stoke armenian conflict resignation and despair · 2020. 10. 19. · umns of fighters, armenians...

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When a devastating earth-quake hit Haiti in 2010, a teenagernamed John Peter was playingbasketball in the yard outside thesmall orphanage where he lived.He felt the earth bounce belowhim. He heard screams andwatched a mushroom cloud ofdust rising over the walls.

Two weeks later, he and 18 otherchildren from the orphanage

boarded a charter plane in themiddle of the night as part of anAmerican humanitarian effort.They landed in Sanford, Fla., tostart new lives, in a new country,with new families.

“I saw the disaster and death allaround. Dead moms, holding their

dead kids,” John Peter Schlecht,now 23 and known as “JP,” saidfrom St. Cloud, Minn., where heworks three jobs. “I got out ofthere, but all those people wereleft. They didn’t get the chance Igot.”

Since then, the children haveheaded in all directions. Some arestudying in high school or college,or making a living of their own.Others have struggled with prob-lems brought on by the early hard-

From an Orphanage in Haiti to the Rose GardenBy CATHERINE PORTER

and SERGE F. KOVALESKI

Continued on Page A20

After Ordeal, New Lifefor Barrett Children

Samantha Kacmarik, a Latinacollege student in Las Vegas, saidthat four years ago, she hadviewed Hillary Clinton as part of acorrupt political establishment.

Flowers Forever, a Black trans-gender music producer in Mil-waukee, said she had thoughtMrs. Clinton wouldn’t change any-thing for the better.

And Thomas Moline, a white re-tired garbageman in Minneapolis,said he simply hadn’t trusted her.

None of them voted for Mrs.Clinton. All of them plan to vote forJoseph R. Biden Jr.

“I knew early that Trump defi-nitely wasn’t the guy for me,” re-called Mr. Moline, an independ-ent. But when it came to Mrs. Clin-ton, “I guess I had a bad taste inmy mouth from her husband’seight years in office.” He voted forGary Johnson, the Libertariancandidate, a decision he regrets,and he feels at ease backing Mr.Biden.

“I identify more with Biden —whether that’s being a male chau-vinist, or whatever you want tocall me,” he said.

The point seems almost too ob-vious to note: Mr. Biden is notMrs. Clinton. Yet for many Demo-crats and independents who satout 2016, voted for third-partycandidates or backed Mr. Trump,it is a rationale for their vote thatcomes up repeatedly: Mr. Biden is

They SpurnedClinton in 2016,But Like Biden

By LISA LERERand REID J. EPSTEIN

ALLAN TANNENBAUM/GETTY IMAGES

We tour the neighborhood where the Ramones, above, and many others have held court. Page C1.The East Village, Old and New

STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Ka-rabakh — On the front line, thestench is overwhelming. The re-mains of fighters have been lyingthere for weeks.

In the trenches, there is fear.The Armenians are defenselessagainst the Azerbaijani dronesthat hover overhead and kill atwill.

At the military graveyard, bull-dozers have scraped away a hill-side. It is already lined with tworows of new graves, along withsoon-to-be-filled, freshly dug, rec-tangular holes.

The three-week-old conflict be-tween Azerbaijan and Armeniaover a disputed territory in theCaucasus Mountains, where Eu-rope meets Asia, has settled into abrutal war of attrition, soldiersand civilians said in interviewshere on the ground in recent days.

Azerbaijan is sacrificing col-umns of fighters, Armenians say,to eke out small territorial gains inthe treacherous terrain of Nagor-no-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenianenclave that is part of Azerbaijanunder international law.

Civilians who have stayed be-hind live in their damp and un-heated basements, converted inrecent weeks with makeshiftkitchens, and where some sleepon flattened cardboard boxes. Theshelling and missile barrages intothe towns in Nagorno-Karabakhand Azerbaijan have killed dozensof civilians and hundreds of sol-diers and have filled the nightswith terrifying flashes and booms.

In the city of Stepanakert in Na-gorno-Karabakh, which I visitedover four days last week with thephotographer Sergey Ponomarev,artillery fire could often be heardin the distance. Late Friday thecity itself came under attack. Airraid sirens and bangs and thudssounded throughout the night, ashotel guests rushed repeatedly forthe basement. At least one of theshells landed by the city center, il-

luminating my hotel window witha bolt of yellow light.

