Ray Dolby, Who Put Moviegoers in the Middle of It, Is Dead at 80

By NATASHA SINGER NY TIMES

 

Ray Dolby, the sound pioneer who revolutionized the recording industry with the invention of the Dolby noise-reduction system and transformed cinema and home entertainment with Dolby digital surround sound, died on Thursday at his home in San Francisco. He was 80.

He developed Alzheimer’s disease several years ago and received a diagnosis of acute leukemia in July, his company, Dolby Laboratories, said in announcing the death.

The Dolby name became synonymous with high fidelity. For his pioneering contributions to audio engineering, Dr. Dolby received an Oscar, several Emmy Awards and a Grammy.

Trained in engineering and physics, he started Dolby Laboratories in London in 1965 and soon afterward introduced technology that produced cleaner, crisper sound by electronically reducing the hiss generated by analog tape recording.

Decca Records was the first customer to buy the Dolby system. The noise-reduction technology quickly became a staple of major labels.

Film studios began adopting the system in the 1970s, beginning with Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film “A Clockwork Orange.” Dolby Laboratories introduced digital surround-sound technology to home entertainment in the 1980s.

Film industry executives credit Dr. Dolby with enabling directors like Steven Spielberg to endow sound with the same emotional intensity as pictures. The producer Sidney Ganis, a former president of Paramount Pictures, recalled the powerful scene in the 1977 Spielberg film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” in which the mother spaceship of an alien race hovers above Devils Tower in Wyoming and communicates with scientists on the ground through a series of electronically produced tones.

“The sound of the spaceship knocked the audience on its rear with the emotional content,” Mr. Ganis, a former president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said in an interview. “That was created by the director, but provided by the technology that Ray Dolby invented.”

Ray Milton Dolby was born on Jan. 18, 1933, in Portland, Ore., to Earl Milton Dolby and the former Esther Strand. His father was a salesman. An inveterate tinkerer with mechanical devices, Dr. Dolby was interested in how sound worked from a young age and took clarinet lessons.

As a teenager, he met Alexander Poniatoff, a Russian émigré and electrical engineer who in 1944 started Ampex, a pioneering maker of audio and later video recorders, in San Carlos, Calif. Mr. Poniatoff had gone to Ray Dolby’s high school looking for a projectionist for a talk he was going to give and young Ray volunteered. Impressed with his abilities, Mr. Poniatoff invited him to work for Ampex.

“I was so far ahead in my credits that I didn’t have to worry about getting into college, so I went to school three hours a day and worked five at Ampex,” Dr. Dolby told The Los Angeles Times in 1988.

Hired in 1949, Dr. Dolby developed the electronic components of the company’s videotape recording system.

He left the company in 1957, the same year he graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, deciding to pursue graduate studies at Cambridge University in Britain on a Marshall Scholarship and a fellowship from the National Science Foundation. He received a postdoctoral degree in physics from Cambridge in 1961. While at Cambridge, he met a German summer student named Dagmar Bäumert; they were married in 1966. She survives him, along with two sons, Tom and David, and four grandchildren.

In mid-1962, Dr. Dolby saw an announcement from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in a Sunday newspaper; Unesco was seeking an expert to help the government of India set up a new national laboratory to develop scientific and industrial instruments. Dr. Dolby applied and won the assignment.

He set off for India in 1963 and traveled the country assessing its scientific instruments industry and how the new research lab might help advance it. His stint in India turned out to be pivotal to his thinking about the problems of sound.

In his free time, Dr. Dolby hired professional musicians to play at his home so that he could make live recordings using his Ampex tape recorder. He had long been bothered by the tape hiss that distorted the sound quality of the recordings; the slower the tape speed, the noisier it became.

“I was doing recording at Cambridge, and I thought about noise reduction,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1987. “In India, I had my recorder with me and thought about noise reduction.”

So, after two years in India, he decided to tackle the problem. Returning to England, he founded Dolby Laboratories. First he developed noise-reduction technology that eliminated the hiss, even at low tape speeds, making cassette players sound like high-quality systems. Then he tackled another problem: in the late 1960s, the quality of sound in films lagged far behind that of home stereos.

