BY ASSASSINATION IRAN PACT S FATE · 2020. 11. 29. · torious one: Gabriel Matzneff, the writer...
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U(D547FD)v+[!:!/!$!z These film performers have outshone all others in the last 20 years. PAGE 6 ARTS & LEISURE The 25 Greatest Actors Around Some millennial heirs see “plutocratic wealth” as a moral and economic fail- ure, and are using their own money to try to take down the system. PAGE 1 SUNDAY STYLES Trust-Funders Fight Capitalism Have you ever wondered how a new vaccine gets tested? Our illustrated stories tackle that question and more. SPECIAL SECTION The New York Times for Kids A new Chinese village has popped up high in the Himalayas, inside territory also claimed by Bhutan, echoing similar tactics used to create conflict in India and the South China Sea. PAGE 12 INTERNATIONAL 12-19 China’s Expansion Playbook The troubles facing the film industry seem more daunting than ever. PAGE 6 SUNDAY BUSINESS Say Goodbye to Hollywood? Parents are finding creative ways to encourage their isolated offspring to drop their phones and exercise. PAGE 8 AT HOME Get Ready for Snow Yoga The videos look pretty sweet: exotic animals, cash, parties. But experts say the propaganda campaign is meant to attract expendable young recruits into a world of murder and mayhem. PAGE 15 The Cartel on TikTok Jennifer Senior PAGE 4 SUNDAY REVIEW Wildfires are filling the lungs of Califor- nia’s children with smoke. PAGE 24 NATIONAL 20-28 Poisoning the Young PARIS — One of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the Renaudot can change a writer’s career overnight. Prizewinners jump onto best-seller lists. Pub- lishers earn bragging rights in a nation that places literature at the heart of its sense of grandeur and global standing. A striking example is now a no- torious one: Gabriel Matzneff, the writer whose career was revived with the award in 2013 before col- lapsing this year when a woman published a bombshell account of their sexual relationship when she was underage. He now faces a police investigation in a national scandal that has exposed how clubby Parisian elites long pro- tected, celebrated and enabled his pedophilia. Mr. Matzneff’s win was engi- neered by an elite fully aware of his pedophilia, which he had bra- zenly defended for decades. His powerful editor and friends sat on the jury. “We thought he was broke, he was sick, this will cheer him up,” said Frédéric Beigbeder, a confidant of Mr. Matzneff and a Renaudot juror since 2011. The fallout from the Matzneff affair has rippled through France, dividing feminists and seemingly ending the career of a powerful deputy mayor of Paris. Yet the in- sular world that dominates French literary life remains large- ly unscathed, demonstrating just how entrenched and intractable it really is. Proof of that is the Renaudot — all but one of the same jurors who honored Mr. Matzneff are ex- pected to crown this year’s win- ners on Monday. That the Renaudot, France’s second biggest literary prize, could wave away the Matzneff scandal underscores the self-per- petuating and impenetrable na- ture of many of France’s elite insti- tutions. Whether in top schools, compa- French Literary Elites Shrug at Cronyism, and Even Pedophilia By NORIMITSU ONISHI and CONSTANT MÉHEUT Continued on Page 14 The telephone call would have been laugh-out-loud ridiculous if it had not been so serious. When Tina Barton picked up, she found someone from President Trump’s campaign asking her to sign a let- ter raising doubts about the re- sults of the election. The election that Ms. Barton as the Republican clerk of the small Michigan city of Rochester Hills had helped oversee. The election that she knew to be fair and accu- rate because she had helped make it so. The election that she had publicly defended amid threats that made her upgrade her home security system. “Do you know who you’re talk- ing to right now?” she asked the campaign official. Evidently not. If the president hoped Republi- cans across the country would fall in line behind his false and farcical claims that the election was some- how rigged on a mammoth scale by a nefarious multinational con- spiracy, he was in for a surprise. Republicans in Washington may have indulged Mr. Trump’s fantas- tical assertions, but at the state and local level, Republicans played a critical role in resisting the mounting pressure from their own party to overturn the vote af- ter Mr. Trump fell behind on Nov. 3. The three weeks that followed tested American democracy and Even as Trump Claimed Fraud, These Republicans Didn’t Bend By PETER BAKER and KATHLEEN GRAY Separating “I Voted” stickers in Rochester Hills, Mich. SYLVIA JARRUS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 