Chris Hedges's Blog, page 511

Can America Ever Cure Its Obsession With Wealth?

Photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield is an expert in Americans’ yearning for material wealth. Since the early ’90s, her work has documented our hunger for it in photography books, multiple traveling exhibitions, short films and four documentary features, notably 2012’s “The Queen of Versailles,” the story of one Florida woman’s quest to build a replica of King Louis XIV’s home.

Greenfield’s latest feature, “Generation Wealth,” involves multiple stories, giving viewers a wide view of the cultural and social forces that drive Americans to covet becoming rich above all other goals. As Greenfield explains in an interview with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer, our wealth addiction has intensified in the last few decades, influencing everything from our spending habits to whom we elect president.

“America has undergone a monumental shift in the last 25 years,” Greenfield explains in the latest edition of “Scheer Intelligence.” “The American Dream,” she says, “had really become corrupted, going from values of hard work and frugality and discipline—that being a means of social mobility that was accessible to anyone—to a culture that elevated bling, and celebrity and narcissism.”

Unfortunately, as Greenfield has discovered, the desire continues to grow. She starts the film with the stories of wealthy individuals in Los Angeles, including scenes from a bar mitzvah in a giant L.A. club with strippers, then moves across the country, then the world. She includes interviews with hedge fund managers, bankers, heirs to family fortunes and entrepreneurs, providing context for how we got here, and whether we can change.

Scheer and Greenfield discuss the decline of America’s meritocracy, the impact of venerating wealth as a positive value and how our wealth obsession led to the election of Donald Trump. Greenfield also explains what she calls “the influence of affluence, the aspiration, and, in a way, the kind of aspirational hunger, kind of disease, kind of perpetual dissatisfaction, that we really see among so many people.”

Listen to the episode below.

Meet the Mysterious Fixer Who Negotiated Syria Out of Seven Years of War

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the reconciliation process in Syria.

BEIRUT – After seven years of grinding war, the Syrian government has achieved victory. According to current and former international officials and diplomats as well as UN officials, credit or blame for the Syrian government’s recent victories in East Ghouta and then in the south — along with the tacit acceptance these sweeping military successes received — can be placed on one man.

He is Khaled al Ahmad, a Syrian government emissary and businessman who masterminded the Syrian government’s reconciliation strategy. Al Ahmad is the secret diplomat who has exerted exceptional tolls of energy building bridges with the enemies of Damascus. Despite his central role in bringing one of the worst conflicts since World War Two to an end, he remains almost totally unknown in international media and has scarcely been discussed even among expert Syria observers.

Bashar al Assad’s victory was made clear by the middle of July of this year, when multiple Israeli outlets confirmed that Israel’s government was cooperating with Russia to facilitate the return of Syrian forces and UN observers to the pre-2011 border with the occupied Golan Heights. Prime Minister Netanyahu himself stated that he had no objection to Assad’s rule while his defense minister even allowed for the possibility of diplomatic relations between the two countries. These statements were met with embarrassed silence by the Syrian government and its allies like the Lebanese political party and militia, Hezbollah, but they marked a striking shift in Israeli policy.

With Russian support, Syrian armed forces initiated a march to the southern borders of Jordan and Israel this July. The operation turned out to be a cakewalk. This success followed the recapture of East Ghouta and northern Homs, themselves relatively easy taken compared to the grinding battles of previous years. The reassertion of Syrian government authority over the south has as its final target the reopening of the Naseeb border crossing with Jordan and full restoration of the pre-2011 situation in the south. The US has not objected, and in fact, has even sent a message to its former anti-Assad proxies in Syria informing them that they were on their own. Israel and Jordan, for their part, made it clear they had no objections either, as long the operation was strictly Syrian, with no visible Iranian or Shia militia role in the battles.

The battles in this phase were limited and not as brutal as they have sometimes been elsewhere. Many towns or rebel groups were not involved in the fighting and others quickly agreed to deals. This may have surprised some observers unfamiliar with the events that took place on the ground in 2015 and 2016, when tens of deals were struck secretly with rebel groups in the south. These deals helped thwart the 2015 Southern Storm operation launched by rebels when one of the main factions called Ababil Horan betrayed its allies. It was through this process that al Ahmad laid the foundation for the end of Syria’s war.

The man behind the deals

In dozens of towns, villages, and cities across Syria, reconciliation agreements have brought fighting to a halt. Some people call them truces, others refer to them as settlements and those staunchly opposed to them call them forced surrenders. Whatever one’s preferred label, there’s no denying that the reconciliation process has been vital to the de-escalation of violence Syria has witnessed over the past two years.

The reconciliation process was initiated in 2015, when al Ahmad carried a message to Berlin. There, he met with representatives of the Southern Front, a coalition of Western and Saudi-backed rebel groups that operate in Southern Syria and received support from the US-run Military Operations Center (MOC) in Jordan. That same message was delivered to faction leaders from the Southern Front in Jordan and the south. Some leading commanders even secretly entered Damascus to meet security chiefs before returning to the south. This series of exchanges formed the basis of the southern ceasefire agreement and ultimately became the Russian-American de-escalation zone.

Coordinated with Wafiq Nasr, who was at the time the head of security for the south and one of the most respected security officials in Syria, the offer held that the Southern Front would be allowed to administer the south on behalf of the Syrian government. One Western observer described it as offering the opposition in southern Syria the chance to become the “Palestinian Authority of the south,” a cynical analogy that painted the opposition as a toothless vassal, with the Syrian government as a stand-in for the Israeli occupation.

Pragmatic as it might have been, the division of Syria into de-escalation zones was at first opposed by then-Secretary of State John Kerry. The top US diplomat wanted a national Cessation of Hostilities instead, but when that failed, the Americans came around to the proposal. Following a 2017 visit to Moscow by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his policy chief Brian Hook, Trump personally signed off on the plan.

In a seven year war where so many previously unknown figures have gained worldwide notoriety, al Ahmad managed to remain largely anonymous. One of the few observers to pick up on Al Ahmad’s importance was the neoconservative operative Tony Badran, a fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Badran observed that al Ahmad had briefly appeared in the media in 2012 when emails to Assad were leaked showing him to be some kind of advisor to the Syrian president. Badran described Al Ahmad as “a man who would emerge at the center of the White House’s channel to Assad. Remember that name. Ahmad appears in the correspondence as an adviser of sorts to Assad; a troubleshooter active on the ground and offering counsel on issues ranging from security policy to monetary policy.”

Badran also noted Al Ahmad’s connections to then-Al Jazeera journalist Nir Rosen, adding that “Ahmad’s connection with Rosen would endure, and ultimately intersect with, other, bigger channels Assad tasked Ahmad with. Namely, contact with the White House.”

Al Ahmad resurfaced again in a December 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal, which revealed that his contacts with the Obama White House began in late 2013 when he met Robert Ford, the Special Envoy for Syria, to offer collaboration between Assad and the US in fighting terrorism. The article also revealed that it was al Ahmad who in 2015 arranged for Steven Simon to visit Damascus and meet Assad. Simon had been head of Middle East policy in Obama’s White House until 2012 and at the time of his secret mission to Damascus he was at the Middle East Institute in Washington. The Gulf-funded institute fired him after his Damascus trip.

The Wall Street Journal article revealed that Simon and al Ahmad had met “at least twice before the Damascus trip.” This counter terror approach would prove fruitful over time as the ISIS threat grew, and al Ahmad eventually brought officials from the anti-ISIS coalition to Damascus to meet security chiefs.

In addition, Simon met with his successor at the White House, Robert Malley, before and after the trip to Damascus to coordinate the message. The connection with Malley is significant because in 2015 and 2016, al Ahmad secretly met with him in the Middle East while he was still at the White House and again at a global conference called the Oslo Forum, where al Ahmad was described as a “senior strategic adviser.”

In September 2014, Malley commissioned Nir Rosen, now working for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, “a Swiss-based private diplomacy organization,” to publish an informal but influential paper on de-escalating the Syrian war. The arguments and proposals featured in Rosen’s paper – which was first reported on in Foreign Policy and is published here in full for the first time – appear to have been vindicated four years later.

(Rosen’s full paper is embedded at the end of this article.)

The paper promoted de-escalation, local ceasefires and freezing the conflict as the solution for the Syrian war. These recommendations were adopted by UN special envoy Staffan De Mistura when he proposed his Aleppo Freeze. It appears that De Mistura’s draft for the Aleppo Freeze was written by Al Ahmad and Rosen and then personally approved by Assad, only to be ultimately rejected by the opposition and their foreign backers. UN sources say it was Rosen who led a delegation of De Mistura’s staff to Aleppo to help plan the ill-fated freeze.