“Studios were using the same sound technology as ‘Gone With The Wind,’ 35 years earlier,” Walter Murch, an Oscar-winning film editor and sound designer, said in an interview on Friday. When Dolby Laboratories introduced noise-reduction and multichannel sound to cinema in the 1970s, Mr. Murch said, the technology was a game changer.

“It’s like going from black and white film to three-dimensional color high definition,” Mr. Murch said. “That’s probably exaggerated, but not much.”

Dolby Laboratories gained wide attention in 1977 with the release of “Close Encounters” and “Star Wars,” both of which used Dolby Stereo, a system for recording films in multichannel sound. In the 1980s, the company introduced surround-sound technology in television, compact discs and laser discs.

Dr. Dolby was named to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 and awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Clinton in 1997. He served as chairman of the Dolby board from 1965 until 2009, retiring in 2011.

Dolby Laboratories is continuing to explore new ways to experience entertainment; one project is focused on investing small devices with cinema-quality sound. Already Dolby audio is a feature of Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD tablets as well as some Android phones and tablets.

“Ray Dolby made the inventors the heroes of the company,” Kevin Yeaman, the chief executive of Dolby Laboratories, said in a telephone interview on Friday.

To honor Dr. Dolby in 2012, the company secured the rights for 20 years to name the auditorium that is home to the Academy Awards the Dolby Theater.

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A Plea for Caution From Russia

By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN NY TIMES

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.

The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.

If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia.

Obama's Syria Speech

 

'Sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough," the president said Tuesday night.   

My fellow Americans, tonight I want to talk to you about Syria, why it matters and where we go from here.

Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over 100,000 people have been killed. Millions have fled the country. In that time, America’s worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement, but I have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad’s government gassed to death over 1,000 people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.

On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off-limits, a crime against humanity and a violation of the laws of war.

This was not always the case. In World War I, American G.I.s were among the many thousands killed by deadly gas in the trenches of Europe. In World War II, the Nazis used gas to inflict the horror of the Holocaust. Because these weapons can kill on a mass scale, with no distinction between soldier and infant, the civilized world has spent a century working to ban them. And in 1997, the United States Senate overwhelmingly approved an international agreement prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, now joined by 189 governments that represent 98 percent of humanity.

On August 21st, these basic rules were violated, along with our sense of common humanity. No one disputes that chemical weapons were used in Syria. The world saw thousands of videos, cell phone pictures, and social media accounts from the attack, and humanitarian organizations told stories of hospitals packed with people who had symptoms of poison gas.

Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces. Shortly after those rockets landed, the gas spread, and hospitals filled with the dying and the wounded.

We know senior figures in Assad’s military machine reviewed the results of the attack and the regime increased their shelling of the same neighborhoods in the days that followed. We’ve also studied samples of blood and hair from people at the site that tested positive for sarin.

When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory, but these things happened. The facts cannot be denied.

The question now is what the United States of America and the international community is prepared to do about it, because what happened to those people -- to those children -- is not only a violation of international law, it’s also a danger to our security. Let me explain why.

If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield, and it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons and to use them to attack civilians.

If fighting spills beyond Syria’s borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel. And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran, which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon or to take a more peaceful path.

This is not a world we should accept. This is what’s at stake. And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike. The purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them, and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.

That’s my judgment as commander-in-chief, but I’m also the president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. So even though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security to take this debate to Congress. I believe our democracy is stronger when the president acts with the support of Congress, and I believe that America acts more effectively abroad when we stand together. This is especially true after a decade that put more and more war-making power in the hands of the president and more and more burdens on the shoulders of our troops, while sidelining the people’s representatives from the critical decisions about when we use force.

Now, I know that after the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of any military action -- no matter how limited -- is not going to be popular. After all, I’ve spent four-and-a-half years working to end wars, not to start them. Our troops are out of Iraq. Our troops are coming home from Afghanistan. And I know Americans want all of us in Washington -- especially me -- to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home, putting people back to work, educating our kids, growing our middle class. It’s no wonder then that you’re asking hard questions.

