The New York Times International - 27.08.2019

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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY,AUGUST 27, 2019

BUILT TO LAST

MAKING A CASE

FOR AN $11 WATCH

PAGE 7| BUSINESS

SHO MADJOZI

SOUTH AFRICAN

RAPS HER TRUTH

PAGE 14| CULTURE

CHINA’S SUMMER CAPITAL

AMURKY BEACH BELOVED

BY MOVERS AND SHAKERS

PAGE 3| WORLD

Jamaica. This year, the government called a state of emergency to stop the bloodshed in national hot spots, sending the military into the streets. Guns like Briana reside at the epicen- ter of the crisis. Worldwide, 32 percent of homicides are committed with firearms, according to the Igarapé Institute, a research group. In Jamaica, the figure is higher than 80 percent. And most of those guns come from the United States. American firearms are pouring into neighboring countries and igniting record violence, in part because of federal and state restrictions that make it difficult to track the weapons and inter- rupt smuggling networks. In the United States, the dispute over guns focuses almost exclusively on the policies, consequences and constitu- tional rights of American citizens. But here in Jamaica, there is no such debate. Law enforcement officials, poli- ticians and even gangsters on the street agree: It’s the abundance of guns, typi- cally from the United States, that makes the country so deadly. Firearms play such a central role in Jamaican murders that the authorities keep a list of the nation’s 30 deadliest guns, based on ballistic matches. To keep track of them, they are given names, like Ghost or Ambrogio. Some, like Briana, are so poorly docu- mented that the United States Bureau of

She came to Jamaica from the United States about four years ago, sneaking in illegally. Within a few short years, she became one of the nation’s most-wanted assassins. She preyed on the parish of Claren- don, carrying out nine confirmed kills, including a double homicide outside a bar. Her violence was indiscriminate: She shot and nearly killed a 14-year-old girl getting ready for church. With few clues to identify her, police named her Briana. They knew only her country of origin — the United States — where she had been virtually untrace- able since 1991. She was a phantom, the eighth-most-wanted killer on an island with no shortage of murder, suffering one of the highest homicide rates in the world. And she was only one of thou- sands. Briana, serial number 245PN70462, was a 9-millimeter Browning handgun. An outbreak of violence is afflicting

Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo- sives has nothing more than a piece of paper with the name and details of the original buyer, according to confidential documents reviewed by The New York Times. Purchased in 1991, the Browning van- ished from the public record for nearly 24 years until it suddenly started wreak-

ing havoc in Jamaica. For three years, its ballistic fingerprint connected it to shootings, mystifying law enforcement. Finally, after a firefight with police, it was recovered last year and its bloody run came to an end. The authorities traced the serial number to the handgun’s original owner. But JAMAICA, PAGE 4

A gang member in Kingston, Jamaica. By one estimate, 80 percent of homicides in the country are committed with firearms, mostly from the United States.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

9 killings and a ghost of a gun

CLARENDON, JAMAICA

How American firearms vanish under loose laws to cause carnage abroad

BY AZAM AHMED AND TYLER HICKS

A gangster accused of a shooting and weapon violations was arrested in a dawn raid in Kingston. The government called a state of emergency to stop an outbreak of violence.

Sidney Rittenberg, an American soldier- linguist who stayed in China for 35 years after World War II as an adviser and po- litical prisoner of the Communist revolution and later made millions as a coun- selor of Western capitalists exploiting booming Chinese markets, died on Sat- urday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 98. The family confirmed the death in a statement. In a saga of Kafkaesque twists, Mr. Rittenberg was a dedicated aide to Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai as a party propagandist known across China by his Mandarin name, Li Dunbai — the mysterious for- eigner in Mao’s government. But he ran afoul of Mao’s suspicions, offended Mao’s wife and spent 16 years in prison, falsely accused of espionage and coun- terrevolutionary plotting. In the United States after his release,

he used his extensive knowledge and contacts in China to build his own capi- talist empire, advising corporate leaders, including Bill Gates of Microsoft and the computer magnate Michael S. Dell, on how to cash in on China’s vast growing economy. Still welcome in China, he took entrepreneurs on guided tours, introducing them to the country’s movers and shakers. The rebel scion of a prominent Charleston, S.C., family, Mr. Rittenberg, who joined and quit the American Com- munist Party, arrived in China as an Army private just as World War II ended. He was fluent in Chinese, was committed to Marxist-Leninist ideals, was aware of the rampant corruption in Chi- ang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government and was determined to take part in mo- mentous historical changes. For most of his time in China, from 1945 to 1980, he was an intimate of the Communist Party’s top leaders, whom he sought out in their mountain sanctu- ary, a guerrilla camp in Yan’an, by trek- R ITTENBERG, PAGE 8

Sidney Rittenberg with Mao Zedong during a gathering of Communist Party leaders.
Mr. Rittenberg was a dedicated aide to Mao but became disillusioned with the party.

COLLECTION OF SIDNEY RITTENBERG

SIDNEY RITTENBERG

1921-

BY ROBERT D. MCFADDEN

American adviser to Mao and capitalists

The New York Times publishes opinion
from a wide range of perspectives in
hopes of promoting constructive debate
about consequential questions.