It’s hard not to see in these negotiations a clever and ultimately successful Assad policy of using Al Ahmad, the urbane English speaking face of the Syrian government, to influence White House and UN policy on Syria. By sending al Ahmad to Moscow and to Oslo to meet with Russians, Assad was able to manipulate the Russians, implanting his own ideas in the minds of their officials, preventing them from proposing ideas the government would not accept, and instead pitching initiatives like the Sochi talks which changed the parameters of what could be discussed in international settings.

Still, not all Western officials are enamored with al Ahmad. One Swiss diplomat, who like most people I contacted for this article agreed to talk only on a voice call on the application Whatsapp, accused al Ahmad of having blood on his hands. Others dismissed him as a smuggler and regime enabler.

In a second article by Badran, the neoconservative operative drew a more explicit connection between Rosen, al Ahmad and the American foreign policy establishment.

“Malley met in Washington with journalist Nir Rosen, who has a close relationship with the Assad regime. Following his meeting with Malley, Rosen authored an unpublished pro-Assad report making the case for local cease-fires—which have been an instrument of warfare for the regime camp. Malley distributed Rosen’s report, which, naturally, was also leaked to David Ignatius. Simon’s and Lynch’s pieces floated the approach favored by Malley and the White House in much cleaner form and venues than the tarnished Rosen.” Behind all this was al Ahmad.

In the interest of full disclosure I must admit that I met Al Ahmad’s brother, Tariq, in a 2017 reporting trip in Damascus. Tariq is an official in the reformist wing of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), part of the country’s ruling coalition that believes in a greater Syria encompassing all of the Levant. Repeated attempts to contact Khaled al Ahmad have failed, and his close partners, Syrian and Western, largely refused to respond to requests for information.

The strategy

Al Ahmad’s strategy appears to have involved two steps. The first was convincing the West and the US that there was a state and it should be preserved, the second was to support reconciliation as a way to build a wall against the spread of Salafi influence and build new local leaders.

According to Westerners who dealt with him, al Ahmad believed that reconciliation was a military tool best applied on besieged or partially besieged areas. Once an area was selected and the forces embedded there complied, the government could open trade and allow for goods to flow in. According to al Ahmad’s thinking, it would also be able to deal with new leaders who rose to power during the war or with those who previously had connections with the state. These men would be empowered as stakeholders assisting in securing peace and services. This would force people to choose between those who offered them money to fight or those who offered them money and services to gradually transition into a civilian role with less risk of death.

“Al Ahmad once told me,” said one UN official, that “history teaches us that leaders are made of those who offer their people something and power is the most important tool for revolutionary change in history.” Al Ahmad saw in the war an opportunity to reform Syria, though he was confronted by a system that resisted change. Even in 2012 when the threat against the Syrian state was increasing, he insisted that the government should still enact bold reforms. “Khaled believed that all wars were alike and only those who studied past experiences and applied it could gain the upper hand,” an EU official told me. So al Ahmad studied American counterinsurgency experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan during the George Bush and Obama eras.

Al Ahmad may not have convinced the West to embrace the Syrian government, but he persuaded key officials not to invest in more war. According to one Western critic, “Al Ahmad’s meetings with Westerners and the opposition were just a good show, and he used the reconciliations as an excuse for the West to feel less guilty about abandoning the Syrian revolution. He played on our guilt.”

Another Western critic, a UN expert on Syria with knowledge of areas that had undergone reconciliation processes, was unsatisfied with the outcome of Al Ahmad’s efforts. “The assessment I’ve been hearing from security minds in Syria is that there has been a striking calm in areas that have been reconciled, people are like the Walking Dead, but the trauma isn’t about the shelling,” the UN expert said. “The entire civil society has been blocked, it’s just going to explode. The outcome of the war, the end of the conflict, unless there is a genuine reconciliation, it’s just going to explode eventually. It can collapse any second.”

But for now, the peace has held, allowing communities to return to a semblance of normality, and for economies and social structures to begin functioning again. The eerie calm taking hold in areas that had once been theaters of carnage is the legacy of one of the Syrian war’s most mysterious figures.

Obscure origins

It remains unclear clear how al Ahmad rose from relative obscurity to become the devil’s advocate. I was told by multiple sources that his ascent was a symptom of Assad’s frustration with the inefficiency of his own system and with the dishonesty of his own advisors. The Syrian leader began to circumvent the official chain of command and appoint informal advisors who reported directly to him. While it was unusual for Assad to select a 30-year-old man who was not part of the security apparatus to be his secret representative abroad, it appears that al Ahmad was elevated into the system by an influential father. There is much confusion about his sect, but his name and the fact that he is described as originally from Homs suggest he is a Sunni Muslim, which surely helped him build bridges with the opposition. While he does not seem to respect the system or regime itself, according to those who have spoken to him, he is staunchly loyal to the president as an individual and as the only man who can guarantee the stability of the Syrian state and Syria’s triumph over the crisis.

Said to have studied aeronautical engineering, al Ahmad is also believed to refer to the de-escalation process as a “soft landing” for Syria. Thus in meetings with Western officials, including Americans, when they would inevitably bring up the fate of Assad, al Ahmad is said to have dismissed the issue out of hand. The ship of state could weather a harsh storm, but under no circumstance would he allow it to crash against the hard rocks of regime change.

Another reason for al Ahmad’s emergence appears to be that he is simply the only man available for the job. Syria’s diplomats and intelligence officials lack the flexibility and finesse to talk to Westerners without sounding like ossified Baathist ideologues. Here too Assad demonstrated a clever approach. Knowing that his traditional representatives would alienate their interlocutors, he needed someone who could speak for him and cast him in a favorable light. Al Ahmad, say those who know him, is an avid consumer of books and articles in English and Arabic. While he is loosely associated with the Syrian nationalism of the SSNP, he has demonstrated a pragmatic approach shorn of ideological bonds. His sensibilities stand in strong contrast to Syrian government officials who have relied on local news that reinforces their worldview and hardens their outlook.

The withdrawal of international diplomats from Syria also meant that government officials only talked to a handful of emissaries from places like Algeria, China, Russia, North Korea and Cuba. One European diplomat compared al Ahmad to Ronaldo, the soccer striker who carries the otherwise unimpressive Portuguese national team on his back.

Al Ahmad appears not to be on a sanctions list, allowing him frequent travel to Europe, where he has met with officials in multiple governments. Members of the armed opposition have met him in different European cities including Berlin, Geneva and Oslo. On top of bringing Steve Simon and other Western officials to Syria, he’s brought opposition leaders to Damascus, both civilian and military.

Al Ahmad was frequently sought out by insurgents and opposition members seeking to make a deal with the government. He was also regularly invited to international conferences in Oslo, Moscow and elsewhere to explain the government point of view in logical and measured terms. He also provided special briefings for UN special envoys to Syria Ibrahimi and De Mistura, as well as Jeffrey Feltman, the former State Department official who until recently headed the UN’s Department of Political Affairs.

Al Ahmad’s years of outreach and marketing on behalf of the government didn’t lead to radical change in the policies of the enemies of Damascus, but they prevented more radical policies from being adopted. Indeed, his efforts helped normalize the idea of de-escalation, reconciliation, local ceasefires, and decentralization as alternatives to endless war. In Western capitals divided in debates between Syria hawks and those who were more skeptical of regime change, al Ahmad offered the pragmatists crucial arguments to help prevent the pursuit of maximalist policies. His work was thus crucial in persuading an Obama administration that knew de-escalation was the only solution but couldn’t admit it for political reasons.

Likewise, when NGOs and humanitarian organizations needed advice, visas or a guide for working in Syria, al Ahmad often facilitated their work. And when when international media touched down in Damascus, he encouraged them to portray daily life in government-held areas and generate more balanced coverage. Many Western officials would deny meeting al Ahmad, even as they desperately sought him out. For them, he was a trusted guide to Damascus and a counter-weight to the rumor-mongering and propaganda spread by their Turkey-based colleagues, who had “gone native,” along with a cartoonishly biased Western media that has relied exclusively on a carefully cultivated network of opposition activists.

Life returns to normal

I caught a glimpse of the consequences of al Ahmad’s efforts last summer when I visited several areas in Syria that have reconciled with the government.