So let me answer some of the most important questions that I’ve heard from members of Congress and that I’ve read in letters that you’ve sent to me. First, many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war? One man wrote to me that we are still recovering from our involvement in Iraq. A veteran put it more bluntly: This nation is sick and tired of war.

My answer is simple. I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective, deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad’s capabilities.

Others have asked whether it’s worth acting if we don’t take out Assad. Now, some members of Congress have said there’s no point in simply doing a pinprick strike in Syria.

Let me make something clear: The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks. Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver.

I don’t think we should remove another dictator with force. We learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next. But a targeted strike can makes Assad -- or any other dictator -- think twice before using chemical weapons.

Other questions involve the dangers of retaliation. We don’t dismiss any threats, but the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military. Any other -- any other retaliation they might seek is in line with threats that we face every day. Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise, and our ally, Israel, can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakable support of the United States of America.

Many of you have asked a broader question: Why should we get involved at all in a place that’s so complicated and where, as one person wrote to me, those who come after Assad may be enemies of human rights?

It’s true that some of Assad’s opponents are extremists. But Al Qaida will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death.

The majority of the Syrian people, and the Syrian opposition we work with, just want to live in peace, with dignity and freedom. And the day after any military action, we would redouble our efforts to achieve a political solution that strengthens those who reject the forces of tyranny and extremism.

Finally, many of you have asked, why not leave this to other countries or seek solutions short of force? As several people wrote to me, we should not be the world’s policemen.

I agree. And I have a deeply held preference for peaceful solutions. Over the last two years, my administration has tried diplomacy and sanctions, warnings and negotiations, but chemical weapons were still used by the Assad regime.

However, over the last few days, we’ve seen some encouraging signs, in part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin. The Russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemical weapons. The Assad regime has now admitting that it has these weapons and even said they’d join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits their use.

It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments, but this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force, particularly because Russia is one of Assad’s strongest allies.

I have therefore asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path. I’m sending Secretary of State John Kerry to meet his Russian counterpart on Thursday, and I will continue my own discussions with President Putin.

I’ve spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies -- France and the United Kingdom -- and we will work together in consultation with Russia and China to put forward a resolution at the U.N. Security Council requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control.

We’ll also give U.N. inspectors the opportunity to report their findings about what happened on August 21st, and we will continue to rally support from allies from Europe to the Americas, from Asia to the Middle East, who agree on the need for action.

Meanwhile, I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails. And tonight I give thanks, again, to our military and their families for their incredible strength and sacrifices.

My fellow Americans, for nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world’s a better place because we have borne them.

And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with the failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.

To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.

Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress and those of you watching at home tonight to view those videos of the attack, and then ask, what kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way?

Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideas and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”

Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along with our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used.

America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong, but when with modest effort and risk we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.

That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Russia balks at French plan for U.N. Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical arms

By Michael Birnbaum, Will Englund and Loveday Morris, WASHINGTON POST

 

BERLIN — A last-ditch effort to avert a U.S. military strike

e by transferring control of Syrian chemical weapons ran into obstacles Tuesday, as Russia balked at a French plan to enforce an international agreement under a binding U.N. Security Council resolution with a military option if necessary.

An unexpected Russian proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international monitoring and ultimately destroy them had appeared to be gaining traction earlier in the day, as Syria embraced it, China and Iran voiced support, and the United States said it would explore the idea seriously.

But a telephone conversation between French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, revealed a deep divide over their visions of the Security Council’s role — and particularly over the prospect of military action to ensure that an agreement would be honored.

There were also doubts about how Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons could be transferred to international monitors in the midst of a bloody and protracted civil war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The call took place after France said it would draft a U.N. Security Council resolution to put the Russian proposal into effect.

In Washington, Secretary of State John F. Kerry told a House committee that the proposal “is the ideal way” to take chemical weapons away from the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But he warned that the United States would not tolerate “delay” or “avoidance,” adding: “We’re waiting for that proposal, but we’re not waiting for long.”

With support crumbling on Capitol Hill for a resolution authorizing military strikes on Syria, a bipartisan group of senators began coalescing Tuesday around a proposal that would call on the United Nations to condemn the Syrian government for using chemical weapons against its people and order U.N. inspectors into the country to recover the weapons.