22 WASHINGTON — The assassi- nation of the scientist who led Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon for the past two decades threatens to cripple President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal before he can even begin his diplomacy with Tehran. And that may well have been a main goal of the operation. Intelligence officials say there is little doubt that Israel was be- hind the killing — it had all the hallmarks of a precisely timed op- eration by Mossad, the country’s spy agency. And the Israelis have done nothing to dispel that view. Prime Minister Benjamin Netan- yahu has long identified Iran as an existential threat, and named the assassinated scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as national enemy No. 1, capable of building a weap- on that could threaten a country of eight million in a single blast. But Mr. Netanyahu also has a second agenda. “There must be no return to the previous nuclear agreement,” he declared shortly after it became clear that Mr. Biden — who has proposed exactly that — would be the next president. Mr. Netanyahu believes a covert bomb program is continu- ing, until yesterday under Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s leadership, and would be unconstrained after 2030, when the nuclear accord’s restraints on Tehran’s ability to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wants expires. To critics of the deal, that is its fatal flaw. “The reason for assassinating Fakhrizadeh wasn’t to impede Iran’s war potential, it was to im- pede diplomacy,” Mark Fitz- patrick, a former State Depart- ment nonproliferation official, wrote on Twitter on Friday. It may have been both. Whatever the mix of motives, Mr. Biden must pick up the pieces in just seven weeks. The question is whether the deal the president- elect has outlined — dropping the nuclear-related sanctions Mr. Trump has imposed over the past IRAN PACT’S FATE DEALT NEW BLOW BY ASSASSINATION EARLY HITCH FOR BIDEN Israel May Be Counting on Gains No Matter Tehran’s Response By DAVID E. SANGER Continued on Page 19 WASHINGTON — One firm helps companies navigate global risks and the political and pro- cedural ins and outs of Washing- ton. The other is an investment fund with a particular interest in military contractors. But the consulting firm, West- Exec Advisors, and the invest- ment fund, Pine Island Capital Partners, call themselves stra- tegic partners and have featured an overlapping roster of political- ly connected officials — including some of the most prominent names on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s team and others un- der consideration for high-rank- ing posts. Now the Biden team’s links to these entities are presenting the incoming administration with its first test of transparency and ethics. The two firms are examples of how former officials leverage their expertise, connections and access on behalf of corporations and other interests, without in some cases disclosing details about their work, including the names of the clients or what they are paid. And when those officials cycle back into government positions, as Democrats affiliated with Wes- tExec and Pine Island are doing now, they bring with them ques- tions about whether they might favor or give special access to the companies they had worked with in the private sector. Those ques- tions do not go away, ethics ex- perts say, just because the officials cut their ties to their firms and cli- ents, as the Biden transition team says its nominees will do. WestExec’s founders include Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden’s choice to be his secretary of state, and Michèle A. Flournoy, one of the leading candidates to be his defense secretary. Among others to come out of WestExec are Avril Haines, Mr. Biden’s pick to be di- rector of national intelligence; Christina Killingsworth, who is helping the president-elect orga- nize his White House budget of- fice; Ely Ratner, who is helping or- Test of Ethics Awaits Biden And His Team Aides Have Worked for Undisclosed Clients By ERIC LIPTON and KENNETH P. VOGEL Continued on Page 26 BALTIMORE — Zia Hellman prepared to welcome her kinder- garten students back to Walter P. Carter Elementary/Middle School this month the way any teacher would on the first day of school: She fussed over her class- room. Ms. Hellman, 26, dodged the tri- angular desks, spaced six feet apart and taped off in blue boxes. She fretted about the blandness of the walls, fumbled with the plastic dividers covering name tags and arranged the individual yoga mats that replaced colorful car- pets. Every window was open for extra ventilation, chilling the air. “I wonder how they’re going to react to all of this,” she said, hands on her hips, scanning the room for the last time. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel, but it feels right.” Ms. Hellman was among about two dozen teachers and staff members required to return to work on Nov. 16 for the first in-per- son instruction in Baltimore City Public Schools since March. The city was the first large school dis- trict in Maryland and the latest among urban districts in the coun- try to tiptoe into one of the high- est-stakes experiments in the his- tory of the nation’s public educa- tion system: teaching face-to-face in a pandemic. Returning to the classroom has not been easy; neither has remote learning. Educators looking to get back in front of students have had to navi- gate conflicting guidance from po- liticians and public health offi- cials. Some teachers’ unions have refused to return to buildings until the virus abates, ostracizing col- leagues who dare break with them. On the other hand, the coun- try’s most vulnerable children have sustained severe academic and social harm from the remote- learning experiment. Parents, navigating their own economic and work struggles, are increas- ingly desperate. Ms. Hellman has yearned to be back in her school building in northeast Baltimore since Sep- tember. She also understands the risks. ‘It Feels Right’: Tiptoeing Back Into a Classroom By ERICA L. GREEN When Paige Myers, 5, headed to in-person kindergarten in Baltimore this month, her mother said she watched her mood improve. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROSEM MORTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Zia Hellman, a kindergarten teacher, said despite the risks, she wanted to be there for her students. Week of Fear and Duty in Baltimore Schools Continued on Page 10 On April 15, the United States reached a grim nadir in the pan- demic: 2,752 people across the country were reported to have died from Covid-19 that Wednes- day, more than on any day before or since. For months, the record stood as a reminder of the pain the corona- virus was inflicting on the nation, and a warning of its deadly poten- tial. But now, after seven desper- ate months trying to contain the virus, daily deaths are rising sharply and fast approaching that dreadful count again. How the virus kills in America, though, has changed in profound ways. Months of suffering have pro- vided a horrific but valuable edu- cation: Doctors and nurses know better how to treat patients who contract the virus and how to pre- vent severe cases from ending in fatality, and a far smaller propor- tion of people who catch the virus are dying from it than were in the spring, experts say. Yet the sheer breadth of the cur- rent outbreak means that the cost in lives lost every day is still climbing. More than 170,000 Americans are now testing pos- itive for the virus on an average day, straining hospitals across much of the country, including in many states that had seemed to avoid the worst of the pandemic. More than 1.1 million people tested positive in the past week alone. At the peak of the spring wave in April, about 31,000 new cases were announced each day, though Virus Deaths Are Nearing Grim Record This article is by Campbell Rob- ertson, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Joseph Goldstein and Mitch Smith. Continued on Page 6 JOCKEYING Filling out his cabinet, Biden will negotiate tricky cur- rents and sharp elbows. PAGE 28 Tony Hsieh, 46, turned a shoe start-up into an internet powerhouse and helped revitalize downtown Las Vegas. PAGE 29 OBITUARIES 29-30 Visionary Chief of Zappos Sarah Fuller, a Vanderbilt soccer goal- keeper, became the first woman to play in a Power 5 football game. PAGE 32 SPORTS 31-33 History With a Kick Unlike athletes in the N.C.A.A., college cheerleaders can be paid through lucra- tive sponsorship deals. PAGE 31 What’s That Spell? Money Late Edition VOL. CLXX . . . No. 58,892 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2020 Today, mostly sunny, high 56. To- night, cloudy, low 48. Tomorrow, winds becoming strong, rain, some heavy, thunderstorms, milder, high 63. Weather map is on Page 27. $6.00
Transcript of BY ASSASSINATION IRAN PACT S FATE · 2020. 11. 29. · torious one: Gabriel Matzneff, the writer...
C M Y K Nxxx,2020-11-29,A,001,Bs-4C,E2
U(D547FD)v+[!:!/!$!z
These film performers have outshoneall others in the last 20 years. PAGE 6
ARTS & LEISURE
The 25 Greatest Actors Around
Some millennial heirs see “plutocraticwealth” as a moral and economic fail-ure, and are using their own money totry to take down the system. PAGE 1
SUNDAY STYLES
Trust-Funders Fight CapitalismHave you ever wondered how a newvaccine gets tested? Our illustratedstories tackle that question and more.