One of the most genuine reconciliations to take place was in Hammeh, a Sunni suburb of Damascus formerly under rebel control. Then there was Qudsaya, also an outlying area Damascus that had been controlled by the armed opposition. These suburban areas were the first to be fully normalized, meaning the siege was totally removed and a free flow of goods and people were allowed. They were also freed from unregulated militias and their weapons. In a deal organized by the then-head of the National Defense Forces in Damascus, Fadi Saqr, the opposition was given a choice to stay and receive an amnesty that guaranteed that none of the security agencies would arrest them. Their other option was to receive safe passage further north to opposition held areas, a practice pioneered in Homs in 2014.

During Ramadan of 2017, a group of Syrian youths from Hammeh went to the orphanage of the neighboring poor Alawite suburb, Jebel Wurud, to deliver presents to the children, many of whose parents were killed during the fighting. The residents of Jebel Wurud, who up until a few months earlier had been enforcing a government-imposed siege on Hammeh, were astonished. The next day the young people in Hammeh held a children’s festival on a patch of land in the valley between the two mountain villages that had been a no man’s land during the fighting. As people from Jebel Wurud passed by the area to buy bread at a nearby government-run bakery, they and their children, though somewhat cautious and suspicious at first, eventually joined the fun. Inspired by the kind gesture from Hammeh’s youth, a group of young people from Jebel Wurud visited Hammeh the day after the festival, bearing gifts for Hammeh’s orphans.

“We focused on the families who suffered from this crisis from both areas,” explained Ebrahim Fatouh, a Hammeh local who helped lead the activity. “We got them together, especially the mothers who lost their children.”

Ebrahim, a 23-year-old freelance graphic designer born and raised in Hammeh, is public relations manager of Temkeen, which means empowerment in Arabic. Temkeen is a civil society group established by Ebrahim and his friends back in 2016 to help repair Hammeh’s social fabric. But it wasn’t until after the fighting ended that Temkeen was able to do anything truly effective.

“From 2012 to 2017, until the reconciliation, these villages were fighting,” said Ebrahim. The truce had allowed the necessary space for him and his friends to get to work. Hammeh is but one example.

Hammeh is an extension of Qudsaya, an even larger Damascus suburb that reconciled with the government as part of the Hammeh negotiations last year. In early 2017, residents of Hammeh kicked out the armed groups inhabiting the town and reconciled with the government after lengthy and arduous negotiations.

Hammeh and Qudsaya were held initially by the FSA — in Hammeh the rebel forces included some fighters affiliated with Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra. During ceasefires in Qudsaya, fighters from Hammeh would often spoil the truce by launching attacks on government areas. This infuriated the government and the residents of Qudsaya and Hammeh. Ultimately the siege tactics imposed by the government on these areas worked. Nobody was forced to leave, they were given the choice of either remaining in the Syria of President Assad or leaving to insurgent-held areas in the north.

An estimated 300 insurgents, some 30 percent of the rebel fighters in Hammeh, as well as some of the civilian elements of the insurgency political administration, chose to stay and receive amnesty from the Syrian government in exchange for handing over their weapons. For those who stayed, checkpoints were removed and life was normalized, including for the men who were given amnesties.

Residents in Hammeh say that those given amnesty were able to return to their ordinary lives and now they come and go as they please. While they are looked upon with suspicion by some locals, there haven’t been any problems except for one verbal skirmish during Ramadan. The government got involved and mediated and those involved promised it wouldn’t happen again.

Compared to other areas that came under opposition control, Hammeh endured little physical damage. On the way into Hammeh, I drove by what used to be the Barada beer factory. It was in ruins, destroyed by Al Nusra, which deems alcohol to be anti-Islamic. All that remained were mounds of broken green beer bottles. There were some damaged residential buildings strategically located at the top of the mountain that overlooks Hammeh, which insurgents had captured in an effort to control the entire town. Bullet holes from sniper fire could be spotted on the exterior of some homes and shops. But for the most part the town was still in good shape. And reconstruction on the damaged buildings had already begun when I was visiting.

Hammeh had been reintegrated into the city suburbs, so people and commerce flowed freely. There was a checkpoint at the entrance to the town to check for weapons and car bombs, but it was relaxed and easy to move back and forth. The men in charge of the checkpoints were locals from Hammeh who were hand selected by the local reconciliation committee, demonstrating some of the local autonomy that exists in Hammeh due to compromises by the government.

“The problem wasn’t the protests, it was sectarianism”

The important thing about Hammeh is how organic the reconciliation process was, with locals working hard to repair the area’s social fabric through local initiatives spearheaded by young people in Hammeh, such as the children’s festival organized between Hammeh and Jebel Wurud.

The first thing Temkeen did after the reconciliation went into effect was purchase a building in Hammeh, which they turned into a non-profit educational institution called Steps Education Center to help fill the gaps in schooling for kids who couldn’t attend classes during the fighting as well as job training for adults in software development, programing, website development, IT, electrical engineering and cooking. They also hope to use these educational initiatives to undo the damage from Islamist ideology spread by the armed groups.

What was most striking during my visit to Hammeh was the ratio of schools to mosques. I lost count of the number of mosques after I reached six. I asked Ebrahim how many schools were in Hammeh. He said five, but that includes just one high school. This was a noticeable pattern in areas of Syria that fell to the opposition—the mosques seemed to exceed the number of schools.

After 2000, when Bashar al Assad took over the presidency following his father’s death, he relaxed some of the country’s anti-religious laws and thousands of new mosques were built. A senior official with the ministry of public record estimated that 10,000 mosques were built under Bashar. This number does not include the Koran memorization schools the government sponsored during this time. Many of these mosques were funded by private donors from outside the country, mostly from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Ebrahim and his friends explained to me the role of the mosques in the protests that erupted in their town and later the role of foreigners.

When the uprising began, boys would pour out of the mosques after Friday prayers to protest after being riled up by their local sheikhs, said Ebrahim.

“There were never any problems in Hammeh that I can remember until 2011,” he said, explaining how the conflict in Hammeh evolved. “When the protests started here, a lot of young men went out and protested. They usually went after Friday prayer, the imams encouraged it. The problem wasn’t the protests, it was sectarianism. Hammeh is Sunni. There are neighborhoods around it that are Alawite and Shia.”

Ebrahim continued, “In 2011 it was just harmless protests. But in 2012 it became sectarian. Within 10 days heavy weapons were coming in. In 2012, we also found foreigners here, they started fighting the Syrian army. There was a Jordanian man living in Hammeh. He fought in Iraq, then came to Syria and settled here. The Jordanian man played a role in arming the protests. Then there was the first agreement in beginning of 2013 for a truce and it lasted two years. We all left during this time, living outside Hammeh. We didn’t try coming back because it was too dangerous.”

Ebrahim fled to Lebanon, got married and then returned to Hammeh in 2015. But the situation deteriorated again. This time he stayed and joined his friends in efforts to assist his community. He spoke out against sectarianism and volunteered with charities that delivered humanitarian aid.

His activism angered the Baraa Bin Malek brigade, one of the Islamist insurgent groups based in Hammeh. Ebrahim had posted a plea on Facebook to stop the violence and accept different religions, “so this brigade threatened me, they said I know your father, where you work.”

Ebrahim was forced to flee to his grandfather’s house outside of Hammeh but soon grew tired of hiding out. “After a month, I thought I have to come back because we have to stop this ideology from spreading. I thought maybe I can change someone’s mind if I talk to them.”

But the conditions on the ground made his work impossible.

“There were two brigades active in Hammeh throughout the conflict. In the last six months, before the reconciliation, they split into forty brigades because of infighting,” he recalled. “Each one had its own particular ideology and each one thought the other wasn’t religious enough.”

The rebel groups detained Ebrahim at the beginning of 2016 and interrogated him. “They accused me of dealing drugs and spreading an unacceptable ideology and being a kafir (infidel). I used to have long hair; they made me cut it. I stopped leaving the house and stopped all activities out of fear. My only contact was with my family,” he said.

“When they started the negotiations for reconciliation there was a military operation in Hammeh,” Ebrahim continued. “That’s when I was happy, people started to understand and say we don’t want this terrorist group here. The reason this agreement works here is because people started to protest against the rebel groups. They demanded the rebel groups leave. It was the same in Qudsaya. The armed groups realized the people don’t support them here, that’s why they said yes to the agreement. They left. After that we were safe, there’s no rebels anymore. At that time, we became active again and have been trying to convince everyone to accept other people, to be inclusive. We started out just four of us. Now there are 40 people in our organization.”

In 2010, the population of Hammeh, per the census, was 25,000. The population now is believed to be even higher given the number of people who have returned in addition to the internally displaced who have moved to Hammeh.

Life in Hammeh returns to normal following reconciliation deal.

