Start your weekend the right way. It’s your Weekly Wrap 🗞️
Talking points
- Genoa’s Morandi bridge collapsed, killing 39; populists in Rome and the EU blamed each other for the bridge being in disrepair
- Moon Jae-in reaffirmed his audacious plan to unify Korea; he wants road and rail links between North and South underway before the year ends
- Chinese authorities lambasted Hong Kong’s Foreign Press Club for hosting a feisty pro-independence speaker
- An ISIS suicide bomber slaughtered 34 Afghan students even as the Taliban engaged government positions in a sweeping offensive
- A US court found that Monsanto’s popular weed-killer Roundup can be carcinogenic; shares in Bayer (which is buying Monsanto) are down 18%
- Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against news publishers; hundreds of newspapers responded with editorials criticising his combative stance
- A suicide bomber targeting Chinese engineers in Pakistan drew attention to Beijing’s overbearing presence in restive Balochistan
- A 29-year-old man rammed his car into the gates of Westminster; several cyclists were injured in the attack
- Google employees criticised their company’s ‘Dragonfly’ project which aims to launch a censored search engine in China
- Rodrigo Duterte announced he is willing to relinquish the Philippines presidency to none other than the son of (ex-dictator) Ferdinand Marcos.
Worldlywise
Long live the Queen
Aretha Franklin passed away aged 76 in the town of her childhood — Detroit, just a short drive from the church where she first sang gospel. She died of advanced pancreatic cancer some eight years after the initial diagnosis. When news broke, American hearts broke with it.
The Queen of Soul’s numbers don’t lie: Franklin sold 75m records worldwide, topped the R&B Charts with 20 different songs and won 18 Grammy awards. Songs like ‘Respect’, ‘Think’, ‘Natural Woman’ and ‘Chain of Fools’ have been committed to heart by fans around the globe. Here was an African-American woman from Detroit singing with, to, and for, her people. The triumphs and falls of black America can be mapped across her lifetime: she sang at Martin Luther King’s funeral in 1986, and in 2015 she moved America’s first black president to tears.
Such a figure — a titan in African-American music history — deserves more than a eulogy. She deserves an audience.
Spotlight on Pennsylvania
Back in 2001 the Boston Globe shone a light on the abuse of children by Catholic priests. The rape of children was widespread, repeated and covered up by senior clergymen. It was a scandal that rocked the heavily Irish-Catholic town of Boston to its core. In the intervening years it’s been revealed that religious institutions worldwide have been complicit in the wholesale abuse of children; of these the Catholic Church is primus inter pares.
A damning new revelation came from Pennsylvania this week. The details are familiar: priests using the rituals and symbols of Catholic power to coerce children into bed. The scale is jawdropping, some 300 priests abused at least 1000 children over seven decades.
A spokesperson for Pope Francis has described the Pontiffs “shame and sorrow”. Yet such words from the palaces of the Vatican City will provide little consolation to those whose lives were ruined before its altars. While Francis is certainly the most approachable Pope in recent memory, he remains reactive.
Deep Dive
In classical Greek mythology the Trojan War was fought over the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen was spirited off to Troy by her lover; it’s said that her face launched 1,000 ships. It’s a wondrous tale but likely apocryphal. It’s far more likely that the conflict was in fact a trade war, fought over access to the Black Sea entrepôts. Fast forward three millennia and a leader of Homeric proportions is once again waging economic war in the Aegean, ostensibly to reclaim a lost citizen.
Andrew, not Helen
An argument between Washington and Ankara over the detention of an American pastor spiralled out of control this week. At the centre of the controversy is Andrew Brunson, a presbyterian evangelical who has spent nearly two decades living and preaching in the bustling Turkish city of Izmir. By all accounts he guided his flock well and was held in fine standing by the community. That all changed in 2016 when a small group of military officers attempted a coup against Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In the heady months that followed Turkey was wracked by purges, seemingly without rhyme or reason; Brunson was caught up in this tide and jailed on charges of terrorism.
The US State Department believed that the charges against Brunson were thin, if not entirely fabricated, and wanted him released. A possible solution emerged earlier this year in the shape of Ebru Ozkan. Ozkan, a Turkish citizen, had been arrested by Israeli authorities on suspicion of aiding Hamas. Washington leaned on Tel Aviv and secured Ozkan’s release in exchange for Brunson; yet Brunson only made it as far as a transfer to home detention.
Economic gunboat diplomacy
US President Donald Trump is not one to take betrayal lightly. His Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced sanctions on two members of Erdoğan’s cabinet and just yesterday threatened more. And what had begun as a diplomatic spat has now pushed the Turkish economy to the brink of meltdown after Washington doubled tariffs on Turkish steel (to 50%) and aluminium (to 20%).
