Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
BOOKS ON WINEREAD BETWEENTHE VINESBACK PAGE | LIVING
“There is no alternative. Solar energy is a blessing from God.”
When the Syrian government attackedtheir village, Radwan al-Shimali’s fam-ily hastily threw clothes, blankets andmattresses into their truck and sped offto begin new lives as refugees, leavingbehind their house, farmland and televi-sion.
Among the belongings they kept wasone prized technology: the solar panelnow propped up on rocks next to the tat-tered tent they call home in an olivegrove near the village of Haranabush innorthwestern Syria.
“It is important,” Mr. al-Shimali saidof the 270-watt panel, his family’s solesource of electricity. “When there is sunduring the day, we can have light atnight.”
An unlikely solar revolution of sortshas taken off in an embattled, rebel-con-trolled pocket of northwestern Syria,
where large numbers of people whoselives have been upended by the coun-try’s 10-year-old civil war have em-braced the sun’s energy simply becauseit is the cheapest source of electricityaround.
Solar panels, big and small, old and
new, are seemingly everywhere in IdlibProvince on Syria’s border with Turkey,rigged up in twos and threes on the roofsand balconies of apartment buildings,perched atop refugee tents andmounted near farms and factories onhuge platforms that rotate to follow the
sun across the sky.Many in the West view solar panels as
a sign of affluence, and wealthy coun-tries like the United States have in-vested billions of dollars to promote al-ternative energy.SYRIA, PAGE 4
Solar panels in Binnish, Syria. People whose lives have been upended by 10 years of war have embraced solar power simply because it is the cheapest source of energy around.PHOTOGRAPHS BY IVOR PRICKETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Syria’s surprising solar boom
A battery attached to solar panels at Ahmed Bakkar’s home in the city of Idlib. “It works for us because it’s free energy,” he said.
SYRIA DISPATCHHARANABUSH, SYRIA
BY BEN HUBBARD
Rebel-held enclavescut off from the power gridare turning to the sun
Aleppo
IDLIB
Haranabush
Al-Dana
Binnish
TURKEY
SYRIA
LEBANON 2 0 M I L ES
2 0 M I L ES
SYRIA
TURKEY
IRAQDamascus
Euphrates R.
Detail area
THE NEW YORK TIMES
..
INTERNATIONAL EDITION | FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2021
80 IS THE NEW 60IT’S NOT JUSTABOUT EXERCISEPAGE 16 | WELL
BASEBALL IN BRITAINAFTER A CRASS TWEET,A TOP OFFICIAL QUITSPAGE 17 | SPORTS
The first time I understood what it isthat the composer Nicholas Britell doesfor a film — understood with my wholebody — I was in his studio, listening to amistake he had made and the way hehad fixed it.
Earlier, in a cafe off Lincoln Center inNew York, I had asked him about theprocess of making “Moonlight,” the Os-car-winning coming-of-age story hescored for Barry Jenkins.
Britell told me about a scene in whichthe protagonist’s mentor teaches him toswim.
“I was looking at the sequence like,‘Oh, Juan and Little swim,’” Britell said.“It’s a beautiful moment. This will be
something special he can carry withhim.”
So Britell wrote a sweet piece in F ma-jor, an orchestral swell with a clarinetsinging a variation on Little’s theme ontop. He played it for Jenkins. The re-sponse was a visceral “nope.”
Jenkins urged him to think of thescene as a spiritual baptism. This wasthe first day of the rest of Little’s life.“And I still get moved even just thinkingabout it,” Britell said. “Because I imme-diately knew.”
He began improvising somethingdarker, with the virtuosic feeling of a ca-denza. “I was playing it on my keyboardwith a kind of fake violence,” he said.“Barry was directing me from thecouch. And so right there, I just made itin front of him.”
In his studio, Britell played me thescene. First he cued up his original at-tempt — tender movie music that couldhave scored any rite of passage. Nextwas “Middle of the World,” the music hemade with Jenkins. The violin plays jolt-ing waves of arpeggios, wild and exhila-rating. Little vanishes into the ocean,
Juan holding him but somehow not pro-tecting him, initiating him into a kind ofviolent abandon.
The studio, in an apartment overlook-ing the Hudson River, is dark, and Britelloften works with the lights off. Heshares the apartment with his wife, thecellist Caitlin Sullivan. There are book-shelves and vintage movie posters onthe walls — “Chariots of Fire” greetsyou at the entrance.
Last year, in February, Britell invitedme to watch him and Jenkins at work.The two hadn’t previously allowed any-one to sit in on their sessions. They werestill early in their work on “The Under-ground Railroad” — a new 10-part serieson Amazon that is based on the novel byColson Whitehead.
The first piece he played for me at thesession was a dark piano sequence onlya few bars long, circling the drain of afew dissonant notes. “One of the thingswe keep discovering is, for some reason,pianos,” he said. “Really specific pianos,like slightly warped.” He played anothersequence to demonstrate. “It’s felted” —BRITELL, PAGE 2
His film scores create their own sceneFROM THE MAGAZINE
New ways of writingkeep Nicholas Britell in demand for his music
BY JAMIE FISHER
Through music, Nicholas Britell helpsdirectors feel what they can’t explain.
HENRY NICHOLLS/REUTERS
The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.
On the outskirts of Guiyang, a city in apoor, mountainous province in south-western China, men in hard hats re-cently put the finishing touches on awhite building a quarter-mile long withfew windows and a tall surroundingwall. There was little sign of its purpose,apart from the flags of Apple and Chinaflying out front, side by side.