In 2016, the main street of Hammeh was empty. Today it is bustling with cars and families pouring in and out of local shops. Four of the stores on this street are owned by women. The boys point out that when the armed groups were in charge you couldn’t find a single woman running anything. In fact, women were rarely even seen in public. Nearby, the sound of children frolicking around a newly reopened public swimming pool filled the air. Not long ago, the pool served as a base for a band of insurgents.

Nir Rosen’s influential 2014 paper on Syrian conflict de-escalation by Max Blumenthal on Scribd

Three Reasons Why ‘Fire and Fury’ Won’t Work With Iran

On July 22, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed a crowd of Iranian-Americans, giving voice to a new American policy on Iran that seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the Iranian government. It would also strangle Iran’s economy through the reimposition of economic sanctions that had been set aside when Iran and five other Western nations, including the United States, came to an agreement in 2015 over Iran’s nuclear program.

According to this agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, Iran accepted sanctions on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. When President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in May, he promised to reimpose sanctions that had been approved by Congress, including those targeting Iran’s sale of oil. The goal of the Trump administration, Pompeo told the crowd, was to “get [Iranian oil] imports as close to zero as possible” by this November.

Pompeo’s address did not go over well in Tehran. Addressing a gathering of Iranian diplomats, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani asked, “Is it possible that everyone in the region sells their oil and we stand idly by and watch? Do not forget that we have maintained the security of this waterway [Strait of Hormuz] throughout history. We have historically secured the route of oil transit. Do not forget it.”

Approximately 18.5 million barrels of oil a day transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow channel of water separating Iran from Oman. The loss of this oil to the global economy would be devastating. On July 5, Rouhani commented on the American plan to shut down Iran’s oil imports, saying, “The Americans say they want to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero. … It shows they have not thought about its consequences.” While Rouhani had remained silent about what those consequences would be, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, made it clear that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz to all oil traffic.

“America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” Rouhani said, warning the American president not to “play with the lion’s tail, this would only lead to regret.”

President Trump’s response, delivered via Twitter the next day, caught the attention of the world.

NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

On July 24, the Iranian Armed Forces chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, responded to Trump’s threats. “As the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, [Iran] has been the guarantor of the security of shipping and the global economy in this vital waterway and has the strength to take action against any scheme in this region,” Bagheri said.

“As our president correctly pointed out, the enemies, particularly America, whose centers of interest are within reach of the visible and hidden defense forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, should not play with the lion’s tail,” the Iranian general said, “because they will receive a strong, unimaginable and regrettable response of great magnitude in the region and the world.”

That same day, President Trump addressed a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, seemingly a perfect venue for offering a bellicose response to the Iranian threats of action. Instead, the president offered up a fig leaf of sorts. “We’ll see what happens,” Trump said, “but we’re ready to make a real deal, not the deal that was done by the previous administration, which was a disaster.”

The seesawing rhetorical game of threat and counterthreat being played by Trump seems reminiscent of a similar approach taken late last year and early this year with North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Last August, responding to North Korean threats to test missiles capable of reaching the United States, Trump had declared that North Korea “best not make any more threats to the United States,” saying that if North Korea disregarded him, “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Trump later went on to famously belittle North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, as “little rocket man,” while Kim in turn responded by calling Trump a “dotard” and a “warmonger” whose true nature was that of a “destroyer of the world peace and stability.”

In June, Trump and Kim held a summit in Singapore, where they discussed the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Many observers believe that Trump is reaching back to his North Korean playbook in engaging in the current hostile exchange with Iran. Iran, however, is not North Korea.

What follows are major reasons why Trump is wrong if he thinks Iran will accede to his demands that it renegotiate a nuclear agreement with the United States to replace the JCPOA.

Reason One: Iran Isn’t Breaking the Law

North Korea was in open violation of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and there was (and is) widespread concurrence that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program posed a clear and present threat to international peace and security. While Trump’s hostile rhetoric toward Kim Jong Un represented American policy only, he was backed up by a global consensus that the threat from North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was no longer acceptable. North Korea was on the wrong side of the law, and it knew it.

Iran, on the other hand, had successfully negotiated a nuclear agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the European Union. Its nuclear program today operates in total conformity with the terms of that agreement. The Security Council had passed a resolution undoing the totality of the economic sanctions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear program. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA because of American domestic politics, not because Iran threatened international peace and security. As the United States moves to reimpose sanctions on Iran, one is struck by the number of nations rushing to its side to join in this endeavor: zero.

Simply put, there is no compelling narrative than can be crafted that has Iran walking away from the JCPOA.

Reason Two: Iran Doesn’t Have to Win to Win

A war between the United States and North Korea, while potentially devastating for the entire region, had only one sure outcome—total American victory (at a huge cost), and the absolute destruction of the North Korean regime. In short, if Kim Jong Un opted for war with the United States, he would be committing suicide—and taking millions of others down with him. Kim Jong Un is anything but suicidal. He built his arsenal of nuclear weapons for deterrence purposes, not to engage in a self-destructive acquisition of technology. North Korea’s ultimate goal has been to break free of the international isolation it has been subjected to; nuclear weapons were a way to secure that outcome. The Singapore Summit occurred  because of North Korean initiatives—the Olympic outreach, the meetings with South Korean leaders, and so on. Kim Jong Un was not compelled to go to Singapore—a meeting with an American president was always his ultimate objective.

The Iranian government does not trust the United States and has no desire to engage in diplomatic relations with the United States. This does not mean that the two nations cannot peacefully coexist—they can, and Iran desires as much. But throwing the possibility of a grand bargain with the United States on the table in exchange for Iran giving up its nuclear program is sheer fantasy. As such, any effort to compel Iran into diplomatic engagement by threatening it with war is doomed to fail. Iran learned the lessons of Hezbollah’s ongoing conflict with Israel, and in particular that of the 2006 war, all too well. To win the war, Hezbollah did not need to defeat Israel; it had only to make sure Israel did not defeat it. This is an ambition Iran readily aspires to—it can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, cripple the global economy and ride out any American military response. In the end, the United States will succumb to international pressure and search for a negotiated settlement, and Iran will emerge victorious simply because it survived. Iran would accept this outcome rather than surrender its hard-won diplomatic achievement regarding the JCPOA.

Reason Three: Religious Democracy

North Korea is an absolute dictatorship—Kim Jong Un need only gain the concurrence of his inner circle to move forward on ground-changing policy, such as improving relations with the United States. Even then, any voices of dissent can be—and indeed, have been—summarily silenced. Kim Jong Un has a constituency of one when it comes to getting his policies approved: himself.

Iran is a far more complex problem when it comes to making policy—an Islamic republic governed by a democratically elected executive and legislature whose decisions are subject to review by a theocracy that itself is governed by a constitution and held accountable, via elections, to the will of the people. While Iranian democracy has been openly mocked in the United States as a sham, the fact is that democratic processes have shaped the Islamic Republic of Iran since its founding. The current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has spoken of Iran as being a “religious democracy,” where the people’s participation in the government, expressed through the vehicle of elections, is indicative of the nation’s health (indeed, Iran’s 73.3 percent turnout in the presidential election of 2017, in which Hassan Rouhani won re-election, dwarfs the paltry 55.7 percent turnout in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 that put Donald Trump in office).

The JCPOA that was negotiated between Iran and the West was more than simply an expression of political will by the Iranian leadership—it was an expression of the will of the Iranian people, given voice through countless parliamentary debates and legitimized through repeated elections where the issue of Iran’s nuclear program factored in the balloting. The Iranian people would support its government refusing to bend a knee in the face of American threats; they would not support a government that surrendered their hard-won gains on the nuclear front, which the Iranian people suffered greatly to achieve.

Donald Trump lives in a transactional universe where everything can be dealt away. While this approach might work with New York City real estate and may even have limited application in international affairs, it fails where issues derived from intangible principles—something that cannot be monetized—are at stake. In Trump’s world, one can try to bribe North Korea with the promise of economic largesse or threaten NATO’s viability by placing a dollar value on continued membership. While the ulterior motives of North Korea agreeing—in principle, if not reality—to denuclearize, and NATO to increase its defense spending to 2 percent GDP per member, are probably far more complex than the zero-sum thinking that Trump’s transactional diplomacy suggests, the results are the same. But there can be no transactional diplomacy when the other side refuses to name a price, and Iran has made it clear that there is no price it is willing to accept to give up its nuclear program.

