ROGER COHEN

OUR ILLUSIONS
OVER UKRAINE

SHERLOCK HOLMES
LONDONS FRENZY FOR
A MAN WHO NEVER LIVED

QUEEN OF THE DESERT

FOR WERNER HERZOG, A
LOVE STORYS OTHER SIDE

PAGE 9

PAGE 10

PAGE 11

OPINION

CULTURE

CULTURE

....

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2015

BRYNN ANDERSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tori Sisson, left, and Shant Wolfe in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday after saying their marriage vows. The couple had camped out overnight to be first in line to receive a license.

Haltingly, Alabama grants gay marriages

BIRMINGHAM, ALA.

Civil Rights era echoes

in showdown between
state and federal justices
BY ALAN BLINDER
AND RICHARD PREZ-PEA

It was a standoff redolent of the

bitterest struggles of the Civil Rights
era: a deep Southern state bridling at

federal authority; a maverick conservative defiantly refusing to obey court orders for equal treatment of citizens; legal confusion and pledges of resistance
from a minority group arguing that its
rights were being trammeled.
That was the scene in Alabama on
Monday, when the United States Supreme Court effectively compelled the
state to issue licenses for same-sex marriages, a day after the states chief
justice, Roy Moore, told county judges
not to, in defiance of a Federal District
Court order.

Amid the conflicting signals, some

Alabama counties began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples on
Monday in a legal showdown with
echoes of the battles over desegregation
in the 1960s.
In major county seats like Birmingham, Montgomery and Huntsville, gay
couples lined up outside courthouses as
they opened, and emerged smiling, licenses in hand, after being wed by
clerks or by the judges, themselves. But
some counties decided not to hand out
any marriage licenses at all.

Chief Justice Moores position was

just the latest drama in a legal and cultural debate rife with overtones of history, closely held religious beliefs and a
chronically bubbling mistrust of the federal government that has played out in
pockets of the United States, but which
holds special resonance here.
As the issue has steadily moved up the
chain of American courts the Supreme
Court is expected to rule on a case of its
own in June some communities in disagreement with rulings favoring sameALABAMA, PAGE 5

China sounds alarm on ideas

from West, with a big exception
BEIJING

BY DAN LEVIN

ABD DOUMANY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Casualty of war

A wounded Syrian girl at a hospital on Monday in a rebel-held

area near the capital, Damascus, after reported airstrikes by government forces.

They are out there, hiding in library

stacks, whispering in lecture halls,
armed with dangerous textbooks and
subversive pop quizzes: foreign enemies plotting a stealthy academic invasion of Chinese universities.
So says Chinas education minister,
Yuan Guiren, who has been issuing dire
alarms about the threat of foreign ideas
on the nations college campuses, calling for a ban on textbooks that promote
Western values and forbidding criticism of the Communist Partys leadership in the classroom.

Young teachers and students are key

targets of infiltration by enemy forces,
Mr. Yuan wrote on Feb. 2 in the elite
party journal Seeking Truth, explaining that some countries, fearful of
Chinas rise, have stepped up infiltration in more discreet and diverse
ways.
But the governments latest attempts
to tighten controls over the nations intellectual discourse have raised concerns and elicited rare open criticism
among teachers and students who reject the idea that foreign pedagogy and
textbooks pose a threat to the governments survival. Indeed, they note, one
of the most vocal arguments against
CHINA, PAGE 7

INSIDE TO DAY S PA P E R

ONLINE AT INY T.COM

Greece to propose compromise plan

Anchorage haunted by memories

Greek officials intend to propose a

detailed plan at an emergency
meeting with creditors in Brussels
on Wednesday, a Finance Ministry
official said. BUSINESS, 15

Sochi after the Olympic Games

Reports that HSBCs Swiss unit helped

clients avoid taxes have fed political
fighting in Britain, where the approach
of elections in May has made almost
any issue grist for debate. BUSINESS, 14

