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Today, periodic morning rain, severe afternoon and evening thunderstorms, high 82. Tonight, cloudy,
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high 81. Weather map is on Page B6.

VOL. CLXV . . . No. 57,255

$2.50

NEW YORK, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

© 2016 The New York Times

DOCUMENTS SHOW
HOW WEALTHY HID
MILLIONS ABROAD

Trump Stance
Makes G.O.P.
Fear Backlash
Muslim Judge Couldn’t
Be Neutral, He Says

PANAMA PAPERS TROVE

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

Donald J. Trump, who said last
week that a judge’s Mexican heritage should disqualify him from a
lawsuit against Mr. Trump, expressed doubt on Sunday that a
Muslim judge could remain neutral in the case, comments that are

unlikely to ease concerns among
his fellow Republicans who fear
his controversial remarks could
hurt the party in November.
Mr. Trump’s comments, made
in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the
Nation,” followed his criticism of
Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal
judge in California overseeing a
suit against the defunct Trump
University. Mr. Trump said Judge
Curiel had a “conflict of interest”
in the case because of Mr. Trump’s
proposed border wall with Mexico.
Republicans, concerned about
how his contentious statements
could harm their ability to retain
control of the Senate and have a
detrimental effect in down-ballot
races, have struggled with how to
distance themselves from Mr.
Trump’s language without alienating his die-hard voters.
In a series of interviews on Sunday television news shows, Republicans repudiated Mr. Trump’s
comments about Judge Curiel.
But instead of softening his
stance, Mr. Trump intensified it.
Mr. Dickerson asked Mr.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, if a Muslim judge
would be similarly biased because
of Mr. Trump’s call for a ban on

Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah.
That would be possible. Absolutely.”
When Mr. Dickerson said there
was a tradition in the United
Continued on Page A13

Law Firm That Shielded
Riches Had 2,400
Clients in U.S.
By ERIC LIPTON
and JULIE CRESWELL

ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Children earn tips by sprinkling water on graves, to absolve the dead of sins, at the Kart-e-Sakhi cemetery in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Trump Show,
A Hit for Now,
Faces Fall Test

A Carnival of Life in a Field of the Dead
Children for Hire, Lovers and Cockfights Fill an Afghan Cemetery
By MUJIB MASHAL

KABUL, Afghanistan — The children’s
gathering point is the grave of one Bibi
Jawaher. She has been dead for 27 years,
the inscription on her headstone so faded
that you have to run your fingers over it to
fully make out her name and the year of

her death.
But the central location of her resting
place, on a little hill in the middle of the
sprawling Kart-e-Sakhi cemetery in western Kabul, gives the pack of young hustlers
a sweeping view of potential customers
visiting the thousands of graves dotting
the mountain skirt.
There is the middle-aged jeweler
making his weekly pilgrimage to his
mother, who died of cancer; he pays extra
to have her grave washed with the precision of a sponge bath. There is the mother
haunted by nightmares that the grave of
her 15-year-old son, who killed himself over
failed love, is engulfed in flames. She
comes regularly to check on the head-

It’s time to stop calling Donald
J. Trump’s presidential operation
“the Trump campaign.” It would
be far more accurate to call it
“Trump Productions Inc.”
Mr. Trump is not
running a campaign in the modern sense — or
what was the modMEDIATOR
ern sense until
about yesterday. Rather, he oversees a prolific content production
studio that has accomplished
what every major media conglomerate is trying to pull off
with mixed success.
It has managed to produce a

huge amount of inexpensive
programming that has consistently dominated the ratings and
the conversation across the
entire new-media landscape —
cable news, broadcast news,
radio, Twitter, Facebook and who
knows what else.
With Mr. Trump as its star,
show runner and chief content
officer, the operation has taken
over the vast media space with
multiple plotlines (War With
Megyn Kelly; Peace With Megyn
Kelly!), shocking comments (A
federal judge can’t be fair to me
because he’s of Mexican heritage!) and insults (Hillary belongs in jail; that reporter is a
sleaze!) that keep Americans
glued to their screens.
These plots often lead to negative portrayals of Mr. Trump.
And the Trumpian content can at
times be contradictory or even
counterfactual, as in false. But
Continued on Page B4

stone, which bears a portrait of her son in a
jacket and tie, and offers the children a
small amount to ritually sprinkle water on
it.
The sprinkling of water on graves is an
old tradition in Afghanistan, believed to

keep the memory of the dead fresh and to
help absolve them of the sins they committed in life.
Right over Bibi Jawaher’s body, the children wait with their large buckets, filled
from the well of a nearby shrine and carried in on their backs. Once they spot a client, they rush in with smaller buckets, often fighting one another along the way.
But in the end they always keep to their
unspoken code: When one reaches a client,
the rest back off, immediately scanning the
field for the next opportunity.
The children look for fun where they can,
but their business is serious. It puts food on
their families’ tables. They make about 10
afghanis for each small bucket they pour
— the price of a loaf of bread, about 15

cents. On lucky days, they will get much
more in tips, some as big as $10 or even $20,
forever marking that grave as auspicious,
distinct in their memory.
They have come to rely on a harsh reality of Afghan life: After decades of war and
staggeringly frequent tragedy, more and
more Afghan families have some business
or another in Kabul’s cemeteries, where an
ever-larger slice of everyday life is now
centered.
“Ajmal usually pours water without asking for permission,” said Jamshid, 10, who
teams up with him on busy days. It is an
effective tactic: Once the water is poured,
the mourner must pay.
“Who says I do that?” protested Ajmal,
who is also 10. “O.K., maybe I did it once. Or

two times.”
Behind them, another boy was straddling Bibi Jawaher’s headstone like a toy
horse.
“We don’t leave her dirty like that,”
Continued on Page A10

Over the years, William R. Ponsoldt had earned tens of millions
of dollars building a string of successful companies. He had renovated apartment buildings in the
New York City area. Bred Arabian
horses. Run a yacht club in the
Bahamas, a rock quarry in Michigan, an auto-parts company in
Canada, even a multibillion-dollar
hedge fund.
Now, as he neared retirement,
Mr. Ponsoldt, of Jensen Beach,
Fla., had a special request for
Mossack Fonseca, a Panamabased law firm well placed in the
world of offshore finance: How
could he confidentially shift his
money into overseas bank accounts and use them to buy real
estate and move funds to his children?
“He is the manager of one of the
richest hedge funds in the world,”
a lawyer at Mossack Fonseca
wrote when the firm was introduced to Mr. Ponsoldt in 2004.
“Primary objective is to maintain
the utmost confidentiality and
ideally to open bank accounts
without disclosing his name as a
private person.”

In summary, the firm explained: “He needs asset protection schemes, which we are trying
to sell him.”
Thus began a relationship that
would last at least through 2015 as
Mossack Fonseca managed eight
shell companies and a foundation
on the family’s behalf, moving at
least $134 million through seven
banks in six countries — little of
which could be traced directly to
Mr. Ponsoldt or his children.
These transactions and others
like them for a stable of wealthy
Continued on Page A14

Watchdog’s Financial Woes
The International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists is facing cutbacks, even as the Panama
Papers raised its profile. Page B1.

So Much Work Is Going Digital,
But Productivity Remains Stuck

JIM
RUTENBERG

By STEVE LOHR

ERIK S. LESSER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Once-Segregated City and Its Native Son
A group waited on Sunday for a tour of the boyhood
home of Muhammad Ali in Louisville, Ky., where people left items, left, to pay respects. The city will hold a
public service for Ali, who died Friday, but it was not always so appreciative of him. SportsMonday, Page D1.

Your smartphone allows you to
get almost instantaneous answers
to the most obscure questions. It
also allows you to waste hours
scrolling through Facebook or
looking for the latest deals on Amazon.
More powerful computing systems can predict the weather better than any meteorologist or beat
human champions in complex
board games like chess.
But for several years, economists have asked why all that
technical wizardry seems to be
having so little impact on the
economy. The issue surfaced
again recently, when the government reported disappointingly
slow growth and continuing stagnation in productivity. The rate of
productivity growth from 2011 to
2015 was the slowest since the
five-year period ending in 1982.
One place to look at this disconnect is in the doctor’s office. Dr.
Peter Sutherland, a family physician in Tennessee, made the shift
to computerized patient records
from paper in the last few years.
There are benefits to using electronic health records, Dr. Sutherland says, but grappling with the

GEORGE ETHEREDGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Dr. Peter Sutherland uses electronic records, and earns less.
software and new reporting requirements has slowed him down.
He sees fewer patients, and his income has slipped.
“I’m working harder and getting a little less,” he said.
The productivity puzzle has given rise to a number of explanations in recent years — and divided economists into technology
pessimists and optimists.
The most prominent pessimist
Continued on Page A3

INTERNATIONAL A4-11

INTERNATIONAL

NEW YORK A18-21

ARTS C1-5

A Korean Home for Japanese

Vote Against Assured Income

Cuomo Offers Support to Israel

Conjuring a Harry Potter Play

The dwindling numbers in a South
Korean nursing home for Japanese
women are reminders of the countries’
combative history.

PAGE A4

Swiss voters soundly rejected a proposal to guarantee a monthly income of
about $2,560 to residents, whether or
not they are employed.
PAGE A8

The governor ordered agencies to divest themselves of companies aligned
with a boycott against Israel. PAGE A18

Members of the creative team behind
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”
discuss the origins of the production —
called an eighth installment in the
Potter canon — and working under
PAGE C1
intense secrecy.

SPORTSMONDAY D1-9

A Long Wait at the Met

Golden State Cruises to a Win

That the brilliant Yannick Nézet-Séguin
will become the next music director of
the Metropolitan Opera is no surprise.
The concern is the long wait for him,
writes Anthony Tommasini.
PAGE C1

Draymond Green, above, scored 28
points as the Warriors defeated Cleveland, 110-77, to take a two-games-to-none
lead in the N.B.A. finals.
PAGE D3

NATIONAL A12-16
BUSINESS DAY B1-6

Driverless Cars Put to the Test
Automakers and tech companies are
competing to create the perfect selfdriving car — and to keep others from
knowing how they did it.
PAGE B1

NPR Journalist Killed in Attack

Led Zeppelin Song Dispute

An American working for NPR and his
translator were killed in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.
PAGE A11

Members of the rock band are set to
testify in a suit claiming parts of “Stairway to Heaven” were copied.
PAGE B1

Somalis Split Over a Verdict
The son of Abdihamid Yusuf, below, and
two others were jailed.

PAGE A12

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

Joyce Carol Oates

PAGE A23

U(D54G1D)y+?!&!#!=!.


A2

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

N

Inside The Times

B®

CHANEL BOUTIQUES 800.550.0005 CHANEL.COM

©2016 CHANEL®, Inc.

‘Trapezio’ black bag with chain top handle

KATHY WILLENS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

They Said Rain or Shine

Members of the Jewish Agency for Israel were not deterred by the pouring rain that fell at the start of the annual Celebrate Israel Parade down Fifth Avenue on Sunday afternoon. The parade was one part of a daylong unity festival.

INTERNATIONAL

NEW YORK

SPORTS
QUOTATION OF THE DAY

SALE
BEGINS TODAY

Report Accuses Mexico
A Ukrainian Mainstay
Of Crimes Against Humanity Approaches Its Final Days

Argentina Struggles
To Regain Its Footing

A study by the Open Society Justice
Initiative concluded that indiscriminate force — killings, forced disappearances and torture — and impunity are a part of state policy. The
report argues that the actions
constitute crimes against humanity.

Despite the undisputed quality of its
roster and having the world’s best
soccer player in Lionel Messi,
Argentina has not won a major
trophy since the 1993 Copa América.
The fear is that a generation of

offensive talent has been wasted.

PAGE A4

Covering War in Ukraine
A journalist has had guns pointed at
him, slept in a shipping container,
and walked past corpses, but until
now had never been listed as a
terrorist for doing his job.
Reporter’s Notebook. PAGE A6

Germany Expands Army
655 FIFTH AVENUE AT 52ND STREET
BROOKFIELD PLACE
BLOOMINGDALE’S 59TH STREET
AMERICANA MANHASSET

As Europe faces pressure from ISIS
and a more muscular Russia, Germany has embraced its role as the
European Union’s de facto leader,
and pledged to bolster its military,
reversing a decades-long policy of
instinctive pacifism. PAGE A11

THE WESTCHESTER

The owner of Surma, a small shop
in the East Village that serves as a
cultural touchstone, said the business will close this month. PAGE A18

BUSINESS

‘Stairway to Heaven’
To Be Scrutinized in Court
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of
Led Zeppelin will be defending
themselves against a lawsuit claiming that parts of “Stairway to Heaven” — the band’s signature hit —
were copied from “Taurus,” an
instrumental tune by the lesserknown group Spirit. PAGE B1

A Peek at Europe’s Privacy
Computer scientists were able to
discover the names of roughly a
third of the people who had asked
that online links about themselves
be taken down. PAGE B3

NATIONAL
THE MALL AT SHORT HILLS
GARDEN STATE PLAZA
THE SHOPS AT RIVERSIDE
FERRAGAMO.COM
866-FERRAGAMO

A Fight in Virginia
Over Felons’ Right to Vote
Top Republicans in Virginia’s legislature are seeking to block a sweeping order that re-enfranchised
206,000 Virginians who have completed prison sentences, probation
or parole. The suit has plunged

Virginia into yet another racially
charged voting rights battle.
PAGE A12

OBITUARIES

Thomas E. Schaefer, 85
He was a retired Air Force colonel
who had endured death threats,
harsh interrogation and solitary
confinement as the ranking military
officer among the 52 Americans
held hostage for 444 days in Iran in
the closing stages of the Carter
administration. PAGE D10

PAGE D5

‘‘

We were left making
these headstones because
death is easy here.

’’

MUHAMMAD ZAHIR,
an artist in Kabul, Afghanistan, on how his business
came to specialize in headstones. [A10]

ARTS

OP-ED

A Surprising Wait
For an Unsurprising Choice

Paul Krugman PAGE A23

That the brilliant Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin will become the next music director of the
Metropolitan Opera is not much of a
surprise. However, Mr. NézetSéguin will not officially begin his
tenure until the start of the 2020-21
season. Critic’s Notebook. PAGE C1

ONLINE
“WHAT’S MY NAME?” Current and
former New York Times reporters
and columnists talk about their
memories of Muhammad Ali and
how he became an international
icon. nytimes.com/video

Buddy Cops to Retire
The TNT police drama “Rizzoli &
Isles” enters its seventh and final
season, still serving up prime-time
comfort food and still true to its
devoted following — at least four
million viewers each week.

PAGE C3

Report an Error:
or call
1-888-NYT-NEWS
(1-888-698-6397).
Editorials:
or fax (212) 556-3622.
Public Editor: Readers concerned

Crossword C3
Obituaries D10
TV Listings C6
Weather B6
Commercial
Real Estate Marketplace B4

about issues of journalistic integrity
may reach the public editor at
or (212) 5567646.
Newspaper Delivery:
or call
1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637).

TIM GRUBER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

‘A Forgotten Legend of Basketball’
John Kundla, 99, who was the coach of the first National Basketball Association dynasty, still keeps up on the game at his assisted living facility in Minneapolis, where he watched the Eastern Conference finals. SportsMonday, Page D1.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

By ANDREW POLLACK

CHICAGO — Women with
early-stage breast cancer could
benefit from taking an estrogensuppressing drug for 10 years
rather than the standard five, researchers reported here on Sunday, citing the results of a new
study.
In the study, postmenopausal
women who took a drug known as
an aromatase inhibitor for an additional five years lowered the
risk of their cancer returning or of
a new case of cancer occurring in

the other breast.
“These data are important to
millions of women around the
world,” Dr. Harold J. Burstein, a
breast cancer expert and spokesman for the American Society of
Clinical Oncology, said in a statement on Sunday. The results “suggest that longer durations of
widely available therapy reduce
the risk of cancer recurrence and
prevent second cancers from arising.”
The study is being presented
Sunday at the oncology society’s
annual meeting here and is being
published by The New England
Journal of Medicine.
But some experts noted that the
women who took the drug an extra five years did not live longer on
the whole than those in the control
group. They said it was far from
clear that the benefit of 10 years of
an aromatase inhibitor outweighed the risk of side effects
like bone loss and joint and muscle
pain.
“It’s an option but not the standard,” said Dr. Eric Winer, director
of the breast cancer program at
the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
in Boston and an author of the

study. “I think this is one of those
situations where you have a new
approach that probably makes

sense for some women and probably doesn’t make sense for a lot of
women. You have to be careful not
to over-treat everyone.”
Most breast cancers are hormone receptor-positive, meaning
tumor growth can be fueled by the
hormones estrogen or progesterone. Even after the initial tumor is
removed by surgery, women with
this type of cancer are thought to
have a risk of recurrence, albeit
low, that lasts indefinitely.
“There isn’t a point at which we
look at the woman and say ‘You’re
done, it’s not going to come back,’”
said Dr. Lisa A. Carey, a breast
cancer specialist at the University
of North Carolina who was not involved in the study.
So women typically take pills,
either tamoxifen or an aromatase
inhibitor, to block or suppress estrogen in hopes of keeping the
cancer from returning. The aromatase inhibitor used in this
study was letrozole, which is sold
as Femara by Novartis but is also
available as a generic.
The question is how long women should continue to take these
drugs. Guidelines from the oncology society recommend women
take tamoxifen for 10 years rather
than five, because studies have
shown this prevents cancer recurrence and improves survival. Or
they can take five years of an aromatase inhibitor after five years
of tamoxifen.

But the majority of postmenopausal women now start on an
aromatase inhibitor, not tamoxifen. For those women, there has
been insufficient evidence to recommend continuing beyond five

years. The new study provides
some such evidence.
The trial involved about 1,900
postmenopausal women in Canada and the United States who had
already received about five years
of treatment with an aromatase
inhibitor. Many of the women had
also taken tamoxifen for about
five years before that, meaning
they were entering the trial about
10 years after their diagnosis.
Half the women were randomly
assigned to take letrozole once a
day for five years and the other
half a daily placebo.
After a median follow-up of a lit-

A study finds that
extending an estrogen
suppressor could
lower risks.
tle over six years, 67 women in the
letrozole group, or 7 percent, had
experienced either a recurrence
of their cancer or development of
a new cancer in the opposite

breast. That was lower than the 98
women, or 10.2 percent, in the placebo group. Using a statistical
measure known as the hazard ratio, the risk of a recurrence or of
new breast cancer was reduced by
34 percent.
The strongest effect of letrozole
was to prevent a new cancer in the
other breast. Only 1.4 percent of
those taking the drug developed
one compared with 3.2 percent of
those on the placebo. In terms of
recurrence of the original cancer

— most of which occurred in
bones, livers and other places outside the breast — there was a
smaller difference between the
groups, 5.7 percent for the letrozole group versus 7.1 percent for
the control group.
Dr. Winer said it was most important to prevent recurrence outside the breast because that is
what kills people. The small effect
of the drug on such recurrences
could explain why there was no
difference in mortality, he said.
Some 93 percent of the women
in the letrozole group were alive
after five years, compared with 94
percent in the control group.
The drug increased the onset of
osteoporosis, with 133, or 14 percent, of the women taking the
drug suffering a bone fracture,

compared with 88, or 9 percent, in
the placebo group.
“It’s really bone versus breast
cancer, is what it really comes
down to,” said Dr. Carey of the University of North Carolina. She said
it was “not unreasonable to continue therapy on patients who are
at higher risk.”
Over all, the extra therapy was
tolerable. There was no difference
in the quality of life between the
two groups, as measured by questionnaires. However, the women
in the trial had previously had five
years of treatment with aromatase inhibitors, meaning they
were already likely to tolerate the
therapy. Many women do not stay
on the drugs for even the first five
years because of side effects like
joint and muscle pain.
The study received funding
from the National Cancer Institute, the Canadian Cancer Society
Research Institute and Novartis.

©T&CO. 2016

Longer Use of Drug May Aid Breast Cancer Patients

N

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TO CELEBRATE GRADS

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As Businesses Go Digital, Productivity Remains Stuck
From Page A1
is Robert J. Gordon, an economist
at Northwestern University. His
latest entry in the debate is his
new book, “The Rise and Fall of
American Growth.” Mr. Gordon
contends that the current crop of
digital innovations does not yield
the big economic gains of breakthrough inventions of the past,
like electricity, cars, planes and
antibiotics.
The optimists are led by Erik
Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, co-directors of the M.I.T. Initiative on the Digital Economy.
They argue that there have always been lags between when
technology arrives and when people and institutions learn to use it
effectively. That has been true for
a range of technologies, including
the electric motor and the internet, which contributed to the last
stretch of healthy productivity
growth in the late 1990s and early
2000s.
The gains from current tech
trends like big-data analysis, artificial intelligence and robotics,
they say, will come. Just wait.
Some economists insist the

problem is largely a measurement
gap, because many digital goods
and services are not accurately
captured in official statistics. But
a recent study by two economists
from the Federal Reserve and one
from the International Monetary
Fund casts doubt on that theory.
Technology spending has been
robust, rising 54 percent over a
decade to $727 billion last year, according to the research firm IDC.
Despite all the smartphone sales
to consumers, most of the spending is by companies investing in
technology to increase growth
and productivity.
But an industry-by-industry
analysis, published by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research
arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, found that the
march of digital technology across
the economy has a long way to go.
The McKinsey researchers examined 22 industries, measuring not
only investment but also the use of
technology to change how work is
done. Some industries, like technology, media and financial
services, were well along, while
others, like health care and hospitality, trailed.
Only 18 percent of the American
economy is living up to its “digital
potential,” the report concluded.
And if lagging industries do not

catch up, we will not see much of a
change in national economic
statistics, said James Manyika, a
director of the McKinsey Global
Institute.
Since the financial crisis, the
Obama administration has moved
aggressively to push medicine
into the digital age. As part of the
economic recovery package, Congress enacted the Health Information Technology for Economic and
Clinical Health Act of 2009. The
legislation provided for federal incentive payments of $44,000 a
physician to shift to electronic
health records.
The billions of dollars in subsidies were intended to accelerate
adoption. And from 2008 to 2014,
the share of hospitals with electronic health records rose to 75
percent from 9 percent, while the
adoption rate in doctors’ offices
rose to 51 percent from 17 percent,
according to the most recent surveys by the American Hospital
Association and the government.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEORGE ETHEREDGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Dr. Peter Sutherland, above, sees benefits to using electronic health records but says the system
has slowed him down. Below, two nurses, Mona Bentley and Sandra Johnson, work on patient
records. The government has paid billions in subsidies to usher medicine into the digital age.

Following in Dad’s

footsteps requires
a great pair of shoes.
“The government funding has
made a huge difference,” said Dr.
Ashish Jha, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “But
we’re seeing little evidence so far
that all this technology has had
much effect on quality and costs.”
The electronic records, health
experts say, represent only a first
step toward curbing costs and improving care. “People confuse information automation with creating the kind of work environment
where productivity and creativity
can flourish,” said Dr. David J.
Brailer, who was the national
health technology coordinator in
the George W. Bush administration. “And so little has gone into
changing work so far.”
The government incentives
came with timetables for adopting
different levels of use and new reporting requirements, with the
prospect of financial penalties for
doctors and hospitals that fell behind. The early goals for adopting
electronic records were reasonable, health experts say, but the
later stages were too aggressive.
Overwhelmed doctors protested, and the administration recently shelved the previous timetable, stretching out schedules
and modifying some reporting
rules.

Healthstar Physicians, the 50doctor group in Morristown,
Tenn., where Dr. Sutherland practices, was spurred to go electronic

by those federal incentive payments, which now total $32 billion.
But the cultural adjustment to
digital technology has been challenging.
Dr. Sutherland and his colleagues evaluated several technology providers and chose Athena Health, which does not sell software but is paid a percentage of its
customers’ revenue. Healthstar
started using Athena’s cloud software in 2012, first for billing and
then for electronic health records.
Athena’s share is less than 5 percent of the group’s revenue.
Today, Dr. Sutherland’s personal income and the medical group’s
revenue are about 8 percent below
where they were four years ago.
But in 2015, both his earnings and
the revenue of Healthstar, which
employs 350 people in 10 clinics,
increased slightly, by nearly 3 percent from 2014.
Dr. Sutherland decided he did
not want a computer screen separating him from his patients. So he
opted for a tablet computer,
making it easier to keep eye contact.
Not a fast typist, Dr. Sutherland

decided to use voice recognition
software. For six months, he
stayed up until midnight most
nights, training the software until
its speech recognition engine
could transcribe his comments
into text with few mistakes.
Dr. Sutherland bemoans the
countless data fields he must fill in

to comply with government-mandated reporting rules, and he concedes that some of his colleagues
hate using digital records.
Yet Dr. Sutherland is no hater.
Despite the extra work the new
technology has created and even
though it has not yet had the expected financial payoff, he thinks
it has helped him provide better
information to patients.
He values being able to tap the
screen to look up potentially
harmful drug interactions and to
teach patients during visits. He
can, for example, quickly create
charts to show diabetes patients
how they are progressing with
treatment plans, managing blood
glucose levels and weight loss.
He is working harder, Dr.
Sutherland says, but he believes
he is a better doctor. Blunt
measures of productivity, he added, aren’t everything. “My patients are better served,” he said.
“And I’m happier.”