If the efforts were unsuccessful, the proposal would give President Obama the authority to order military strikes, according to Senate aides familiar with the talks.

Fabius said bringing Moscow’s proposal to the Security Council would allow the world to judge the intentions of Russia and China, which until now have blocked efforts to sanction Syria for any actions during its 2 ¹ / ₂-year-long civil conflict.

After a telephone conversation Tuesday with Lavrov, Fabius said Russia is reluctant to agree to a binding U.N. Security Council resolution that would provide a framework to control Syria’s chemical weapons stocks.

“I understand that the Russians, at this stage, are not necessarily enthusiastic, and I’m using a euphemism, to frame all this in a binding U.N. resolution,” Fabius told French lawmakers.

The Russian Foreign Ministry quoted Lavrov as saying that the French proposal of a “U.N. Security Council resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter with responsibility for the Syrian authorities for the possible use of chemical weapons is unacceptable.” Chapter 7 allows the Security Council to take military action to “restore international peace and security.”

Russia considers Fabius’s proposal unacceptable at least in part because the French resolution would imply that the Syrian government is responsible for last month’s chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus. Instead, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said, Russia plans to submit a draft U.N. Security Council presidential statement “welcoming” the initiative to transfer Syrian chemical weapons to international control in order to destroy them. The statement would call for the U.N. secretary general, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and “interested parties” to implement the plans, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.

Late Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Obama administration was pursuing a dual-track effort to authorize military strikes even as it sought to avoid them by eliminating Syria’s chemical arsenal, an approach he said could not work.

The disarmament plans “will work out only if the U.S. and those who support it on this issue pledge to renounce the use of force, because it is difficult to make any country, Syria or any other country in the world, unilaterally disarm if there is military action against it under consideration,” Putin told Russia Today.

He told the Russian broadcaster that he and President Obama had discussed the disarmament idea at the Group of 20 summit in Russia last week.

The White House said that Obama spoke separately Tuesday morning with French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron. “They agreed to work closely together, and in consultation with Russia and China, to explore seriously the viability of the Russian proposal to put all Syrian chemical weapons and related materials fully under international control in order to ensure their verifiable and enforceable destruction,” press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “These efforts will begin today at the United Nations, and will include a discussion on elements of a potential U.N. Security Council Resolution.”

Russia floated the idea of handing over the weapons Monday, after a seemingly offhand remark by Kerry that such a move would be a way for Assad to avoid a U.S. military strike.

President Obama has been urging world leaders and U.S. lawmakers to endorse military action as a way of sending a message of condemnation and deterrence to Assad, whose government allegedly authorized nerve gas attacks outside Damascus on Aug. 21 that killed more than 1,400 civilians.

But on Monday evening, after Russia and Syria embraced Kerry’s weapons-transfer scenario, Obama said that the idea of monitoring and ultimately destroying Syria’s arsenal of weapons that have been outlawed around the globe “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.” The Senate postponed a vote scheduled for Wednesday on whether to back a proposed strike.

“I think you have to take it with a grain of salt, initially,” Obama said in an interview with NBC that was among several he gave Monday in pursuit of public support for a military strike. “We’re going to make sure that we see how serious these proposals are.”

Obama is scheduled to address the nation Tuesday evening at 9 p.m. Eastern time. His speech was originally planned as the capstone of a newly focused effort to rally a skeptical public and reluctant lawmakers in favor of a military strike. That approach could change, however, given the new proposal.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Kerry told lawmakers that “your word is on the line, too” in enforcing the international prohibition against chemical weapons attacks. He cited the Syria Accountability Act, passed by Congress in 2003, which charges that the Syrian government “is pursuing the development and production of biological and chemical weapons” and vows that “the United States will work to deny Syria the ability to support acts of international terrorism and efforts to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction.”

“I want to emphasize that President Obama’s first priority throughout this process has been and is diplomacy,” Kerry said. But he said that Russia and China have vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria, and Russia “has even blocked press releases” at the United Nations that do nothing more than express humanitarian concerns or condemn chemical weapons use without assigning blame.

“Make no mistake: No political solution will ever be achievable as long as Assad believes he can just gas his way out of this predicament,” Kerry said.