SPECIAL SECTION
The New York Times for KidsA new Chinese village has popped uphigh in the Himalayas, inside territoryalso claimed by Bhutan, echoing similartactics used to create conflict in Indiaand the South China Sea. PAGE 12
INTERNATIONAL 12-19
China’s Expansion Playbook
The troubles facing the film industryseem more daunting than ever. PAGE 6
SUNDAY BUSINESS
Say Goodbye to Hollywood?
Parents are finding creative ways toencourage their isolated offspring todrop their phones and exercise. PAGE 8
AT HOME
Get Ready for Snow YogaThe videos look pretty sweet: exoticanimals, cash, parties. But experts saythe propaganda campaign is meant toattract expendable young recruits into aworld of murder and mayhem. PAGE 15
The Cartel on TikTok
Jennifer Senior PAGE 4
SUNDAY REVIEWWildfires are filling the lungs of Califor-nia’s children with smoke. PAGE 24
NATIONAL 20-28
Poisoning the Young
PARIS — One of France’s mostprestigious literary awards, theRenaudot can change a writer’scareer overnight. Prizewinnersjump onto best-seller lists. Pub-lishers earn bragging rights in anation that places literature at theheart of its sense of grandeur andglobal standing.
A striking example is now a no-torious one: Gabriel Matzneff, the
writer whose career was revivedwith the award in 2013 before col-lapsing this year when a womanpublished a bombshell account oftheir sexual relationship whenshe was underage. He now faces apolice investigation in a nationalscandal that has exposed howclubby Parisian elites long pro-tected, celebrated and enabled hispedophilia.
Mr. Matzneff’s win was engi-neered by an elite fully aware ofhis pedophilia, which he had bra-zenly defended for decades. His
powerful editor and friends sat onthe jury. “We thought he wasbroke, he was sick, this will cheerhim up,” said Frédéric Beigbeder,a confidant of Mr. Matzneff and aRenaudot juror since 2011.
The fallout from the Matzneffaffair has rippled through France,dividing feminists and seeminglyending the career of a powerfuldeputy mayor of Paris. Yet the in-sular world that dominatesFrench literary life remains large-ly unscathed, demonstrating justhow entrenched and intractable it
really is.Proof of that is the Renaudot —
all but one of the same jurors whohonored Mr. Matzneff are ex-pected to crown this year’s win-ners on Monday.
That the Renaudot, France’ssecond biggest literary prize,could wave away the Matzneffscandal underscores the self-per-petuating and impenetrable na-ture of many of France’s elite insti-tutions.
Whether in top schools, compa-
French Literary Elites Shrug at Cronyism, and Even PedophiliaBy NORIMITSU ONISHI
and CONSTANT MÉHEUT
Continued on Page 14
The telephone call would havebeen laugh-out-loud ridiculous if ithad not been so serious. WhenTina Barton picked up, she foundsomeone from President Trump’scampaign asking her to sign a let-ter raising doubts about the re-sults of the election.
The election that Ms. Barton asthe Republican clerk of the smallMichigan city of Rochester Hillshad helped oversee. The electionthat she knew to be fair and accu-rate because she had helped makeit so. The election that she hadpublicly defended amid threatsthat made her upgrade her homesecurity system.
“Do you know who you’re talk-ing to right now?” she asked thecampaign official.
Evidently not.If the president hoped Republi-
cans across the country would fallin line behind his false and farcicalclaims that the election was some-how rigged on a mammoth scaleby a nefarious multinational con-spiracy, he was in for a surprise.
Republicans in Washington mayhave indulged Mr. Trump’s fantas-tical assertions, but at the stateand local level, Republicansplayed a critical role in resistingthe mounting pressure from theirown party to overturn the vote af-ter Mr. Trump fell behind on Nov.3.
The three weeks that followedtested American democracy and
Even as Trump Claimed Fraud, These Republicans Didn’t Bend
By PETER BAKERand KATHLEEN GRAY
Separating “I Voted” stickersin Rochester Hills, Mich.