BROOKSBROTHERS.COM

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MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

JEAN CHUNG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Korean Home for Japanese Who Have No Other
By CHOE SANG-HUN

GYEONGJU, South Korea — She spends hours a day
watching the Japanese broadcaster NHK. Her bedside table is stacked with Japanese magazines and figurines in
kimonos. The walls bear pictures of Mount Fuji.
Shizue Katsura, 96, is among 19 Japanese women who
are spending their final days in an unlikely place: a nursing home in South Korea, where lingering anti-Japanese
sentiment has helped keep the women in obscurity.
“There is no use looking back on my life,” Ms. Katsura
said. “Home is where you are living. Japan is a foreign
country to me.”
Thousands of Japanese women like Ms. Katsura married Korean men during Japan’s colonial rule, which lasted
from 1910 to 1945. When World War II ended and Korea was
liberated, many stayed with their husbands in Korea,
while others fled back to Japan, fearing violence from
those looking to avenge the brutal colonial rule.
Or, as in Ms. Katsura’s case, they followed their husbands from Japan to Korea.
Once in Korea, these women often discovered that
their husbands’ families had found them Korean spouses
in their absence. Many also lost their husbands during the
Korean War, which lasted from 1950 until 1953.
By the time many tried to return to Japan, it was too
late. Japan and South Korea did not re-establish ties until

1965, and, even then, some of the women had no relatives
to sponsor their return and resettlement.
Emotions run high when South Koreans talk about

their country’s historical disputes with Japan, especially
the enslavement of Korean “comfort women” in front-line
brothels for Japan’s Imperial Army during World War II.
But society has paid little attention to these Japanese
women, some of whom were abandoned by their families
in both countries and had to live with neither a Korean nor
a Japanese passport.
“When they arrive here, they all have made-up Korean names,” said Song Mi-ho, the head of the nursing home,
Nazarewon, which takes its name from the biblical
Nazareth. “One of the first things we do is to call them by
their Japanese names. When this happens, they are in
tears, as if they are getting their life, their identity, back.
“Once we give their real names back, it’s amazing how
quickly they regain their Japaneseness, the decorum, the
way they fold their hands before them when they greet
others,” Ms. Song said.
While sitting in a wheelchair, Ms. Katsura perked up
when telling a visitor how she met a “kindly” Korean man
more than seven decades earlier, when they worked in a
power station in her hometown, Ebetsu, near Sapporo in
northern Japan.
But she became taciturn when asked about her life in
South Korea.
Her husband died of alcoholism decades earlier, she
said. She once raised tobacco and livestock in southwestern South Korea, and then sold vegetables in the capital,
Seoul, before failing health forced her to move into the

nursing home nine years ago.
“My son, he died early,” she said, declining to elabo-

Chiyo Yagi, 90, second from left, watching Japanese
television with other residents at Nazarewon, a
nursing home in Gyeongju, South Korea, for women who did not return to Japan after World War II.
rate.
A South Korean philanthropist named Kim Yong-sung
was operating orphanages in Gyeongju in southeastern
South Korea when he traveled to Japan and saw what
looked like Korean women protesting in front of the Japanese emperor’s palace. They turned out to be Japanese
women with South Korean passports demanding that Japan help them regain their citizenship and return home.
Mr. Kim opened Nazarewon in 1972 as a way station for
these women, providing them with lodging, as well as legal and financial aid. A total of 147 returned home through
Nazarewon, the last one in 1984.
Nazarewon has since become a nursing home for
women who either could not or did not want to return to
Japan and had no family support.
After 70 years in South Korea, some women preferred
living here to ending up at a nursing home in Japan. “They
like umeboshi,” Ms. Song said, referring to the ubiquitous
Japanese dish of pickled plums. “But they can do without
it, but not without the Korean kimchi.”
More than 80 women have died at Nazarewon during
the past 35 years. The average age of the 19 current
Continued on Page A6

A Report on Mexico’s Drug War
Cites Crimes Against Humanity
By ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — Two days after
Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadán was kidnapped by a criminal gang, the Mexican
Army raided the remote ranch where he
was a prisoner and killed him. As he instinctively raised his hands in defense,
the soldiers fired over and over at pointblank range.
A brief army communiqué about the
event asserted that soldiers had returned fire and killed three hit men at El
Puerto ranch on April 26, 2010.
But Mr. Parral had fired no weapon.
He was a government employee, the
supervisor of a bridge
crossing into Texas,
when he and a customs agent were abducted, according to a
2013 investigation by
the National Human
Rights Commission.
The case, which is still
open, has volleyed
among prosecutors,
Jorge Antonio yet his parents persist, determined that
Parral
someone be held acRabadán
countable.
“Tell me if this looks
like the face of a killer to you,” said Alicia
Rabadán Sánchez, Mr. Parral’s mother,
pulling a photograph of a happy young
man from a plastic folder.
In the years since the Mexican government began an intense military campaign against drug gangs, many stories

like Mr. Parral’s have surfaced — accounts of people caught at the intersection of organized crime, security forces
and a failing justice system.
They are killed at military checkpoints, vanish inside navy facilities or
are tortured by federal police officers.
Seldom are their cases investigated. A
trial and conviction are even more rare.
But are these cases just regrettable accidents in the course of a decade-long

government battle against drug violence? A new report by the Open Society
Justice Initiative, which works on ruleof-law issues around the world, argues
that they are not. Instead, the study says,
they point to a pattern of indiscriminate
force and impunity that is an integral
part of the state’s policy.
And in the framework of international
law, the study argues, the killings, forced
disappearances and torture constitute
crimes against humanity.
The evidence is “overwhelming,” said
James A. Goldston, the executive director of the New York-based Justice Initiative, which will present the report on
Tuesday. “In case after case, army actors
and federal police have been implicated.”
But in all but a few cases, the allegations languish, are dismissed or are reclassified. “The impunity is a loud signal
that crimes against humanity are being
committed,” Mr. Goldston said.
The Justice Initiative report is the first
time an international group has made a
public legal argument that the pattern of
abuses amounts to crimes against humanity. The finding is significant, Mr.
Goldston said, because under the lens of

international law, an investigation would
seek to determine the chain of command
behind the policy.
The government of President Enrique
Peña Nieto rejected the conclusions.
“Based on international law, crimes
against humanity are generalized or systematic attacks against a civilian population which are committed in accordance
with a state policy,” the government said
in a statement. “In Mexico the immense
majority of violent crimes have been
committed by criminal organizations.”
The report does not dispute that last
point. Its analysis, which covers the sixyear administration of former President
Felipe Calderón and the first three years
of Mr. Peña Nieto’s government, also
looks at the Zetas, the most violent of
Mexico’s drug gangs. Their brutal ac-

Mr. Parral’s parents, Jorge Parral
Gutiérrez and Alicia Rabadán
Sánchez. Mr. Parral, who had been
kidnapped by a criminal gang, was
killed by soldiers in a raid in 2010.

ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

tions constitute crimes against humanity
as well, the report concludes.
The government said that in the “exceptional cases” in which public officials
have been shown to be involved in the

use of excessive force, human rights
abuses or torture, they have been tried
and sentenced.
But human rights and international organizations have argued for years that
these cases are not exceptional.
Rather than ask the International
Criminal Court’s prosecutor to begin an
investigation, the Justice Initiative proposes that the crimes be investigated at
home.
“One of the things that we have
learned is that Mexico is rich in financial
resources and human capital in these issues,” Mr. Goldston said. The Justice Initiative has been working in Mexico for
more than a decade.
But the investigations “simply haven’t
happened because in our view the political will is not there,” Mr. Goldston said.
The report “explains how we have
reached this state of impunity,” said José
Antonio Guevara, the director of the
Mexican Commission for the Defense
and Promotion of Human Rights. The
government’s “understanding at the

highest level is that what they’re doing is
the right thing to weaken organized
crime,” he said.
The commission was one of five Mexican groups that helped prepare the Justice Initiative report.
To break that impunity, the report proposes that Mexico accept international
help from outside prosecutors with the
authority to investigate and prosecute
atrocities and corruption cases.

Mexico’s human rights crisis has commanded international attention since 43
students from a local teachers’ college
were abducted by local police officers
working with a drug gang in the southern city of Iguala in September 2014 as
the federal police and military stood by.
“The impunity in Mexico and the circuits of corruption are such that they
generate pacts so solid that international
intervention is needed,” said Santiago
Aguirre, the deputy director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Center for Human Rights.
One model for what the report suggests is in neighboring Guatemala,
where independent prosecutors uncovered a customs fraud scheme that
brought down the president last year.
The Mexican government rejected the

idea. “Our country has the capacity and
the will to meet human rights challenges,” it said.
The government pointed to the drop in
complaints to the National Human
Rights Commission, to 538 last year from
1,450 in 2012.
It also described recent changes designed to reduce abuses, including proposed laws and protocols to prevent torture and investigate disappearances. A
new law for victims is in effect, and this
month courts will begin to switch from
written to oral trials.
Critics are skeptical that the changes
will make much of a difference unless
they are carried out effectively.
As long as prosecutors in Mexico remain subject to political power, said Mr.
Aguirre, the impunity will continue.
“What’s the incentive for a prosecutor to

be independent? None,” he said.
Without real investigations, there are
thousands of parents like the Parrals,
who trudge from one government office
to another in search of answers.
It was only through a case file number
that appeared on an army document 10
months after their son disappeared that
they found his body.
Tucked into the archives at the state
prosecutor’s office was their son’s government ID, which had been found at the
ranch. But his body had been tossed into
a common grave. An army investigation
dismissed the case, and it languished
with federal prosecutors before it was
turned back to state prosecutors.
“We think the army is hiding something to protect the commanding officers
from the atrocities they carry out,” said
Mr. Parral’s father, Jorge Parral
Gutiérrez. “We can see that the
prosecutors are not free to act.”
“The message is that the army . . . ,”
began Mr. Parral. His wife finished the
sentence: “ . . . has obstructed justice in
every way.”


THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

IT’S THE COURT, STUPID!

Confirm Judge Garland

Don’t Let the Tail Wag the Elephant
By Earle I. Mack

A

s a lifelong Republican, who has always
been realistic on social issues and
conservative on fiscal and governmental issues,
I would be deeply dismayed if we lost control
of Congress because Republican hardliners in
the Senate, blinded by politics, have lost their
common sense. They fail to acknowledge the
danger facing our country by holding hostage
the confirmation of centrist Chief Judge
Merrick Garland of the United States Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Let’s put aside the Presidential race and its
hashtag campaigns. Republicans in this country
need to grasp the broader implications of not
filling Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court seat. I
have impartially looked at the credentials and
record of Chief Judge Garland, and I think he
would make a fine Justice given the high stakes
facing the Republican Party today. He has
been fair in his rulings, and has shown none of
the ultra-liberal judicial activism that would
endanger the Supreme Court’s balance. By
continuing to use the Garland nomination as a

political tool, Republicans in the Senate are not
only risking their credibility, but risking the loss
of the Senate, the ability to confirm or reject
future Presidential nominations, and possibly
decades of an activist bench.
There is no reason to drag this nomination
out any longer. It is far better to confirm a
known variable than to risk everything on the
hopes that a long-shot Republican victory in
November — despite polls — will offer a better
nominee.
According to popular online odds makers
— where people actually put their own
money at risk — Hillary Clinton has a 4-11
shot of winning the Presidential election. The
Donald is 9-4. As a conservative investor, I
don’t like those odds. By confirming Judge
Garland now, before we are faced with a
far worse alternative, we can show that the
Senate, with Republican leadership, is smart
enough to make tough choices, and also send
a signal to independents, millennials, women,
minorities, and gay Americans that Republicans
in Congress are ready to work, and not just
perceived to be the party of no.

We must hold on to six endangered
Republican Senate seats this year: Florida,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire
and Pennsylvania; five of which are considered

either “swing” or “battleground” states for
the presidential election and all are states
that Governor Mitt Romney lost in 2012.
By continuing to block this confirmation, we
are not only giving Democrats an issue to use
against these vulnerable Republican Senators,
but worse, are potentially risking decades of
a possible liberal, activist Supreme Court. If
we act judiciously, proceed intelligently, and
use good political rationalization before
the election — not after, Republicans can
avert disaster, not just in the short-term but
potentially for years to come.
George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright
and Nobel Laureate once said, “The
reasonable man adapts himself to the world.
The unreasonable one persists in trying to
adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Republicans, it is time to stop being the
unreasonable party, by being immovably on the
right. It’s time to show the country that, despite
policy disagreements, we are fit to lead and can
make responsible choices.
Let this serve as a wakeup call to Senator
McConnell and GOP leaders to take a bold
leadership stand and confirm Judge Garland
immediately; thus averting a devastating
decision that could cost the Republican Party
not only the Senate, but their own credibility

and good standing. Remember, it is not only
conservatives who vote in general elections.
The Senate and the Supreme Court are in your
hands.
Don’t let your legacy, the future of the
Republican Party, and our country, suffer.
Don’t let the tail wag the elephant.
There could be more at stake here than the
Presidency.
Earle I. Mack is a successful real estate investor
who served as U.S. Ambassador to Finland under
George W. Bush. He was Chairman of Victory
2000 in New York and Chairman Emeritus of
the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Reprinted with permission. © The Hill 2016.

Join us @ ItsTheCourtStupid.com
Confirm Judge Garland now for the
sake of our children and grandchildren.
God Bless America.

Paid for by It’s the Court Stupid PAC
Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee
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THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

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A Korean Home Shelters
Blacklisted for Covering Two Sides of Ukraine War Japanese With No Other
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

I have had guns pointed at me,
slept in a shipping container and
walked past the corpses of
shelling victims since the separatist insurgency in eastern
Ukraine began two years ago.
But I had never been blacklisted
as a terrorist before.
So when my name recently
appeared on a “terrorist” list of
journalists published by a website with close ties to the Ukrainian government, I viewed it with
a mix of trepidation and sarcasm.
Trepidation because it suggested powerful people in
Ukraine, a democracy that aspires to the free flow of information, were going after me and
others on the list for simply
doing our jobs: reporting both
sides of the war, including the
pro-Russian rebel side.

And sarcasm because, this
being Ukraine, the list was not
likely to have much credibility
elsewhere. I have not, for example, had any trouble flying after
appearing on what may be the
world’s first list of terrorist journalists.
It is also not a secret that I and
other reporters have reported
from rebel territory; our
publications and broadcast outlets regularly use our names and
note where we are.
The list, published by a
Ukrainian nationalist website
called Myrotvorets, or the Peacemaker, appeared to have been
born out of a simmering frustration.
Hard-liners in Ukraine have
been furious at the foreign press
for some time now, arguing that
any coverage of the rebels from
their home base in the east
played into Russia’s powerful
propaganda machine. Russia has
portrayed residents in the breakaway regions as victims of an
unjustified Ukrainian military
assault by a Western-backed
“fascist” government in Kiev.
The list is a compilation of
reporters and others who applied
for press passes to work in territory controlled by the Donetsk
People’s Republic, Ukraine’s

main enemy in the two-year-old
war in the east. Applying for
accreditation from Russianbacked rebels, according to the
website, was enough to be
branded a “terrorist accomplice.”
The website said it had obtained the list of names, and
personal information including

From Page A4

MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS

Pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk in 2014 prepared to listen to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
emails, from hackers who had
stolen the rebels’ data.
Groups supporting journalists
quickly condemned the publication of the names — and in some
cases home addresses — for
seeming to invite violence
against reporters.
A pro-Russian commentator
living in Kiev, Oles Buzina,
whose home address was publicized in a Myrotvorets post last
year, was shot and killed on a
street not far from his home days
later.
But this time, the site was
publishing names and contact
details for 5,412 journalists, drivers, fixers, soundmen and translators. Not all of us can be
rubbed out.

Why were so many reporters
accredited to cover the war in
Donetsk? Because it served the
media strategy of the Russiabacked rebels. About two-thirds
of the journalists and support
staff on the list were Russian
nationals or locals from eastern
Ukraine, who might be expected
to be sympathetic to the rebels.
In addition, 1,816 foreign
reporters showed up over the
two years and were accredited,
according to the list.
The ease of accrediting ensured, for example, broad coverage of stray Ukrainian artillery
strikes hitting the city and some-

times killing civilians, helping
discredit Ukraine’s actions to win
back territory. The media strategy seems right out of Russia’s
media playbook; Western military analysts have noted Russia’s
savvy at what they have called
“hybrid wars” that blend lethal
force with aggressive (and positive) press coverage.
For reporters, press passes to
travel in rebel-held territory
were invaluable for avoiding
arrest, duct-taped hands or detention in a basement. To get the
coveted slips of paper, journalists
visited Angela, a witty woman
known as the “accreditation

queen.”
Angela worked in a seventhfloor office of the separatist
headquarters in central Donetsk.
Reaching her space meant trekking up a dark stairwell festooned with coarse propaganda
for the anti-Western cause: One
drawing showed President Obama’s head on the body of a monkey; another showed a Ukrainian
politician, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk,
dressed in a Nazi uniform.
With few exceptions, Angela
cheerily printed out press passes
for anyone who asked — other
than reporters from governmentcontrolled Ukraine.
Many Ukrainians remain
outraged that, as they see it, the
Russian-backed groups have

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been able to deftly amplify their
message with the megaphone of
the Western media — despite the
rebels’ virulently anti-Western
agenda. The war has now killed
more than 10,000 people.
Still, Ukraine’s ombudsman,
Valeria Lutkovska, condemned
the release of the journalists’
names and urged the authorities
to shut down the Kiev-based
website for revealing personal
information. President Petro O.
Poroshenko on Friday called the
release a “big mistake.” Western
ambassadors voiced concern.
In the face of criticism, the

Myrotvorets website has doubled
down, posting a sarcastic rejoinder. “Many journalists demanded
an apology from us, and now we
understand the reason for this,”
the site wrote on May 20, two
weeks after publishing the list of
“terrorist accomplices” in the
media. “The staff offer their
sincere apologies in regards to
the list not being fresh.” It then
added new names.
And the interior minister,
Arsen B. Avakov, appeared to
endorse the leak, or at least did
not condemn it.
“War is like war,” he wrote on
Facebook. “A friend sincerely
fighting is more important for me
than opinions of liberals and
latent separatists who think too
much of themselves.”

residents is 92. Many suffer from
Alzheimer’s disease and were not
available for interviews.
The nursing home’s existence
rankles some South Koreans.
“I still get angry calls, asking:
‘What do you think you are doing?
Don’t you know what the Japanese did to our comfort women?’ ”

Ms. Song said. “I hope what we do
here will, in its small and silent
way, help heal the ties between the
two nations.”
Chiyo Yagi, 90, said she was a
nurse in the Fukuoka prefecture
in southern Japan when she fell in
love with a Korean translator who
would bring injured Korean workers from the nearby Lizuka coal
mines to her hospital. When they
were married, her father did not
attend the wedding.
Ms. Yagi, too, did not like to talk
about her life in South Korea,
though her callused and crooked
fingers appeared to reflect a life of
menial labor.
“Korea is a better place for me
to live because I at least have a
daughter here,” she said. “My
daughter comes to see me once a
year.”
Japanese journalists have
visited Nazarewon since a book
about the women there was published in Japan in the early 1980s.
A church in Japan and the Japa-

Reminders of the
combative history
between two nations.

nese Embassy in Seoul have provided aid to help Ms. Song operate
the nursing home. Japanese
tourists who visit this city, the seat
of the ancient Silla kingdom and
home to numerous Buddhist temples and pagodas, often stop at the
nursing home.
But their numbers have declined sharply in recent years, as
relations between South Korea
and Japan have cooled over a territorial dispute and the issue of the
comfort women.
On a recent afternoon, Nazarewon was shrouded in silence.
Women sat motionlessly in wheelchairs, gazing at NHK on a large
screen. A few played a card game,
counting their scores in Japanese
but otherwise speaking Korean.
Azaleas blossomed in the front
yard.
“I don’t know anything about
politics,” said Ms. Katsura, who
declined to discuss Korean-Japanese relations. “What I do know is
that if you do well to others, they
will do well to you, too. That’s true
between people, between nations.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES


THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

www.ebook3000.com

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THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

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Swiss Voters Reject Plan for Guaranteed Income
By RAPHAEL MINDER

ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, in Jerusalem in 2012.

Russia to Return to Israel
Tank Used in 1982 Battle
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — In a sign of
growing cooperation, President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has
agreed to return to Israel a tank
that was seized during a disastrous 1982 battle with Syrian

forces in southern Lebanon, an
episode that left three Israeli soldiers missing in action and has
haunted Israel for more than 30
years.
The gesture of good will was announced before a visit to Moscow,
starting Monday, by Israel’s prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to
commemorate 25 years since the
resumption of diplomatic relations between Israel and Russia.
The Soviet Union had severed ties
in 1967, after the Arab-Israeli War.
This will be Mr. Netanyahu’s
third visit to Moscow since September. After his most recent visit,
in April, Mr. Netanyahu said the
two sides also planned to sign an
agreement dealing with state pensions for tens of thousands of immigrants to Israel from the former
Soviet Union. The April visit focused on security coordination between the Israeli and Russian
militaries to avoid any mishaps as
they operate in the Middle East.
But it is the promised return of
the tank that will have symbolic
value for many Israelis. “There
has been nothing to remember the
boys by and no grave to visit for 34
years now,” Mr. Netanyahu said,
referring to the families of the
missing soldiers. “The tank is the
only evidence of the battle, and
now it is coming back to Israel
thanks to President Putin’s response to my request.”

Mr. Netanyahu said last week
that Mr. Putin had signed an order
to return the tank, which the
Syrians sent to Moscow for examination, and which has been on
display at the armored corps museum in Moscow. Mr. Netanyahu
said he had raised the issue during
his meeting with Mr. Putin at the
Kremlin in April after a request
from the chief of staff of the Israeli
military, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. A
delegation from the Israeli military’s armored corps has been in
Moscow discussing the logistics
for transferring the tank.
The battle near the village of
Sultan Yakoub, in the eastern Bekaa, occurred in the opening days
of an Israeli invasion. An Israeli
armored brigade entered a narrow valley, apparently unaware
that Syrian forces were positioned
in the surrounding hills.
Survivors described scenes of
chaos as tanks were abandoned
and soldiers tried to escape on

foot. A rescue mission was attempted, and about 20 Israeli soldiers were killed in the clash. One
of the captured Israeli tanks was
later paraded through the streets
of Damascus, according to news
reports at the time.
The three Israeli soldiers —
Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman

and Yehudah Katz — were in two
tanks when they were ambushed,
according to relatives. Mr. Baumel
was in one, and Mr. Feldman and
Mr. Katz were in another. Israeli
officials could not immediately
specify which tank the Russians
had pledged to return.
Zvi Magen, Israel’s ambassador
to Moscow in the late 1990s, said
he had been shown the Americanmade tank at the museum. The
Syrians had transferred it because the Soviets wanted to study
its defense and weapons systems,
he said. Mr. Magen said he had
asked for details about anything
that was found in the tank, but had
been told that it arrived without
any signs of the soldiers who had
been in it, or of any remains.
Mr. Magen, who is now a senior
research fellow at the Institute for
National Security Studies at Tel
Aviv University, said the more important background to what he
called the “confidence-building
measures” of the return of the
tank and the pension deal were
Russian and Israeli interests given the “new reality” of Russia’s
presence in Syria.
Still, the families of the three
soldiers have never stopped

searching for information about
their fate. “They were probably
taken in the battlefield,” Osna Haberman, the sister of Mr. Baumel,
said in a telephone interview on
Sunday. “There is still a chance
that he could be sitting somewhere in a Syrian jail.”
Mr. Baumel, 22 at the time of the
battle, also held American citizenship, having moved to Israel with
his family from Brooklyn in 1970.
Ms. Haberman, a high school
teacher who lives in Jerusalem,
said Mr. Netanyahu called her a
week ago to tell her of Mr. Putin’s
promise.
The families believe that it was
the tank that Mr. Katz and Mr.
Feldman had been riding in, Ms.
Haberman said. “In any event,”
she said, according to witness accounts the three young men were
captured after they abandoned
their tanks. “It doesn’t solve our
problem,” Ms. Haberman said of
the Russian gesture. “We are
waiting for information. Something solid, like an eyewitness report. Nothing else will serve.”

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O F F E R G O O D T HR O UG H 7- 31- 16

GENEVA — Swiss voters on
Sunday overwhelmingly rejected
a proposal to guarantee an income
to
Switzerland’s
residents,
whether or not they are employed,
an idea that has also been raised
in other countries amid an intensifying debate over wealth disparities and dwindling employment opportunities.
About 77 percent of voters rejected a plan to give a basic

monthly income of 2,500 Swiss
francs, or about $2,560, to each
adult, and 625 francs for each child
under 18, regardless of employment status, to fight poverty and
social inequality and guarantee a
“dignified” life to everyone.
Switzerland was the first country to vote on such a universal basic income plan, but other countries and cities either have been
considering the idea or have
started trial programs.
Finland is set to introduce a pilot program for a random sample
of about 10,000 adults who will
each receive a monthly handout of
550 euros, about $625. The intent
is to turn the two-year trial into a
national plan if it proves successful.
In the Netherlands, Utrecht is
leading a group of municipalities
that are experimenting with similar pilot projects.
In the United States, the idea of
a guaranteed income has gained
some traction in the run-up to the
presidential election in November. It has been promoted by some
Democrats who are demanding
more social justice, but it also has
some right-wing advocates who
see it as a better alternative to
government welfare programs.
In Switzerland, opponents
warned that the proposal would
derail an economic model that, far

from showing signs of near-collapse, has allowed the country to
remain among those with the
highest living standards in the
world, even with a growing and
aging population. Switzerland has
an unemployment rate of around
3.5 percent, less than half the average in the European Union.
The backers of the plan did not
detail how it would be financed.
But the Swiss government and almost all the main political parties
had urged voters to turn down the
guaranteed income plan, warning
that it would require raising an additional 25 billion Swiss francs a
year through deep spending cuts
or tax increases.
Some opponents of a Swiss
guaranteed income also attacked
it as a return to Marxist economics, even if the idea has far older
roots, dating to the 16th-century
writings of Thomas More and the
18th-century works of Thomas
Paine.

ALEXANDRA WEY/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Backers gathered in Basel, Switzerland, to celebrate the votes an income plan received Sunday.
After World War II, the concept
of a guaranteed income was promoted as a way of redistributing
income by some free-market
economists led by Milton Friedman, who in part argued that it

would be more efficient than the
bureaucracy of running dozens of
separate programs to help the
poor.
Still, the current discussion, in
Switzerland and elsewhere, has
been not only about wealth redistribution but also about how modern societies can continue to create jobs while pushing technological advances such as factory
robots and driverless trucks.
Campaigners in favor of a guaranteed income used robots as
street stunts to warn what the jobless society of the future would entail. Some people gave out 10-franc
notes at the Zurich’s main train
station while supporters in Geneva set up, on a public esplanade,
a giant banner that asked, “What
would you do if your income were
taken care of?”
“I understand that a new generation is worried about how and
where young people will next find
work, but this proposal was pure
nonsense,” said Curdin Pirovino, a
Swiss industrial designer. “You
cannot give a society the idea that
money is available for doing nothing.”
But at a Sunday market in Geneva, several people defended the
proposal in the context of returning to a more equitable society.
Some also presented their vote
as another challenge to industrialization, similar to their motivation for buying organic food
from the stalls of local farmers

rather than cheaper supermarkets. A third of voters in Geneva
backed the idea of a guaranteed

income.
“We’re losing all our values, creating countries that no longer
need workers but still need consumers, but how can we expect
people to buy anything if they
can’t earn a salary tomorrow?”
asked Olivier Duchene, a musician and street entertainer.
Despite the clear defeat, campaigners said the vote was a first
step toward a fairer economic
model.
“One out of five people voted for

A proposal to pay the
equivalent of $2,560
a month, job or no job.
the unconditional basic income, so
that is a success in itself,” Sergio
Rossi, an economics professor
who backed the initiative, told
STA, the Swiss news agency.
Switzerland’s model of direct
democracy, in which citizens can
collect signatures to force a national referendum on a proposal,
has helped turn the country into a
laboratory for pioneering social
and economic changes.
In early 2013, the Swiss voted to
impose some of the world’s most
severe restrictions on executive
compensation, following a proposal by a small entrepreneur in
defiance of the country’s big business lobby.

Later that year, however, the
Swiss rejected another economic
proposal, the “1:12” initiative,
which would have limited the salary of top executives to 12 times the
wages of their lowest-paid
employees. And in 2014, the Swiss
rejected a proposal to introduce
what would have been the world’s
highest minimum wage, equivalent to nearly $25 an hour.
Referendums
are
gaining
ground in other European countries that normally rely on a system of parliamentary democracy.
Last year, Greece held a referendum on a bailout plan, and the
Netherlands introduced a referendum law under which voters rejected a European Union agreement with Ukraine in April. Britain is set to vote in a referendum
this month on whether to leave the
European Union a year after Scotland voted to stay in the United
Kingdom.
But in Switzerland, the proliferation of such votes has provoked a
debate over the ease with which
complicated or radical issues can
be brought to a referendum. Low
voter turnout has also become an
issue. About 46 percent of eligible
Swiss voters went to the polls on
Sunday, when four other national
issues and several regional issues
were voted on.
Philippe Leuba, a regional politician, said on Swiss national radio

on Sunday that it was positive that
voters had followed the advice of
their federal government. But he
still deplored the fact that the proposal for guaranteed income had
gotten so far, calling it a “hyperpopulist and demagogic” plan to
give away money for nothing.

Economist Holds Thin Lead in Peru’s Presidential Vote
By ANDREA ZARATE
and NICHOLAS CASEY

LIMA, Peru — An economist
who served as Peru’s prime minister held a razor-thin lead in the
presidential contest on Sunday
against the daughter of an imprisoned former president who
was seeking to return her family
to power.
A partial count released by the
government on Sunday night put
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, with
about a 1 percent advantage over
Keiko Fujimori, 41, whose father,
Alberto, ran the country in the
1990s. Officials said the result
amounted to a technical tie and
said they would keep counting
throughout the night.
While both candidates campaigned on similar free-market
platforms, many in the region saw
the election as a referendum on

the legacy of Mr. Fujimori, whose
rule turned authoritarian as he
suspended the country’s Constitution in a conflict with the Shining
Path, a Marxist rebel group.
Years later, while trying to return to power, he was convicted of
corruption and human rights
abuses and sentenced to 25 years
in prison.
Still, many Peruvians initially
seemed to favor Ms. Fujimori —
who pledged not to give her father
Andrea Zarate reported from
Lima, and Nicholas Casey from
New York.