He said Obama would “take a hard look” at the proposal to transfer Syria’s chemical weapons but that “this cannot be a process of delay; this cannot be a process of avoidance.”

“We have to continue to show Syria and Russia and the world that we are not going to fall for stalling tactics,” Kerry said.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halki confirmed Tuesday that his government supports the Russian initiative to “spare the blood of Syrians” and prevent a conflict that could extend beyond the region, Syrian state television reported.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said the Assad government decided Monday evening to accept the plan “to stave off American aggression.”

But it was not clear whether the resolution language proposed Tuesday by Fabius would be acceptable to Russian officials, who have voiced doubts about whether the Syrian government was responsible for the Aug. 21 attacks and who can veto any Security Council resolution.

The resolution will “condemn the massacre of August 21 committed by the Syrian regime,” Fabius told reporters in Paris, and “require that this regime sheds light without delay on its chemical weapons program, that they be placed under international control and that they be dismantled.”

The resolution would warn of “extremely serious consequences” if Syria violated those guidelines, Fabius said. It would also seek to bring to justice those responsible for the Aug. 21 attacks.

Fabius said he hoped the resolution would not be blocked by other permanent members of the council — a reference to previous efforts on Syria that were blocked by Russia and China. He said that “all options are still on the table” and acknowledged that there were many practical difficulties in actually carrying out any plans to destroy Syrian chemical weapons. “It’s something that’s difficult to do, that takes take time, and is very complicated in the middle of conflict, the kind of conflict that exists currently in Syria,” Fabius said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country will soon announce “a feasible, clear and concrete plan,” which it will discuss with “the U.N. secretary general, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the U.N. Security Council.”

Alexander Kalugin, the Russian ambassador to Jordan, said the plan would need “international inspectors,” likely from the United Nations, and agreement from both the Syrian government and rebel forces to secure their safety.

“We are now engaged with Syrians about working out some concrete details on how to do the job,” Kalugin said by telephone from Amman. “It’s certainly not an easy mission.”

The Syrian government is known to have stockpiles of chemical agents including mustard gas, sarin and other nerve agents, but it has never explicitly admitted possessing them, and the exact locations and sizes of the stockpiles remain uncertain.

“Certainly we need more information from the Syrians about quantities, whereabouts, but I don’t think it’s an impossible mission,” said Kalugin.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition described the initiative as a strategy to stall for time and said that Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons, a violation of international law, requires a “serious and proportionate response.”

“Crimes against humanity cannot be absolved through political concessions, or surrendering the weapons used to commit them,” the opposition coalition said in a statement.

In a 22-page report released Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said that evidence — including witness testimony and remnants of the weapons used in last month’s chemical attack — “strongly suggests” that the Syrian government was responsible. It said the rights organization and arms experts have not documented Syrian rebel forces’ possession of the 140mm and 330mm rockets reportedly used in the strikes.

The chairman of the international affairs committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, Alexei Pushkov, said that Russia’s role in pushing the proposal is a key to its acceptance by Syria.

If the United States had demanded that Syria put its chemical weapons arsenal under international control, Pushkov told reporters, it would have looked like “blackmail at gunpoint,” and Assad would very likely have rejected it.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters that officials “welcome and support the Russian proposal” and believe that “the international community ought to give it positive consideration.”

“China always believes that a political settlement is the only realistic way to solve the Syrian issue,” Hong said. “We should insist on this direction without wavering.”

In Tehran, newly appointed Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said Iran “welcomes Moscow’s initiative at this stage to resolve the Syrian crisis. The Islamic Republic of Iran sees this initiative as a way to halt militarization in the region.”

The possibility of placing Syrian chemical weapons under international control was discussed by Obama and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin when they met Friday at the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg. On Monday, appearing before reporters, Kerry referred to it almost sarcastically when he was asked whether there was anything Assad could do to avoid a U.S. attack.

“Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry responded with a shrug. “But he isn’t about to.”

As Kerry flew back to Washington to help lobby lawmakers, he received a midair call from Lavrov, who said he had heard the secretary’s remarks and was about to make a public announcement. The statement in Moscow came before Kerry landed.