Manushak Titanyan, an archi-tect in Nagorno-Karabakh, has al-ready lost one of her buildings tothe violence: the House of Culturein the hilltop town of Shusha, itsroof gone, a piece of it stuck in atree across the street, the plushred seats coated in dust, the stagecurtain tangled amid the rubble.

Now she fears for her threesons, the youngest 18, who are atthe front lines. She has kept her-self busy by sewing military uni-forms in an emergency workshopthat the authorities set up in a fac-tory in Stepanakert, the capital ofNagorno-Karabakh. When thebuilding shook on a recent after-noon with the rumble of a nearbyexplosion, she barely skipped abeat and kept on sewing.

“War is probably the most terri-ble thing in the world,” Ms. Ti-tanyan said. “All the most horriblethings that man ever created reartheir heads in their most horriblemanifestation.”

For the region’s populace, thewar is a continuation of on-off vio-lent strife over both territory andhistory, with roots going backmore than a century. Armeniansand Azerbaijanis lived side byside in the Soviet days, until con-flict over the disputed mountainterritory called Nagorno-Kara-bakh exploded in the late 1980sinto riots, expulsions and a years-long war.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been ef-fectively independent since Ar-menia won the war in 1994, afterthe deaths of some 20,000 and thedisplacement of about a millionpeople, mostly Azerbaijanis.

Azerbaijan launched its offen-sive on Sept. 27 and began makingsmall territorial gains, backed byintense artillery fire and precisiondrone strikes. Armenia’s limitedair defenses have failed to stop thedrones, but its troops, bolstered

Resignation and DespairStoke Armenian Conflict

Battle With Azerbaijan Intensifies as Callsto Suspend Fighting Go Unheeded

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI

Armenians secluded in the basement of an apartment building in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh, a region within Azerbaijan.SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A11

In public, President Trump andhis campaign team project a senseof optimism and bravado. Whenthey meet with Republican donorsand state party leaders, presiden-tial aides insist they are fully capa-ble of achieving a close victoryover Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Nov. 3.

On television and in campaignappearances, Mr. Trump and hischildren dismiss public polls thatsuggest that his prospects arebleak. The president’s calendar ofevents is packed through ElectionDay, with aides predicting athrice-a-day rally schedule in thefinal weeks of the race. When Mr.Trump contemplates the prospect

of defeat, he does so in a tone ofdenial and disbelief: “Could youimagine if I lose?” he asked acrowd Friday.

In private, most members of Mr.Trump’s team acknowledge that isnot a far-fetched possibility.

Away from their candidate andthe television cameras, some ofMr. Trump’s aides are quietly con-ceding just how dire his politicalpredicament appears to be, andhis inner circle has returned to a

state of recriminations and back-biting. Mark Meadows, the WhiteHouse chief of staff, is drawing fu-rious blame from the presidentand some political advisers for hishandling of Mr. Trump’s recenthospitalization, and he is seen asunlikely to hold onto his job pastElection Day.

Mr. Trump’s campaign man-ager, Bill Stepien, has maintainedto senior Republicans that thepresident has a path forward inthe race but at times has concededit is narrow.

Some midlevel aides on thecampaign have even begun in-quiring about employment onCapitol Hill after the election, ap-parently under the assumptionthat there will not be a second

Trump Stays Upbeat, but Campaign Turns GrimBy MAGGIE HABERMANand ALEXANDER BURNS

Continued on Page A15

Sobering View SpreadsAmong Strategistsas Election Nears

The instructions were clear:Write an article calling out SaraGideon, a Democrat running for ahotly contested U.S. Senate seat inMaine, as a hypocrite.

Angela Underwood, a freelancereporter in upstate New York,took the $22 assignment overemail. She contacted the spokes-man for Senator Susan Collins, theRepublican opponent, and wrotean article on his accusations thatMs. Gideon was two-faced for crit-icizing shadowy political groupsand then accepting their help.

The short article was publishedon Maine Business Daily, a seem-ingly run-of-the-mill news web-site, under the headline “Sen.Collins camp says House SpeakerGideon’s actions are hypocritical.”It extensively quoted Ms. Collins’sspokesman but had no commentfrom Ms. Gideon’s campaign.

Then Ms. Underwood receivedanother email: The “client” whohad ordered up the article, her edi-tor said, wanted it to add more de-tail.