Twitter and government requests

Muslims arrived in North America well

before the founding of the United States.
In a sense, Islam is as American as the
rodeo, Peter Manseau writes. OPINION, 8

The American skier Bode Miller in a crash in Beaver Creek,

Colo., last week, that may have ended his career. The International Ski Federation approved
the use of a new airbag, but many ski racers are afraid it would slow them down. SPORTS, 12

NEWSSTAND
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NEWSSTAND PRICES

Egypt EGP 15.00

Estonia 3.20
Finland 3.00
France 3.00
Gabon CFA 2.500
Great Britain 1.80
Greece 2.50

:HIKKLD=WUXUU\:?k@c@l@a@a"

You cannot give in,

says German who won
20-year legal struggle

Europeans still opposed,

but Obama cites failure
of sanctions to slow Putin

BY ANDREW HIGGINS

BY JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

AND ANDREW HIGGINS

For anyone looking for insight on how to

deal with President Vladimir V. Putin
and the Kremlin as negotiations over
Ukraine intensify, Franz J. Sedelmayer
has some advice.
Russias tactics are always the same
drag things out so long that everyone
gives up, Mr. Sedelmayer said over a
meal of Bavarian liver soup and pork
here in his hometown, Munich, where
Western leaders ended a security conference on Sunday divided over how to
stall Russian aggression in Ukraine.
You cannot give in, he added. Russia only respects the language of
strength. Nothing else works.
He speaks from experience. Mr.
Sedelmayer, 51, has known Mr. Putin,
62, since he was an obscure municipal
bureaucrat in St. Petersburg, Russia, in
the 1990s, when the Kremlin seized Mr.
Sedelmayers newly renovated offices
in the former imperial capital.
Today, Mr. Sedelmayer is the rarest of
victors against strong-arm Kremlin tactics, having recently wrested back millions in compensation after a 20-year legal fight, replete, he says, with trumpedup charges of tax evasion, veiled threats
and repeated warnings to back off.
I think this is the first time the Russians have been forced to pay up to a
private claimant, Mr. Sedelmayer said,
savoring his success in extracting from
Russia almost three times the compensation he sought when his struggle
began in the 1990s.
Moscows dogged, and ultimately
very costly, battle to avoid bowing to a
lone but persistent German businessman shows the extent to which the
Kremlin will pursue stubbornly counterproductive strategies in the name of
defending its national interests.
Still, after fighting about 140 different
cases with Russia since 1996, Mr. Sedelmayer believes that sustained pressure
can work against the Kremlin over the
long run.
He and Mr. Putin were friendly in
their St. Petersburg days. Under an arrangement brokered by Mr. Putin, Mr.
Sedelmayers security company, SGC
SEDELMAYER, PAGE 4

President Obama said on Monday that

he was weighing providing lethal
weapons to Ukraine to help Kiev defend
against Russias aggression if diplomatic efforts failed, an issue that threatens
to divide what until now has been a
united front between the United States
and its European allies.
At a joint news conference at the
White House with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has been one of
the staunchest opponents of sending
arms, Mr. Obama said the United States
remained united with Europe in maintaining sanctions against Moscow.
The two leaders spoke after European
foreign ministers agreed to postpone a
new round of sanctions against Russia,
hoping to give fruitless talks with Moscow more time and to avert a rift with
the United States over sending arms.
As the war in eastern Ukraine is
stoked by a steady supply of weapons
and soldiers from Russia, many European capitals share Washingtons distrust of President Vladimir V. Putin but
continue to hope that the pressure of
economic sanctions will lead him to accept some sort of settlement.
The prospect for a military solution
to this problem has always been low,

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Chancellor Angela Merkel with President

Obama on Monday in Washington.