ESTEBAN FELIX/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Peruvian citizens in Santiago, Chile, voted on Sunday in an
election between Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Keiko Fujimori.
a pardon — giving her the most
votes in the first round of the presidential contest in April and handing her Popular Force party a majority in Congress.
After the first round of voting,
polls showed her widening a lead
over Mr. Kuczynski with populist
appeals to working-class voters
and a law-and-order message.
Yet the Sunday result revealed
a country more evenly divided between the two candidates, with a
slight advantage for Mr. Kuczynski, a mild-mannered former
World Bank official who appealed

to voters as a technocrat.
On Sunday night before

supporters, a jubilant Mr. Kuczynski, who was prime minister from
2005 to 2006, stopped short of
claiming a win, but said he believed that victory would be his
soon. “I am sure that the election
commission will come out tomorrow with a favorable verdict for
us,” he said. “We abhor dictatorship and love democracy.”
Ms. Fujimori said she would
also wait for the final result.
“We’re proud to know that we
came out with the backing of 50
percent of the population,” she
said.
Cires Palomares Vicuña, 55, a
nurse, said she had voted for Mr.

Kuczynski. “I identify with him,
and we need to make a positive
change and have someone experienced to correctly steer us,” she
said.
Jesús Ayala, 53, a construction
worker, said he was fearful that
crime was on the rise in his country, something he thought Ms. Fujimori was better equipped to handle.
“I believed in Fujimori’s fight
against terrorism back in the
’90s,” he said. “He was the only
one able to end that war. Like now,
delinquency has grown, and I

think she’s best to combat it.”
While her father’s legacy cut
both ways, Ms. Fujimori found
herself on the defense against a
number of corruption allegations.
Critics repeatedly accused her
campaign of giving money to
voters, and one of her running
mates was disqualified by the
country’s electoral commission
for handing out food and water at
an election event.
Ms. Fujimori has denied any
wrongdoing.
The allegations were a factor
for Alexander de Feudis, 45, a
graphic designer.
“At first, I thought Keiko would
be great because her party leads
the Congress and this allows her
to make changes faster,” he said.
“Now I changed my mind because
I see too many signs of corruption
within her party and the people
who surround her.”

Militants Suspected in Killing of Bangladeshi Officer’s Wife
By JULFIKAR ALI MANIK
and NIDA NAJAR

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Three
attackers fatally shot and stabbed
the wife of a police superintendent
in southern Bangladesh on Sunday morning, the police said, the
latest in a series of killings in
which Islamist militants are the
primary suspects.
The woman, Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, 30, and her young son
were walking through a narrow
lane near their home in Chittagong on the way to a school bus
stop when three men arriving on a
motorcycle stabbed her and shot
her in the head, said Mohiuddin
Julfikar Ali Manik reported from
Dhaka, and Nida Najar from New
Delhi.

Mahmood, the officer in charge of
the Panchlaish police station in
Chittagong. The son was unhurt.
“We found nine wounds of stabbing on her back and belly,” Mr.
Mahmood said.
Her husband, Babul Akter, a police officer with a record of going
after Islamist militants, was recently promoted to superintendent. In December, Superintendent
Akter led a raid on an apartment
on the outskirts of the city that the
police said belonged to the banned
group
Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen
Bangladesh, according to the local

news media.
In October, five people suspected of belonging to the militant
group were arrested in Chittagong.
“We suspect militants,” Iqbal

Bahar, the commissioner of the
Chittagong Metropolitan Police,
said of the attack. Superintendent
Akter’s work “created threats for
him.”
Superintendent Akter had been
in Dhaka, the capital, for the past
few days after his promotion, the
police said.
Though Commissioner Bahar
said it was not yet clear who had
carried out the attack, he said Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh
could have been involved.
For the past two years, activists, religious minorities, intellectuals and secularist writers,
among others, have been targeted
for death in Bangladesh, and the
deaths appear to have accelerated
in recent weeks.
The Islamic State has claimed

some of the killings on social media accounts linked to it, and others have been claimed by a faction
of Al Qaeda. The authorities in
Bangladesh have denied the presence of foreign militants in the
country.
Also on Sunday, a Christian

man, Sunil Gomez, 60, was hacked
to death in his grocery store in the
Natore district in northern Bangladesh, in a style similar to recent attacks, said Moniruzzaman,
subinspector of the Boraigram police station in Natore, who goes by
one name.
The Amaq News Agency of the
Islamic State claimed the killing,
according to the SITE Intelligence
Group. But Mr. Moniruzzaman
said it was too soon to name suspects.


THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

0N

A9

WHITE HOUSE LETTER

For Obama and Modi, a ‘Chemistry’ of Shared Objectives
By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON — There are
few relationships between President Obama and another world
leader more unlikely than the
one he has with Prime Minister
Narendra Modi of India.
The two have a public warmth
— or “chemistry,” as the Indian

news media like to describe it —
and that is likely to be on display
Tuesday when Mr. Modi visits
the White House for the second
time in two years. It will be the
seventh time the two leaders will
have met.
There are compelling reasons
the leaders of the world’s largest
democracies would find common
cause. The United States is encouraging the rise of India as a
giant Asian partner to balance
China, and India is trying to
accelerate its economy with an
injection of investment from
American companies.
“It is true that Obama and I
have a special friendship, a special wavelength,” Mr. Modi said
last month in an interview with
The Wall Street Journal. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s
deputy national security adviser
for strategic communication, said
on Saturday that the two leaders
“have each invested in developing a close relationship.”
It is worth recounting just how
unlikely such a friendship is.
The nation’s first black president, Mr. Obama has made the
protection of minorities a central
pillar of his life. And he has argued that criticism and dissent
are core tenets of democracy.

Mr. Modi, by contrast, spent
much of his life rising through
the ranks of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, a rightwing paramilitary organization
that campaigns forcefully for
India’s Hindu majority. Mr. Modi
was in charge of the state of
Gujarat when rioting in 2002 cost
the lives of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. Just
last week, 24 people were convicted of massacring Muslims
during the riots, and pending
cases are attempting to prove
that Mr. Modi, who has so far
escaped judicial censure, was
part of a high-level conspiracy to
encourage the killings.
Generally poorer and less
educated than India’s Hindus,
Muslims are about 14 percent of

JIM BOURG/REUTERS

President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India in 2015. Mr. Modi, visiting Tuesday, spoke of a “special wavelength.”
the population, about the same
proportion as African Americans
in the United States. In India, Mr.
Modi’s reputation among Muslims could broadly be compared
to that of a Southern segregationist from the 1950s.
Perhaps just as troubling, Mr.
Modi’s government has increasingly used the country’s broad

and vague laws restricting free
speech to stifle dissent, according to a recent report by Human
Rights Watch. Other laws have
been used to intimidate and even
shut down nongovernmental
organizations, such as Greenpeace.
Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr.
Modi is given to displaying affection. Both avoid the socializing
common in their capitals. And
while Mr. Obama is a doting
father and dutiful husband who
maintains close bonds with his
childhood friends, Mr. Modi
abandoned his arranged mar-

riage decades ago and has no
children or any public friendships.
Some political analysts have
expressed deep skepticism that
the two leaders have any real
fondness for each other.
Mr. Modi is part of a class of

Some doubt there’s
a real fondness
between two leaders.
“populist, electable, narcissistic
right-wing autocrats whose
appeal is that they pander to
majoritarian anger,” said Kanti

Prasad Bajpai, a professor of
Asian studies at the National
University of Singapore.
“Obama is the opposite of that,

so it is hard to see how close they
can be,” Mr. Bajpai said.
Others see similarities that
extend beyond political beliefs.
Both men rose from modest
circumstances, had difficult
relationships with their fathers
and were widely considered
transformational figures when
elected. (Mr. Modi’s humble
origins, largely corruption-free
government and intense focus on
winning foreign investment are
sharp breaks from his predecessor.) And parts of Mr. Modi’s
political operation, in particular
its effective use of social media,
were based on Mr. Obama’s
model.
Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
said both men “are remarkably
warm and have a personal graciousness about them that is
very evident in personal
encounters.”

Raymond E. Vickery, a former

United States assistant secretary
of commerce who has met Mr.
Modi, said both had grown up as
outsiders and valued frankness.
“Modi is a really down-to-earth
guy who tries to answer your
questions and doesn’t just go to
talking points,” Mr. Vickery said.
Mr. Obama made the first
significant gesture in the relationship when, during Mr. Modi’s
first official visit to Washington
in 2014, the president left his
White House staff behind to give
a personal 15-minute tour of the
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.
Mr. Modi responded by inviting Mr. Obama to be his guest at
the annual Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi in January
2015. When Mr. Obama arrived,
Mr. Modi broke with protocol to
greet the president at the airport
with a hug. And at a later appearance, Mr. Modi referred to
the president as Barack and

thanked him for his “deep personal commitment” to their
friendship. In a toast at a state
dinner, Mr. Obama called Mr.
Modi “my partner and friend.”
“The hours they’ve spent
together,” Mr. Rhodes said Saturday, “have allowed them to have
a good understanding of their

respective worldviews and domestic circumstances, and made
it possible to deepen defense ties,
advance our civil nuclear cooperation and achieve a breakthrough on climate change.”
He added, “It’s also an indication of how important President
Obama thinks our relationship is
with India, as the world’s largest
democracy and an increasingly
important partner.”
On Tuesday, White House
officials said, the two leaders are
expected to discuss climate
change and clean energy partnerships, security cooperation,
and economic growth. The officials said the leaders might
announce a new defense logistics
agreement, further progress on
India’s efforts to phase out
ozone-depleting hydrofluorocarbons and perhaps a deal for
Westinghouse Electric Corporation to build nuclear power
plants in India in a long-delayed
fulfillment of a pact first struck
in 2006.
A shared interest in clean
power and climate change is
central to their personal bond,
some analysts said.
“These two guys get very little
political traction at home for
being climate champions, but
they are anyway, and I think
they respect each other for that,”

said Andrew Light, a former
senior adviser to the United
States special envoy on climate
change.
Tavleen Singh, an Indian commentator and admirer of Mr.
Modi, said the prime minister’s
high-profile sanitation campaign
and his efforts to improve the
status of women would also
endear him to Mr. Obama. Still,
she said she doubted the two
men were truly affectionate.
Zia Haq, an assistant editor at
the Hindustan Times in India,
was also skeptical.
“I refuse to believe the two
men could be very good personal
friends deep down, because Modi
is all things Obama can’t possibly
be,” Mr. Haq wrote in an email.


A10

0

N

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

Denizens of Kabul
Bring Carnival of Life
To Field of the Dead
left. Sitting on the edge of a grave, he was
intently wrapped up with every move, at
once thrilled and anxious as the birds
tangled their necks together and delivered blows.
“Bring it for the next round before it
gets cold!” he called to one owner who
Elaborate Displays
was wiping the blood from his bird’s face.
Kart-e-Sakhi cemetery comes to life on
“If the bird’s body doesn’t hurt, it won’t
Thursdays and Fridays, the Afghan
learn how to fight.”
weekend. Specific grave markers have
The graves at Kart-e-Sakhi have bebecome the landmarks for new commucome remarkably ornate lately. There
nities, some transitory, others more perwere always poetry and flower patterns,
sistent.
but now there are massive headstones
Children with chapped hands play
with etched portraits, and even posters
hanging on the railings enclosing the graves.
On the edge of the cemetery, behind a row of small
shops and eateries, is the
grave of “The Martyr Commander Mahdi Ghazniwal
Bakshi.” A police officer, he
was 23 at the time of his
death, ambushed by the Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan.
Two flags fly over his

grave, one of the Afghan
state and the other a martyrdom banner, and between
them is a poster of him wearANDREW QUILTY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ing black shades, a military
radio in one hand and an
marbles by the grave of Zaher Turkman.
AK-47 rifle in another.
Two men smoke a joint near the grave of
Inside the railing, right behind a headSayed Rohullah Sadat. (They turn out to
stone bearing an etched portrait, hangs
be policemen.) A university student
another poster of Commander Mahdi. He
wearing a blue jacket, lecture notes in
is shown lounging on a couch, wearing
hand, paces between graves, trying to
Levi’s sneakers and a gold bracelet. At
memorize them ahead of an exam.
the foot of the headstone is a withered
The cemetery is a godsend for young
rose, most of its petals stolen by the
lovers, a place of privacy where, with a
wind.
buffer of assumed mourning around
“He had 60 girlfriends,” said his uncle
them, they can speak on their phones unEzatullah Nabizada, who came one day
interrupted by the harassment that is
to crouch by the grave and pay his reotherwise too normal here. In one
spects. “And he was married.”
tucked-away corner, a pair of teenage
The new crop of ornate headstones is

girls sit on the edge of a grave, one of
largely the work of one artist, Muhamthem on her phone, smiling and blushmad Zahir, who signs his address and
ing. A cotton-candy seller moves around
phone number at the bottom of each
on his bicycle.
work.
Every weekend, there are cockfights
Mr. Zahir spent 25 years as a laborer in
by the grave of Sayed Faqir Hussain.
Iran, where he learned to build sculpMen sit in a ring, and the trained birds
tures, fireplaces and fountains out of
are brought in under the arms of their
stone. Etching headstone portraits was a
owners. Presiding over the games, as
small part of his business.
godfather and referee, is Said Gul Agha,
When he returned to Afghanistan
who goes by the nickname The Mechanmore than a decade ago, he first tried the
ic, his weekday vocation.
sculptures, the fireplaces and the founThe Mechanic used to have 10 fighting
tains. They sold during the gush of
roosters of his own, but he had only two
From Page A1

Jamshid said about their graveside base.
“We wash the grave with the remaining
water before we go home.”

ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Top, the Kart-e-Sakhi cemetery in Kabul, Afghanistan. Above, children washing the grave of a relative during a
visit to the cemetery that also included a family picnic. Left, a pile of stone slabs that are used to cover graves.
money that came with the massive international military presence, but sales
dropped, and then halted.
“We were left making these headstones,” he said, “because death is easy
here.”
Depending on the size and the quality
of the stone used, a grave, which includes
a headstone and frames of stone for the
slab, costs $250 and up. The most expensive one Mr. Zahir made, for more than
$3,000, was for a police general in the
north.
One late autumn morning at his outdoor studio, his lead artist, covered in the
white dust of sawed marble, was busy
with the headstone of a 22-year-old police officer, Cmdr. Zabiullah Qasemi. In
his portrait, Commander Qasemi is
wearing thick sunglasses. Except for
puffs of hair on his temples, he is bald,
which makes for extra work in etching
the black marble.
The women buried at the cemetery do
not receive such luxuries.
Even in death, they are hounded by
misogyny. Their own names rarely appear on their graves, let alone their portraits or any poetry.
“Here lies the late mother of Muhammad Raza.”
“Here rests the daughter of Muhammad Haidar.”

Running Out of Space
In a small but overpopulated and unplanned city like Kabul, the logistics of
dealing with death at such a rapid rate

over three decades has brought
dilemmas.
“We are facing a lack of space for
graveyards in the city,” said Abdul Rahman Ahmadzai, the director of the department of the Afghan Ministry of Religious Affairs that oversees the roughly
30 cemeteries in Kabul, 12 of them huge
ones like Kart-e-Sakhi.
Since the civil war, which began in the
1980s, unplanned graveyards have
popped up all across the city. In the 1990s,
when factional fighting intensified, people could hardly move out of fear of rockets, so they often buried their loved ones
in any plot of land they could find. Now,
each grave site is a land dispute for the
government to solve.
“Our policy is that anywhere that bodies are buried automatically becomes
government property,” Mr. Ahmadzai
said. “If it is people’s property, the government gives them property elsewhere.”
Mr. Ahmadzai’s department has been
working to acquire land in the districts
outside the city’s gates and move the
cemeteries there. And he has rigidly en-

forced the space limit for individual
graves: 1.5 meters by 2.5 meters, about 5
feet by 8 feet, a dimension he says is
called for under Shariah.
One noon late in the fall, as the pressure cooker at Mr. Ahmadzai’s office in
central Kabul grew louder with the noise
of a simmering beef stew, a worker from
the presidential palace came with a demand. He wanted a few meters around
his father’s grave enclosed for a mausoleum of sorts, and he had written the details on a piece of paper that also noted

the approval of the minister of religious
affairs, Mr. Ahmadzai’s boss.
Mr. Ahmadzai read the request, and
then apologized. As a matter of policy, he
could not sign off that much space for one
grave.
“My father was a university lecturer
on Islamic issues for 40 years,” the man
argued. “For his service, doesn’t he deserve that much space?”
After the visitor mentioned a powerful
member of Parliament, Mr. Ahmadzai
seemed to cave in, assigning an inspector to go check the site. But later, in private, he said the inspector would make
the same recommendation: It cannot be
done.
His inspectors are his eyes and hands
across the city, measuring the grave
plots and reporting offenders. It falls to


THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

0N

A11

Taliban Attack Kills NPR Journalist and Afghan
By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — An American journalist for NPR was killed on
Sunday afternoon along with his Afghan translator in a Taliban ambush in

southern Afghanistan, the Afghan military confirmed. NPR also confirmed
their deaths on Sunday.
The victims were identified as David
Gilkey, a photographer and videographer who was part of a four-person NPR team embedded with Afghan
Special Forces in Helmand Province,
and his translator, Zabihullah Tamanna. The other two American journalists on the team were unhurt.
Mr. Gilkey was the first American
journalist not in the military killed during the 15-year-long Afghan conflict;
since 1992, at least 27 journalists have
been killed in Afghanistan, according to
the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In 2010, James P. Hunter, a staff
sergeant and journalist with the 101st
Airborne Division, was killed by an improvised explosive device.
The journalists were in a five-vehicle
special forces convoy driving on the
main road from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, to Marja when
Taliban insurgents fired at the convoy
with heavy weapons, said Shakil Ahmad, the spokesman for the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps in Helmand.
The vehicle carrying Mr. Gilkey and
Mr. Tamanna was destroyed, Mr. Ahmad said. It was not immediately clear
where the other two NPR journalists
were at the time of the attack.
After a heavy firefight, the Afghan
government forces recovered the victims’ bodies and retreated to a nearby
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting
from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

MONIKA EVSTATIEVA/NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

Zabihullah Tamanna, left, an Afghan translator, and David Gilkey, right, a
journalist with NPR, were killed on Sunday in southern Afghanistan.
Afghan police base, Mr. Ahmad said.
The bodies were then flown to Camp
Bastion, the corps headquarters, which
was once the major American and
British base in Helmand, late Sunday.
Mr. Gilkey was an award-winning
journalist who had extensive experience covering conflicts in Gaza, South
Africa, Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
After he covered the 2010 earthquake
in Haiti, Mr. Gilkey talked about his profession in a video.
“It’s not just reporting. It’s not just
taking pictures,” he said. “It’s do those
visuals, do the stories, do they change
somebody’s mind enough to take action?”
The NPR team’s most recent report,

Thursday on the network’s “Morning
Edition” program, described American
Army Special Forces troops working
with their Afghan counterparts and using drones to hunt Taliban insurgents.
Mr. Gilkey’s photographs accompanied
an online version of the report.
The last foreign journalist killed in
Afghanistan was Anja Niedringhaus, a
German citizen and an Associated
Press photographer, who was shot by a
rogue policeman when she was covering the Afghan presidential election in
2014.

The NPR team also included Monika
Evstatieva, the director of the “All
Things Considered” program, and Tom
Bowman, NPR’s Pentagon correspondent.

Germany’s Military Growth Met With Western Relief
By ALISON SMALE

ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ADAM FERGUSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A family visiting Kart-e-Sakhi, a cemetery that comes to life on
Thursdays and Fridays, the Afghan weekend.
them to stop encroachment on cemetery
lands, and to try, however futilely, to enforce proper behavior.
Mr. Ahmadzai knows about the children’s water hustle in Kart-e-Sakhi, of
course. That goes on everywhere, and
there is a comforting tradition behind it,
he said: “Spraying water is good, because if the dead had sinned, we know
that even the smallest plant praises God,
and the water may help plants and
weeds grow.”

Scramble for Cash
The young hustlers themselves, ranging in age from 5 to 13, have more temporal concerns on their minds, mostly. They
have been roughened by competition,
hard circumstances and the crowd they
mingle with.
One Thursday evening late in the fall,

the children waited for business at Bibi
Jawaher’s grave. The cemetery was quiet. One boy, Edris, his clothes dirty, his
face chapped and snot dangling from his
nose, sat astride the poor woman’s headstone, rocking back and forth. (On a visit
just a week later, Bibi Jawaher’s headstone would be found broken to pieces.)
Edris looked no older than 6, but when
asked how old he was, he counted his fingers and said 22. What grade was he in?
“This much,” he said, showing the fingers of both hands: “22.”
“He is here all day, and he goes home
with us in the evening,” Ajmal said.
“When his family changes him into new
clothes, he doesn’t like it. He changes
back into dirty ones and comes out here.”
Nearby, a boy named Imranai suddenly smacked one of his cousins in the
face. Chaos erupted. Several children
tangled up in a fight in the dirt, cursing
one another’s mothers and sisters, some
crying.
“I told him to go to work and stop wasting your time, and he cursed my sister!”
Imranai said, explaining the reason for

what would be one of several fights that
evening. He wore bright yellow sweatpants, and fixed a stylish kerchief around
his neck.
“I have worked 60 afghanis today. How
much have you worked?” the cousin shot
back. Imranai, bent on keeping up the intimidation, jumped at the boy again. The
younger cousin dropped his bucket, water splashing everywhere, and picked up
two small rocks, assuming a firing position.
“They curse their own aunts, their

own mothers — as if they are not all from
same family,” Ajmal said, happy to look
down at them. He was interrupted again.
He wrinkled his nose up and sniffed the
air.
“Is that weed?” he said, stretching the
word out over several beats as he
scanned the graveyard to see who was
smoking it.
At the end of the day comes the most
important ritual. The children lay out all
their bills on a dry grave for sorting.
Their fathers are either poor, or abroad
for labor. Ajmal’s father is a gatekeeper
at a university, for example. Jamshid’s is
a gardener.
Khushnuma, 6, is one of youngest of
the group, and she comes to the cemetery with her sister, who is even younger.
She said her father was in their hometown in Laghman, an eastern province,
and would return soon. The boys said she
did not know that her father was actually
in Iran.
“He is bringing me a Galaxy phone,”
she said. A dirty apple, an offering from
some mourning family, bulged out the
pocket of her pink jacket.
Khushnuma has a go-to tactic that
never seems to fail. “If they don’t pay her,
she just starts crying,” Ajmal said.
Khushnuma smiled. “I have worked 80

afghanis today” — about $1.20 — “all on
my own,” she said, clicking her tongue in
satisfaction.

BERLIN — You know times have
changed when the Germans announce
they are expanding their army for the
first time in 25 years — and no one objects.
Back when the Berlin Wall fell, Britain and France in particular feared the
re-emergence of a German colossus in
Europe. By contrast, Berlin’s pledge
last month to add almost 7,000 soldiers
to its military by 2023, and an earlier
announcement to spend up to 130 billion
euros, about $148 billion, on new equipment by 2030 were warmly welcomed
by NATO allies.
It has taken decades since the horrors of World War II, but Berlin’s modern-day allies and, it seems, German
leaders themselves are finally growing
more comfortable with the notion that
Germany’s role as the European
Union’s de facto leader requires a military dimension.
Perhaps none too soon. The United
States and others — including many of
Germany’s own defense experts —
want Germany to do even more for Continental security and to broaden deployments overseas.
President Obama expressed frustration in an interview this year that the
United States’ European and Persian
Gulf allies were acting too often as “free
riders.” Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee,
has been even more scathing in his remarks, threatening to pull out of NATO

if he is elected.
As a July NATO summit meeting in
Warsaw approaches, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is now key to
how the alliance will face the twin perils
that have transformed the strategic situation in Europe: a more menacing
Russia and the Islamic State’s expansion beyond individual acts of terrorism
like executions to seizing territory.
In Europe, where NATO’s easternmost members, particularly Poland and the Baltic States, have
clamored for permanent deployment of
Allied troops to deter Russian meddling, Germany looks set to take command of a brigade in Lithuania, joining
Britain and the United States in leading
the effort to marshal a robust presence
on Russia’s borders.
Under Chancellor Angela Merkel,
Germany is also playing a part in NATO
programs to pool resources of member
states for greater collective security.
Defense experts hold up increased German-Dutch cooperation as a model.
The path to even a semblance of collective European defense is littered
with unmet promises of better cooperation — for example, the quarter-century-old Franco-German brigade,
which remains mostly a paper tiger,
and the scramble ahead of the Warsaw
meeting to find a fourth country to command a unit in the new NATO deployment in Eastern Europe. Britain and
France, both nuclear powers, continue
to set their own priorities.
But whether on its own or with others, Germany is showing signs of growing more comfortable with embracing a
bigger military role, a gradual but distinct shift away from an instinctive
pacifism that took hold starting in 1945,
and a post-Cold War tendency to shrink
the nation’s military.

The shift started becoming publicly
apparent in 2014, when Germany’s
president and foreign and defense ministers all urged an increased global security role for the country at the annual
Munich Security Conference. Weeks
later, Russia’s leader, President Vladimir V. Putin, annexed Crimea from
Ukraine.
Since then, Germany has responded
by helping to build a NATO rapid response force in Eastern Europe, leading the diplomacy efforts in Ukraine,
and training and arming Kurdish pesh
merga battling the Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria.
Now, a new government strategy

CHRISTOF STACHE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, visiting troops in
March. Long wary, the nation is starting to embrace a bigger military role.
document, the first such “White Book”
in 10 years, is being prepared. It is likely
both to bolster Germany’s role on the
world stage — beyond its traditional
sphere of activity in Europe — and to
talk explicitly of military contributions.
How far this thinking has spread outside the political and military elite is
open to question. Polling shows that
“the general public is not very comfortable with the military dimension,” said
Sylke Tempel, the editor of International Policy, the magazine of the German Council on Foreign Relations.
The policy-making elite, on other
hand, know that “strategic thinking includes the notion that you have to build
a force in order to be taken seriously,

and that you have to spend on this dimension,” Ms. Tempel said.
Germany is not moving fast enough
for defense experts like Hans-Peter
Bartels, the parliamentary commissioner for the military, or Karl-Heinz
Kamp, the president of the govern-

Responding to security
threats as the de facto
leader of Europe.
ment’s Federal Academy for Security
Policy.
Germany should expand its military
“as quickly as possible, as much as possible,” said Dr. Bartels, a member of the
center-left Social Democratic Party. Despite the announced expansion, he
noted, military spending is in danger of
sinking to 1.08 percent of Germany’s
gross domestic product, which he said
would be its lowest ever — and well below the 2 percent that NATO member
states committed to spend at the
alliance’s last summit meeting, in
Wales in 2014.
Dr. Kamp was more upbeat about
German and NATO efforts, particularly
the plans for meeting any Russian challenge on the alliance’s eastern borders.
“We are almost at permanent presence, almost,” Dr. Kamp said. “More is
being decided than Putin could ever
have imagined.”
The major danger he sees for these
plans is “the fact that we have these
anti-establishment movements on both

sides of the Atlantic — we have the Alternative for Germany, we have the National Front in France and in the U.S.A.
we have Trump.”
Populists in such movements have
little interest in knitting together transAtlantic interests and deploying Allied
forces for common goals, he said.
“These anti-establishment movements stand in contrast to everything
which is NATO, and that is the only
point which really worries me,” Dr.
Kamp said.