In the early 1950s, a young economist
named Paul Volcker worked as a hu-
man calculator in an office deep inside
the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York. He crunched numbers for the
people who made decisions, and he
told his wife that he saw little chance of
ever moving up. The central bank’s
leadership included bankers, lawyers
and an Iowa hog farmer, but not a
single economist. The Fed’s chairman,
a former stockbroker named William
McChesney Martin, once told a visitor
that he kept a small staff of economists
in the basement of the Fed’s Washing-
ton headquarters. They were in the
building, he said, because they asked
good questions. They were in the base-
ment because “they
don’t know their own
limitations.”
Mr. Martin’s dis-
taste for economists
was widely shared
among the midcen-
tury American elite.
President Franklin
D. Roosevelt dis-
missed John May-
nard Keynes, the
most important
economist of his
generation, as an
impractical “mathematician.” Presi-
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his
farewell address, urged Americans to
keep technocrats from power. Congress
rarely consulted economists; regula-
tory agencies were led and staffed by
lawyers; courts wrote off economic
evidence as irrelevant.
But a revolution was coming. As the
quarter century of growth that fol-
lowed World War II sputtered to a
close, economists moved into the halls
of power, instructing policymakers that
growth could be revived by minimizing
government’s role in managing the
economy. They also warned that a
society that sought to limit inequality
would pay a price in the form of less
growth. In the words of a British aco-
lyte of this new economics, the world
needed “more millionaires and more
bankrupts.”
In the four decades between 1969
and 2008, economists played a leading
role in slashing taxation of the wealthy
and in curbing public investment. They
supervised the deregulation of major
sectors, including transportation and
communications. They lionized big
business, defending the concentration
of corporate power, even as they de-
monized trade unions and opposed
worker protections like minimum wage
laws. Economists even persuaded

Economists

are to blame

for this mess

Binyamin Appelbaum

OPINION

Why did
America
listen to the
people who
thought we
needed
“more
millionaires
and more
bankrupts”?

A PPELBAUM, PAGE 11

In retrospect, it was probably not a fan- tastic idea to leave Iceland’s economic fortunes tethered to an airline called WOW. Before it collapsed in March, WOW Air delivered more than one-fourth of all international visitors to this ruggedly spectacular island nation. Its credulity- straining fares — $199 round trip from New York and San Francisco — were key elements of a tourism bonanza that lifted Iceland from its catastrophic 2008 financial crisis. Now, five months after WOW’s purple jets ceased flying, Iceland is suffering a pronounced drop in tourists that threat- ens to push the country into recession. The downturn completes a cycle not unfamiliar to the 350,000 people who live on this boom-and-bust-prone island. WOW cannily exploited the financial crisis, which made the country a more af- fordable tourist destination. Then WOW helped turn Iceland’s glaciers and wa- terfalls into the backdrop for countless selfies, bringing millions of visitors and propelling economic growth. Finally, WOW disappeared, sending Iceland back to trouble. Tour companies, hotels, rental-car agencies and retailers now lament can- cellations and diminished sales in the summer high season, forcing price cuts. Iceland’s central bank has warned that the economy is likely to contract this year, prompting governors to drop inter- est rates to the lowest level in eight years. “We feel it,” said Solveig Ogmunds- dottir, 70, a retired university librarian who knits multihued Icelandic caps em- blazoned with images of puffins, selling them from a stand near the harbor in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. Her sales are down 20 percent this year, she said, a trend she traced directly to the demise of WOW. “We are getting fewer Americans,” she said. “Now we have more people from Spain and Portugal. It seems to us that they have less money.” The story of WOW Air is a classic tale of too much success yielding outsized ambitions that ultimately end in ruin. Introduced in 2011, the company was the brainchild of Skuli Mogensen, whose brash proclamations, irreverent mar- keting and penchant for adventure have drawn comparisons to Richard Bran- son, the entrepreneur behind Virgin At- lantic. Mr. Mogensen aimed to turn Reyk- javik into a major international air hub, exploiting its position near the top of the

Failed airline

pulls Iceland

economy

down with it

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND

WOW helped lift nation after 2008, but its collapse has damaged tourism

BY PETER S. GOODMAN

AND LIZ ALDERMAN

ICELAND,PAGE 8

Issue Number Andorra € 3.70Antilles € 4.00 No. 42, Austria € 3.50Bahrain BD 1. Belgium € 3.50Bos. & Herz. KM 5. Cameroon CFA 2700

Canada CAN$ 5.50Croatia KN 22. Cyprus € 3.20Czech Rep CZK 110 Denmark Dkr 30Egypt EGP 32. Estonia € 3.

Finland € 3.50France € 3. Gabon CFA 2700Germany € 3. Great Britain £ 2.20Greece € 2. Hungary HUF 950

Israel NIS 13.50Israel / Eilat NIS 11. Italy € 3.50Ivory Coast CFA 2700 Jordan JD 2.00Lebanon LBP 5, Luxembourg € 3.

Slovenia € 3.40Spain € 3. Sweden Skr 35Switzerland CHF 4. Syria US$ 3.00The Netherlands € 3. Tunisia Din 5.

Qatar QR 12.00Republic of Ireland ¤ 3. Reunion € 3.50Saudi Arabia SR 15. Senegal CFA 2700Serbia Din 280 Slovakia € 3.

Malta € 3.50Montenegro € 3. Morocco MAD 30Norway Nkr 33 Oman OMR 1.40Poland Zl 15 Portugal € 3.

NEWSSTAND PRICES

Turkey TL 17U.A.E. AED 14. United States $ 4.00United States Military (Europe) $ 2.

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