The danger here is that Trump doesn’t realize he is playing a losing hand. His bluff will be called by Iran (indeed, based upon Rouhani’s words, it has been called), but Trump will continue to throw chips into the pot until compelled to either reverse course and rejoin the JCPOA (unlikely), or force the issue and watch the United States enter a war with Iran it will not lose—but cannot win.

Will U.S. Economic Boom Complicate Curbing Immigration?

WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s priorities, low unemployment, is complicating another: curbing immigration.

With the number of jobs available exceeding the number of Americans seeking jobs, employers are looking beyond the border to fill openings, and migrants are coming to the country in search of work.

Hotel and restaurant owner Todd Callewaert is short more than two dozen workers this season for his Mackinac Island, Michigan, businesses. “You can’t hire a line cook right now, it’s impossible, even for 20 bucks an hour,” he said. “We usually fill the gap with visa workers, but we can’t even get those this year.”

The Labor Department said Friday the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent, near the 18-year low set in May, and employers are adding jobs at a faster pace than last year.

Trump has made clear employers should be trying to attract American workers through wage increases and other incentives, not filling jobs with immigrants.

“Curbing immigration is essential to growing wages and ensuring available jobs go to American workers, not foreign workers,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told AP. “As immigration curbs are put into place, more and more Americans will be absorbed back into the workforce, especially those who have been left out due to poor work history or difficult life circumstances.”

The administration has made it harder to come to the U.S. for work, legally or otherwise. Work visas are costly, complicated and limited. Large-scale, job-seeking migration through a porous border is long gone.

This summer, the administration tried to deter would-be immigrants by adopting a “zero-tolerance” policy, prosecuting anyone caught crossing the border illegally. It resulted in nearly 3,000 children separated from their parents at the border, prompting international outrage. Trump eventually stopped the separations and the government was forced by a judge to reunify families.

Still, tens of thousands of people cross the border illegally every month, many seeking asylum from violence. But often, they’re coming because of the prospect of work.

Dala Edilson Ba Juc traveled with his 12-year-old daughter from Guatemala to the U.S. — only to be separated from her at the border, reunited and deported home. Sitting at an immigration facility in Guatemala City, he said they came for work.

“I needed to try to make a better life for my family — I wanted them to have what I could not give them here,” he said. “There are many, many jobs in the States.”

Frandy Frauville, 35, joined a wave of Haitians who came to Tijuana, Mexico, from Brazil starting in 2016. Brazil welcomed Haitians after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. But Frauville grew tired of factory jobs in Mexico that barely allowed him to cover rent and food, and, lured by the prospects of better work and joining family near Miami, he lined up with his 5-year-old daughter at a border crossing.

“I’ll take whatever I can get,” he said.

And Rolando Antonio Bueso Castillo, who was separated from his infant Johan, was making only $10 a day driving a bus in Honduras. He was captured and quickly deported while his baby remained behind for five months.

He said he made the difficult journey because his brother had secured him a job in Maryland. Someday, he said, his son will ask what happened, and why he had left him in the United States.

“I’ll tell him the truth,” he said. “We thought we had a good plan to give him a better life.”

Many economists say immigration is actually good for the economy and migrants provide complementary work to the jobs Americans do. Despite Trump’s push, some business owners say they just can’t get Americans to fill the jobs.

A.J. Erskine is vice president of Cowart Seafood Group, which includes a Virginia oyster company of about 75 employees. “Entry-level is $12.13 an hour,” he said. “I don’t know how much higher we can go without being unable to sell oysters. He said the company has been in business more than a half-century, and that despite massive recruiting efforts, it can’t keep American workers.

“We just don’t have people who want to come out and shuck oysters at 3 in the morning — and I don’t blame them,” he said.

Some, like Erksine, are willing to front the cost associated with a temporary work visa, about $4,000 per employee for workers holding down seasonal, non-agricultural jobs. But the visas are capped at 66,000 annually, with 15,000 additional visas this year.

Economists say the hiring crunch could be eased in part by increasing the number of visas available during boom years, and decreasing them when the economy is weaker. But those changes must be made by Congress.

Those turning a blind eye to immigration status, or hiring people with false identification face crackdowns by immigration agents. Agents raided an Ohio garden center in the summer, arresting 114 workers and accusing the business of unlawful employment of aliens and fraud.

“It’s not worth the risk for us to hire people we’re not sure about,” said Callewaert, the hotel and restaurant owner. But a lack of staff means the business can’t grow, he said.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Virginia., a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he did not think the lower unemployment rate would weaken efforts to restrict illegal immigration.

“The irony is it makes it more transparent what the real problem of the labor market is,” Brat said, citing about 10 million Americans not in the labor force. He called for improved education and imposing work requirements on food stamp recipients to get more of these Americans in the workforce.

“The answer is not to bring in 10 million folks from abroad,” Brat said.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram in Washington; Julie Watson in San Pedro Sula, Honduras; and Elliot Spagat in Tijuana, Mexico, contributed to this report.

China Lists $60 Billion in U.S. Goods for Tariff Retaliation

BEIJING — China on Friday announced a $60 billion list of U.S. goods including coffee, honey and industrial chemicals for retaliation if Washington goes ahead with its latest tariff threat.

The Finance Ministry accused the Trump administration of damaging the global economy after it proposed increasing duties on $200 billion of Chinese goods in the second round of a dispute over technology.

“China is forced to take countermeasures,” said a ministry statement. It said the retaliatory duties of 25 percent, 20 percent, 10 percent or 5 percent on 5,207 products will be imposed “if the U.S. side persists in putting its tariff measures into effect.”

Washington imposed 25 percent duties on $34 billion of Chinese goods on July 6 in response to complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology. Beijing retaliated by imposing similar charges on the same amount of U.S. products.

Earlier Friday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman called on Washington to “come to its senses” and settle the dispute.

Chinese leaders have offered to narrow their politically sensitive trade surplus with the United States by purchasing more American goods. But they have rejected changing technology development plans they see as a path to prosperity and global influence.

The escalating dispute, with no settlement in sight, has fueled fears it might chill global trade and economic growth.

Friday’s threat targeting a smaller amount of U.S. goods reflects the fact that Beijing is running out of products for retaliation due to its lopsided trade balance with the United States.

China’s imports from the United States last year totaled $153.9 billion. After the earlier action against $34 billion of U.S. goods, that left about $120 billion available for retaliation.

The highest penalties in Friday’s list would be imposed on honey, vegetables, mushrooms and chemicals, targeting farming and mining areas that supported President Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

The list included products as varied as snow blowers and 3-D printers, suggesting Chinese authorities were struggling to find enough imports their own economy can do without.

Beijing’s earlier round of tariffs appeared designed to minimize the impact on the Chinese economy by targeting soybeans, whiskey and other goods available from Brazil, Australia and other suppliers.

Trump earlier proposed 10 percent tariffs on an additional $200 billion of Chinese imports. He told trade officials this week to consider raising that to 25 percent.

Chinese authorities warned earlier that if the dispute escalated, they would adopt unspecified “comprehensive measures.” That prompted concern among American companies that retaliation might expand to disrupting their operations in China.

The United States and China have the world’s biggest trading relationship but official ties are increasingly strained over complaints Beijing’s technology development tactics hurt American companies.

Trump’s tariffs target goods the White House says benefit from industrial policies such as “Made in China 2025,” which calls for developing Chinese competitors in robotic, artificial intelligence and other fields. China’s trading partners complain those might violate its market-opening pledges by subsidizing or shielding Chinese companies from competition.

The dispute is part of broader U.S. complaints about global trading conditions that have prompted Trump to raise duties on steel, aluminum, washing machines or solar panels from Canada, Europe, Japan and South Korea.

The foreign ministry spokesman appealed to Washington to negotiate but could not confirm reports the two sides were setting up talks.

“We urge the United States to come to its senses, correct its erroneous acts and create the necessary condition for a proper settlement as soon as possible,” spokesman Geng Shuang said.

‘Nico, 1988’: Trine Dyrholm on the Art of Bringing an Enigma (Back) to Life

How do you get at the person behind the icon? That’s just one of many riddles director had to work through in making her latest film, “Nico: 1988.” Much of the success of the project hinged on finding the right actor, of course—one who could put on the changeable guise of the late German artist without either losing herself or sticking too close to her source, one who could make something new yet somehow still familiar from a life story now long over.

Oh, and she’d also have to sing.

Luckily for Nicchiarelli (and judging by the reception, for audiences as well), she found a star who likes taking risks. Danish actor was also a versatile performer, gaining international notice with strong performances in films such as “The Commune” (2016) and “In a Better World” (2011). As a bonus, when she was just 14 she nearly claimed the top prize to become her country’s representative in the annual Eurovision Song Contest.