Inside, Apple was preparing to storethe personal data of its Chinesecustomers on computer servers run by astate-owned Chinese firm.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, hassaid the data is safe. But at the data cen-ter in Guiyang, which Apple hopedwould be completed by next month, andanother in the Inner Mongolia region,Apple has largely ceded control to theChinese government.
Chinese state employees physicallymanage the computers. Apple aban-doned the encryption technology it usedelsewhere after China would not allowit. And the digital keys that unlock infor-mation on those computers are stored inthe data centers they’re meant to se-cure.
Internal Apple documents reviewedby The New York Times, interviewswith 17 current and former Apple em-ployees and four security experts, andnew filings made in a court case in theUnited States this month provide rareinsight into the compromises Mr. Cookhas made to do business in China. Theyoffer an extensive inside look — manyaspects of which have never been re-ported before — at how Apple has givenin to escalating demands from the Chi-nese authorities.
Two decades ago, as Apple’s opera-tions chief, Mr. Cook spearheaded thecompany’s entrance into China, a movethat helped make Apple the most valu-able company in the world and madehim the heir apparent to Steve Jobs. Ap-ple now assembles nearly all of its prod-ucts and earns a fifth of its revenue inthe China region. But just as Mr. Cookfigured out how to make China work forApple, China is making Apple work forthe Chinese government.
Mr. Cook often talks about Apple’scommitment to civil liberties and pri-vacy. But to stay on the right side of Chi-nese regulators, his company has putthe data of its Chinese customers at riskand has aided government censorshipin the Chinese version of its App Store.After Chinese employees complained, iteven dropped the “Designed by Apple inCalifornia” slogan from the backs ofiPhones.APPLE, PAGE 8
What Appleswallows to get aheadin ChinaGUIYANG, CHINA
It gains billions in profitsby going along with a surveillance state
BY JACK NICAS, RAYMOND ZHONG AND DAISUKE WAKABAYASHIIf you oppose war crimes only by your
enemies, it’s not clear that you actuallyoppose war crimes.
That’s a thought worth wrestlingwith as many experts suggest thatboth Hamas and Israel are engaging incrimes of war in the current Gazaconflict. For the same reason that wedeplore Hamas’s shelling of Israel,shouldn’t we also demand that PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israelaccept a cease-fire and stop bombingsthat kill far greater numbers of inno-cents?
The United States was the firstcountry to recognize Israel upon itsfounding in 1948, and one of the fewthings that Democrats and Republi-
cans have mostlyagreed on over thedecades is unwaver-ing support for Is-rael.
“The deep bondsof friendship be-tween the U.S. andIsrael remain asstrong and unshak-
able as ever,” President Barack Obamawrote soon after taking office.
Yet today, especially within theDemocratic Party, those bonds areshaking as Netanyahu resists a cease-fire in Gaza. He leaves Americanswondering: Why should our tax dollarssubsidize a rain of destruction that haskilled scores of children, damaged 17hospitals and clinics and forced 72,000people to flee their homes?
President Biden has blocked theUnited Nations Security Council fromcalling for a cease-fire. He apparentlybelieves that he can accomplish morewith private diplomacy than withpublic rebukes. “Progress occurs in theMiddle East when everyone knowsthere is simply no space between theUnited States and Israel,” Biden said in2010.
Alas, it’s difficult to spot this“progress.” Netanyahu has used Amer-ican cover to expand settlements andpretty much destroy any hope of atwo-state solution. He has winked atdomestic extremism, so that at least100 new WhatsApp groups in Israel(with names like “Death to Arabs”)encourage violence against Palestin-ians. And now he is bombing Gaza andigniting street fighting that PresidentReuven Rivlin of Israel has called a
The bondswith Israelare shaking
OPINION
The U.S. allyin the MiddleEast might“win” inGaza, andlose America.
KRISTOF, PAGE 15
Nicholas Kristof
The weekend paper that weighs every word.Award-winning news, opinion, lifestyle, culture and more. In one concise paper.
Pick up the Weekend Edition.
Y(1J85IC*KKOKKR( +,!"!?!$!z
Issue NumberNo. 42,977Andorra € 5.00
Antilles € 4.50Austria € 4.00Belgium € 4.00Bos. & Herz. KM 5.80Britain £ 2.60
Cameroon CFA 3000Croatia KN 24.00Cyprus € 3.40Czech Rep CZK 115Denmark Dkr 37Estonia € 4.00
Finland € 4.00France € 4.00Gabon CFA 3000Germany € 4.00Greece € 3.40Hungary HUF 1100
Israel NIS 14.00/Friday 27.50
Israel / Eilat NIS 12.00/ Friday 23.50
Italy € 3.80Ivory Coast CFA 3000
Sweden Skr 50Switzerland CHF 5.20Syria US$ 3.00The Netherlands € 4.00Tunisia Din 8.00Turkey TL 18
Poland Zl 19Portugal € 3.90Republic of Ireland ¤� 3.80Serbia Din 300Slovenia € 3.40Spain € 3.90
Luxembourg € 4.00Malta € 3.80Montenegro € 3.40Morocco MAD 35Norway Nkr 40Oman OMR 1.50
NEWSSTAND PRICES
U.A.E. AED 15.00United States Military
(Europe) $ 2.30
