded for showing compas- relations with Trump. That may have
whether it was possible to be a good last month and warned that she would sion. been the first time I’ve had a leader
billionaire, I called up two experts. be murdered by her family if she was Trump gets headlines with his peri- resist laudatory coverage.
The first was Peter Singer, the Prince- forced home, it was Canada that again odic threats to invade Venezuela to Whenever I say something nice about
ton moral philosopher who has written braved Saudi fury by accepting her. topple President Nicolás Maduro, but Canada, I get indignant emails from
extensively about the ethical duties of Freeland was at the airport to wel- Canada has been quietly working since Canadian friends pointing out the coun-
the rich. Mr. Singer told me that in gen- come Alqunun as a “very brave new 2017 to help organize the Lima Group of try’s shortcomings (which are real).
eral, he did not think it was possible to Canadian.” And Prime Minister Justin 14 nations pushing for democracy in Fortunately, Canadians don’t seem
live morally as a billionaire, though he Trudeau didn’t mince words, saying, Venezuela. When Canada recognized capable of mean emails. Not even of
made a few exceptions: Mr. Gates and “We’ll stand up for human rights and the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as mean tweets. One study found that
Mr. Buffett, who have pledged to give Americans’ tweets are loaded with
away the bulk of their wealth to philan- curses and words like “hate”: Canadi-
thropy, would not earn Mr. Singer’s ans’ tweets are larded with “awesome,”
scorn. “amazing” and “great.”
But most billionaires are not so gener- Off the ice, Canadians pursue policies
ous; of the 2,200 or so billionaires in the that are preternaturally sensible. Cana-
world — about 500 of whom are Ameri- dians regulate guns, oversee the bank-
can — fewer than 200 have signed the ing sector so as to avoid financial
Giving Pledge created by Bill and Me- crashes, and nurture entrepreneurship
linda Gates and Mr. Buffett. and economic growth without enor-
“I have a moral concern with the mous inequality.
conduct of individuals — we have many Typically, more Canadians use mass
billionaires who are not living ethically, transit, and the country has better
and are not doing nearly as much good traffic safety laws, so that the vehicle
as they can, by a wide margin,” Mr. fatality rate there is half that of the
Singer said. United States’. If the United States had
Canada’s traffic death rate, we would
Then there is the additional complica-
tion of whether even the ones who are save more than 20,000 American lives a
“doing good” are actually doing good. year.
As the writer Anand Giridharadas has Today there’s a vacuum of construc-
argued, many billionaires approach tive global leadership. Canada may be
philanthropy as a kind of branding incapable of a mean tweet, but it’s tough
JUSTIN TANG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
when necessary — and it may be the
exercise to maintain a system in which
Jessie Thomson, left, and Amany Alhadka, far right, with Syrian refugees in Canada. leader the world needs.
they get to keep their billions.
When a billionaire commits to putting
money into politics — whether it’s How-
ard Schultz or Michael Bloomberg or
Sheldon Adelson, whether it’s for your
team or the other — you should see the
plan for what it is: an effort to gain some
leverage over the political system, a
scheme to short-circuit the revolution
and blunt the advancing pitchforks.
Which brings me to my second expert
on the subject, Tom Steyer, the former
hedge-fund investor who is devoting his
billion-dollar fortune to a passel of
progressive causes, like voter registra-
tion and climate change and impeach-
ing Donald Trump. NEW
Mr. Steyer ticks every liberal box. He PRODUCTION
favors a wealth tax, and he and his wife
have signed the Giving Pledge. He
doesn’t live excessively lavishly — he
drives a Chevy Volt. Still, I wondered
when I got on the phone with him last
week: Wouldn’t we be better off if we
didn’t have to worry about rich people
like him trying to alter the political
process?
Mr. Steyer was affable and loqua- Is murder ever
cious; he spoke to me for nearly an hour
about his interest in economic justice
legitimate? Dmitri Chostakovitch
and his belief in grass-roots organizing.
At one point I compared his giving with
that of the Koch brothers, and he
seemed genuinely pained by the com-
parison.
“I understand about the real issues of
money in politics,” he said. “We have a
system that I know is not right, but it’s
the one we got, and we’re trying as hard
as possible to change it.”
I admire his zeal. But if we tolerate the
supposedly “good” billionaires in poli-
tics, we inevitably leave open the door
for the bad ones. And the bad ones will
overrun us. When American capitalism
sends us its billionaires, it’s not sending
its best. It’s sending us people who have
lots of problems, and they’re bringing
those problems with them. They’re
bringing inequality. They’re bringing
injustice. They’re buying politicians.
And some, I assume, are good people.
It was time to go.
On the corner of Hodos Platonos,
Plato Street, I noticed a bar unsurpris-
Philippe Dollo, Prague, 2009 - ES : 1-1075037, 1-1075038, 2-1075039, 3-1075040
ingly called Platon. I thought about
having a quick glass of red wine in
Plato’s honor, but lost courage, took two
photos, and left.
SIMON CRITCHLEY is a professor of philos-
ophy at the New School for Social Re-
search and the author of several books,
including “What We Think About When
CONDUCTOR OPERA BASTILLE OPERADEPARIS.FR
We Think About Soccer” and the forth- INGO METZMACHER FROM APRIL 6 + 33 1 71 25 24 23
coming “Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us.” DIRECTOR
TO APRIL 25, 2019
He is the moderator of The Stone. KRZYSZTOF WARLIKOWSKI
CHORUS MASTER
“Athens in Pieces” is a series of dis- JOSÉ LUIS BASSO
patches by the author, tracing the past
PARIS OPERA ORCHESTRA
of Athens. Each post will focus on a AND CHORUS
specific object or site from Greek antiq-
uity for insight into contemporary life
and politics.
 ..
12 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Sports
Helicopter parents take up college football
las, a tight end, posed alongside his fa-
With matching jerseys ther at Pitt and Kentucky before signing
with the latter — recalled a long visit
and photo ops, signing day with Auburn Coach Gus Malzahn. “We