That took care of the acting and singing requirements, but becoming a figure like Nico is another, much trickier matter—particularly for someone who neither looks nor sounds much like Nico. Luckily for Dyrholm, that wasn’t really what her director wanted from her.

Instead, they created more of an emotional portrait than a straight-up biopic by taking an unflinching deep dive into the final years of Nico’s life. It may have helped that their subject wasn’t always known for keeping her facts straight, particularly as she slid further into heroin addition, pulling her son along for much of that ride. Even her name was a departure from the much less memorable, far more German original: Christa Päffgen.

But no small part of her glamour came from her offbeat mystery. Nico was most widely known as the singer and model who shared the stage with the Velvet Underground and ran with Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd—she of the throaty vocals and gauzy sensuality, all pouty lips and bangs, who helped create the aesthetic and the soundtrack of late ’60s New York. Many of those classics, like “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “These Days,” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” have kept their cool in the many years since.

Which was more or less the extent of Dyrholm’s familiarity with Nico before she signed on to play her. Turns out that was probably better, as what interested the filmmaker, and ultimately Dyrholm, more than Nico in her heyday was the one who emerged after that glowing moment had passed. She was many other things besides what others made of her, professionally and personally. Significantly, for “Nico, 1988,” Nicchiarelli and Dyrholm took on the version of Nico that wasn’t defined by the more famous men around her, when she wasn’t someone’s backup singer or anyone’s muse. It’s not always pretty, but that’s not remotely the point of this darkly lovely composition.

In a recent interview, Dyrholm told Truthdig about how she found her way into her role, how it was and wasn’t like others she had played, and what she thinks “Nico, 1988” is ultimately about.

Kasia Anderson: Can you tell me a little bit about the process of becoming interested in doing the part and how you decided to take on such an iconic character?

Trine Dyrholm: I got an email one day from the director, Susanna Nicchiarelli, where she talked about the project and she wanted me to do it, and she said here’s the script. I didn’t know much about Nico—I would have been like one of the journalists in the film, asking her about Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground; that was basically what I knew. So, I Googled her and tried to find out more. I was very interested when I read the script, and I liked the take on Nico—that it was Nico after Nico–and what’s behind the icon, and I really liked it.

And then Susanna came to Copenhagen, and we had a great day and night together. And she said to me, “You don’t look like Nico, you don’t sing like Nico, but I think you have the right spirit to play this character, so if you dare to go on board, let’s do our version.”

That’s basically what happened. Of course, we worked with the script, and we changed some things when I came on board, but then we went to the studio to find the voice. Not to do an imitation, that was very important for us, not to do an imitation. And I have a background as a singer—when I was 14, I was in the Eurovision Song Contest, a contest in Europe, so I could use that background in a way to work with the sound in the studio.

So, we tried out different ways of singing the songs, and we treated all the songs as monologues, in a way. In an emotional state of mind—of the character. That was key. …

KA: Not to stop your train here, but I was going to ask if the preparation for the singing was its own separate kind of project—whether finding the character and finding the voice were part of the same impulse, or whether you had to do preparation for the acting and preparation for the singing in different parts.

TD: No, I think actually it was a way to find the character—through the music. Because when suddenly I found a way to sing the songs, the character was kind of there, and I started to embody it. And then the weight came and all these kinds of things. It was really something about finding the voice. And of course, when we then had to start shooting and I had to do the first talking scenes with this voice, I was afraid that it was too much, and I was in doubt, you know, like does it work? But always when you work you’re in doubt, and you know, is it good enough?

That’s how it is always! And now we’re in New York, and I have to meet the audience tonight and I’m, “Oh what do they think? What do they say?” But that’s also the fun thing, that you risk something. I would much rather risk something than not. And if you risk something, then you’re also nervous and in doubt, and that’s part of the job. I like that. And of course, this job was by far the biggest challenge I’ve had in my career. It’s a character that is so different from me. I’m very different from this character.

KA: I imagine her being an actual person was part of the difficulty there.

TD: Of course. But it helps me in that Susanna said that to me, that “nobody believes that you are the real Nico anyway, so don’t go there.” I mean, let’s make a character. It’s not only about Nico, it’s about—it’s a universal story, it’s about a mother, an artist, a war generation, a human being. That’s very important. And then of course, I was inspired by some things that I could find on the internet, and a documentary that I saw, and her music and all these kinds of things. But basically, I mean, I’m an actress, I live on imagination, and I always have to imagine how is it to be this person.

KA: Whether or not it’s a real person.

TD: Exactly. And nobody knows how she was anyway. We do have our imagination, but what is the true one?

KA: And she was mysterious—that was part of her allure, and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

TD: Exactly, but also, I mean, it goes with all persons, that we define each other. But who knows the true story about you? Nobody! We always have ideas—“this is Trine, she is like this”—but actually, nobody knows.

KA: One of the things that I was thinking as I was watching is about the fact that the director is a woman. I appreciated how the film brought Nico out from under Andy Warhol’s wing, so to speak, and of course that was chronological as well as part of the story, but do you feel like the project itself benefited from having a woman at the helm?

TD: Well, I think that every director is different. Men and women. But the take on this film … Susanna wanted to do a film where Nico can define herself. Nico was very defined by men—back then, by Andy Warhol, by being a model, by being in the Velvet Underground, you know. And this movie is about identity. And it’s about finding your way in life. I think that she was much more happy in her later life, when she was not only the beautiful woman. I think she struggled a lot—she wanted to be respected for her art and not her beauty.

I was very inspired by an interview I saw where Nico was asked, “Do you regret anything?” And then she says, “No, I don’t regret anything—other than [that] I was born a woman and not man.” And it’s a very tough sentence. But also very inspiring when you have to create a character, because it tells you a lot of things.

It was a big thing for Susanna that she wanted Nico to have her own film and not only be a blond girl that makes a blowjob in the Doors film. She has been portrayed as just like the hip, blond glamour girl. And here you have an artist!

KA: She was a screen that others projected things onto that may not have had much to do with her.  …

TD: … I don’t know if it’s a typical female film, but I like the take on it.

KA: Did you watch footage of her while you were still in the preparation stage, or did you have a time when you had to put aside video and recordings so that you could focus?

TD: A little bit, to get inspired, and then I didn’t stick too much to reality, because it can sometimes be too narrow—because then you don’t have your imagination, and you’re like, oh, well, maybe she didn’t do like that, and then you don’t have your creative freedom.

I kind of looked up things, and Susanna sent me things that she found, and then I just grabbed things that could inspire me. And then I was also inspired by other things, you know, by some artwork that I could find, and some other physical things … that’s how I always work. I’m very inspired by a lot of different things, and I put it in an emotional bank and then I can use it when I have to.

KA: And I read that Nico’s son was fairly involved in the process as well—he became involved?

TD: Well, I didn’t meet him, but he lives in Paris. But Susanna met all the people for writing the script; that is important for the script.

KA: Do you have a favorite Nico song, and did it change from before you did the movie?

TD: Of course I knew the Velvet Underground songs, and I also knew “These Days” from her first album, before. But I must say, I know that we do another version of “My Heart Is Empty,” but I really like that song. And I also really like “My Only Child,” because it’s such a simple, very tough song.

Transcript edited for brevity and clarity.

Official Who Replaced Mugabe Wins Zimbabwe’s Presidency

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa won election Friday with just over 50 percent of the ballots as the ruling party maintained control of the government in the first vote since the fall of longtime leader Robert Mugabe.

Mnangagwa received 50.8 percent of the vote while main opposition challenger Nelson Chamisa received 44.3 percent. The opposition is almost certain to challenge the results in the courts or in the streets.

While election day was peaceful in a break from the past, deadly violence on Wednesday against people protesting alleged vote-rigging reminded many Zimbabweans of the decades of military-backed repression under Mugabe.

Zimbabwe’s president says he is “humbled” by his win.

“Though we may have been divided at the polls, we are united in our dreams,” Mnangagwa said on Twitter.

“This is a new beginning. Let us join hands, in peace, unity & love, & together build a new Zimbabwe for all!” Mnangagwa tweeted, after a week that began with peaceful voting Monday but spiraled into deadly violence in the capital Wednesday as the military fired on protesters.

Western election observers who were banned in previous votes have expressed concern at the military’s “excessive” force in the capital, Harare. Their assessments of the election are crucial to the lifting of international sanctions on a country whose economy collapsed years ago.