Mr. Obama said, given the extraordinarily powerful military that is at the disposal of the Russian president, and the
length and porousness of Russias border with Ukraine.
Still, Mr. Obama said, it is clear that a
set of steep sanctions against Russia
has not yet dissuaded Mr. Putin from
following the course that he is on,
prompting him to ask his team to look
at all options, including providing lethal
weapons to bolster Ukraines defenses.
I have not made a decision about
that yet, Mr. Obama said.
Most European countries, including
Germany and France, oppose sending
arms, arguing that doing so would only
UKRAINE, PAGE 4

ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS

RUBLES FALL TESTS CENTRAL BANK CHIEF

Elvira S. Nabiullina, the Bank of Russia

governor, is a staunch believer in letting
market forces have their way. PAGE 14

PARIS AND BERLIN GAMBLE ON UKRAINE

Franois Hollande and Angela Merkel

play good cops to the American bad
cop, Celestine Bohlen writes. PAGE 2

At Her Majestys spy school

Muslims in America

or e-mail usDenmark
at inytsubs@nytimes.com
DKr 26

WASHINGTON

The social media company said

government requests for users
information rose by 40 percent in the
second half of 2014, compared with its
last report, in July. bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Plans for Go Set a Watchman have

ignited fierce debate, but those closest to
Harper Lee say she is capable of making
up her own mind. WORLD NEWS, 6

Latvia 3.25
Lebanon LP 5,000
Hungary HUF 800
Lithuania LTL 15
Israel NIS 13.00/Eilat NIS 11.00 Luxembourg 3.00
Italy 2.80
Macedonia Den 150.00
Ivory Coast CFA 2.500
Malta 3.00
Jordan. JD 1.50
Montenegro 2.00
Kazakhstan USD 3.50
Morocco MAD 25
Kenya K. SH. 200
Moscow Roubles 110
Kosovo 2.50
Nigeria NGN 390

MUNICH

A slide show documents how the Black

Sea city is adapting to life after the 2014
Winter Olympics. nytimes.com/sports

As 2nd novel surfaces, plots arise

Cyprus 48
2.90
Germany27
3.00
00800 44
78
Czech Rep CZK 110 Gibraltar 1.35

U.S. leaves
option of
arming Kiev
on the table

Falling oil prices have come with bitter

memories of the Alaskan city in the
mid-1980s, when the wild economic
party ushered in by the Trans Alaska
Pipeline shut down. nytimes.com/us

HSBC fallout turns political

Andorra 3.50
Antilles 3.50
Austria 3.00
Bahrain BD 1.20
Belgium 3.00
Bosnia & Herzegovina KM 5.00
Bulgaria 2.55
Cameroon CFA 2.500
Canada C$ 5.50
Croatia KN 20.00

A plaintiff
who bested
Putin has tips
for the West

SHINICHIRO TANAKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

RESISTA NCE TO SAFETY DEVICE

CFA3.00
Northern IrelandFrance
1.50 Senegal
2.500
Norway Nkr 28
Serbia Din 250
AndorraSlovakia
3.50
Oman OMR 1.250
3.30
Poland ZI 12.20
Slovenia 2.50
3.50
Portugal 3.00 Antilles Spain
3.00
Qatar QR 10.00
Sweden Skr 28
Cameroon
CFA 2.500
Republic of Ireland 3.00 Switzerland SFr 4.30
Reunion 3.50 Gabon CFA
Syria US$
3.00
2.500
Romania Lei 11.50
The Netherlands 3.00
Saudi Arabia SRIvory
13.00 Coast
TunisiaCFA
Din 4.300
2.500

Turkey TL 6
Ukraine US$ 5.00
Morocco
MAD 25
United Arab Emirates
AED 12.00
United States $ 4.00

Senegal CFA 2.500

U.S. Military (Europe) US$ 1.75

Tunisia Din 4.300

Reunion 3.50

IN THIS ISSUE

No. 41,028
Books 11
Business 14
Crossword 13
Culture 10
Opinion 8
Sports 12

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The director Matthew Vaughn talks

about his collaboration with the
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Kingsman: The Secret Service,
starring Colin Firth. nytimes.com/movies
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