becomes a family affair spent 20 minutes talking about football,”
Ognenovic said. “The rest was about the
BY MARC TRACY new addition on his deck, the truck he
bought. He’s a regular guy.”
When Leslie Smith, a high school senior The trend can also be a way for
from Miami, made his official visit to the coaches to signal to recruits, present
University of Pittsburgh last month, he and future, what kind of program they
got an idea before a photo shoot in which are running. For instance, Florida’s sec-
he was to pose wearing the Panthers’ ond-year head coach, Dan Mullen, ap-
football uniform. pears intent on reintroducing to Gaines-
He asked his mother, Lucretia Chap- ville the kind of whimsy one expects
ple, who was accompanying him on his from a team whose fans do a gator-chop
visit, to put on the jersey. on game days.
His request was too mild for her. In contrast, a Tennessee assistant
“She decided, ‘I’m going to put on the coach recently spoke out against the
whole uniform,’” Smith said. practice, posting on Twitter that one of
The result is a pair of pictures of the things he prays for was “that I
Smith, who will suit up for Pitt more reg- NEVER have to outfit someone’s dad in
ularly next season as a freshman line- full gear for a photo shoot.” It is not
backer, and Chapple, who in years past shocking that the assistant first worked
played basketball and ran track. Both with Tennessee’s head coach, Jeremy
are clad in the school’s blue and gold col- Pruitt, when both were on the staff of
ors, head to almost-toe (they did not ap- Alabama’s buttoned-up Nick Saban,
pear to have cleats that fit Chapple). whose recruits are probably not very
Long hair flows from the back of her hel- likely to pose alongside mom or dad.
met. So why do some players and parents
“She looks pretty good in that uni- want these photographs, and why do
form,” said Smith’s future coach, Pat they make heavy rotation on social me-
Narduzzi. “She looks like a player.” dia and in the sports blogosphere?
Parents of college-age students have The photos are a reminder of the hu-
long proudly advertised where their stu- man dimension in college football’s an-
dents attend school on sweatshirts, nual meat market. For all the hoopla
bumper stickers or coffee mugs. over which program has signed the best
But football parents — a special class (spoiler: it probably was Alabama
species of sports parent — have a new again) and which team whiffed on a top
twist on that this year. As national sign- TARA OGNENOVIC UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ATHLETICS in-state linebacker, often overlooked is
ing day dawned Wednesday, the trend Steve Ognenovic, left, and his son Nikolas, a tight end from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., posed Leslie Smith of Miami, right, and his mother, Lucretia Chapple, posed for a photo dur- how big a day this is for the prospects
du jour was parents’ dressing up in uni- together on visits to Pitt and the University of Kentucky. Nikolas signed with Kentucky. ing an official visit to the University of Pittsburgh. He has since signed with the college. themselves, who, like so many other ad-
forms alongside their talented sons. olescents who are less gifted on the grid-
The resulting shots have been posted iron, are finally completing the large
to Twitter and Instagram, of course, as Smith did, but signing day is still “This is the era of ‘we’ parenting, i.e., tors may offer about how well a certain Oregon’s neon green uniform as op- and much-celebrated process of decid-
from which they have ricocheted across when ultimate judgment about coaches’ ‘We have a midterm. We’ve got a game linebacker meshes with a certain co- posed to Jamal’s black one. ing where to go to college.
the web. recruiting is rendered. tomorrow. We’re being recruited by top- ordinator’s defensive philosophy or how “It’s a long-term decision,” Hill added. Steve Snyder said that, when a Mis-
“I had buddies coming up to me being “For college football, recruiting is the tier schools,’” Julie Lythcott-Haims, a successful a college program is at devel- “You’ve got to trust them. Once you souri coach asked if he wanted to put a
like, ‘You know you’re on Barstool lifeblood,” said Luke Stampini, a recruit- former Stanford administrator and the oping players for the N.F.L., much of re- start recruiting the whole family, that jersey on, “I thought to myself, how
Sports?’” said Steve Snyder, who posed ing analyst at 247Sports. “If you’re not author of “How to Raise an Adult,” said cruiting comes down to the more basic makes it go more smoothly.” many opportunities am I ever going to
alongside his son, Sam, a tight end, dur- recruiting well, you’re probably not go- in an email. element of feel. Even for top football During their campus visits, recruits get to have an experience like this with
ing Sam’s official visit to Missouri. ing to be around for long.” “If the child is wearing a jersey signal- players, college football is also college, typically tour not only football facilities my son?”
There may be no bigger date on the The uniform photo op arguably re- ing their recruitment status, the we- and that means getting the family to but academic ones. Coaches are as likely His son ended up signing with Baylor,
calendar for college football teams than flects broader currents in child rearing. speaking parent wants that cool jersey, sign on, too. to shoot the breeze as to draw Xs and Os and, Snyder said, friends and family had
signing day, since personnel over- It could be cast as helicopter parenting too,” she said, adding, “But where does “The recruiting process is not just on a whiteboard, hoping to make re- already loaded up on Bears gear.
whelmingly dictates a team’s ultimate — or perhaps the next generation of hel- this intertwined-ness stop?” about the player. They can’t recruit the cruits — and their families — feel like “You’re very proud parents,” he said.
success or failure. For the past two icopter parenting, in which the parent What the novelty undeniably reveals player. They’ve got to recruit the family,” their college is a suitable home away “Lot of hard work.”
years, players have also been able to ropes down from the chopper right after is a crucial secret to recruiting nowa- said Jamal Hill, who posed alongside his from home.
sign during a brief window in December, the child. days. For all the talk that prognostica- older brother, Jeffrey, who got to wear Steve Ognenovic — whose son Niko- Doris Burke contributed research.

NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1991

GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES

SUDOKU No. 0802

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

Solution No. 0702 KENKEN CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Fill the grid so
that every row,
column 3x3 box Fill the grids with digits so as not Across 30 Prospectors’ prospects 58 Natural coats 13 14 15

and shaded 3x3 to repeat a digit in any row or

column, and so that the digits 1 Lifelong pals, slangily 31 Trap for the unwary 59 Originates 16 17
box contains (from)
each of the within each heavily outlined box 5 Japanese P.M. Shinzo 34 Camel purchaser, e.g.
18 19
numbers will produce the target number ___
36 First-rate
60 Muscle strengthened
1 to 9 exactly shown, by using addition, 8 Gaiety
in rowing, briefly
20 21 22 23 24 25
once. subtraction, multiplication or 37 Recorded, as data
61 ___ pants
division, as indicated in the box. 13 Subjects for saving 39 Unit on a utility bill 26 27 28 29
For solving tips A 4x4 grid will use the digits 14 Military pilot’s waiting
and more puzzles: 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6. 40 Liverpool-to- Down
www.nytimes.com/ area Nottingham dir. 30 31 32 33
sudoku
For solving tips and more KenKen 16 1997-2006 U.N. chief 1 Drummer John of Led
41 One might be sent Zeppelin 34 35 36
puzzles: www.nytimes.com/ 17 Calculating with a scent
kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@ competitors 45 Desert gullies
2 Between jobs and 37 38 39
kenken.com loving it
18 Piques 48 Like poppy seeds 40 41 42 43 44
3 Busted
KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 19 Cropped up 49 Perfect
Copyright © 2018 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.
4 Joint acct. info 45 46 47 48 49
20 Metric unit 50 Big name in yo-yos
5 Naval forces
21 Mark up, perhaps 50 51 52
52 Southpaw
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Answers to Previous Puzzles 22 Shakers and Quakers 53 Way to get fit while expression 53 54 55 56
you sit
26 Official approval 7 Savor the flattery
57 58
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Solution to February 7 Puzzle 9 1935 Nobelist Joliot-