One analyst memorably noted, “Trump is wielding something much more powerful than a nuclear weapon now. He is basically kneecapping countries, and Turkey is the first one to be kneecapped.”
Turkey’s already-vulnerable lira has plunged in value. In just a few short days it has lost ground against all the major currencies. Exasperated Turks have watched as the level of inflation climbed from uncomfortable to untenable: the peak body representing bakers raised the price of bread by 15% overnight. The mountain of foreign corporate debt on which Turkey’s meagre growth was won is looming large overheard. Complicating matters is the fact that counter to most economic thought, Erdoğan believes that higher interest rates don’t counterbalance rising inflation. Economists are therefore deeply worried that the man with total control over Turkey’s economy will do nothing to stave off hyperinflation because he believes that higher interest rates are “the mother and father of all evil”.
Dominoes and devaluation
The ship settled slightly towards the end of the week. Cavalry arrived in the form of a $15b loan from Qatar. It seems fair recompense for the military and economic assistance Ankara provided during Doha’s dispute with the GCC last year. Other help may arrive too, from Russia and China. But the real action needs to happen internally. Unfortunately it’s unlikely that Erdoğan will steer a course to buttress the economy from American pressure. The strongman’s belligerence may overwhelm a cabinet stacked with yes-men and a son-in-law for a Finance Minister.
So far authorities have hosed down short-sellers and added more liquidity to the market. A small battery of counter-sanctions against American technology and liquor is a nod towards the president’s defiance. It’s yet to be seen whether America will force Turkey into accepting an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
The situation in Turkey has had global repercussions. Eurozone beancounters are likely to have endured several sleepless nights this week; the European banks most exposed to risk are those least capable of handling a run (Spain and Italy). As the lira slid, it also threatened to take several emerging-market currencies with it; both the Indian rupee and South African Rand faltered. The Georgian Iari was one of the best-performing currencies of 2018; yet all its gains have been lost in the past week.
Right now banking analysts, economists and Treasurers the world over are wondering whether or not two stubborn men will endanger the global economy over the fate of a jailed pastor.
The Best of Times…
A lot can happen in three years; back in 2015 Christine Hallquist was coming out as a woman. At the time it would have seemed highly improbable that a transgender person could or would stand for high office, even in the bluest states. This week Hallquist won the Democratic nomination to stand for Governor of Vermont. The progressive state (home to none other than Bernie Sanders) will become the first in American history to see a transgender individual’s name on the ballot. Perhaps one day such an event won’t be treated as a novelty, but in the meantime there have been celebrations galore for Hallquist’s representation, visibility and bravery.
In general, the larger an animal is, the more likely it is to develop cancers. But for years this rule of thumb has not applied to elephants. This week a new study into why pachyderms manage to largely avoid cancer has turned up a fascinating answer: zombie genes. The noble pachyderms have a handy gene called LFI6 which very efficiently kills cells at risk of becoming cancerous. It’s essentially a built-in scorched-earth mechanism that starves the cancer of the fuel it needs to spread. Humans could do with some of those.
The Worst of Times…
Are one million Uyghurs interned in the province of Xinjiang? This explosive claim was made before the United Nations this week and quickly drew condemnation from Beijing. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination heard testimony that the entirety of Xinjiang has been transformed into an internment camp by Chinese security forces. It’s believed that hundreds of thousands of the muslim minority have been trucked off to “re-education” facilities. If these claims hold even the smallest amount of water they deserve international condemnation.
Is the British Labour Party anti-semitic? For generations the left-wing of the Labour has battled with Jewish interest groups over the party’s stance on Israel and Palestine. An undercurrent of antisemitism has been revealed on different occasions in both major parties, yet Labour can’t seem to shake the accusations. Jeremy Corbyn (a staunch critic of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies) has um’ed and ah’ed in the face of growing public criticism. It seems the Jewry is still out on this vexed old question.
Weekend Reading
Featured long-reads from inkl publishers:
- Financial Times sits down for a fantastic interview with Julien Baker
- Bloomberg reveals an extraordinary tale: The Billionaires and The Guru
- Businessweek asks a ripper: why can’t Europe do tech?
Tom Wharton
@trwinwriting
P.S.
Quote of the week…
“I can’t guarantee anything… I can tell you that I’ve never heard it.” — White House Press spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders gives a wholly unreassuring response when asked whether or not the president was taped saying the n-word.
What to watch next week
The Asian Games. This enormous festival of sports kicks off in Jakarta and Palembang today!
And one last thing
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