In German politics, the post of defense minister has traditionally proved
difficult. The job is prestigious, but
plagued by difficulties in securing finances and suitable, modern equipment.
Neither the defense minister nor the
chancellor is commander in chief of the
army — another legacy of post-Nazi efforts to constrain Germany. Control of
the army belongs to the Parliament,
and any military expense or deployment is subject to its approval.
Further, demographic decline and
the lure of good civilian jobs in Germany’s robust economy have made it
difficult to recruit an all-volunteer
force.
Thomas Wiegold, an expert on defense affairs, noted that regular troop
strength — around 166,000 in April — already lags the current target of 170,000
and asked whether the defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, could reach
that level and then keep her pledge of
more soldiers by 2023.
“The political message is that after
decades of shrinking, we want to grow,”
Mr. Wiegold said. “But how that translates practically, nobody yet knows.”

The defense minister has taken several steps to make the military a better
employer. They include hiring a senior
aide from the business consultant McKinsey to examine structures, and simply ensuring more contact between soldiers overseas and their families back
home.
A new cyberwarfare unit is a priority.
The Defense Ministry is trying to end
equipment failures and malfunctions.
Last year, a dispute erupted with the
arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch
over the standard issue G-36 machine
gun, which the ministry said did not always fire straight.
Another major task is to convince
skeptical Germans, particularly in the
east, that NATO is keeping its 1997 bargain with Russia that alliance troops
would not be stationed permanently at
Russia’s edge.
And so, in another measure of how
things have changed in Europe, listeners of a Berlin broadcaster, rbb Inforadio, heard an unusual early morning interview on May 19. On the line from the
Polish port city of Szczecin was Lt. Gen.
Manfred Hofmann, a 42-year veteran of
the German Army, who commands a
corps that began in 1999 as a GermanDanish unit to help Poland integrate
into NATO, which it joined that spring.
Dialogue with Moscow has not shut
down, he said, and NATO is keeping its
commitments not to permanently station combat units on former Soviet bloc
territory.
But the general noted that the corps
command is now a 400-person, 21-nation unit, overseeing rapid deployment
of NATO units if necessary, and reflected that since the 2014 summit meeting in Wales, “an unbelievable amount

has happened.”


A12

N

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Abdihamid Yusuf in his family’s Minneapolis restaurant. His son Mohamed Farah was one of three Somali-Americans convicted on charges of trying to join the Islamic State.

Fair or ‘Conspiracy’? Trial Divides Somalis in Minneapolis
By JACK HEALY
and MATT FURBER

MINNEAPOLIS — The day after his oldest
son was convicted of conspiring to join and kill
for the Islamic State in Syria, Abdihamid Yusuf
just wanted to go home and rest. But bills were
stacking up, so on Saturday morning he and his
wife visited the jail and then reopened Hooyo’s
Kitchen, the small Somali restaurant where
they serve plates of chicken, rice and bananas.
“We try to survive,” Mr. Yusuf said.
The trial of his son and two other young Somali-American men splintered
families and opinions here in the
country’s largest Somali community. Former friends testified
against one another, describing

how they had watched propaganda videos, bought fake passports and plotted their paths to
Syria. Family members squabbled in the halls of the courthouse. Some said they had been
threatened or shunned.
When the jury came back on
Friday afternoon, Mr. Yusuf did
not even get word in time to
reach the courtroom to see his
22-year-old son, Mohamed
Farah, and the two other defendants, Guled
Omar, 21, and Abdirahman Daud, 22, declared
guilty. A total of nine men — including another
of Mr. Yusuf’s sons, Adnan — have been convicted in the case.
Federal prosecutors say the case shined a
light on the persistent problem of terrorist recruiting here. Law enforcement authorities
have said that more than 20 young men from
Minnesota have left to join the Shabab militant
group in Somalia and that more than 15 have
tried or succeeded in leaving to join the Islamic
State.
But it also opened wounds among families,
and at the end of the trial, some in the community praised justice served, while others pointed
to what they called another injustice.

Deqa Hussen said she had learned the price
of cooperating: “They’ve been calling me
snitch.”
Her oldest son, Abdirizak Warsame, 21,
briefly acted as the leader of a group of friends
as they planned to travel to Syria in 2014. He
pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors,

telling the jury how he had wanted the rewards
of martyrdom.
Now, Ms. Hussen said, longtime friends and
strangers have accused her of selling her son to
the government. During the trial, she said, the
mother of another defendant
threatened her life.
“I have to respect the government and I have to respect my
son,” she said. “My culture is a
culture of silence. You cannot
speak your rights.”
Some in the Somali community praised the government. They
said that the three defendants
had gotten a fair trial, and that
they hoped the convictions
would prompt candid talks about
extremism and its allure to some
young men here.
“This is good for the community,” said Mohamed Ahmed, a gas
station manager who created an online cartoon
character, Average Mohamed, to condemn
extremism. “It unmasks the fear, forces us to
think deeply. We can either confront it or bury
our heads.”
Jibril Afyare, an IBM software engineer and
community activist, spoke of vigilance. He said
he talked regularly to the United States attorney about the threat of recruitment by terrorist
groups, and has a local police captain’s number
on speed dial.
“We cannot afford even one Somali youth to

be recruited by extremists,” he said. “It’s dangerous for the country, and it’s dangerous for
the Somali community.”

A case that
highlights
terrorist
recruiting
in the U.S.

Above, evening prayer on Saturday at a
mosque in Karmel
Square Mall in Minneapolis. Left, Amina
Ahmed shops in her
friend’s store at the
mall. The shopping
center is one of the
largest collections of
Somali businesses in
the United States.

Continued on Page A16

Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

RICHMOND, Va. — On the night
Barack Obama became the nation’s first
black president, Leah Taylor, a fast-food
worker and African-American mother of
six, stayed up until 2 a.m. watching the

election returns. “I knew that was history, and I wanted to be a part of it,” she
said. But she did not vote.
Ms. Taylor, 45, has never voted. In 1991,
when she was 20, she was stripped of her
voting rights after being convicted of
selling crack cocaine and sent to jail for a
year. So she was stunned when an organizer from a progressive group, New Virginia Majority, showed up one recent afternoon at the church soup kitchen
where she eats lunch and said he could
register her.
“Your rights have been restored!” the
organizer, Assadique Abdul-Rahman,
declared with a theatrical flourish, waving an executive order signed in April by
Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Ms. Taylor, so
moved she nearly cried, promptly signed
up.
Thus did Ms. Taylor join a wave of
newly eligible voters, all with criminal
pasts, signing up in Virginia. But what
Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away.

Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s
sweeping order, which re-enfranchised
206,000 Virginians who have completed
sentences, probation or parole. Last

week, the Supreme Court announced a
special session to hear arguments in July
— in time to rule before the November
election.
The suit has plunged Virginia and Mr.

CHET STRANGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Assadique Abdul-Rahman helped Leah Taylor fill out a voter registration
form last month outside Broomfield Methodist Church in Richmond, Va.

McAuliffe — a Democrat and close friend
of Hillary Clinton’s, the party’s likely
presidential nominee — into yet another
racially charged voting rights battle. In
May, a federal judge upheld a Republican-backed law requiring Virginia voters
to provide photo identification, while the
Supreme Court let stand a court-imposed redistricting map, drawn to address Democrats’ complaints of racially
motivated gerrymandering.
This next fight over restoring voting
rights to convicted felons — an issue
playing out nationally — could affect the
presidential contest and Mrs. Clinton’s
fortunes in Virginia, a critical swing
state. Ever since Mr. McAuliffe’s order
on April 22, progressive groups have
been waging a furious registration campaign; as of Friday, state elections officials said, more than 5,800 newly eligible
voters had signed up.
“This could get really messy,” said
Tram Nguyen, an executive director of
New Virginia Majority, a leader in the
registration campaign. “What happens if
the executive order gets overturned?
There’s no precedent; 5,800 people are
actively on the registration rolls now. Do

we purge them?”
That is precisely what Republicans are
asking. In addition to overturning the or-

der, they want the new registrations nullified — a request Ms. Taylor calls “appalling.”
A teenage mother when she went to
jail, Ms. Taylor said her time there “gave
me clarity.” After her release in 1992, she
said, she performed community service,
folding clothes in a Salvation Army store,
and paid the state $15,000 in fines, with
money inherited from her mother. Today,
she has part-time jobs at McDonald’s
and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and dabbles in advocacy, lobbying lawmakers on
behalf of “Fight for $15,” a coalition pushing to raise the minimum wage. She likes
both Mrs. Clinton and Senator Bernie
Sanders, and counts herself a Democrat.
“I did my time; I did everything I was
supposed to do,” she said. “I paid the
courts, I paid the fines and got my life
back on track.”
In issuing his sweeping order, Mr.
McAuliffe made expansive use of his
clemency powers to effectively nullify a
Civil War-era provision in the State Constitution that barred convicted felons
from voting for life — one of the harshest
disenfranchisement policies in the nation. In an interview previewing his announcement, Mr. McAuliffe said his legal
Continued on Page A16

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

ELECTION

2 016

Clinton Wins a Primary
While Sanders Promises
AFight to the Convention
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. —
Senator Bernie Sanders defiantly
vowed again on Sunday to take his
campaign to the Democratic National Convention this summer,
even as Hillary Clinton edged
closer to clinching the party’s
presidential nomination and the
final primary contests drew near.
Two days before Tuesday’s primaries in California and five other
states, Mr. Sanders repeated his
pledge not to concede even if Mrs.
Clinton acquires enough delegates to reach 2,383, the threshold
for securing the nomination.
A win in California is critical to
Mr. Sanders’s plan to stay in the
race through the convention and
would give him a significant lift.
But with her victory in the
Puerto Rico primary on Sunday,

Mrs. Clinton is only 28 delegates
short of the threshold and will
most likely declare victory on
Tuesday.
Mr. Sanders, however, insists
that the convention will be contested because he is still lobbying
superdelegates — party officials
and state leaders who cast their final votes at the convention — to
withdraw support from Mrs. Clinton and back him instead. He
plans to make the case that he is a
stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. A number of
polls, he said, show he can beat
Mr. Trump by larger margins than
Mrs. Clinton can.
On Sunday, Mr. Sanders opened
a new line of attack against Mrs.
Clinton, criticizing donations
made by foreign governments
while she was secretary of state to
the Clinton Foundation, the organization founded by former President Bill Clinton.
When Mr. Sanders, who greeted
fans in West Hollywood, was
asked by reporters if he remained
committed to pushing for a contested convention, said he “absolutely” was.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York, and Thomas Kaplan from Oakland, Calif.

A convention is typically seen
as contested when a candidate
cannot reach the necessary delegate count using both pledged delegates and superdelegates. In
2008, Mrs. Clinton conceded to

Barack Obama shortly after the final primary and before the convention. But Mr. Sanders is promising to break with tradition and
extend his fight further than initially expected.
Mr. Sanders reiterated his
stance on Sunday at a restaurant
filled with disco lights as he urged
supporters to back him.
“We need a real change in this
country,” Mr. Sanders said to a
cheering crowd at the restaurant,
Hamburger Mary’s, in West Hollywood, “and we need a government which represents all of us,
not just the 1 percent.”
During a news conference on
Saturday in Los Angeles, Mr.
Sanders said it would be wrong for
Mrs. Clinton to claim victory on
Tuesday based on her total delegate count. News media outlets
should not call the race, he said,
unless she reaches the threshold
with only pledged delegates.
“It is extremely unlikely that
Secretary Clinton will have the
requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday
night,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now, I
have heard reports that Secretary
Clinton has said it’s all going to be
over on Tuesday night. I have reports that the media, after the
New Jersey results come in, are
going to declare that it is all over.
That simply is not accurate.”
Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. Sanders

in both pledged and total delegates.
In a sign of his campaign’s urgency to win in California, Mr.
Sanders criticized the Clinton
Foundation during an interview
on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the
Union.”
“If you ask me about the Clinton
Foundation, do I have a problem
when a sitting secretary of state
and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments,
governments which are dictatorships?” Mr. Sanders said.

A13

0N

Ignoring long odds
while criticizing
foreign donations
to a foundation.

MONICA ALMEIDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders attended a rally Saturday in Los Angeles, top. On Sunday,
Hillary Clinton campaigned at Greater St. Paul Church in Oakland, Calif., speaking to black congregants about issues like gentrification and gun violence. California’s primary is set for Tuesday.
“You don’t have a lot of civil liberties or democratic rights in
Saudi Arabia,” he told the interviewer, Jake Tapper. “You don’t
have a lot of respect there for op-

Stance That Makes G.O.P. Fear Backlash

position points of view for gay
rights, for women’s rights. Yes, do
I have a problem with that? Yes, I
do.”
Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton

spent Sunday campaigning in California, where polls indicated a
tight race. Mrs. Clinton and Mr.
Clinton visited black churches, appealing to a demographic that had

given her important support in
past nominating contests.
In Oakland, Mrs. Clinton spoke
at Greater St. Paul Church. Tailoring her remarks to her audience,
she recalled working briefly in
Oakland in the 1970s, and she
praised the Golden State Warriors, who were set to host Game 2
of the N.B.A. finals.
Mrs. Clinton also talked about
issues like gentrification and gun
violence and told congregants
how difficult it was to be president.
“I wish it was only about
making speeches,” Mrs. Clinton
said. “You know, just get up there
and promise the moon and make
all of these rhetorical flourishes.

That’d be a lot easier than what
the job is.”
Mr. Clinton visited First African
Methodist Episcopal Church in
South Los Angeles, where he took
aim at Mr. Trump and addressed
criticism that he and his wife were
part of the “political establishment.”
“This is not an establishment
campaign,” he said. “This is an inclusion campaign.”
Mr. Sanders spent much of his
day walking around greeting
voters in several places, including
the Santa Monica Pier, where
dozens of fans hugged and
snapped photos with him. Some
shouted, “That’s our next president!”
But there were signs of opposition from Clinton supporters. One
woman shouted, “Get out of the
race!” As Mr. Sanders shook
hands, he quickly moved past
Jenny Swiatowy, 33, who sat next
to a fruit arrangement with a
sticker showing her support for
Mrs. Clinton.
“In the beginning, I thought it
was great for him to come out as a
new candidate with a new voice
and to start bringing out the
young new voters,” said Ms. Swiatowy, who works at a record label.

“But it’s time to concede and unite
the party.”
Mr. Sanders, though, was not
bowing to the pressure.
“See you in Philly,” he told one
smiling supporter.

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States, a nation of immigrants,
against judging people based on
heritage, Mr. Trump replied, “I’m
not talking about tradition, I’m
talking about common sense,
O.K.?”
In his interview with Mr. Dickerson, and in a separate discussion with Jake Tapper on CNN’s
“State of the Union,” Mr. Trump refused to retreat from his comments on Judge Curiel’s background.

“He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican,
which is all fine,” Mr. Trump said.
“But I say he’s got bias. I want to
build a wall. I’m going to build a
wall. I’m doing very well with the
Latinos, with the Hispanics, with
the Mexicans, I’m doing very well
with them, in my opinion.”
Judge Curiel, 62, was born in
East Chicago, Ind., to parents who
had emigrated from Mexico. He
graduated from Indiana University’s law school and worked as an
assistant United States attorney
in the Southern District of California before being appointed in 2007
to the bench in San Diego by Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. President Obama nominated Judge Curiel to the federal
bench in late 2011, and he was confirmed by the Senate in 2012.
Mr. Trump’s broadside against
Judge Curiel was one of the most
overtly racial remarks he had
made in the presidential race, and
it exacerbated the tension between some Republicans and
their nominee. White, older, working-class voters make up a large
portion of the party’s base, and
Republicans need to keep the
presidential campaign close in order to hold their majority in the
Senate. But Mr. Trump’s remarks
have offended wide blocs of voters
to whom the party must appeal
amid national demographic shifts.

And the critiques have raised
concerns about how, as president,
Mr. Trump would handle the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of
government. That issue is sacred
to conservatives, who have railed
against what they see as an abuse
of power by Mr. Obama.
Republicans have tried to mitigate the potential damage of Mr.
Trump’s language by rejecting it
in one moment, but embracing his
candidacy in the next.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,”
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, did not
directly answer a question about
whether Mr. Trump’s remark had

DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Donald J. Trump at a rally on Thursday in San Jose, Calif. He
has criticized a judge overseeing a lawsuit against him.
been racist, but said he completely disagreed with it. “All of us
came here from somewhere else,”
Mr. McConnell said, referring to
Judge Curiel’s heritage. “That’s
an important part of what makes
America work.”
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican whose name
had been floated as a potential
vice-presidential nominee, said on
ABC’s “This Week” of Mr. Trump’s

behavior, “I think that he’s going
to have to change.” And Newt
Gingrich, the former House

A candidate refuses to
back off comments
about a judge with
Mexican heritage.
speaker, who has been among Mr.
Trump’s most vocal supporters,
called the Curiel remarks “inexcusable” on “Fox News Sunday.”
“This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made,” said Mr.
Gingrich, who has also been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate.
But none of the three men rejected Mr. Trump’s candidacy outright. Mr. Gingrich praised Mr.
Trump moments later as a quick
learner. Mr. Corker suggested that
Mr. Trump “has an opportunity to
really change the trajectory of our
country, and it’s my sense that he
will take advantage of that.”
Those defenses are becoming
more strained as Mr. Trump has
reversed his suggestions that he
knows he must grow into the role

of nominee. And Republicans
were mostly silent after Hillary
Clinton assailed Mr. Trump in a
speech on Thursday about the
stakes of the election. Mr. Trump

led his defense on Twitter and at a
rally, but his campaign and its surrogates had no uniform response.
In the weeks since he vanquished his remaining two primary opponents, Mr. Trump has repeatedly turned his campaign’s focus inward — toward his businesses, the Trump University
lawsuit, his fights with other Republicans — and obscured the
hopes Republicans had of keeping
a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton and her
email controversy, or on a jobs report suggesting a slowdown in job
creation.
Mr. McConnell, who endorsed
Mr. Trump quickly after Mr.
Trump became the presumptive
nominee early last month, has
been vocal in his concern that the
remarks on Hispanics will have a
historic effect along the lines of
the remarks Barry Goldwater
made on the party’s ability to woo
black voters after he declined to
support the Civil Rights Act of
1964.
Mr. McConnell said the alternative to Mr. Trump — a second Clinton presidency — was worse. But
he also urged Mr. Trump to stop
focusing on the recent past and to
look toward the future.
“This is a good time, it seems to
me, to begin to try to unify the
party,” Mr. McConnell said.
“And you unify the party by not
settling scores and grudges
against people you’ve been competing with,” he added. “We’re all

behind him now. And I’d like to see
him reach out and pull us all together and give us a real shot at
winning this November.”

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A14

N

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

Papers Show
How Money
Was Hidden
Overseas
From Page A1
clients from the United States are outlined in extraordinary detail in the trove
of internal Mossack Fonseca documents
known as the Panama Papers. The materials were obtained by the German
newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and have now been
shared with The New York Times.
In recent weeks, the papers’
revelations about Mossack Fonseca’s international clientele have shaken the financial world. The Times’s examination
of the files found that Mossack Fonseca
also had at least 2,400 United Statesbased clients over the past decade, and
set up at least 2,800 companies on their
behalf in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, the Seychelles and other jurisdictions that specialize in helping hide
wealth.
Many of these transactions were legal; there are legitimate reasons to create offshore accounts, particularly when
setting up a business overseas or buying

real estate in a foreign country.
But the documents — confidential
emails, copies of passports, ledgers of
bank transactions and even the various
code names used to refer to clients —
show that the firm did much more than
simply create offshore shell companies
and accounts. For many of its American
clients, Mossack Fonseca offered a howto guide of sorts on skirting or evading
United States tax and financial disclosure laws.
These included locating an individual
from a “tax-convenient” jurisdiction to
be the straw man owner of an offshore
account, concealing the true American
owner, or encouraging one client it knew
was a United States resident to use his
foreign passports to open accounts offshore, again to avoid scrutiny from regulators, the documents show.
If the compliance department at one
foreign bank contacted by Mossack Fonseca on behalf of its clients started to ask
too many questions about who owned
the account, the firm simply turned to
other, less inquisitive banks.
And even though the law firm said
publicly that it would not work with
clients convicted of crimes or whose financial activities raised “red flags,” several individuals in the United States with
criminal records were able to turn to
Mossack Fonseca to open new companies offshore, the documents show.
Federal law allows United States citizens to transfer money overseas, but
these foreign holdings must be declared
to the Treasury Department, and any

taxes on capital gains, interest or dividends must be paid — just as if the
money had been invested domestically.
Federal officials estimate that the government loses between $40 billion and
$70 billion a year in unpaid taxes on offshore holdings.
Experts in federal tax law, money
laundering and offshore accounts —
asked by The Times to examine certain
documents or at least to identify legal issues raised by the money management
techniques that Mossack Fonseca advocated — said the law firm at times had
come up with creative, but apparently legal, strategies to save clients money. A
common tactic: selling real estate as a
shift of corporate assets, instead of as a
piece of property subject to transfer
taxes.
While the experts were reluctant to declare that the law firm or its clients had
broken any laws given that no charges
have been filed, they said they were surprised at how explicitly Mossack Fonseca had offered advice that appeared
carefully crafted to help its clients evade
United States tax laws.
“The more correspondence that you
have between a U.S. person and a bank
or law firm discussing tax issues and efforts at concealment, the stronger the
government will see it as a potential case
worth prosecuting,” said Kevin M.
Downing, the lead Justice Department
Mike McIntire contributed reporting.
Kitty Bennett and Ryan Chittum contributed research.

William R. Ponsoldt in
1986. Mossack Fonseca

managed eight shell
companies and a foundation on his family’s behalf. The Panama Papers
reveal how money was
moved on request to
family members.

CARLOS JASSO/REUTERS

For many of its American clients, Mossack Fonseca in Panama City offered a how-to guide of sorts on skirting United States tax and financial disclosure laws.
prosecutor in the UBS offshore banking
and tax evasion cases, now at the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier.
Mossack Fonseca has said repeatedly
in recent weeks that its lawyers and staff
members have honored international tax
and banking laws, and that it is the victim in this case of an illegal hacking attack.
But presented with summaries of several cases by The Times, Mossack Fonseca did not try to explain its actions. It
simply said that its standards had improved in recent years, as rules internationally had tightened.
“Our significantly expanded compliance office today not only evaluates new
client candidates, but also existing accounts, and especially those that were
established prior to the new international regulatory regime coming into effect,” a spokeswoman said in a written
statement, referring to a 2010 law passed
by Congress. “It wasn’t always this way.”
The firm’s American client list does
not appear to include the sort of highprofile political figures who have
emerged from reporting on the Panama
Papers in many other countries around
the world.
But the services offered by Mossack
Fonseca, with 500 employees in more
than 30 offices worldwide, were in high

demand by the rich and famous in the
United States.
In 2001, Sanford I. Weill, then the chief
of Citigroup, set up an offshore account
called April Fool for his yacht. Alfonso
Soriano, a former Major League Baseball All-Star player with the Yankees and
other teams, had a Panamanian corporation created for him. John E. Akridge III,
a leading real estate developer in Washington, flew to Panama to meet with
Mossack Fonseca lawyers, who in 2011
created the Cyclops Family Foundation
in Panama, along with a related bank account.
A spokesman for Mr. Weill said the accounts were used for legitimate purposes, and “appropriate disclosures
were filed.” Mr. Akridge and Mr. Soriano
did not respond to repeated requests for
comment.
For its best customers, like the Ponsoldts, who declined repeated requests
to discuss their work with Mossack Fonseca, the firm’s ministrations went far
beyond legal services and banking. It
acted as a concierge for “all details regarding your properties and worldwide
business affairs,” for example, helping
the family confidentially purchase (and

dispose of) luxury condominiums at resort destinations and even arranging repairs for a car stored at a vacation home
and hiring a contractor to fix broken
poolside tiles, the documents show.
“You deserve the best Mr. Ponsoldt,
and we will try to help you the most we
can,” the firm explained in an email.
The firm’s American clients often expressed disbelief at how much they could
lighten their tax burden by using the

techniques advocated by Mossack Fonseca.
“At hearing that he can make nearly $8
million per year just on tax savings,” a
client from Pennsylvania “was now wide
awaken,” a Mossack Fonseca staff member wrote. “I could even detect sweats
coming down from his forehead and his
cheeks were beginning to blush with
crimson excitement. Noticing his interest, I went in for the kill.”

Black Hole for Assets
In 2006, using a secret email account
set up by Mossack Fonseca so his correspondence would not be traced by the authorities, a businessman from Washington State asked a common question
among the firm’s potential American
clients:
“How does a US citizen legally get
funds to Panama without the knowledge
of the US government and how can those
funds be profitably invested without the
US government knowing about them?”
The reply came from Ramsés Owens,
then a partner who helped run the firm’s
trust division, offering clients “effective
solutions to enhance your privacy, protect your wealth.” Mr. Owens laid out a
basic menu of services: a package deal
setting up an offshore company in what
he promised would be a relatively cheap
and quick transaction.
“We have right now a special offer by
which we create a Private Foundation/
company combination for a flat fee of

US$4,500.00,” Mr. Owens said. “It includes Charter Documents, Regulations,
nominee officers and directors, bank account and management of funds, provision of authorized signatories, neutral
phone and fax numbers and mail forwarding services for both the private
foundation and its underlying company.”
With this legal structure in place, Mr.
Owens went on to explain, any money
placed in these accounts would essentially go into a black hole.
“If we create a Private Foundation and
the underlying company for you, the

funds become completely private (US
cannot know) as soon as the funds are
deposited under a bank account or investment account in the name of the underlying company or the private foundation,” he wrote.
The benefits of such an arrangement
were numerous, he added, detailing how
the client could effectively evade United
States tax laws while protecting himself
— and the firm.
“You can take the money in cash, you
can do a bad investment; you can purchase something and not receive anything (an expensive piano, an expensive
software),” Mr. Owens wrote. “You can
receive an invoice from Panama or any
other location and that would justify
some of the outgoing moneys. You can
also declare everything to the tax administration.
“Any decision you make, please be
aware that you will have to sign a ‘disclaimer’ to us. We can only ‘suggest,’ but
the final decision to take the money out of
the country is fully yours, and under the
professional opinion of someone in USA.”