GO GO Curie PUZZLE BY JOHN GUZZETTA AND MICHAEL HAWKINS
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A C D C D A W N R E G A L 10 Bushwa scale
B O I L T R I O O M A N I 35 Canyonlands National swing
T A K E S T W O T O T A N GO
11 One of four for an 25 Fish order
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12 Naval inits. 38 “That was totally out 51 Home of 30 Rock
GO O D N I G H T I R E N E lineup, in brief
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O S L E R H A M S A Y E S 23 Defining 33 Modern cry of
GO GO accomplishment success 44 California’s Point ___ 55 Consist of
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Culture
Wu Jing, above, in “The Wandering Earth,” which opened this week. Below, Liu Cixin, a Hugo Award-winning writer who’s led a science-fiction renaissance in China. Two of his works were the bases for “The Wandering Earth” and “Crazy Alien.”
Countdown to China’s sci-fi era
BEIJING
Filmmakers go big budget
as they tackle Hollywood’s
special effects standards
BY STEVEN LEE MYERS
China was a latecomer to space explora-
tion, and in the movies, it has been a late-
comer to science fiction, too. That is
about to change.
The country’s first blockbuster set in
space, “The Wandering Earth,” opened
Tuesday amid grandiose expectations
that it will represent the dawning of a
new era in Chinese filmmaking.
It is one in a series of ambitious, big-
budget films tackling a genre that, until
now, has been beyond the reach of most
filmmakers here — technically and fi-
nancially. Those movies include “Shang-
hai Fortress,” about an alien attack on
Earth, and “Pathfinder,” about a
spaceship that crashes on a desert plan-
et.
“Filmmakers in China see science fic-
tion as a holy grail,” said Raymond Zhou,
an independent critic, who noted that
Hollywood had set the technological
standards, and thus audience expecta-
tions, very high.
“The Wandering Earth,” shown in
3-D, takes place in a distant future in
Egypt unveils dozens of mummies
Archaeologists uncovered
the tomb of a large family
from the Ptolemaic era
BY LAURA M. HOLSON
Dozens of newly discovered mummies
from the Ptolemaic era have been un-
veiled at an Egyptian burial site, one of a
number of locations that the country
plans to disclose this year, according to
Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities.
The site, which was described as a
family burial chamber, was discovered a
year ago hollowed out of rock at Tuna el-
Gebel, an ancient burial ground not far
from the city of Minya in central Egypt.
The area is known for its archaeological
finds, including the tomb of Petosiris, an
ancient Egyptian priest, and a catacomb
filled with mummified falcons, ibises
and baboons.
Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities
posted information about the site on
Facebook and Twitter, and invited for-
eign dignitaries and journalists to tour
the tomb last Saturday.
The tomb consists of numerous cham-
bers that date from 323 B.C. to 30 B.C.
and that were accessible through a cor-
ridor and sloping set of stairs. Khaled
which the sun is about to expand into a
red giant and devour the Earth.
The impending peril forces the
world’s engineers to devise a plan to
move the planet to a new solar system
using giant thrusters. Things go very
badly when Earth has to pass Jupiter,
setting off a desperate scramble to save
humanity from annihilation.
The special effects — like the apoca-
lyptic climatic changes that would occur
if Earth suddenly moved out of its cozy
orbit — are certain to be measured
against Hollywood’s, as ever here. And
the preliminary reviews have been pos-
itive.
“It’s like the coming-of-age of the in-
dustry,” Zhou said.
“The Wandering Earth” opens with
the Lunar New Year, the beginning of an
official, weeklong holiday that is tradi-
tionally a peak box-office period in
China. It is receiving a limited release in
the United States, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand.
At home, it is competing with “Crazy
Alien,” a comedy inspired by “E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial” about two brothers
hoping to capitalize on the arrival of a
visitor from outer space.
Both “The Wandering Earth” and
“Crazy Alien” are adapted from works
by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a
renaissance in science fiction here, be-
coming the first Chinese winner of the
Hugo Award for the genre in 2015.
His novels are sprawling epics and
El-Enany, the minister of antiquities,
said in the presentation that the tomb
belonged to a family, most likely from
the elite middle class, and contained the
bodies of more than 40 men, women and
children.
Some of the adult mummies still had
painted fragments of cartonnage at the
base of their feet, which were used for
deeply researched. That makes them
plausible fantasies about humanity’s en-
counters with a dangerous universe.
Translating them into movies would
challenge any filmmaker, as the director
of “The Wandering Earth,” Guo Fan, ac-
knowledged during a screening in Bei-
jing last week.
That has made the film, produced by
Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism Com-
pany and the state-owned China Film
Group Corp., a test for the industry.
“Shanghai Fortress” is about
an alien attack on Earth. In
“Pathfinder,” a spaceship crashes
on a desert planet.
Guo, who uses the name Frant Gwo in
English, noted that Chinese audiences
have responded coolly to many of Holly-
wood’s previous sci-fi blockbusters. Stu-
dios, therefore, have been wary of in-
vesting the resources required to make
convincing sci-fi.
The film’s budget reportedly reached
nearly $50 million, modest by Holly-
wood standards but still significant in
China. More than 7,000 people were in-
volved in the production.
Much of it was filmed in the new Ori-
ental Movie Metropolis, an $8 billion
studio in the coast city of Qingdao, built
by the real estate and entertainment gi-
ant Dalian Wanda.
decoration and, in the Ptolemaic era,
were made of old papyrus scrolls. Some
of the children were wrapped in linen
decorated with ancient Egyptian script.
The ministry also displayed bowls
and other items and found family arti-
facts from the Roman and Byzantine
eras.
The site was excavated by the min-
“I really hope that this movie will not
lose money at least,” said Guo, whose
previous film, “My Old Classmate,” was
a romantic comedy. “As long as this one
does not lose money, we can continue to
make science-fiction films.”
The popularity of Liu’s novels could
help. So could two recent Hollywood
films, “Gravity” and “The Martian.”
Both included important plot twists
that, not incidentally, cast China’s space
program in a positive light, and both
were huge hits here.
The openings also come as China
reached a milestone in space: the land-
ing of a probe on the far side of the moon
in January. Although decades behind
Russia and the United States, China has
now put astronauts in orbit and has am-
bitious plans to join — or even lead — a
new age of space exploration.
“I think there is a very close connec-
tion between Chinese cinema and the
nation’s fortunes,” said Sha Dan, a cura-
tor at the China Film Archive, who mod-
erated a discussion with Guo.
He cited the most popular film in
China last year: “Operation Red Sea,” an
action drama loosely based on the Chi-
nese rescue of several hundred civilians
from Yemen when war erupted there in
2015.
“When we have the ability to go to
war, we can make movies like ‘Opera-
tion Red Sea,’” he said, alluding to Chi-
na’s military modernization in recent
years. “Only when China can enter the
istry and archaeologists from nearby
Minya University. Wagdi Ramadan,
who the ministry said headed the mis-
sion, said Saturday that some of the sar-
cophagi were tucked into niches in one
large chamber, a burial style common at
Tuna el-Gebel. Bodies were encased in
wooden or stone sarcophagi, while oth-
ers were tucked in sand or laid on the
IMAGINECHINA, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
space era can we make works like ‘The
Wandering Earth.’”
Unlike “Operation Red Sea” or the two
“Wolf Warrior” movies, which featured
a Rambo-like hero battling Western vil-
lains, “The Wandering Earth” is not
jingoistic, though it does star Wu Jing,
the hero of the “Wolf Warrior” films,
who made his own investment in the
project. He plays an astronaut aboard
an international space station who has
to contend with a HAL-like computer.
Guo said he consciously avoided mak-
ing Wu’s character a do-it-alone super-
hero. The fight to save Earth is fought
instead by an ensemble, including an af-
fable Russian cosmonaut who explains
why his country prohibited alcohol in
space, at least officially. (To say more
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER ANIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
floor, wrapped in linen.
The tomb was first discovered in Feb-
ruary 2018 and, according to Dr. El-
Enany, represented the first announced
discovery this year. He said he expected
to announce more finds in the coming
months.
Egypt’s cultural and political under-
pinnings have long been associated with
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 | 13
CHINA FILM GROUP
would be a spoiler.)
“The Wandering Earth” takes for
granted China’s central role in future
space exploration, but it also has a vi-
sion of the international collaboration
necessary to cope with the threats fac-
ing the planet, a theme that runs deeply
through Liu’s fiction. Liu, who attended
a screening last week, noted that sci-
ence-fiction films in China dated as far
back as the 1930s, when the director
Yang Xiaozhong made ones like “Ex-
changed” and “Visiting Shanghai After
60 Years,” but those were largely forgot-
ten here after the Communist revolution
in 1949.
A 1980 movie, “Death Ray on Coral Is-
land,” was a campy, propagandistic flop.
There have been few attempts since.
“This is mainly because Chinese soci-
ety is relatively closed and conserva-
tive,” Liu said in a written response to
questions. “There were not the condi-
tions for science-fiction movies to have
an impact.”
A film project based on Liu’s best-
known work, the trilogy that began with
“The Three-Body Problem,” was op-
tioned and even filmed in 2015 but has
since languished in postproduction, re-
portedly because of technical chal-
lenges and costs.
The conditions now seem ripe. Seeing
the “The Wandering Earth” on the
screen, Liu said, was “soul shaking.”
Claire Fu contributed research.
From far left, people gathering outside
the entrance to a recently discovered
burial site at Tuna el-Gebel, and an ar-
chaeologist inside.
its archaeological past.
“Egypt always announces when it
has a big find,” said Sharon Waxman,
the author of “Loot: The Battle Over the
Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World.”
“Ancient Egypt is an integral part of
modern Egypt’s identity.” (Ms. Wax-
man is a former reporter for The New
York Times.)
One reason is that archaeological
treasures drive tourism, a major indus-
try that keeps Egypt’s economy afloat.
After the Arab Spring revolution swept
across parts of the Middle East in 2011,
Americans stayed away and have only
begun to tiptoe back into the country.
In a report published by the World
Tourism Organization last summer,
Egypt led tourism growth in the Middle
East in 2017, with many tourists coming
from Western and Central Europe. If
tourists stay away, the economy suffers.
“Tourism, in part, is what fuels the
country,” Ms. Waxman said. “The big
problem in Egypt is that they have such
a massive amount of antiquities, they
are hard to maintain.”
 ..
14 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

culture

It’s her song. Theirs, too.