The idea of international control also quickly gained traction among diplomats and at least some senior Democrats whose backing Obama seeks for a show of force.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has said a U.S. attack on Syria would be illegal without U.N. approval, signaled support, as did British Prime Minister Cameron. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been wary of a strike, welcomed the idea.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was the first senior lawmaker to voice support for the Russian proposal.

“I think if the U.N. would accept the responsibility of maintaining these facilities, seeing that they’re secure, and that Syria would announce that it is giving up any chemical weapons programs or delivery system vehicles that may have been armed, then I think we’ve got something,” Feinstein said.

Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said that the proposal came only because Assad feels the threat of military force and that Congress should continue considering Obama’s request for legislative backing. But the two said the proposal should be given a chance — and a test of its sincerity — by being committed to writing in a U.N. Security Council resolution.

“I am skeptical. Very, very skeptical,” McCain said in an interview with CNN Tuesday morning. “But the fact is, you can’t pass up an opportunity like this without trying to determine if it’s real. I think we can find out very quickly whether it’s valid or not.”

Morris reported from Beirut. Englund reported from Moscow. Karen DeYoung in London, Anne Gearan, Ed O’Keefe, Debbi Wilgoren and William Branigin in Washington and Simon Denyer and Zhang Jie in Beijing contributed to this report.

Inside the Nazi Mind at the Nuremberg Trials 

At Nuremberg, 24 of the highest-ranking Nazis were put on trial, but behind the scenes they were also being analyzed by leading American psychologists to figure out the root of their evil. Thomas Harding on what they discovered. 
The Daily Beast 

 

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Why do men commit evil? Were the kommandants who ran the Nazi death camps psychopaths? Did they have subnormal intelligence? Were they just ordinary men who made appalling decisions?

I have been thinking about these questions ever since I found out that my great-uncle, Hanns Alexander, a German Jew, was a Nazi Hunter. At the end of the Second World War he tracked down and caught one of the worst mass murderers of all time, Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz.

These were also the questions that a team of American psychologists and psychiatrists were directed to answer during the Nuremberg Trials that opened on November 20, 1945, six months after the war’s end.

Charges of crimes against humanity were read out against 24 of the highest-ranking Nazis then in captivity, including Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Reich Security Main Office and the highest-ranking SS officer after Himmler’s death.

With so many senior Nazis held in one place at the same time, the Americans instructed a panel of psychologists to conduct exten­sive interviews and tests with the defendants. Such horrific crimes were committed surely by damaged men, men different in some fundamental way from the rest of humanity.

Among the defendants examined was Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz. Unlike the others held in Nuremberg, Höss had been intimately involved in the design and day-to-day operations of the extermination camps. 

First he was visited by Gustave Gilbert, a New Yorker born to Jewish-Austrian immigrants. Gilbert later wrote about his meeting with the Kommandant in his 1947 book Nuremberg Diary.

Gilbert asked for a brief career summary, and was surprised when Höss admitted in an unemotional tone that he had been responsible for the deaths of more than two and a half million Jews.

The American asked how it was possible to kill so many people. “Technically,” answered Höss, “that wasn’t so hard—it would not have been hard to exterminate even greater numbers.” Gilbert then pressed him for an emotional response, but Höss continued in a similar tone: “At the time there were no consequences to consider. It didn’t occur to me that I would be held responsible. You see, in Germany it was understood that if something went wrong, then the man who gave the orders was responsible.” Gilbert started to ask, “But what about the human—” before Höss interrupted, “That just didn’t enter into it.” After a few more questions, Höss said, “I suppose you want to know in this way if my thought and habits are normal.” “Well, what do you think?” Gilbert asked. “I am entirely normal,” said Höss. “Even while I was doing the extermination work, I led a normal family life.”

Relying on the often-discredited Rorschach ink-blot test, Gilbert concluded that “one gets the general impres­sion of a man who is intellectually normal but with a schizoid apathy, insensitivity, and lack of empathy that could hardly be more extreme in a frank psychotic.”

Two days later, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, Major Leon Goldensohn, came to visit Rudolf Höss. Thirty-five years old, Goldensohn was, like Gilbert, a Jew who had been born and raised in New York. Goldensohn had arrived recently in Nuremberg to replace Douglas Kelley, another American psychiatrist who had conducted interviews with many of the prisoners (and would later publish his findings in a 1947 book Twenty-two Cells in Nuremberg.)