This was the sort of menu sold to the
Ponsoldt family — in a very big way.
William Ponsoldt, now 74, had come to
Mossack Fonseca with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the firm’s staff
estimated in “due diligence” memos that
also laid out how he had become so
wealthy.
“He has started off in the 70ties purchasing run-down apartment buildings
in New York, in order to refurbish and
sell them off,” noted one memo from
2007, shortly after the firm had started to
handle the family’s investment accounts.
“Having done this for a while he spread
out to various businesses and his CV is
the typical profile of a serial entrepreneur.” The memo went on to list nine
businesses he had created, taken over or
helped run, including Glas Aire Industries Group, an automotive parts supplier; Zeus Energy Resources, a Texas oildrilling company; Regency Affiliates,
which owned a Michigan rock mine; and
Pegasus Ranch, one of the country’s largest Arabian-horse-breeding operations.
Few American clients, the records
show, demanded and received as much
attention as Mr. Ponsoldt and two of his
children, Tracey and Christopher, each of
whom was assigned a secret email account and a code name — “father,”
“daughter” and “son.” Mossack Fonseca’s “V.I.P. service” consisted of everything from securing lunch reservations
at a popular French bistro in Panama
City to pressing the government to make
an exception and grant Mr. Ponsoldt and
his wife Panamanian passports.
Over the years, tens of millions of dollars flowed into a series of shell companies — Escutcheon Investment, with its

money at the Banca Privada in the Pyrenees principality of Andorra; Probity Investments, with deposits at Andbanc
Grup Agricol, also in Andorra; Royal Pacific Investments, with deposits at Balboa Securities in Panama; and Valdano
Investments Group, with deposits at
Berenberg Bank in Switzerland, among
others, the bank records and other documents show.
Mossack Fonseca employees were
named as the companies’ officers, avoiding whenever possible any link to the
Ponsoldt family. The firm even asked a
Hong Kong branch of Barclays, the international bank, to override its rules for
proof of the so-called beneficial owners
of the accounts.
“This is a very special client of ours,” a
Mossack Fonseca lawyer wrote, conceding that the firm had intentionally created such a maze of companies so it “leaves
us in the position to legally argue that our
client is NOT the owner of the structure.”
It was not clear if the bank complied.
The most important part of this elaborate structure was an entity called the
Edenstone Foundation.
Panama has long specialized in creating unusual foundations like Edenstone
that are neither subject to Panamanian

taxes nor required to support charitable
causes. They do, however, allow the
investors who “contribute” their financing to shield themselves from legal
claims in the United States.
In secret meetings documented in the
Panama Papers, Mossack Fonseca
named the Ponsoldt family as the beneficiary, through the foundation, of the
money placed in bank accounts around
the world.

Among the early requests: confidentially transfer $800,000 from “father” to
“son,” meaning moving the money to yet
another offshore account — called LBFH
of Panama — which Mossack Fonseca
had set up on Christopher Ponsoldt’s behalf with bank accounts in Andorra and
Panama.
One motivation for Christopher Ponsoldt to stash money overseas in accounts not traceable to him: He owned a
dirt racetrack in Florida, and he was concerned racers “may get hurt and might
then try to sue him for damages,” the law
firm notes on his case file said.
“Please notify me when the money is
deposited in American dollars,” Christopher Ponsoldt wrote to the law firm a few
months after his father’s accounts had
been set up and $800,000 was in the
process of being transferred to another
offshore account Christopher Ponsoldt
controlled via the firm. “I want to have
U.S. dollars, Australian Dollars, Indian
Real’s and some kind of China index, to
be determined.”
Mossack Fonseca agreed to “prepare a
service agreement” between two of the
legal entities it managed for the family, to
make it look as if there were an actual expenditure of money for a business purpose.
“After receiving the money, we will explain to them the nature of this transaction without giving details of your name,”
the firm explained to William Ponsoldt,
regarding the Caribbean bank through
which the money was moving to his son.
“Please let us know if you agree with this
and if you will instruct the relevant parties to execute the wire transfer.”

Federal law generally limits such taxfree transfers between family members
to $14,000 a year. But for this transfer, described as a “pre-inheritance distribution,” the documents give no indication
that any United States gift taxes were
paid, as would most likely have been required, said Jack Blum, a lawyer and expert in international tax evasion who
served for more than a decade as a consultant to the Internal Revenue Service.
“This is one way in which people with a
lot of money step away from being average,” Mr. Blum said after reviewing the
documents.
Christopher Ponsoldt declined to comment. “I am sorry, I can’t help you,” he
said before hanging up.
Tracey Ponsoldt Powers, William Ponsoldt’s daughter, approached the firm in
October 2008 with an urgent request for
help in secretly moving some of her family’s money to Panama and then into gold
coins. She feared political developments
at home.
“I feel VERY unsettled with this election and how the media is censoring information and spinning the American
Public to vote Obama,” she wrote to Mr.
Owens at Mossack Fonseca. “It is so obvious to me, that they are setting us up
with a Socialist — but most people can’t
see it happening before their eyes! It’s
like propaganda that is brainwashing
Americans to forget the Principles of
Hard Work, Ingenuity, Risk and Boundless Success!”
Mr. Owens suggested shifting the
money into a “charity” account, controlled by the firm on the family’s behalf,
in increments of less than $100,000, so it
would not be detected.
Separately, that same month, William
Ponsoldt moved $100,000 from a company Mossack Fonseca controlled on his
behalf into the name of his daughter. This

was confirmed in an email from Mossack
Fonseca to the code name “daughter.”


THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

ARNULFO FRANCO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca helped wealthy United States clients,
among many others worldwide, set up offshore corporations, foundations and bank
accounts where the clients could place large amounts of cash and other assets. While
federal law allows United States citizens to transfer money overseas, these foreign
holdings must be declared to the Treasury Department, and any taxes on capital gains,
interest or dividends must be paid. But in some cases, Mossack Fonseca appeared to
create accounts with the express purpose of shielding identities or avoiding scrutiny from
American authorities.

How to Shield Your Identity With an Offshore Account
A client conveys his or her money to one or a
series of corporations that Mossack Fonseca
creates in spots around the world. In some cases,
the firm has advised clients to justify the money
flow out of the United States by falsifying receipts
for imaginary purchases, or claiming they had
made bad investments and lost the money.

CLIENT

In Panama, Mossack Fonseca sets up a private
foundation, not subject to Panamanian taxes

and not required to make any actual donations
to a charity. Clients who “contribute” funds to
such foundations are shielded from legal claims
filed against them in the United States, even
though they often indirectly still control the use
of the money, via Mossack Fonseca.

“CHARITABLE” OR FAMILY
FOUNDATION
MOSSACK
FONSECA
LAWYER

To further conceal the connections between the
foundations and their true owners, employees of
Mossack Fonseca (or, in some cases, their family
members) are appointed as officers to the
foundation and to the various shell companies. This
arrangement allows Mossack Fonseca to argue that
the client who donated the money does not own or
control this new legal entity, even if emails and other
correspondence show that he does.

CHIEF OFFICERS
ARE MOSSACK FONSECA
INSIDERS

In some cases, the Mossack Fonseca staff secretly
names the client as the sole beneficiary of the
private foundation and the various shell companies it

has created for the client. But the client’s actual
identity remains hidden from any public documents,
and perhaps also from American authorities.

Mossack Fonseca’s employees, now acting as officers of the
foundation or shell companies, transfer large chunks of
money to and from bank accounts it has separately set up
on the client’s behalf, in tax havens like Andorra, Switzerland,
the British Virgin Islands and Panama, which have historically
helped customers hide their names from government
authorities. In other cases, money is used to buy
luxury apartments or yachts. These maneuvers
SHELL
COMPANIES
make it difficult to know where the money
AND
BANKS
originally came from, or if capital gains taxes
and other obligations have been paid.

The Benefits
Money deposited by the client to the private
foundation may be shifted into the accounts of
shell companies, and through them to the
personal accounts of the client’s family
members, such as children, potentially allowing
the United States ceiling on tax-free gifts from
parents to children to be illegally evaded. The
firm argues it is the client’s responsibility to pay
these taxes, when appropriate.

TAX-FREE
DISTRIBUTIONS
TO CLIENT’S CHILDREN
OR FAMILY MEMBERS

Other Risky or Potentially Illegal Uses
By not reporting to the United States government income earned abroad, or even the
existence of these overseas accounts, clients can evade United States taxes on
passive income (like interest, dividends and capital gains) they earn on their offshore
investments. Mossack Fonseca argues that it is up to its clients to pay what they owe.
By setting up the shell companies in foreign countries, and claiming that the client is not
a resident of the United States even if the firm knows that is not true, the firm can help
the client evade taxes owed to the United States.
The offshore companies can also be used to shield assets if an individual is sued in the
United States, or is going through a divorce or other family dispute.
THE NEW YORK TIMES

“The USD 100.000 is deposited as call
Money with high liquidity at Berenberg
Bank Schweiz, Zürich,” said the email,
which added: “Your Father initiated this
process as you know. We will treat you
with the same esteem and conditions and
service as the family is used to.”
The subsequent series of complicated
transfers — money from the account
would eventually be used by Mossack
Fonseca in 2013 at Ms. Powers’s request
to buy real estate — would be a challenge

for American enforcement authorities,
Mr. Blum said.
“Simply by constructing all this in
such a complex way, they make it extremely hard for enforcement officials to
ever have resources to reconstruct what
taxes should have been paid,” he said.
“What this is all about is obscuring the
trail.”
Ms. Powers did not respond to a series
of calls and emails, and then declined to
answer questions when reached on a

cellphone.
“I have no idea what you are talking
about,” she said before hanging up.

‘Live This Potential Risk’
Across the United States, Mossack
Fonseca picked up clients who had similarly urgent and delicate demands.
For more than 30 years as the founder
of Boston Capital Ventures, Harald Joachim von der Goltz has built a reputation as a savvy investor in emerging
companies.
What few know, however, is that over
roughly that same span of time and with
the help of Mossack Fonseca, Mr. von der
Goltz has also come to command a vast
offshore empire: interconnected corporations, foundations and bank accounts
with about $70 million in assets, according to internal emails.
A lawyer for Mr. von der Goltz said the
beneficial owner of all of the trusts and

A15

Marianna Olszewski, an
author on personal finance, shifted $1 million
to an overseas account
through Mossack Fonseca, then was concerned
that her name had been
revealed as the principal
beneficiary. She later
disclosed her accounts to
the I.R.S.

Ramón Fonseca, a co-founder of Mossack Fonseca, in April in his office. The
firm has said it has honored international tax and banking laws.

How Mossack Fonseca Helped Clients Skirt
Or Break U.S. Tax Laws With Offshore Accounts

N

accounts is Mr. von der Goltz’s 100-yearold mother, who resides in Guatemala.
One document also suggests that the
tens of millions of dollars in the accounts
originally came from businesses operated by Mr. von der Goltz’s father.
But numerous other documents prepared by Mossack Fonseca and signed
by Mr. von der Goltz list him as the
founder, manager and “first beneficiary”
of the foundation that controls most of
the family’s wealth. Mr. von der Goltz

also put assets from companies he
helped operate into the accounts, documents show.
Most important, Mossack Fonseca
registered Mr. von der Goltz as a resident
of Guatemala, which tax experts said
could help him protect the family money
from certain United States tax
obligations.
“MF Trust has registered Harald Joachim von der Goltz as a client of
Guatemala. However, we know he lives
in Miami; and makes his residence for 5
months of the year in Boston,” Mr. Owens, the Mossack Fonseca partner, wrote
in an email in 2009 to top executives at
the firm.
The firm recognized that claiming the
Guatemala residency represented a risk,
but considered it a risk worth taking, given Mr. von der Goltz’s importance to the
firm.
“My suggestion: Leave everything as
it is with von der Goltz, i.e. stay and live
this potential risk, we might prefer to
send money orders and cashier’s checks,
which have a slightly lower risk than
bank transfers. It’s all well done,
customer understands well and accepts
it as is,” Mr. Owens wrote.
“I agree with your suggestion on my
part,” responded Ramón Fonseca, one of
the firm’s founders.
Money was frequently transferred

from several of the offshore accounts to
accounts in the United States to fund investments at Mr. von der Goltz’s firm, the
documents show. A foundation paid for
his daughter’s education, as well as his
granddaughter’s high school tuition.
In a 2008 email, Mr. von der Goltz’s
Boston-based accountant asked executives at Mossack Fonseca to wire money
from Mr. von der Goltz’s mother, Erika.
“Erika would like to make a gift to Tica
of $100,000 for his birthday. She hadn’t
given him anything,” the email said, providing an account for Mr. von der Goltz at
Espírito Santo Bank in Miami.
“Ohh, yes, I know ERIKA wants it to be
done quickly, we will proceed,” Mr. Owens responded before confirming that
the money should be moved as requested.
Legal experts consulted by The Times
said it was difficult to determine definitively if the arrangements related to Mr.
von der Goltz violated United States
laws. But they said such moves were
commonly used by investors seeking to
hide their assets and evade federal taxes.
“There is reason to question if she was
really directing that shift of money,” Mr.
Blum said, referring to Mr. von der
Goltz’s mother.
In a statement, Mr. von der Goltz said
the companies were established for legal
purposes, and that both he and the companies were compliant with United
States tax and reporting requirements.
“There has never been any illegal activity associated with these companies,”

the statement said.
Other case files examined by The
Times show how Mossack Fonseca may
have turned a blind eye in the vetting
process while helping Kjell Gunnar Finstad, a Texas resident, set up an oil company offshore in 2013.
Mossack Fonseca has long maintained
that it will not work for individuals with
criminal records or whose conduct raises
“red flags” during its due-diligence
process. But the firm somehow either
missed or overlooked Mr. Finstad’s past
when it conducted a background search
of potential directors for the new offshore oil company, OK Terra Energy,
which was run out of Houston but registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Three years earlier, Mr. Finstad, the
company’s controlling partner and lead
investor, had been convicted in Norway
for various breaches of securities and accounting laws involving a company
called Norex Group. The case was major
news in Norway.
The records examined by The Times
show that Mossack Fonseca collected a
copy of Mr. Finstad’s passport, and conducted a basic internet search and a cursory background check. But there is no
mention of the fraud case, and no discussion of whether to proceed with setting
up the new company, in light of Mr. Finstad’s involvement.
Reached at his office in Texas and
asked about the Panama Papers, Mr. Finstad said only, “I don’t want to talk about
that.”
For another client, Mossack Fonseca
offered a special service for a premium

price.
Marianna Olszewski, the New York
City-based author of “Live It, Love It,
Earn It: A Woman’s Guide to Financial
Freedom,” wanted to shift $1 million held
by HSBC in Guernsey to a new overseas
account. The catch? She did not want her
name to appear anywhere near the
transaction.
Mr. Owens, the Mossack Fonseca lawyer, again offered a solution.
Mossack Fonseca would locate what
he called a “natural person nominee” in a
“tax-convenient” jurisdiction to stand in
for Ms. Olszewski as the owner of the account.
“The Natural Person Trustee is a service which is very sensitive,” Mr. Owens
wrote. “We need to hire the Natural Person Nominee, pay him, make him sign
lots of documents to cover us, make him
sign resignations, make him get some
proofs evidencing that he has the economic capacity to place such amount of
moneys, letters of reference, proof of domicile, etc., etc.” The process, he suggested, would cost her at least $17,500.
Ms. Olszewksi approved the maneuver — only to see the firm, at one point,
accidentally disclose her name to the
banks involved.
“Ramses, Please call me ASAP!! This
is important!!!!” she wrote to Mr. Owens. “HSBC said someone said marianna
olszewski is the principal / beneficary!
Who has done this!! I need you to call me
immediately and tell them hsbc that was
a mistake!!!!!!!!!! This is not good and I

asked you NOT to do this! this is why we
have this structure.”
Mr. Owens sought to calm her down,
saying that Mossack Fonseca could tell
the bank that the natural person
nominee actually controlled the account.
“This can be solved,” he wrote.
Mr. Owens did not tell his client the
identity of the natural person nominee,
saying simply, “We would appoint a UK
citizen residing in Panama since 50 years
ago, engineer, entrepreneur,” as they
needed someone who would be expected
to have such a large amount of money
available to transfer.
Twelve days later, Mr. Owens sent
HSBC a copy of a passport for a man
named Edmund James Ward.
“Kindly please find hereto attached
the due diligence documents of the beneficial owner,” said the email sent to
HSBC, noting that “the documents duly
correct.”
The $1 million from Ms. Olszewski was
then transferred to the new accounts,
with an assurance that she need not
worry.
“If for any reason something happens,
please also bear in mind that Mossfon is
covered by insurance policies for US$10
Million (per event),” Mr. Owens wrote.

“We have never used our insurance policy to cover a ‘fraud,’ or something like
this.”
The use of a stand-in to hide the true
ownership of an account is one of the remaining illegal ploys favored by Americans today as international banks, under
pressure from the United States, demand proof of account ownership, said
Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor from Miami who specialized in
criminal tax offenses, adding that he
could not comment directly on this case.
“The fact that a law firm was willing to do
this legitimizes the process for their
clients,” he said.

A Firm’s Inner Doubts
Many of the client files — like those for
Mr. Weill, the banker; Mr. Soriano, the

ballplayer; and Mr. Akridge, the developer — contain little information on the
purpose of the offshore accounts, or how
they were used after they were set up,
making it impossible, based on the
records available, to assess whether
they were used legitimately.
But the experts who reviewed some of
the documents related to the Ponsoldts,
Mr. von der Goltz and Ms. Olszewski said
that the firm itself seemed to realize it
was taking risks.
“They were not always sure themselves which side of the line they were on
at any given moment,” said Ross S. Delston, a former federal banking regulator
who now specializes in combating

money-laundering efforts. “It is apparent that members of the firm were aware
they were treading very close to the
line.”
In fact, the files contain instances, beginning before the Panama Papers came
to light, of Mossack Fonseca lawyers second-guessing their actions. (In recent
weeks, the firm has shut down many of
its operations in Nevada, as well as
British locations in Jersey and the Isle of
Man, and is closing the asset-management division that served many of its
United States clients.)
In 2013, Mossack Fonseca advised Ms.
Olszewski to seek outside counsel and
consider reporting herself to the I.R.S.,
warning
of
possible
“severe”
repercussions if she did not. The warning
came in the wake of a Justice Department investigation of the role that certain Swiss banks had played in helping
United States citizens evade federal
taxes.
Records show that Mossack Fonseca
had been paid at least $102,000 over nine
years to help Ms. Olszewski handle various transactions.
Ms. Olszewksi took the firm’s advice,
and belatedly disclosed her accounts to
the I.R.S., the documents show. And by
2014, she asked Mossack Fonseca to shut
down her accounts and offshore entities,
which collectively held at least $1.7 million.

“I’m in complete compliance with all
my U.S. tax and reporting requirements,” Ms. Olszewski said in an emailed
statement when The Times asked about
the accounts.
In a second statement, she said she
had relied on the advice of legal counsel
to establish a trust for her family while
living abroad. “I am confident that I have
acted properly,” she added, “and any insinuation otherwise is false.”
Reached by telephone in late May, Mr.
Owens, who is no longer with the law
firm, said only, “Regretfully, I cannot
speak about individual clients or my time
at Mossack Fonseca.”
Mossack Fonseca sent a series of similar and increasingly dire warnings to the
Ponsoldts in 2013 and 2014, telling them
that they had to provide a Swiss bank
with documentation that they had paid
all required United States taxes — or
face possible investigation.
“Neither your ex Trustees nor us
would like to be involved into any measure the US Department of Justice might
try to enforce,” the firm wrote. “In this regard, again we strongly urge you to take
the necessary steps to avoid any negative consequences for you as well as us.”
The records examined by The Times
give no indication whether the Ponsoldts
complied, and family members would
not say when asked.
“I don’t know what you are talking
about,” Christopher Ponsoldt said in a

second brief conversation before he
again hung up.

JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

Panama City, home to Mossack Fonseca. A trove of the firm’s internal documents, known as the Panama Papers, has shaken the financial world.


A16

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

N

Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote
From Page A12
authority to do so is “ironclad.”
But Republicans say the governor
lacks blanket authority to restore
voting rights and must instead do
so on a case-by-case basis — as his
predecessors in both parties have
done.
“He’s really put a stick in the
legislature’s eye,” said Speaker
William J. Howell of the Virginia
House of Delegates, the lead
plaintiff in the Republican suit. He
said the suit “has nothing to do
with” the registration drive, and

rejected Democrats’ accusations
that Republicans were trying to
suppress the black vote: “The
governor has whipped them up.”
Still, race is a powerful subtext;
African-Americans make up 19
percent of Virginia’s population,
but 45 percent of those covered by
the governor’s order. The Sentencing Project, a Washington research organization, says one in
five African-Americans in Virginia cannot vote because of felony
convictions.
“When you look at the fact that
of the individuals who are most
impacted by this, 45 percent of
them are African-American, what
conclusion can we draw?” asked
State Senator Mamie Locke,
chairwoman of the Virginia Black
Legislative Caucus, which held
“Voices for The Vote” rallies on
Saturday in three Virginia cities.

What a governor
granted, a State
Supreme Court might
take away.
Organizers of the registration
drive say they would like to sign
up 25,000 new voters in time to
cast ballots on Election Day.

“That could make a difference,”
said Bob Holsworth, a longtime
political analyst in Virginia, noting that some state races in Virginia had been decided by relatively slim margins, of 5,000 or
6,000 votes.
Here in Richmond, the capital,
the registration campaign is most
intense in some of the poorest corners of the city, in places like
Gilpin Court, a public housing development in Jackson Ward, a
historically
African-American
neighborhood. Karen Fountain,
another New Virginia Majority organizer, has signed up so many
people that residents have named
her “The Voter Lady.”
Ms. Fountain estimated that
roughly three-quarters of those
she encounters in Gilpin Court
have lost their right to vote. On a
sweltering Friday afternoon, she
walked
the
neighborhood’s
streets, asking people if they had
heard what “Governor Terry,” as
she calls Mr. McAuliffe, had done.
Many had not; some remain ineligible.
“I can’t; I just got home,” one

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHET STRANGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Clockwise from top: Karen Fountain, known as “The Voter Lady,”
took a break from registering people in Richmond; Assadique Abdul-Rahman, right, congratulated a new voter; the Gilpin Court
housing project, where Ms. Fountain estimated that roughly threequarters of those she encounters have lost their right to vote.
tattooed young man replied, when
Ms. Fountain asked if he wanted
to register. “Are you on probation?” she asked. He nodded his
head yes. “Supervised?” she
asked. He nodded again. “O.K.,”
Ms. Fountain said, “when you get

Obama Opposes Privatization
Of Health Care for Veterans
COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) —
President Obama is opposing suggestions to privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve the health care that veterans receive.
In an interview with The Colorado Springs Gazette, he said
that his administration had made
progress modernizing the department and providing veterans with
more timely care. Privatizing the
agency would delay that progress,
Mr. Obama said.
The department was criticized
when it was disclosed that secret
wait lists were uncovered at a veterans health care system in Arizona amid reports that several
veterans had died waiting for
care. Government investigations
found significant system failures.
“The notion of dismantling the
V.A. system would be a mistake,”
Mr. Obama told The Gazette, referring to the Veterans Administration, which the department
was known as until 1989. “If you

look at, for example, V.A. health
care, there have been challenges
getting people into the system.
Once they are in, they are extremely satisfied and the quality
of care is very high.”
Mr. Obama said he will continue
to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. Obama appointed Robert A.
McDonald, a former chief executive of Procter & Gamble, as Veterans Affairs secretary in 2014 after Eric K. Shinseki resigned.
“I think Secretary McDonald
has done a terrific job,” the president said. “Since there’s only eight
months left in my administration,
he’s got all the way until then to
run through the tape.”
Mr. Obama signed the Veterans
Access to Care Act, which requires the department to contract
with private providers when a
clinic is not within 40 miles of the
veteran seeking care or the wait
time for care is more than 30 days.

In the Matter of the
Liquidation of
HEALTH REPUBLIC
INSURANCE OF
NEW YORK, CORP.

Index No. 450500/2016

NOTICE OF LIQUIDATION ORDER
MARIA T. VULLO, the Acting Superintendent
of Financial Services of the State of New York (the
“Superintendent”), in her capacity as court-appointed
Liquidator (in such capacity, the “Liquidator”)
of Health Republic Insurance of New York, Corp.
(“Health Republic”) hereby gives you notice that, on
May 11, 2016, the Supreme Court of the State of New
York, County of New York (the “Court”), entered
an order (the “Liquidation Order”): (i)  finding
Health Republic to be insolvent within the meaning
of section 1309 of the New York Insurance Law (the
“NYIL”); (ii) appointing the Superintendent and her
successors in office as Liquidator of Health Republic;
(iii)  directing the Liquidator to take possession of
the property and assets of Health Republic; and
(iv)  directing the Liquidator to liquidate Health
Republic’s business in accordance with Article 74 of
the NYIL. The Liquidation Order also provides for
certain injunctive relief, which the Court determined
is in the best interest of Health Republic’s former
members, its creditors, and the general public.
Please take notice that a copy of the Liquidation
Order, and the papers upon which it was granted,
are accessible at www.healthrepublicny.org and
www.nylb.org.
Requests for further information or questions
should be directed to (866) 680-0893 or
www.healthrepublicny.org.
MARIA T. VULLO

Liquidator of Health Republic
Insurance of New York, Corp.

off, you can register.”
For Mr. Abdul-Rahman, a
cheery 53-year-old with a corny
expression — “Cool bananas!” —
for things that please him, the
work is deeply personal. He spent
17 years in prison, for armed rob-

bery and breaking and entering.
In prison, he read history books
and taught himself about politics.
When he heard about the governor’s order, he signed up to vote,
and began registering others.
Then New Virginia Majority

hired him; the day he met Ms.
Taylor was his first day of work.
Standing outside the church, on a
thin grassy patch under a shady
crepe myrtle tree, he registered 11
new voters during the lunch hour
— some homeless, some strug-

gling with addiction to drugs.
None seemed happier than Ms.
Taylor.
“Oh my goodness,” she said,

giving Mr. Abdul-Rahman a hug
after signing her papers. “This is
such a beautiful day.”

Somalis in Minneapolis Are Torn Over Terrorism Trial
From Page A12
But others called the case a setup, and said the defendants had
been goaded to act and praise terrorism by a onetime friend who
made secret audio recordings as a
paid federal informant. In barber
shops and cafes where the case
flashed on television screens,
young men and old said the trial
would harden the community’s relationship with law enforcement,
and said the defendants did not
deserve potential sentences of life
in prison.
“People think the trial was dishonest and was done in a hurry,
that this is a conspiracy,” said Jamaal K. Farah, 35, a barber and comedian who goes by the name
Happy Khalif and has attracted
hundreds of thousands of views
on YouTube.
Mr. Farah said he used to give
haircuts to some of the nine
friends who have now pleaded
guilty or been convicted. He rejected portrayals of them as eager,
would-be militants who spoke of
wanting to spit on the United
States, kill Turkish security forces
or die as martyrs.

The case focused on conversations and events in 2014 and 2015.
Prosecutors said some of the
defendants had watched Islamic
State propaganda videos, met to
discuss routes and timing to leave
for Syria, tried to buy fake passports from an undercover F.B.I.
agent and played paintball to train
for combat.
But to Mr. Farah and others
skeptical of the convictions, the
men were not defendants or terrorists, but boys, brothers, kids
who had messed up but deserved
a second chance.
“These kids used to be part of
this community,” Mr. Farah said.
“This country gave us hope and a
better life. We think this trial was a
total injustice.”
As he watched boys play basketball outside a community center in central Minneapolis,
Burhan Mohumed thought of his

JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jibril Afyare, right, an IBM software engineer and community activist, on Saturday at Karmel
Square Mall. “We cannot afford even one Somali youth to be recruited by extremists,” he said.
friend Guled Omar.
He said Mr. Omar had played
here before “he was caught up in
that storm.” Mr. Mohumed attended the trial regularly but was
barred from the courthouse after

he intervened in a fight and argued with court security officers.
After the trial, Andrew M.
Luger, the United States attorney
for Minnesota, condemned the
threats and courthouse scuffles as
intolerable and “unheard-of.”
Mr. Mohumed supported the
three defendants and, echoing
others here, he was upset they
could face life in prison even
though they never left for Syria
and never pulled a trigger.
“If they can convict them on
words and thoughts, it’s over,” he
said. “People will not feel safe in
our communities.”
But prosecutors said the case
involved far more than thoughts.

They said the defendants were
ready to kill for the Islamic State
and had made well-documented
efforts to fly out of Kennedy International Airport or cross the Mexican border to travel to Syria.
On Saturday, Mr. Yusuf said, his

Disagreement over
a suitable severity
of punishment.
wife insisted that they go back to
work after they visited their son in

jail. He said he had taken time off
from his job driving a school bus to
deal with the criminal cases
against his sons. But they still had
five other children to care for.