A Broadway show tune
written by Sara Bareilles
inspires a range of covers
BY MICHAEL PAULSON

Sometimes, a song takes on a life of its

own.
Sara Bareilles says that when she
wrote “She Used to Be Mine,” the 11
o’clock number from her Broadway mu-
sical, “Waitress,” it seemed so insanely
specific (“she is all of this mixed up and
baked in a beautiful pie”) that she felt
self-conscious performing it in concert.
But audiences have a way of making
decisions for themselves. The song,
written for a pregnant, abused waitress,
reflecting back on the dreams she did
not achieve, has been claimed, unex-
pectedly, by men, by children, by sing-
ers of all sorts.
“The range of who this song speaks to
is much broader than I could have antic-
ipated,” Ms. Bareilles said. “The chasm
between who we are, and who we
thought we would be, is always some-
thing we’re negotiating.”
Covers of the song caught my atten-
tion when a video of a gut-punching ver-
sion by a 14-year-old boy from Pennsyl-
vania went viral in the fall. Then I
started to notice it popping up on set
lists. Heather Headley, a Tony winner
for “Aida,” put her version on an album
alongside standards like “Over the Rain-
bow.” Just last week, Kathryn Gallagher,
an actress in the cast of the Broadway-
bound “Jagged Little Pill,” performed
her own take, accompanied by a cello, at
a Midtown Manhattan bar, encouraged
to do so, she said, by fans online.

“I think of my songs as my little

children, and I want them to
have big lives. This one is having
a big life.”

I asked my colleague Jesse Green, the

co-chief theater critic for The Times,
what makes the song so coverable. Its SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

emotional content, he said: “It has a

classic arc from sadness and self-criti-
cism to acceptance and triumph.” And
the music offers singers a chance to
show off their voices. “You get breathy
confessional head-voice moments build-
ing to a belty chest-voice climax,” he
added.
Ms. Bareilles, who just finished her
third stint leading the “Waitress” cast,
clearly pays attention to the way the
song has traveled since the musical
opened nearly three years ago. “I think
of my songs as my little children, and I
want them to have big lives,” she said.
“This one is having a big life.”
Here are five of her favorite versions.
Go to nytimes.com/theater to hear ADAM NEMSER/STAR TRAKS SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES CARLOS ALVAREZ/GETTY IMAGES

them.
ADRIAN MATTHEW
Adrian Matthew, the 14-year-old ninth
grader from Blairsville, Pa., was work-
ing on the song with his voice teacher
when his mother pulled out her phone
and started taping; she put the video on
Facebook, and it has now been viewed
more than 3 million times.
The video grabbed the attention of the
“Waitress” alumna Betsy Wolfe, who
shared it on Twitter. In turn, it im-
pressed the actor Zach Braff so much
that he has arranged to pay for Adrian to
go this summer to Stagedoor Manor, the
theater camp in the Catskill Mountains
of New York that Mr. Braff attended. In
the weeks since, Adrian has seen his
first Broadway show, met Ms. Bareilles
and appeared on the “Today” show.
Ms. Bareilles said she had been in
tears watching the video of Adrian sing.
“Sometimes with children, we take for
granted that they’re not able to process
a certain level of depth, but I think they
are,” she said. “I love that he was so free
in his interpretation.”
How it is possible for a teenage boy to
connect with the life experience de-
scribed in the song? It’s a question Adri-
an has been thinking about.
“You don’t have to be a middle-aged
woman who is pregnant and abused —
you can still feel it,” he told me. “The way
I relate to it — there’s been school bul-
lies, or people making fun of me. I
thought going from middle school to
high school was going to be so easy, and
I’d make so many friends, and then you
get there and it’s the opposite. The song
made me feel that.”
TIFFANY MANN
Like many New York performers,
Tiffany Mann wasn’t making enough
money acting, so for four years she had
a survival job at Ellen’s Stardust Diner,
the Times Square tourist destination
where the servers sing. It was there that
she performed a version of “She Used to
Be Mine” that a friend recorded and put
on social media.
“I had just ended a chapter in my life,
and it was rough,” she said. “In that vid-
eo, I wasn’t singing ’cause it was my job,
I was singing my way through heart-
ache.”
The clip led to an appearance on Steve
Harvey’s television variety show, fol-
lowed by a role in “Waitress.” Next up:
She’s in “Be More Chill,” which starts
previews on Broadway on Wednesday.
“It’s such an awesome story,” Ms.
Bareilles said of Ms. Mann. “She’s sing-
ing, and people are busing tables around
her — it’s so indicative of what is beauti-
ful and unwieldy about New York City,
where there is all this talent tucked into
every corner.”
ALBA RECHE
The first time Alba Reche was able to
choose her own song on “Operación Tri-
unfo,” a televised singing competition in
Spain, she picked “She Used to Be
Mine.”
“It was easy to see myself reflected in
her words,” she said in a telephone inter-
view. “We all have stories in our past,
and this song connects to some parts of
my life.”
Ms. Reche, a painter from southeast-
ern Spain, wound up becoming the run-
ner-up on the show; her version of the
song was released in a collection of her
performances; and she is about to tour
Spain with her castmates. Among those
who saw her interpretation online was
Ms. Bareilles.
“I just found her version and couldn’t
take my eyes off her,” she said. “She was
so exposed and so raw.”
BEN PLATT
Ben Platt, the Tony-winning original
star of “Dear Evan Hansen,” filmed his
version of “She Used to Be Mine” in his
childhood home. It was a tribute, he
said, to Nicolette Robinson, an actress,
whose performance in “Waitress” he
was sorry to miss.
“The song is such a beautifully perfect
meeting of pop and genuine musical the-
ater,” he explained in an email, “which is
no surprise because emotionality and
vulnerability has always been one of
Sara’s super powers.”
His take is just an excerpt, but for Ms.
Bareilles, it symbolizes something
about the theater world she long idol-
ized and is now part of. “I love the gener-
osity of someone who is so beloved in
this community singing a song from a
different show,” she said.
MATTHEW DARREN
Once a month at “Waitress,” there is a
post-show karaoke night, when audi-
ence members put their names in a tote
bag for a chance to sing a number from
the cast album.
The name drawn one night in Septem-
ber was Matthew Darren, who, it turned
out, is no stranger to singing in front of
audiences — he was a contestant on Sea-
son 10 of “American Idol,” then using the
name Matthew Darren Nuss. He knew
one song from the show — “She Used to
Be Mine” — and felt it spoke to him.
“That feeling of having lost myself in
Top, Sara Bareilles in the Broadway show
“Waitress,” for which she wrote “She
Used to Be Mine.” Above, from left, Adri-
an Matthew with Ms. Bareilles backstage
following a performance of the musical
after his version of the song went viral;
Tiffany Mann; Alba Reche; Ben Platt; and
Matthew Darren.
the routine of each day is all too famil-
iar,” he said. “Getting caught up in the
unexpected curveballs life throws at us
is so easy.”
Ms. Bareilles said Mr. Darren’s ver-
sion was a reminder of how the song can
move beyond its initial confines. “In the
life of ‘Waitress,’ people make an as-
sumption that it’s a very feminine show,
and it is, and I love that,” she said. “But
these themes go so far beyond gender.”
She added: “It was so unexpected to
see this powerful, soulful performance
come out of this man.”
Charo Henríquez contributed reporting.