Shortly before the election commission’s announcement, Morgen Komichi, the chief agent for Chamisa’s opposition alliance, took the stage and said his party “totally rejects” the results and said he had not signed the election results. Police escorted him from the room.

Later Komichi said the elections were “fraudulent” and “everything has been done illegally.” He said he had refused an electoral commission request to sign papers certifying Mnangagwa’s win.

“We’re not part of it,” said Komichi, adding that the opposition would be challenging the election in the courts.

Commission chair Priscilla Chigumba urged the country to “move on” with the hopeful spirit of election day and beyond the “blemishes” of Wednesday’s chaos: “May God bless this nation and its people.”

With the military still deployed in Harare, the capital’s streets were quiet following the announcement of Mnangagwa’s victory.

By the center where the election results were announced, Charity Manyeruke, who teaches political science at the University of Zimbabwe, said she was delighted.

“There is continuity, stability,” Manyeruke said. “Zimbabwe is poised for nation-building.”

The signs that Mnangagwa’s election will be disputed appears to deepen a political crisis that was worsened by Wednesday’s violence in Harare as the military swept in with gunfire to disperse opposition supporters alleging vote-rigging.

The death toll rose to six, with 14 injured, police said, and 18 people were arrested at the offices of the main opposition party amid tensions over a vote that was supposed to restore trust in Zimbabwe after decades of Mugabe’s rule.

While Mnangagwa and the ruling party accused the opposition of inciting the violence, the opposition, human rights activists and international election observers condemned the “excessive” force used against protesters and appealed to all sides to exercise restraint.

Police raided the headquarters of Chamisa’s Movement for Democratic Change party while a lawyers’ group said Chamisa was being investigated for allegedly inciting violence. He and several others are suspected of the crimes of “possession of dangerous weapons” and “public violence,” according to a copy of a search warrant seen by The Associated Press.

Chamisa, however, said police seized computers and were looking for what he called evidence that his party had gathered of vote-rigging by Mnangagwa’s party. The evidence already had been moved to a “safe house,” he said.

Mnangagwa called for an “independent investigation” into Wednesday’s violence, saying those responsible “should be identified and brought to justice.”

Mnangagwa was a longtime Mugabe confidante before his firing in November led his allies in the military to step in and push Mugabe to resign after 37 years in power. Thousands of jubilant Zimbabweans celebrated in the streets of Harare, greeting the military with selfies and cheers.

Since taking office, the 75-year-old Mnangagwa has tried to recast himself as a voice of reform, declaring that Zimbabwe was “open for business” and inviting long-banned Western election observers to observe Monday’s vote, which he pledged would be free and fair.

A credible election after past votes were marred by violence against the opposition and alleged irregularities is crucial for the lifting of international sanctions and for the badly needed foreign investment to help Zimbabwe’s long-collapsed economy revive. Mnangagwa himself remains under U.S. sanctions.

While Monday’s election has been widely judged as peaceful with a high turnout, the deadly violence that erupted on Wednesday brought back chilly memories of decades of repression under Mugabe.

It was a reminder, as opposition leader Chamisa declared Thursday, that “‘We have removed Mugabe but not Mugabe-ism.”

The military deployment was the first time that soldiers had appeared in the streets of the capital since Mugabe’s resignation. Some Harare residents expressed frustration and exhaustion at the dramatic change from November’s exuberant expression of hope to the current tensions.

“We are a peaceful nation,” said 29-year-old Sifas Gavanga of the latest chaos. “We don’t deserve the death we saw.”

Google Search App for China Stirs Up Employee Anger Over Chinese Censorship

News broke Wednesday that Google is building a new search engine for China, sparking internal debate among employees over the ethics of selling a product to a country that censors its internet. This project has pitted Google employees concerned about privacy and free speech against executives eager to expand into a lucrative market.

The Intercept reports that the proposed search engine, code-named Dragonfly, will “blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest.”

Based on internal Google documents, The Intercept writes that Dragonfly “has been underway since spring of last year and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.”

Most Google employees had no idea the project existed. The Intercept found:

Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.

It’s an abrupt change for Google, which was once extremely wary of China’s censorship laws. Now, The Intercept reports, “the app Google is building in China will comply with the country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable.”

Bloomberg adds that eight years ago, “Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose parents brought him to the U.S. to escape communist Russia, led a dramatic exit from mainland China in 2010 after the company refused to self-censor search content.”

Bloomberg reports that Dragonfly is one of a few projects the tech giant is exploring for a potential return to China, and that CEO Pinchai, “since coming on board in 2015, “has made no secret of his desire to take the search giant back to mainland China.” Brin, Bloomberg continues, has stepped back from his day-to-day duties at Alphabet Inc., which is producing Dragonfly, leaving Pinchai with greater control.

Bloomberg observes that by contrast, Pinchai “sees China as a hotbed of engineering talent and an appealing market.”

Pinchai’s eagerness to work with China has created internal strife. One employee, who spoke to Bloomberg anonymously, called Dragonfly a “censorship engine,” saying, “People trust Google to share true information and the Chinese search app is a betrayal of that.”

Some employees took to Twitter to announce their anger. In a since-deleted tweet reported by Bloomberg, researcher Meredith Whittaker was succinct: “WTF.” She added that the company’s decision was “enabling mass politically-directed censorship of (AI-enabled) search.”

Employee response to Dragonfly, however, was not all negative. Some workers expressed cautious optimism, and even excitement, Bloomberg reports:

Some Googlers, however, posted missives of support for the project on internal message boards on Wednesday. Google’s mission of organizing the world’s information shouldn’t leave out a fifth of the planet, one person wrote in a post viewed by Bloomberg News. Another said that boycotting the country did little to change the Chinese government or “bring any positive change.”

The Dragonfly debate comes on the heels of another recent controversy when Google won a contract to develop artificial intelligence technology for the Pentagon’s Project Maven, which, as The New York Times explains, “uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.”

The Times said, “Many of the company’s top A.I. researchers, in particular, worried that the Maven contract was the first step toward using the nascent technology in advanced weapons.” Upset that at the decision, 4,000 Google employees signed a petition “demanding ‘a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.’ ”

The Times also reports that “[a] handful of employees also resigned in protest, while some were openly advocating the company to cancel the Maven contract.”

In Dragonfly’s case, its success or failure may depend not on Google employee backlash to China’s censorship laws but on Chinese consumers’ own search engine preferences.

As Bloomberg observes, while Google has stayed out of search in China, Chinese and other American companies have filled the gap. For example, “Baidu Inc. has strengthened its grip while Microsoft Corp.’s Bing operates in the country by censoring subjects and words.” Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, told Bloomberg that Google “faces an uphill battle in getting users who are now very accustomed to Baidu to switch.”

Apple Becomes First Trillion-Dollar Company

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is the world’s first publicly traded company to be valued at $1 trillion, the financial fruit of stylish technology that has redefined what we expect from our gadgets.

The milestone reached Thursday marks the latest triumph of a trend-setting company that two mavericks named Steve started in a Silicon Valley garage 42 years ago.

Apple’s shares gained $5.89 to close at $207.39, leaving the company’s market value a notch above $1 trillion — around $1,001,679,220,000, according to FactSet. Apple sits atop a U.S. stock market that has become dominated by technology-centered companies: Amazon, Google’s parent Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook round out the top five in market value.

The achievement seemed unimaginable in 1997 when Apple teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, with its stock trading for less than $1, on a split-adjusted basis, and its market value dropping below $2 billion.

To survive, Apple brought back its once-exiled co-founder, Steve Jobs, as interim CEO and turned to its archrival Microsoft for a $150 million cash infusion to help pay its bills.

If someone had dared to buy $10,000 worth of stock at that point of desperation, the investment would now be worth about $2.6 million.

Jobs eventually shepherded a decade-long succession of iconic products such as iPhone that transformed Apple from a technological boutique to a cultural phenomenon and moneymaking machine.

The stock has been surging this week as anticipation mounts for the next generation of iPhone, expected to be released in September.

Although iPhone sales aren’t rising as rapidly as they were a few years ago, Apple has been adding enough new features to persuade consumers to pay higher prices for its top-of-the line devices. In its most recent quarter, Apple fetched an average price of $724 per iPhone — a nearly 20 percent increase from an average of $606 per iPhone at the same time last year.

The price escalation has widened Apple’s profit margins to the delight of investors, who have boosted the company’s market value by about $83 billion — nearly equal to the entire market value of American Express — since the quarterly report came out late Tuesday. The 9 percent gain was Apple’s biggest two-day advance in nearly a decade.