Goldensohn made detailed notes of his encounter with the kommandant, which were posthumously published in 2005 in the volume The Nuremberg Interviews.

When he arrived in the cell, sucking at a pipe dangling from his mouth, Goldensohn found the prisoner sitting on the edge of his cot with his trousers rolled up, bathing his feet in a tub of warm water.

Through an interpreter, Goldensohn asked him how he felt mentally. Rudolf Höss replied: “I feel less nervous now than I did.” He was then asked if he felt upset over what he had done in Auschwitz. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” said Höss. “I was obeying orders, and now, of course, I see that it was unnecessary and wrong. But I don’t know what you mean by being upset about these things because I didn’t personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination program at Auschwitz. It was Hitler who ordered it through Himmler and it was Eichmann who gave me the orders regarding transports.”

When Goldensohn asked if he was haunted by nightmares—by images of the executions, gas chambers, or burning corpses—Höss replied: “No, I have no such fantasies.”

Overseeing the murder of over a million people had left him unhaunted by “fantasies.”

In a letter, written on 20 May 1946, Goldensohn gave his assess­ment: “His character is that of the amoral psychopath, which in itself, and correlated with his personal development history, indicates a dearth of parental love and unconscious hostility toward the father.”

On 15 April 1946, Rudolf Höss provided his testimony at Nuremberg. In its candor and detail regarding the mechanics of the Final Solution it changed the course of the trial.

Rudolf Höss’ testimony was reported around the world. The New York Times described it as the “crushing climax to the case.” In Britain, The Times of London went further. They said of Höss’ signed testimony: “its dreadful implications must surpass any document ever penned.”

A few days later, Rudolf Höss was handed to the Polish authorities to face his own trial. In April 1947, the former kommandant was hung on the gallows next to the old crematorium in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The conclusion of the psychologists and psychiatrists at Nuremberg was clear: they both decided that though Rudolf Höss was intelligent, he was mentally ill: a psychopath, psychotic, amoral, lacking empathy.

But Rudolf flatly denied this to be the case. He declared himself to be normal.  He regretted, at most, doing something unnecessary.  Overseeing the murder of over a million people had left him unhaunted by “fantasies.”

The impression of the mental health professionals was also contradicted by two of the intelligence officers who interrogated Rudolf Höss.

First, there was the British war crimes investigator, Captain Hanns Alexander, my great-uncle Hanns, the German Jew turned British soldier, who had arrested the kommandant. Alexander had expected Höss to be a monster and was surprised to find him to appear “normal.”

Then there was Whitney Harris, the American prosecutor (and member of the OSS) who took Höss’s affidavit in Nuremberg. Harris said that Höss appeared like a “grocery clerk,” someone you would pay no attention to if you met him on the street.

This view that Höss was “normal,” no different essentially from other human beings, is supported by the kommandant’s own daughter, Brigitte, who said in a recent interview that her father was “kind” to her as a child, indeed he was “the nicest father in the world.” Brigitte even recalled that he looked “sad when he came back from work.” Brigitte was also clear that, as far as an 11-year-old would be able to tell, her father was sane.

An alternative theory of what underlies the character of the men and women who executed the Final Solution is put forward by Hannah Arendt. She argued that these men and women were typically not psychopaths or two-dimensional monsters. Rather they were ordinary men, who made a series of terrible decisions with horrific consequences.

To paraphrase Hannah Arendt—as portrayed in the recently released movie of the same name—the Nazi war criminal’s actions stemmed from her well-known phrase “banality of evil,” not as a result of mental illness but as a result of a lack of thinking. Their greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. In Rudolf Höss’s case, this would have been his superiors, particularly Heinrich Himmler. 

To many this conclusion is troubling, for it suggests that if everyday, “normal,” sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future.

Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn from the war criminals at Nuremberg. We must be ever wary of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. And we ourselves must be extra vigilant, particularly in this day of accelerated technological power, heightened state surveillance, and global corporate reach, that we do not delegate our thinking to others.