Candlepins, eccentrics and whimsy

BOOK REVIEW
Bowlaway
By Elizabeth McCracken. 373 pp. Ecco/
HarperCollins Publishers. $27.99.
BY DWIGHT GARNER
The greatest bowling scene in Ameri-
can literature, worth slipping on a pair
of tricolor slippers to read, is almost
certainly the one that opens William
Kennedy’s novel “Billy Phelan’s Great-
est Game” (1978).
Kennedy’s prose has as much mus-
tard on it as does one of Billy’s throws.
A substantial bet has been placed. Billy
bowls a strike, and it’s “not just another
strike, but a titanic blast this time
which sent all pins flying pitward, the
cleanest of clean hits, perfection unto
tidiness, bespeaking power battening
on power, control escalating.”
Why there isn’t more bowling writing
in American fiction is a mystery. Surely
the problem can’t be the game’s rela-
tively low status. (Paul Fussell once
proposed a map of the least classy
places to live in America, based on
ample access to bowling.) Bowling
alleys seem a potent setting for drama;
a playwright could set a wax-floor
update of “The Iceman Cometh” on
Lane 11.
Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel,
“Bowlaway,” is a paean to candlepin
bowling, a less-whacking variant of the
sport. It employs thinner pins and a
ball the size of a grapefruit with no
finger holes. Bowlers are given three
tosses a turn, not two. The game is
popular in New England. There are no
candlepin alleys in New York City.
With this novel, McCracken has, to
borrow a term from cricket, bowled a
googly. “Bowlaway” is a large and
caterwauling sort of opera buffa,
packed with outsize characters —
some with recherché talents — and
wild, often dreamlike events. If this
novel were a bar, it would be the kind
of joint where the Christmas lights are
left on all year long.
This is McCracken’s third novel, and
there’s been a wait for it. (She has also
written two books of stories and a
memoir.) Her last novel, “Niagara Falls
All Over Again,” which tracks a pair of
comedy partners from vaudeville to
Hollywood, appeared 18 years ago.
Her first, a favorite of mine, a little
heartbreaker of a book written with
command and magic, is titled “The
Giant’s House.” It was published in
1996. It’s about a librarian and her love
for a very tall, very literate boy who is
dying. It’s the sort of novel, I recall
writing at the time, you want to sleep
with under your pillow.
In the nearly two decades between
her last novel and this one, there has
been some tragedy in the author’s life.
Her memoir, “An Exact Replica of a
Figment of My Imagination” (2008), is
about the child she lost, in her ninth
month of pregnancy, while living in a
remote part of France.
Some of the sorrow in that memoir
seeps over into “Bowlaway.” More than
one woman in this novel has lost a
child. The writing on this topic makes
for close to unbearable reading.
“People, women especially, are leery
of mothers of dead children, or too
gentle around them,” McCracken
writes. “The bereaved mother is a
combustible gas, the baby is a match;
which one is dangerous makes no
difference but best keep them apart.
LuEtta couldn’t think of a way to ask
that didn’t make her seem more dan-
gerous. She saw she might never be
allowed to hold anyone’s baby again.”
This substratum of despondency
adds ballast to a novel that sometimes
seems to want to drift off, like a hot-air
balloon, into an ionospheric layer of
pure twinkle and whimsy.
This is the sort of novel in which
nearly every character has an offbeat
EDWARD CAREY
Elizabeth McCracken.
name (Leviticus Sprague, Cracker
Graham, LuEtta Mood) and can seem
more like a collection of quirks than a
human being. One man blinks like a
circus bear and has hands as brown as
paws. Another speaks “at the same
rumbling pitch of the rolling balls.”
A woman talks about rivers of blood
if you ask her about cheese soufflés.
Another takes in wild animals until one
kills her. Yet another can remember
being born. (“It was dark inside
Mama.”) If someone showed up with
an emotional support anteater, he or
she would not seem out of place.
In the manner of John Irving and
Salman Rushdie and Annie Proulx in
their less persuasive work, McCracken
in “Bowlaway” comes close to writing
caricatures instead of characters.
That this ambitious novel nearly
works is a testament to her consider-
able gifts as a novelist, her instinctive
access to the most intricate threads of
human thought and feeling.
“Bowlaway” begins at the start of
the 20th century, when a woman
named Bertha Truitt turns up — inex-
plicably, as if she has beamed down
from outer space — in the cemetery of
a small town north of Boston.
Bertha is larger than life in many
ways. She’s big and bosomy, which is
worth remarking because so many of
the people in this novel have had too
much cake and too little exercise.
McCracken writes wonderfully about
large bodies. If she were a painter or
sculptor, she’d be Fernando Botero or
Henry Moore.
Bertha, who is described as a
“prophet of bowling,” opens a can-
dlepin alley. The place is a success, in
part because of its feminist bona fides.
In most bowling alleys at the time,
McCracken writes, women had to bowl
behind curtains, separated from the
men for modesty’s sake. Not here.
Women bowling in the open bring
gawkers, “because where else could
you see such a good-looking girl dewy
with sweat and happiness, and not pay
a cent, and not have to go to confes-
sion?”
This candlepin alley attracts ghosts.
A major character spontaneously
combusts. Another dies in the Great
Molasses Flood of 1919, which is a
correlative, at times, for the experience
of reading “Bowlaway.”
The alley attracts orphans and sensi-
tive, damaged souls, the heartbroken
and the disinherited. As this novel
moves through the decades, we follow
them, as well as the children of Bertha
and others. Some go to New York City.
Others go to wars. Some open their
own bowling alleys.
The plot has many resonances but
never fully sets its hooks in us. The
politics of nearly all its characters,
with respect to feminism, interracial
marriage, and gay and lesbian tenden-
cies, are anachronistically progressive.
This novel’s cast grows epic, but
McCracken is always most impressive
when she works small, when she is