SYLVIA JARRUS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page 22
WASHINGTON — The assassi-nation of the scientist who ledIran’s pursuit of a nuclear weaponfor the past two decades threatensto cripple President-elect JosephR. Biden Jr.’s effort to revive theIran nuclear deal before he caneven begin his diplomacy withTehran.
And that may well have been amain goal of the operation.
Intelligence officials say thereis little doubt that Israel was be-hind the killing — it had all thehallmarks of a precisely timed op-eration by Mossad, the country’sspy agency. And the Israelis havedone nothing to dispel that view.Prime Minister Benjamin Netan-yahu has long identified Iran as anexistential threat, and named theassassinated scientist, MohsenFakhrizadeh, as national enemyNo. 1, capable of building a weap-on that could threaten a country ofeight million in a single blast.
But Mr. Netanyahu also has asecond agenda.
“There must be no return to theprevious nuclear agreement,” hedeclared shortly after it becameclear that Mr. Biden — who hasproposed exactly that — would bethe next president.
Mr. Netanyahu believes acovert bomb program is continu-ing, until yesterday under Mr.Fakhrizadeh’s leadership, andwould be unconstrained after2030, when the nuclear accord’srestraints on Tehran’s ability toproduce as much nuclear fuel as itwants expires. To critics of thedeal, that is its fatal flaw.
“The reason for assassinatingFakhrizadeh wasn’t to impedeIran’s war potential, it was to im-pede diplomacy,” Mark Fitz-patrick, a former State Depart-ment nonproliferation official,wrote on Twitter on Friday.
It may have been both.Whatever the mix of motives,
Mr. Biden must pick up the piecesin just seven weeks. The questionis whether the deal the president-elect has outlined — dropping thenuclear-related sanctions Mr.Trump has imposed over the past
IRAN PACT’S FATEDEALT NEW BLOWBY ASSASSINATION
EARLY HITCH FOR BIDEN
Israel May Be Countingon Gains No MatterTehran’s Response
By DAVID E. SANGER
Continued on Page 19
WASHINGTON — One firmhelps companies navigate globalrisks and the political and pro-cedural ins and outs of Washing-ton. The other is an investmentfund with a particular interest inmilitary contractors.
But the consulting firm, West-Exec Advisors, and the invest-ment fund, Pine Island CapitalPartners, call themselves stra-tegic partners and have featuredan overlapping roster of political-ly connected officials — includingsome of the most prominentnames on President-elect JosephR. Biden Jr.’s team and others un-der consideration for high-rank-ing posts.
Now the Biden team’s links tothese entities are presenting theincoming administration with itsfirst test of transparency andethics.
The two firms are examples ofhow former officials leveragetheir expertise, connections andaccess on behalf of corporationsand other interests, without insome cases disclosing detailsabout their work, including thenames of the clients or what theyare paid.
And when those officials cycleback into government positions,as Democrats affiliated with Wes-tExec and Pine Island are doingnow, they bring with them ques-tions about whether they mightfavor or give special access to thecompanies they had worked within the private sector. Those ques-tions do not go away, ethics ex-perts say, just because the officialscut their ties to their firms and cli-ents, as the Biden transition teamsays its nominees will do.
WestExec’s founders includeAntony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden’schoice to be his secretary of state,and Michèle A. Flournoy, one ofthe leading candidates to be hisdefense secretary. Among othersto come out of WestExec are AvrilHaines, Mr. Biden’s pick to be di-rector of national intelligence;Christina Killingsworth, who ishelping the president-elect orga-nize his White House budget of-fice; Ely Ratner, who is helping or-
Test of EthicsAwaits BidenAnd His Team
Aides Have Worked forUndisclosed Clients
By ERIC LIPTONand KENNETH P. VOGEL
Continued on Page 26
BALTIMORE — Zia Hellmanprepared to welcome her kinder-garten students back to Walter P.Carter Elementary/MiddleSchool this month the way anyteacher would on the first day ofschool: She fussed over her class-room.