The client, according to emailsand the editing history reviewedby The New York Times, was a Re-publican operative.

Maine Business Daily is part ofa fast-growing network of nearly1,300 websites that aim to fill avoid left by vanishing local news-papers across the country. Yet thenetwork, now in all 50 states, isbuilt not on traditional journalismbut on propaganda ordered up bydozens of conservative thinktanks, political operatives, corpo-rate executives and public-rela-tions professionals, a Times inves-tigation found.

The sites appear as ordinary lo-cal-news outlets, with names likeDes Moines Sun, Ann ArborTimes and Empire State Today.They employ simple layouts andarticles about local politics, com-munity happenings and some-times national issues, much likeany local newspaper.

But behind the scenes, many ofthe stories are directed by politi-cal groups and corporate P.R.firms to promote a Republicancandidate or a company, or tosmear their rivals.

The network is largely over-seen by Brian Timpone, a TV re-

HOW AGENDAS FILLLOCAL NEWS VOID

Clients Pay for FavorablePolitical Coverage

By DAVEY ALBAand JACK NICAS

Continued on Page A18 Continued on Page A21

Lebanon’s economic crisis has madecannabis and hashish so unprofitablethat farmers have given up. PAGE A9

INTERNATIONAL A9-13

Durable Crop Loses Its Luster

What happens if Roe vs. Wade is over-turned? “Tremendous inequality inabortion access,” a report says. PAGE A20

If Roe Is Reversed

More than 430,000 acres have burned inColorado so far, making this one of itsworst years on record. PAGE A14

NATIONAL A14-21

Raging Wildfires in Colorado

If vacationing with other families wascomplicated, the pandemic only madeit more so. But for some travelers, theextra effort is worth it. PAGE A6

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-8

A Trip With the ‘Quaranteam’

Its players have led the way for higher-profile professional leagues in combin-ing social action and sports. PAGE D1

Activism and the W.N.B.A.

Rachel Balkovec, a coach in the Yankees’system, and other women in pro base-ball connect via a text chain. PAGE D1

SPORTSMONDAY D1-8

A Community of Their Own

Ross Douthat PAGE A24EDITORIAL, OP-ED A24-25

Rhonda Fleming was a popular sexsymbol in Hollywood westerns, filmnoir and adventure movies of the 1940sand ’50s. She was 97. PAGE A26

OBITUARIES A22-23, 26

Actress Made for Technicolor

From Ford to Target to Microsoft, com-panies are delaying a return to theoffice for their white-collar employeesuntil next summer. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Working From Home Till July

Bryan Washington’s debut noveltouches on Houston, Osaka, food andpersonal relationships. PAGE C2

ARTS C1-8

Cooking Up Something New

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,851 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2020

BEIJING — As most of theworld still struggles with the co-ronavirus pandemic, China isshowing once again that a fasteconomic rebound is possiblewhen the virus is brought firmlyunder control.

The Chinese economy surged4.9 percent in the July-to-Septem-ber quarter compared with thesame months last year, the coun-try’s National Bureau of Statisticsannounced on Monday. The ro-bust performance brings Chinanearly back up to the roughly 6percent pace of growth that it wasreporting before the pandemic.

Many of the world’s major econ-omies have climbed quickly out ofthe depths of a contraction lastspring, when shutdowns causedoutput to fall steeply. But China isthe first to report growth that sig-nificantly surpasses where it wasat this time last year. The UnitedStates and other nations are ex-pected to report a third-quartersurge too, but they are still behindor just catching up to pre-pan-demic levels.

China’s lead could widen fur-ther in the months to come. It hasalmost no local transmission ofthe virus now, while the UnitedStates and Europe face anotheraccelerating wave of cases.

The vigorous expansion of theChinese economy means that it isset to dominate global growth —accounting for at least 30 percent

Virus in Check,China Economy

Bounces BackBy KEITH BRADSHER

Continued on Page A6

The flow of refugees into the U.S. hasbeen cut, and even those who helped themilitary are being blocked. PAGE A10

No Entry for Wartime Partners

Today, mostly cloudy, high 65. To-night, remaining cloudy, patchy foglate, low 57. Tomorrow, patchy fogearly, some sunshine, high 69.Weather map appears on Page D8.

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