describing movie kisses or corsets or
simply loneliness and longing.
One man in “Bowlaway” likes drink-
ing for the same reason I like her
sentences: “Beer turned on the lights,
warmed the furniture.”
..
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
travel
Big changes in a small Utah ski resort
The first luxury lodge
is opening in Alta, which
has long resisted alteration
BY RACHEL LEVIN
When Cassie Dippo’s family moved from
the City of New York to the slopes of
Alta, Utah, in 1965, she was 9 years old.
The snow was dry and white and fa-
mously light and often so deep it
reached well past her (and her father’s)
waist.
There were four chairlifts. Lift tickets
were $4.50. And lining the road up Little
Cottonwood Canyon were five simple,
family-run, ski-in/ski-out lodges, all
opened between 1939 and 1962. All of
which, a lifetime later, have remained
essentially the same, in aesthetic and
spirit and “modified American” meal
plans.
“Honestly, not much has changed
here since I was a kid,” said Ms. Dippo,
now 63, who remains an owner of the
TV-free Alta Lodge, her family’s prop-
erty.
Until now. Fresh off a $50 million over-
haul, the Snowpine Lodge reopened re-
cently as Alta’s first-ever true luxury ho-
tel. It appears to have everything any
luxury ski hotel anywhere has — and a
lot of things Alta, a world-class moun-
tain with a $116 lift ticket and a whop-
ping six chairlifts, has never had, inten-
tionally so.
Many of its 77 accommodations (in-
cluding 19 dorm-style bunks) come with
balconies, because unlike other lodges
in the canyon, the Snowpine will be open
year-round. There is a heated pool and
full spa; an indoor “grotto” and outdoor
hot tubs; and firepits, of course. And
contrary to tradition, both the Gulch
Pub, which will serve standard après-
ski fare (wings, burgers, $14 cocktails)
and Swen’s fine-dining restaurant, with
a $42 Wagyu zabuton steak with duck
fat potatoes, will be open to the public.
Snowpine’s opening winter rate for a
standard king is $569 for two, and $780
with breakfast and dinner; Alta Lodge’s
regular season rate is $500 for two, in-
cluding meals.
Night life at Alta — about 25 miles
from Salt Lake City — has always meant
books and board games (or, after a day
hiking Devil’s Castle, bed), but the new
Snowpine brings activities: arcade
Celebrating its zombie-film legacy
Pittsburgh events honor
George A. Romero, who
set his horror movies there
BY ERIK PIEPENBURG
In 1968, decades before zombies laid
waste to the American landscape in
“The Walking Dead,” they imperiled
Pittsburgh in “Night of the Living
Dead.” Directed by George A. Romero, it
was a game-changer in the horror-mov-
ie genre. Shot in low-budget black and
white, it was a zombie film (the undead
threaten a house full of strangers) with a
social conscience (with a lead character
who is black and the era’s racial unrest
an ever-present menace). The movie is
in the permanent collection of the Mu-
seum of Modern Art.
The spirit of Romero’s flesh-eaters
and imperfect heroes is what’s fueling
Romero Lives!, a new citywide initiative
aimed at celebrating Romero and draw-
ing devotees to Pittsburgh. If a group of
horror-movie fans have their way, Ro-
mero will be to Pittsburgh what John
Waters is to Baltimore: a director whose
visionary (and offbeat) filmography is a
cultural tourism generator.
It’s worth noting that Pittsburgh al-
ready has two famous artistic sons,
Andy Warhol and August Wilson, who
are a draw for tourists. Warhol has his
own museum, and Wilson is the name-
sake of an African-American cultural
center. But George Romero? In this am-
bitious and unusual undertaking, organ-
izers are convinced that the horror-
movie director will have plenty of ap-
peal for cultural tourists in a city of hills
and often overlooked charms.
“Pittsburgh can not only own
George’s accomplishments and legacy,
but it can instruct and educate and de-
light others about that as well,” said
Adam Lowenstein, a professor of film
studies at the University of Pittsburgh
and a coordinator of Romero Lives!
Romero made maverick movies in
and around Pittsburgh for almost 50
years before he moved to Toronto,
where he died in 2017. Romero most re-
flected Pittsburgh in films like “The Cra-
zies” and “Martin” with characters that
epitomized the city’s working-class pop-
ulation, and through themes — like cor-
porate greed and environmental trauma
— that rattled the region. Romero often
cast his movies with locals.
The yearlong series, which will run
through October, is underway even as
the city continues to mourn the 11 people
killed by a gunman shouting anti-Se-
mitic slurs in October at the Tree of Life
synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighbor-
hood. Mr. Lowenstein said celebrating
Romero in the face of such a real-life
atrocity puts into action the “Stronger
Than Hate” signs that have blanketed
the city.
“Romero’s films have always under-
The Snowpine Lodge is reopening as the first true luxury hotel in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, with a renovated look that cost $50 million.
games like Skee-Ball, karaoke and big-
screen movies. Also, an oxygen bar.
The final touch: A new chairlift and
ski valet to welcome home guests at the
end of the day. “We’re offering a Deer
Valley-type of lodging at Alta,” ex-
plained Robin Cohen, Snowpine’s long-
time reservations manager, referring to
the nearby upscale resort area. That
statement alone is sure to make die-
hard skiers like Alta loyalists, who refer
to themselves as “Altaholics,” cringe.
The opening of “Night of the Living Dead” was filmed at Evans City Cemetery, above,
near Pittsburgh. Monroeville Mall was the primary location for “Dawn of the Dead.”
stood that real horror is not about zom-
bies or vampires, but the fear and hatred
we can feel toward each other, especially
when we imagine each other as mon-
sters, as something not quite fully hu-
man,” he said. “In the wake of Tree of
Life, Romero has more to teach us than
ever.”
Romero Lives! kicked off last fall with
a roster of events, including a retreat for
authors of zombie fiction and a 50th an-
niversary screening of “Night of the Liv-
ing Dead” at the theater where the film
had its debut. In December, Romero’s