Ms. Hellman, 26, dodged the tri-angular desks, spaced six feetapart and taped off in blue boxes.She fretted about the blandness ofthe walls, fumbled with the plasticdividers covering name tags andarranged the individual yogamats that replaced colorful car-pets. Every window was open forextra ventilation, chilling the air.
“I wonder how they’re going toreact to all of this,” she said, handson her hips, scanning the room forthe last time. “I don’t know what
I’m supposed to feel, but it feelsright.”
Ms. Hellman was among abouttwo dozen teachers and staffmembers required to return towork on Nov. 16 for the first in-per-son instruction in Baltimore CityPublic Schools since March. Thecity was the first large school dis-trict in Maryland and the latestamong urban districts in the coun-try to tiptoe into one of the high-est-stakes experiments in the his-tory of the nation’s public educa-tion system: teaching face-to-facein a pandemic.
Returning to the classroom has
not been easy; neither has remotelearning.
Educators looking to get back infront of students have had to navi-gate conflicting guidance from po-liticians and public health offi-cials. Some teachers’ unions haverefused to return to buildings untilthe virus abates, ostracizing col-leagues who dare break withthem. On the other hand, the coun-try’s most vulnerable childrenhave sustained severe academicand social harm from the remote-learning experiment. Parents,navigating their own economicand work struggles, are increas-ingly desperate.
Ms. Hellman has yearned to beback in her school building innortheast Baltimore since Sep-tember. She also understands therisks.
‘It Feels Right’: Tiptoeing Back Into a ClassroomBy ERICA L. GREEN
When Paige Myers, 5, headed to in-person kindergarten in Baltimore this month, her mother said she watched her mood improve.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROSEM MORTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Zia Hellman, a kindergarten teacher, said despite the risks, she wanted to be there for her students.
Week of Fear and Dutyin Baltimore Schools
Continued on Page 10
On April 15, the United Statesreached a grim nadir in the pan-demic: 2,752 people across thecountry were reported to havedied from Covid-19 that Wednes-day, more than on any day beforeor since.
For months, the record stood asa reminder of the pain the corona-virus was inflicting on the nation,and a warning of its deadly poten-tial. But now, after seven desper-ate months trying to contain thevirus, daily deaths are risingsharply and fast approaching thatdreadful count again.
How the virus kills in America,though, has changed in profoundways.
Months of suffering have pro-vided a horrific but valuable edu-cation: Doctors and nurses knowbetter how to treat patients whocontract the virus and how to pre-vent severe cases from ending infatality, and a far smaller propor-tion of people who catch the virusare dying from it than were in thespring, experts say.
Yet the sheer breadth of the cur-rent outbreak means that the costin lives lost every day is stillclimbing. More than 170,000Americans are now testing pos-itive for the virus on an averageday, straining hospitals acrossmuch of the country, including inmany states that had seemed toavoid the worst of the pandemic.More than 1.1 million people testedpositive in the past week alone.
At the peak of the spring wavein April, about 31,000 new caseswere announced each day, though
Virus DeathsAre Nearing
Grim RecordThis article is by Campbell Rob-
ertson, Giulia McDonnell Nieto delRio, Joseph Goldstein and MitchSmith.
Continued on Page 6
JOCKEYING Filling out his cabinet,Biden will negotiate tricky cur-rents and sharp elbows. PAGE 28
Tony Hsieh, 46, turned a shoe start-upinto an internet powerhouse and helpedrevitalize downtown Las Vegas. PAGE 29
OBITUARIES 29-30
Visionary Chief of ZapposSarah Fuller, a Vanderbilt soccer goal-keeper, became the first woman to playin a Power 5 football game. PAGE 32
SPORTS 31-33
History With a Kick
Unlike athletes in the N.C.A.A., collegecheerleaders can be paid through lucra-tive sponsorship deals. PAGE 31
What’s That Spell? Money
Late Edition
VOL. CLXX . . . No. 58,892 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2020
Today, mostly sunny, high 56. To-night, cloudy, low 48. Tomorrow,winds becoming strong, rain, someheavy, thunderstorms, milder, high63. Weather map is on Page 27.
$6.00
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