So they opened Hooyo’s
Kitchen, in a Somali shopping center stuffed with rug stores, barber
shops, classrooms and kitchens,
four floors above Mr. Farah’s barber shop.
As his wife cooked, Mr. Yusuf
rushed food to customers. People
stopped by to tell them to be
strong. Mr. Yusuf’s thoughts tilted
back to his sons.
He said Mohamed Farah, the
oldest, was hopeful about sentencing, and had told him that whatever came next was God’s will. He
worried about the cost of funding
two commissary accounts so his
sons could call him from jail. He
worried about the distance he
would have to drive to visit them.
“It’s not fair,” Mr. Yusuf said.
But he said they were propped up
by faith. “We believe God will
give, no matter what.”


THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

N

A17


A18

N

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

He Worked Cuomo to Halt State Business With Groups Tied to Israel Boycott
For Tenants,
Until His Past
Caught Up
By JESSE McKINLEY

The building superintendent’s
name was Vincent Bostick, and
he was good with his hands,
reliable and quick on snowy days
to get outside with a shovel.
But he did have one
quirk.
“He put all these
cameras up,” Michael
Garcia, a tenant in the
building, on Jerome
CRIME
Avenue in the Bronx,

SCENE
said as he pointed
them out in the hall. “The city
didn’t put these cameras up. He
did. He had TVs in his apartment.”
Mr. Garcia said he had thought
Mr. Bostick was being cautious,
if a little extreme. But
revelations about Mr. Bostick,
starting with his name, suggest a
different reason for the cameras’
presence: Maybe he was watching for the day when his past
would catch up with him.
That past took shape at a
house party 26 years ago and
about 170 miles away, in Worcester, Mass. On Aug. 26, 1990,
Anibal Vargas, 39, one of about
30 people at the party, got into a
fight, pulled out a gun and fired
it, wounding a rival and accidentally hitting someone else in the
leg, the police said.
The victims survived. Mr.
Vargas fled.
He bought a new birth certificate and a Social Security card,
according to a criminal complaint. Both were in a new name:
Vincent Bostick.
He came to New York City and
got an apartment on Jerome
Avenue under the name Bostick.
The building, for low-income

tenants, is owned by the city’s
Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The
man who introduced himself as
Vincent lived on the second floor.
Neighbors got together and
formed a tenants’ association,
said Joyce Simpkins, 69, who
lives in the building. “He became
the super,” she said on Thursday.
“He wanted to be an officer or

MICHAEL
WILSON

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New
York ordered agencies under his
control on Sunday to divest themselves of companies and organizations aligned with a Palestinianbacked
boycott
movement
against Israel.
Wading into a delicate international issue, Mr. Cuomo set executive-branch and other state entities in opposition to the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which has grown
in popularity in some quarters of
the United States and elsewhere,
alarming Jewish leaders who fear
its toll on Israel’s international image and economy.
Mr. Cuomo made his announcement in a speech at the Harvard
Club in Manhattan to an audience
including local Jewish leaders and
lawmakers, describing the B.D.S.

movement as an “economic attack” on Israel.
“We cannot allow that to happen,” the governor said, adding
that, “If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.”
Alphonso David, the counsel to
the governor, said that the executive order was specifically aimed
at the B.D.S. movement launched
in 2005, but that it would apply to
any boycott targeting Israel.
Several states have moved to
support Israel and prevent their
governments and agencies from
doing business with companies or

ULI SEIT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Manhattan, where he announced an
executive order on Sunday aimed at a Palestinian-backed effort.
individuals that endorse the boycotts. Similar bills have been introduced in both houses of the
New York Legislature, and a Republican-sponsored bill passed
the State Senate, which the party
leads, in January.
But on Sunday, Mr. Cuomo, a
Democrat, flexed his executive
power — a more familiar demonstration in the governor’s second
term — joking that passing legislation can “often be a tedious affair,” and saying instead he
wanted “immediate action” on
B.D.S., while challenging other
governors to do the same.

According to the executive order, Mr. Cuomo will command the

commissioner of the Office of General Services to devise a list over
the next six months of businesses
and groups engaged in any “boycott, divestment or sanctions activity targeting Israel, either directly or through a parent or subsidiary.”
The list will be compiled from
“credible information available to
the public,” according to the order,
and subject to appeal by the companies and entities included on it.
Once the designation process is
completed, however, all execu-

tive-branch agencies and departments — which make up a large
portion of state government — as
well as public boards, authorities,
commissions and all public-benefit corporations will be required to
divest themselves of any company on the list.
Mr. Cuomo’s signed the executive order just before he marched
in the Celebrate Israel parade in
New York.
With the largest population of
Jewish residents outside Israel,
New York has outsize symbolic,
and political, value in the debate
over the Middle East. For his part,
Mr. Cuomo has shown increased
willingness in recent years to get
involved in international issues,
including a short trip to Israel in
2014 with a state delegation.
The B.D.S. movement, started
in 2005, has become a contentious

issue on some American college
campuses
and
beyond.
Supporters say the campaign
aims to pressure Israel economically over its treatment of
Palestinians and to further Palestinian independence. Opponents
say the efforts are a thinly disguised, anti-Semitic attempt to
deeply hurt or even destroy Israel.
Omar Barghouti, a founder of
the movement, said he did not find
the actions by states like New
York surprising, calling such proposals part of Israel’s “legal warfare against B.D.S.”

“Having lost many battles for
hearts and minds at the grassroots level, Israel has adopted
since 2014 a new strategy to criminalize support for B.D.S. from the
top,” he said in an email, adding
that such actions were meant to
“shield Israel from accountability.”
Mr. Barghouti added that Israel
was supporting efforts by states
to try to “delegitimize the boycott,
a time-honored tactic of resisting
injustice in the U.S. and a form of
protected speech.”
Mr. David said in an interview
that the executive action was
meant to send a clear message
that “the B.D.S. movement is deplorable.” He added that the governor’s order was not meant to be

interpreted as “opining on actions
taken to empower Palestinians,”
or meant to discourage debate
over Israeli actions in the Middle
East. Rather, it intends to stake a
position on a movement that “the
State of New York unequivocally
rejects,” as the order puts it.
“It’s one thing to say I want to
engage in political speech,” Mr.
David said. “It’s another thing to
say I’m going to sanction you or
penalize you for engaging in commercial activity.”
He added that although he did
not know how many companies
that do business with the state had
endorsed or engaged in the B.D.S.
movement, “we anticipate it’s going to be quite significant.”

Fleeing after a 1990
crime, then shoveling
snow and fixing leaks
under a new name.
vice president until he found out
we paid the super.”
Mr. Vargas’s true identity went
unnoticed on several occasions.
He was arrested in the Bronx in
1994 on a charge of possessing a
weapon, in 1998 accused of selling drugs to an undercover police officer and in 2000 on a

drug-possession charge, the
police said. All three times, he
was identified as Vincent Bostick.
In 2001, he got a job at Janovic
Pro Center, a paint company, in
Queens. He provided a Social
Security card and a driver’s
license, a payroll officer there
later told the police.
Back at home, he continued
working for the tenants. “He was
a very good handyman,” Ms.
Simpkins said. “He could fix a
leak or put a pipe in.” He kept
quiet about his personal life.
Mr. Garcia considered him a
friend.
“He’s a cool guy,” he said. “He
stays out of trouble, man. He
helped me a lot.” The two ate
lunch together from time to time.
“He doesn’t get visitors, no wife,
no nothing. He said he had been
in trouble in the past and he
didn’t like what the past did to
him.”
The super put in the cameras
and watched the feeds. “He’s a
very nervous person,” Mr. Garcia
said. “Those screens are always

on.”
In 2006, the police arrested Mr.
Vargas and charged him with
identity theft. Another man
named Vincent Bostick who
lived in South Carolina had the
same Social Security number
that Mr. Vargas had been using.
That Mr. Bostick had received
reports about wages he supposedly earned in Queens, a place
he had never worked, the police
said.
Mr. Vargas lost his job at the
paint company. He confessed,
according to the complaint, and
told the police: “I bought a Social
Security card and birth certificate in the name of Vincent
Bostick from a Spanish guy in
Massachusetts for $500. I was in
jail, and it’s tough getting a job
with a record in my true name.”
He pleaded guilty to a misdeContinued on Following Page

With Shop’s Closing, Little Ukraine Grows Smaller
By NOAH REMNICK

In July 1910, a teenager named
Myron Surmach left his village in
Ukraine, boarded the ship Atlanta
with a third-class ticket and

headed across the ocean to an improbably big city called New York.
For 21 days, Mr. Surmach sucked
on a lemon to stave off seasickness until he reached Ellis Island.
There, he told an interviewer
decades later, he was shocked to
find an American guard welcoming him to the United States in perfect Ukrainian.
Mr. Surmach began his new life
in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., but within a
few years, he made it back to New
York. Eager to preserve his native
culture, he opened a small shop on
Avenue A in Manhattan where he
sold records, books, clothes and
other trinkets from the old country to other Ukrainian immigrants. He named the store Surma
— after an old woodwindlike instrument — and for 98 years it has
operated at various addresses in
the East Village, settling in 1943 at
11 East Seventh Street.
The family business has outlived Myron, and his son, Myron
Jr. It has outlived Janis Joplin and
Jim Morrison, who bought embroidered blouses there during
the folk revival of the 1960s, when
the peasant look was all the rage.
But recently, patrons learned that
Surma has only a few days left,
when Mr. Surmach’s grandson
Markian announced that he would
close the shop this month.
“You can trace the whole history of our community through
this store,” said William M. Du-

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Markian Surmach, top, the owner of Surma in Manhattan. Mr. Surmach’s grandfather Myron Sr.
started the business 98 years ago, selling records, clothes and other trinkets from Ukraine.
betz, 79, a security guard from the
Bronx who has stopped by Surma
for 61 years to pick up his weekly
Ukrainian newspaper. “I don’t
know what will happen to that culture once it closes.”
Mr. Dubetz was hardly alone in
his words of regret. Over the
weekend, Surma’s aisles were
crowded
with
longtime
customers, saying goodbye and
wondering where they would go
now to find painted pysanky eggs
for Easter, or kutia, a sweet grain
pudding, for their Christmas
feasts.
“This store has connected our
wave of immigrants to the 19th
century,” said Vladimir Ginzburg,
72. “When it closes, that connection will go with it.”
Although the patch of the East

A relic of the Eastern
European stores that

once thrived in the
city’s East Village.
Village around Seventh Street has
long been known as Little
Ukraine, many of the Eastern European emporiums that thrived
there have closed in recent years.
The Kiev, a beloved coffee shop,
shut in 2000, followed by the
Ukrainian Art and Literary Club
and Odessa restaurant. And J.
Baczynsky is a relic of a once competitive corps of Ukrainian butchers selling smoked meats. Now, St.
George
Ukrainian
Catholic

Church and the Ukrainian Museum are among the dwindling
number of institutions that invoke
the neighborhood’s history.
“Inside here, nothing has
changed, but outside, everything
is different,” said Stephanie Czerepanyn, 72, who emigrated from
Ukraine in 1951 and has worked at
Surma since 1978, taking a bus and
two trains from her home in
Brooklyn.
Despite the gentrification of Little Ukraine (and its corresponding rent increases), Markian Surmach was not exactly forced out of
his store. He owns the building,
which his grandfather bought for
$15,000. Its sale now is likely to
fetch millions — a sum surely

never envisioned by the young
Myron Sr., whose mother sold a

cow so he could afford to leave
Ukraine.
Although
many
customers bemoaned his decision, Mr. Surmach explained that
sales have slumped since the
1990s, when the fall of the Soviet
Union and the proliferation of
cheap specialty goods online
made Surma’s once scarce wares
more readily available.
“Even if we own the building,
the property taxes and upkeep are
very expensive and have drowned
out profits to the point where
we’re barely floating,” Mr. Surmach, 54, said. “If we didn’t own
the place, we’d have been out of
business decades ago.”
Mr. Surmach added that he was
considering taking the business
online after the location closes.
Mike Buryk, a genealogist and
historian of Ukrainian descent
from North Caldwell, N.J., was
saddened to hear that the store he
had patronized for 50 years would
soon be gone. “It felt like the passing of an old dear friend,” he said.

When he was a teenager, Mr.
Buryk, now 66, began combing the
shelves at Surma for books and
embroidery as a way to reinforce
his Ukrainian-American identity.
He was particularly fond of the
honey — a staple of Ukrainian
cooking — which in those days
came from an apiary tended by
Myron Sr. after he handed the
store to his son and moved to a
farm in Saddle River, N.J.
“The number of Ukrainians living in East Village has certainly
changed,” Mr. Buryk, who also
writes for the Ukrainian Weekly,
Continued on Page A20


THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

N

GRACE NOTES

Curating a Polished Playlist for a Shabby Hub
By JAMES BARRON

It is one of the incongruities of
life in New York that some of the
most appealing music ever written, a Beethoven trio, for example, or a Mozart sonata, is played

in one of the most unappealing
public spaces ever built — Pennsylvania Station.
The timeless music is meant to
make the life of the modern
traveler more pleasant, a word
not typically associated with
Penn Station. It is even considered a crime deterrent.
But the three people who
decide what travelers in Manhattan will hear are actually about
1,500 miles away and have never
set foot in the train station, the
busiest in the country.
Working from a windowless
office in Austin, Tex., the three
women do their best to channel
their inner commuter — harried,
frazzled and stressed out — and
choose the right overture, concerto or pop-song arrangement
to soothe another hair-pulling
train ride.
Amy Frishkey, one of the programmers, understands the
otherness of picking the music
that people hear between the
train-boarding announcements.
There is the place itself: “It’s like
a basement,” she said, a description she has gleaned from her
readings about the much-disliked
terminus.
Unlike her two colleagues, Ms.
Frishkey has strolled through

Grand Central Terminal, whose
monumental hall seems a far
more appropriate setting for
classical tunes.
But music does not play from
speakers in the vaulted sky that
floats over the main concourse at
Grand Central, as it does from
the blotchy ceiling at Penn Station. And Penn Station has definite shortcomings beyond the
dispiriting, shabby look. It is not
a concert hall and, as Ms. Frishkey suggested, it is not the
soaring architectural gem that
the original Penn Station was in
its heyday, a place the novelist
Thomas Wolfe once described as
“vast enough to hold the sound of
time.”
The puny-sounding speakers
at Penn Station play a stream of
classical pieces along with “easy
instrumentals” that sound like
dentist-office arrangements,
mostly contemporary piano and
guitar solos — and, one afternoon last month as the evening
rush was approaching, a Sinatra
hit that seemed to have been
arranged for French horn. The
result is a Beethoven quartet one
minute, something vaguely New
Age the next.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

But What If We’re Wrong?

Discussion / Q&A / Book Signing
Tuesday, June 7th, 7PM
33 East 17th Street
Union Square (212) 253-0810
The acclaimed author speaks with
scientists, artists, and writers to imagine
how our world will be seen in the future.
Priority seating with book purchase.

KARSTEN MORAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

At Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, puny-sounding speakers play a stream of classical music.
The volume varies, as do the
tempos — louder and bouncier
during the morning and evening,
less so at other times. There are
interruptions — “Now boarding,
east gate, Track 9” cuts off the
zippiest allegro, right at the
climax — and there is the buzz of
people on cellphones, calling to
warn whoever is expecting them
that their train is late or, more
irritating, canceled.
“It’s almost as if you’re trying

to D.J. the world’s largest wedding reception,” Danny Turney,
Ms. Frishkey’s boss, said. But it
is a reception without a bride or
groom, and the 650,000 people
who pass through Penn Station
every day do not dance to the
music.
Amtrak, which operates Penn
Station, was not looking for a
party when it decided to pipe in
music in the 1990s. Amtrak
wanted “to subtly help promote a
peaceful and calm environment,”
Craig S. Schulz, an Amtrak
spokesman, said. So it enlisted
Muzak, which was bought by
Mood Music, a programming
giant, in 2011.
Amtrak wanted classical music, Mr. Schulz said, with “an
emphasis on light, airy selections, as opposed to thundering
horns and drums.” He added,
“The intent was to create a serene environment that could
calm the nerves of the harried
traveler.”
But, in a city in which the
1990s began with 2,200 murders
in just one year, Amtrak had
another objective: using music to

deter crime.

“Yes, that was definitely a
factor,” Mr. Schulz said. He said
the decision to play classical
music in Penn Station “was
based on research” that suggested, among other things, that
classical music “had in the past
been effective in displacing gang
activity from certain locations.”
Norman Middleton, who
worked as a concert producer at
the Library of Congress until his
retirement, has described this
theory of policing as “Halt, or I’ll
play Vivaldi,” a term he said he
got from a newspaper headline.
In a panel discussion several
years ago, he said the police in
West Palm Beach, Fla., had installed speakers on the roof of a
bar and played classical music —
“I think it was Beethoven’s string
quartets,” Mr. Middleton said.
Drug dealers who frequented the
neighborhood went elsewhere.
Ms. Frishkey said she had read
all about Penn Station — the
original Penn Station, a temple to
railroading and high-minded
civic purpose. “Through it one
entered the city like a god,” the
architectural historian Vincent J.

Scully Jr. declared after its demolition in the 1960s, adding about
its replacement, “One scuttles in
now like a rat.”
So Penn Station is a place
where workaday commuters and
long-distance passengers seek
the shortest sally to the boarding
gate, some running, some preoccupied with how to drag too
much luggage across the floor
and then down the escalators,

some simply happy their train is
leaving close to on time.
“The music functions to create
spaciousness, light, not feeling
like you’re in a cattle call,” Ms.
Frishkey said. “It speaks to the
power of overhead music to work
within a space, working as a
corrective to this basement feeling.”
The music designers, as Mood
Music calls them, vary the
playlist. “We spread it out so
you’re not hearing all symphonic
pieces and then a piano piece
and then some chamber pieces,”
Janica Chang, one of Ms. Frishkey’s colleagues in Austin,
said.
But they favor fairly fast tempos. “Most are around allegro,
kind of bright, lively,” she said.

Nothing faster, nothing slower.
“You don’t want largo and lethargic,” she added, “and you don’t
get prestissimo because that will
make people feel more rushed
than they already feel.”
In Penn Station, there is always the chance. It is a place
where the critics are tough.
Hannah Greenberg, who works
in a Manhattan art gallery and
was on the way home to Montclair, N.J., gave the music a
thumbs-down review.
“It’s just loud enough to be
annoying,” she said, “and it doesn’t even sound like classical
music.”
She listened for a moment. “It
doesn’t really fit the environment,” she said, “but I don’t
think any music fits Penn Station.”

RUMAAN ALAM in conversation
with MIRA JACOB

Rich and Pretty

Discussion / Q&A / Book Signing
Tuesday, June 7th, 7PM
150 East 86th Street
Upper East Side (212) 369-2180
This debut novel explores the evolving
friendship of two New York women.

BRAD MELTZER

The House of Secrets

Discussion / Book Signing
Tuesday, June 7th, 7PM
2289 Broadway at 82nd Street
Upper West Side (212) 362-8835
A woman with amnesia must solve a
murder mystery to understand her
father’s death—and her own past.

TERRY McMILLAN

I Almost Forgot About You

Discussion / Book Signing

Wednesday, June 8th, 7PM
33 East 17th Street
Union Square (212) 253-0810
A successful optometrist bored with her
life decides to reinvent herself.
Priority seating with book purchase.

RUSSELL BANKS

Voyager

Discussion / Q&A / Book Signing

Wednesday, June 8th, 7PM
2289 Broadway at 82nd Street
Upper West Side (212) 362-8835
The award-winning novelist documents
how his travels led to self-discovery in
this collection of essays.

ETHAN HAWKE &
GREG RUTH

Indeh

Discussion / Book Signing
Thursday, June 9th, 7PM
33 East 17th Street
Union Square (212) 253-0810
This graphic novel from the
Oscar-nominated actor and the
bestselling author revisits the 1872
Apache wars.
Priority seating with book purchase.

YANA PASKOVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Soggy Anniversary
Participants walked down a rain-soaked street during the Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday. Organizers said it was the
30th anniversary of the event, which traveled the Grand Concourse in celebration of Puerto Rican heritage in the borough.

Hiding Past,
He Worked

For Tenants

The apartment building on Jerome Avenue where Anibal
Vargas lived as Vincent Bostick, the superintendent.

From Preceding Page
meanor and was sentenced to 30
days in jail or a $100 fine. But
even having learned his real
name, officers did not discover
that he was wanted in Massachusetts in the shooting 16 years
earlier, the Queens district attorney’s office said last week.
About two years later, Worcester authorities entered a warrant for Mr. Vargas into a national database. The warrant did
Twitter: @mwilsonnyt
Email:

NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

not surface when he was arrested yet again, in 2011, for a
minor offense.
Back at the apartment building, word of his real name surfaced and was met with indifference. “We call him Vincent,” Ms.
Simpkins said. “That’s the name

he goes by.” Why? That was his
business, she said. “I had heard
child support or something.”
More time passed. Then two
weeks ago, on May 26, an officer
in the Bleecker Street subway
station in Manhattan saw a man

“manipulating the turnstile” to

get in without paying, and arrested him, the police said. It was
Mr. Vargas, now 65 and carrying
a counterfeit driver’s license.
This time, entering his name in
the system raised an alert that
he was wanted in Massachusetts.
On Thursday, Mr. Vargas declined to speak to a reporter at
the jail ward at Bellevue Hospital
Center. Prosecutors in Massachusetts said he was fighting
extradition.
No one is watching the camera
feeds at his home now. His neighbors never thought there was
much to see, but it was nice
knowing the cameras were there.
“He made me feel safe,” Mr.
Garcia said.

Overcoming Invisibility
MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH
in conversation with
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY

Invisible Man, Got the Whole
World Watching
Discussion / Book Signing

Thursday, June 9th, 8PM
2289 Broadway at 82nd Street

Upper West Side (212) 362-8835
The contributing writer for The Nation
discusses his personal and political
education with the author and professor.

Get more info and get to know your favorite writers at BN.COM/events
All events subject to change, so please contact the store to confirm.

A19


A20

N

THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016
METROPOLITAN DIARY

D

EAR DIARY:
During a late 1960s
summer, I was a page at
the New York Public Library’s
44th Street annex, which housed
research collections and periodical archives. At the time, the
library owned one of the few
complete United States patent
collections. My main job was
fulfilling requests and reshelving

materials.
My most regular customer,
along with the morning callers
who requested copies of The
Daily Racing Form before heading to Aqueduct, was an older
gentleman in a blue suit who
would spend the day requesting
his maximum of four volumes of
patents at a time. He was searching for a patent his uncle had
been granted for an electronic
tube that was ripped off by a big
electronics maker he was suing.
Then, there were more than
three million patents. I wondered
if, in a moment of weariness, he
might have skipped over the
patent.
A few years later, I visited the
annex for college-related reasons, and the man in the blue
suit was there, perusing his
usual four volumes of patents. I
hope he found what he was looking for.
Rick Evans
Dear Diary:
At the barbershop, my barber
said it was good that Easter and
Passover weren’t close together
this year.
Why?
“I like them a haircut apart,”

she said.
Thomas Wynbrandt
Dear Diary:
Lil’ Kim defended me once.
Now, it’s my turn.
When I played “Prozac Girl”
on a New York City morning
radio show in the early 2000s,
Lil’ Kim visited the studio. We
were in the middle of — or maybe just ending — a promotion
called something like “Win a
Lipstick Lesbian Date With
Prozac.” Those details are fuzzy,
but Lil’ Kim’s reaction when the
host teased me about the contest
is Ultra HD clear.
“It’s O.K., Prozac, if you’re
gay,” she said. “There’s nothing
wrong with that. It’s O.K.”
“I’m . . . I’m not gay,” I stammered. I wanted to explain that
the contest had been the host’s
idea after I’d lost control of my
stake in one of our winding and
raw on-air conversations, but,
humbled by her compassion, I
could muster only, “Thank you.”
Recently, the Brooklyn-born
rapper posted an Instagram
photo that revealed a lighter skin
tone, an image that released the

internet kraken. Everyone from
bloggers to trolls had a theory on
Kim’s appearance and her motivations. The sentiments ranged
from pity to rage to confusion to,
in true social media fashion,
maliciousness. Even the headline
Observations for this column may
be sent to Metropolitan Diary at
or to The New
York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10018. Please include your name, mailing address
and daytime telephone number;
upon request, names may be withheld in print. Submissions become
the property of The Times and cannot be returned. They may be
edited, and may be republished
and adapted in all media.

of an opinion piece shared by
Newsweek asked, “Why Has Lil’
Kim Turned White?”
I don’t know why she’s lighter,
and I don’t care, because when
given the chance to judge me, to
criticize my humanity, she
demonstrated hers in an unexpected and important way,
natural or manufactured skin
tone be damned.
And when I remember that, I
wish I could return the gesture,
stare into her eyes from across

that West Village studio and say,
“It’s O.K., Lil’ Kim. It’s O.K.”
Keysha Whitaker
Dear Diary:
This Passover, I ran into the
Prophet Elijah on the Amtrak
platform in New Rochelle.
I am old, and I had already
dragged my luggage through the
caverns of Union Station in
Washington only to miss my
train home to New York. Back to
the counter to buy another ticket,
this one for a slower train.
When we finally got into the
tunnel under Pennsylvania Station, I fell fast asleep. I awoke as
we were leaving the station
heading north. By the time I got
off at the next stop, I had no
energy left to drag my luggage
up onto the bridge and over the
tracks to catch a southbound
train.
But there, sitting on a bundle
of his stuff, sat Elijah. We had, of
course, opened the door for him
at the Seder. The littlest children
were sure he had sipped wine
from his special cup.
No one actually saw him, but I

recognized him by his actions.
He said: “Let me take your luggage. I know many of the cabdrivers here. I’ll get you a good
price.”
He did. An hour later, I was
home on the Upper West Side.
Henny Wenkart
Dear Diary:
A small, round, not quite ripe
watermelon rolled out of a subway passenger’s bag at 5:36 p.m.
on the Brooklyn-bound 2 train. It
leaned against the closed subway
doors and rotated — almost
getting off at Atlantic Avenue.
But the doors closed and it
found itself a resting place again
where the air breathed quietly
through the subway door’s crack.
It sat for about a minute, until it
found its way under the step of a
stout woman in her 60s with a
short blond crop. The woman
grinned as the melon kissed her
toes and rustled her blue, tiedyed chiffon dress.
We all watched as the melon
rolled from one end of the car to
the other, as the subway abruptly
stopped and started. We chuckled. Our smiles and eyes met in
this instant community — each
one of us peering around to find
the melon’s rightful owner.

One young woman stepped
away from her husband and her
baby carriage to rescue the
melon — offering it up. But there
were no takers. She offered once
again. Then she quietly grasped
the melon and placed it among
her grocery packages, glanced at
her husband and shrugged her
shoulders.
We all eyed the melon as it
was placed with its foster family
and nodded silently — sanctioning the melon’s new home.
Laura S. Postiglione

RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Inside here, nothing has changed,” said Stephanie Czerepanyn, 72, who has worked at Surma for nearly four decades.

With Longtime Shop’s Closing,
Little Ukraine Grows Smaller
From Page A18
said. “They tended to make a good
living, get educated and move out
to suburbs. But for Ukrainians,
the area still represents our cultural and religious focal point.”
About 71,000 Ukrainian-Americans live in the New York metropolitan area, which includes the
city and its suburbs, according to
the 2010 census. But after a postWorld War II surge, few live in the
East Village neighborhood that

once anchored the community,
Maria Shust, the director of the
Ukrainian Museum, said. “The
population has shrunk around
here,” she said, noting that the
nearby St. George Academy, a pri-

vate, Ukrainian Catholic high
school, had drastically cut its enrollment.
While Mr. Buryk understood
the pressures on Mr. Surmach,
Elena Solow said she was “not
even speaking to Markian anymore.” Although she was visiting
the store for the first time in
nearly two years, she said she
hated to see any family establishment close.
“When neighborhoods lose
their history they lose their souls,
and all that’s left is the Gap,” Ms.
Solow, a jewelry dealer who lives
in Chelsea, said.
“This will probably turn into a
Starbucks,” she lamented as she
walked out the door, hearing its familiar bell chime for the last time.


THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

A21

N

Songs, Toasts and Tales of the Past at a Broadway Bartender’s Very Last Call
25-year regular, was his ability to
foster a friendly atmosphere with
easy conversation despite the anonymity and commercial bustle of
Times Square and the surrounding blocks.
“He’s got that old-school mentality,” Mr. DeGirolamo said. “He
brings people together.”
The television was off at the Little Bar on Saturday, and no music
played. Instead the room was
filled with the sound of voices talking about, among other things, the
plays of David Mamet, the current
Broadway production of “American Psycho” and the mixed fortunes of Mr. Estevez’s favorite
baseball team, the New York Yankees.
As the afternoon progressed
into evening, the conversations
were punctuated with singing. At
one point a few people at the bar

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

The post-matinee crowd began
streaming into Sardi’s restaurant
on Saturday, just as it had for
decades. After passing through
the Chianti-red facade, many patrons entered the Little Bar, an alcove-like room to the left of the entrance. Then they settled in for
drinks and conversation in the
company of a tall man wearing a
maroon jacket, a white starched

shirt and a black bow tie who had
long been a steady presence
there.
In the years after World War II,
Sardi’s, on West 44th Street in
Manhattan, was practically synonymous with Broadway. People
like the playwright Tennessee
Williams and the actors John Barrymore and Helen Hayes frequented the restaurant, and opening-night theater reviews in The
New York Times and The New
York Herald Tribune were distributed to diners when the ink was
barely dry. Some of the restaurant’s glory may have faded since
that heyday, but it remains a staple of the neighborhood, cherished especially by those who see
tradition in its red walls, lined with
drawings of famous patrons.
Part of that tradition includes
José Estevez, who began working
at Sardi’s in 1990 and presided
over the Little Bar since 1993 — as
familiar and reliable as the Rolex
clock that ticks there above the
rows of bottles and polished
glasses. But a few weeks ago, Mr.
Estevez, 72, told the restaurant’s
main owner, Max Klimavicius,
that he was planning to retire. The
word spread quickly, and during
Mr. Estevez’s last shift, on Saturday, more than two dozen regulars
gathered to wish him a fond, raucous goodbye.
Mr. Estevez, who grew up in the
Dominican Republic, began working at Sardi’s when it was facing

grave challenges. Vincent Sardi
Jr., who had bought the restaurant
in 1947 from his father, sold the
business in 1985 to investors who
planned to expand it. Instead,
within a few years, they declared
bankruptcy. The restaurant was

Well-wishers send off
a man who mixed
their drinks for years.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAMSAY DE GIVE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Top, José Estevez, a bartender at Sardi’s in Manhattan. Above,
one of the many patrons who came to his last shift on Saturday.

shuttered for about four months
until Mr. Sardi came out of retirement in Vermont at the end of 1990
to resume running it, first as a
temporary receiver and then,
once again, as its owner.
Sardi’s regained stability, and
Mr. Estevez said that he relished
his years working there, partly because of the regular customers
who became his friends.
“This isn’t working; it’s socializing,” he said on Saturday as he
poured drinks and talked with
those at the bar. “I have been
lucky.”

Customers arrived that day
while the sun was still shining, requested drinks and began reminiscing. Several described visits
from Broadway stars. Others recalled the many evenings that

Joyce Randolph, known for playing Trixie Norton on “The Honeymooners,” spent inside the Little Bar, sitting a few feet from a
drawing of herself while sipping
Dewar’s and milk and chatting.
There were memories of less
common occurrences, too. Salvatore Salamone, a trade magazine
editor from Pennsylvania, remembered the time that Raymond L. Flynn, the former mayor
of Boston, posed for a picture behind the bar. Chris Edelmann, a
physician from Rye Brook, in
Westchester County, N.Y., recalled
speaking with a stranger who offered a tip on a horse running in
the Belmont Stakes. He took the
tip, Dr. Edelmann said, and won.
Part of what made Mr. Estevez
special, said Frank DeGirolamo, a

harmonized on a doo-wop song.
The Rev. John R. Sheehan, a Jesuit
priest, sang a traditional song
called “The Parting Glass.” All the
while, Mr. Estevez exchanged
greetings with guests as they arrived and departed.
The hands of the Rolex above
the bar ticked down to 8 p.m., quitting time for Mr. Estevez, and patrons began offering thanks and
congratulations. Ruben Brache,
who runs a Manhattan company
that raises money for Broadway

productions, called for silence and
then handed Mr. Estevez a silver
trophy cup engraved with the
words “for the world’s winningest
bartender.”
“I want to toast the bartender
extraordinaire, our lifelong friend,
José Estevez,” Mr. Brache
shouted as the other patrons
cheered. “Our cups runneth over
for you, brother.”

The Times’s Last Hot-Type Printer Puts Down His Tools
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Amid a lot of talk about the future of The New York Times, its
past slipped out the door.
Rudolph Stocker was the last
printer at The Times working under a guaranteed lifetime contract; the last
employee who
knew how to operate a Linotype
casting
machine; the
last
journeyman of the old
International
Rudolph
Typographical
Stocker
Union and its

New York local,
No. 6, a bargaining unit so powerful that it was known as “Big Six.”
On May 18, Mr. Stocker, 78, said
goodbye to his colleagues and left
the Times Building in Midtown
Manhattan, with no more ceremony than that. He made it known
that he was not interested in a
valedictory interview.
Mr. Stocker deserves a deep
bow, all the same, not just for 50
years of service, but for what he
represents: thousands of blue-collar craft workers who cared as
much as any journalist about how
newspapers were read and how
they looked.
That legacy endures at The
Times’s printing plant in College
Point, Queens. But the company
headquarters has lost a living link
to the days when each word was
set in molten lead.

That said, computers were
threatening Big Six even before
Mr. Stocker arrived.
New York Typographical Union
No. 6 led a 114-day strike against
the city’s newspapers from late
1962 to early 1963. Staggered by
the lost revenue, the publishers

resolved to begin automating
their composing rooms as quickly
as possible. The union shops, or
“chapels,” pushed back.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, newly
installed as publisher of The
Times, tried at first to soothe the
newspaper’s chapel.
“You will remember that my
grandfather, Adolph Ochs, was
raised as a printer,” Mr.
Sulzberger told the chapel secretary in an August 1963 letter. “I can
assure you that his pride at being
a member of your craft is a part of
our family tradition.”
In July 1964, however, management — in the person of George
Lapolla, the general foreman of
the composing room — announced that The Times intended
to install an IBM computer within
the month.
“We must take advantage of the
best printing technology available,” Mr. Lapolla told Bertram A.
Powers, the president of Big Six.
“We do not believe that the computer need represent any threat to
Times printers.”
Fooling exactly no one.
“Please be advised that the union does not agree that this may be
done unless agreement to do so is
reached between the parties to

the contract,” Mr. Powers told Mr.
Lapolla.
A decade of skirmishing followed, during which Mr. Stocker
began his apprenticeship. On
June 5, 1966, he earned a full-time
“situation” in the chapel — distinct from substitute printers who
worked in different shops as
needed.
The steampunkesque machine
that Mr. Stocker mastered was
called a Linotype because it cast
one line of type at a time.
At the stroke of a key on a peculiar-looking keyboard (the first
two columns spelled e-t-a-o-i-n sh-r-d-l-u), a little brass mold corresponding to that letter dropped
down a chute from an overhead
magazine.
Once a full line of these molds
was assembled, it was shunted
into a casting mechanism and injected with a dollop of molten lead.
As the line solidified, it was
ejected into a steel tray, while the
molds were recycled back to the
magazine.
Victorian technology for the
space age.
One can understand why The
Times was thinking IBM.
But it would not be until 1974
that Big Six and The Times and
The Daily News agreed to a contract that freed the publishers to

introduce automation, while effectively guaranteeing lifetime job
security to 1,785 situation-holders
and full-time substitutes, 810 of
whom were at The Times, Mr.
Stocker included.

ONLINE: INSIDER

Times Insider, a digital
feature, delivers behindthe-scenes insights into how
articles come to life at The New
York Times.
nytimes.com/insider

“We’re going to see more
changes in the next 10 years than
any working men have ever seen,”
Mr. Powers said.
He did not overstate the case.
Within four years, The Times had
fully converted to photocomposition. The battery of Linotypes was
used for the last time to set the paper of July 2, 1978, an event captured in the documentary
“Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu.”
Mr. Stocker’s career, however,
was just beginning.
“Rudy was an expert proofreader,” his colleague Barbara Natusch said, “and transferred his
skills from operating a Linotype
machine to producing ads for the
paper on a Mac, using InDesign
and Photoshop.”

Another
colleague,
Kurt
Ochshorn, said, “The retiring of
the last, old-hire I.T.U. worker
should be a story in the newspaper.”
So here it is, even though there
is not a single Linotype machine
to set it. Nor Mr. Stocker to compose it on that confounding keyboard.

G.O.P. Bill Would Diminish de Blasio’s Control of Schools
By KATE TAYLOR

In his latest swipe at Mayor Bill
de Blasio, the State Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan, introduced a bill on Friday that would
extend mayoral control of New
York City schools by only one year,
while allowing the governor to appoint an “education inspector”
with substantial power to interfere in the management of the
schools.
The bill prompted swift criticism from both Democratic members of the Assembly and the Partnership for New York City, a business group, which warned that it
would return the schools to a chaotic and dysfunctional form of
governance.
Mr. Flanagan, a Republican, has
in recent weeks made something
of a sport of tormenting Mr. de
Blasio, a Democrat, as the mayor
seeks a renewal of mayoral control, which otherwise will lapse on
June 30. He has questioned Mr. de
Blasio’s knowledge of the schools,

accused him of not being forthcoming with information, and expressed indignation when the
mayor, after testifying for nearly
four hours at one Senate hearing,
did not attend a second one.

NATHANIEL BROOKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

John J. Flanagan, the New York State Senate majority leader.
Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor,
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg,
was the first mayor to win control
of the city’s schools, which he did
in 2002. The Legislature granted
him seven years, with strong support from the Senate’s Republican
majority, and then a six-year renewal in 2009. But Mr. de Blasio
made an enemy of Mr. Flanagan in
his first year in office, when he
tried to help the Democrats win a

majority in the Senate. As a result,
last year, when Mr. de Blasio
asked for permanent control, he
got only a one-year renewal.
This year, Mr. de Blasio asked
for seven years, then requested
three years, after the Democratic
majority in the Assembly approved a three-year extension.
Mr. Flanagan’s bill would create
a position of “education inspector,” to be appointed by the gover-

nor and confirmed by the Senate.
Among the inspector’s powers, he
or she would have access to all the
district’s records, documents and
information systems. The mayor
and the city’s Education Department would have to fully cooperate with all of the inspector’s requests for information. The inspector could appeal decisions by
the city’s Panel for Educational
Policy, which approves contracts
and decisions to locate charter
schools in public school buildings,
among other things, to the state
education commissioner. The inspector could void any contracts
or appointments to the panel if he
or she finds a conflict of interest.
On Saturday, the two other parties in the state government said
they did not support the education
inspector provision. Michael
Whyland, a spokesman for the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, a
Democrat, said Democratic lawmakers supported a straight extension of mayoral control, without conditions. And a spokeswoman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a
Democrat, with whom the mayor
has been openly feuding, said the
governor supported a three-year
extension “and nothing else.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

A printer at a Linotype machine in the composing room in the
1950s. By the late 1970s, The Times introduced automation.

MARSHAL /

SHERIFF
SALES
(3650)
MARSHAL EXECUTION SALE
PUBLIC AUCTION
Re: Parking Violations VS Various
Judgment Debtors. I Will Sell
at Public Auction for
City Marshal Richard A. Capuano
By Arthur Vigar Auctioneer DCA
#0767619 On Wednesday, June 8 , 2016
At 2:00PM At Ken Ben Ind.
364 Maspeth Ave.,Brooklyn, New York
All R/T/I in & to the Following Vehicles :
01 DODGE
1B7HC13Z21J560186
99 HONDA
2HGEJ6579XH532852
05 NISSAN
1N4AL11D45N423456
04 FORD
1FAFP55S94A169081
06 HONDA
5FNRL38736B418452
05 NISSAN
1N4BA41E95C855346
01 CHRYSLER
2C8GP64L01R304954
03 FORD
2FMZA51423BA06657

05 CHRYSLER
2C4GP54L75R474374
07 CHRYSLER
2A4GP54L07R275504
08 AUDI
WAUEF78E98A157199
00 HONDA
2HKRL1863YH523962
99 GMC
1GKEK13R6XR914635
96 HONDA
2HGEJ6671TH549248
06 MAZDA
JM1BK143161427476
04 MITSUB
4A4MN31S14E040352
99 FORD
1FTSE34L8XHA98660
98 DODGE
2B4FP2538WR829558
02 CHRYSLER
2C8GP64L52R779551
03 BMW
WBAGN634X3DR09553
02 HONDA
2HGES25732H510490
01 PONTIAC
1G2WP52K31F129693
97 FREIGHTLNR 1FUYSSEB7VL776160
Following Vehicles Sold With Liens

02 CHRYSLER
3C4FY48B72T216966
Following Vehicles Sold As Salvage
96 HONDA
2HGEJ6678TH532866
02 FORD
1FMZU73K42UD34315
97 FORD (LIEN) 1FMDU34X6VUA88479
CASH ONLY Inspect1/2Hr. Prior to Sale
City Marshal Richard A. Capuano
Phone (718) 478-0400

SHERIFF'S EXECUTION SALE:
N.Y.C. Parking Violation Bureau And/
Or N.Y.S. Department Of Motor Vehicles vs Various Judgment Debtors. I
Will Sell At Public Auction By Dennis
Alestra, Auctioneer, On Tues., June 7th,
2016 At 10:00 AM. at Apple Towing, 350
Front Street, Staten Island, NY 10304. All
R/T/I Of the Judgment Debtors In & of
The Following Vehicles.
Additionally, 3 Vehicles Will Be Sold As
Abandoned Property Pursuant To Section 1224 Of The Vehicle Traffic Laws
Of The State Of New York.
05 HOND
1HGCM56725A075563
07 NISS
JNAPA80H07AN60088
06 NISS
5N1AR18W26C661606

99 CHRY
1C4GT64LXXB894763
95 FORD
1FMDU34X0SUB58490
12 HYUN
5NPEC4AC2CH343025
01 CHEV
1GCGG25W411235211
95 TOYT
4T1SK12E7SU553544
00 MERC
2MEFM75W5YX683815
03 HYUN
KMHDN45D23U490228
06 FORD
1FTNE24L76HA70824
00 TOYT
2T1BR12E8YC292222
02 HYUN
KMHDN45DX2U349678
05 NISS
1N4AL11DX5C169117 Lien
04 CADI
1GYEE637540147112
04 HOND
1HGCM66564A050538
96 PONT
1G2JB1246T7509305
00 FORD
1FTWX32F7YEE47545

02 CHRY
2C4GP44342R645135
01 INFI
JNKCA31A91T038294
02 MITS
4A3AA46G02E126102
Cash Only, Inspect: › Hr Prior To Sale
Joseph Fucito, Sheriff


A22

THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIALS/LETTERS MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

N

Muhammad Ali, American Legend
TO THE EDITOR:
ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER JR., Publisher, Chairman
Founded in 1851

ADOLPH S. OCHS

ARTHUR HAYS SULZBERGER

ORVIL E. DRYFOOS

ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER

Publisher 1896-1935

Publisher 1935-1961

Publisher 1961-1963

Publisher 1963-1992

To Stop Bad Prosecutors, Call the Feds
Prosecutors are the most powerful players in the
American criminal justice system. Their decisions — like
whom to charge with a crime, and what sentence to seek
— have profound consequences.
So why is it so hard to keep them from breaking the
law or violating the Constitution?
The short answer is that they are almost never held
accountable for misconduct, even when it results in
wrongful convictions. It is time for a new approach to ending this behavior: federal oversight of prosecutors’ offices
that repeatedly ignore defendants’ legal and constitutional
rights. There is a successful model for this in the Justice
Department’s monitoring of police departments with histories of misconduct.
Among the most serious prosecutorial violations is
the withholding of evidence that could help a defendant
prove his or her innocence or get a reduced sentence — a
practice so widespread that one federal judge called it an
“epidemic.” Under the 1963 landmark Supreme Court case
Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors are required to turn over
any exculpatory evidence to a defendant that could materially affect a verdict or sentence. Yet in many district attorneys’ offices, the Brady rule is considered nothing more
than a suggestion, with prosecutors routinely holding
back such evidence to win their cases.
Nowhere is this situation worse than in Louisiana,

where prosecutors seem to believe they are unconstrained
by the Constitution.
This month, the Supreme Court will consider the latest challenge to prosecutorial misconduct in Louisiana in
the case of David Brown, who was one of five men charged
in the 1999 murder of a prison guard. Mr. Brown said he
did not commit the murder, but he was convicted and sentenced to death anyway. Only later did his lawyers discover that prosecutors had withheld the transcript of an
interview with another prisoner directly implicating two
other men — and only those men — in the murder.
This is about as blatant a Brady violation as can be
found, and the judge who presided over Mr. Brown’s trial
agreed, throwing out his death penalty and ordering a new
sentencing. But the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed
that decision, ruling that the new evidence would not have
made a difference in the jury’s sentence.
David Brown’s case is a good example of how every
part of the justice system bears some responsibility for not
fighting prosecutorial misconduct. State courts often fail
to hold prosecutors accountable, even when their wrongdoing is clear. Professional ethics boards rarely discipline
them. And individual prosecutors are protected from civil
lawsuits, while criminal punishment is virtually unheard
of. Money damages levied against a prosecutor’s office
could deter some misconduct, but the Supreme Court has

made it extremely difficult for wrongfully convicted citizens to win such claims.
This maddening situation has long resisted a solution.
What would make good sense is to have the federal government step in to monitor some of the worst actors, increasing the chance of catching misconduct before it ruins
peoples’ lives. The Justice Department is already authorized to do this by a 1994 federal law prohibiting any “pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers”
that deprives a person of legal or constitutional rights.
The department has used this power to monitor police
departments in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Detroit and Seattle, among other municipalities with a history of brutality, wrongful arrests, shootings of unarmed civilians and

other illegal or unconstitutional practices. For the most
part, the results have been positive. Since prosecutors are
also “law enforcement officers,” there is no reason they
and their offices should be immune from federal oversight.
Of course, many district attorneys’ offices will balk at
being put under a federal microscope. But nothing else has
worked to prevent misconduct by prosecutors, and the
Justice Department is uniquely equipped to ferret out the
worst actors and expose their repeated disregard for the
law and the Constitution.

As we celebrate the life of Muhammad
Ali, an illustrious athlete, I hope the
“sport” in which he participated, and
which crippled him, will not be extolled
or glorified.
The legal savagery of boxing is a stain
on our nation. Although it brought Ali
fame and fortune, it robbed him of a full
life from an early age because of countless hits to the head from those who
sought to achieve the perverse goal of
knocking out the opponent.
Muhammad Ali was indeed “the
Greatest,” but I wonder if he would have
traded what he accomplished in the boxing ring in order to have had a long and
healthy life.
A society such as ours does not need
any encouragement to engage in violence. Impressionable children are
watching.
OREN M. SPIEGLER

Upper St. Clair, Pa.

The sad news of the passing of the legend Muhammad Ali brought back a
childhood memory. Back in 1973, I was a
12-year-old kid from New Jersey on my
way to a youth football “bowl game”
against a team from Atlanta.
I was a big Joe Frazier fan who respected his quiet toughness and disliked
Ali’s outspoken ways, considering him a
loudmouth and a braggart. As our team
reached the Atlanta airport I saw a huge

JASU HU

to earn the trust of Brazilians, many of whom have been
protesting Ms. Rousseff’s dismissal as a coup, he and his
cabinet must take meaningful steps against corruption.
Under Brazilian law, senior government officials, including lawmakers, enjoy immunity from prosecution under most circumstances. That unreasonable protection
has clearly enabled a culture of institutionalized corruption and impunity. Investigators found that Petrobras contracts routinely included a flat kickback rate and that
money from bribes got steered to political parties. Petrobras acknowledged last year that at least $1.7 billion of its
revenue had been diverted to bribes.
“Systemic corruption schemes are damaging because
they impact confidence in the rule of law and in democracy,” Sérgio Moro, the federal judge who has overseen the
Petrobras investigation, wrote in an essay in Americas
Quarterly last month, adding, “Crimes that are uncovered
and proven must, respecting due process, be punished.”
Brazil is not the only nation in the region bedeviled by
corruption. A scandal in Bolivia has tarred the image of
President Evo Morales. Colombia has begun an anticorruption campaign partly in response to revelations of kickbacks in state contracts. Under heavy international pressure, Guatemala and Honduras have agreed to let anticorruption task forces staffed by international experts help
local prosecutors tackle high-profile investigations.

It is not clear how far Mr. Temer will go to root out
corruption. If he is serious, and wants to end suspicion
about the motives for removing Ms. Rousseff, he would be
wise to call for a law ending immunity for lawmakers and
ministers in corruption cases.

The Albany Pols Who Love Plastic Bags
When it comes to behaving badly, the New York State
Legislature has been thinking outside the box. There are,
it turns out, ways to do the wrong thing that go beyond the
usual influence-peddling, bribing, extorting and other
common varieties of Albany venality.
There is, for example, undoing good work done elsewhere. That is the aim of a noxious bill that has gained momentum in the waning days of the Albany session. It
would squelch New York City’s recently adopted 5-cent fee
on disposable plastic shopping bags.
The City Council, after years of deliberation and
through a finely wrought compromise, passed the fee as
an antipollution measure. It seeks to sharply reduce the
use of the bags, whose ubiquity and near-indestructibility
have made them one of the city’s signature eyesores and a
serious environmental threat.
The state legislation, sponsored in the Senate by Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat, and in the Assembly by
Michael Cusick, a Staten Island Democrat, would forbid
any city to impose fees or taxes to discourage the use of
plastic bags. The measure would, in a stroke, force the city
to accept the perpetuation of the plastic-trash free-for-all,
with tons of discarded bags clogging the sewers, festooning tree branches and littering sidewalks.
Why would Albany do this? Because Albany can. Because New York City has no power compared with the

TO THE EDITOR:

TO THE EDITOR:

Brazil’s Gold Medal for Corruption
Michel Temer, Brazil’s interim president, displayed
poor judgment on his first day in office last month when he
appointed an all-white, all-male cabinet. This understandably angered many in racially diverse Brazil.
Their outrage was compounded by the fact that seven
of the new ministers had been tainted by a corruption
scandal and investigation that have shaken Brazilian politics. The appointments added to the suspicion that the
temporary ouster of President Dilma Rousseff last month
over allegations that she resorted to unlawful budget-balancing tricks had an ulterior motive: to make the investigation go away. Earlier this year, Ms. Rousseff said that allowing the inquiry into kickbacks at Petrobras, the state
oil company, to run its course would be healthy for Brazil
in the long run.
Two weeks after the new interim government was
seated, Romero Jucá, Mr. Temer’s planning minister, resigned after a newspaper reported on a recorded phone
conversation in which Mr. Jucá appeared to endorse the
dismissal of Ms. Rousseff as part of a deal among lawmakers to “protect everyone” embroiled in the scandal. That
was the only way, he said, to assure that Brazil “would return to being calm.” Late last month, Fabiano Silveira, the
minister of transparency, charged with fighting corruption, was forced to resign after a similarly embarrassing
leak of a surreptitiously recorded conversation.
This forced Mr. Temer to promise last week that the
executive branch would not interfere with the Petrobras
investigation, which so far has ensnarled more than 40 politicians. Considering the men Mr. Temer has surrounded
himself with, that rings hollow. If the interim president is

Re “Muhammad Ali, 1942-2016: The
Champ Who Transcended Boxing”
(front page, June 4):
Muhammad Ali was a near mythical

figure with a worldwide reputation. He
was arguably the best heavyweight
fighter of all time, but we remember his
life for so much more. He was an iconic
civil rights advocate and a prodigious
fund-raiser for Parkinson’s disease,
which he lived with for more than three
decades.
He was incredibly devoted to his Muslim faith. Rather than be drafted and
serve in the Vietnam War, which he objected to on religious and political
grounds, he was stripped of his boxing title and faced imprisonment.
Such devotion to principle is something we can all aspire to. For this he will
always have a place in my memory.
KEN DEROW
Swarthmore, Pa.

muscle Albany can flex. Because the will of a sovereign
city counts for little when there are populist points to be
scored, and plastic-bag-maker lobbyists to please.
The bag fee is not, in the scheme of things, earth-shattering. It’s a nickel. It is not a tax — the city doesn’t collect
or spend any of the revenue — it’s just a calculated inconvenience to give consumers an incentive to shop with reusable bags. The fee is potentially annoying, but it spares
the poor and businesses that would suffer unduly, for
benefits that would be enjoyed across the populace. Cities
that have tried fees have found that they work splendidly.
But for meddlesome reasons, some Albany pols want
to overrule the City Council, citing dubious principle.
“You’re irritating people to change their behavior — that’s
not what we’re here for,” Mr. Felder said recently.
Some would argue that it’s the state legislators who
do the irritating, which is easy enough under a system of

government that forces the city and its mayor to go begging to Albany for money and permission to do basic
things like run the schools, regulate traffic and, in this
case, somehow shrink a mountain of plastic trash. Getting
a handle on disposable bags was a simple, smart decision
that the City Council should have been able to make for itself. If the Legislature persists in passing this meddling
bill, then Gov. Andrew Cuomo will have to be the grown-up
who sets this particular wrong right.

crowd gathering and ran over to see
what was going on. It was Ali and his entourage surrounded by autograph seekers.
But this wasn’t the Ali I saw on TV.
Here was this huge, gentle, smiling man
taking the time to sign all the kids’ autographs, including mine. As he signed
mine, he smiled, winked and said, “Don’t
you feel sorry for me having to sign all
these?”
I came to realize that here was a special man — much kinder and greater in
spirit than I realized. That simple moment changed my mind about him — and
changed me so I was more open-minded,
reflective and considerate about people I
didn’t truly know.
GREGG GEIDER
Ridgewood, N.J.
TO THE EDITOR:

He came to us as a curiosity and
stayed as an icon.
Muhammad Ali was a fighter with
quick fists, quick wit and an indomitable
spirit.

In refusing to be drafted during the
Vietnam War, he willingly forfeited
riches and his crown, and would have
given up even his freedom, if it had come
to that, following the dictates of his religion and his heart. He might have arrived as part showman but he remained
as a dedicated, serious ambassador for
his beliefs.
Parkinson’s may have sapped him of
his most obvious strengths, making him
a physical shadow of his earlier self and
taking away much of the sound of his
voice.
But he had the heart of a lion, and the
will of David against Goliath. He lived a
life equal parts passion and compassion.
Muhammad Ali died a legend and a
hero to countless millions around the
globe.
Forever may he be recalled as one who
was both butterfly and bee, a man filled
with enduring beauty, grace and power.
ROBERT S. NUSSBAUM
Fort Lee, N.J.
TO THE EDITOR:

I will never forget the pair of boxing
gloves from Muhammad Ali hanging on
the wall of Ted Kennedy’s Senate office in
Washington. One was inscribed “Senator
Ted, I hope this glove helps you knock out

injustice.”
MICHAEL MOFFITT
Princeton, N.J.