legacy was part of a zombie-themed
Christmas attraction at Scarehouse, a
long-running Pittsburgh haunted house.
Still to come are film screenings and ac-
ademic forums. The George A. Romero
Foundation has even started to discuss
establishing a national horror movie
museum in Pittsburgh.
The locations that will most appeal to
Romero pilgrims sit far from Pitts-
burgh’s trendy Lawrenceville and East
Liberty neighborhoods. The real must-
see is the bronze, intricately sculpted
Ms. Cohen admits she has mixed feel-
ings about her new digs. “I’m old-fash-
ioned; people should just ski so hard
they eat and crash. I get it: With the
world in such chaos, things that don’t
change are comforting. But it was time,”
she said. “I mean, we have elevators!
And bellmen! I’m never going to have to
carry luggage up all those stairs again.”
What had been the oldest, quirkiest,
squattest structure in Alta (22 awkward
rooms, warm cookies, rope tow) is now
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROSS MANTLE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
bust of Romero at the Monroeville Mall,
about a 20-minute drive from downtown
Pittsburgh. Made by the local sculptor
Christian Stavrakis and installed last
June, the work is perched without much
fanfare at the shopping center where
Romero shot his 1978 anti-materialist
zombie manifesto, “Dawn of the Dead.”
The mall’s parking lot and its signage
remain mostly unchanged, an instantly
recognizable detail that “Dawn of the
Dead” fans will eat up on Instagram. An
annual “Dawn of the Dead” fan conven-
tion, which takes place inside the mall,
started in 2016.
The other main Romero attraction is
in Evans City, a Pittsburgh suburb about
30 miles outside downtown, where Ro-
mero filmed “Night of the Living Dead.”
At the Evans City Cemetery, visitors can
drive on the road and roam among the
tombstones seen in the film’s memora-
bly terrifying opening scene. In the town
center is the small Living Dead Mu-
seum, featuring props and memorabilia
about the film and a zombie culture
“Maul of Fame.” An annual outdoor fes-
tival celebrating the film takes place
there every October.
There’s no hard data about a rise in
tourism as a result of Romero Lives!,
but anecdotally there’s evidence. Sev-
eral organizations, including the Warhol
Museum and the Carnegie Mellon Inter-
national Film Festival, credited Rome-
ro-related events for significant upticks
in attendance, results that Mr. Lowen-
stein hopes will help turn Romero
Lives! into an annual celebration.
The tactic makes sense: Horror is a
movie genre with a large and devoted
fan base willing to pay for thrills and
nostalgia. Horror-movie tourism thrives
at places like the Stanley Hotel in Col-
orado, which inspired “The Shining” as
novel and film, and Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco
in New Jersey, a.k.a. Camp Crystal
Lake, the setting of “Friday the 13th.”
its newest, swankiest and tallest. “It’s
massive. More massive than anyone an-
ticipated,” said Tom Pollard, general
manager of the Rustler, which previ-
ously laid claim to being Alta’s most lux-
urious lodge, with its heated pool and
dining room with a wall of windows
framing the mountain. (He used the
word “massive,” or its synonyms, at
least 10 times. Ms. Dippo used only one
word for her first impression: “Whoa.”)
“It went from being a quaint little
te in er
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The easiest part of the world’s greatest
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KIM RAFF FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
lodge to a massive Restoration Hard-
ware,” said Mr. Pollard, who moved to
Alta in 1981. “My wife says it looks just
like every building in Vail,” referring to
the Colorado ski town. As former mayor
of Alta, he oversaw the Snowpine’s plan-
ning approval process. “I’ve been get-
ting a lot of ‘How did you let this hap-
pen?’ ” he said.
“We’re still about fostering a commu-
nal vibe, that feeling of making friends
that last a lifetime. What would really be
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 | 15
drastic, would be if Vail Resorts came in
and bought up Alta,” countered Ms. Co-
hen, nodding to the seemingly inexora-
ble, industrywide trend of big corpora-
tions commandeering privately owned
ski resorts, like Alta. “That’s what we’re
all hoping to avoid.”
At a time when almost every moun-
tain is building a mall-like village at its
base, many say change like this was
bound to happen, and that it is healthy
for the long-term viability of the resort,
which remains one of three in the United
States to not allow snowboarders on its
slopes.
“The lodges have been resting on
their laurels: their 60, 70, 80 percent re-
turn rates,” said Connie Marshall, who
ran Alta’s press office for a quarter-cen-
tury before retiring last year. “This is a
gauntlet thrown.”
She went on: “Millennials like my
kids are looking for authenticity as
much as older generations, but they also
have expectations of, you know, getting
a drink at a bar.”
Middle-aged skiers have expecta-
tions, too. “You’re talking to a 46-year-
old guy who slept in a van last ski week-
end,” said Brent Thill of Mill Valley, Calif.
A fan of the old Snowpine, he and his
family are excited about the new one. “I
“Millennials like my kids are
looking for authenticity as much
as older generations, but they
also have expectations of, you
know, getting a drink at a bar.”
mean, no one wants Aspen at Alta,” he
said, “but it’s smart to stay with the
times. Hopefully they can preserve the
charm without bringing the one-piece
Bogners,” referring to the expensive ski
suits popular at flashier mountains.
What every Altaholic wants — no
matter where they choose to sleep — is
for Alta to, always, remain Alta.
“Am I excited about the new Snow-
pine? No. But there’s a happy grittiness
to people who go to Alta. A fancy hotel
can’t break that,” said Troy Rothwell,
who proposed to his wife at Alta and
even named his dog Alta.
“No one goes to be seen,” he said.
They go to ski. “You’re never going to
get the people with fur around their col-
lars.”
 ..
16 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

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