Apple’s stock has climbed by 23 percent so far this year, compared to a 6 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

The recent rally in Apple’s stock contrasts sharply from a deep downturn in the fortunes of two social media companies, Facebook and Twitter that offer some of the most popular apps used on iPhones and other mobile devices. User growth and engagement on Facebook and Twitter has been wavering amid deepening concerns about their ability to protect people’s personal information and shield them from misinformation and other abuses that have been infecting their services.

As mighty as Apple may seem now, economic and cultural forces can quickly shift the corporate pecking order.

Consider the plight of Exxon Mobil, which was the most valuable U.S. company five years ago. Now, it ranks as the ninth most valuable, surpassed by Apple and a list consisting primarily on companies immersed in technology.

Some analysts believe e-commerce leader Amazon.com will supplant Apple as the world’s most valuable company in the next year or two as its spreading tentacles reach into new markets.

And Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco, is planning an initial public offering that Saudi officials have said would value the giant oil company at about $2 trillion. But until the IPO is completed, Saudi Aramco’s actual value remains murky.

This much is certain: Apple wouldn’t be atop the corporate kingdom without Jobs, who died October 2011. His vision, showmanship and sense of style propelled Apple’s comeback.

But the recovery might not have happened if Jobs hadn’t evolved into a more mature leader after his exit from the company in 1985. His ignominious departure came after losing a power struggle with John Sculley, a former Pepsico executive who he recruited to become Apple’s CEO in 1983 — seven years after he and his geeky friend Steve Wozniak teamed up to start the company with the administrative help of Ronald Wayne.

Jobs remained mercurial when he returned to Apple, but he had also become more thoughtful and adept at spotting talent that would help him create a revolutionary innovation factory. One of his biggest coups came in 1998 when he lured a soft-spoken Southerner, Tim Cook, away from Compaq Computer at a time when Apple’s survival remained in doubt.

Cook’s hiring may have been one of the best things Jobs did for Apple. As Jobs’ top lieutenant, Cook oversaw the intricate supply chain that fed consumers’ appetite for Apple’s devices and then held the company together in 2004 when Jobs was stricken with a cancer that forced him to periodically step away from work — sometimes for extended leaves of absences.

Just months away from his death, Jobs officially handed off the CEO reins to Cook in August 2011.

Cook has leveraged the legacy that Jobs left behind to stunning heights. Since Cook became CEO, Apple’s annual revenue has more than doubled to $229 billion while its stock has quadrupled. More than $600 billion of Apple’s current market value has been created in that time.

Cook hasn’t escaped criticism, however. The Apple Watch has been the closest thing that the company has had to creating another mass-market sensation under Cook’s leadership, but that device hasn’t come close to breaking into the cultural consciousness like the iPhone or the iPad.

That has raised concerns that Apple has become far too dependent on the iPhone, especially since iPad sales tapered off several years ago. The iPhone now accounts for nearly two-thirds of Apple’s revenue.

But Cook has capitalized on the continuing popularity of the iPhone and other products invented under Jobs’ reign to sell services tailored for the more than 1.3 billion devices now powered by the company’s software.

Apple’s services division alone is on pace to generate about $35 billion in revenue this fiscal year — more than all but a few dozen U.S. companies churn out annually.

Apple had also come under fire as it accumulated more than $250 billion in taxes in overseas accounts, triggering accusations of tax dodging. Cook insisted what Apple was doing was legal and in the best interest of shareholders, given the offshore money would have been subjected to a 35 percent tax rate had if it were brought back to the U.S.

But that calculus changed under the administration of President Donald Trump, who pushed Congress to pass a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code that includes a provision lowering this year’s rate to 15.5 percent on profits coming back from overseas.

Apple took advantage of that break to bring back virtually all of its overseas cash, triggering a $38 billion tax bill. All that money coming back to the U.S. also spurred Apple to raise its dividend by 16 percent and commit to buy back $100 billion of its own stock as part of an effort to drive its stock price even higher.

Trump Proposes Car-Mileage Rollback; States Sue in Protest

WASHINGTON — Citing safety, the Trump administration on Thursday proposed rolling back car-mileage standards, backing away from years of government efforts to cut Americans’ trips to the gas station and reduce unhealthy, climate-changing tailpipe emissions.

If the proposed rule becomes final, it could roil the auto industry as it prepares for new model years and weaken one of the federal government’s chief weapons against climate change — regulating emissions from cars and other vehicles. The result, opponents say, will be dirtier air and more pollution-related illness and death.

The proposal itself estimates it could cost tens of thousands of jobs — auto workers who deal with making vehicles more fuel efficient.

The administration also said it wants to revoke an authority granted to California under the half-century-old Clean Air Act to set its own, tougher mileage standards. California and 16 other states already have filed suit to block any change in the fuel efficiency rules.

“The EPA has handed decision making over to the fossil fuel lobbyists … the flat-Earthers, the climate change deniers,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

The proposal would freeze U.S. mileage standards at levels mandated by the Obama administration for 2020, when the new vehicle fleet will be required to hit an average of 30 miles per gallon in real-world driving.

The proposed change, halting further improvement requirements, stakes its case on consumer choice and on highway safety claims challenged by many transportation experts.

The administration says waiving requirements for greater fuel efficiency would make cars and light trucks somewhat more affordable. And that, it said, would get vehicles with the latest technology into the hands of consumers more quickly.

It’s got “everything to do with just trying to turn over the fleet … and get more clean and safe cars on the road,” said Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The administration will now seek public comment on its proposal and a range of other options, including leaving the tighter, Obama fuel standards in place.

Some Republican lawmakers supported the mileage freeze, but environmental groups and many states assailed it.

“This has to be absolutely one of the most harmful and dumbest actions that the EPA has taken,” said Healey of Massachusetts, one of the attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia objecting to the change. “It’s going to cost drivers here and across the country hundreds of millions of dollars more at the pump.”

The EPA under President Barack Obama had proposed mileage standards that gradually would become tougher, rising to 36 miles per gallon in 2025, 10 mpg higher than the current requirement. California and the automakers agreed to the rules in 2012, setting a single national fuel economy standard.

Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump called for a rollback, urging “common sense changes” if the mileage requirements threatened auto industry jobs.

However, his administration’s report on Thursday projects that relaxing mileage standards would cost 60,000 auto jobs by 2030. Those losses would hit the estimated 200,000 U.S. jobs that deal with making vehicles more fuel efficient, said Simon Mui of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

A Transportation Department spokesperson called the estimate of job losses “rough approximations.”

Two former EPA mileage officials said the administration’s proposal departed from years of findings on fuel efficiency, car safety, exhaust emissions and costs.

“They don’t offer any meaningful example of what has changed so dramatically” to warrant the reversal, said Jeff Alson, who until this spring was a senior engineer in the EPA’s transportation and air quality office. “In my opinion the only way they got there was, they knew what kind of results they were told to get and they cooked the books to get that result.”

Chet France, an EPA senior executive until his retirement in 2012, called the administration’s contention that the mileage freeze would cause only a tiny increase in climate-changing exhaust emissions “bogus.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown said his state “will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible.”

The Obama administration had planned to keep toughening fuel requirements through 2026, saying those and other regulations on vehicles would save 40,000 lives annually through cleaner air. That argument remained on the EPA’s website Thursday.

According to Trump administration estimates, the Obama fuel efficiency standards would raise the price of vehicles by an average of $2,340. That would price many buyers out of the new-vehicle market, forcing them to drive older, less-safe vehicles that pollute more, the administration says.

Heidi King, deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said the freeze would reduce highway deaths by 1,000 per year “by reducing these barriers that prevent consumers from getting into the newer, safer, cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.”

But private transportation experts say there are so many factors involved that the 1,000-lives figure is questionable. The affordability argument also ignores thousands of dollars of saving in fuel costs for each driver over the life of a car, opponents of the rollbacks said.

Longstanding federal legislation has allowed California to set its own mileage standards given the choking smog that still sometimes blankets Los Angeles and other central and Southern California valley cities.

More than a dozen states follow California’s standards, amounting to about 40 percent of the country’s new-vehicle market.

A drawn-out legal battle over the standards could hurt the auto industry as it tries to plan for coming model years.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a main industry group, sought to stave off any dispute between California and the federal government that could split the U.S. car market: “We urge California and the federal government to find a common sense solution that sets continued increases in vehicle efficiency standards while also meeting the needs of American drivers.”

In 2012, when the standards were first adopted, cars were about 50 percent of new-vehicle sales. Now they’re only about one-third, with less-efficient trucks and SUVS making up the rest.

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Tom Krisher reported from Detroit. Don Thompson contributed from Sacramento.