Gaming College Aid

Keep Ban on Gravity Knives

TO THE EDITOR:

TO THE EDITOR:

As the president of a private university,
I am acutely aware of the financial challenges many lower- and middle-income
families face in helping their child choose
a college.
To assist these families, our campus
has frozen our tuition for five years (at
$29,976), and provides institutional aid
for both merit and need that reduces this
figure by a per student average of more
than $13,000.
We rely on federal Fafsa filings (Free
Application for Federal Student Aid) to
determine need, and do our best to meet
full need for as many students as possible.
Given this, I was stunned to read “The
Best Way to Help a Grandchild With
College” (Retiring column, May 28), in
which various college financing “experts”

advised grandparents how to hide their
529 college savings plans from college financial aid offices in order to increase the
size of the grandchild’s college aid award.
It’s lovely that some grandparents are
able to help their grandchildren with
college costs, but doing so in a way that
results in diverting college aid dollars
away from those with true need is
shameful.
Creating access to college for families
of modest means is hard enough without
your pointing out ways for more affluent
families to game the system.
DONALD J. FARISH
President
Roger Williams University
Bristol, R.I.

“New York’s Outdated Knife Law”
(editorial, May 31) states that in New
York City “gravity knives account for
more than two-thirds of arrests” under
an unspecified “weapons law.”
But prosecutions for the possession of
gravity knives are hardly as prevalent as
the editorial suggests: In 2015 in Manhattan, fewer than 2 percent of all misdemeanor prosecutions were for the possession of gravity knives.
The editorial supports a bill that would
legalize the possession of knives that can
be flicked open with one hand. The ban
on such knives has been in effect since

1958, and its constitutionality has been
uniformly upheld.
The ban has enhanced public safety,
and ending it now amid highly publicized
slashing incidents in our city’s streets
and subways is not advisable.
We provided a memorandum to the
Legislature proposing amendments to
the law in fairness to those who carry
gravity knives for bona fide trade or business reasons.
That memorandum sets forth reasonable ways to address the legitimate concerns of tradespeople without compromising public safety.
CYRUS R. VANCE Jr.
District Attorney, New York County
New York

A Different Gun Lobby
TO THE EDITOR:

Air Safety, Shared Equally
TO THE EDITOR:

Re “How to Zip Through Airport Security” (news article, nytimes.com, May
27): Yet another sign of money fracturing our society: the wealthy paying for
fee-based programs offered by some airlines to zip through airport security
checkpoints. While those time-devouring security lines are awful, even more
disheartening is the fact that those with
extra cash can pay to avoid the waiting.
Given that there are so many ways for
the rich to assert their superiority —
yachts, sky boxes, concierge medicine,

gated communities — wouldn’t it be nice
if the burden of travel safety were shared
equally?
MURRAY SUID
Inverness, Calif.

Re “Gun Control That Actually
Works,” by Alan Berlow (Op-Ed, May
31): The critical difference between the
National Rifle Association of the 1930s
and the National Rifle Association of today is that it has been transformed from
being an advocate for responsible gun
owners into being an advocate for the
gun industry.
Why else would its officials oppose the
reasonable regulation of potentially
deadly weapons? THILO WEISSFLOG
Portland, Ore.

ONLINE: MORE LETTERS

“In addition to reading novels, one
should also learn to think critically
and write well if one wants to write good
software.” nytimes.com/opinion

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THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

Sanders
Fans, I Get
Your Pain
By Jay Carson

W

E had lost. And I was as
sure as I’ve been about
anything else in my life
that my party was
making an enormous
mistake. My candidate had won 23 primaries, about 1,900 delegates and, by one
count, the popular vote. My candidate

may have actually gotten more votes than
the guy we Democrats were about to
nominate, who was inexperienced and, I
thought, unelectable.
Putting aside these macro issues, I was
also deeply depressed. Anyone who has
ever lost a serious presidential campaign
can tell you it is an excruciating experience. I know what I’m talking about —
I’ve lost three, including one in 2008 that
was, we thought, un-losable: Hillary Clinton versus Barack Obama. I was her 31year-old press secretary.
Losing is crushing: If you’re a staff
member you’re immediately unemployed. And whether staff member or diehard supporter, you’re disappointed and
angry — really, really angry. You have
come to believe (because you must in order to work 18 to 20 hours a day for very
little pay) that your candidate is a hero
who will save the world, and that your opponent is a horrible person who will ruin
it.
So once we lost the long primary fight, I
wanted to shout my certainty that she
was the right nominee and he was the
wrong one to anyone who would listen.
Night after night I sat down and wrote excoriating op-ed essays taking on Mr.
Obama, the press and the party structure
that helped elect him. I’d wake up in the
morning and realize that what I had written sounded shrill, sometimes crazy and
way too upset, and I’d tear it up and start
over again.
The general election showed me how
wrong I was. To my surprise, Mr. Obama
won handily, taking states that

Democrats hadn’t won in generations.
And though I haven’t agreed with everything he’s done, he’s had one of the most
successful presidencies in a very long
time.
The stakes today are much higher. Unlike Senator John McCain, the Republican
nominee in 2008, Donald J. Trump is dangerous. He believes in one thing and one
thing only — Donald Trump. And make no
mistake: Donald Trump can win. He has
already proved that, and he’s as much a
threat in the general election as he was to
his opponents in the primaries.
Senator Bernie Sanders’s role in this
campaign has been valuable — he has introduced important issues and excited
millions of new voters. Mr. Sanders has
earned the right to compete in the remaining primary contests and stay in until the convention — as Mrs. Clinton did in
2008. But rules are rules, and the math is
the math. Senator Sanders is not going to
be the Democratic nominee. There’s staying in a race to cross the finish line with
your head held high, and then there’s participating in or condoning language and
actions that will damage the nominee and
help Mr. Trump.
So to all the Sanders staff members and
supporters who are as hurt and dismayed
as I was, who feel that their candidate is
right and the opponent dead wrong, who
want to keep fighting to the convention
and beyond: I get it. I’ve been there (with
Howard Dean and Bill Bradley as well).
But please learn what I have learned and
don’t let your anger get the best of you.

The consequences of doing anything that
will help Donald Trump win are catastrophic.
I understand you may not love (or even
like) Mrs. Clinton right now. Perhaps you

Make no mistake:
Donald Trump can win
this election.
can’t imagine knocking on doors for her in
the cold or donating your hard-earned
money to finance her campaign. I’m doing both of those things, but I realize that
you may not want to. I felt the same way
about Mr. Obama in 2008. In the end I didn’t work hard to get him elected (I really
regret that now, by the way), but neither
did I do or say anything that would harm
his chances. I came to accept that he was,
in fact, my party’s nominee and might be
the eventual president.
Recalling all those op-ed articles I discarded, I finally wrote one toned-down
enough that I thought someone might
publish it. I showed it to the one person
whose blessing, if not praise, I needed:
Hillary Clinton. Her response was clear
and unequivocal. Do not send this to anyone. The race is over, she said. We fought
our best fight, but we lost.
I know how difficult those lessons
about losing can be to impart — and even
more so to accept. But it is of the utmost
importance that we all look beyond this
intraparty contest to the one coming in

November. I understand the anger about
losing, and I know you may not love her
(or even like her) yet. But Hillary Clinton
is going to be the nominee of the
Democratic Party. She is the only thing
standing between us and President
Trump. That should be enough motivation for all of us to put our differences behind us and focus on helping her win. 0
Jay Carson is a screenwriter, former deputy mayor of Los Angeles and consultant
on urban issues.

N

CHARLES M. BLOW

PAUL KRUGMAN

The Madness of America

A Pause
That
Distresses

The candidacy of Donald Trump, the
fervor of those who support it, and the
fierce opposition of those who don’t is
making America mad — both angry and
insane, as the dual definitions of the word
implies.
One of the most disturbing displays of
this madness is the violence that Trump

has incited in his supporters, and the violent ways in which opposition forces
have responded, like the exchange we
saw last week in San Jose.
Both forms of violence are unequivocally wrong, but speak to a base level of
hostility that hovers around the man like
the stench from rotting flesh.
What is particularly disturbing is to
see anti-Trump forces lashing out at
Trump’s supporters, seemingly provoked simply by a difference in political
position.
This cannot be. It’s self-defeating and
narrows the space between the thing you
despise and the thing you become.
Listen, I understand how unsettling
this man is for many.
I understand that he is elevating and
normalizing a particular stance of racism and sexism that many view as a
spiritual attack, a kind of psychic violence from which they cannot escape.
Furthermore, the election cycle promises at least five more months of this, until Election Day, and even more if by
some tragic twist of fate Trump is actually elected.
And, if elected, the threat could move
from the rhetoric to the real, wreaking
havoc on millions of lives.
I understand the frightful, mindnumbing, hair-raising disbelief that can
descend when one realizes that this is indeed plausible.
Recent polls have only added to this
anxiety as some have shown an increasingly tight race between him and Hillary
Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee;
some even have him beating her.
(Now of course, these polls must be

taken with a grain of salt. Trump and
Clinton are in different phases of the
fight: Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee with no remaining opponents and with Republicans coalescing
around his candidacy; Clinton is still in a
heated contest with Bernie Sanders, who
has given no indication of giving up.)
I understand that Trump represents a
clear and present danger, and having a
passionate response that encompasses
rage and fear is reasonable.
It is understandable to want to make
one’s displeasure known.
But there is a line one dares not cross,
and that is the one of responding to violent rhetoric with violent actions.
As I have said before, the Rev. Dr. Mar-

tin Luther King Jr. said it best in his 1967
book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?,” and he is worthy of
quoting here at length:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is
that it is a descending spiral, begetting
the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead
of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the
liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor
establish the truth. Through violence
you may murder the hater, but you do not
murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot
drive out darkness; only light can do

that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only
love can do that.”
You may feel activated by the cause of
righteousness, but violence is most often
a poor instrument for its implementation. Indeed, violence corrodes righteousness. It robs it of its essence.
The best way to direct passions is not
only with the bullhorn, but also at the ballot box.
In a democracy, the vote is the voice.
The best way to reduce the threat Trump
poses is to register and motivate people
who share your view of the threat.
It is easy to look at the throngs who
support and exalt this man and be discouraged, but don’t be. It is easy to look
at Republicans like Paul Ryan abandoning their principles and selling their
souls to fall in line behind this man and be
discouraged, but don’t be. It is easy to see
the media fail miserably to counter
Trump and his surrogates’ Gish-gallop
and be discouraged, but don’t be.
These are the moments in which the
nation’s mettle — and ideals — are
tested. I have a fundamental belief that
although America was born and grew by
violence and racial subjugation, that although it has often stumbled and even
regressed, that its ultimate bearing is toward the better.
Folks must be reminded that one demagogue cannot lead to a detour or a dismantling. There is an elevated plane of
truth that floats a mile above Trump’s
trough of putrescence.
Trump and his millions of minions
have replaced what they call “political

correctness” with “ambient viciousness.”
This won’t “make America great
again,” because the “again” they imagine
harkens back to America’s darkness. We
are the new America — more diverse,
more inclusive, more than our ancestors
could ever have imagined.
Don’t invalidate that by allowing yourselves to be baited into brutishness. 0

Never the White Man’s Negro
By Joyce Carol Oates

C

ASSIUS CLAY, born in 1942,
was the grandson of a slave;
in the United States of his boyhood and young manhood, the
role of the black athlete, particularly the black boxer, was a forced
self-effacement.
White male anxieties were, evidently,
greatly roiled by the spectacle of the strong black man,
and had to be assuaged. The
greater the black boxer (Joe
Louis, Archie Moore, Ezzard
Charles), the more urgent
that he assume a public role
of caution and restraint.
Kindly white men who advised their black charges to
be a “credit to their race”
were not speaking ironically.

And yet, the young Cassius
Clay/Muhammad Ali refused
to play this emasculating
role. He would not be the
“white man’s Negro” — he
would not be anything of the
white man’s at all. Converting to the Nation of Islam at
the age of 22, immediately after winning the heavyweight
championship from Sonny
Liston, he denounced his
“slave name” (Cassius Marcellus Clay, which was also
his father’s name) and the
Christian religion; in refusing to serve in the Army he
made his political reasons
clear: “I ain’t got no quarrel
with them Vietcong.”
An enormous backlash followed: where the young
boxer had been cheered, now
he was booed. Denunciations
rained upon his head. Respected publications, including The New York Times,
continued to print the “slave
name” Cassius Clay for years. Sentenced
to five years’ imprisonment for his refusal to comply with the draft, Ali stood his
ground; he did not serve time, but was
fined $10,000 and his boxing license was
revoked so that he could not continue his
professional career, in the very prime of
that career. In a gesture of sheer pettiness the State Department took away his
passport so that he couldn’t fight outside
the country. After he was reinstated as a

professional boxer three and a half years
later, he had lost much of his youthful
agility. Yet he’d never given in.
The heart of the champion is this: One
never repudiates one’s deepest values,

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of “On
Boxing.” She is this year’s recipient of the
A.J. Leibling Award for Excellence in Boxing Writing.

one never gives in.
Though Ali had risen to dizzying
heights of fame in the 1960s, it was in the
1970s that his greatness was established.
Who could have imagined that, being
reinstated as a boxer after a lengthy suspension, Ali would expand the dimensions of the sport yet again; that, past his
prime, his legs slowed, his breath shorter, out of an ingenuity borne of despera-

matic stoicism in which the end (winning) justifies the means (irreversible
damage to body, brain). The spectator is
appalled to realize that a single blow of
Foreman’s delivered to a non-boxer
might well be fatal; how many dozens of
these blows Ali absorbed, as in a fairy
tale in which the drama is one of reversed expectations. In this way, with
terrible cost to come in terms of Ali’s
health, he won back the heavyweight title at the age of 32, defeating
the 25–year-old Foreman.
Great as Ali-Foreman was,
it can’t compare to the trilogy

of fights between Ali and Joe
Frazier in 1971, 1974 and 1975;
Frazier won the first on
points, Ali the second and
third on points and a TKO.
These were monumental
fights, displays of human
stamina,
courage
and
“heart” virtually unparalleled in the history of boxing.
In the first, Ali experienced
the worst battering of his life,
yet he did not give up; in the
second and third, Ali won
against an exhausted Frazier,
at what cost to his health we
can only guess — “The closest thing to dying,” Ali said of
the last fight. Yet, incredibly,
unconscionably, Ali was exploited by managers and promoters who should have protected him; his doomed career continued until 1981 with
a devastating final loss, to the
much-younger
Trevor
Berbick. Ali then retired, belatedly, after 61 fights, with 56
wins.
What does it mean to say
that a fighter has “heart”? By
“heart” we don’t mean technical skill, nor even unusual
strength and stamina and
MATT ROTA

ambition; by “heart” we
mean
something
like
spiritual character.
The mystery of Muhammad Ali is this
spiritual greatness, that seemed to have
emerged out of a far more ordinary, even
callow personality. With the passage of
time, the rebel who’d been reviled by
many Americans would be transformed
into an American hero, especially amid
general disenchantment with the Vietnam War. The young man who’d been detion he would reinvent himself as an athnounced as a traitor was transformed
lete on whose unyielding body younger
into the iconic figure of our time, a comboxers might punch themselves out. He
passionate figure who seems to trancould no longer “float like a butterfly”
scend race. A warm, sepia light irradibut he could lie back against the ropes,
ates the past, glossing out jarring details.
like a living heavy bag, and allow an opAli had long ago transcended his own
ponent like the hapless George Foreman
origins and his own specific identity. As
to exhaust himself trying to knock him
he’d once said: “Boxing was nothing. It
out.
wasn’t important at all. Boxing was just
What is the infamous Rope-a-Dope
meant as a way to introduce me to the
world.”
0
stratagem of 1974 but a brilliantly prag-

Out of ingenuity, Ali
reinvented himself as a
boxer.

A23

Friday’s employment report was a major disappointment: only 38,000 jobs
added, a big step down from the more
than 200,000 a month average since January 2013. Special factors, notably the
Verizon strike, explain part of the bad
news, and in any case job growth is a
noisy series, so you shouldn’t make too
much of one month’s data. Still, all the evidence points to slowing growth. It’s not a
recession, at least not yet, but it is definitely a pause in the economy’s progress.
Should this pause worry you? Yes. Because if it does turn into a recession, or
even if it goes on for a long time, it’s very
hard to envision an effective policy response.
First things first: Why is the economy
slowing? The usual suspects wasted no
time blaming President Obama. But you
need to remember that these same people have been warning of imminent disaster ever since Mr. Obama was elected,
and have been wrong every step of the
way. They predicted soaring interest
rates and soaring inflation; neither happened. They declared that the Affordable
Care Act would be a huge job-killer; the
years after the act went into full effect
were marked by the best private-sector
job creation since the 1990s.
And despite this disappointing report,

we should remember that private job
growth under Mr. Obama has vastly exceeded George W. Bush’s record, even if
you leave out the economic collapse of
2008.
So what is causing the economy to
slow? My guess is that the biggest factor
is the recent sharp rise in the dollar,
which has made U.S. goods less competitive on world markets. The dollar’s rise,

Jobs:
Don’t panic,
but do worry.
in turn, largely reflected misguided talk
by the Federal Reserve about the need to
raise interest rates.
In a way, however, it hardly matters
why the economy is losing steam. After
all, stuff always happens. America has
been experiencing major economic
downturns at irregular intervals at least
since the 1870s, for a variety of reasons.
Whatever the cause of a downturn, the
economy can recover quickly if policy
makers can and do take useful action.
For example, both the 1974-5 recession
and the 1981-2 recession were followed by
rapid, “V-shaped” recoveries, because
the Fed drastically loosened monetary
policy and slashed interest rates.
But that won’t — in fact, can’t — happen this time. Short-term interest rates,

which the Fed more or less controls, are
still very low despite the small rate hike
last December. We now know that it’s
possible for rates to go slightly below
zero, but there still isn’t much room for a
rate cut.
That said, there are other policies that
could easily reverse an economic downturn. And if Hillary Clinton wins the election, the U.S. government will understand perfectly well what the options are.
(The likely response of a Trump administration doesn’t bear thinking about. Maybe a series of insult Twitter posts aimed
at China and Mexico?) The problem is
politics.
For the simplest, most effective answer to a downturn would be fiscal stimulus — preferably government spending
on much-needed infrastructure, but
maybe also temporary tax cuts for lowerand middle-income households, who
would spend the money. Infrastructure
spending makes especially good sense
given the federal government’s incredibly low borrowing costs: The interest
rate on inflation-protected bonds is
barely above zero.
But unless the coming election delivers Democratic control of the House,
which is unlikely, Republicans would almost surely block anything along those
lines. Partly, this would reflect ideology:
although right-wing economic predictions have been utterly wrong, there’s little indication that anyone in that camp
has learned from the experience. It
would also reflect an unwillingness to do
anything that might help a Democrat in
the White House. Remember, every Republican in the House voted against a
stimulus even during the darkest days of
the slump, when Mr. Obama was at the
peak of his popularity.

If not fiscal stimulus, then what? For
much of the past six years the Fed, unable to cut interest rates further, has
tried to boost the economy through
large-scale purchases of things like longterm government debt and mortgagebacked securities. But it’s unclear how
much difference that made — and meanwhile, this policy faced constant attacks
and vilification from the right, with
claims that it was debasing the dollar
and/or illegitimately bailing out a fiscally irresponsible president. We can
guess that the Fed will be very reluctant
to resume the program, and face accusations that it’s in the pocket of “corrupt
Hillary.”
So the evidence of a U.S. slowdown
should worry you. I don’t see anything
like the 2008 crisis on the horizon (he
says with fingers crossed behind his
back), but even a smaller negative shock
could turn into very bad news, given our
political gridlock.
0


A24

N

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016


Dropping the Ads

Europe’s Privacy Rules

Cultivating Customers

Publication’s New Tack

A Flaw Is Uncovered

Test for Loyalty Programs

Prevention Magazine is going
ad-free and raising its
subscription rates.

Researchers found the names of
about a third of the people who
3
had asked to be forgotten.

Experts say the cosmetics retailer
Sephora gives people what they
6
want — special offers.

2

N

B1

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016

Watchdog That Shepherded Panama Papers Now Constrained by Finances
By NICHOLAS FANDOS

WASHINGTON — As news outlets
around the world continued to publish
revelations from the Panama Papers, the
nonprofit organization that coordinated
the project was preparing to move out of
its offices here in an effort to cut costs.
The organization, called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, was already forced to part with
three contract journalists who had

U.S. to Focus
On China’s
Industrial
Output

helped its small staff shepherd the
project. And three other budgeted
positions, it was told, would have to be
left unfilled for now.
Its brief shining moment in the journalistic spotlight was being complicated
by much more familiar issues. Like so
many of its peers in nonprofit journalism, the consortium is subject to the financial headwinds buffeting the industry as a whole. In this case, it is feeling

ripple effects from the financial struggles of its parent organization, the Center for Public Integrity, the venerable
nonprofit investigative news organization that controls the consortium’s budget.
The financial pinch has created dual

realities for the consortium, damping
morale and escalating long-simmering
tensions with its parent, even as the impact of the Panama Papers has dramati-

cally increased its global profile.
The consortium’s problems also represent a potential setback in the search for
new ways to finance and pursue journalism at a time when traditional news organizations, and even new digital operations, are seeking workable business
models. In the nonprofit segment of the
industry, which has inspired hope as a
way forward, it has exposed a particularly hard truth: Financing even the

most successful investigative reporting
unit is hard and often inconsistent.
“You always want more staff and more
funding,” the consortium’s director,
Gerard Ryle, said. “But I have to accept
the situation as it is. My job is to get on
with things no matter what.”
Financial uneasiness is nothing new
for the Center for Public Integrity, which
ran yearly operating deficits from 2005
Continued on Page 4

The Unpredictable, Under Control

By CHRIS BUCKLEY
and JANE PERLEZ

BEIJING — The Obama administration plans to use annual talks
with leaders in Beijing to push for

cuts in excess Chinese industrial
output, which has inundated foreign markets with discounted
steel, aluminum and other products, Treasury Secretary Jacob J.
Lew said in Beijing on Sunday
ahead of the meeting.
The talks, known as the U.S.China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, bring together senior
American and Chinese officials
every year to discuss a broad
range of economic, foreign policy
and security concerns. On the economic side of the talks, China’s exchange rate controls and intellectual property violations will be
high on the American agenda,
while North Korea and the South
China Sea are expected to dominate the security talks.
But Mr. Lew said the economic
track of the meeting in the Chinese capital this year would also
take up China’s flood of exports of
steel and other products, which
have spilled into the international
marketplace, provoking anger
from producers, unions and politicians.
“Excess capacity is not just a
domestic issue,” Mr. Lew told an
audience
of
students
and
academics at Tsinghua University
ahead of the start of the dialogue
on Monday.
“The question of excess capacity is one that really has an enormous effect on global markets for

things like steel and aluminum,”
he said. “We’re seeing distortions
in global markets because of excess capacity.”
A senior Chinese official said
last week that his side was prepared to discuss excess capacity
but was vague about how China
would respond.
“We do not shy away from problems,” the official, Zhu Guangyao,
a vice minister of finance, told
reporters at a briefing. “Anything
can be discussed in the economic
dialogue.”
Chinese leaders, including
President Xi Jinping, have said
they will cut back production at
Continued on Page 2

LAURA M cDERMOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mcity in Ann Arbor, Mich., a testing ground for autonomous vehicles, is a place for trial and error, outside of the public eye.

For Driverless Cars, Citylike Test Sites Offer a Chance
To Maneuver Safely Through Countless Challenges.
By NEAL E. BOUDETTE

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Here in this
college town 40 miles west of Detroit,
behind black sheeting attached to an
eight-foot-tall chain-link fence, the future of the auto industry is being
worked out in a secret setting.

The fence surrounds a testing center called Mcity — a 32-acre patch of
land that aims to recreate Anywhere,
U.S.A., complete with simulated city
streets and intersections. Within its
borders are 13 types of traffic lights,

storefronts, road signs, parking meters and a tunnel. A railroad crossing
will be added soon.
Mcity is one of a half-dozen or so
testing grounds for autonomous vehicles in the world as automakers and
technology companies engage in a
heated competition to create the perfect self-driving car — and to keep
their competitors from knowing how
they are doing it.
But while they have honed the technologies that enable cars to find their
way on their own, these companies

Led Zeppelin Members Set to Defend ‘Stairway’
By BEN SISARIO

Beyoncé is on tour, Drake is setting
streaming records and Taylor Swift has
split up with her boyfriend. But next
week, the most gripping news for the music industry may come out of a federal
courtroom in Los Angeles.
There, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of
Led Zeppelin will be defending themselves against a lawsuit claiming that
parts of “Stairway to Heaven” — the
band’s signature hit and a pillar of rock radio since the song’s release in 1971 — were
copied from “Taurus,” an instrumental

tune by the lesser-known group Spirit.
The trial, set to start on June 14 with Mr.
Page and Mr. Plant expected to be in attendance, may prove fascinating legal
theater for fans. But it will also be closely
watched by a music business that is grappling with a series of recent copyright decisions.
Last year, a federal jury found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had copied Marvin Gaye in Mr. Thicke’s 2013 hit
song “Blurred Lines,” and ordered Mr.
Thicke and Mr. Williams to pay $7.4 million (later reduced to $5.3 million). Industry commentators said the decision penalized elements of songs long thought of as
Continued on Page 4

ANDREW SONDERN/
THE NEW YORK TIMES

AND THEN A BALL
BOUNCED INTO THE ROAD

These cars don’t drive
drunk or text, but when
sudden events strike, the
brain is still best. B3.

now face an even more daunting challenge: how to take that technology,
with all its promise, and make those
cars perform flawlessly in an unpredictable world.
Both the car companies and regulators have decades of experience
making vehicles safer in crashes, but
the means and methods for validating
the reliability and safety of self-driving cars have not even been invented.
“When you no longer have a human
doing the sensing and decisionmaking, the car has to be flawless,”

said John Maddox, an assistant director at the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center.
Continued on Page 5

Grandma’s Radio Helps
Computer Chips Shrink
By JOHN MARKOFF

HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

A lawsuit, seen as a test of the limits of copyright, claims that part of “Stairway to
Heaven,” the hit by Led Zeppelin, above, was copied from “Taurus” by Spirit.

PASADENA, Calif. — The future of computing may be in its
past.
The silicon transistor, the tiny
switch that is the building block of
modern microelectronics, replaced the vacuum tube in many
consumer products in the 1970s.
Now as shrinking transistors to
even more Lilliputian dimensions
is becoming vastly more challenging, the vacuum tube may be on
the verge of a comeback.
In a darkened laboratory here,
two stories beneath the California
Institute of Technology campus,
two students stare through the
walls of a thick plastic vacuum
chamber at what they hope will be
the next small thing — a computer
chip made from circuits like vacuum tubes whose dimensions are

each roughly one-thousandth the
size of a red blood cell.
At stake is the future of what
electronic engineers call scaling,
the ability to continue to shrink
the size of electronic circuits,

which is becoming harder to do as
they become as small as viruses.
It has been more than half a
century since the physicist Richard Feynman predicted the rise of
microelectronics, noting “there’s
plenty of room at the bottom.” He
used the phrase in 1959 when he
speculated about engineering
with individual atoms. Several
years later, Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, wrote that the
number of transistors that could
be etched into silicon wafers
would double at regular intervals
for the foreseeable future.
Now, however, there is growing
evidence that space, if still available, is increasingly at a premium.
Progress is slowing down. The
time between each new chip generation is stretching out, and the
cost of individual transistors, although infinitesimal, is no longer
falling. The tiny transistors also
bedevil chip designers because as
they get smaller, they generate
unwanted heat.

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